Summary: Graham Platner’s embattled campaign and allegations against him
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Calls for resignation continue to mount for Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, a day after a woman he dated accused him of sexual assault in an exclusive story published by Politico.
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Platner has denied the allegation, calling it “categorically false” but said he was “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward” in the race.
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This statement hasn’t convinced Democrats, from Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer to Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who believe the best path forward is for him to withdraw from the race.
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Progressive senator Bernie Sanders, who had previously endorsed Platner and rallied with him repeatedly in Maine, also asked him to step aside.
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Representatives for Platner’s campaign have yet to announce whether he plans to remain in the race. An exit from the race should be made by 13 July, as stated in Maine state law. Should he withdraw, the Democratic Party in the state must name an alternative by 27 July.
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The controversy comes at a rocky time for Democrats, as Platner had been seen as the party’s strongest chance to unseat Republican incumbent Susan Collins.
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A new allegation emerged on Tuesday. Another woman he had previously dated told The Washington Post that he repeatedly removed protection without her consent when they were having sex.
Key events
Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. We’ll be back on Wednesday. Here are the latest developments:
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Calls for Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine, to withdraw his candidacy intensified on Tuesday after a woman accused him of sexual assault in an exclusive report by Politico. While Platner denied the claims on Monday, top lawmakers including Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, and numerous others have called for him to withdraw from the race. More here.
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But the question remains: who might replace Platner? In order to have a new candidate on the ballot for November’s general election, Platner needs to end his campaign by Monday 13 July at 5pm ET, and Democrats would have a two-week window to pick a replacement. Names in the frame include Nirav Shah, former deputy director of the Maine center for disease control and prevention (CDC), current secretary of state Shenna Bellows, and former state senate president Troy Jackson. More here.
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Donald Trump has revived his bid for the US to acquire Greenland, threatening to pull all American armed forces out of Europe after the continent repeatedly pushed back. Arriving at the Nato summit in Ankara, the US president also suggested his commitment to defending Europe had been tempered by political decisions by leaders on immigration and energy. More here.
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A federal appeals panel struck down a significant chunk of Ron DeSantis’s so-called Stop Woke Act, delivering another rebuff to the Republican Florida governor’s efforts to stifle free speech in higher education. Judges of the 11th circuit court of appeal said that the higher education component of the law – which prevented college and university professors teaching or sharing thoughts on concepts of race and gender – breached the free expression rights guaranteed under the US constitution’s first amendment. More here.
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Ninety-five per cent of Americans believe the US is suffering an affordability crisis, as many report trouble with the rising cost of groceries and gas, according to an exclusive new poll conducted for the Guardian. The survey, conducted by Harris Poll, paints a bleak picture of how people feel about the US economy amid the war in Iran and ahead of the key midterm elections this fall. More here.
The Maine Democratic Party’s executive director, Devon Murphy-Anderson, said that Graham Platner’s team has tried to influence the process for replacing him as the Democrats’ US Senate nominee.
“Graham Plattner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like”, Murphy-Anderson said in a video posted on social media. “We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Plattner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the US Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like”.
“We have also reiterated that Graham Plattner must drop out of this race, so that Democrats in Maine can focus on defeating Susan Collins this November”, she added. “We look forward to making this process public as soon as Graham Plattner formally withdraws from this race”.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is set to hold a nomination hearing for Jay Clayton, Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the permanent director of national intelligence, on 15 July.
Clayton is US attorney for the southern district of New York, where he oversees one of the justice department’s most prestigious prosecution offices. He previously served as chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The official date comes after Trump faced widespread criticism of his decision to install a controversial ally, Bill Pulte, as acting director of national intelligence while searching for a permanent candidate.
In June, the hearing was postponed in an effort by the US president to force Congress to act on a voter ID bill. Republican senator and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Tom Cotton, tried to push the hearing forward anyway, but Trump directed Clayton to not appear for his confirmation proceedings, forcing Cotton to announce that the hearing was postponed.
A federal judge denied a request by the justice department asking for personal information from people who worked during the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia. The request is part of the Trump administration’s false claims that widespread election fraud cost him the 2020 election.
In April, the justice department served a grand jury subpoena requesting the names and personal contact information of county employees and volunteer poll workers in an effort to support the theory that the election was unfair.
“Given the low need for the subpoenaed information and the highly burdensome nature of the disclosure of the same, the Subpoena is unreasonable and must be quashed,” US district judge William Ray wrote in his ruling.
While grand juries often work with federal prosecutors to investigate alleged crimes, “that does not give the DOJ the right to use the Grand Jury to do whatever the DOJ wants,” wrote Ray.
Michigan Democratic Senate primary candidates Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens faced off in a somewhat heated debate that, while touching on China, Social Security and trade policy, also gave them an opportunity to point fingers at each other over their past spending.
So much so that moderator Rick Albin gave them a minute to hash out their differences.
“We have apparently scratched the surface on a couple of differences between the two of you, and this is not scripted, and this is not something that’s planned, and the people in the control room are about to pull their hair out”, Albin said. “I want to give you 30 seconds to pursue whatever this is that’s going on here. Obviously, you’ve got a question about some of the money in her campaign. You’ve got a question about some of the money in his pocket.”
“My opponent wants to make this race about lives and attacking my integrity and the work that I’ve done for the people of Michigan”, Stevens said. After outlining her track record, she asked, “Can we stop the lies, and can we get the transparency out that my opponents long talked about?”
El-Sayed was quick to criticize the super PACs funding Stevens, which have “bought airline tickets for my opponent, for her mother and herself to go to Portugal”.
“I don’t know what they talked about”, he said. “I don’t know what they did. So, if we want to talk about lies, I think it’s really important for us to understand who’s paying for them”.
On immigration, Abdul El-Sayed said the country should “abolish ICE”, referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, highlighting the massive crackdown in Minnesota that led to more than two months of protests and 4,000 arrests.
“I’ve been clear that you can’t reform ICE, you can’t retrain ICE. You have to abolish ICE”, he said. “ICE is a new agency. It is younger than I am. We have done this in the past in a way that respects the basic rule of law”.
Meanwhile, Haley Stevens said that “money needs to be redirected to those law enforcement agencies that are responsible for our safety and security”, referring to state and local law enforcement. “Donald Trump has abused his power, he has failed the American people, and we need change”.
Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary debate has kicked off.
Candidates include Abdul El-Sayed and representative Haley Stevens in a fight to replace retiring senator Gary Peters.
To start, candidates discussed inflation and what they would do to make Michiganders’ lives more affordable.
“Number one, we need to tackle health care by guaranteeing everybody health care without a deductible, a premium, or a copay through Medicare for all”, El-Sayed said. “Number two, we need to stand up to the monopolies and oligopolies that are picking our pockets. Number three, we need to stand up to increase wages, and I mean standing with unions like the UAW and the nurses who endorsed us.”
Stevens, also aiming to lower costs for groceries and utilities, took a stab at El-Sayed, saying that “I’m the only person running for United States Senate in Michigan who is not a millionaire”.
“I’m the only one on this stage who doesn’t have a talent agent trying to pitch me for paid speeches, and unlike my opponent, I’m not running at the first mic or camera I see”, she added.
To which El-Sayed replied: “We also don’t need politicians bought off by corporations in this race… The question is not whether or not you’re a millionaire, the question is whether or not you are bowing down to billionaires”.
Former Maine State Senator Troy Jackson, whose name has been floated to take Graham Platner’s place on the ballot in the Senate race, said he is “deeply humbled by the outpouring of support and encouragement” he has received.
Jackson said he has not “made any final decisions yet”.
“The allegations against Graham Platner are serious, credible, and deserving of full accountability — they cannot and must not be ignored”, Jackson said in a statement. “There is a powerful movement of working class people in the state of Maine. For the sake of that movement, and the millions of Americans who have put their trust in it, Graham must now step down”.
Jackson continued: “To all of you who have poured your passion, dedication, and hope into this movement, I know you are hurting, and I want you to know that your efforts were not in vain. Your contributions matter. Your time matters. You matter.”
“While I haven’t made any final decisions yet, I’m deeply humbled by the outpouring of support and encouragement I’ve received,” reads the statement. “I’m currently weighing the best path forward to support our progressive movement and the working class political revolution Mainers are fighting for”.
Moments after US officials announced “powerful” strikes on Iran, Iranian state media reported several explosions heard in the region of the strait of Hormuz.
As a reminder, my colleague Nadeem Badshah is covering the latest developments in Iran in The Guardian’s Middle East live blog:
Summary: Graham Platner’s embattled campaign and allegations against him
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Calls for resignation continue to mount for Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, a day after a woman he dated accused him of sexual assault in an exclusive story published by Politico.
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Platner has denied the allegation, calling it “categorically false” but said he was “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward” in the race.
-
This statement hasn’t convinced Democrats, from Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer to Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who believe the best path forward is for him to withdraw from the race.
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Progressive senator Bernie Sanders, who had previously endorsed Platner and rallied with him repeatedly in Maine, also asked him to step aside.
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Representatives for Platner’s campaign have yet to announce whether he plans to remain in the race. An exit from the race should be made by 13 July, as stated in Maine state law. Should he withdraw, the Democratic Party in the state must name an alternative by 27 July.
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The controversy comes at a rocky time for Democrats, as Platner had been seen as the party’s strongest chance to unseat Republican incumbent Susan Collins.
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A new allegation emerged on Tuesday. Another woman he had previously dated told The Washington Post that he repeatedly removed protection without her consent when they were having sex.
Ex-girlfriend accuses Graham Platner of removing protection without consent – report
An ex-girlfriend of the Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner told The Washington Post that he repeatedly removed protection without her consent when they were having sex.
According to the report, Lyndsey Fifield had told Platner multiple times between 2013 and 2015, while they dated, that protection was needed because she was not on birth control.
“He would pull condoms off,” Fifield, who has previously accused Platner of physical abuse, told the Post. “He would do it in a sneaky way. He wouldn’t tell me.”
Trump renews call for US to take over Greenland
Pippa Crerar
Donald Trump has revived his bid for the US to acquire Greenland, threatening to pull all American armed forces out of Europe after the continent repeatedly pushed back.
Arriving at the Nato summit in Ankara on Tuesday, the US president also suggested his commitment to defending Europe had been tempered by political decisions by leaders on immigration and energy.
Keir Starmer and European allies have been determined to avoid another public bust-up with Trump over defence spending after a bruising year for Nato, in which the Iran war once again exposed cracks in the alliance.
Richard Luscombe
A federal appeals panel struck down a significant chunk of Ron DeSantis’s so-called Stop Woke Act on Tuesday, delivering another rebuff to the Republican Florida governor’s efforts to stifle free speech in higher education.
In a scathing order, judges of the 11th circuit court of appeal said by a 2-1 majority that the higher education component of the law – which prevented college and university professors teaching or sharing thoughts on concepts of race and gender – breached the free expression rights guaranteed under the US constitution’s first amendment.
It accused the state of “puppeteering”: making the educators their mouthpieces by controlling what they can say or teach.
“Because the government pays the professors’ salaries, Florida says, their speech is the state’s speech,” Britt Grant, a Donald Trump-appointed judge who wrote the majority opinion, said. “Emphatically no.
“Florida’s salary-for-speech rule is a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the state’s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry – classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”
It added: “The ideas Florida targets may well be noxious. Or maybe not. Either way, in this context the first amendment trusts students to figure it out for themselves.”
Earlier today, the New York Post reported that Morris Katz, who is Graham Platner’s campaign strategist and a former campaign adviser to NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani, was still recommending that Platner remain in the Maine Senate race, citing a source.
“[Platner’s] team is delusional,” the Post’s source said, adding that Platner and Katz are deliberating about the Maine Democrat dropping out but only if his replacement shares his leftwing values.
Katz responded to the report on X this afternoon:
To be very clear, no one in campaign deliberations or familiar with my thinking is talking to the NYP.
The New York Times also reports (paywall) that Graham Platner said on a private call with his campaign staff yesterday evening that he believed he still had leverage to influence which candidate would replace him on the ticket, citing three people familiar with the conversation.
On the call, he didn’t announce plans to withdraw but implied such a decision would be coming, the people added.
And further to our earlier post about senator Mitch McConnell, who has been in hospital since 14 June, spokespeople for Senate majority leader John Thune and majority whip John Barrasso have confirmed to Politico that the two leaders spoke with the Kentucky Republican this week.
The disclosures come amid growing online speculation about McConnell’s health, with little detail from his own office about why he was hospitalized or his condition, and an increasingly rattled GOP that is wondering whether it can afford his continued absence from the Senate.
Thune and McConnell “had a lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security”, a spokesperson for the majority leader said in a statement to Politico today.
Kate Noyes, a spokesperson for Barrasso, said the No. 2 leader and McConnell “had a lengthy conversation early this afternoon”, speaking by phone for roughly 20 minutes.
“They caught up about the latest news impacting Senate races, the Graham Platner scandal and the recent supreme court ruling on coordinated spending limits,” as well as the Senate agenda, she added. “Senator McConnell was fully engaged and is eager to get back to the Senate.”
Both Thune and Barrasso previously said they had spoken to McConnell after his hospitalization. In addition, CNN commentator Scott Jennings, who was for a long time a McConnell adviser, posted on X today that he had also spoken with McConnell.
I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning, the senior Senator from Kentucky. He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes … about IRAN, UKRAINE, the unfolding situation in MAINE, my visit to the TR Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history. I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible.
With his Maine Senate campaign on the brink after most of his allies urged him to back out, Graham Platner has yet to comment since yesterday’s video addressing the allegations against him.
But his campaign has stopped running ads on Meta’s platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, the New York Times (paywall) reports, citing the company’s ad disclosure database. He had been running multiple ads as recently as yesterday evening.
Troy Jackson, a former Maine State lawmaker, has filed paperwork to run for US Senate on Tuesday, as Platner’s campaign teeters on collapse.
Jackson is a fifth-generation logger and former state Senate president who ran unsuccessfully for governor. Our Revolution, a political organization aligned with Senator Bernie Sanders, has announced that it would back Jackson – an early indication he would the left’s preferred candidate should he run for Senate.
The group rescinded their endorsement of Platner after a woman accused him of rape, calling the allegation “too serious to treat as a distraction from the campaign or the issues”. Platner has called the account “false”.
The state of crucial Senate races
Democrats path to winning control of the Senate is narrow – and some fear, following the upheaval in Maine, getting narrower. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 advantage in the upper chamber. Democrats must flip four seats to clinch a majority.
Maine is key. Defeating the state’s five-term Republican incumbent, Senator Susan Collins was already an uphill task, but now with Platner’s campaign in turmoil and uncertainty over whether he will even remain on the ballot, the path becomes potentially more challenging.
Democrats are also eyeing Alaska, where a former Democratic congresswoman, Mary Peltola, is running for Senate, North Carolina, where the state’s former governor, Roy Cooper, is Democratic nominee.
From there, Democrats would have to gain a seat in at least one other very red state – either Ohio, Iowa or Texas, where the party is unexpectedly hopeful that their nominee, James Talarico, can pull off an upset.
At the same time, Democrats will also need to defend the seats in swing states, including Georgia, New Hampshire and Michigan.
Even with historical precedent and Trump’s low approval ratings, clinching the Senate remains a tall task for the minority party.
