US President Joe Biden is making his third trip to Pennsylvania in less than a week and returning just two days after his predecessor, Donald Trump, staged his own rally there — illustrating the battleground state's importance to both parties as Labour Day kicks off a nine-week sprint to crucial midterm elections.
Trump spoke Saturday night in Wilkes-Barre, near Scranton, where Biden was born. The president made his own Wilkes-Barre trip last week to discuss increasing funding for police, decry GOP criticism of the FBI after the raid on Trump's Florida estate and to argue that new, bipartisan gun safety measures can help reduce violent crime.
Two days after that, Biden went to Independence Hall in Philadelphia for a prime-time address denouncing the “extremism” of Trump's fiercest supporters.
On Monday, he's attending Labour Day festivities in Milwaukee, in another key swing state, Wisconsin, before traveling to Pittsburgh for that city's parade.
The White House says Biden will celebrate “the dignity of American workers". The unofficial start of fall, Labour Day also traditionally kicks off political crunch time, with campaigns scrambling to excite voters ahead of Election Day on November 8.
That's when control of the House and Senate, as well some of the country's top governorships, will be decided.
Trump has endorsed candidates in key races around the country and Biden is warning that some Republicans now believe so strongly in Trumpism that they are willing to undermine core American values to promote it.