Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt leaving role, president says – US politics live

As we noted earlier, the special primary to replace Lindsey Graham as the Republican nominee for US Senate in South Carolina has resulted in a runoff between Darline Graham – the late senator’s sister – and congressman Ralph Norman.

The race is set for 25 August and Norman released an ad today highlighting his credentials for the job.

“You shouldn’t have to guess where your next senator stands. With me, you already know,” Norman said in the new spot.

Graham, however, has received Donald Trump’s endorsement and clinched 33% of Tuesday’s votes.

In the aftermath of the hotly contested Democratic primary in Wisconsin, a number of candidates and nominees broke bread (literally) today at a “unity” brunch.

On social media, Sarah Godlewski, Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, shared a picture of the table – which included David Crowley and Francesca Hong, as well as Wisconsin’s Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin. A number of other federal and state officials were also at the event.

• Following her defeat for the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin governor, Francesca Hong said that she would support David Crowley in the lead-up to the November general election. “This campaign was not about getting one person into office. It is about a building movement for permanent affordability and a government that puts working people first,” Hong said in a statement.

• For his part, Crowley vowed to unite a fractured coalition heading into November’s general election. At a press conference after his narrow victory, the Democratic nominee welcomed those who voted for Hong in Tuesday’s primary to join him in the lead-up to November. “I look forward to earning their support,” Crowley told reporters. He said his focus to unite voters “no matter where you fall on the political spectrum” in order to beat his GOP challenger, Tom Tiffany, in November.

• In Minnesota, Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman, Trump supporter and election denier, has refused to concede defeat in Minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial primary, despite trailing by a double-digit margin the morning after polls closed. The Associated Press called the race for Lisa Demuth, the Minnesota House speaker, late last night. Told by a reporter on his own streaming channel, LindellTV, that the AP had declared the race over, Lindell dismissed the wire service outright. “I’m not going to give up this race until the votes are counted,” Lindell said. “That’s nonsense.”

• The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump was accompanied by some of his most loyal and longest-serving aides – but no cabinet officials – in the astonishing decoy operation to get him off Air Force One, via a catering truck, in response to a potential Iranian assassination threat last month in Turkey. Other passengers on the truck included Dan Scavino, the White House deputy chief of staff; Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant; and Walt Nauta, the director of Oval Office operations, according to a US official familiar with the operation and corroborating material reviewed by the outlet, which first reported the story on Monday.

• The Trump administration has finalized a rule ending federal Medicaid funding for gender‑affirming care for transgender minors. Under the policy, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will bar states from seeking federal reimbursement for what the administration calls “sex‑rejecting procedures”. In practice, that includes puberty blockers – which are reversible – hormone therapy and, in rare cases, surgeries for trans youth. More here

• Prices in the US rose 0.1% in July, with overall inflation cooling slightly to 3.4% – but still higher than a year ago. The latest consumer price index report, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows that core inflation, which measures price changes without volatile goods such as food and gas, rose by 0.2% in July, after not really changing in June compared with the month prior.

• The Trump administration has again asked the supreme court to intervene to fully ⁠implement his executive ⁠order restricting the ​use of mail-in ballots ahead of November’s midterm elections that will decide control of Congress. The justice department filed a request today asking the court to put on hold a decision made Tuesday by the US district judge Indira Talwani that blocks the US Postal Service from nationwide enforcement ⁠of the directive’s tighter rules for voting by mail.

Donald Trump has been sued after a subscription service charging up to $100,000 a month for early access to his posts on his Truth Social platform sparked allegations of corruption.

The lawsuit, filed in the US district court for the southern district of New York, was brought by the Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation against Trump, two of his aides and the executive office of the president.

It targets “Truth API”, a paid data feed launched on 1 August by the Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social. The complaint calls the arrangement “extraordinary, corrupt and unconstitutional”.

The service gives paying subscribers faster access than the general public to posts from 10 of the platform’s highest-profile accounts, including Trump’s own account, as well as those of the vice-president, JD Vance; press secretary Karoline Leavitt; and other senior officials. Subscribers pay $100,000 a month, or $60,000 a month for a three-year commitment.

The White House and Trump Media did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.

Trump has a history of using Truth Social to disclose market-sensitive news, including posts on tariffs and the war on Iran, which have triggered swings in stock and oil prices. Trump Media’s interim chief executive, Kevin McGurn, has even promoted the service as a way to give businesses fast access to the platform’s “most market-moving” posts. He has described it as a “high-margin” product meant to provide a “meaningful, ongoing source of revenue”.

Earlier this week, astonishing reports emerged around Donald Trump being secretly spirited off an Air Force One jet on a catering truck and into a different plane in response to a potential Iranian assassination threat last month in Turkey.

Democrats have called for an immediate congressional hearing into the ruse, and critics have raised serious questions over why reporters and the public had been deliberately misled. According to my colleague Martin Belam in this morning’s First Thing newsletter, more than a hundred aides, officials and reporters were kept onboard, without being told there was a threat to their lives.

“It appears that the idea was we can reduce the danger to President Trump by offering up 100 or so people to be killed by the Iranians in his place,” said Steven Cash, executive director of the Steady State and a former CIA intelligence officer and senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence branch.

Today, the Washington Post (paywall) further reports that the president was accompanied by some of his most loyal and longest-serving aides – but no cabinet officials.

Other passengers on the truck included Dan Scavino, the White House deputy chief of staff; Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant; and Walt Nauta, the director of Oval Office operations, according to a US official familiar with the operation and corroborating material reviewed by the paper, which first reported the story on Monday.

According to the Post’s report, a few lower-profile aides were also present, but the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and other officials at the highest level of the government were not. Indeed, the story goes:

Other senior administration officials, military personnel, Secret Service agents and journalists remained on the legacy Air Force One plane, which had been deemed too risky for the president’s travel.

It remains unclear whether all the top administration officials involved were aware they were flying on a different plane than the president or whether they, like the reporters assigned to be in the pool covering him, were kept in the dark.

In his first public comments about the operation, Trump told reporters last night at Joint Base Andrews that the decision for him to take an alternative flight was made by the Secret Service.

“The plane that I was on was at greater risk,” he said. “Because that would be the plane that I think that they would be more likely to go for.”

Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, called the operation “unprecedented and surreal” and “downright scary” on CNN yesterday. “There has to be a congressional briefing because it involves not just the safety of the president.

“I want to know what precautions were taken to make sure that all of the passengers on that Air Force One, which was judged too dangerous for the president to fly on, what precautions were taken to keep the staff and reporters on that plane safe?”

Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman, Trump supporter and election denier, has refused to concede defeat in Minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial primary, despite trailing by a double-digit margin the morning after polls closed.

The Associated Press called the race for Lisa Demuth, the Minnesota House speaker, late last night. With almost all votes counted, Demuth was more than 45,000 votes ahead of Lindell, who had the backing of Donald Trump, beating him by 43.4% to 32.5%. Businessman Kendall Qualls, backed by the Republican state party, was trailing in third.

Told by a reporter on his own streaming channel, LindellTV, that the AP had declared the race over, Lindell dismissed the wire service outright. Asked why he wouldn’t accept the call, he questioned the AP’s authority to determine the outcome and insisted that hundreds of thousands of votes remained uncounted.

“I’m not going to give up this race until the votes are counted,” Lindell said. “That’s nonsense.”

Lindell did not return a request for comment on what steps he will take next to contest the election, as he waits for the votes to come in.

Lindell built his political career on the false claim that Trump’s 2020 defeat was the product of a rigged and stolen election, spending what he has said were tens of millions of dollars pursuing that conspiracy theory through lawsuits, documentaries and conferences, even as courts repeatedly threw it out. Last month he settled a $1.3bn defamation suit brought by voting technology company Liberty Vote, formerly known as Dominion Voting Systems, regarding the stolen election lies.

Lindell’s campaign was also dogged by questions over his own eligibility to run. He was, for weeks, not registered to vote in the state whose governorship he was seeking – his registration remained active in Texas, tied to a property owned by a company in Lufkin, even as he told reporters he had re-established Minnesota residency. Minnesota’s same-day registration rules meant he could still cast a ballot, and run, regardless.

Trump, who has failed to carry Minnesota in three consecutive presidential elections, made a late, personal push for Lindell on Tuesday, urging Minnesota Republicans on social media to hand him a decisive win and praising his commitment to “free and fair” elections.

Lindell’s defeat extended a run of losses for Trump-endorsed candidates, including House races for Andy Ogles, a representative in Tennessee, and Amir Hassan, a navy veteran in Michigan who lost to a candidate who had dropped out.

Donald Trump’s administration has again asked the US supreme court to intervene to fully ⁠implement his executive ⁠order restricting the ​use of mail-in ballots ahead of November’s midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.

The justice department filed a request today asking the ⁠justices to put on hold a decision made yesterday by the US district judge Indira Talwani in Boston that blocks the US Postal Service from nationwide enforcement ⁠of the directive’s tighter rules for voting by mail.

Trump signed his executive order in March after ​years of calling for restrictions on ‌voting by mail and pushing false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud. A reminder that he has never provided evidence for that and has voted by mail himself.

Talwani’s decision yesterday, in a case brought by several voting rights groups and represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, effectively expands on an earlier order she issued in June preventing the enforcement of Trump’s order in 23 mostly Democratic-governed states and Washington DC, which had also challenged the action as unconstitutional.

The administration has already asked the supreme court to pause the June decision. In ‌its brief filing today, the justice department urged the court to lift that decision and make clear that the ruling applies to the judge’s ​action yesterday as well.

The administration contends that the lawsuits are premature as federal agencies have not yet taken any concrete actions that affect the plaintiffs, and so any harm they allege is speculative.

Trump’s executive order directed the Department of Homeland Security to compile and transmit to the states a list of ⁠US citizens eligible to vote in each state, and the justice department to prioritize ​investigating and prosecuting state ​and local election officials who issue ballots ​to people deemed “not eligible” to vote in federal elections.

It also required the ​Postal Service to ‌deliver ballots only to voters ​on each state’s ​approved mail-in ballot list. The Postal Service recently moved to implement Trump’s directive.

In siding with the voting rights groups yesterday, Talwani wrote that the executive branch of the federal government had no authority to regulate elections, a responsibility that the US constitution assigns to individual states.

In Minnesota, the outcomes of some of the key primary races we’ve been watching have set the stage for historic victories come November.

In the North Star state’s gubernatorial race, the Democratic nominee, Senator Amy Klobuchar, will face off against Lisa Demuth, the state’s house speaker. Whoever emerges victorious will be the first woman to lead Minnesota. And if Demuth wins, she’ll also be the first Black governor in the state’s history.

In the race to replace retiring Senator Tina Smith, another all-female competition has emerged. The Democratic lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, and Republican Michelle Tafoya won their respective primaries. If Flanagan wins, she will be the first Native American woman elected to the Senate.

Following her defeat for the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin governor, Francesca Hong said that she would support David Crowley in the lead-up to the November general election.

“This campaign was not about getting one person into office. It is about a building movement for permanent affordability and a government that puts working people first. Our movement is strong and the work isn’t done,” Hong said in a statement, emphasizing that her goal moving forward was to ensure Tom Tiffany, the GOP nominee, is unsuccessful.

As the war in Iran shows few signs of easing, a reminder that US gas prices are hovering around $4 a gallon, according to AAA. That is almost 90 cents more than it was this time a year ago.

Donald Trump continued to insist that the US has “total control” of the strait of Hormuz, despite cargo traffic through the vital waterway only a fraction of what it was before the war began in February.

Trump said that he thinks the US will “KEEP” control of the chokepoint. “Our Naval Blockade is being called, by everyone, ‘A WALL OF STEEL,’ and there is nothing Iran can do about it,” the president added. “They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, their remaining soldiers are unpaid … Iran is all talk and no action, the Bully of the Middle East No Longer. Praise be to Allah!”

The Trump administration has finalized a rule ending federal Medicaid funding for gender‑affirming care for transgender minors.

Under the policy, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will bar states from seeking federal reimbursement for what the administration calls “sex‑rejecting procedures”. In practice, that includes puberty blockers – which are reversible – hormone therapy, and, in rare cases, surgeries for trans youth.

The rule takes effect 13 October. Beneficiaries will have up to six months to claim coverage for hormone therapy medications after that date. Federal funding for talk therapy related to gender dysphoria will continue.

“We are not going to pay for our innocent children to undergo these barbaric surgeries and practices, which result in unthinkable and irreversible harm to their young bodies,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The move marks the latest step in the White House’s broader effort to strip federal support from providers treating trans youth, despite gender‑affirming care being endorsed by major US and international medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. Providers stress that treatment plans follow extensive evaluations and involve families throughout.

Trump claimed that “dozens of U.S. hospitals have already ended this so‑called ‘gender‑affirming care,’” citing pressure from his administration. Earlier this year, STAT news reported that more than 40 hospitals have paused or stopped some services for trans youth since Trump returned to office. In February, the Guardian reported that NYU Langone Health, one of New York City’s major hospital networks, would shut down its gender‑affirming care program for minors.

The new rule leans on a Department of Health and Human Services report that questions the medical consensus that gender‑affirming care can be life‑saving for transgender youth.

When Crowley was asked how he plans to get progressives on board, he said that that he wants to engage with voters “no matter where you fall on the political spectrum”.

“So many people have felt like they’ve been on the menu because nobody has asked them to lend their voices to the solutions,” Crowley added, while noting his ultimate goal is to beat his Republican challenger, congressman Tom Tiffany, in November.

At a press conference on Wednesday, David Crowley accepted the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin governor, and vowed to unite a fractured coalition heading into November’s general election.

He thanked Francesca Hong, his progressive challenger, noting that her campaign “reminded people across Wisconsin that there are no long shots in believing in a better future and fighting to expand opportunities to every family.”

He welcomed those who voted for her in Tuesday’s primary to join him in the lead up to November.

“I look forward to earning their support,” Crowley told reporters.

The newly minted nominee said that while the messy Democratic primary has been branded as a “battle between the left and the center”, it’s ultimately an inaccurate characterization.

“We may not agree on every policy. We may not use the same labels, but we all want safe communities, strong schools, affordable health care, good-paying jobs, and a brighter future for all of our children,” he said.

He added: “Every one of us has something much bigger to unite around, and that is keeping Maga extremism from bringing the chaos we see in Washington into our neighborhoods right here in the state of Wisconsin.”

Rachel Leingang and Maanvi Singh

Some Alabama voters took to the polls for the second time this primary season after the state’s Republican-controlled legislature reconfigured four of the seven districts.

The redrawn district map came after the US supreme court dismantled a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and several southern states moved to redistrict and consolidate Republican power. In June, the supreme court ruled that Alabama could use a redrawn congressional map that eliminates one of the state’s two majority-Black districts in this year’s midterm elections.

The new map poses steep challenges for Shomari Figures, the Democratic representative who was first elected in 2024 after the creation of a new district that included the mostly Black cities of Mobile and Montgomery. But the district no longer includes Mobile, Figures’s home town. Rhett Marques, a Republican state representative and small-business owner who became part of the new district, won the primary to challenge Figures in November.

Here’s a round-up of some of the key takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries:

Michael Alfonso, the son-in-law of transportation secretary Sean Duffy, won the Republican nomination for Wisconsin’s seventh congressional district.

The seat is currently held by Tom Tiffany, who as we noted earlier, ran unopposed for the GOP nomination for governor.

Alfonso, 26, received Donald Trump’s support for the primary and won in a landslide – beating four other Republican candidates in a red district that was represented by Duffy from 2011-2020, when he left Congress

Tony Evers, the outgoing Wisconsin governor, praised David Crowley on his victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for the governor’s race.

“He’s the future of our party,” Evers said. “I can’t wait for him to be our next governor.”

Evers’ endorsement spurred Crowley to re-enter the race in July, after the Milwaukee county executive initially suspended his bid.

Crowley will now face Tom Tiffany, a Trump-endorsed Republican congressman who ran unopposed in the Republican primary.