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Voters in Michigan have been organising for months to send Joe Biden a message during the state's primary on Tuesday: "No ceasefire. No vote."

After President Joe Biden narrowly defeated Donald Trump in Michigan in the last election in 2020, a protest vote tied to events in Gaza is a real concern for the White House.

Mr Biden and Mr Trump are on course for a rematch in November, and in a close presidential election - as is predicted by most polls - experts say Michigan is a must-win state.

With the largest Arab-American population in the US, the state poses a crucial test as to the impact the Biden administration's policy on the Israel-Gaza conflict could have on the Democrats.

The anger it has created among many in that community has been festering for months, and the Democratic primary on Tuesday offers the first chance for the party's voters to register that discontent by withholding their vote from the president.

He is largely unopposed in the Democratic Party's search for their presidential nominee, but that has not stopped those opposed to his Middle East policy from taking action.

In the final hours on the eve of Tuesday's primary election, Khalid Turaani stood outside the Islamic Center of Detroit and distributed pamphlets encouraging people to vote "uncommitted" on their ballot papers.

"We're doing all that we can to ensure that Biden is a one-term president," Mr Turaani, the co-organiser behind Abandon Biden, told the BBC. "In November, we will remember. When you stand against the will of the people, you're going to lose."

Two grassroots organisations, including Mr Turaani's group Abandon Biden and a second, Listen to Michigan, are urging Democrats to choose "uncommitted" in Tuesday's primary.

In the state, each party's candidate list includes an "uncommitted" option, which allows a voter to exercise a party vote without selecting a candidate - in this case, Mr Biden.

The movement has gained endorsements from at least 39 state and local elected officials. These include congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Michigan state legislator Abraham Aiyash and Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud.

Lexis Zeidan, a co-organiser for Listen to Michigan, said they're hoping to get at least 10,000 people to vote uncommitted.

"We want to wake up the next day on Wednesday, and we want to be able to claim Michigan as a pro-Palestinian state," she said. "And we want to inspire communities across the nation to know that, at the end of the day, America is beholden to its people."

Mr Biden's victory in this primary election is assured, but Democrats will be watching how many vote "uncommitted" to see what electoral harm has been done by the president's support of Israel in its months-long war against Hamas in Gaza.

Recent national opinion polls suggest a majority of Democrats disapprove of the president's handling of the crisis. In places like Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit where a large concentration of the state's Arab American population lives, discontent with Democrats appears to be widespread.

The president has attempted to walk a tightrope between sending aid to Israel, a longstanding US ally with historically strong support from Democrats, and appeasing those in his party who want the devastation in Gaza to end now.

In one attempt to pacify their frustrations, Mr Biden's campaign staff attempted to organise an in-person meeting with Arab-American leaders in January, a request denied by Dearborn's mayor. "This is not the time to talk about elections," Mayor Hammoud said at the time.

Instead, he and other community leaders met senior staff from the White House in February. Mr Aiyash, the state representative, told the New York Times after the meeting: "We emphasised that beyond communication, there needs to be a change in policies."

However, the White House has been reluctant to reel back its support, sending billions of dollars in military aid to Israel and three times blocking a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Samraa Luqman, another member of Abandon Biden who described herself as a far-left Democrat, said: "And yet today I stand before you telling you that I am considering voting for Trump in 2024.

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"Irrespective of the price I may pay as a Muslim woman in this country, I'm still willing to draw the red line and say that the commission of genocide is more of a priority to me," she said.

Israel vehemently rejects allegations that it is committing genocide in Gaza.

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The Utah bill, introduced as the “Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act,” was signed into law by Gov. Spencer Cox on January 31.

“The Legislature may, by concurrent resolution, prohibit a government officer from enforcing or assisting in the enforcement of a federal directive within the state if the Legislature determines the federal directive violates the principles of state sovereignty,” the law states.

With the bill, Utah joins a long-standing small-c conservative push to promote states’ rights, particularly when the federal government is controlled by the opposing party. It’s a debate going back to the original founders of the US Constitution, through the “Nullification Crisis” of 1832-33, when South Carolina tried to avoid paying federal tariffs, and into the Southern states’ attempts to avoid racial integration in schools in the 1950s.

Most recently, Texas and the US have been in a legal battle over security at the US-Mexico border, historically under the federal government’s control. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the federal government, but the tight vote suggested the principles of the Supremacy Clause “might be in a degree of flux,” according to CNN Supreme Court analyst Steve Vladeck.

Utah Sen. Scott Sandall, who sponsored the Sovereignty Act, said he hoped the bill spreads to other states.

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Home prices across China are falling, developers have gone bust and people are doubting whether real estate will ever be a viable investment again. The meltdown is dragging down growth and spooking investors worldwide.

Under the new strategy, the Communist Party would take over a larger share of the market, which for years has been dominated by the private sector.

Underpinning it are two major programs, according to policy advisers involved in the discussions and recent government announcements.

One involves the state buying up distressed private-market projects and converting them into homes that the government would rent out or, in some cases, sell.

The other calls for the state itself to build more subsidized housing for low- and middle-income families.

The goal, the policy advisers say, is to increase the share of housing built by the state for low-cost rental or sale under restricted conditions to at least 30% of China’s housing stock, from 5% or so today.

The plans line up with Xi’s broader push in recent years to expand party control over the economy and rein in the private sector. That push has included regulatory crackdowns on technology firms such as Jack Ma-backed Ant Group and more investment in state-owned enterprises in preferred industries such as semiconductors.

Xi is adamant that real estate, which for years propelled China’s growth and at one point made up around a quarter of gross domestic product, should no longer take on such an outsize role in the economy, the policy advisers say.

In Xi’s view, too much credit moved into property speculation, adding risks to the financial system, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and diverting resources from what Xi considers to be the “real economy”—sectors such as manufacturing and high-end technology that he sees as crucial for China in its competition with the U.S. In some ways, Xi’s plans would take China’s housing market back to its roots. Decades ago, in the Mao Zedong era, the party controlled the market, with most Chinese people living in homes provided by their party work units.

In the late 1990s, when leaders started liberalizing the market, they initially envisioned a two-tiered system in which some people would buy privately developed properties, while others would live in state-subsidized housing.

Over the following decades, however, private developers like China Evergrande expanded rapidly and increasingly dominated the market. Today, more than 90% of Chinese households own their own homes, compared with around 66% in the U.S.

The shift to private ownership created enormous wealth in China. But the market’s explosive growth also sparked a debt-fueled bubble, priced many young families out of desirable housing, and dismayed Xi and other senior leaders who felt the country was straying too far from its socialist roots.

Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University, says that if the government does significantly improve affordable housing, “it will represent the kind of transfer to the poor households that China urgently needs,” freeing people to spend more on other things. But he said it was too early to know how the plan would play out.