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, 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.

David Smith

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

David Smith

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.’

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.

Joan E Greve

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.

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.

Good morning US politics readers. 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.