The latest on the 2024 campaign and primary elections

A resident arrives to vote in the state's primary election at a polling location on April 2, in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail Tuesday with events in two critical Midwest battlegrounds: Michigan and Wisconsin.

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.

Republicans have struggled to replicate Trump’s initial success in subsequent elections, including in 2020 when President Joe 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.

Biden won Michigan in 2020 by more than 150,000 votes. The margin was much tighter in Wisconsin, where he came out ahead by about 21,000 votes – a victory of about 0.7 percentage points.

In both states, efforts to subvert the 2020 election – including by enlisting fake electors – have roiled Republican politics, at times aided by Trump. The former president attacked Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in 2022 for refusing to decertify the state’s presidential result, which he did not have the power to do.

Read more about Trump’s events today — and why Michigan and Wisconsin are key.

Wisconsin voters will approve two election-related amendments to the state constitution, CNN projects, delivering a win for Republican lawmakers who have pushed to alter voting rules in this battleground state ahead of November’s presidential election.

The vote to ban the use of private money in election administration marks a victory for conservative activists who have denounced what they have called “Zuckerbucks,” the money that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated to a nonprofit that ultimately helped administrators around the country carry out the 2020 election amid the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The one-time $350 million donation included roughly $10 million sent to Wisconsin jurisdictions. The grant administrators noted that any community that applied for the money received it and said partisanship played no role in their decision-making. But opponents have argued the money helped Democratic turnout that year – particularly in the state’s largest cities – and unfairly shaped the 2020 election outcome as Wisconsin flipped from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Biden won Wisconsin by fewer than 21,000 votes that year. In aftermath of Trump’s 2020 loss, he and his allies have made repeated, baseless claims that election fraud contributed to his defeat in the Badger State.

Wisconsin voters on Tuesday are also projected to approve a separate constitutional amendment that would allow only officials designated by state law to administer elections. Proponents said it was needed to guard against outside consultants participating in the process.

Opponents have argued that the measures could have unintended consequences, such as potentially barring local clerks from accepting donated supplies or the use of a privately owned building as a polling place. In addition, they note, the ballot questions make no guarantee of increased government funding to help run elections once private sources are restricted.

Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.

Democrats have been growing increasingly anxious about public polls showing former President Donald Trump making unprecedented inroads among Black and Hispanic voters. But there may be reasons for Republicans to feel uneasy about these polls too.

Surveys now consistently show Trump leading President Joe Biden nationally and in almost all of the key swing states. But those same surveys generally show Biden matching or even exceeding his winning 2020 share of the vote among White voters. Trump’s lead in polls is often based solely on him significantly improving on his 2020 showing among voters of color – and in fact, running better among Blacks and Hispanics than any Republican presidential candidate in decades.

These results have provoked a fierce debate about whether those numbers are accurate. But the more important question may be whether Trump can sustain whatever level of support he now has among non-White voters as more of them learn about the aggressive agenda he has adopted on race-related issues.

The presumptive GOP nominee is now benefiting from the best of both worlds politically: he is energizing his base of White social conservatives with incendiary ideas such as the largest deportation drive against undocumented migrants in American history and attracting historic numbers of non-White voters on other issues, principally the economy. If Trump can continue to do both things through November, he will be very hard to beat. Biden’s position would look much better if Democrats can push Trump off of that tightrope by raising unease in minority communities about the former president’s most militant proposals and rhetoric – like his claim that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Under any scenario, Trump in 2024 will receive the vast majority of his votes from Whites. But the incremental improvement from 2020 that could carry him to a second term now looks to be concentrated preponderantly among non-Whites.

Read more about this dynamics’ impact on a Trump-Biden rematch.

Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will win their respective presidential primaries in Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin, CNN projects, as the candidates gear up for a November rematch. 

Biden and Trump already won enough delegates to clinch their parties’ presidential nominations. Neither will officially become the nominee until the national conventions vote this summer. 

Wisconsin activists pushed for a protest vote in the Democratic primary, asking voters to support an “uninstructed delegation” to send a message to Biden about his handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Voters in Connecticut and Rhode Island had the option to select “uncommitted” on their Democratic primary ballots. The New York Democratic primary ballot did not list an “uncommitted” option.

This post has been updated with additional projections.

A city commissioner in Enid, Oklahoma, who has faced significant controversy for alleged ties to White nationalist groups will be recalled from office, according to a projection from the CNN Decision Desk.

Judd Blevins, who faced criticism from residents over his attendance at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, will lose the recall election to former teacher Cheryl Patterson.

Enid, in northern Oklahoma, has a population of about 50,000 and votes overwhelmingly for Republicans.

Blevins, who has denied being a White nationalist, was elected in February 2023.

The Enid Social Justice Committee, a group of local activists, helmed a campaign to bring attention to Blevin’s past and collected enough signatures for a recall petition, leading to Tuesday’s special election.

CNN’s Ashley Killough and Ed Lavandera contributed reporting to this post.

Speaking at a rally in Wisconsin, former President Donald Trump continued his anti-immigrant rhetoric from his earlier campaign stop Tuesday, saying, “There’s never been corruption and rape and pillage and loss and people coming in at levels that nobody’s ever seen.”

The former president used dark and violent rhetoric as he railed against illegal immigration and highlighted examples of undocumented immigrants committing violent crimes. At his earlier rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the former president referred to those perpetrators as “not humans” and “animals.”

Trump claimed, without evidence, that undocumented immigrants would “obliterate Social Security and Medicare for American seniors.” Officials estimate that undocumented immigrants contribute billions to Social Security annually through payroll tax deductions.  

Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Hyatt Regency in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on April 2.

Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that November 5 — Election Day — would be called “Christian Visibility Day” because he argued Christians would turn out in large numbers to vote for him as he criticized President Joe Biden for proclaiming Easter Sunday as the Transgender Day of Visibility, though the two days coincided this year only by chance. 

The Transgender Day of Visibility, which was started in 2009 as a day of awareness to celebrate the successes of transgender and gender-nonconforming people, is held annually on March 31. The date of Easter, meanwhile, changes from year to year.

Despite the two dates coinciding this year by chance, Trump and other Republicans have seized on Biden’s proclamation to attack the president. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson said on social media Saturday that the Biden administration had “betrayed the central tenet of Easter.”

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement Saturday, “As a Christian who celebrates Easter with family, President Biden stands for bringing people together and upholding the dignity and freedoms of every American.”

Former President Donald Trump set up a second podium onstage at his campaign rally Tuesday in Wisconsin as he called for debates with President Joe Biden.

“So that we can discuss in a friendly manner the real problems of our country — of which there are many — instead of trying to have corrupt prosecutors fight your battles for you. That’s no good,” he continued.

The podium had a sign that read “Anytime. Anywhere. Anyplace.” Trump, who did not participate in any GOP primary debates, has previously called for debates with Biden.

More context: Biden only faced token primary opposition this year, and the Democratic National Committee didn’t sponsor any primary debates. But he has remained coy about whether he will debate Trump in the general election.

Whether either man will show up to the debate stage is an open question, but there is a detailed plan for three presidential debates and a vice presidential one already in place from the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Read more about the history of presidential debates.

CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf contributed reporting to this post. 

In this 2020 photo, people vote at the Milwaukee County Sports Complex in Franklin, Wisconsin.

Republican lawmakers and activists in several presidential battlegrounds are pushing ballot measures to change how elections are run in their states. Critics say those efforts, if successful, could make it harder to administer voting in places that could decide key political contests.

Today, Wisconsin voters are deciding whether to alter the state’s constitution and ban any private money in elections, one of two GOP-backed measures on the ballot focused on election administration. In Nevada, meanwhile, a GOP-aligned group is collecting signatures in the hopes of establishing new voter ID requirements in the Silver State.

And in Arizona, a so-called ballot referral moving through the Republican-controlled Legislature would upend the state’s widely used, no-excuse vote-by-mail system. The measure, which recently cleared a key Senate committee, also would effectively sideline the use of so-called vote centers in the state’s largest counties.

Opponents say that will set off a costly scramble to find additional polling places and workers. In Wisconsin and Arizona, Republican lawmakers, who have seen Democratic governors veto their election proposals, are leading the efforts to go the ballot measure route and avoid veto pens. Constitutional amendments in Wisconsin and ballot referenda in Arizona are not subject to the approval of governors in those states.

Read more about the ballot measures.

As former President Donald Trump returns to Wisconsin tonight for the first time in nearly two years, Democrats have a close eye on him – but not only him – as they build a general election campaign in this critical battleground state.

As Wisconsin voters cast ballots Tuesday in a largely symbolic primary seven months ahead of the November election, Robert Kennedy Jr.’s independent candidacy is increasingly becoming a worrisome wild card for Democrats and Republicans.

For now, Kennedy seems to be more of a concern for Democrats, who are increasingly divided over Biden’s support for Israel’s unrelenting war in Gaza. Though Biden and Trump have both clinched their respective party’s nominations, progressives are again urging Democrats to lodge protest votes – this time for “uninstructed” – as a warning to Biden.

A national poll from Marquette University Law School, conducted in February, highlighted the volatility of the coming general election. The survey found Trump with a lead of 51% to 49% over Biden among registered voters, well within the poll’s margin of error. When third-party candidates were added to the mix, both Biden and Trump saw their numbers fall by about 10 percentage points. Trump received 42% to Biden’s 39%, while Kennedy received 15%, with West and Stein taking 5% combined – meaning as many as 1 in 5 voters seem open to casting a third-party ballot.

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on April 2.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday ramped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric in a Michigan speech aimed at President Joe Biden’s handling of the US-Mexico border, spotlighting instances of violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and again referring to those perpetrators as “not humans” and “animals.”

Trump spent the entirety of his speech in the key battleground state stoking fears about undocumented immigrants as he sought to directly tie migrants to an increase in crime in the US, despite many researchers finding no connection between immigration and crime. He also linked an uptick in illegal immigration to the spread of contagious disease.

Trump also embraced the use of the word “bloodbath” to describe Biden’s border policies, again using the term that drew criticism for Democrats when he recently deployed it to warn about the future of the auto industry and country under a second Biden term.

Trump vowed to “deliver justice” to Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student whose suspected killer is an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, and Ruby Garcia, a 25-year-old woman officials say was killed in Michigan by an undocumented immigrant she was in a romantic relationship with.

Garcia’s sister Mavi told a local news station in Michigan later Tuesday that Trump did not speak with members of her family despite him claiming he had in his Michigan campaign speech. CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

Ahead of Trump’s official remarks in Michigan, he held a brief roundtable with law enforcement officials and state representatives, including Rep. John James, former Rep. Mike Rogers, Rep. Jack Bergman, Allegan County Sheriff Frank Baker and Van Buren County Sheriff Daniel Abbott. 

Trump, who left Michigan for a campaign speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin, emphasized the importance of the two battleground states. “This is a very important state. You win Michigan, you win the election,” Trump said.

This is post has been updated with comments from Garcia’s sister.

The presidential primaries are effectively over since President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have amassed enough delegates to win the Democratic and Republican nomination, respectively.

But some progressive voters in particular are intent to use the process to send a message to Biden about his support for Israel during the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Progressive and pro-Palestinian groups are encouraging voters in Wisconsin to pick the “uninstructed delegation.” A similar campaign in Michigan’s Democratic primary in February with the “uncommitted” option yielded more than 100,000 votes, about 13% of the primary vote count, compared with Biden’s 81%.

Any discontent could be consequential: Wisconsin has been decided by slim margins in recent elections. Trump won the White House by winning states like Wisconsin in 2016 and then lost the White House when Biden took it back for Democrats in 2020. Read this dispatch from CNN’s Jeff Zeleny and Gregory Krieg on the spoiler role Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could play as an independent candidate in a state like Wisconsin. They note that when the Green Party’s Jill Stein was a candidate in Wisconsin in 2016, Trump won. When Stein was off the ballot in 2020, Trump lost.

There have been some indications that President Joe Biden and other top Democrats are evolving their positions on Israel’s war in Gaza after the the Michigan Democratic primary in February yielded more than 100,000 votes for the “uncommitted” option.

If the Democratic voters of Michigan – and a handful of other swing states like Wisconsin – are feeling uncommitted in November, Biden could risk losing the election.

Here’s some recent steps taken since that primary:

On the other hand, the Biden administration is on the cusp of approving a deal to sell up to 50 American-made F-15 fighter jets to Israel.

Joe Biden departs the White House in Washington, DC, on March 22.

During his trip to New York City last week, President Joe Biden sat down for a rare joint interview alongside former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. But the interview was not with a national news organization or a local newspaper or outlet. It was with the comedy podcast, “Smartless,” hosted by the actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett.

The Biden campaign is prioritizing interviews with outlets reaching specific constituency groups, believing that focusing on local media will pay off in November, said Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign communications director. But as Biden pays more attention to new and non-traditional forms of media, he has shown more reluctance than his predecessors to grant one-on-one sit-down interviews with the national press, participating in fewer interviews than other presidents at this point in his presidency.

Some of Biden’s hesitation to speak with the traditional news media likely stems from his frustration with how members of the press have covered him and his campaign. But it goes without saying that interviews with the national news media are where Biden will face the toughest line of questioning.

By bypassing the Beltway press and prioritizing other forms of media, Biden has been able to remain in contact with voters, while allowing the president to avoid being repeatedly pressed on uncomfortable topics such as his age.

“These interviews we are able to do focus far more on the substance and the stakes that matter to voters than they do to folks in the beltway and New York,” Tyler said.

President Joe Biden, center, takes photos with patrons at They Say restaurant during a campaign stop on February 1, in Harper Woods, Michigan.

On a recent chilly Sunday, a retired Milwaukee police sergeant leaned into the window of a gray Mazda in a strip mall parking lot where some of the post-church crowd was coming for lunch, chatting up the driver for almost 10 minutes.

The 2024 election could hinge on the efforts of people like Kimberlee Foster — or at least President Joe Biden’s campaign hopes so. In the run-up to Tuesday’s Wisconsin primaries and local elections, Foster is part of a live “relational organizing” pilot program Biden’s campaign has been running here as it tries to tackle the drop-off in Black turnout over the last decade, along with the cultural and technological changes that have made it harder than ever to reach those who have checked out.

It’s no accident this program started in Wisconsin: Almost any path to victory for Biden or former President Donald Trump will run through this state, which Biden won by fewer than 21,000 votes in 2020 and Trump won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016 — with the Black vote significantly lower than expected both times. North Milwaukee is home to the most concentrated Black population in the state, but Black engagement here has been so low that Democratic organizers are finding that half the people they’ve been reaching weren’t in their voter files, which means they never even heard from campaign staff trying to rally votes in 2020 or before.

It’s not just Wisconsin, though. CNN’s conversations with two dozen top Biden campaign aides, elected officials across the country and voters on the ground in several key states detail a frantic fight that is much bigger than what’s going on in north Milwaukee.

Read more about what why Black voters are so crucial.

Don Hankey, the chairman and majority shareholder of Knight Specialty Insurance, told CNN on Tuesday that the deal to underwrite Donald Trump’s $175 million bond in New York came together quickly and that the former president posted all cash as collateral.

Hankey said initially he reached out to the Trump Organization last month when the former president was having trouble putting together a bond of $464 million. After the amount of the bond was slashed to $175 million by a New York appeals court, the Trump team eventually reached back out to Knight Specialty, according to Hankey.

What to know about Hankey: The billionaire has amassed a fortune that Forbes values at $7.4 billion. Hankey confirmed to CNN that he and his wife, as well as their two sons, have donated to Trump’s presidential campaigns in the past and plan to support him again in 2024. His firm, Knight Specialty Insurance, is based in California, and is known for providing subprime auto loans to car buyers with weaker credit scores.

Former President Donald Trump attends the 2024 Senior Club Championship award ceremony at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 24.

Donald Trump is running one of the strangest general election campaigns America has ever seen. He’s hawking Bibles, attacking judges, making billions in the stock market and boasting about his golf game. Last Thursday, the ex-president traveled to New York to attend the wake of a fallen police officer – on a trip that allowed him to deepen his characterization of a nation adrift and plagued by crime under President Joe Biden.

But there wasn’t much in Trump’s busy week that resembled a conventional general election campaign – certainly not one that might address some of his biggest liabilities as he seeks a return to the White House.

That’s a sharp contrast to Biden, who this week wrapped up his post State of the Union tour in North Carolina. The state was in Trump’s column in 2020 and 2016, but Democrats think they can put it back in play. Last Thursday night, the president put on a show of Democratic unity and invoked the party’s glory days at an event in New York with ex-Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama that the campaign said ahead of time had raised more than $25 million. Those big bucks could be critical in what is likely to be a tight race with Trump that could be decided by a few hundred thousand votes across a handful of states.

One attendee told CNN after leaving the off-camera fundraiser that the three presidents spoke repeatedly about the threat a second Trump term would pose, with Biden saying the former president would tear up the Constitution and alluding to Trump’s comment that he’d only be a dictator on “day one.” Videos released by the Biden campaign Friday morning showed a light-hearted moment in which moderator Stephen Colbert contrasted Biden’s busy schedule with Trump’s golf activities, as well as Biden’s warning that democracy is “literally at stake.” Biden and his team have also been aggressively taking the campaign to Trump on policy, including on abortion and reproductive rights.

Read more about Trump and Biden’s contrasting campaigns.

Former President Donald Trump appears during a court hearing in the Manhattan borough of New York City, on February 15.

Donald Trump is the first former president in US history to face criminal charges, and with his third presidential bid under way for 2024, the stakes are high for both him and the country. Here’s what to know about his four criminal cases:

Hush money case: Trump was first indicted in March 2023 by the Manhattan district attorney on state charges related to a hush-money payment to an adult-film star in 2016. Prosecutors allege Trump was a part of an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election. Further, they allege he was part of an unlawful plan to suppress negative information, including the $130,000 payment. Trump has pleaded not guilty. The trial is set to begin on April 15.

Classified documents: Trump was indicted in June 2023 by a federal grand jury in Miami for taking classified national defense documents from the White House after he left office and resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials. Both Trump and his aide Walt Nauta have pleaded not guilty. On July 27, the special counsel charged Trump with three new counts, including one additional count of willful retention of national defense information.

Election interference: Trump’s third indictment was a result of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into alleged efforts by the former president and his allies to overturn the 2020 election. The indictment alleges Trump and a co-conspirator “attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol by calling lawmakers to convince them … to delay the certification” of the election. It also alleges another co-conspirator pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to “violate the law” to delay President Joe Biden’s victory. Trump pleaded not guilty to all four counts.

Fulton County case: An Atlanta-based grand jury on August 14, 2023, indicted Trump and 18 others on state charges stemming from their alleged efforts to overturn the former president’s 2020 electoral defeat. Four people have pleaded guilty. The charges, brought in a sweeping investigation led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, cover some of the most overt efforts by the former president and his allies to meddle in the 2020 presidential election. Trump pleaded not guilty. On March 13, 2024, a judge dismissed six of the 41 counts from the indictment, including three that applied to Trump.

Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his campaign will make a statement next week on abortion.

“We’ll be making a statement next week on abortion,” Trump told reporters during a campaign event in Michigan, when asked about Florida’s six-week abortion ban, which is set to become law after a state Supreme Court ruling.

Trump did not delve into the specifics of his position on Tuesday, but he has recently said he was “thinking in terms of” supporting a 15-week federal abortion ban.

Remember: The Florida Supreme Court on Monday paved the way for the state’s six-week abortion ban to take effect, while allowing Floridians to decide in the fall whether to enshrine abortion protections in the state’s constitution.

CNN’s Kate Sullivan contributed reporting to this post. 

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on April 2.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday spoke for the first time on camera about posting a $175 million bond as he appeals the judgment against him in the New York civil fraud case and maintained there was no wrongdoing.

“I’m the only one that has to put up a bond, you know. I put up a bond, I didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump said at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Judge Arthur Engoron in January fined Trump and his co-defendants, including his adult sons and his company, $464 million, finding they fraudulently inflated the value of the former president’s assets to obtain better loan rates.

The bond amount was lowered by several hundred million dollars by a state appeals court last month after Trump’s attorneys argued that covering the full bond on the $464 million verdict against him was not feasible.

Trump went on in the speech to focus on immigration and President Joe Biden’s border policy.