Donald Trump is scheduled to campaign Thursday in Michigan and Wisconsin as the former president ramps up battleground state travel heading into the traditional Labor Day turn toward the fall election.

What You Need To Know

  • Former President Donald Trump is set to campaign in battleground states Michigan and Wisconsin on Thursday, part of his focus to win back the states he flipped in 2016 but lost in 2020

  • Trump's day starts with an afternoon rally in Potterville, Michigan, near the state capital of Lansing; it's his third visit to the state in nine days

  • Later, he will visit La Crosse, Wisconsin, for a town hall moderated by Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic lawmaker who endorsed him on Monday in Michigan

  • Trump is set to visit Pennsylvania on Friday, the third in a trio of northern Rust Belt states that are often reliably Democratic, but he flipped red in 2016; Joe Biden flipped them back in 2020 on his way to the White House

Trump's intense focus on recapturing states he won in 2016 but lost narrowly in 2020 continues with stops in the middle of Michigan and western Wisconsin.

Trump's day starts 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. It will be his third visit to the state in the past nine days and second this week after a speech to the National Guard Association in Detroit on Monday, where he was endorsed by former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

Later, he will visit La Crosse, Wisconsin, for a town hall moderated Gabbard. 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 and made way for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Along with Pennsylvania, which Trump will visit on Friday, these three Midwestern states make up a northern industrial bloc Democrats carried for two decades before Trump won them in 2016. Biden recaptured them on his way to the White House in 2020.

Trump and his vice-presidential pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have blitzed the battleground states in recent weeks, with Vance in both states this week as well.

The battleground offensive comes as a reinvigorated Democratic Party rallies around Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Harris and Walz are aiming to leverage the surge in enthusiasm among the party's base since her campaign launch just over a month ago. They hope this excitement — which was on full display at last week's convention in Chicago — will extend to more moderate areas as they embark on a two-day bus tour in Georgia, including events in the state's rural southern regions.

Trump's events in Michigan and Wisconsin are both in swing congressional districts.

Potterville is in Michigan's 7th District, which features a mix of Republican-dominated counties like Clinton and Shiawassee, and Democratic strongholds such as Ingham, home to the state Capitol and Michigan State University. This district is expected to be one of the nation's most competitive this fall following incumbent Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin's decision to run for the state's open U.S. Senate seat.

La Crosse, meanwhile, is a hub within Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District, where Republican Derrick Van Orden won narrowly in 2022. Democrat Rebecca Cooke won the Aug. 13 primary to face him in November.