Democrats say supreme court rejection of Trump mail ballot plans will ensure ‘safe, secure and accurate elections’ – live | Trump administration
Supreme court rejection of Trump mail ballot restrictions will ensure ‘safe, secure and accurate elections’
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Lawmakers have given their support to the supreme court’s rejection of Donald Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots for the midterm elections.
The decision capped a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting already underway, with states allowed to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes used for years.
Election officials have said there was simply no way to carry out a complete overhaul in the weeks before the midterms. Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin began sending mail ballots to voters over the past week while the new system was still not active.
Washington’s secretary of state Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, said the decision means work “to carry out a safe, secure, and accurate election” can continue ‘without having to upend our election processes to meet unrealistic ballot mail requirements.”
In Arizona, another largely vote-by-mail state, Democratic secretary of state Adrian Fontes said “it is crucial for us to continue rejecting the notion that access and security are mutually exclusive when it comes to running strong elections.”
Utah Lt Gov Deidre Henderson, a Republican serving as the state’s chief election officer, said on social media that the supreme court’s decision means “Utahns can have confidence that the 2026 election will proceed as normal.”
In other developments:
-
Mitch McConnell, the 84-year-old former Senate majority leader from Kentucky, was seen in Washington for the first time in months on Monday, minutes before his office released a statement saying that he was back at work.
-
With a slip of the tongue reminiscent of Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, told CNN that he would not run for president in 2028 if his fellow Californian, former vice-president Kamala Harris, decides to run again, since “I know what that means: I know her base of supporters, I know her friends, the zen diagram on that is just pure crossover.”
-
Donald Trump claimed there is a “SICK conspiracy” against artificial intelligence and data centers in response to the growing calls for greater checks on AI development.
-
In a statement posted on social media, Barack Obama, the former US president, called for the pace of AI development to be slowed to allow time for the federal government to develop regulations to address “serious safety concerns”.
Key events
Michelle R Smith
Donald Trump’s nominee for US surgeon general reported more than $200,000 in business income from a company she owns that sells dietary supplements, a loosely regulated industry that health and consumer advocates say raises concerns about her record and which some critics allege are akin to “snake oil”.
Dr Nicole Saphier, who specializes in breast cancer as a radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New Jersey and was formerly a Fox News contributor, is facing a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday. She filed a financial disclosure and ethics agreement last week.
In them, Saphier also reported extensive investments in other industries that have a bearing on Americans’ health, including tobacco. US surgeons general have warned repeatedly about the dangers of tobacco in dozens of reports since the 1960s.
Saphier also listed investments in pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, technology, fossil fuel and food companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and McDonald’s.
The filings show Saphier made substantial income from her company Empower MD, LLC, which owns her supplement line, Drop RX. She reported that she received $270,605 in business income from Empower MD and placed the company’s value in a range of $100,001 – $250,000. She said she would sell the company before assuming the duties of surgeon general.
The Guardian previously reported that Saphier’s company had sold at least nine formulations under the brand name Drop RX since at least 2024 and promoted the products multiple times on her Instagram account. The company sold several of the 2-ounce liquid formulations on Amazon, packaged in glass bottles with a dropper. While most are no longer available for sale this week, at least one – a blend that includes turmeric and ginger root and marketed under the name “Soothe” – was being sold for $24.99 as of Monday.
Read the full report here:
Meanwhile, Trump spent much of the day yesterday posting to Truth Social to make his feelings about calls to slow down the development of advanced artificial intelligence known.
He called the fear about AI’s ability and the lack of guardrails a “hoax” that is being perpetrated by the “Radical Left Dumocrats” and is reminiscent of their “Global Warming Scam of not so long ago, where everyone was going to die from extreme heat”.
However, much of the concern that has emerged in recent days has been bipartisan, and even included CEOs of leading AI companies – who have suggested deceleration and greater checks on the technology’s development.
Donald Trump is in Washington today. He’ll spend the day in meetings, but take part in an Ambassador Credentialing Ceremony at 2.30pm ET. None of his events will be open to the press, but we’ll let you know if that changes.
We’ll also hear from attorney general Todd Blanche, who will hold a White House press briefing in the Rose Garden at 2pm ET. We’ll bring you the latest lines as that gets under way.
Bernie Sanders and podcaster Steve Bannon to call for AI restrictions
Senator Bernie Sanders and conservative podcaster Steve Bannon will together on Tuesday call for restrictions on AI systems, uniting two political adversaries around concerns that the technology will harm humans.
They will speak at the same Washington gathering on Tuesday, a sign of how concerns about AI are upending political norms, Reuters reported.
Public alarm about the potential danger posed by AI is growing, after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said last week he had resigned, in part because the “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
AI-related stocks fell worldwide on Monday after leaders of some of the industry’s largest companies called for slowing the pace of the technology’s development.
Bannon, a longtime ally of president Donald Trump, has criticized Trump’s approach to overseeing AI, placing the blame for the president’s unwillingness to regulate the technology squarely on tech companies.
On his Monday podcast, Bannon said Congress should not pass laws that prohibit states from enforcing their own rules for the technology.
“The American people are not going to be supplicants to these tech oligarchs,” Bannon said.
The Kremlin on Tuesday welcomed what it called US president Donald Trump’s “good idea” for a truce between Russia and Ukraine on striking energy targets, without saying whether Moscow had agreed to such a proposal.
Trump announced a truce between the warring sides on Monday, but neither Moscow or Kyiv has confirmed it was in force.
“We have seen president Trump’s post. We consider it a good idea, a good initiative. We are in contact with the Americans,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Kash Patel to testify before Senate committee on FBI agenda
FBI director Kash Patel is set to return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Republican-led panel is likely to try to keep the focus on Patel’s efforts to combat violent crime, counter drug trafficking and pursue the Trump administration’s agenda from his perch at the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.
But Democrats will almost certainly seize on the tumult inside the bureau over the last year, including sweeping firings of agents who participated in investigations into president Donald Trump, efforts by the bureau to investigate Trump’s perceived political adversaries and Patel’s travel schedule that has blended private leisure with professional responsibilities.
Patel has made multiple appearances before Congress while serving as director, including to testify about the FBI’s budget, but this will be his first time since last September before the Senate committee that has principal oversight jurisdiction over the bureau.
The board of Washington’s John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is due to vote on Tuesday on whether it will continue to operate, with directors largely installed by president Donald Trump arguing that its future hinges on having his name on the complex.
Trump’s name has been added to and then removed from one of the nation’s top performing arts venues once already this year after federal judges ruled that only Congress could legally change the name of what it designated to be a “living memorial” to Kennedy, the 35th US president, who was assassinated in 1963.
“The Board understands that without such appropriate recognition it is unlikely that president Trump will provide the fundamental oversight of the renovation of the main building and lead the fiscal rescue of the Center,” the draft resolution says.
The draft resolution says the center’s finances are dire and it will be unable to honor its payroll obligations or routine maintenance contracts “within a matter of weeks.“
Trump facing AI backlash in Congress as push for guardrails intensifies
David Smith
Donald Trump is facing a rare backlash from the US Congress as Democrats and some Republicans push for guardrails on the world’s most powerful AI companies.
Concerns over the dangerous potential of AI reached fever pitch this week after tech leaders sounded the alarm over the rapid advancement of the technology and its potential threat to humanity.
Trump dismissed the anxieties on Monday, describing them as a “HOAX” and “conspiracy” and insisting on social media: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”
But the 80-year-old president, who has sidelined Congress on numerous issues during his second term, looks increasingly isolated as members of both major parties acknowledged the risks and expressed a desire to act before it was too late.
Don Beyer, a Democratic congressman from Virginia, said: “History will look very poorly on that tweet. He’s not paying attention – or he’s paying attention to the wrong people. He’s being really foolish: not the first time he’s been really foolish but perhaps catastrophically foolish in this case.”
Recent surveys by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation found 85% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans want a new federal agency to monitor and regulate AI; and 82% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans favour government safety tests for AI making critical decisions.
Supreme court rejection of Trump mail ballot restrictions will ensure ‘safe, secure and accurate elections’
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Lawmakers have given their support to the supreme court’s rejection of Donald Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots for the midterm elections.
The decision capped a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting already underway, with states allowed to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes used for years.
Election officials have said there was simply no way to carry out a complete overhaul in the weeks before the midterms. Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin began sending mail ballots to voters over the past week while the new system was still not active.
Washington’s secretary of state Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, said the decision means work “to carry out a safe, secure, and accurate election” can continue ‘without having to upend our election processes to meet unrealistic ballot mail requirements.”
In Arizona, another largely vote-by-mail state, Democratic secretary of state Adrian Fontes said “it is crucial for us to continue rejecting the notion that access and security are mutually exclusive when it comes to running strong elections.”
Utah Lt Gov Deidre Henderson, a Republican serving as the state’s chief election officer, said on social media that the supreme court’s decision means “Utahns can have confidence that the 2026 election will proceed as normal.”
In other developments:
-
Mitch McConnell, the 84-year-old former Senate majority leader from Kentucky, was seen in Washington for the first time in months on Monday, minutes before his office released a statement saying that he was back at work.
-
With a slip of the tongue reminiscent of Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, told CNN that he would not run for president in 2028 if his fellow Californian, former vice-president Kamala Harris, decides to run again, since “I know what that means: I know her base of supporters, I know her friends, the zen diagram on that is just pure crossover.”
-
Donald Trump claimed there is a “SICK conspiracy” against artificial intelligence and data centers in response to the growing calls for greater checks on AI development.
-
In a statement posted on social media, Barack Obama, the former US president, called for the pace of AI development to be slowed to allow time for the federal government to develop regulations to address “serious safety concerns”.
