Closing summary
Donald Trump’s campaign wrote to the commission on presidential debates asking for this year’s general election debates between him and Joe Biden to take place “much earlier” and calling for more to be added to the schedule.
The Trump campaign letter comes after five of the major TV news networks banded together to prepare a letter urging Biden and Trump to participate in televised debates ahead the November general election.
Joe Biden’s re-election campaign launched a seven-figure ad buy in Arizona on Thursday focusing on reproductive rights, just two days after the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total abortion ban dating to 1864.
Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister, called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right congresswoman of Georgia who has filed a motion to remove Mike Johnson, said the House speaker offered her a spot on a proposed “kitchen cabinet” of advisers after a meeting at the Capitol.
Senator Tim Kaine, a former vice-presidential nominee and leading foreign policy voice in the Democratic party, has said Joe Biden now understands that Benjamin Netanyahu “played” him during the early months of the war in Gaza but “that ain’t going to happen any more”.
The joint press conference between Mike Johnson and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago tomorrow will come just two days after the former president called on Republicans to kill legislation the speaker put forward to extend a controversial surveillance law. Trump had urged House GOP members to reject a reauthorization of the law, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), ahead of the key procedural vote on Wednesday.
Johnson is dashing to Florida to meet with Trump, where the pair are expected to appear tomorrow at an event at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate for a “major announcement on election integrity”. Friday’s appearance will mark their first public event together since Johnson was elected to the speakership last fall.
FBI director Christopher Wray is currently speaking before the House appropriations committee, where he is expected to warn lawmakers of his concerns over potential bad actors carrying out attacks on US soil.
“Our most immediate concern has been that individuals or small groups will draw twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home,” a transcript of Wray’s opening statement obtained by ABC News reads.
But now increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, akin to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia Concert Hall a couple weeks ago.
Wray said he was “hard pressed to think of a time where so many threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once,” according to the transcript.
While he was careful not to touch on US domestic politics, the address by Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, today comes amid a deadlock in Congress on approving billions of dollars in additional military aid to Ukraine, due to pressure from hard-right Republicans aligned with Donald Trump.
Kishida warned that the biggest challenge the world faces comes from China:
China’s current external stance and military actions present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge, not only to the peace and security of Japan but to the peace and stability of the international community at large.
“Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow,” he added.
Kishida decries Russian war against Ukraine as “unprovoked, unjust, and brutal.” “As I often say, Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow,” he says. That gets a standing ovation from most (Marjorie Taylor Greene among the few in the chamber who remain seated).
— Morgan Chalfant (@mchalfant16) April 11, 2024
Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Thursday called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress.
Warning of risks from the rise of China, Kishida said that Japan – stripped of its right to a military after the second world war – was determined to do more to share responsibility with its ally the United States.
“As we meet here today, I detect an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should be,” Kishida told a joint session of the House of Representatives and Senate during a state visit to Washington.
The international order that the US worked for generations to build is facing new challenges, challenges from those with values and principles very different from ours.
Kishida said he understood “the exhaustion of being the country that has upheld the international order almost single-handedly” but added:
The leadership of the United States is indispensable. Without US support, how long before the hopes of Ukraine would collapse under the onslaught from Moscow? Without the presence of the United States, how long before the Indo-Pacific would face even harsher realities?
Updated
A majority of voters in Florida say they believe a six-week abortion ban is too strict, but only 42% said they will vote in favor of a ballot measure to enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution, according to a new poll.
The study by Emerson College Polling found that 57% of respondents said the six-week abortion ban that will become state law next month is “too strict”, compared with 15% who said it is not strict enough.
Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said:
Fifty-six percent of Democrats and 44% of independents plan to vote in favor of a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability. Republicans are more split: 36% plan to vote no, 30% yes, and 34% are unsure.
Wisconsin Republicans have hit the state election commission with complaints alleging that officials in the state’s two largest cities illegally rejected Republican applicants for poll worker positions for the primary election.
The complaints, filed by the Milwaukee county Republican party and Dane county Republican party, claim officials in Milwaukee and Madison violated state law by not contacting eligible Republicans nominated by their party to work the polls. The move furthers the GOP strategy of questioning election processes in key battleground states.
“This is the kind of misconduct that drives down faith in elections,” the Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman, Michael Whatley, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Republican Party is filing these complaints to compel election officials to follow the law and guarantee bipartisan access to important election administration positions in the Badger state.
Burt Jones, Georgia’s state senator turned lieutenant governor, will be investigated for his role as a fake elector for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Pete Skandalakis, director of the prosecuting attorneys’ council of Georgia, said he will look into whether Jones should face criminal charges over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state.
Jones was one of 16 state Republicans who signed a certificate stating that Trump had won Georgia and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors even though Joe Biden had been declared the winner in the state.
The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, was barred from prosecuting Jones in 2022 as part of her election interference case against Trump and others, after she hosted a campaign fundraiser for his Democratic opponent in the lieutenant governor’s race.
Skandalakis announced on Thursday that he would appoint himself to spearhead a potential case against Jones, after facing criticism for not moving more quickly to find a prosecutor to replace Willis.
Updated
The Trump campaign letter comes after five of the major TV news networks banded together to prepare a letter urging Joe Biden and Donald Trump to participate in televised debates ahead the November general election.
The letter, endorsed by ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News, urged the presumptive presidential nominees “to publicly commit to participating in general election debates before November’s election”, according to CNN.
In a statement responding to the Trump campaign’s letter asking for more presidential debates, Republican national committee Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump said:
Election calendars have become longer than ever before – and scheduling debates after millions of Americans have already cast their ballots does a grave disservice to voters who want to hear solutions to the economic, border, and crime crises created by Joe Biden.
Trump campaign calls for more presidential debates
Donald Trump’s campaign wrote to the commission on presidential debates asking for this year’s general election debates between him and Joe Biden to take place “much earlier” and calling for more to be added to the schedule.
In a letter to the commission, Trump co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita wrote:
The Commission must move up the timetable of its proposed 2024 debates to ensure more Americans have a full chance to see the candidates before they start voting, and we would argue for adding more debates in addition to those on the currently proposed schedule.
The first presidential debate is scheduled to take place on 16 September in San Marcos, Texas. There are three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate scheduled.
Wiles and LaCivita noted that by the date of the first proposed debate, more than a million Americans are likely to have already voted, and three million may have cast their ballot by 1 October, when the second proposed debate is scheduled. They added:
We have already indicated President Trump is willing to debate anytime, anyplace, and anywhere – and the time to start these debates is now.
Trump, who did not participate in any of the Republican primary debates, made similar requests during the 2020 election.
The Republican National Committee sent out a scripted robocall on behalf of its new co-chair Lara Trump, falsely claiming Democrats were guilty of “massive fraud” in the 2020 election.
“We all know the problems,” the RNC call said, according to CNN, which also said the call was sent 145,000 times in the first week of April.
No photo IDs, unsecured ballot drop boxes, mass mailing of ballots and voter rolls chock full of deceased people and non-citizens are just a few examples of the massive fraud that took place. If Democrats have their way, your vote could be canceled out by someone who isn’t even an American citizen.
Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who repeatedly defeated Trump in court after the 2020 election, said the RNC robocall showed the Republican party to be “more committed to the big lie than ever”.
Donald Trump, who installed his daughter-in-law at the RNC last month, lost the 2020 election conclusively to Joe Biden and was told by close aides including William Barr, his attorney general, and Chris Krebs, his head of cybersecurity, that there was no widespread fraud.
Regardless, Trump pursued his fraud lie through the courts – losing every case – and ultimately by inciting the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021.
The daily media briefing in the west wing at the White House is overdue, so we’ll bring you highlights when it happens.
White House press secretary Karine-Jean-Pierre was scheduled to begin the briefing at 1.30pm ET, then it was put back to 1.45pm, but no sign yet.
These events often run late and it’s nothing we’re not used to, it often partly depends on whether Joe Biden is running on or behind schedule (usually behind).
No-one else is listed as attending the briefing today. Jean-Pierre is sometimes accompanied, increasingly of late with so much international news involving the US, especially in Gaza, by national security adviser Jake Sullivan or national security spokesman John Kirby.
Amid the Biden-Harris campaign ad buy in Arizona focusing on reproductive rights, just two days after the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total abortion ban dating to 1864, US vice president Kamala Harris will visit the state tomorrow, for an official campaign event focused on “reproductive freedom”.
Harris had already planned to be in Arizona but now will make the visit to Tucson a key campaign trail stop as she leads the administration and the election campaign’s efforts to bolster reproductive choice.
Also she’s marking Black Maternal Health Week.
And she’s been posting.
Black women are 3x times as likely to die because of pregnancy-related complications than their white counterparts.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) April 11, 2024
As we begin Black Maternal Health Week, we must ensure Black women get the care they deserve throughout pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum. pic.twitter.com/RC0stq3Hag
And re-posted this from Joe Biden.
Vice President @KamalaHarris has been a leader on the issue of maternal mortality for years.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 11, 2024
She has led the charge to improve maternal health outcomes and continues to elevate the issue so all mothers can access the care they need.
I’m proud to have her on my team. pic.twitter.com/ntYAYeBOiG
Interim summary
It’s been a lively day so far of political jostling between Democratic and Republican leaders and within the Republican top echelons, on Capitol Hill and on the presidential election campaign trail. There’s more to come and we’ll bring you the news as it happens.
Here’s where things stand:
Joe Biden’s re-election campaign launched a seven-figure ad buy in Arizona on Thursday focusing on reproductive rights, just two days after the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total abortion ban dating to 1864.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right congresswoman of Georgia who has filed a motion to remove Mike Johnson, said the House speaker offered her a spot on a proposed “kitchen cabinet” of advisers after a meeting at the Capitol.
Senator Tim Kaine, a former vice-presidential nominee and leading foreign policy voice in the Democratic party, has said Joe Biden now understands that Benjamin Netanyahu “played” him during the early months of the war in Gaza but “that ain’t going to happen any more”.
The joint press conference between Mike Johnson and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago tomorrow will come just two days after the former president called on Republicans to kill legislation the speaker put forward to extend a controversial surveillance law. Trump had urged House GOP members to reject a reauthorization of the law, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), ahead of the key procedural vote on Wednesday.
House speaker Mike Johnson is dashing to Florida to meet with Donald Trump, where the pair are expected to appear tomorrow at an event at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate for a “major announcement on election integrity”. Friday’s appearance will mark their first public event together since Johnson was elected to the speakership last fall.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is due to brief the media at 1.30pm ET. At 3.15pm Joe Biden will meet with Philippine president Ferdinand R Marcos Jr and at 4.15pm Biden will hold a trilateral meeting with Marcos and Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida, which US vice president Kamala Harris will attend.
Jon Stone, a New Hampshire Republican state representative and county chair for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, who once presented Trump with an AR-15 assault rifle, lost his job as a police officer in 2006 after a suspension over a relationship with a teenage girl prompted him to threaten to kill colleagues and rape the police chief’s wife and children.
The extraordinary story was first reported by InDepthNH.org, a “nonprofit watchdog news website published by the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism”.
Its story, by Damien Fisher, begins:
Republican representative Jon Stone’s New Hampshire law enforcement career ended when he threatened to kill fellow police officers in a shooting spree, and murder his chief after raping the chief’s wife and children, all while he was already under scrutiny for his inappropriate relationship with a teen girl, according to the internal investigation reports finally released this week.
Stone, a twice-elected Republican state representative for Claremont, has been fighting to keep those reports secret for years. Last month, the New Hampshire supreme court ruled that Stone could not block their release in response to this reporter’s 2020 right-to-know request, ending years of legal challenges.
Stone and his attorney did not comment.
On Wednesday, HuffPost pointed to Stone’s 2016 presentation to Trump of an assault rifle engraved with the New Hampshire state motto, “Live free or die”, and “1-4-5”, indicating Trump was his No 1 choice to be the 45th president.
“It was very nice to meet Mr Trump,” Stone, a co-owner of Black Op Arms, told WMUR-9, an ABC News affiliate.
Stephen Stepanek, Trump’s 2024 New Hampshire campaign chair, told HuffPost: “I just found out about it this morning. [Stone has] been a Trump supporter for a long time, and he’s been a state representative, and he had, as far as we were concerned, what looked like a great background.
“We haven’t made any decisions at this point,” Stepanek said, adding that he expected aides close to Trump at his Florida home would decide what to do. “I think it will be handled by Mar-a-Lago, in consultation with me.”
Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, co-managers of Trump’s campaign, did not comment to HuffPost.
The Guardian has contacted Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesperson, for comment.
Arizona state senator Eva Burch, a Democrat, shared her recent experience of getting an abortion as she condemned the state supreme court’s ruling earlier this week that a near-total abortion ban could be enforced.
“Somebody took care of me,” Burch, who earned national attention last month after announcing she would get an abortion because her pregnancy is no longer viable, said today.
Now we’re talking about whether or not we should put that doctor in jail. This is outrageous that we would even dignify the consideration of this type of ban.
Arizona State Sen. Eva Burch (D): "A couple weeks ago, I had an abortion — a safe, legal abortion here in Arizona for a pregnancy that I very much wanted."
— The Recount (@therecount) April 11, 2024
"Somebody took care of me," she continues. "And now we're talking about whether or not we should put that doctor in jail." pic.twitter.com/znACed4wB2
Arizona’s state Republican leadership halted an effort by Democrats on Wednesday to repeal an 1864 law banning almost all abortions, which the state supreme court this week ruled could go into effect.
Democrats and one Republican lawmaker sought to repeal the law, but GOP leaders, who command the majority, cut it off twice and quickly adjourned for the week. Outraged Democrats erupted in finger-waving chants of “Shame! Shame!”
Republican state Rep Teresa Martinez, of Casa Grande, said there was no reason to rush the debate. She accused Democrats of “screaming at us and engaging in extremist and insurrectionist behaviour on the House floor”. The GOP-led senate briefly convened without debate on abortion.
Democratic legislators seized on national interest in the state’s abortion ban. “We’ve got the eyes of the world watching Arizona right now,” said Democratic state Rep Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, of Tucson.
We know that the supreme court decision yesterday is extreme. And we know that should the 1864 ban on abortion remain a law in Arizona, people will die.
Biden campaign launches seven-figure ad buy on abortion in Arizona
Joe Biden’s campaign launched a seven-figure ad buy in Arizona on Thursday focusing on reproductive rights, just two days after the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total abortion ban dating to 1864.
The ad buy focuses on Donald Trump’s latest abortion stance, in which he said laws should be left to individual states, many of which have enacted new restrictions since he appointed supreme court justices who were instrumental in the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade.
“Because of Donald Trump, millions of women lost the fundamental freedom to control their own bodies,” Biden narrates in the 30-second ad.
And now, women’s lives are in danger because of that. The question is, if Donald Trump gets back in power, what freedom will you lose next?
The ad, dubbed “Power Back”, will run this month on targeted television programs and target key young, female and Latino voters both on television and online, according to the campaign.
In a statement, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:
This week, women across the state of Arizona are watching in horror as an abortion ban from 1864 with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of a woman will soon become the law of the land for Arizonans. This nightmare is only possible because of Donald Trump.
Marjorie Taylor Greene said she had recently spoken to Donald Trump but did not say how the former president felt about her threats to force a vote to remove Mike Johnson as House speaker.
I don’t speak for the president,” Greene said after her meeting with Johnson on Wednesday, CNN reported.
Asked about Johnson’s upcoming appearance with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club, Greene said:
Things like that don’t bother me.
MTG says she does not support Johnson despite 'kitchen cabinet' adviser offer
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right congresswoman of Georgia who has filed a motion to remove Mike Johnson, said the House speaker offered her a spot on a proposed “kitchen cabinet” of advisers after a meeting at the Capitol.
Johnson met with Greene for nearly an hour on Wednesday to discuss their disagreements, after which she described the exchange as “direct and passionate”.
Johnson “discussed having a kitchen cabinet group that would be a group of advisers for him, asked me if I was interested,” she told reporters on Wednesday.
She said she would “wait and see” about Johnson’s offer, but that she was more interested in how he handles several issues before Congress, particularly aid for Ukraine and the Fisa vote. She added:
I explained to him, this isn’t personal. But he has not done the job that we elected him to do.
She added:
He does not have my support and I’m watching what happens with Fisa and Ukraine. Those are the two things that we’ll all be watching.
The Democratic senator for Virginia, Tim Kaine, is best known nationally as Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the 2016 presidential election, a race they lost to Republicans Donald Trump and Mike Pence. The Biden ally is a member of the Senate foreign relations and armed services committees.
Kaine has repeatedly reiterated his backing for Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas following the terrorist attack six months ago that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people hostage. But he has joined other Democrats in expressing growing consternation over a hardline military response that has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, and spurred a looming famine.
In a 30-minute phone call last week, Joe Biden issued a stark warning to Benjamin Netanyahu that future American support for the war depends on the swift implementation of new steps to protect civilians and aid workers. Netanyahu subsequently approved measures to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, including the reopening of a key crossing destroyed in the 7 October attack. Kaine noted:
They turned water back on in northern Gaza. They allow bakeries to start to operate again in Palestine. They announced they’re pulling troops back in southern Gaza, and there’s probably more that they’re going to do, because I think he finally heard in Joe Biden’s voice, ‘Yeah, I’m a friend but you played me and I know you played me; that ain’t going to happen any more.’
He added:
I feel strongly that Benjamin Netanyahu has made Israel less safe in dramatic ways and is now hurting the US-Israel relationship, which has been fairly steady and easy to be counted upon.
Biden knows Netanyahu ‘played’ him in early months of Gaza war, says Tim Kaine
Senator Tim Kaine, a former vice-presidential nominee and leading foreign policy voice in the Democratic party, has said Joe Biden now understands that Benjamin Netanyahu “played” him during the early months of the war in Gaza but “that ain’t going to happen any more”.
In an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday, Kaine accused the prime minister of making Israel “dramatically less safe” and hurting its longstanding relationship with the US, and said the US president had come to realise the limits of his influence.
Biden embraced Netanyahu early in the conflict but had little to show for it as Israel continued to rain bombs on Gaza, causing mass displacement, threats of famine and disease and, last week, the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers. Protesters have condemned Biden for miscalculating the extent of his sway over Netanyahu. Kaine reflected:
I do believe he felt like that relationship and the true compassion that he had for Israel over his career would lead him to be listened to by the Israeli leadership. I think he is enormously frustrated that he’s been trying to give advice, not like a foe would give it – ‘I think this is better for you if you listen to me. I’m not just saying this is better for me; I’m saying this will be better for you.’
Updated
The House is expected to vote again on renewing section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) today after the bill was blocked on Wednesday by a small faction of House Republicans backed by Donald Trump.
Republican congressman French Hill of Arkansas told Reuters:
What I’ve been told is that we’re going to do the same thing we were doing yesterday today.
Mike Johnson’s embarrassing defeat over the Fisa bill and the threat of an intra-party revolt over a Ukraine aid package leaves Johnson, six months into his speakership, in a similar place as his predecessor Kevin McCarthy, who was unceremoniously voted out last fall.
After the Fisa vote on Wednesday, Johnson held a closed-door meeting of House Republicans but there was no breakthrough after more than an hour, NBC News reported. The speaker later told reporters:
We will regroup and reformulate another plan.
Johnson suffered embarrassing defeat over surveillance bill after Trump calls to 'kill' it
The joint press conference between Mike Johnson and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago tomorrow will come just two days after the former president called on Republicans to kill legislation the speaker put forward to extend a controversial surveillance law.
Trump had urged House GOP members to reject a reauthorization of the law, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), ahead of the key procedural vote on Wednesday. “KILL FISA,” Trump posted to Truth Social.
As a result, a faction of far-right House conservatives banded together to block the law from coming to the House floor, throwing the chamber into chaos once again. The Fisa vote was an embarrassing defeat for Johnson, and the fourth time in his tenure that the House has defeated a rule vote.
Asked about Trump’s role in the reauthorization process, Johnson told reporters:
I’ll just say that it’s never helpful for the majority party to take down its own rules. What it does ultimately is it weakens our hand in negotiations with the Senate and the White House, so it’s not a good development.
Updated
As the House adjourned last month, Mike Johnson vowed that the chamber would soon “take the necessary steps to address the supplemental funding request”, which includes money for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The Senate passed a $95bn foreign aid package in February, but Johnson indicated that the House would consider an amended proposal when members returned to Washington this week.
Even as Johnson faces a challenge from the hard-right flank of his conference including congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, other House Republicans insist the chamber must take action to assist Ukraine. They warn that further inaction, after months of ignoring the White House’s demands to approve more funding, will only embolden Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“We are at a critical juncture on the ground that is beginning to be able to impact not only morale of the Ukrainians that are fighting, but also their ability to fight,” congressman Mike Turner, the Republican chair of the House intelligence committee, told CBS News last Sunday.
Putin knows this. This is obviously an area where we cannot allow Putin to win.
Allies of Mike Johnson have reached out to Donald Trump to ask him to publicly support the speaker, sources told CNN. Johnson has also been advised to keep the former president in the loop on a vote on funding for Ukraine could be imminent in the chamber, it writes.
The specter of Trump has loomed large over the wrangling for a Ukraine deal; he was instrumental in Johnson’s refusal to call a House vote on a $95bn wartime funding bill that passed the Democratic-led Senate in February, which also included aid for Israel in its war in Gaza.
Trump has also demanded Republicans reject any Ukraine funding measure that ties in money for US border security in order to deny Joe Biden a “win” on immigration ahead of November’s election. The friction has led to rightwingers, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, threatening Johnson’s position.
Johnson and Trump to hold joint press conference on Friday
The joint appearance at Mar-a-Lago tomorrow was pitched by Mike Johnson’s office to Donald Trump’s team, but the event is being viewed as a win by both camps, according to Politico’s Playbook.
Johnson gets to stand onstage with the King of MAGA himself right as he faces a hard-right revolt, while Trump gets the country’s highest-ranking Republican to lend credence to his voting concerns as many in the GOP beg him to move past the 2020 election.
The event on Friday comes as discussions are under way about holding regular meetings between the Trump campaign and Johnson’s team, it writes.
Updated
Those around Donald Trump are growing weary of the constant motion-to-vacate threats and fearful that an election-year speakership battle could risk Republicans losing the House, Politico’s Playbook writes.
“The internal fighting is not appreciated by [Trump],” one person close to the former president said, adding:
It’s no way to run a party; it’s no way to run a House. You can’t work in that environment.
Trump and Johnson grow closer amid frustration over 'stupid' threat to speakership
The embattled House speaker, Mike Johnson, is dashing to Florida to meet with Donald Trump this week where the pair are expected to appear tomorrow at an event at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate for a “major announcement on election integrity”.
Friday’s appearance will mark their first public event together since Johnson was elected to the speakership last fall, and comes as he and Trump have begun to develop a rapport and engaging in more frequent phone calls, Politico’s Playbook reports. It also comes at a precarious time for Johnson, who faces a threat for his ouster from one of Trump’s most loyal allies in Congress, the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Just before the spring recess last month, Greene filed a motion to vacate, and has since warned Johnson that passing Ukraine aid would put his position in peril. Johnson warned on Wednesday that an effort to oust him would not be helpful for the Republican majority and “would be chaos in the House”, and Trump insiders reportedly agree. “100 percent distraction. Unwanted. And just stupid,” one Trump insider told Playbook.
We’re not going to get trapped into this cycle of bullshit that comes out of members of the House.
Here’s what else we’re watching:
10am ET: Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida will meet with Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries.
10.35am: Kishida will address a joint meeting of Congress.
1.30pm: Jeffries will hold his weekly news conference.
1.30pm: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief.
3.15pm: Joe Biden will meet with Philippine president Ferdinand R Marcos Jr.
4.15pm: Biden will hold a trilateral meeting with Marcos and Kishida. Kamala Harris will attend.
Updated
