LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Donald Trump is scheduled to campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin on Thursday as the former president ramps up his battleground state trips for a traditional Labor Day swing toward the fall election.
Trump’s intense focus on capturing states he won in 2016 but narrowly lost in 2020 continues, stopping in the middle in Michigan and western Wisconsin.
Trump’s day begins with an afternoon rally in Potterville, Michigan, near the state capital of Lansing. Trump won Eaton County, where part of Lansing is located, in both 2016 and 2020, but by a smaller margin the second time. This is his third visit to the state in the past nine days and his second this week after he addressed the National Guard Association on Monday in Detroit.
He later visits La Crosse, Wisconsin, for a town hall overseen by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who endorsed him in Detroit. It will be Trump’s first visit to Wisconsin since the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which ended three days before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Along with Pennsylvania, which Trump will visit Friday, the three Midwestern states make up the northern industrial bloc that Democrats carried for two decades before Trump defeated them in 2016. Biden conquered them on his way to the White House in 2020.
Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, have been hitting battleground states in recent weeks, and Vance is in both states this week as well.
The battleground attack comes in force as the Democratic Party rallies around Harris and his new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Harris and Walz are looking to capitalize on a surge in enthusiasm among the party’s base since his campaign began just over a month ago. They’re hoping that excitement — on full display at last week’s convention in Chicago — will spill over into more moderate areas as they embark on a two-day bus tour of Georgia, including events in the state’s rural south.
Trump’s events in Michigan and Wisconsin are both in swing congressional districts.
Potterville is located in Michigan’s 7th District, a mix of Republican-controlled counties like Clinton and Shiawassee and Democratic strongholds like Ingham, home to the state Capitol and Michigan State University. This district is expected to be one of the most competitive in the country this fall after Democratic incumbent Rep. Elissa Slotkin decided to run for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.
La Crosse, meanwhile, is the center of Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, where Republican Derrick Van Orden narrowly won in 2022. Democrat Rebecca Cooke won the August 13 primary against him in November.
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Beaumont reports from Des Moines, Iowa.
