“Welcome to Michigan, Donald Trump and JD Vance,” the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, said in an Instagram post on Saturday, before outlining “three things you should know about our great state” ahead of today’s joint rally.

Here, we protect reproductive freedom. We’re not interested in your national abortion ban. Two, we find ways to put money back in Michiganders pockets … and three, we’re a proud union state and UAW workers still remember when Donald Trump broke his promises to Michigan workers … and Michigan is going to reject your extreme Project 2025 agenda.

Whitmer’s caustic welcome comes amid polling indicating she would beat Trump by 1% in the key swing state if she were to become the Democratic presidential nominee, but trails the former president by almost 4% nationally in a hypothetical general election matchup.

Donald Trump is shortly expected to speak at his first public campaign rally since his assassination attempt a week ago by appearing in a crucial rust belt battleground state alongside his new running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance.

The return to the campaign trail by Trump comes after the attempted killing of the former president at a Pennsylvania rally last Saturday when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire, injuring Trump and others and killing one rally-goer.

The shooting roiled American politics, ratcheting up the tension in a race already fueled by fears over rising political violence and the prospect of civil unrest. It also dominated the past week’s Republican national convention in Milwaukee from which Trump emerged at the head of a remarkably unified and energized campaign.

Tonight’s joint rally with Vance is the first for the pair since they officially became the nominees.

Michigan is one of the crucial swing states expected to determine the outcome of the presidential election. Trump narrowly won the state by just more than 10,000 votes in 2016, but Democrat Joe Biden flipped it back in 2020, winning by a margin of 154,000 votes on his way to the presidency.

Donald Trump was struck by a bullet that passed “less than a quarter of an inch” from his head that left a “2 cm wide wound” in his right ear during last week’s assassination attempt, his former physician said.

In a statement shared by the former president, Texas congressman Ronny Jackson, Trump’s former doctor, said he has been evaluating and treating his wound daily.

Trump “is doing well”, Jackson said.

As reported and witnessed by the entire world, he sustained a gunshot wound to the right ear from a high-powered rifle used by the would be assassin. The bullet passed, coming less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head, and struck the top of his right ear. The bullet track produced a 2cm wide wound that extended down to the cartilaginous surface of the ear.

Jackson said there was initially “significant” bleeding, “followed by marked swelling of the entire upper ear” which has since resolved.

“Based on the highly vascular nature of the ear, there is still intermittent bleeding requiring a dressing to be in place,” he wrote, adding:

In summary, former president Trump is doing well, and he is recovering as expected from the gunshot wound sustained last Saturday afternoon. I am extremely thankful his life was spared. It is an absolute miracle he wasn’t killed.

Donald Trump’s campaign is preparing a major attack plan on Kamala Harris if Joe Biden steps aside, including a wave of ads focusing on her record in her current office and in California, according to a report.

The Trump team has already prepared opposition research books on Harris, including a recently concluded poll testing her vulnerabilities in a general election contest, the New York Times reports, citing sources. The report says:

The Trump team’s attention on Ms Harris is based on its assumption that if Democrats were to bypass the first Black woman to serve as vice president, it would drive even deeper divisions in the party and risk alienating their base of Black voters.

Trump allies have also begun examining the records of Democratic governors who are considered potential running mates for Harris, including Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, according to the report.

The multimillionaire and prominent election denier Patrick Byrne has been boosting his funding to the Maga-allied America Project and using it to steer six-figure checks to far-right groups that push voting conspiracies in Arizona, Michigan and elsewhere, according to tax records and voting experts.

Byrne, the former CEO of online retailer Overstock.com, said last fall that only $3m of the $30m the Florida-based project had raised at that point came from “the public”, with the rest coming from him. In 2022, the America Project almost doubled its revenues to $14.3m versus some $7.7m the prior year, according to tax records first disclosed by Issue One, a bipartisan political reform group.

The America Project was launched in April 2021 by Byrne and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump when he was president; both Byrne and Flynn have been vocal purveyors of falsehoods that Trump lost the 2020 election due to fraud. They were also both at a meeting with Trump and others in late 2020 to brainstorm ways to overturn his loss.

The America Project and Byrne have sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Arizona-based We the People AZ Alliance, and Michigan-based United States Election Investigation and Lawsuits Inc, triggering alarms by election watchdogs and some GOP veterans due to their incendiary election denialist stances and leaders.

Read the full story: Pro-Trump multimillionaire and election denier boosts funds to far-right voter-conspiracy groups

The White House just released an update on Joe Biden’s Covid infection, saying that the president is still experiencing mild symptoms, including a cough and hoarseness, “but his symptoms continue to improve steadily”. Biden took his sixth dose of Paxlovid Saturday morning.

“The president continues to tolerate treatment well and will continue Paxlovid as planned,” White House physician Kevin C O’Connor said in a statement. “He continues to perform all of his presidential duties.”

The former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton have privately been supportive of Joe Biden’s decision to stay in the race and have been actively encouraging donors to stay with him, NBC is reporting, citing sources.

The Clintons’ position was described by the sources as “deferential” in relation to Biden’s commitment to continue his re-election campaign, the report says.

Behind the scenes, the Clintons have been in touch with the White House and have offered to help however they can, sources told the outlet.

Lauren Gambino

When Al Sharpton recently hung up the phone with Joe Biden, a man he has known for more than 30 years, first as a senator, then as vice-president and now as president, the message was clear: “He assured me he wasn’t going anywhere.”

In their conversation, Sharpton said, he never asked Biden to exit the 2024 presidential race.

“I said to him that I appreciated what he did and I want to see it continue,” the reverend told the Guardian in an interview. “And he said: ‘That’s why I’m running, Al.’”

That was Monday. By the week’s end, the 81-year-old president, cloistered at his beach house in Delaware with Covid and besieged on all sides by dismal polling, voter concerns and a rebellion against his candidacy from members of his own party, was confronting the most consequential decision of his half-century in public life.

“Let him make up his mind,” said Sharpton, the veteran civil rights leader.

If he decides to walk, let him walk with his dignity, and if he decides to stay in it, he’s earned that right.

Read the full interview: Al Sharpton on Joe Biden’s re-election bid: ‘Let him make up his mind’