Today, primary elections are being held in Michigan, USA, both for the Republican Party, with Donald Trump expected to emerge as the winner again, and for the Democratic Party, where Joe Bidenalthough he looks certain to win his party’s nomination, is running afoul of the Midwestern state in a protest vote over the war on the Gaza Strip.

As the civilian death toll in Gaza mounts, Biden is seeing Muslim and Arab-Americans, whose support was critical in 2020 to Trump’s victory in the state of Michigan, drifting away.

Activists in the state, where the US president beat Trump four years ago by just 150,000 votes, are asking voters to throw white in protest, putting pressure on Biden to change his stance on Israel and call for an immediate ceasefire. in Gaza.

“President Biden is funding the bombs that are being dropped on the relatives of families who live here in Michigan, people who voted for him and feel completely betrayed,” said Leila Elabed of the Listen to Michigan campaign.

10,000 votes

The campaign wants to mobilize 10,000 voters to send “a strong and unmistakable message” that funding and supporting the war in Gaza “goes against the values ​​of the Democratic Party.”

They emphasize that their campaign is not merely symbolic.

“Ten thousand votes is almost the same number as the difference (votes) between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016” in Michigan, Elabed emphasized.

White House officials are increasingly expressing their exasperation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the way he is conducting the war in Gaza.

However, the US continues to deliver large quantities of weapons to Israel, while at the same time conducting intense negotiations to reach a second ceasefire in the war.

Biden has asked Congress for billions of dollars more in military aid for Israel, and his administration has vetoed draft UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire.

“Every day that goes by, every minute that the president doesn’t do what he needs to do, the trust that I and others have in him diminishes,” Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with a large Arab-American population, wrote last week in the New York Times. community.

Republicans

Donald Trump has already won the four primary elections held in other states, including South Carolina on Saturday, a victory he is expected to repeat in Michigan.

His only opponent, Nikki Haley, although she also lost in South Carolina, of which she has been governor, refuses to leave the race for the nomination of the Republican party, considering that Trump cannot beat Biden in November.

Haley was dealt another blow on Sunday when the powerful Koch family announced it would stop donating to her campaign.