For the next week-plus, prepare to hear a lot about Michigan. President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak at a General Motors plant there on Monday afternoon, and Michigan’s statewide primaries are next week, including the ultra-important Democratic Senate showdown between progressive Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens.
The location of Trump’s speech matters for one big reason: Milford, a suburban city in the western reaches of wealthy Oakland County, is a traditional GOP stronghold that has swung very hard to Democrats in recent years. The city is in the 7th Congressional District, one of the key battlegrounds in the national House map. It was Elissa Slotkin’s seat; she flipped it blue in 2018 and gave it up to run for U.S. Senate in 2024. Although she carried it in that election, the seat flipped red in the House race in 2024: Tom Barrett won it.
Barrett, who has voted twice to curb Trump’s war powers in Iran, is expected to attend Trump’s event on Monday. That alone is worth paying attention to, and is a nice encapsulation of a reality that MS NOW’s Vaughn Hillyard and Jake Traylor reported Monday morning: Top Trump political advisers are giving the green light to Republican elected officials who feel they need to distance themselves from Trump.
That’s a major shift for a circle that has long prized loyalty to Trump above all else. And the question is to what extent that’s a signal of his relative weakness at the moment. (On the other hand, it’s also a sign that his grip on the GOP is strong enough that he can allow dissent without risking control.) Allowing distance and supporting those who disagree with him goes against Trump’s nature, and could be read as a sign of the polling reality he faces, which is dire, and Republicans’ electoral fortunes, which flow from there.
Trump’s net job approval is -22 points: 39% approve and 61% disapprove in a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday.
That’s obviously bad for Republicans, but it would be a mistake to think that Democrats are on a glide path to a majority. “Since late May, the Democratic lead on the generic ballot in the RealClearPolitics average has shrunk from 7.9 points to a more modest 4.9-point reading,” The Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter wrote last week. “The slippage for Democrats during the same period in the Silver Bulletin average was more modest, going from a high of 7.1 points to 6.2 points today. This shift in the generic ballot average coincided with the success of the progressive left in primaries across the country.” And that’s precisely what frightens many Democrats in places like the Wolverine State.
What Democrats fear in Michigan
Michigan’s 7th Congressional District should be winnable, if competitive, for Democrats in the general election. But it’s the locus of a vicious three-way House primary set to be settled next week — one that members of the Democratic establishment in both Michigan and Washington, D.C., worry could make the climb to a House majority all the steeper.
The Democratic primary in Michigan’s 7th District pits former Ukraine Ambassador Bridget Brink against former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam (Slotkin’s pick) and also against progressive Will Lawrence (a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, a political advocacy organization focused on climate action, who has complained in the recent past about Black political leaders being “a pillar, frankly, for establishment, capitalist, imperialist American power”).
The sense on the ground is that Lawrence is surging, a perception aided by the recent string of victories of Democratic Socialists of America candidates elsewhere, and by Lawrence’s ties with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and El-Sayed — who, while not a DSA member, rallied with him last week.
The concern in Washington is that if nominated, Lawrence will lose. (Don’t be surprised if Trump singles out Lawrence or El-Sayed during his speech in Michigan on Monday, betting that if he attacks them, he’ll cause some Democratic voters to rally to their side and speed along the outcome Republicans are hoping for.)
The DSA is glad for the attention. But more establishment Democrats are concerned that any attention on the DSA is terrible for the Democratic Party’s brand. Witness Sunday’s appearance of DSA co-chair Megan Romer on “Fox News Sunday,” in which she reiterated the party’s platform stances, including abolishing borders, blanket amnesty for people living in the U.S. illegally, defunding the Pentagon and abolishing prisons. (A winning message in battlegrounds this is not, as Rahm Emanuel opined in The Wall Street Journal last week.)
That concern about losing winnable races is also front and center in Michigan’s Democratic Senate melee. El-Sayed and Stevens are locked in one of the most divisive campaigns anyone in Michigan has seen. And while both candidates have pledged to support the nominee, it’s becoming increasingly clear that this primary could poison their chances.
Why Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary is getting so much attention
There’s a lot at stake in this race. Here’s why:
1. Holding Michigan is an absolute must for Democrats if they want any shot of retaking the Senate.
Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is retiring, providing Republicans with their best pickup opportunity this cycle. The GOP candidate, former Rep. Mike Rogers, ran statewide against Slotkin just two years ago and lost narrowly, by about 20,000 votes out of about 5.5 million cast. Republicans start in a good place, in a state Trump has won twice, on a ticket that is strong up and down the ballot for the Michigan GOP.
2. It features big ideological differences, especially about Israel and Gaza.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has figured prominently in the race (and has spent more than $30 million on Stevens’ behalf), and that’s in a state that had a massive “uncommitted” movement of pro-Gaza activists and is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the United States.
3. It will likely set the party’s narrative heading into 2028.
Semafor’s Dave Weigel nailed this: Every outcome will inform the 2028 debate. If El-Sayed wins the primary and general, progressives prove they can win in a big swing state. If he loses to Rogers, the center-left will blame the left, and El-Sayed will be a cautionary tale. If Stevens wins the nom and the general, it’s another sign that moderate Ds are needed in swing states. If Stevens wins the nom but loses to Rogers, the left will blame the establishment and demand change.
4. It encapsulates the establishment-vs.-outsiders narrative roiling Democrats this year.
Stevens is backed by Schumer and preferred by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; she has the backing of most of the statewide Democratic officials, including Peters and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
El-Sayed is backed by Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, and has hired the consulting firm that helped power Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s 2025 mayoral race. He’s taking aim at the establishment in Washington, and — as we saw on Friday — taking jabs at Whitmer, too. Divides within the party are opening into chasms. Some prominent moderate Democrats are now suggesting that they cannot or will not support him if he gets the nomination.
The establishment Democrats argue that they know how to win in Michigan. Whitmer, after all, not only won two terms; she still has an approval rating above 50% in a state Trump carried. Slotkin won in 2024 running as a moderate. The model is replicable. But insurgent Democrats argue that the establishment has failed them, pointing to things like data centers, the lack of progress on some of their top policy priorities and — notably — Trump’s victory: If the establishment was successful, how did that happen?
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