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Trump is veering off the battleground map to blue states: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, politics reporters Matt Dixon and Allan Smith explore why Donald Trump is set to campaign in heavily Democratic states in the final stretch of the 2024 race. Plus, chief political analyst Chuck Todd explains why the winner of House control this fall will have a major say over the direction of the next presidency.

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Trump plans rallies in solidly Democratic states in the race’s final weeks

By Matt Dixon and Allan Smith

Get ready for Donald Trump’s blue state extravaganza.

With less than four weeks until Election Day, the Republican presidential nominee is scheduled to hold rallies in staunchly Democratic states he has virtually no chance of winning. It’s an unorthodox strategy campaign advisers say is designed to focus on areas where Democratic policies have failed, but it will also keep him away from the small handful of swing states almost certain to determine the election.

Over the next month, Trump has events scheduled in Colorado, California, Illinois and New York. President Joe Biden won those states by an average of 20 points in 2020, with his 13-point Colorado win the closest. And Colorado is the only one of those states to have voted for a Republican presidential nominee this millennium, backing George W. Bush in 2004.

While each event will be held in slightly different venues, the most notable will be this month in Madison Square Garden in New York City, where Trump has long said he wanted to hold a political rally.

“Choosing high-impact settings makes it so the media can’t look away and refuse to cover the issues and the solutions President Trump is offering,” a senior Trump campaign adviser said of the strategy. “We live in a nationalized media environment, and the national media’s attention on these large-scale, outside-the-norm settings increases the reach of his message across the country and penetrates in every battleground state.”

Some Trump supporters also argued that going into areas of the country traditionally not visited by GOP presidential candidates could have a coattail effect, helping boost down-ballot Republicans in tough races. There are a handful of competitive House races in those states — particularly in California and New York — where the majority is likely to be decided by razor-thin margins.

Still, the race is almost certain to be decided in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states that are within the margin of error in most public polling and considered winnable for both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“This does not seem like a campaign putting their candidate in critical vote-rich or swing-vote locations — it seems more like a candidate who wants his campaign to put on rallies for optics and vibes,” longtime Republican operative Matthew Bartlett said.

By Chuck Todd

One of the more remarkable aspects about the current political era is how closely contested control of all parts of the federal government is.

It’s not just the presidency that’s on a knife’s edge — so is the House, and even the Senate is highly competitive, though a GOP takeover this cycle is looking closer and closer to inevitable.

We could see all three change party control in the same election cycle, without their all ending up in the hands of the same party — an outcome that would be quite astonishing and unprecedented. And yet, as unusual as that would be, in another way, it would be sort of par for the course, considering how polarized and closely divided we are as a country.

Ultimately, while I don’t believe most voters prefer divided government, they certainly prefer divided government to the alternative of seeing a party they don’t fully trust take full control of the three elected segments of Washington.

So perhaps the anxious centrist or moderate should take comfort in the fact that the likelihood of divided government is unusually high in this campaign. It should put a damper on just how much we should expect the next president to accomplish, especially if the divide is between the House and the White House.

There’s a big difference in just how divided government becomes, depending on whether the House and the White House are controlled by the same party or different parties. Two words send chills down the spine of any presidents who find the “other” party in control of the House: subpoena power.

Given the current incentive structures in both parties, using a House majority’s subpoena power as a political weapon to essentially neuter an opposing-party president would be quite tempting. And it’s a prospect folks should probably count on under either scenario, whether Donald Trump gets elected with a Democratic House (he was impeached twice by a Democratic House, after all) or whether Kamala Harris gets elected with a Republican House.

Big ideas like a child care tax credit or a rewrite of the tax code would be nearly impossible if the person in the White House is dealing with a House controlled by the other party. Just getting a budget passed without triggering a government shutdown would be a tall order.

🗞️ Today’s top stories

🌀 Bracing for Hurricane Milton: Biden delivered a stark warning about the dangerous storm barreling toward Florida while shooting down a conspiracy theory spread by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., that the federal government is responsible for controlling the weather. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-shoots-marjorie-taylor-greenes-ridiculous-conspiracy-theory-cont-rcna174710">Read more →</a>
🚫 Thwarted election plot: An Afghan national living in Oklahoma was charged this week with conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack on Election Day on behalf of the Islamic State terrorist group, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/afghan-national-living-us-charged-allegedly-plotting-election-day-terr-rcna174606">Read more →</a>
💰 Big buck hunting: Harris' presidential campaign operation crossed the $1 billion fundraising threshold in September, just over two months after she took over as the Democratic Party's standard-bearer. To put that figure in perspective: Biden’s operation raised a little more than $1 billion over the entire 2020 election cycle. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/harris-political-operation-crosses-1-billion-raised-2024-election-rcna174696">Read more →</a>
💲 Make or break: Harris is trying to wipe out Trump’s persisting advantage among voters about whom they trust to handle the economy in the final stretch of the race. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/kamala-harris-final-push-economy-donald-trump-polling-rcna174277">Read more →</a>
🌵 Harris looks west: Harris and several of her top allies are descending on Arizona this week, part of a push as early voting starts in the state Wednesday. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/harris-democratic-allies-descend-arizona-hands-push-early-voting-rcna174481">Read more →</a>
🤝 Trump looks west: Trump announced a Latter-day Saints coalition as his campaign looks to shore up support among a key voting bloc in which defections could be particularly damaging in Western battlegrounds. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-announces-latter-day-saints-coalition-push-battleground-voters-rcna174427">Read more →</a>
🎤 Debate prep: Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Ruben Gallego are sharpening their criticisms of each other ahead of their first and only Arizona Senate debate Wednesday night. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/kari-lake-ruben-gallego-let-rip-fiery-criticisms-ahead-arizona-senate-rcna174376">Read more →</a>
📺 Debate recap: Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin and GOP former Rep. Mike Rogers had heated exchanges over national security issues and tried to highlight their bipartisan credentials during the Michigan Senate debate Tuesday night. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/mike-rogers-elissa-slotkin-debate-michigan-senate-race-rcna173854">Read more →</a>

That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at [email protected]

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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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