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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
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.
