Former President Donald Trump will make his foray back onto the campaign trail Wednesday for the first time since his New York criminal hush money trial began in earnest last month. Trump will spend his one allotted weekday out of the courtroom hosting rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan, two critical battleground states he won in 2016 but lost in 2020.

       As the general election rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden heats up, both states are considered pivotal on the path to White House.

       Despite Trump and his campaign’s insistence that the former resident would take advantage of every second he wasn’t tethered to the courtroom, in the more than two weeks since the trial began, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has rarely used his days off from court to host political events.

       The absence from the trail hasn’t been entirely within his control.

       His most recent planned major campaign stop in Wilmington, North Carolina, on April 20 was canceled at the 11th hour due to severe storm weather. Trump, who is required to be present in court throughout his trial every weekday, except Wednesday, has instead spent much of his free time attending closed-door fundraisers, taking meetings and hosting dinners at Trump Tower. Last Wednesday, the former president escaped the city to play golf at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club, and spent this past weekend at his Mar-a-Lago home for his wife Melania Trump’s birthday. The campaign has arranged two stops with remarks around New York City, before and after court, but the majority of Trump’s politicking has been done to the cameras set up outside the courtroom.

       That hasn’t stopped Trump from routinely lamenting that Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, is keeping him off the trail.

       “This is what took me off and takes me off the campaign trail! Because I should be in Georgia now. I should be in Florida now. I should be in a lot of different places right now campaigning and I’m sitting here. And this will go on for a very long time, it’s very unfair,” Trump told reporters last week while speaking outside the courtroom.

       Some people close to Trump have acknowledged that they are surprised by the lack of traditional campaigning on the sidelines of the trial, especially given that the general election is just months away. Early polls suggest Michigan and Wisconsin pose a challenge for Biden and an opportunity for Trump to mine for electoral votes in the upper Midwest, and Republican allies would like to see him start laying the ground work now. Trump advisers see openings with critical working class voters unhappy with inflation, and with Arab American voters who disprove of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

       Recent polling shows that, as of now, the race is a statistical tie in Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as in Pennsylvania, another state Biden flipped in 2020. CBS News polls published Sunday show Biden and Trump virtually neck-and-neck in all three battlegrounds.

       Trump’s team has hired state directors in both Michigan and Wisconsin, as they have in each battleground state. But they are still in the early stages of building out the teams, according two senior Trump campaign advisers, which they say will be a mix of paid staffers and volunteers. The campaign is also planning to rely heavily on Republican National Committee officials to further assist in their ground game efforts.

       Trump’s campaign is paying especially close attention to the polling in Michigan and Wisconsin, comparing the data to where Trump was in both 2016 and 2020, the senior advisers told CNN. They have spent almost no money on paid media in either state, and allege the millions of dollars spent by the Biden campaign in both states is proof that Trump’s rival is being forced to spend money to reinforce his democratic base amid low poll numbers.

       Trump’s team believes that his ability to turn out his base is guaranteed, and instead plan to spend money to persuade outside voters to support him in November. That approach is both strategic and out of necessity, as Trump’s adviser’s acknowledge they will not catch up to Biden’s vast and ever-growing campaign war chest.

       In Michigan, a pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., has spent only $145,000 on what the campaign is deeming “urban radio” advertising. The ads are specifically targeting Black voters in Michigan by focusing on crime and immigration.

       The Trump campaign is also closely tracking the protest votes cast in the Wisconsin and Michigan primaries, where tens of thousands of people, many of whom protested Biden’s support for Israel during the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, opted not to vote for Biden in the Democratic primary.

       In Wisconsin, roughly 48,000 votes, or 8.2% of those cast, were for “uninstructed” in the Democratic primary. The numbers were even worse in Michigan, where more than 100,000 Democrats voted “uncommitted,” or 13.2% of the Democratic vote.

       “That’s a colossal disaster for him,” one of the senior Trump advisers said, and it is something they plan to message on aggressively in the months ahead.

       “In Michigan and Wisconsin, that fraction of the vote can make a real difference,” the second senior Trump adviser said. “If even a fraction of that original audience is still convinced to stay where they are, that’s a catastrophic issue for Biden that we will exploit.”

       Trump also has his own weaknesses in Michigan and Wisconsin. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who was still in the race at the time, received 297,124 votes during Michigan’s February 27 primary, or 26.6% of the GOP vote.

       In Wisconsin’s April 2 primary, Haley received 76,762 votes, or 12.7%, despite having suspended her presidential campaign weeks earlier.

       On Wednesday, Trump will first visit Waukesha, Wisconsin, where he will focus on the core issues his team believes Biden is most vulnerable on. That includes foreign policy and his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, crime, immigration and the economy, all of which will be highlighted in his remarks, according to a campaign adviser familiar with his speech.

       Later, he will hold a rally at an airport hangar in Freeland, Michigan. Trump lost Saginaw County, where Freeland is located, by just over 300 votes in 2020, after winning it in 2016. His speech will largely reflect the same themes as his remarks in Wisconsin, with a greater focus on the auto industry, the adviser said.

       The dueling stops follow his recent visits to both states on April 2, when he railed against what his campaign labeled as “Biden’s border bloodbath” in Grand Rapids and Green Bay, attacking the president for his handling of the southern border and highlighting alleged violent crimes committed by immigrants.

       Trump’s decision to return to both states just one month later underscores how imperative they are to his pathway to the White House.

       The former president’s 2016 victories in the Rust Belt were largely credited to his success with blue-collar voters, who helped him produce a seismic crack in the so-called blue wall of states Democrats had relied on in every election going back to 1992.

       This election, Trump’s advisers argue they plan to replicate those wins by making inroads with the same working class voters that helped propel him to the White House in his first presidential campaign. Trump’s senior advisers have characterized both states as “must-win” in 2024, acknowledging that the former president’s pathway to victory is largely impossible without carrying the Badger and Wolverine states.

       Biden won Michigan in 2020 by more than 150,000 votes. The margin was much tighter in Wisconsin, where he came out ahead by about 21,000 votes – a victory of about 0.7 percentage points.

       The Trump campaign plans to set up a “robust volunteer-driven” organization this cycle, his advisers say, and argue they have learned from the mistakes made four years ago that led to the former president’s defeat. They also plan to rely heavily on the Republican National Committee’s infrastructure to not only turn out voters, but also find and create first-time voters that support Trump.

       However, Republicans have been slow to invest in key battlegrounds as they scramble to catch up to Democrats’ fundraising lead. Recent campaign filings with the Federal Election Commission show Biden’s principal campaign committee entered April with $85.5 million, while Trump’s main campaign account had $45.1 million in its war chest.