WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is heading to a toss-up congressional district in New York on Friday to test his midterm message on the economy, even as voters largely disapprove of his stewardship of it.
Trump will travel to the Hudson Valley area to appear with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who is up for reelection in what will be one of the most closely watched House races this November. The focus of the event is to promote the tax law Trump signed last year, particularly the quadrupling of the deduction for state and local taxes, which is critical in a high-tax state like New York.
The White House has been looking for more opportunities to highlight Trump’s economic accomplishments as his approval rating on the economy has slumped. About one-third of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling the economy, according to a new AP-NORC poll, down slightly from 40% at the start of Trump's second term. Trump had promised to bring prices down, but gasoline prices have surged this year due to the war in Iran.
Lawler is just one of three House Republicans who represent a district won by Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024. Unlike the other two — retiring Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon and Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who’s been a critic of Trump policies — Lawler has chosen to embrace the polarizing president in hopes of not alienating Republican voters who support the party’s leader.
“Look, the people who hate the president — and that’s their sole basis for their vote — are likely never voting for me," Lawler told The Associated Press in an interview on the sidelines of the White House congressional picnic earlier this week. He described the Trump appearance as a chance to energize supporters.
“Moreover, I have a record in my district that is one I’m very proud of, and a record that appeals to a broad middle," said Lawler, who was wearing a red ball cap emblazoned with “Mr. SALT,” the acronym for the state and local tax deduction he fought to include in the bill. “I am confident that I will be reelected on my own merits and my own record.”
The president’s remarks at Rockland Community College in Suffern, New York, will “highlight his strong record of making life more affordable for working families,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston said. She added that Trump plans to draw a sharp contrast with Democrats in Congress, who voted against the tax law.
Trump established a SALT cap in 2017 through his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Last year’s law expanded the SALT deduction to $40,000 from $10,000 after arduous negotiations with Republicans, including Lawler, whose district has high local taxes. The law also raised the average tax refund for New Yorkers to more than $3,800, according to data provided by the White House.
“My constituents were seeing anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 refund checks, which is pretty massive,” said Lawler, who said he wanted to give Trump one of his “Mr. SALT” ball caps.
Trump formally endorsed Lawler for reelection last year, although it came at a time when the congressman was publicly mulling a run for governor of New York. The endorsement was viewed as a way to keep Lawler in a reelection bid rather than opening up a competitive House seat.
Five Democrats are vying for the party's nomination to compete against Lawler in the general election. The Democratic primary is June 23.
“Nothing says ‘I don’t understand my district’ quite like Mike Lawler bringing Donald Trump to NY-17 to tout a disastrous economy that’s crushing working families at every turn," said Riya Vashi, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Richard Hudson disputed that, arguing that Trump's Friday appearance will “absolutely” help.
“His poll numbers are pretty good in Lawler’s district,” said Hudson, a North Carolina congressman. The NRCC has been polling in competitive districts and Hudson said the “president’s numbers are good. Democratic numbers are tanking.”
The remarks are an official White House event and not a campaign one, said Lawler, who noted that more than 5,000 people registered to attend in the first 12 hours that a sign-up was available.
Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump attends an event about loosening a federal refrigerant rule, in the Oval Office at the White House, Thursday, May 21, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
NEW YORK (AP) — Remember Donald Trump’s response in the 2016 presidential debate, when Hillary Clinton blasted him for paying virtually no federal taxes?
“That makes me smart,” Trump said.
By that logic, Trump is looking smarter than ever now.
On Tuesday, the Internal Revenue Service agreed to drop all pending probes of Trump over whether he's paid his fair share of taxes, to settle a lawsuit brought by the president over a leak of his tax returns. That could include, assuming it was ongoing, a long-standing audit into a technique Trump reportedly used to avoid paying taxes years ago that could have hit him with an estimated $100 million bill if the IRS found wrongdoing.
Trump has repeatedly denied he did anything wrong and has blasted the IRS investigation as politically motivated, without providing proof.
Details of IRS audits are not public and the merits of each side's arguments are impossible to tell. But the way the president's case against his own government's IRS was resolved is highly unusual, experts say.
Trump sued the IRS, a federal agency within his administration, putting him in the unusual position of challenging an agency overseen by the executive branch he leads — a rare move, experts say, and possibly unprecedented. Then that agency decided, in another unusual move, to grant him immunity.
Under the settlement to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit over the 2018 leak of his tax returns to The New York Times, the U.S. is “forever barred and precluded” from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization's current tax filings, according to a one-page document released Tuesday. That was quietly added to an original settlement establishing a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people whom Trump thinks were improperly investigated by the government.
Tax experts say this grant of immunity is shocking in the breadth of protection it offers the president and could undermine confidence in the fairness of the tax system.
“This is an unprecedented remedy,” said former IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, noting that Trump should be treated like every other American. “People expect the same tax rules and enforcement framework to apply to everybody.”
The IRS probe revolved around whether Trump doubled-dipped in cutting his taxes, according to a 2024 report by The New York Times and ProPublica — specifically whether he used the same losses from his Chicago skyscraper to cut them twice in future filings, a big no-no.
The report said Trump could owe more than $100 million, including penalties, if he were to lose the audit battle.
Now the Justice Department has moved to “wipe his slate clean,” said tax expert Brandon DeBot, calling that an “extraordinary action” in the message it sends to the country.
“The president and his affiliates might not pay the taxes they should,” said DeBot, policy director at New York University’s Tax Law Center. “This is giving the president and his affiliates completely different set of rules than everyday taxpayers.”
The immunity is especially useful to Trump. His company includes hundreds of separate businesses, making his tax returns complicated. He also has a reputation for aggressively cutting his taxes, which some experts find suspicious — and at least in one case deemed now illegal.
After his Atlantic City casinos collapsed under heavy debt in the mid-1990s, for instance, Trump claimed about $1 billion in losses to cut his tax bill, even though lenders had forgiven hundreds of millions of dollars he owed. Trump argued the debt was never technically forgiven because he had exchanged equity in the bankrupt casino business for it — a tax maneuver Congress later barred as an abusive tax loophole.
Through that technique and other tax shelters and deductions, Trump was able pay just $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017, and zero in 2020, according to a congressional investigation after his first term.
Despite hinting that he may now release his tax returns, Trump has previously refused to do so, saying he can't while undergoing an IRS audit — but there is no law barring him from doing that. In fact, presidents for decades have done so voluntarily and all have had their returns audited as a matter of IRS policy.
That policy began in the late 1970s in a post-Watergate crackdown on presidential abuses after Richard Nixon was found to have claimed dubious deductions — including a donation of his personal papers — that led to big underpayments. One year while president, he paid only hundreds of dollars.
When asked about his tax maneuvers, Nixon famously retorted, “I am not a crook.” He later agreed to the IRS findings, and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes.
Trump's settlement with the IRS refers only to existing audits, not future examinations, so the president and his family are not off the hook for any alleged abuses in future tax returns.
Parts of the settlement are being challenged in court.
The compensation fund is being attacked by police officers who helped defend the U.S. Capitol from Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. They have sued to block anyone — including the rioters — from receiving payouts.
Some law experts expect the tax immunity will be challenged in court, too.
“This is the president trying to play every role in the system, acting as plaintiff, defendant, and his own judge and jury to extract extraordinary windfalls,” said New York University's DeBot, adding that giving broad immunity “stretches beyond what DOJ actually has authority to do.”
Hussein reported from Washington.
President Donald Trump speaks as he tours Ballroom construction around the outside the White House, Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
FILE - The Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City, N.J., on Jan. 30, 2009. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)
FILE - President Donald Trump arrives at Leesburg Executive Airport on Marine One in Leesburg, Va., Thursday, April 24, 2025, en route to Trump National Golf Club Washington DC in Sterling, Va. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
