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Democrats eye rare window of opportunity in Georgia run-off to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

The Democrat Shawn Harris will go head-to-head with Republican Clay Fuller in a run-off after they came out ahead in a special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress on Tuesday night.

The election for the state’s 14th congressional district has been seen as a test of Donald Trump’s sway and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in a deep-red pocket of north-west Georgia.

Former prosecutor Fuller has Trump’s endorsement and had raised more than $1m leading into voting on Tuesday, but Harris, a retired army general who faced Greene two years ago, has raised more than four times as much.

Fuller said he was confident he could bring Republicans together. Speaking on Tuesday evening, he said:

double quotation markI think the Republican party is going to unite around us because they know that the Democrat is too dangerous. We can’t have a Democrat representing Georgia 14. That would be a tragedy for our community, a tragedy for Georgia 14 and a tragedy for the Maga movement.

Even though four Republican candidates dropped out before the election, the Republican field was fractured among more than a dozen candidates, including former state senator Colton Moore, a combative agitator to the right of most Republican legislators in Georgia.

By contrast, Harris contrasted himself with Greene’s bomb-throwing style, saying practical-minded Republicans should vote for him because he will work for constituents “not for somebody else who’s already in DC”. He said:

double quotation markThe way I’m going to go to Congress is that it’s going to be a coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans.

Fuller and Harris will face each other again on 7 April, and the winner will complete the rest of Greene’s term through the end of this year with hopes of re-election.

Read our full report here:

In other developments:

The Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, has warned that Tuesday would be the “most intense” day of US strikes yet, even as he blamed Iran for civilian casualties by claiming its forces were firing missiles from schools and hospitals. Speaking alongside Gen Dan Caine, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Hegseth alleged Iran was deliberately firing missiles from schools and hospitals, describing the country’s leadership as “desperate and scrambling like the terrorist cowards they are”. More here.
The minelayers near the strait of Hormuz were among multiple Iranian vessels taken out by US forces today, according to a post by the US Central Command. In a post on X, the military published unclassified footage of some of the vessels after Donald Trump warned Iran against laying mines in the critical waterway.
Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, declined to condemn Republican lawmakers who recently made Islamophobic comments, saying only that he had spoken to them about their “tone”. Democrats and groups advocating religious tolerance have decried the statements from congressmen Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Randy Fine of Florida, with the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, calling on Johnson to discipline the latter. More here.
Donald Trump said that America First Refining plans to open a new oil refinery in Brownsville, Texas, as part of a $300bn deal. “THE BIGGEST IN US HISTORY, A MASSIVE WIN for American Workers, Energy, and the GREAT People of South Texas! Thank you to our partners in India, and their largest privately held Energy Company, Reliance, for this tremendous Investment,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.
Donald Trump has appointed Erika Kirk, the widow of murdered rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, to a key advisory board of the US Air Force Academy. The 37-year-old joins a number of other loyalists to the president on the 16-member panel of the academy’s board of visitors, which according to its website “inquires into the morale, discipline, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods and other matters” of the Colorado Springs military training facility. More here.

Key events

Ahead of his visit to congressman Thomas Massie’s district in northern Kentucky, Donald Trump has continued to denigrate the Republican lawmaker on Truth Social.

“I predict that ‘Representative’ Thomas Massie will go down as the WORST Republican Congressman in the long and fabled history of the United States Congress,” the president wrote, before listing several other GOP representatives who have bucked Trump in recent years. Including those like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who sat on the congressional committee that investigated the president’s role in the January 6th insurrection.

“They are all misfits and losers,” Trump said, “but Massie, who is running against a great American Patriot in the Kentucky Primary, will hopefully lose BIG.” As I noted earlier, Trump has backed Massie’s challenger, Ed Gallrein.

Latest data shows that US inflation remains at 2.4%

The latest consumer price index report showed that US inflation remained at an annual rate of 2.4% in February.

The data does not reflect the hike in average gasoline prices since the beginning of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Overall, prices rose 0.3% from January.

Donald Trump will make the next stops on his affordability tour on Wednesday. He’ll start the day in Washington, before travelling to Cincinnati, Ohio for a site visit of a pharmaceutical company. Then he’ll deliver remarks in Hebron, Kentucky at a packaging facility.

We can certainly expect more from Trump about his administration’s aims to lower the cost of prescription drug prices. And we’ll be listening out for more about the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, and escalating gas prices for every day Americans.

Notably, this patch of northern Kentucky sits in Thomas Massie’s congressional district. Trump has insulted the Republican representative on several occasions, and even endorsed Massie’s GOP primary challenger, Ed Gallrein.

We’ll bring you the latest lines things get under way.

Melody Schreiber

New details are leading experts to fear that an “unethical” vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau is the “prototype” for studies under Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US department of health and human services (HHS) and longtime vaccine critic.

At the center of US vaccine policy is an unlikely set of Danish researchers whose work on the health effects of vaccines has been called into question. The study in Guinea-Bissau would have looked at the overall health effects of giving hepatitis B vaccines by only vaccinating half of the newborns in the study at birth despite an 18% prevalence rate in adults of the illness, which can lead to serious and sometimes fatal health consequences.

Stand Up for Science, a science and health nonprofit in the US, sent an investigator to Guinea-Bissau to look at public records and interview experts. The organization met with members of Congress on 19 February to share these results in an unreleased report, obtained by the Guardian, that raises concerns about how deeply the Bandim Health Project is enmeshed in public health in Guinea-Bissau and the challenges to conducting ethical research in this setting – with immense repercussions for how US research will be carried out under Kennedy.

“We are fearful that this is a prototype for other studies,” said Colette Delawalla, founder of Stand Up for Science. The US could fund global studies with the similar ethical concerns as the Tuskegee experiment five or 10 or 100 times a year, she said. “It could be extraordinarily deadly.” Stand Up for Science held nationwide rallies on Saturday to protest moves like these.

Trump’s pick for state department role withdraws after backlash over past ‘anti-Israel’ and race remarks

David Smith

Donald Trump’s nominee for a top diplomatic post has been withdrawn from consideration after a growing backlash over his past remarks on race and Jewish people left him without crucial Republican support.

Jeremy Carl, who had been tapped to serve as the assistant secretary of state for international organisations – a role overseeing US policy towards bodies such as the UN – announced on Tuesday that he was stepping aside after failing to secure unanimous backing from Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee.

In a statement posted on X, Carl thanked Trump and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, for their support but acknowledged that it would not be enough to secure confirmation.

“With unanimous opposition from Senate Democrats to my candidacy, we also needed the unanimous support of every GOP [Grand Old Party] senator on the Committee on Foreign Relations,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, at this time this unanimous support was not forthcoming.”

The Senate foreign relations committee normally votes on nominations before sending them to the full Senate. Carl’s prospects had appeared shaky since his confirmation hearing in February, when one Republican member of the panel publicly broke ranks.

John Curtis, a Senator for Utah, who is regarded as one of the more moderate Republicans in the chamber, said afterwards that he could not support the nomination, citing Carl’s record of comments on Israel and Jewish people.

“I find his anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated,” Curtis said.

Jeffrey Epstein’s former accountant who went on to become the executor of his estate, Richard Kahn, will face questions behind closed doors today before the House Oversight Committee.

Kahn, who was associated with the paedophile for over a decade, managing investments and finances in his final years. He was also responsible for renovations on Epstein’s Caribbean island.

He was one of two executors of of Epstein’s estate, with the other, lawyer Darren Indyke scheduled to answer questions next week.

In February, Epstein’s estate agreed to pay as much as $35m to resolve a class-action lawsuit that accused the two advisers of aiding and abetting his sex trafficking of young women and teenage girls, according to a court filing.

In the 2024 lawsuit, lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner said Indyke and Kahn helped Epstein create a complex web of corporations and bank accounts that let him hide his abuses and pay victims and recruiters, while leaving them “richly compensated” for their work.