Trump turns attention to Michigan and Wisconsin, the ‘blue wall’ states he won, then lost
CNN
Donald Trump will return to the campaign trail on Tuesday with events in Michigan and Wisconsin, two critical Midwest battlegrounds that he won eight years ago but that have mostly vexed Republicans ever since.
Donald Trump will return to the campaign trail on Tuesday with events in Michigan and Wisconsin, two critical Midwest battlegrounds that he won eight years ago but that have mostly vexed Republicans ever since. The former president is scheduled to first appear in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he is expected to deliver remarks about the US-Mexico border. From there, Trump will travel to Green Bay, Wisconsin, for his first rally in the Badger State since launching his third White House bid. The visits come amid a notable lull in Trump’s campaign activity in the weeks since he became the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. Trump has held two campaign events since Super Tuesday — while the same time period has seen a surge in political activity from President Joe Biden, including his own stops in Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump, meanwhile, has unleashed a flurry of social media posts in recent weeks, attacking his Democratic rival and the judges and prosecutors overseeing the various legal cases against the former president. Along with Pennsylvania, Trump’s stunning 2016 victories in Michigan and Wisconsin produced a seismic crack in the so-called blue wall of states Democrats had relied on in every election going back to 1992. Trump’s particular success with blue-collar voters gave Republicans optimism for a political realignment that could turn the Rust Belt red for the foreseeable future. Instead, Republicans have struggled to replicate Trump’s initial success in subsequent elections, including in 2020 when Biden narrowly won all three states en route to victory. Democrats in that time also took over the governors’ offices in Michigan and Wisconsin and flipped a Senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2022 that proved crucial to maintaining control of the chamber. Still, gone are the days when Democrats could comfortably count on these states to deliver in national elections. Early polls suggest Michigan and Wisconsin pose a challenge for Biden and an opportunity for Trump to mine for electoral votes in the upper Midwest.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
If nothing else, the controversy over the Trump administration’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has surfaced a long-overdue debate about its already legally dubious first strikes.
Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.
Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.
Young Americans are “a generation under profound strain” with little confidence in institutions and widespread economic concerns, according to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey of adults younger than 30 released Thursday.
As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.
The murder trial of Brian Walshe, who is accused of killing and dismembering his wife in 2023 continues. Follow for live updates.
The FBI arrested a person Thursday who investigators believe planted pipe bombs near the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters the night before the 2021 US Capitol riot.
Lawyers for the New York attorney general’s office are expected to appear in federal court in Albany on Thursday to try to disqualify a US attorney from investigating the state’s civil case against President Donald Trump.