Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Though Donald Trump has repeatedly complained this week that his criminal trial is keeping him from holding campaign events, Wednesday was an off-day for the legal proceedings, and the former president appears to have spent the day golfing.
* President Joe Biden appeared on Howard Stern’s radio program this morning and the host asked the Democrat whether he’ll debate the presumptive Republican nominee this year. “I am, somewhere,” the incumbent president replied. “I don’t know when. But I’m happy to debate him.”
* Montana Republicans recently passed a law that threatened people with felony charges if they registered to vote in the state without canceling previous voter registrations elsewhere. A federal judge this week temporarily blocked the law.
* After ending her presidential campaign last month, Nikki Haley fared surprisingly well in this week’s Pennsylvania primary, and a day later, the Biden campaign kicked off a renewed effort to appeal to the former ambassador’s supporters in the Keystone State.
* On a related note, former Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said this week that he supported Haley over Trump in this week’s primary, and he expects to write in her name on his general election ballot in the fall. Toomey, who occasionally clashed with Trump while in office, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that there’s “a non-trivial, significant minority of Republicans” in the state who won’t support the former president. * In Utah’s 2nd congressional district, the conventional wisdom is that incumbent Republican Rep. Celeste Maloy will have her party’s support, which made it all the more notable when Republican Sen. Mike Lee endorsed the congresswoman’s GOP challenger, Colby Jenkins, two days before the state GOP convention. * Though Florida is generally seen as a red state now, the latest University of North Florida poll found Trump leading Biden in the Sunshine State by just two points, 47% to 45%, among likely voters. * And Trump told reporters this week that he believes he has “a good chance“ of winning his former home state of New York. He’s made similar comments before, and he’s never made any real investments in the state in either of his previous campaigns. Biden won New York in 2020 by more than 23 points.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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