Controversial Platner overcomes allegations to seal Democratic nomination for Senate race
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Graham Platner won the Maine Democratic primary for Senate and called for supporters to “believe people can change” amid his controversial candidacy.
The Marine veteran won 72% of the vote, defeating the state governor, Janet Mills, who suspended her campaign in April but remained on the ballot, and third-placed David Costello, based on early results reported by Reuters.
Reports emerged that Platner had exchanged sexually explicit messages with several women while married. Former partners described him as volatile and unfaithful.
One ex-girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, a Republican operative, alleged in the New York Times that more than a decade ago he had twisted her arm behind her back during an argument and held her in a room against her will – claims that Platner categorically denied.
“If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and our country then you must also believe that people can change,” Platner, 41, told supporters in Blue Hill. “And the reason I believe is that is because I have lived it. And the reason I have lived it is because of my wife.”
In a nod to his troubled past, Platner said:
Redemption is not just some simple or easy destination; it’s a journey. I’ve made mistakes in my life, mistakes I regret, that I live with, that I continue to learn from. I’m still far from perfect. But every day I wake up and I try to be a little bit better and a little kinder than I was the day before. And if you give me the chance, I will be a senator for the people who cannot afford to buy a senator.
Platner also earned supportive hollers and whoops from the crowd when he took a swipe at his critics outside Maine.
“Now, the national pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by. But in trying so hard to understand me, they fail to understand that this is not about me at all. This is a movement about us.”
Platner will face the senator Susan Collins, a Republican running for a sixth six-year term, in November. The race is seen as a must-win for Democrats to take control of the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.
Read the full story:
In other developments:
-
House Republicans narrowly passed a reconciliation bill on Tuesday, by two votes, to provide another $70bn in funding over the next three years to the Department of Homeland Security, ensuring that agencies carrying out Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda remain funded until the end of his presidency.
-
At nearly the same moment, the US struck Iran again, in retaliation for the downing of a US helicopter near the strait of Hormuz.
-
JD Vance, the US vice-president, said that a deal with Iran to end the war launched by the US and Israel 102 days ago, “could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.”
-
Lesley Groff, longtime executive assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades, testified before the House oversight and reform committee.
Key events
Chris Stein
House Republicans’ approval of the bill yesterday, which will fund through the duration of his term the agencies leading Trump’s immigration crackdown, ended a months-long standoff with Democrats that at one point shuttered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The Secure America Act passed in a 214-212 vote that was largely along party lines, with Kevin Kiley, an independent who aligns with the Republicans, joining all Democrats in voting no.
The Senate approved the measure last week, which allocates $38bn to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), $26bn to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and $5bn more to the DHS through September 2029. The legislation now awaits Trump’s signature this morning.
The bill ends a blockade of funding for the agencies, which Democrats announced in January after federal agents killed two US citizens in Minneapolis amid an intensive campaign billed as rooting out undocumented immigrants. Their boycott – and fruitless effort to negotiate reforms to federal immigration enforcement operations – halted passage of a measure that authorized spending by the entirety of DHS, forcing it to shut down for 75 days from mid-February.
The department reopened at the end of April after Democrats agreed to support legislation that paid for all of its operations excluding ICE and CBP, while Republicans then moved to approve funding for those agencies through the duration of Trump’s presidency, saying it was necessary to prevent Democrats from shutting down DHS again.
House Democrats unanimously opposed the bill, with Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, saying it would “waste $70 billion in taxpayer money to give a blank check to ICE without any guardrails, any oversight, any accountability”.
Republicans countered by accusing Democrats of trying to “defund the police” and allow undocumented immigrants to enter the country.
Here’s Chris’s report from yesterday:
Trump to sign $7obn immigration enforcement funding package into law
Donald Trump is due this morning to sign the Secure America Act – the GOP’s $70bn bill that will fund ICE and Border Patrol through 2029 – into law, after the House narrowly passed the bill yesterday.
There is a livestream here if you’d like to follow the signing. Trump often makes remarks and/or takes questions at these events, and I’ll bring you all the key lines here.
Trump targeting immigrants from countries hit most by climate shocks
Oliver Milman
Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is largely targeting people from the countries most vulnerable to displacement from climate-driven disasters, a Guardian analysis shows.
As the Trump administration pushes policies to boost planet-heating fossil fuels, millions of people are being forced to flee their homelands due to storms, floods and droughts worsened by the climate crisis.
Of the 39 countries from which the Trump administration has fully or partly restricted entry to the US, 22 are ranked within the most vulnerable quarter of nations in the world to climate impacts, according to a Guardian analysis of data from the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative, which assesses how prone jurisdictions are to the climate crisis.
“Nearly all of the most vulnerable countries are on a ban or visa pause,” said Danielle Wood, an associate professor at Notre Dame. Immigrants from Chad and Niger, the two most climate-vulnerable countries in the world according to the index, are now fully barred from the US, as are people from Sudan, Somalia and Sierra Leone, also among the 10 countries most exposed to climate impacts.
Here is Oliver’s report:
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has arrived on Capitol Hill for questioning by the House oversight committee over his relationship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I hope my testimony is helpful to the work – important work – of the committee to find justice for the victims,” Gates told reporters as he walked into a hearing room, while avoiding further questions.
Gates, who has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, will sit for a closed-door interview. A transcript will be released in the coming days.
The panel asked Gates to appear after documents released by the justice department included numerous mentions of Gates, as well as several photographs of him, and records showing that he met with Epstein on several occasions after the financier’s conviction in 2008 for sex crimes that involved minors, renewing scrutiny of his past ties to Epstein.
Gates has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and simply appearing in the files does not indicate evidence of wrongdoing.
A spokesperson for Gates told AFP in a statement that the billionaire welcomed the chance to appear before the committee and emphasized he had “never witnessed or participated in Epstein’s illegal conduct”.
US inflation jumped to 4.2% in May, the third consecutive increase since start of Trump’s war against Iran
Gaya Gupta
US inflation jumped to an annual rate of 4.2% in May, the third consecutive monthly increase since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran and a three-year high, as Americans continue to face steep oil prices.
Prices have increased sharply over the past several months, rising at an annual rate of 3.3% in March before going up to 3.8% in April. In February, before the conflict began, inflation was at 2.4%.
Energy prices were once again responsible for the increase in the consumer price index, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accounting for 60% of the overall monthly increases. The national average price for a gallon of gas is $4.15, according to AAA, which is slightly lower than where the price was a month ago but still $1 per gallon more than a year ago. Airline fares also increased 26.7% annually, a squeeze travelers may have already noticed ahead of the busy summer season.
Other essential everyday expenses, such as food, energy services and clothing, also increased. Stripping out volatile energy and food prices, core CPI increased 2.9%.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
More from this report here:
Trump says Iran ‘will pay the price’ for taking ‘too long’ to agree peace deal
Donald Trump said Iran has taken “too long” to agree to a deal “that would have been great for them” and will now “have to pay the price”.
In a post on Truth Social early this morning, which came after the US and Iran exchanged fire on Tuesday, Trump wrote:
Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore – They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action. The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!! They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!
He did not clarify on Truth Social what action he intended to take, but Fox News, citing a phone interview yesterday with the president, reports that Trump said Iran was “dragging its feet” at the negotiating table – and suggested he may be close to ordering the US military to begin targeting Iranian power plants and bridge.
As you will remember, this is not the first time Trump has threatened to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure – which could constitute a war crime under international law.
The future of peace talks have been thrown into question after the two sides traded fire overnight. The US launched strikes against Iran in the early hours of Wednesday morning in retaliation for what it said was Iran’s downing of a US army helicopter near the strait of Hormuz. Iran then launched a wave of retaliatory airstrikes claiming hits on US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan.
Trump has previously insisted that a deal could be reached.
My colleague Tom Ambrose is covering all the latest developments here:
Exclusive: Anti-Trump Republicans back Democrat in hopes of ousting Maga congressman in Pennsylvania
Shrai Popat
A key group of anti-Trump Republicans has endorsed the Democratic nominee in a pivotal House race in Pennsylvania, according to details first provided to the Guardian.
Republicans Against Perry (Rap) revived their effort to oust hardline congressman Scott Perry last year. Now, the group is formally supporting Democrat Janelle Stelson in Pennsylvania’s 10th District, which includes Harrisburg.
Rap is backed by WelcomePac, which focuses its support for Democratic candidates across the country. The group is also launching a new ad which focuses on Perry’s support for restarting the infamous nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island.
Craig Snyder, Rap’s executive director, said the new campaign aims to show Perry “kowtowing to Washington and the handful of the super rich by supporting a billion taxpayer dollars to restart the reactor … known the world over as the site of the first major nuclear accident ever in the free world”.
Stelson’s race to unseat Perry is a rematch. The former local news anchor previously challenged the incumbent in 2024 and lost by just one percentage point.
Perry, the four-term representative, is a member, and former chair, of the House’s ultra-conservative Freedom caucus. Following Joe Biden’s presidential victory in 2020, he maintained that the election was stolen, and in the lead-up to the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, Perry introduced Trump to Jeffrey Clark, a fellow election denier who was then a justice department official.
Snyder is hoping the small margin Stelson fell short by in the last cycle will be easy to overcome in the November midterms. “This year, with Governor Josh Shapiro at the top of the ticket, and many more Republicans having second thoughts about the real impacts of Maga policies in our lives, Perry is going to be retired by the people of Central Pennsylvania,” he told the Guardian.
Jon Henley
European confidence in an American “security guarantee” has hit a historic low, a survey suggests, with only one in 10 people across 15 countries seeing the US as an ally and majorities in all doubting it would come to their aid if they were attacked.
The survey, published on Wednesday by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank before critical G7 and Nato summits in France and Turkey over the coming weeks, revealed “deep European distrust in the US”, the authors said.
It also showed that, while many Europeans felt relations with Washington would improve once Donald Trump leaves office, they were increasingly ready in the meantime to protect themselves against US unreliability by bolstering Europe’s defence.
The US president’s Middle East aggression, threats against Greenland, vows to withdraw troops from European bases and scepticism on the future of Nato had also prompted a growing European pragmatism, the report said.
“Across the continent, there’s clear support for reducing dependence on Washington,” said Jana Kobzová, a co-author and ECFR senior policy fellow. “Europeans are increasingly open to higher defence spending and, crucially, show a striking degree of confidence that neighbouring countries would come to their aid in a crisis.”
Trump presses on with plan to install Bill Pulte as acting intelligence chief
Robert Mackey
Donald Trump is pushing ahead with his controversial plan to install political loyalist Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence, a move that has sparked bipartisan congressional backlash and imperiled the reauthorization of a powerful surveillance law set to expire at the end of this week.
Trump’s Tuesday evening announcement came after he met earlier in the day with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, to discuss Pulte’s elevation to the role, which has prompted widespread concern over his complete lack of national security experience and the prospect that he could use the office’s spying powers to continue his campaign of targeting Trump’s perceived political enemies.
Writing on social media, Trump said Pulte was already working with the outgoing director, Tulsi Gabbard, and will take her place on 19 June, while remaining head of the federal mortgage agency.
Gabbard, a former congresswoman who served in the military and then on a House subcommittee with oversight of military intelligence, had announced in her resignation letter that she would step down on 30 June.
Trump offered no explanation for Pulte taking over before that date, but the president has suggested in public comments that he expects his political ally to investigate elections that he has falsely claimed were “rigged” once he is installed as the country’s top intelligence officer.
Bill Gates to face questions from House committee over links to Jeffrey Epstein
Anna Betts
Bill Gates is set to testify in front of the House committee on oversight and reform on Wednesday as part of the panel’s investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The Microsoft co-founder will appear in a closed-door session, where lawmakers are expected to question him about his past relationship with Epstein. A transcript of the interview is expected to be released at a later date.
In a statement to the Guardian before his appearance, a spokesperson for Gates said that Gates “welcomes the opportunity to appear before the committee” and said that “while he never witnessed or participated in any of Epstein’s illegal conduct, he is looking forward to answering all the committee’s questions to support their important work”.
The committee, chaired by James Comer, requested Gates’s appearance in March, following the justice department’s release of millions of documents related to Epstein earlier this year. The files included numerous mentions of Gates, as well as several photographs of him, and records showing that he met with Epstein on several occasions, renewing scrutiny of Gates’s past ties to the disgraced financier.
David Smith
Progressives rallied round the controversial Graham Platner after his primary victory in Maine on Tuesday, while Donald Trump again exerted his grip on the Republican party, helping to defeat a politician who had pushed for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Primary elections were held in four states – Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina – ahead of November’s midterms to decide control of both houses of Congress. The results offered mixed signals about the direction of the two major parties.
The marquee race was a Senate primary election in Maine, where Platner won 72% of the vote, defeating the state governor, Janet Mills, who had suspended her campaign but remained on the ballot, and third-placed David Costello, based on early results reported by Reuters.
The result sets up a bruising general election battle against the Republican incumbent, Susan Collins. Maine is among a handful of states where Democratic strategists believe a Republican-held seat is genuinely vulnerable.
Platner, 41, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer from the small coastal town of Sullivan, had in effect wrapped up the nomination weeks ago when Mills suspended her campaign after concluding there was little prospect of catching him.
Controversial Platner overcomes allegations to seal Democratic nomination for Senate race
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Graham Platner won the Maine Democratic primary for Senate and called for supporters to “believe people can change” amid his controversial candidacy.
The Marine veteran won 72% of the vote, defeating the state governor, Janet Mills, who suspended her campaign in April but remained on the ballot, and third-placed David Costello, based on early results reported by Reuters.
Reports emerged that Platner had exchanged sexually explicit messages with several women while married. Former partners described him as volatile and unfaithful.
One ex-girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, a Republican operative, alleged in the New York Times that more than a decade ago he had twisted her arm behind her back during an argument and held her in a room against her will – claims that Platner categorically denied.
“If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and our country then you must also believe that people can change,” Platner, 41, told supporters in Blue Hill. “And the reason I believe is that is because I have lived it. And the reason I have lived it is because of my wife.”
In a nod to his troubled past, Platner said:
Redemption is not just some simple or easy destination; it’s a journey. I’ve made mistakes in my life, mistakes I regret, that I live with, that I continue to learn from. I’m still far from perfect. But every day I wake up and I try to be a little bit better and a little kinder than I was the day before. And if you give me the chance, I will be a senator for the people who cannot afford to buy a senator.
Platner also earned supportive hollers and whoops from the crowd when he took a swipe at his critics outside Maine.
“Now, the national pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by. But in trying so hard to understand me, they fail to understand that this is not about me at all. This is a movement about us.”
Platner will face the senator Susan Collins, a Republican running for a sixth six-year term, in November. The race is seen as a must-win for Democrats to take control of the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.
Read the full story:
In other developments:
-
House Republicans narrowly passed a reconciliation bill on Tuesday, by two votes, to provide another $70bn in funding over the next three years to the Department of Homeland Security, ensuring that agencies carrying out Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda remain funded until the end of his presidency.
-
At nearly the same moment, the US struck Iran again, in retaliation for the downing of a US helicopter near the strait of Hormuz.
-
JD Vance, the US vice-president, said that a deal with Iran to end the war launched by the US and Israel 102 days ago, “could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.”
-
Lesley Groff, longtime executive assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades, testified before the House oversight and reform committee.
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