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Trump to Visit Swing Districts in Michigan and Wisconsin as Battleground Campaigning Increases

Former US Representative Tulsi Gabbard (R) waves after endorsing former US President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (L) at the National Guard Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, on August 26, 2024. (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP)
Former US Representative Tulsi Gabbard (R) waves after endorsing former US President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (L) at the National Guard Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, on August 26, 2024. (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP)
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Trump to Visit Swing Districts in Michigan and Wisconsin as Battleground Campaigning Increases

Former US Representative Tulsi Gabbard (R) waves after endorsing former US President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (L) at the National Guard Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, on August 26, 2024. (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP)
Former US Representative Tulsi Gabbard (R) waves after endorsing former US President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (L) at the National Guard Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, on August 26, 2024. (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP)

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.
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, The Associated Press said.
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.
Later, he will visit La Crosse, Wisconsin, for a town hall moderated 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 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 US 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.

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US Forces Ready with a 'Range of Options' to Deal with South China Sea Aggression, US Admiral Says

US Indo-Pacific Command Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, left, and Philippines military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., shake hands after a press conference on the Mutual Defense Board-Security Engagement Board held at the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio, northern Philippines on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
US Indo-Pacific Command Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, left, and Philippines military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., shake hands after a press conference on the Mutual Defense Board-Security Engagement Board held at the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio, northern Philippines on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
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US Forces Ready with a 'Range of Options' to Deal with South China Sea Aggression, US Admiral Says

US Indo-Pacific Command Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, left, and Philippines military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., shake hands after a press conference on the Mutual Defense Board-Security Engagement Board held at the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio, northern Philippines on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
US Indo-Pacific Command Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, left, and Philippines military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., shake hands after a press conference on the Mutual Defense Board-Security Engagement Board held at the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio, northern Philippines on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

American forces are ready with a “range of options” to deal with increasing acts of aggression in the disputed South China Sea if ordered to carry them out jointly and after consultations with treaty ally the Philippines, a US admiral said Thursday.

US Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. Samuel Paparo, who heads the biggest number of combat forces outside the US mainland, refused to provide details of the contingency options.

According to The AP, Paparo's comments came when asked at a news conference what the longtime treaty allies could do to deal with China’s so-called gray-zone tactics in the disputed waters.

The “gray-zone tactics” refer to types of assault, like water cannon fire and the blocking and ramming of rival ships in the disputed waters, that are under the threshold of an actual armed attack and wouldn't allow the Philippines to invoke its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the US The treaty obligates either country to help the other in case of an armed external attack.

"We certainly have prepared a range of options and USINDOPACOM stands ready, if so called, after consultations in accordance with the treaty to execute those shoulder to shoulder with our ally,” Paparo said.

Detailing those US military options would allow “the potential adversary” to “build a countermeasure to those,” he said.

Paparo held a joint news conference with Armed Forces of the Philippines chief Gen. Romero Brawner Jr., after both led an annual meeting in the northern Philippine mountain city of Baguio to discuss security challenges and military plans. They include the Balikatan — Tagalog for shoulder to shoulder — the treaty allies’ largest combat exercises, which in April involved more than 16,000 American and Filipinos forces and were partly staged in the South China Sea.

In response to a question, Paparo repeated that the US military is open, after treaty consultations with the Philippines, to escorting Philippine ships in the South China Sea amid a spike in hostilities between Beijing and Manila in the disputed waters. Such a prospect would risk putting US Navy ships in direct collisions with those of China.

Washington and Beijing have been on a collision course over China’s increasingly assertive actions to defend its territorial claims in the South China Sea, and Beijing’s stated goal of annexing Taiwan, by force if necessary.

Brawner said the Philippines could still fend for itself in the disputed waters, where hostilities with the Chinese coast guard, navy and suspected militia ships have alarmingly spiked since last year.

“If we exhaust all the options and nothing works, then that’s the time we can ask for help,” Brawner told reporters.

When Filipino forces in the disputed waters “are at the verge of dying,” because food supplies were being blocked by Chinese forces, “then that’s the time that we are going to seek the help of the United States,” Brawner said, but added that “we still have a lot of options."

During combat exercises by US and Philippine forces in April, the US military transported a mid-range missile system to the northern Philippines, angering China, which warned that the missile system can trigger a regional arms race and endanger regional stability. Beijing demanded that the US missile system, which can threaten mainland China, be pulled out of the Philippines.

Paparo and Brawner refused to say on Thursday if and when the missile system would be flown out of the Philippines. Brawner thanked the US military for transporting the high-tech weaponry to the country, saying Filipino forces were being exposed to advance defense equipment that the Philippine military plan to acquire in the future.

"Just like what we did with the Stingers and with the Javelins, we start training already even if we don’t have them yet in our inventory,” Brawner said.