US Senate race in Kansas becomes ‘toss up’ in new forecast that puts control ‘squarely in Democrats’ sights’
The Cook Political Report has revised its predictions for the November midterm elections, saying “A Senate Majority is Squarely in Democrats’ Sights” as it revises three Senate race estimates in Democrats’ favor.
Cook amended its prediction for the Kansas Senate race from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up” – a shocker for a state where no Democrat has won a Senate election since 1932.
The elections analysis newsletter also forecasted that New Hamsphire will “Lean Democrat” (from a previous “Toss Up” prediction) and that North Carolina is “Likely Democrat” (from a previous “Lean Democrat”) in Senate races there.
“While Republicans continue to have a financial edge in almost every competitive state, President Donald Trump is a drag across the board even in deep red states due to rising fuel prices and the persistent high cost of living,” editor Jessica Taylor wrote.
“At this point, the question isn’t whether Democrats will gain seats, but how many. As such, we are revising our estimate of potential pickups to two to six seats for Democrats — squarely within the range of the four seats they need to net for a majority,” she added.
Key events
Summary
Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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The Cook Political Report has revised its predictions for the November midterm elections, saying “A Senate Majority is Squarely in Democrats’ Sights”. Cook amended its prediction for the Kansas Senate race from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up” – a shocker for a state where no Democrat has won a Senate election since 1932. The elections analysis newsletter also forecasted that New Hamsphire will “Lean Democrat” and that North Carolina is “Likely Democrat” in Senate races there.
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Donald Trump announced a massive new shipyard, which will be funded by a combination of federal and private dollars, at Tradepoint Atlantic in Sparrows Point. Anduril Industries, which is owned by Trump’s friend and donor Palmer Luckey, plans to invest $3.7bn in the shipyard and the US Navy will contribute an additional $2.9bn. Although he helped negotiate the deal, Maryland’s Democratic governor Wes Moore said he was not allowed to speak at the event.
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The USS Lincoln will dock in San Diego tomorrow, completing a nearly year-long deployment that sparked controversy over living conditions aboard the aircraft carrier as it supported military operations in Iran. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to greet the crew when they arrive.
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Trump ordered the FBI to investigate protesters in Los Angeles who were demonstrating against the president’s immigration crackdown, according to a whistleblower complaint that was submitted to the Senate judiciary committee. Jill Fields, a former supervisory intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, made the complaint following the federal response to anti-ICE demonstrations around the city’s federal buildings, and in residential area, early last year.
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A Republican candidate in San Diego has criticized Donald Trump after the US president suggested Iran could “take out” the city or Los Angeles. Jim Desmond, who is running for a House of Representatives seat in San Diego, said that “no American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage”. Xavier Becerra, the Democratic nominee for California governor, said today he wasn’t surprised by the president’s comments.
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Secretary of state Marco Rubio urged Moscow on Tuesday to release more details about the case of a lab technician in Siberia, who died after a suspected case of pneumonic plague. Trump said he has a called scheduled with Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss possible causes of the incident “very soon”.
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Lawyers for the former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who was charged and dismissed over damage to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, are urging two government watchdogs to examine what they say was a flawed investigation. Hearn’s lawyers said in a letter to the inspectors general for the departments of Justice and Interior that watchdog investigations were needed “to determine what happened inside their agencies that led to the shocking and indefensible treatment” of their client.
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Two top Trump advisers were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to advise the pro-Russia government of the Republika Srpska, the New York Times reports, citing four people familiar with the advisers’ travels. James Blair, a former White House deputy chief of staff, and Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the president’s 2024 campaign, traveled to the semi-autonomous entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina ahead of an election there Sunday.
Robert Tait
Susan Collins, the Republican senator for Maine, pointedly distanced herself from Donald Trump in a televised debate with Democratic challenger Troy Jackson on Tuesday, as she sought to present an image of independence in a state that has voted against Trump three times.
Proclaiming herself as not the US president’s “favorite senator”, Collins made the highly unusual boast for a Republican that she had voted with Joe Biden, a Democrat, more than 90% of the time when he was president. She also emphasized her differences with her fellow Republicans, saying she voted against her own party more than any other senator.
Collins’ defensiveness came amid a determined onslaught from Jackson, 58, a veteran former state legislator who was getting his first chance to present himself to a broad audience since replacing Graham Platner as the Democratic candidate in a contest that could be vital to the party’s hopes of winning the Senate.
Platner, a former harbor master, was forced to withdraw from the race in July after facing sexual assault allegations, which he denied, leaving Democrats racing against the clock to replace a candidate who had built up momentum campaigning on a populist progressive platform.
Jackson painted Collins as a Trump loyalist, saying she voted with the president 96% of the time. He also doggedly focused on her 2018 vote for the conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, tying it to the court’s subsequent overturning of Roe v Wade, which had for half a century guaranteed the national right to abortion.
Donald Trump will not reimburse the federal government for ads it ran using more than $11mn in taxpayer dollars, the New York Times and Politico report, citing White House officials.
In a post on his social media site yesterday, Trump said he will stop using taxpayer funds for television advertisements glorifying himself, which sparked a major backlash, and instead tap his super PAC to cover ads going forward.
A White House spokesperson told the Times that “the president’s Truth was not referring to reimbursement.”
The White House did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
Jeremy Barr
David Ellison, the chief executive of the newly formed media conglomerate Skydance, denied that he has “politicized” the company despite the close connection he has forged with Donald Trump’s White House over the 20 months of his administration.
“We have a good relationship with this administration,” Ellison acknowledged to reporters at a Tuesday press briefing focused on the now-consummated merger of Paramount Skydance and CNN parent company Warner Bros Discovery.
“I also had a really good relationship with President Biden. I have a good relationship with [Republican South Carolina senator] Tim Scott, and I have a good relationship with Governor Gavin Newsom. I think it is important to talk to everybody on both sides of the aisle … When you’re operating within a business-friendly administration, you should always have those relationships.”
“We want to speak to everybody,” Ellison added. “We do not want to politicize the company.”
The USS Lincoln will dock in San Diego tomorrow, completing a nearly year-long deployment that sparked controversy over living conditions aboard the aircraft carrier as it supported military operations in Iran.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to greet the crew when they arrive tomorrow.
Two top Trump advisers were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to advise the pro-Russia government of the Republika Srpska, the New York Times reports, citing four people familiar with the advisers’ travels.
James Blair, a former White House deputy chief of staff, and Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the president’s 2024 campaign, traveled to the semi-autonomous entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina ahead of an election there Sunday. Blair and LaCivita were paid to advise the government there on voting issues, the Times reports, noting that the government is controlled by a pro-Russia, nationalist party.
On Sunday, the Bosnian Serb nationalist politician Milorad Dodik won his election there. Last year, the Trump administration lifted sanctions against Dodik, which the US government imposed in 2017. The government of Republika Srpska has paid lobbyists and operatives with connections to Trump more than $4mn since last year, the Times reported, citing justice department records.
The department of health and human services is creating a team of attorneys to “provide direct legal advice and counsel” to unaccompanied migrant children, per an announcement signed by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. Critics of the program say children should have access to non-government lawyers to lower the risk they will be deported.
The Unaccompanied Alien Children Legal Representation Division will work toward “safely reuniting these children with their families and ensuring they have the legal support they need,” HHS said in a statement.
The department did not answer additional questions from the Associated Press, including whether it would continue to contract with nongovernmental attorneys.
A nonpartisan coalition of former Nasa astronauts has denounced Donald Trump’s comments at a campaign rally yesterday that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego.
In a statement posted to social media, Astronauts For America wrote: “No American city and no American citizen should ever be spoken of as an acceptable price to pay in a conflict with a foreign adversary.”
It added that it called “on elected leaders of both parties to affirm their shared responsibility to protect all Americans.”
Joseph Gedeon
Donald Trump said on Tuesday his administration was considering suspending the federal gasoline tax, a sign the president is noticing voter anger over fuel costs a month before the midterm elections.
“We’re thinking about that,” Trump said when asked whether the tax should be suspended.
Any suspension would require an act of Congress. The president cannot unilaterally suspend the federal tax.
Trump first raised the idea in May, as the Iran war pushed fuel prices sharply higher. Pump prices have stayed high since. The national average for regular was $4.3685 a gallon on Tuesday, according to AAA, more than a dollar above where it stood a year ago.
The federal tax is 18.4¢ a gallon on gasoline and 24.4¢ on diesel. Dropping it would cut about 4% from the price of a gallon of regular. The tax also brings in more than $23bn a year for highways and public transit.
In an interview with Reuters, JD Vance said he had not decided whether he would seek the presidency in 2028 and that Iran must make a “meaningful” reduction in its nuclear enrichment capacity.
“I think if they want to show a commitment to not building a nuclear weapon, they would do something meaningful on their enrichment capacity,” Vance said, speaking to the news outlet during a campaign appearance in Alaska.
The vice-president added, “One of the things we picked up on is it’s not totally clear how their country makes decisions.”
Speaking about whether he would run to replace Donald Trump when the president’s term expires, Vance said: “I’m inherently a procrastinator,” adding, “I really haven’t thought about it much.“
A former CIA official has pleaded guilty to a charge that he stole hundreds of gold bars worth more than $40m from the US spy agency and hid them in his basement.
David J. Rush pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud during a hearing in Alexandria, Virginia today. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for 28 January.
Here’s more of our past coverage of the case:
Although he helped negotiate the deal, Democratic governor Wes Moore said he was not allowed to speak at an event announcing a new $6.6bn shipyard in Maryland today.
“If the president of the United States wants to bring the circus in town and tell me that I’m not allowed to speak, despite the fact we were the ones that helped bring the deal, then I will let the circus be conducted while I go back to the work of the people of Maryland,” Moore told reporters.
A White House official told CNN the president “graciously” invited Moore to attend the event as a guest, rather than a speaker, and that the governor was “throwing a tantrum”.
Sally Yates, a deputy attorney general during the Obama administration, will lead a review of Cornell University’s process for investigating sexual misconduct complaints. The university’s trustees announced the review Tuesday, which is expected to evaluate the school’s disciplinary processes and campus police responses.
“It is imperative that Cornell be willing to examine itself with the same rigor we expect of others,” trustee Chair Anne Meinig Smalling said in a statement.
Jeremy Barr
Lawyers for Disney accused the Trump administration of “blatant violations of the US constitution” and censorship on Tuesday in the first court hearing over the Federal Communications Commission’s early review of the media giant’s eight local television station licenses.
District judge Loren AliKhan seemed unswayed by government arguments that the order to force Disney’s ABC to apply years early to renew local television station licenses was tied to an investigation into parent company Disney’s hiring practices.
ABC, Disney and its station group filed suit against the FCC in August, seeking to block the US media regulator from taking any further steps to punish or pressure the network in connection to the order.
In its lawsuit, ABC argued that the FCC’s actions – taken at the behest of the Donald Trump-appointed chair, Brendan Carr – were actually intended to chill the network’s speech, which the president and Carr have argued is tilted against the administration.
Christa Pike, a Tennessee prisoner who survived the state’s attempt to execute her, is awake and speaking as she receives treatment at a hospital, her attorneys said on Tuesday.
Here’s our full report:
Donald Trump told reporters he has a call scheduled with Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss possible causes of a pneumonic plague case in Siberia “very soon”.
Asked about US intelligence on the case, Trump said “We’ll be able to report about it, probably tomorrow.”
My colleague Nicola Davis has more on the incident:
US Senate race in Kansas becomes ‘toss up’ in new forecast that puts control ‘squarely in Democrats’ sights’
The Cook Political Report has revised its predictions for the November midterm elections, saying “A Senate Majority is Squarely in Democrats’ Sights” as it revises three Senate race estimates in Democrats’ favor.
Cook amended its prediction for the Kansas Senate race from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up” – a shocker for a state where no Democrat has won a Senate election since 1932.
The elections analysis newsletter also forecasted that New Hamsphire will “Lean Democrat” (from a previous “Toss Up” prediction) and that North Carolina is “Likely Democrat” (from a previous “Lean Democrat”) in Senate races there.
“While Republicans continue to have a financial edge in almost every competitive state, President Donald Trump is a drag across the board even in deep red states due to rising fuel prices and the persistent high cost of living,” editor Jessica Taylor wrote.
“At this point, the question isn’t whether Democrats will gain seats, but how many. As such, we are revising our estimate of potential pickups to two to six seats for Democrats — squarely within the range of the four seats they need to net for a majority,” she added.
Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, said the Pentagon denied him access to a US military base during a visit to the Middle East. Murphy had intended to visit the Al Udeid airbase, which has been repeatedly attacked during the US war in Iran.
“This trip confirmed for me that there is an active, unprecedented, unconstitutional effort underway to hide the costs of this war and the implications of this war from Congress and the American people,” Murphy told reporters during a stop in Saudi Arabia.
A senior Pentagon official told the Associated Press that Murphy’s office had been informed that it would not receive support to visit the base, per Pete Hegseth’s March directive restricting travel to the area.
“I’ve never encountered anything like this in my time in the Senate and it’s part of a deliberate campaign of obfuscation that my Republican colleagues in Congress should demand an end to,” Murphy said.
Speaking at a Maryland shipyard, Donald Trump said the biggest problem for him in negotiating with Iran is that no one knows who is running the country.
“Their second group of leaders are gone, and the biggest problem I have is nobody knows who the hell is running the country,” Trump said.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, spoke to the United Nations last month, and Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has met with the country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi.
