Latest 2024 election news: Harris heading to Arizona to hammer Trump on abortion policy

Vice President Harris is heading to Arizona on Friday to give a campaign speech on abortion, three days after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an 1864 law forbidding almost all abortions is operative in the swing state. She is expected to heavily criticize former president Donald Trump, who earlier this week advocated for states having the final say on abortion policy but later said that Arizona has gone too far.

Here’s what to know

• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is scheduled to appear with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Friday afternoon to discuss “election integrity.”
• Trump is scheduled to hold a rally Saturday in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
• Sign up for our elections newsletter, The Campaign Moment, by Aaron Blake.

11:21 AM: When Trump issues a social media decree, congressional Republicans take note

Latest 2024 election news: Harris heading to Arizona to hammer Trump on abortion policy

House Republicans woke up Wednesday morning to an increasingly familiar circumstance: a social media decree from former president Donald Trump.

“KILL FISA,” Trump said after midnight on his Truth Social platform, referring to parts of the national security surveillance program that the chamber was preparing to consider renewing.

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By: Patrick Svitek and Mariana Alfaro

11:08 AM: Who is Juan Merchan, the judge in Trump’s N.Y. hush money trial?

Justice Juan Merchan poses in his chambers in New York on March 14.

Former president Donald Trump is familiar with New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing his criminal case in Manhattan. Trump has been charged there with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016.

Merchan, who has sat on the New York bench since 2009, also presided over the jury trial in 2022 of Trump’s namesake real estate company, which resulted in a conviction, and the prosecution of the company’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.

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By: Perry Stein and Shayna Jacobs

10:44 AM: Analysis from Tyler Pager, White House reporter

President Biden’s campaign plans to spend every day until Nov. 5 reminding voters of Trump’s record on abortion, hoping the issue will mobilize core Democratic voters, bring disaffected voters back into the fold and make inroads with voters whom Democrats have often struggled to win.

10:26 AM: Gallego vows to keep Lake’s abortion views central in Arizona Senate race

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) speaks during a campaign event in Phoenix on Jan. 28, 2023.

Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego’s campaign railed Friday against Republican Kari Lake for her apparent about-face on abortion rights and vowed to keep the issue front and center in his competitive Arizona race that could sway control of the U.S. Senate.

In a campaign memo obtained by The Washington Post, Nichole Johnson, Gallego’s campaign manager, put a spotlight on Lake’s shifting views on the issue after the Arizona Supreme Court this week ruled that a near-total abortion ban from 1864 can take effect in the coming weeks.

Lake, a close ally of former president Donald Trump, said Thursday that the ban is “out of line with where the people of this state are” after she previously called it “a great law.” Lake has reportedly been reaching out to GOP state lawmakers to express her support for an effort to repeal the law and leave in place an existing 15-week abortion ban.

“The bottom line: no half-baked, convoluted statement on this week’s ruling — or desperate, self-interested attempts to have her fellow Republicans get rid of the issue — can erase Lake’s long-documented antiabortion position,” Johnson said in a memo. “She will say or do anything to get power, but our campaign will spend now until November reminding Arizonans just how dangerous her position on abortion is.”

Gallego is hosting a news conference Friday afternoon with Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All — the same day that Vice President Harris is set to appear in the state to rally voters around the issue. Gallego, currently a congressman representing the Phoenix area, has been a proponent of breaking the Senate filibuster if necessary to secure national abortion rights.

By: Sabrina Rodriguez

10:05 AM: Analysis: The dishonest ‘noncitizen voting’ issue melds Trump’s two favorite things

A person votes in the New Hampshire primary in Sanbornton, N.H., on Jan. 23. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

News broke Thursday that the “election security” event for which House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is making the requisite pilgrimage to the holy site of Mar-a-Lago will focus on legislation targeting noncitizen voting.

The good news for Johnson and former president Donald Trump is that their work is already done, both in that prohibitions already exist and that noncitizens hardly ever cast any votes, much less intentionally. But the point of all of this is not to actually address a problem with American elections.

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By: Philip Bump

9:44 AM: Analysis from Marianne LeVine, National political reporter focused on the 2024 elections

At least a dozen people are under consideration for the job of Donald Trump’s running mate, one top Trump adviser told The Washington Post. That list is “growing, not shrinking,” and Trump keeps adding names, said the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations. Who is in or out depends on the day.

9:26 AM: Is Harris an effective campaigner?

The Biden campaign is deploying Vice President Harris more and more on the 2024 campaign trail. With her increased visibility on behalf of the president, she is tackling hot-button issues and attempting to generate enthusiasm for a Biden second term.

But at the same time, Harris toes a tricky line. She needs to be vocal on behalf of the Biden campaign while carrying the baggage of the Biden White House and her recently unfavorable polling — all while promising improvement in a potential second term.

Watch more in the video above for analysis on Harris’s role in the Biden campaign.

By: Blair Guild

9:12 AM: Analysis: A Trump raising money off election lies? Now we’ve seen everything.

An attendee at the July 2021 “Protect Our Elections Rally” in Phoenix shares his thoughts on his cowboy hat.

Donald Trump managed to vacuum up hundreds of millions of dollars of donations as a lame-duck president. This was not money offered by supporters to advance his final policy wishes or in service to some future political bid.

It was, instead, mostly money thrown at Trump in response to his incessant and dishonest claims that he’d been the victim of nefarious behavior in the 2020 presidential election. For a time, it appeared that special counsel Jack Smith was investigating whether that exchange of lies for contributions violated federal law. No charges were filed.

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By: Philip Bump

8:49 AM: Analysis from Amy B Wang, National politics reporter

President Biden’s campaign is blasting the planned appearance Friday by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) with Donald Trump to talk about “election integrity.”

“By virtually all measures, the 2020 election was among the most secure in our nation’s history. … But Donald Trump still can’t admit it,” Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), who has endorsed Biden, said in a statement. “The sham event at Trump’s country club should remind the American people of a dangerous truth: Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy.”

8:26 AM: Biden team increasingly hopes to ride the abortion issue to victory

Abortion rights activists gather in front of the White House in July 2022.

Seven months before Election Day, President Biden still faces widespread concerns about his age. Hundreds of thousands of voters have lodged protest votes against him in Democratic primaries. And with inflation remaining unexpectedly high, the topsy-turvy post-pandemic economy also threatens to hurt his reelection chances.

But inside the Biden campaign and across the Democratic Party, officials see a potential silver bullet that they hope supersedes all of the president’s challenges in his rematch against former president Donald Trump: abortion rights.

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By: Tyler Pager

8:04 AM: Analysis from Amy B Wang, National politics reporter

President Biden is planning to make appearances in the swing state of Pennsylvania three days in a row next week: Scranton on Tuesday, the Pittsburgh area on Wednesday and Philadelphia on Thursday. At least one visit — to his hometown of Scranton — will be an official campaign stop. There, Biden plans to speak about the tax code and contrast his policies with those of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

7:45 AM: What Donald Trump wants in his next vice president — and the candidates he’s considering

Former president Donald Trump speaks with Vivek Ramaswamy, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) at a campaign rally in Laconia, N.H., on Jan. 22.

Donald Trump’s perfect vice president looks the part: attractive and telegenic. The person is ideally Black or a woman, though that’s not required, and most certainly not taller than Trump himself.

Trump wants someone he sees in person but doesn’t see too much, his advisers say. He does not necessarily want a successor as the leader of the MAGA movement; he would prefer that the Republican Party duke it out for his endorsement in four years, one adviser said. He wants a No. 2 who has won in the past. And he wants someone who will never contradict his false claims about the outcome of the 2020 election.

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By: Marianne LeVine, Josh Dawsey and Ashley Parker

7:22 AM: Harris to warn another Trump term would mean ‘more suffering, less freedom’

Vice President Harris is scheduled to give a campaign speech on abortion Friday in Tucson, three days after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an 1864 law forbidding almost all abortions is operative in the swing state.

Harris is set to be joined by Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who is running for the state’s open Senate seat; Mini Timmaraju of the advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All; and an array of state and local officials.

“Here’s what a second Trump term looks like: More bans, more suffering, less freedom,” Harris is expected to say, according to excerpts of her prepared remarks. “But we are not going to let that happen.”

By: Leigh Ann Caldwell and Theodoric Meyer

7:05 AM: GOP Senate candidate in Montana builds campaign on once-secret Navy exploits

Senate candidate Tim Sheehy speaks to attendees during the Montana GOP 2024 Winter Kickoff event in Helena, Mont., on Feb. 9.

When Tim Sheehy completed training as a Navy SEAL in 2009 and shipped off to Iraq, the elite fighting force was not a household name. People in airports were perplexed when he told them what he did, he would later say.

That all changed in 2011, when a SEAL team conducted the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a shift that took Sheehy, now the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Montana, by surprise. Suddenly, he said, “SEALs were everywhere, you know — TV shows, books.”

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By: Isaac Stanley-Becker, Beth Reinhard and Liz Goodwin

6:45 AM: Biden administration cancels another $7.4 billion in student loans

President Biden speaks before a bilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Days after heralding its latest student debt forgiveness plan, the Biden administration is announcing another round of loan cancellation through existing debt relief programs.

The White House will send emails Friday to 277,000 borrowers informing them their debts — $7.4 billion in total — are being canceled. As Election Day nears, the Biden administration has ramped up efforts to tout the president’s record on wiping clear the education debts of millions of Americans, despite Republican challenges to the efforts.

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By: Danielle Douglas-Gabriel

6:30 AM: States warn Biden could miss ballot. Dems say exceptions have been made for GOP.

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen (R) speaks during his inauguration ceremony on the steps of the Alabama State House on Jan. 16, 2023.

Democratic officials are looking at their options after Republican secretaries of state in Ohio and Alabama warned them that President Biden might not appear on their ballots in November because of the timing of his expected nomination at the Democratic National Convention.

Publicly, the Biden campaign is expressing confidence that he will appear on the ballot in both states. But the situation has created new headaches for Democrats and stoked distrust with election officials over what has long been considered an apolitical process.

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By: Patrick Svitek