The White House said it is “glad” to see a bill move forward that would require the TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the US.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that the White House “will look to the Senate to take swift action” on the bill, adding that it “welcomes ongoing efforts to address the threats posed by certain technology services operating in the United States”.

The bill would not ban apps like TikTok, she said, but it would “ensure that ownership of these apps wouldn’t be in the hands of those who can exploit us or do us harm”.

She added that the White House will support the bill “in a technical way”, in order to make sure it is on the “strongest possible footing”.

A group of congressional Democrats including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and armed services veterans urged the current Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, to “lead, follow or get out of the way” of more military support for Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders.

“In the military, we have a great expression,” Mikie Sherrill, a House Democrat from New Jersey and a former navy helicopter pilot, told reporters on Capitol Hill.

‘Lead, follow or get out of the way.’ That is exactly what our speaker has to do.

Last month, Senate Democrats and Republicans passed a $95bn foreign aid package covering Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel.

The Democrats who spoke on Wednesday faced vocal competition from protesters with Code Pink: Women for Peace, opposing funding for Israel in its war on Gaza. On Ukraine policy, though, House Republicans have proved more obstructive than Medea Benjamin, the Code Pink co-founder, was able to be at the Capitol.

Under the direction of Donald Trump, the presumptive presidential nominee who openly favors Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, Johnson has shown no sign of bringing the Senate package up for a vote. The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, recently emerged from meeting Trump to say that if Trump is re-elected, he will not give “a penny” to Ukraine.

Joanna Walters

Joe Biden is expected to formally open his Wisconsin campaign headquarters when he visits Milwaukee this afternoon. He’s en route now.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will talk to reporters and answer questions aboard Air Force One on the way.

The Republican party will hold its convention in Milwaukee this July as it prepares to officially declare Trump its nominee to face Biden at the ballot this November.

Wisconsin is crucial to Biden’s re-election ambitions. He very narrowly won the state in 2020 in his domination of the upper midwest against the former president.

Then there was an almighty, surreal battle as Trump set his political dogs on the trail of overturning the result, with a variety of plots. All failed and last December, a group of Republican fake electors in Wisconsin acknowledged that Biden won the presidency and agreed they would not serve in the electoral college in 2024 as part of a settlement agreement in a civil lawsuit.

Biden hits campaign trail after unofficially clinching nomination to face Trump

Joanna Walters

Joe Biden is on his way to his second swing state of the week when he visits Wisconsin this afternoon, two days after showing up in New Hampshire to tout his election agenda and just hours after unofficially becoming the Democratic party’s nominee for president in the 2024 election.

The current US president and his predecessor, Donald Trump, won primary elections in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington state on Tuesday night, solidifying a rematch in November that a majority of voters aren’t looking forward to.

They won’t be officially anointed until their respective party conventions this summer, but both have now amassed enough delegates during the primary season to be unassailable as the nominees.

Biden, his vice-president Kamala Harris and cabinet members are fanning out across the country after Biden’s handily energetic State of the Union address last week, with swing states and districts very much in mind.

With today’s latest poll numbers showing that many voters are disgruntled and open to persuasion this election (though maybe the hard work will be persuading them to vote at all, not to switch allegiance), Biden and Trump have their work cut out.

The Associated Press notes that the last presidential election featuring a rematch came in 1956, when Republican president Dwight Eisenhower again defeated the Democratic opponent he had beaten four years prior, Adlai Stevenson.

Joanna Walters

Protesters demanding a ceasefire in Gaza have blocked the international terminal at San Francisco airport, according to reports, as ceasefire talks in the Middle East remain stalled.

Demonstrators are holding banners with messages such as “Stop the world for Gaza” and chanting, both inside and outside the airport terminal.

A roadway outside is blocked and protesters are making their voices heard and marching in tight circles there as they demand a resolution, ABC News reported.

Last week, negotiations aimed at brokering a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war appeared to have stalled, days before an unofficial deadline of the beginning of the muslim holy fasting season of Ramadan, which began on Sunday.

Two days of talks between Hamas and international mediators in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, had not yielded any significant breakthroughs, with different parties blaming either Israel or Hamas.

A ship carrying foreign aid to those trapped in Gaza is expected to reach the shoreline of the coastal strip on Thursday morning, about 48 hours after it left Cyprus, and shortly after Josep Borrell, the United Nations’ foreign policy chief said starvation was being used by Israel in its blockade of Gaza as a weapon of war.

The San Francisco airport is still open, but disrupted.

• The House of Representatives passed a bill on that would require the TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total nationwide ban. The vote was a landslide, with 352 Congress members voting in favor and only 65 against.

• The bill’s future is less certain in the Senate. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, issued a noncommittal statement after the House vote. Leaders of the Senate intelligence committee said they “look forward” to getting the bill passed through Senate and signed into law.

• The House voted to pass the TikTok bill despite Donald Trump voicing opposition to the effort, despite previously supporting a ban on the platform. Trump’s newfound support of TikTok came after he met with the Republican mega-donor, Jeff Yass, who reportedly has a major financial stake in the platform. Yass is also the biggest donor to the conservative organization Club for Growth, which is currently paying former senior Trump aide Kellyanne Conway to advocate for TikTok in Congress.

• TikTok responded to the House vote describing it as a “ban” on the social media platform, adding that it was “hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts.”

• China has warned that a potential TikTok ban would “come back to bite the United States”.

• The Georgia judge overseeing the election-interference case against Donald Trump and 14 defendants dismissed six of the charges in the wide-ranging indictment, saying they were not detailed enough.

• Donald Trump is narrowly leading Joe Biden in a new national poll released a day after both candidates clinched their presidential nominations. The poll by USA Today/Suffolk University found Trump polling at 40% to Biden’s 38%.

• Nikki Haley received more than 77,000 votes in the Georgia Republican primary on Tuesday despite dropping out of the race last week. Trump won the state with 84.5% on Tuesday, as well as winning Mississippi and Washington, securing him enough votes to get the GOP nomination for president. Biden also became his party’s presumptive nominee on Tuesday.

• Hunter Biden will not attend a public hearing related to House Republicans’ efforts to impeach his father, Joe Biden, his legal team said.

Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, is expected to visit Capitol Hill today after the House voted to force the app’s owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the US.

Chew is on Capitol Hill on a previously scheduled trip to talk to senators, a source told Reuters.

In January, Chew and executives of other technology firms such as Meta, X and Snap testified at the Senate judiciary committee on child safety online. During the hearing, Chew was repeatedly questioned about his Singaporean nationality and about TikTok’s links to China.

Senator Tom Cotton faced criticism for grilling Chew about his nationality and suggested he was affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party. Singapore does not allow its citizens to hold dual citizenship. Here’s the clip:

Donald Trump is narrowly leading Joe Biden in a new national poll released a day after both candidates clinched their presidential nominations.

The poll by USA Today/Suffolk University found Trump polling at 40% to Biden’s 38%, with a significant group of voters who said they are unhappy with their options and open to being persuaded. One in four of those surveyed said they might change their minds before the November election.

The poll found that 29% of voters ranked inflation and the economy as the most important issue determining their vote, followed by immigration (24%) and threats to democracy (23%).

In what could be good news for Biden, an increasing number of voters said there was an economic recovery under way, and his approval rating has also increased, the poll showed.

Martin Pengelly

The US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh is not a “consummately honest person” and “must know” what really happened on the night more than 40 years ago when he allegedly sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford, his accuser writes in an eagerly awaited memoir.

Ford was thrust into the spotlight in September 2018 as Kavanaugh, a Bush aide turned federal judge, became Donald Trump’s second conservative court nominee. Kavanaugh’s nomination became mired in controversy after a Washington Post interview in which Ford said Kavanaugh, while drunk, sexually assaulted her at a party in Montgomery county, Maryland, when they were both in high school.

Kavanaugh vehemently denied the accusation, helping fuel hearing-room rancor not seen since the 1991 confirmation of Clarence Thomas, a rightwinger accused of sexually harassing a co-worker, Anita Hill.

Supported by Republicans and Trump, Kavanaugh rode out the storm to join Thomas on the court. Trump would later add another conservative, Amy Coney Barrett, tipping the court 6-3 to the right. That court has since passed down major rightwing rulings, most prominently removing the federal right to abortion.

Ford’s memoir, One Way Back, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

“The fact is, he was there in the room with me that night in 1982,” Ford writes.

I believe he knows what happened. Even if it’s hazy from the alcohol, I believe he must know. Once he categorically denied my allegations as well as any bad behavior from his past during a Fox News interview, I felt more certainty than ever that after my experience with him, he had not gone on to become the consummately honest person befitting a supreme court justice.

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, has issued a short statement after the House voted to pass the TikTok bill.

The statement by Schumer reads:

The Senate will review the legislation when it comes over from the House.