President Joe Biden is calling for a tripling of tariffs on steel from China to protect American producers from a flood of cheap imports, an announcement he planned to roll out Wednesday in an address to steelworkers in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

The move reflects the intersection of Biden’s international trade policy with his efforts to court voters in a state that is likely to play a pivotal role in deciding November’s election.

The White House insists, however, that it is more about shielding American manufacturing from unfair trade practices overseas than firing up a union audience.

In addition to boosting steel tariffs, Biden also will seek to triple levies on Chinese aluminum. The current rate is 7.5% for both metals. The administration also promised to pursue anti-dumping investigations against countries and importers that try to saturate existing markets with Chinese steel, and said it was working with Mexico to ensure that Chinese companies can’t circumvent the tariffs by shipping steel there for subsequent export to the U.S.

“The president understands we must invest in American manufacturing. But we also have to protect those investments and those workers from unfair exports associated with China’s industrial overcapacity,” White House National Economic Adviser Lael Brainard said on a call with reporters.

Biden was set to announce that he is asking the U.S. Trade Representative to consider tripling the tariffs during a visit to United Steelworkers union headquarters in Pittsburgh. The president is on a three-day Pennsylvania swing that began in Scranton on Tuesday and will include a visit to Philadelphia on Thursday.

The administration says China is distorting markets and eroding competition by unfairly flooding the market with below-market-cost steel.

”China’s policy-driven overcapacity poses a serious risk to the future of the American steel and aluminum industry,” Brainard said. Referencing China’s economic downturn, she added that Beijing “cannot export its way to recovery.”

“China is simply too big to play by its own rules,” Brainard said.

Higher tariffs can carry major economic risks. Steel and aluminum could become more expensive, possibly increasing the costs of cars, construction materials and other key goods for U.S. consumers.

Inflation has already been a drag on Biden’s political fortunes, and his turn toward protectionism echoes the playbook of his predecessor and opponent in this fall’s election, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump’s campaign is expecting to raise more than $40 million on Saturday when major donors gather for his biggest fundraiser yet.

The event at the Palm Beach, Florida, home of billionaire investor John Paulson is expected to bring in $43 million for the former president’s third run at the White House, according to Paulson.

The high-dollar event is expected to include about 100 guests, including more than a few billionaires, and top a new single-event fundraising record set by President Joe Biden, who raised $26 million recently at a gathering with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

“The response to our fundraising efforts has been overwhelming, and we’ve raised over $43 million so far,” Paulson, a hedge fund manager, said in a statement. “There is massive support amongst a broad spectrum of donors.”

The event, billed as the “Inaugural Leadership Dinner,” sends a signal of a resurgence of Trump and the Republican Party’s fundraising, which has struggled to catch up to Biden and the Democrats.

Trump and the GOP announced earlier in the week that they raised more than $65.6 million in March and closed out the month with $93.1 million. Biden and the Democrats announced Saturday that they took in more than $90 million last month and had $192 million-plus on hand.

“While Donald Trump has been busy awarding himself golf trophies at Mar-a-Lago and palling around with billionaires, Joe Biden has been crisscrossing the nation connecting with voters and outlining his vision to grow our economy from the bottom up and the middle out,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement, referring to Trump’s Florida residence.

Trump initially struggled to attract big donors in particular when he launched his campaign and some lined up to support the other Republicans who challenged him in the presidential primary. But as Trump racked up easy wins, leveled the field and became the party’s presumptive nominee, the GOP has solidified behind him.

Contributions to the event will go toward the Trump 47 Committee, according to the invitation, a joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee, state Republican parties and Save America, a political action committee that pays the bulk of Trump’s legal bills. In an unusual arrangement, the fundraising agreement directs donations to first pay the maximum allowed under law to his campaign and Save America before the RNC or state parties get a cut.

Donors who give the suggested $814,600 per person or $250,000 per person will only have $5,000 of their donation go to Save America, sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cash-strapped RNC.

Michigan’s Supreme Court is keeping former President Donald Trump on the state’s primary election ballot.

The court said Wednesday it will not hear an appeal of a lower court’s ruling from groups seeking to keep Trump from appearing on the ballot.

It said in an order that the application by parties to appeal a Dec. 14 Michigan appeals court judgment was considered, but denied “because we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court.”

The ruling contrasts with Dec. 19 decision by a divided Colorado Supreme Court which found Trump ineligible to be president because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. That ruling was the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

The Michigan and Colorado cases are among dozens hoping to keep Trump’s name off state ballots. They all point to the so-called insurrection clause that prevents anyone from holding office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution. Until the Colorado ruling, all had failed.

The Colorado ruling is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on the rarely used Civil War-era provision.

The plaintiffs in Michigan can technically try again to disqualify Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in the general election, though it’s likely there will be a U.S.

Supreme Court ruling on the issue by then. The state’s high court on Wednesday upheld an appeals court ruling that the Republican Party could place anyone it wants on the primary ballot. But the court was silent on whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment would disqualify Trump in November if he becomes the GOP nominee.

“We are disappointed by the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision,” said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for People, the liberal group that filed the suit to disqualify Trump in the state. “The ruling conflicts with longstanding US Supreme Court precedent that makes clear that when political parties use the election machinery of the state to select, via the primary process, their candidates for the general election, they must comply with all constitutional requirements in that process.”

Trump hailed the order, calling the effort to keep him off the ballot in multiple states a “pathetic gambit.”

Only one of the court’s seven justices dissented. Justice Elizabeth M. Welch, a Democrat, wrote that she would have kept Trump on the primary ballot but the court should rule on the merits of the Section 3 challenge. The court has a 4-3 Democratic majority.

Trump pressed two election officials in Michigan’s Wayne County not to certify 2020 vote totals, according to a recording of a post-election phone call disclosed in a Dec. 22 report by The Detroit News. The former president ’s 2024 campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the recording’s legitimacy.

Attorneys for Free Speech for People, a liberal nonprofit group also involved in efforts to keep Trump’s name off the primary ballot in Minnesota and Oregon, had asked Michigan’s Supreme Court to render its decision by Christmas Day.

The group argued that time was “of the essence” due to “the pressing need to finalize and print the ballots for the presidential primary election.”

Earlier this month, Michigan’s high court refused to immediately hear an appeal, saying the case should remain before the appeals court.

Democrats urged the Wisconsin Supreme Court to overturn Republican-drawn legislative maps Tuesday, with conservative justices questioning the timing of the redistricting challenge, while liberals focused on the constitutionality of the current maps and what the process should be for adopting new ones.

The fight comes ahead of the 2024 election in a battleground state where four of the six past presidential elections have been decided by fewer than 23,000 votes, and Republicans have built large majorities in the Legislature under maps they drew over a decade ago.

The lawsuit was brought by Democratic voters the day after the court flipped to majority 4-3 liberal control in August. They want all 132 state lawmakers to stand for election under new, more favorable maps in 2024.

Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley most aggressively questioned the motives of Democrats and repeatedly referenced newly elected liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz saying during her campaign that the current maps are “rigged.”

“Everybody knows that the reason we’re here is because there was a change in the membership of the court,” Bradley said.

Attorney Mark Gaber, from the Campaign Legal Center, said the timing of the lawsuit had nothing to do with the election result. He said the challenge over whether the districts are unconstitutionally not contiguous would have been filed, regardless of the makeup of the court.

“I don’t see that as a partisan issue,” Gaber said.

Taylor Meehan, attorney for the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature, said the lawsuit was meritless, brought too late, and that Democrats only filed it because control of the court flipped.

The ad sounds like something out of the GOP 2024 playbook, trumpeting a senator’s work with Republicans to crack down on the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the U.S., getting tough on Chinese interests helping smugglers, and noting how he “wrote a bill signed by Donald Trump to increase funding for Border Patrol.”

It’s actually a commercial for Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat facing a tough reelection fight that will help decide control of the Senate.

“Ohioans trust Sherrod Brown to keep us safe,” says the narrator of the ad, sponsored by the Democrat-aligned Duty and Country PAC. His campaign declined to comment.

The message is one more indication of the political and security challenges the U.S.-Mexico border has presented for President Joe Biden. Some Democrats across the country are distancing themselves from the White House, and polls indicate widespread frustration with Biden’s handling of immigration and the border, creating a major liability for the president’s re-election next year.

The Biden administration this week took two actions seen by many as moving to the right on immigration.

The Department of Homeland Security waived environmental and other reviews to construct new portions of a border wall in South Texas after Biden pledged during the 2020 campaign that he would build “not another foot” of wall. And U.S. officials said they would resume deportations to Venezuela not long after the administration increased protected status for thousands of people from the country.

Both moves inflamed conservatives and liberals alike. Many Republicans accused Biden of being too late to adopt former President Donald Trump’s ideas on a border wall, while liberals who oppose additional border restrictions accused the White House of betraying campaign pledges.

“My frustration has been that we are not addressing immigration in a holistic way as a country. We are depending on the president alone,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, a Democrat who represents the border city of El Paso and is a national co-chair of the Biden re-election campaign. “We are treating people from different nationalities in a different way. And the pathways that have been created are being challenged in court consistently.”

Biden has said his administration moved forward with the border wall because it was required by Congress during the Trump administration, even though he considers it ineffective. His reelection campaign pointed to Trump’s record at the border, including his administration’s practice of separating immigrant families as a deterrence measure and the temporary detention of children in warehouses in chain-link cells.

“MAGA Republicans are running on the legacy of Donald Trump’s playbook of family separation, caging kids, and shouting ‘border!’ without any serious solutions,” said Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Biden’s reelection campaign, referring to supporters of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

Border crossings hit two-decade highs under Trump but fell during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with immigration authorities expelling most border crossers using public health authority known as Title 42.

Upon taking office, Biden paused border wall construction and canceled the Trump administration’s “ Remain in Mexico ” program, but kept expelling many people under Title 42 until this past May.

Still, border crossings are now skyrocketing, which some observers blame on his administration for creating the perception that the border was open. The White House counters that migration has surged across the Western Hemisphere due to regional challenges out of the administration’s control.

The chairman of a Senate investigations subcommittee issued a subpoena Wednesday for documents on Saudi Arabia’s new golf partnership with the PGA Tour, saying the kingdom had to be more transparent about what he said was its $35 billion in investments in the United States.

The move is the latest to challenge Saudi Arabia’s assertion that as a foreign government that enjoys sovereign immunity from many U.S. laws, it is not obliged to provide information on the golf deal.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s subpoena comes after the Connecticut Democrat’s unsuccessful requests to the head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Yassir al Rumayyan, to testify before Blumenthal’s Senate permanent select investigations subcommittee about the Saudi-PGA golf deal.

The surprise deal, which would join the venerable PGA Tour and a rival Saudi-funded golf start-up, LIV, was announced in June. It overnight gave the Saudi government a major role in one of the main institutions of U.S. sport. Terms of the agreement are still being worked out.

The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, called the Public Investment Fund, or PIF, is controlled by the Saudi government.

“The Saudi’s Public Investment Fund cannot have it both ways: If it wants to engage with the United States commercially, it must be subject to United States law and oversight,” Blumenthal said at a hearing by his subcommittee on Wednesday.

The Saudi Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the subpoena, which names the Public Investment Fund’s New York-based U.S. subsidiary, USSA International.

This summer’s announcement of the PGA-Saudi golf deal ended a legal battle between the two rivals. As part of that court fight, a federal judge in San Francisco had ruled that Saudi officials would have to sit for depositions and produce documents. Exemptions for commercial activity meant the Saudi claim of sovereign immunity did not apply, the judge said in the ruling, which the Saudis had been fighting at the time the deal was reached.

Some central Florida lawmakers said they were considering “all legislative, legal and executive options available” to stop business owners in a small town from voluntarily displaying rainbow decals in their windows indicating that they are “safe place” for LGBTQ+ people who feel threatened.

Four Republican lawmakers wrote a letter to officials in Mount Dora two weeks ago warning that the new, optional city-sponsored program could put the central Florida community outside Orlando “in the crosshairs of potentially detrimental and absolutely unnecessary economic harm.”

The lawmakers cited boycotts of Bud Light and Target, which followed the brands’ efforts to promote diversity and inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community.

Mount Dora’s city council approved the Safe Place Initiative last month. The city of 17,000 residents is known for its antique shops and weekend festivals.

“The mission of the Safe Place Initiative is to provide the community with easily accessible safety information and safe places throughout the city they can turn to if they are the victims of an anti-LGBTQ+ or other hate crimes,” the city of Mount Dora said on its website.

Safe Place programs are visible throughout metro Orlando — as well as throughout the U.S. — including ones sponsored by the Orlando Police Department, Orange County Sheriff’s Office and Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, all in central Florida.

The council’s decision to approve the program has coincided with an uptick in anti-LGBTQ+ incidents, including vandalism last month at two LGBTQ+ centers in Orlando.

Democratic state lawmaker Anna Eskamani posted the Republican lawmakers’ letter on social media, saying it “might be the weirdest letter I’ve ever read.”

“Let LGBTQ+ (people) exist and stop politicizing everything!” wrote Eskamani, whose district is in Orlando. “So much manufactured panic from the right. Meanwhile families can’t even afford to live in Florida. Focus on that instead.”

In May, the Humans Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ rights organization in the U.S., joined other civil rights organizations in issuing a travel advisory for Florida, warning that newly passed laws and policies may pose risks to minorities, immigrants and gay travelers.