Trump returns to key battleground state of Michigan for first time in 2024 election cycle – latest

After the decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization last year, Republicans have said that the Supreme Court ruling merely left abortion restrictions up to states.

But anti-abortion lawmakers and candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination are pushing for a national ban that would also strike down state laws that protect and expand abortion access.

Congressional Republicans have passed several anti-abortion measures with national implications, and candidates vying for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination are endorsing national bans.

Trump, however, has offered only muddled answers, as national polling finds anti-abortion laws overwhelmingly unpopular. He has also blamed anti-abortion legislation for Republicans’ losses in 2022 midterm elections.

“One of the reasons they wanted Roe v Wade terminated … is to bring it back into the states where a lot of people feel strongly the greatest progress for pro-life is now being made,” he told the influential right-wing Faith & Freedom Coalition conference on Saturday.

But he said there remains “a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life.”

Judge J Michael Luttig was appointed by George H. Bush and served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006.

“Republicans’ spineless support for the past two years convinced Mr Trump of his political immortality, giving him the assurance that he could purloin some of the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets upon leaving the White House — and preposterously insist that they were his to do with as he wished — all without facing political consequences,” he wrote in a guest op-ed for The New York Times.

The former president faces more than 60 criminal charges.

Elise Stefanik, the fourth highest-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives Republican, and rightwing hardliner Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a pair of resolutions that if enacted would aim to change the record “as if such articles had never been passed”.

Former president made the comments as he appeared at Oakland County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner.

Donald Trump told an audience of Michigan Republicans that the push for electric vehicles will mean the “decimation” of the state’s auto industry.

The former president made the comments as he appeared at the Oakland County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner on Sunday night, his first appearance in the battleground state in the 2024 cycle.

“It’s going to be a level that people can’t even image,” Mr Trump said during his address inside the Suburban Collection Showplace, in Novi, Michigan.

Mr Trump told the crowd that the “maniacal push” for electric vehicles would kill auto jobs in the United States, and mocked the range of the vehicles, saying that they were a win for “tow truck companies.”

“If somebody wants an electric car, I’m all for it. But you should be able to have a choice,” Mr Trump told the crowd.

“They want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom,” the former president told the Oakland County GOP’s Lincoln Day Dinner.

“I can’t defend what is alleged but the president is entitled to his day in court. And I think we need to let the process go forward,” the former vice president said on Fox News Sunday

“I don’t know why the other people running for president in the Republican primary assume that the president will be found guilty.”

Donald Trump is set to appear in Michigan on Sunday evening as he looks to reclaim territory that helped propel him to the White House but slipped from his grasp four years later.