Bloomberg Is In, Maybe: This Week in the 2020 Race

While President Trump’s approval rating is very low, and he trails most of his potential Democratic challengers in national polls, he appears stronger in the states that will decide the election, according to a new set of polls from The New York Times and Siena College.

In the six closest states that went Republican in 2016, he trails Mr. Biden among registered voters, but is deadlocked with Senator Bernie Sanders and leads Ms. Warren.

  • You can read more about the polls here.

  • Speaking of battleground states, a progressive organization plans to spend $75 million on digital advertising to counter Mr. Trump’s early spending advantage in them. Our colleague Shane Goldmacher has the story.

Pat Murphy, the Iowa political director for Tom Steyer, resigned after reports that he had offered campaign contributions to local Iowa candidates if they endorsed Mr. Steyer. The campaign said no contributions had actually been made.

“Our campaign policy is clear that we will not engage in this kind of activity, or any kind of communication that could be perceived as improper,” Mr. Steyer’s campaign manager, Heather Hargreaves, said in a statement on Friday announcing Mr. Murphy’s resignation. “Violation of this policy is not tolerated.”

Mr. Sanders unveiled his immigration plan on Thursday, pledging to use executive action if Congress does not pass comprehensive legislation.

He said that on the first day of his presidency, he would reverse President Trump’s immigration policies, including the denial of asylum claims and the “zero tolerance” policy that has led to family separations. He also vowed to halt all deportations “until a thorough audit of current and past practices and policies is complete.”

More broadly, he called for ending deportations of people who have been in the United States for more than five years, creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, expanding the DACA program and making unauthorized immigration a civil, not criminal, offense.

  • Our colleague Reid J. Epstein has more details.

  • Mr. Sanders has been working hard to win over Latino voters, our colleague Jennifer Medina reports. He has raised more money than any other candidate from Latinos, and was leading among them in a recent set of New York Times/Siena College polls.

  • At a forum on Friday, Ms. Warren said she, too, was open to suspending deportations, “particularly as a way to push Congress for comprehensive immigration reform.”

  • Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey announced an economic justice plan centered on what he called the City 2030 Project, in which 50 or more small and medium-size cities would be chosen as regional hubs and given federal funding. The plan would also create a fund for communities hurt by policies like the 1994 crime bill; strengthen antitrust regulations and block some corporate mergers; and expand tax-privileged “opportunity zones.”

  • Former Representative John Delaney of Maryland released a “Paris 2.0” proposal that would commit members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and create a global institute for research on technologies that might mitigate climate change.

  • Ms. Warren outlined how she would support veterans and service members, pledging to raise service members’ pay, expand mental health services and eliminate the benefits backlog at federal agencies.

Ms. Warren has wholeheartedly embraced attacks from Wall Street, and on Thursday, she took it one step further: Her campaign released a “calculator for the billionaires.”

“Some billionaires seem confused about how much they would pay under Elizabeth’s Ultra-Millionaire Tax,” it says. “Don’t worry, now we have a calculator for that too.”

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