Maddow Blog | Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 4.15.24

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In February, a New York Times/Siena College poll found Donald Trump with a five-point lead over President Joe Biden, 48% to 43%. Now, the same pollster shows the former Republican president’s advantage shrinking to just one point, 46% to 45%.

* In Kentucky, the GOP-led legislature late last week overrode a veto and removed Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s power to fill possible U.S. Senate vacancies.

* Two years ago, when Trump was supporting Mehmet Oz’s Republican Senate candidacy in Pennsylvania, the former president trashed his GOP rival, former hedge fund CEO David McCormick. Over the weekend, however, Trump held a rally in the Keystone State and endorsed McCormick’s second attempt. An Associated Press report added, “McCormick — who splits his time in Connecticut, where he has a home — did not attend the rally.”

* Speaking of McCormick, Bloomberg reported late last week that the Senate hopeful led a hedge fund as it “steered millions of dollars of investments into Chinese companies that produce fighter jets, bombers, planes equipped to jam enemy radars, and the country’s first domestically built aircraft carrier.”

* South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who’s reportedly under consideration for the GOP’s vice presidential nomination, has now been banned from four Native American tribes’ land. As my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim explained, the pushback is the result of the Republican governor linking tribal leaders to Mexican drug cartels.

* While independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expressed some interest in possibly running for the Libertarian Party’s 2024 nomination, he’s decided not to pursue it. “We’re not gonna have any problems getting on the ballot ourselves so we won’t be running libertarian,” the conspiracy theorist said.

* And the Idaho Supreme Court last week upheld a state law that says student IDs can’t be used as an acceptable form of identification to vote. The law was passed last year by Republican legislators.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com