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Voters cast ballots in several states as California governor primary goes down to the wire

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Californians go to the polls today in the first round of voting for a new governor, with a tight three-way race for two run-off spots.

The golden state will also vote on House districts for the first time since it approved Proposition 50 – its response to Texas redrawing its congressional lines to create five Republican leaning districts at the behest of Donald Trump – in November last year.

Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota and New Mexico also hold elections on Tuesday.

Focussing on California, the state’s governor primary pits all candidates against each other, regardless of party, with the top two advancing to November’s general election to replace the term-limited Gavin Newsom, AFP reports.

More than 60 names appear on the lengthy ballot papers that have been mailed out to all registered voters in the heavily Democratic state of 40 million people. The latest polls show a three-way split, with former president Joe Biden’s health secretary Xavier Becerra in the lead.

In the battle for second place and the chance to take on Becerra in November are Democrat Tom Steyer and Trump-backed Republican Steve Hilton.

Incumbent Newsom is believed to have his eyes on the White House in 2028, following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, who occupied the governor’s mansion from 1967 to 1975.

Tom Steyer speaks at a rally at Los Angeles Trade Technical College on 31 May 2026. Photograph: Jackson Tammariello/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

It comes as voters in Los Angeles will also vote in the city’s mayoral primary.

Incumbent Karen Bass, who is making her case for a second term, facing a challenge from the left by her former ally on the city council Nithya Raman – and another from the right by reality TV star Spencer Pratt.

If anyone secures 50% of the votes on Tuesday, they win outright, while anything less means the top two candidates go through to the 3 November general election.

In other developments:

Democrats in the US Senate vowed to force Republicans to vote on a $1.8bn “Maga slush fund” established as part of a resolution of Trump’s long-shot lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. The US president has described the secretive and loosely controlled “anti-weaponization fund” as a means of paying the victims of politicized prosecutions.
Tina Peters, the former clerk convicted of participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories promulgated by Donald Trump, was released from prison on Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado’s Democratic governor into commuting her sentence.
On Monday afternoon, over an hour south of Newark, a few dozen protesters outside the New Jersey state legislature in Trenton condemned Democratic governor Mikie Sherrill’s decision to send in the state police to Delaney Hall, the Newark immigration detention center that has seen more than a week of chaotic and often violent clashes.
Transgender troops can remain in the US military, but the armed services can continue to block their enlistment, an appeals court ruled on Monday in a split decision with potentially significant consequences for the Trump administration’s anti-diversity agenda.

Key events

A small number of protesters who were lined up outside a Senate briefing room where secretary of state Marco Rubio is set to testify before Congress have been arrested, the Associated Press reports.

Demonstrators protesting the lack of funding for PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) are detained by police officers in the hallway outside of Marco Rubio’s hearing room. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The group chanted “Rubio lies. People with AIDS die” as well as “One child dies every 30 mins.”

Demonstrators protest the lack of funding for PEPFAR. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Rubio faced chants from protesters who urged him to “stop killing Cubans” when he entered a Senate briefing room.

US Capitol police officers detain a protester. Photograph: Kylie Cooper/Reuters

The protesters were quickly pulled from the room. Their chants also included “Let Cuba live!” as well as, “Repent Marco Rubio. God will forgive you for your sins. Stop killing Cubans.”

US secretary of state Marco Rubio takes his seat as he arrives to testify at a Senate foreign relations committee hearing. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

A US delegation will attend the St Petersburg Economic Forum this week for the first time in since 2017-2018 and hold talks with Russian government officials, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

The delegation would be led by Rodney Cook, chairman of the US Commission of Fine Arts, a Kremlin aide told reporters.

DHS secretary expected to be grilled by Senate over budget and World Cup security concerns

Homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin is set to appear in the Senate to answer questions about the agency’s budget at a time of intense scrutiny about how the Trump administration is carrying out immigration enforcement and preparing for the World Cup, the Associated Press reports.

Mullin’s appearance at the appropriations subcommittee on homeland security comes as the Senate is weighing legislation that would fund immigration enforcement agencies through the end of president Donald Trump’s term in a maneuver that would bypass the need for support from Democrats, who have demanded restraints before agreeing to fund the agencies.

But, the attempt to fund those two agencies for the long term has been stalled over separate Republican opposition to a $1.776 billion settlement fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they have been politically prosecuted.

Mullin, who was tapped by Trump to lead homeland security after his predecessor Kristi Noem was fired, is appearing in the Senate Tuesday for the first time since his confirmation hearing in March.

Can a pro-hunting Democrat lead a blue wave in Iowa?

Chris Stein

With Trump’s approval ratings deep underwater, gas prices high and historical political trends favoring the party out of power, Democrats this year are considering a comeback in Iowa, putting the state at the center of their campaigns to win back control of both the US House of Representatives and the Senate. On Tuesday, voters are casting ballots in primary elections that set the stage for months of what is likely to be fevered campaigning by candidates of both parties.

Democrats in Iowa have little to lose, and much to gain. The state played a pivotal role in elevating Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, but since then, Republicans have become the dominant party, controlling the governor’s mansion since 2011, both US Senate seats since 2015 and all of its US House seats since 2023.

This year, Democrats believe they have a shot at winning three of the state’s US House seats, gains that could prove pivotal in putting them back into the majority in the Congress’s lower chamber. They are also expected to be competitive in the race to succeed Joni Ernst, the Republican who is retiring as Iowa’s junior senator.

Rob Sand, the auditor who is the last Democrat holding statewide-elected office in Iowa, is considered a strong contender to replace the state’s retiring Republican governor, Kim Reynolds.

Trump picks housing finance director Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence

Donald Trump selected federal housing finance director Bill Pulte to be acting director of national intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned last month after revealing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

Trump made the surprise Truth Social announcement on Tuesday regarding Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chair of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The US president says Pulte “has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets, and over 10 Trillion Dollars at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, a substantial increase from where it was just 12 months ago.”

Pulte will keep his other roles as he fills in for Gabbard.

A progressive star emerges in a New Jersey House race

Joseph Gedeon

In six months, Adam Hamawy has gone from a political nobody to, deemed by most measures, the frontrunner in a crowded race, endorsed by prominent progressive and Democratic figures including Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Tammy Duckworth.

His work history has driven him to call for Medicare for All, advocating for sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel, and the abolition of ICE – and to say openly he cannot support the Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer.

One of the few representatives on Capitol Hill who met with him was his own: Bonnie Watson Coleman, who has served New Jersey’s 12th congressional district for more than a decade. When she announced her retirement in November 2025, after six terms, Hamawy decided it was no longer enough to seek the attention of those elected to serve in Washington – and launched his campaign to join them.

In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump makes a final push for Republican Steve Hilton, who is in a three-way race for California governor against two Democrats, Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer.

He wrote:

CALIFORNIA: Vote today for Steve Hilton for Governor. He will work with me and the Federal Government, the money will flow because I have confidence in him (but not any of the others!), and we will MAKE CALIFORNIA GREAT AGAIN. Steve Hilton will NEVER let you down. VOTE NOW!

Andrew Gumbel

While all eyes will be on California’s governor race, there are several other high-stakes races in the state including one that encapsulates Democrats’ ideological struggles.

When Jasmeet Bains first announced she was running for Congress, some Democratic powerbrokers saw her candidacy as downright providential in their quest to flip a crucial House seat that had been in Republican hands for years.

The seat has only grown in importance now that California has redrawn its congressional district boundaries in response to a wave of Republican gerrymandering in Texas, making it easier for Democrats to pick up as many as five extra House seats in the state. Instead of laying out a glide path to victory, however, the Democrats have become mired in a singularly nasty fight over their identity as a party, with Bains thrust squarely into the middle of it.

What Bains’s excited backers overlooked – or chose to ignore – was that a promising Democrat was already campaigning for the seat, and building his own cadre of enthusiastic backers. Randy Villegas, a 31-year-old community college professor and second-generation Mexican immigrant, had been crisscrossing the district laying out his theory of the race in an area that is 75% Latino and has a median voter age of just 30. Bains, he argued, did not represent any kind of solution because he saw her as a big part of the problem.

California elections: governor, LA mayor and Congress at stake

Lauren Gambino

Californians are frustrated and underwhelmed as they head to the polls to cast their ballots in Tuesday’s primary election, where voters will eliminate all but two candidates in the volatile race for governor, the messy battle for Los Angeles mayor and a series of high-stakes congressional contests.

In the marquee race to succeed term-limited Democratic governor Gavin Newsom a trio of new surveys shows Democrat Xavier Becerra pulling slightly ahead as progressive Tom Steyer and Republican Steve Hilton scrap for the second-place spot to advance in the state’s nonpartisan primary.

Meanwhile, voters in Los Angeles remain divided over whether to stand by embattled mayor Karen Bass or to elevate her challengers.

At the federal level, voters will set the stage for a November showdown in the state’s newly redrawn congressional districts, choosing their candidates for November in a series of House races that are poised to play an outsized and potentially decisive role in the fight for power in Washington.

Under California’s quirky nonpartisan primary system, all candidates regardless of party appear on the same ballot and only the top two vote-getters advance to November.

Oliver Wainwright

The Egyptians had their pyramids. The Anglo-Saxons had their barrows. And the Americans have their presidential libraries – the chief difference being that the leaders the US venerates are usually still alive at the opening.

Lacking a royal family or a state religion, the US presidency has swelled to fill the void, transforming over the decades into a national personality cult, complete with its own secular temples to these powerful men. The latest pharaonic edifice is about to open on Chicago’s south side, where it looms on the skyline as a towering totem to the 44th president, Barack Obama. He might have seemed humble in office, but in his post-presidential, Netflix-producing afterlife, Obama has erected the largest, costliest and most audacious complex of them all. Behold the $850m Obamalisk – or, as it sometimes feels morbidly like, the Obamausoleum.

Previous presidential libraries have taken many forms, reflecting the values of their creators. Franklin D Roosevelt began the tradition in 1940, building a library in Dutch colonial style alongside his grave in upstate New York, which he hoped would be swarmed with “an appalling number of sightseers”. Since then, every president has followed suit in their quest for immortality, dreaming up ever larger museums and archives, conceived as hallowed places of pilgrimage. Lyndon B Johnson commissioned a brutalist hulk for Austin, Texas, a fitting symbol, its architect Gordon Bunshaft remarked, for “an aggressive … big man”. Ronald Reagan opted for a sprawling California hacienda, with a dedicated hangar for Air Force One, while Bill Clinton conjured a cantilevered metallic box in Arkansas – a literal interpretation of his promise to “build a bridge to the 21st century”.

So, how to symbolise hope, justice, equality and all the other bygone values that Obama championed in his meteoric ascent to the White House? How to commemorate the first Black president in history, in whom so much transformational faith was vested, at a time when so many of his achievements are being relentlessly rolled back?

Rubio to be grilled by lawmakers in first Capitol Hill appearances since Iran war began

Secretary of state Marco Rubio is set to face a litany of questions Tuesday about the Trump administration’s fragile or stalling diplomatic efforts around the world when he appears for back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill for the first time since the Iran war began.

The Republican former senator will sit before House and Senate committees to make the State Department’s annual budget request, AP reported.

But the focus is likely to shift quickly to the already unsteady ceasefire between Washington and Tehran, which has been further tested in recent days by back-and-forth attacks.

Cabinet members, including Rubio, have defended president Donald Trump’s decision to launch the conflict despite promises over the years not to engage in “forever wars” in the Middle East.

Aipac affiliate funded lavish trips to Israel for dozens of US lawmakers since 7 October

Jason Wilson

Dozens of members of Congress and Capitol Hill staffers have enjoyed lavish gifted travel to Israel funded by an Aipac affiliate since 7 October 2023, amid Israel’s expanding wars on its neighbors and despite plummeting levels of support among Americans for the country’s policies, a Guardian analysis has found.

Congressional ethics filings and other public records show the trips, led by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), revolved around one-sided briefings on Middle East politics and Israeli domestic and foreign policy. Lawmakers and their staffers from both parties met Israeli officials, military contractors and civil society figures, including Benjamin Netanyahu and advocates for the annexation of the West Bank and the displacement of Palestinians from Jerusalem.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and other pro-Israel groups have sponsored such trips for years, and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have joined. But the continued participation of Democratic lawmakers and their staff on recent trips is particularly noteworthy given how much sympathy for Israel has ebbed among Democratic voters, and the pains that some Democratic politicians have recently taken to distance themselves from the lobby group.

A recent poll found that eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have an unfavorable view of Israel, along with six in 10 Americans broadly.

The congressional ethics filings show that members of Congress and their staffers were hosted at luxurious hotels, dined at top-tier restaurants and received briefings in at least one West Bank settlement. While one of the trips referenced in this story has previously been reported in broad terms, the Guardian is revealing details relating to itineraries, costs and other trips for the first time.

Cecilia Nowell

Journalists may no longer enter the Pentagon’s press office, which has been designated as a classified space amid growing moves to restrict press access to the defense department.

“This is the most transparent war department in history. No amount of spin from the Fake News media will change that,” Jose Valdez, the acting defense department press secretary, said in a social media post. “The Pentagon Press Office has been redesignated as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility due to speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War sharing the facility.”

Valdez added that, because speechwriters handle classified material, “journalists will no longer be permitted to enter the office space”. The move was first reported by the Washington Post, and later confirmed by Valdez on social media.

The defense department, which the Trump administration prefers to call the war department, began rolling out new restrictions to press access in September, when the military demanded journalists pledge not to gather any information – including unclassified documents – that had not been authorized for release or else risk revocation of their press passes.

Credentialed journalists have long had broad access to the Pentagon, but after the defense department announced sweeping restrictions to their work in October, many longtime reporters refused to agree and began turning over their press passes. That month, the department announced a “next generation of the Pentagon press corps” featuring 60 journalists from far-right outlets. The New York Times sued the Pentagon over those policies, which designated journalists as “security risks”, and a federal judge found in the Times’s favor in March.

George Chidi

Donald Trump is reconsidering whether to keep pressing for a $1.8bn fund to compensate his allies, a person familiar with his thinking said on Monday, as the justice department paused the program to comply with a court order.

Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund has faced legal setbacks since it was announced two weeks ago. The idea has also faced a mounting political backlash from Republicans concerned by a lack of oversight and the possibility of payouts to participants in the January 6 2021 riot at the US Capitol.

Some Republicans are pressing the White House to commit to giving up on the fund.

“I do think the best way to handle it is if the administration decides to shut [the fund] down themselves,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters.

Democrats in the US Senate had vowed to force Republicans to vote on what they deride as a $1.8bn “Maga slush fund” established as part of a resolution of Donald Trump’s long-shot lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.

The US president has described the secretive and loosely controlled fund as a means of paying the victims of politicized prosecutions. Members of his own party are among those who have expressed alarm.

The terms of the fund do not require the disclosure of how much is paid to whom. Administration officials have said payees could include pardoned January 6 rioters.