The latest on the 2024 campaign and primary elections

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.

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.

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.  

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. 

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.