Trump campaign calls for more presidential debates ‘much earlier’ in election race – as it happened

11 Apr 202413.58 EDT

Joanna Walters

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.

11 Apr 202413.46 EDT

Joanna Walters

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.

And re-posted this from Joe Biden.

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.

11 Apr 202412.51 EDT

Martin Pengelly

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.

11 Apr 202412.24 EDT

Dani Anguiano

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.

1:35

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.

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.