LANSING, Michigan (AP) — Donald Trump will campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin on Thursday as the former president increases his travel to swing states ahead of the fall election, the traditional Labor Day holiday.

Trump remains intensely focused on retaking states he won in 2016 but narrowly lost in 2020, with stops in central Michigan and western Wisconsin.

Trump’s day begins 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 his second this week, after a speech to the National Guard Association in Detroit on Monday.

He will later visit La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he will participate in a town hall meeting 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, making way for Vice President Kamala Harris.

These three Midwestern states, along with Pennsylvania, which Trump will visit on Friday, form a northern industrial bloc that Democrats held for two decades before Trump won them in 2016. Biden recaptured them in 2020 on his way to the White House.

Trump and his vice presidential candidate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, have taken swing states by storm in recent weeks, and Vance was in both states this week.

The offensive on the campaign trail comes at a time when the Democratic Party is rallying with renewed vigor around Harris and its new vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Harris and Walz are looking to capitalize on growing enthusiasm among the party’s base since launching their campaign just over a month ago. They hope that enthusiasm – which was evident at the party’s convention in Chicago last week – will spread to more moderate areas as they embark on a two-day bus tour of Georgia, including events in rural southern parts of the state.

Trump’s events in Michigan and Wisconsin are both taking place in swing congressional districts.

Potterville is located in Michigan’s 7th District, which is made up of a mix of Republican-dominated counties like Clinton and Shiawassee and Democratic strongholds like Ingham, home to the state Capitol and Michigan State University. This district is expected to be one of the most competitive in the country this fall after incumbent Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin decided to run for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.

La Crosse, meanwhile, is a hub in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, where Republican Derrick Van Orden narrowly won in 2022. Democrat Rebecca Cooke won the primary on August 13 and will run against him in November.

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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

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