Cornyn fights to hold Texas Senate seat in runoff with Trump-backed Paxton – US politics live

Nearly 200,000 US truck drivers are at risk of losing their commercial driver’s licenses after the US Department of Transportation (DOT) issued a new rule that disqualifies many foreign-born truck drivers from getting or renewing their licenses.

Tens of thousands of immigrant drivers are stuck in a limbo after the rule took effect in March, and lawsuits challenging the rule are still being reviewed by federal courts.

The rule restricts licenses to immigrants who have specific employment authorization statuses, disqualifying those with other authorizations, including asylum seekers, refugees and those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) status.

The rule has shaken immigrant drivers who have spent years dedicated to the industry.

Sarabjeet Singh, a truck driver from India who has workedin central California for the past 12 years, said he attempted to renew his license last month when it expired but was turned away.

Kavita Patel, Singh’s wife, said the loss of his license has been devastating for their whole family.

“This not only affected us financially, but this is a huge burden mentally, emotionally, physically,” she said. “People think you can just find another job, but your entire skill set [and] experience has been built around driving this big rig.”

“It’s kind of a fear and helplessness that comes from waking up one day and realizing, ‘Oh, guess what, your career that you built is suddenly all gone in one night,’” she added.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to get a medical exam on Tuesday, putting his health under renewed public scrutiny after he has worked to dismiss concerns over his age and stamina.

The 79-year-old president is scheduled to visit Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for what the White House described as annual preventative medical and dental checkups, AP reported.

It will be Trump’s fourth publicly disclosed medical exam since he returned to office for a second term, and comes as he tries to project strength ahead of midterm elections that will test his sway with voters.

Trump turns 80 next month and was the oldest person elected US president. His predecessor, former president Joe Biden, was 82 when he left office, dropping out of the 2024 presidential race because of widespread concerns he was too old for the job.

A Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted in April found that less than half of US adults think Trump has the mental sharpness or physical health to serve effectively as president.

Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, takes on four-term incumbent John Cornyn on Tuesday in the ugliest primary election of the year. The winner of the Republican Senate runoff in Texas will contest November’s general election against Democrat James Talarico.

Paxton and Cornyn have spent months coveting the most valuable endorsement in Republican politics: Donald Trump. Last week, scandal-plagued Paxton got it, with the US president describing him as “a true Maga warrior”.

Supporters in McKinney, Texas, agree. “Paxton is more conservative,” said Jim Tubbesing, 77, strolling in Paxton’s home town, a tranquil vision of Americana with cute antique shops, trendy bistros and a walkable historic downtown exuding 19th-century charm.

“He has been good for Texas. I vote for the policy, not the fact that he’s alleged to have done something.” Tubbesing, calling Cornyn a “Rino: Republican in name only.”

The runoff is not fundamentally about policy, since Cornyn and Paxton would vote the same way on almost every piece of legislation. It is more about vibe and style, and has huge implications for Texas, control of the US Senate, and the future direction of the Republican party.

Cornyn, a former Texas attorney general and state supreme court justice, is widely seen as a last gasp of the Republican establishment. In a primary on 3 March, he narrowly beat Paxton, a far-right hardliner who has been impeached and indicted. But those aggressive stances on immigration and culture war issues appeal to the party’s base. But both men qualified for the runoff.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Texans are voting for a Republican nominee for US Senate in Tuesday’s runoff election, following Donald Trump’s late bid to influence the race in his latest effort to rid the GOP of less devoted leaders.

The president’s endorsement of state attorney-general Ken Paxton over four-term senator John Cornyn gave the challenger a late boost, leaving Cornyn at risk of becoming the first Republican senator in Texas history to seek the party’s nod and lose.

It comes despite Cornyn’s campaign and allied groups spending roughly $90m in advertising since last year, the vast majority of it attacking Paxton, AP reported.

It’s the latest GOP contest where Trump has sought to punish a Republican he sees as insufficiently loyal. This month, he has successfully backed challengers to incumbents in Louisiana, Kentucky and Indiana – a sign of his enduring influence among primary voters.

Paxton’s campaign and a pro-Paxton super PAC began airing ads promoting the endorsement within 24 hours of Trump’s announcement. Cornyn acknowledged Trump’s move would have an impact but said he wasn’t giving up.

“I know who gets to choose our senators, and it’s the people of Texas,” he said hours after the endorsement. The winner will run in November against the Democratic candidate James Talarico .

Tuesday’s runoffs also will decide Democratic US House nominees for districts in Dallas and Houston that overwhelmingly support Democrats and a San Antonio-area seat the party hopes to flip.

In other developments:

• Iran has poured cold water on suggestions that a deal with the US is imminent, pointing to the confusion in US positions and Israeli interference as reasons why an agreement is proving difficult to secure. Speaking at the weekly foreign ministry press briefing, Esmail Baghaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s negotiating team, also said future management of the strait of Hormuz was a matter for Oman and Iran to agree on, and that it was not tolls that were being proposed but “fees for navigational services”.

• By contrast, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that a deal was still possible, adding that the strait of Hormuz would open “one way or another”. “There were some talks going on in Qatar today, so we’ll see if we can make progress. I think it’s a lot of talking back and forth going on about specific language in the initial document,” Rubio told reporters in Jaipur during an official visit to India.

• A Trump Tower planned for the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, is to be built on land currently part-owned by the son of the US-sanctioned leader of the country, according to official records. The proposed skyscraper, a joint venture between a local consortium and the Trump Organization, which is managed by the US president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, will be on a plot whose current registered owner is the International Charity Fund Cartu.

• Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said on Monday her government agreed to allow the Iranian national football team to stay in Mexico during the World Cup, adding that the United States did not want to host the team. Sheinbaum said football’s governing body Fifa approached her government after the US said it did not want Iran’s squad to stay in the country throughout the tournament, despite Iran playing all three of its group matches there.