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.
