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.
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.
SenatorTim 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.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the House Approbations subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington, US Photograph: Michael McCoy/Reuters
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).
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.
Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida delivers an address to a joint meeting of the United States Congress, in the chamber of the US House of Representatives on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA
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?
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.
Georgia lieutenant governor candidate Burt Jones participates in a Republican primary debate, 3 May 2022, in Atlanta. Photograph: Brynn Anderson/AP
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.
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.
Lara Trump, the newly-elected co-chair of the Republican National Committee, gives an address in Houston, on 8 March. Photograph: Michael Wyke/AP
