WSJ-
WASHINGTON—President Biden is dispatching a group of foreign policy and political advisers to Michigan on Thursday in an attempt to quell growing outrage over deaths in Gaza.
The move comes ahead of Michigan’s Feb. 27 presidential primary and has taken on a new urgency after Biden’s previous attempts to assuage Muslim and Arab-American supporters have proven insufficient.
The delegation, led by deputy national security adviser Jon Finer and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power, follows a January visit by campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez, who was publicly rebuffed by the mayor of Dearborn, Mich., and other local Arab-American elected officials.
The Thursday trip to Michigan is infused with presidential politics. Polls show Biden trailing former President Donald Trump in Michigan, one of the so-called “Blue Wall” states along the Great Lakes that Biden flipped in his 2020 campaign triumph. Dearborn is home to the largest Muslim population in the U.S. and is roughly 54% Arab-American, according to census figures. Biden won Michigan in the 2020 election by about 150,000 votes, or nearly 3%.