Category: National News

By Jonathan Shorman
National

The Trump administration illegally overhauled a U.S. Department of Homeland Security computer program in its hunt for noncitizen voters, a judge ruled Monday in a stinging decision that laid into federal officials for violating the privacy of millions of Americans.

The ruling struck at the core of President Donald Trump’s project to assert authority over state-run elections ahead of the November midterms. Under Trump’s control, the executive branch has spent the past year attempting to obtain state voter rolls to feed into the computer program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, a President Joe Biden appointee for a district court based in Washington, D.C., condemned the Trump administration’s behavior over 75 pages and vacated a series of notices Homeland Security had published to implement the computer program.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

Sooknanan’s decision, if upheld, could hamper the administration’s ability to implement an executive order aimed at restricting voting by mail. The order requires Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age citizens in each state using information from SAVE, along with other federal databases.

Homeland Security has long operated SAVE, but prior to the second Trump administration it was primarily a tool to check whether individual immigrants were eligible for various government benefits. Last year, the agency reconfigured SAVE to allow for simultaneous searches of millions of names and allowed states to upload their voter rolls for the purpose of identifying possible noncitizens.

While some Republican-led states took Homeland Security up on the offer, most states have resisted demands to turn over their voter rolls to the Trump administration. In turn, the U.S. Department of Justice has sued 30 states for unredacted copies of their voter rolls, including sensitive personal data such as driver’s license and Social Security numbers.

The Justice Department has been unsuccessful in forcing states to provide the information. DOJ attorneys have indicated that any data would be shared with Homeland Security for analysis by SAVE.

“It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist. Judge Sparkle Soknanan’s latest ruling preventing DHS from addressing alien voting is just the latest example!” Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival wrote on social media.

If Homeland Security appeals the decision, federal officials face a shrinking window to restore their ability to use SAVE before the midterms. Federal law prohibits sweeping purges of voters less than 90 days before federal elections — in this case early August ahead of November.

Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, a group that advocates for the “responsible use of technology in elections,” acknowledged election officials are in a moment of uncertainty.

“The closer we get to the midterms, it raises your blood pressure,” Smith said in an interview. “But I think most people are (saying), ‘well, we just have to wait and see.’”

Concerns from Dems, voting groups

Democrats and voting rights groups have warned about the dangers of SAVE, saying it makes errors and has wrongly flagged citizens. They hailed Monday’s decision as a victory for voters.

“Efforts to create a federal voter database to facilitate voter purges threaten the fundamental right at the heart of our democracy,” Marcia Johnson, chief of activation and justice for the League of Women Voters, said in a statement.

Sooknanan came to a similar conclusion in her decision, writing that federal agencies “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.”

The judge pointed to sworn declarations by four naturalized citizens that Texas had threatened to revoke their voter registrations because of inaccurate Social Security data contained in the SAVE system. At least three citizens had their registrations revoked for at least some time.

The Trump administration didn’t dispute the sworn testimony, Sooknanan noted. The administration also didn’t contest, she wrote, the findings of an independent investigation that found that 25% of possible noncitizens identified by SAVE in Travis County, Texas, which includes Austin, were people who had already proven their U.S. citizenship.

The judge’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed against Homeland Security and other federal agencies last September by the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center that challenged the repurposed SAVE system.

“As the Trump-Vance administration continues its attack on the right to vote, this is an important victory for the American people and our democracy,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement.

Democracy Forward Foundation, along with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Fair Elections Center, represented the groups challenging the directive.

Three violations

The SAVE system violated federal law in three primary ways, Sooknanan wrote.

First, it breached a ban on the Social Security Administration against disclosing Social Security numbers and related records. Second, it violated the federal Privacy Act, which restricts how the federal government shares information. And third, it violated the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies set policy.

The record in the lawsuit “shows that the federal agencies that created this database knew that the database violates those statutory protections,” the judge wrote.

Decision preempted expansion

Before Monday’s decision, the agency was planning to expand the use of SAVE.

CNN reported hours earlier that the agency later this summer planned to require states to run their voter rolls through SAVE as a condition of receiving full homeland security grant funding.

Under the planned changes, states could also lose at least some funding if they don’t offer plans to move voting toward hand-marked paper ballots. Those changes could affect all voters in Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey, Nevada and South Carolina, nearly all voters in Arkansas and Indiana, and roughly two-thirds of voters in Tennessee, according to data from Verified Voting.

Homeland Security didn’t dispute the report when asked about it by States Newsroom. In a statement, the department emphasized Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s focus on election security.

“Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS and FEMA are committed to ensuring homeland security grant funding advances core national security priorities, to include the security and integrity of our nation’s election infrastructure,” the statement says, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, an agency within Homeland Security.

“Any recipient of federal funding should expect accountability for how taxpayer dollars are spent.”

By Jonathan Shorman
National

American teens are driving less than in previous decades, prompting civic advocates to warn that fewer young people may register to vote.

Yet at least one state — New Hampshire — offers insight into how civic groups can work around a lack of registration opportunities to ensure young people can register, as well as the challenges that remain.

Since Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act in 1993, nearly all states must allow residents to register to vote at motor vehicle offices. But fewer teens are obtaining driver’s licenses today, translating into fewer trips to the local Department of Motor Vehicles and more missed chances to register.

More than 7.5 million people ages 16 to 18 don’t have a driver’s license, according to data compiled by The Civics Center, a nonpartisan group focused on boosting youth voter registration. Three million of those youth will be old enough to vote this year and all will be eligible by 2028, the organization said in a June research report on how declines in teen driving, spurred in part by the rising cost of obtaining a license, could affect voting.

Young people represent a large pool of potential voters for candidates ahead of the midterm elections this November and the presidential election in 2028. Still, voting advocates worry barriers to registration will keep many of them from the polls.

“Our goal is to help people debunk these myths that it’s somehow young people’s fault that these systems aren’t working well for them,” said Laura Brill, founder and CEO of The Civics Center.

Low registration rates

In recent years about 60% of 18-year-olds have held driver’s licenses, according to the Federal Highway Administration. By contrast, in 1994, the year after the National Voter Registration Act was passed, about 74% had licenses.

Even without declining visits to the DMV, registration rates among the youngest voters are low. During midterm election years, the percentage of 18-year-olds registered to vote typically remains under 30%, according to The Civics Center, compared to about 75% of Americans 45 and older.

Some civic groups are pushing for more in-person voter registration drives, including in high schools, which may help offset the effects of fewer trips to the DMV. Without significant action, they fear registration rates will dip even lower.

The League of Women Voters announced a partnership with The Civics Center in April to promote high school voter registration. The groups are offering state-specific training and toolkits to help members of the League, which has hundreds of chapters across the country, help students, teachers and school administrators hold registration drives.

They also want states to provide teens more time to register before they can vote. About half of teens currently live in states that allow voter pre-registration at 16 or earlier, according to The Civics Center.

These states include California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and Washington.

“Young people have a very short window of opportunity,” said Jeanette Senecal, chief of civic learning and impact at the League of Women Voters. “So when we increase that window of opportunity to allow for preregistration at 16 and 17, there’s a much longer kind of runway in order for us to get them registered to vote for that first election.”

The focus on voter registration drives reflects, in part, an acknowledgement that online voter registration isn’t a panacea for fewer in-person DMV visits. Thirty-six states either offer no online voter registration option or allow voter registration only with a driver’s license or state-issued identification, according to information compiled by The Civics Center.

“Paper forms, typically you only need a Social Security number and not a driver’s license. That’s one of the reasons that in-person efforts can be so effective,” Brill said.

SAVE America Act

Voter registration drives are under threat, however. President Donald Trump’s signature election legislation, the SAVE America Act, would effectively prohibit drives held by third-party organizations like the League of Women Voters because it would require individuals to present documents proving their citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to government officials in person to register to vote.

The bill has stalled in the U.S. Senate amid opposition from Democrats and a handful of Republican senators. Trump is still urging lawmakers to pass the measure and posted on social media recently that he opposes unrelated foreign surveillance legislation unless it also includes the SAVE America Act.

As of late 2024, 24 states and the District of Columbia placed no restrictions on third-party voter registration drives, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a Colorado-based think tank. An additional 24 states impose some limits, while Wyoming and New Hampshire prohibit them.

What worked in New Hampshire

Because of its voter laws in the early 1990s, New Hampshire is one of six states exempt from the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA, along with Idaho, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The exemption means New Hampshire isn’t required to offer voter registration at motor vehicle offices.

In New Hampshire, everyone — teens and older adults alike — registers in person with election officials and can also register at the polls on Election Day.

Open Democracy, a New Hampshire voting rights group, has spent several years working to improve the registration rate among 18-year-olds.

The organization hired an employee focused on high school voter registration and held 41 high school voter registration drives in 2024, said Olivia Zink, the group’s executive director. To hold the drives, it had to assure election officials were present to accept paperwork.

In December 2023, an election off year, just 9% of New Hampshire 18-year-olds were registered. After the November 2024 election, nearly 64% of 18-year-olds were registered, according to data compiled by The Civics Center. Zink acknowledged that the presidential election was a major motivator, but she emphasized the importance of registering students every year.

State laws can play a major role. Registrations plummeted last year, Zink said, after state lawmakers removed the ability of residents to sign an affidavit as proof of citizenship. She attributed the drop to students not regularly carrying their birth certificates or other documents proving citizenship with them.

“Even with education and posters that are hung up at school and announcements and letters home to parents — we still saw so many fewer students register to vote in 2025 due to that law,” Zink said.

In May, a federal judge blocked the New Hampshire law after a coalition of voting rights groups, including Open Democracy, challenged the measure.

As part of her decision, Judge Samantha Elliott, a Biden appointee, found that Open Democracy registered fewer students in 2025 compared to 2023, even though the organization at that time didn’t have a full-time staff member dedicated to high school registration.

Zink said that even in the first few weeks since the judge’s decision, she had heard of high school students once again registering by signing affidavits.

Despite persistent barriers, Senecal cast the work of registering young people as critical. Each time someone votes, they’re more likely to vote again, she said.

“So the earlier we can engage those people, we really help create these lifetime habits of voting,” Senecal said.

By Shauneen Miranda
National

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education will temporarily reduce interest rates for federal student loan borrowers enrolled in auto pay starting July 1, the agency announced Thursday.

Borrowers who enroll in auto pay — the optional feature that allows a borrower to have their monthly loan payment automatically deducted from their checking or savings account — will see a reduction in their interest rate by one full percentage point from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2028.

The change means a 6% interest rate would drop to 5%, for instance.

Federal student loan borrowers currently enrolled in auto pay already receive an interest rate reduction of 0.25 percentage points from their servicer. Those borrowers do not need to take any additional action and will automatically receive an extra interest rate reduction of 0.75 percentage points, the department said.

“This temporary incentive is designed to help borrowers pay down their balances more quickly, take full advantage of new repayment benefits, remain on track toward loan discharge opportunities and to strengthen the overall health of the federal student loan portfolio,” Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said during a Thursday call with reporters.

Kent said the benefit is estimated to cost the agency $6 billion.

Changes coming

The announcement came ahead of major changes for the federal student loan system — with many provisions slated to also begin July 1 — stemming from congressional Republicans’ mega tax and spending cut bill that President Donald Trump signed last year.

The overhaul includes new loan limits for graduate and professional students, a restructured repayment system that gives new borrowers only two plans to choose from and the elimination of a key loan program for graduate and professional students that allowed for unlimited borrowing.

Meanwhile, millions of borrowers under the now defunct Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan will receive notices from their federal loan servicers starting July 1 that instruct them to enter into a legal repayment plan within 90 days.

Auto pay enrollment halved

The federal student loan portfolio stands at a “staggering $1.7 trillion,” with about 37% of borrowers currently in repayment, according to Kent.

The under secretary noted that at the end of 2019, nearly 83% of borrowers were enrolled in auto pay but that the figure stood at just 40% by the end of 2025.

There are also 9.16 million borrowers in default as of April, per the latest available department data.

Borrowers have until Sept. 30, 2026, to opt in to auto pay to be eligible for the two-year benefit.

The benefit is open to borrowers whose federal student loans originated after July 1, 2012, the department said.

Kent encouraged borrowers to “take advantage of this opportunity and enroll in auto debit as soon as possible.”

Borrowers can enroll by logging in to their loan servicer account and selecting “auto pay” from a navigation bar, he said.

The department clarified that borrowers will need to stay in auto pay to continue receiving the reduced interest rate.

By Ashley Murray
National

Final peace negotiations between the United States and Iran officially began Thursday, Vice President JD Vance said at a late morning press conference in Washington, starting a 60-day countdown for the Islamic Republic to safely open the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. to lift a blockade on Iranian oil, and for the two nations to hammer out a nuclear deal.

The agreement is “a win-win situation” for the U.S., Vance said.

“If they change their behavior, big things are going to happen for Iran and for the world,” Vance said. “If they don’t, no skin off our backs” because Iran’s nuclear program and military are “still destroyed.”

The agreement immediately stops hostilities that began Feb. 28. The war claimed the lives of 13 U.S. service members, thousands of civilians in Iran, Lebanon and across the Gulf region, and disrupted the global economy.

Vance said the “Israelis, just like everybody else, have to respect this process,” highlighting that the agreement binds Israel to ceasing its bombing campaign in Lebanon against Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters.

Without specifying a date, Vance said he expects to brief Congress but is “quite confident” the administration does not need congressional approval on terms of the deal that will lift sanctions on Iran, despite the claims of some U.S. senators.

‘Just signed it’

Vance was slated to finalize the 14-point memorandum of understanding in Switzerland Friday, but President Donald Trump unexpectedly announced early Thursday morning that he had signed the deal while attending a state dinner hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles after the G7 summit among the world’s wealthiest nations concluded.

“Just signed it,” Trump told journalists after hugging and saying goodbye to France’s president and first lady Brigitte Macron just after 1 a.m. local time, according to the traveling press.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian posted images on social media early Thursday of the signed agreement in English and Farsi.

“This text is the reflection of the voice of a nation that did not trade its dignity and independence for any threat or pressure. What was recorded today was the result of national resilience, political rationality, and responsible diplomacy,” he wrote, according to a translation on X.

Trump posted a series of messages about the signed memorandum on his own social media site, Truth Social, Thursday morning, including a link to a news article about Pope Leo commending the deal. The Trump administration engaged in a public war of words with Leo in April.

“These fools, who think I haven’t been tough enough on Iran, when the Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD HIGH, and Oil prices are ‘tumbling’ down, are either jealous, bad people, or stupid. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! President DJT” the president posted online early Thursday.

Hours later, in all caps, he wrote: “OIL IS FLOWING, IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON (THE WORLD WILL BE SAFE!), THE STOCK MARKETS ARE ROARING, JOBS ARE AT RECORDS, AND PRICES ARE DROPPING (AFFORDABILITY!). OUR COUNTRY IS STRONG, SAFE, AND RESPECTED LIKE NEVER BEFORE. ‘YOU’RE WELCOME!’ President DJT”

‘Foreign policy blunder’

Several, including some from the president’s own party, have been critical of the agreement.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who recently lost his primary after Trump endorsed an opponent, said in a statement on social media the deal “is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

“Reagan is rolling over in his grave. Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal.

“Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 service members were still alive. Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped.”

Sen. John Kennedy, also a Louisiana Republican, said on the Senate floor Thursday morning “We ought to give peace a chance. It’s only 60 days and we’re going to just have to trust the president on this one.”

Jonathan Shorman contributed to this report.

By Jonathan Shorman
National

U.S. Senate Democrats introduced legislation on Thursday to require Congress to sign off on any deployment of federal troops to the polls, as President Donald Trump and his administration refuse to rule out the idea.

Fears of troops or other federal agents at voting sites have long loomed over the approaching midterm elections in November. Democrats and voting rights advocates have grown alarmed in recent months as Trump has publicly entertained the possibility. Other administration officials have mocked or sidestepped questions about possible deployments.

The legislation, the Protect Our Polls Act, would require Congress to pass a resolution approving any deployment beforehand. Federal law prohibits troops and other armed federal personnel from polling places, but contains an exception to “repel armed enemies of the United States” — fueling speculation that Trump could invoke this exception to bypass the ban.

“He is trying to nationalize the elections and he is telling us in his own words what he is trying to do,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, said at a news conference at the Capitol. “On top of that, Trump’s nominees for his Cabinet positions have come up here and refused to rule out uniformed military or federal law enforcement being sent to the polls on Election Day.”

White House justification

The bill would require the White House, 48 hours before any deployment, to provide Congress with intelligence, legal justifications, deployment plans and evidence that state and local officials are unable to address the threat themselves.

It also prohibits military personnel from using federal funds to access election records, a provision designed to block troops from seizing ballots.

Slotkin is offering the bill alongside Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Alex Padilla of California, Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Raphael Warnock of Georgia.

“One of the things I’m very proud of is that I served to protect the Constitution of the United States and our democracy,” said Gallego, a Marine veteran. “I swore that oath, and the last thing any Marine, sailor, Army, Coastie, Air Force, spacemen — whatever they call them nowadays — wants to do is to undermine that. We’re here to protect democracy, we’re not here to undermine democracy.”

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that if Democrats “really cared about securing our elections,” the party would pass the SAVE America Act.

The legislation would require voters to provide documents, such as a birth certificate or passport, proving their citizenship. The measure has stalled in the Senate amid opposition from Democrats and a handful of Republicans.

In May, Trump told reporters that he would “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections,” in response to questions about sending National Guard personnel or federal immigration agents to voting locations in November.

Amendments blocked

At a Senate hearing in April, Slotkin pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on sending troops to the polls. He called the questions “another gotcha hypothetical.”

The Democratic legislation comes a week after Slotkin said Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee blocked two amendments to ban troops at the polls during work on the National Defense Authorization Act. The committee typically works on the defense spending bill behind closed doors.

The Protect Our Polls Act has virtually no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Congress. Still, its introduction underscores the level of concern among Democrats as Trump’s efforts to influence the midterm elections come into focus.

The Department of Justice has spent a year demanding states turn over unredacted copies of their voter rolls, including sensitive personal data on voters. DOJ officials have said in court that the department wants to share the data with the Department of Homeland Security, which operates a powerful computer program that can identify possible noncitizen voters.

The DOJ has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for the data, but no judge has so far ruled in the administration’s favor.

Investigations

The Department of Justice is also engaged in several election-related investigations over past elections.

The FBI raided a Georgia elections warehouse in January and seized ballots from the 2020 election. Election officials have been subpoenaed in Minneapolis and the FBI last week searched the office of an Ohio voting rights group.

And Trump signed an executive order that restricts voting by mail. It would require states to provide lists of voters to the U.S. Postal Service before using the mail to send ballots and directs Homeland Security to share lists of voting-age citizens with every state. The order remains in effect for now, despite a series of lawsuits challenging it.

“There’s a common theme here,” Padilla said at a Democratic forum on election security on Tuesday. “All of these things are illegal and many unconstitutional.”

By Jacob Fischler, Jonathan Shorman
National

Democrats are growing hopeful they can recapture the U.S. Senate in this fall’s midterm elections amid President Donald Trump’s plummeting approval ratings.

But they still need nearly everything to break their way against a map that put them at a starting disadvantage, analysts and campaign officials say.

At the outset of this election cycle, Republicans appeared highly likely to hold their majority. Democrats would need to flip four seats, and competitive races this year are in states that are more Republican than average.

But as election watchers increasingly expect a blue tint to the November midterms, the question is now whether it will be blue enough to put Democrats back in the Senate majority, where they are now at a 53-47 disadvantage.

Democrats are mounting competitive campaigns in Republican-run states typically seen as stretches, including Texas and Iowa. But analysts say scandals surrounding the party’s nominee in Maine, Graham Platner, have exposed how dependent Democrats are on a rising tide of voter anger with Trump and Republicans to lift their candidates to victory.

“Is 2026 gonna be a mildly blue lean year, like 2018, or a kind of tsunami blue year, like 2006 or 2008?” J. Miles Coleman, the associate editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a University of Virginia-based election forecaster, said. “I think the answer to that question is still kind of, we’ll see.”

Strong candidates, high prices

Thirty-five Senate seats will be on the ballot during the November midterm elections.

Of the nine deemed most competitive — Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas — that will likely decide control of the chamber, Trump won all but Maine and New Hampshire in 2024. Democrats would have to retain their current seats and flip others in some combination of seven of those Senate races to take over control of the chamber.

But Democrats have also offset their geographic disadvantage by fielding strong candidates in a few of the most important races, making pink-to-red states such as Alaska, Ohio and North Carolina ultra-competitive.

Democrats’ optimism comes as Trump has made a series of moves they believe could prove toxic for Republicans. Potentially most damaging, the war with Iran sent gas prices soaring and inflation rising, calling into question his handling of the economy as voters continue to rate affordability as a top issue.Trump has signed a ceasefire agreement and gas prices are dropping, but the question is whether there’s enough time left to erase the damage.

The president’s approval rating was near 50% when he won the 2024 election, Coleman said, but has since sunk as the cost of living keeps rising.

Trump continues to turn off voters, with elections now less than five months away. A New York Times daily average of polling placed the president’s approval rating at 39% as of June 17.

A switch in Senate control would have major implications for the remainder of Trump’s term.

Democratic senators, assuming they vote together, would have the power to block any U.S. Supreme Court nominees put forward by Trump in the final two years of his term, as well as executive branch nominees and federal judges, and to shut down major party-line legislation enacted by Republicans twice already in the past year through the budget reconciliation process.

The combination of an unpopular president and a strong crop of candidates gives Democrats a fighting chance to win the majority, even if they still face long odds, Coleman said.

“If you asked me a year ago if Democrats had a path to the Senate, I would have said the chances aren’t zero, but they’re very hard,” Coleman said. “Now, I think there are several paths that the Democrats have to take the Senate, but I think the Republicans just have an easier path holding it.”

Moderates put red states in play

Alvin Tillery, a Democratic pollster and consultant who is also a professor in Northwestern University’s political science department, said strong candidates in North Carolina, Ohio and Alaska give his party the edge in those states

Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and former Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola are “moderates who have won statewide,” Tillery said.

Though the Democratic candidates in those states are establishment-friendly, Tillery said Democrats generally should look to motivate younger voters and voters of color by leaning in to issues that the No Kings protests have elevated, as well as keeping affordability in focus.

But, despite the apparent quality of Democratic candidates, those states are still purple at best. Trump has won each state in each of his three White House runs.

The president’s drooping approval may not be as big a factor as Democrats need, a national Republican campaign operative said.

“Yes, approval ratings, obviously, have gone down,” the operative, who declined to be identified by name, said. “However, when it comes to the Republican base, they are still showing up for Trump, and he will make sure to turn them out … At the end of the day, we have an advantage when it comes to the state-specific electorates that we’re looking at.”

Control of the Senate may come down to the Democratic candidates’ strength against the overall partisan lean of the states in play.

“They’ve by and large done a good job of recruiting the candidates they need to to put those states in play,” Coleman said of Democrats. “It’s just a question of: Are those states too red?”

Democrats are also defending open seats in Michigan and New Hampshire, while Sen. Jon Ossoff is seeking reelection in Georgia. Sabato’s Crystal Ball rates the Michigan race as a toss-up and the contests in New Hampshire and Georgia, where Ossoff will face Trump-endorsed Rep. Mike Collins after his win in the June 16 GOP primary, as leaning toward Democrats.

A Maine street fight

On paper, Maine could be seen as the bluest state on the map this year because of its state’s record in presidential elections.

But its Senate race also may be the most immune from the national environment, with a battle-tested Republican incumbent running in a lightly populated state where retail politics can still swing an election.

The matchup, which may be the single most competitive in the country, pits a controversial newcomer in Platner against Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate and powerful Republican with proven electoral appeal who has occasionally criticized the president during the Trump era but also voted for conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Democrats are betting that Maine voters want more full-throated opposition to Trump. Primary voters formally made Platner the nominee in June after Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, seen as a more establishment candidate, suspended her campaign.

Platner, a gruff-looking oyster farmer and Marine veteran, has connected with voters with a populist, outsider message. But he has faced an array of flaps, including over a tattoo with Nazi associations and that Platner had sexted several women while married. The New York Times also reported on women who said they were disturbed by Platner’s behavior while dating him.

He faces a difficult matchup with Collins, who has won other races in the face of significant national headwinds. In 2020, even as Trump lost the presidential election nationwide and in Maine, Collins won reelection while outperforming Trump by 18 points.

Senate math

The president’s party typically does poorly in midterm elections. Republicans are seen as likely to lose the House, though gerrymandering may make the fight for control of that chamber tighter than before. Republicans losing the Senate, too, would be seen as a stinging rebuke of Trump and GOP lawmakers.

In Ohio, Republican Sen. Jon Husted is seeking election after he was appointed to the Senate last year to replace JD Vance, who resigned to become vice president. Brown is running against Husted after losing reelection in 2024 to Sen. Bernie Moreno.

Brown, who promotes a populist message, hearkens back to an earlier era of Ohio politics, when Democrats were more popular. President Barack Obama won the state in 2008 and 2012 but Republicans have since become ascendant, with Trump winning the state all three times he’s run for president.

While Husted hasn’t won a Senate race, he’s won statewide races for lieutenant governor and secretary of state.

In North Carolina, Cooper is now favored in a contest with Republican Michael Whatley, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Sabato’s Crystal Ball and the Cook Political Report have said the race leans Democratic, though another forecaster, Inside Elections, rates it as a tossup.

They are battling to flip the seat and succeed Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican who chose not to run for reelection after repeatedly clashing with Trump. He has publicly said Trump is harming Republican chances in November.

“We need Republicans to do well in November, but the stupid stuff is killing our chances!” Tillis wrote on social media in late May.

Alaska’s Senate race pits two well-known politicians in the state against each other. Incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan is facing Peltola, who was the state’s lone U.S. House member for more than two years.

Peltola represents a hope by Democrats that a familiar face will resonate with voters in a state where the party has struggled. She was the first Democrat to win statewide in Alaska since 2008. Peltola, who was first elected to Congress in a 2022 special election, lost her race for reelection in 2024.

Sullivan’s campaign got a boost after Alaska election officials disqualified a different Dan Sullivan from appearing on the ballot. Alaska Elections Division Director Carol Beecher wrote that the other Sullivan had filed “with a purpose to confuse or mislead” voters.

In Iowa, Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek, a state representative, are running for an open seat created after Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican, declined to run for reelection.

Iowa was once a major swing state and home of long-serving Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, and helped power President Barack Obama’s rise in 2008. It has since become solidly Republican, but anger over Trump’s tariffs and concerns that the war in Iran will send fertilizer prices rising have potentially created an opening for Democrats.

Lone Star longing

After Maine, no race has perhaps attracted as much attention as Texas.

Republicans are emerging from a bruising primary battle between Sen. John Cornyn and Ken Paxton, the scandal-plagued and previously indicted state attorney general. Paxton won and will face Democrat James Talarico, a state lawmaker and seminary student who speaks openly about his faith, a progressive form of Christianity.

A Democratic victory would represent a political earthquake. Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in Texas since the 1980s and haven’t won a statewide election since the 1990s.

Trump won 56% of the vote in Texas in 2024. A Talarico victory — a statewide Democratic victory — would open up the possibility that the party might one day again compete at the presidential level in Texas, the state that sent President Lyndon B. Johnson to Washington. Texas has 40 Electoral College votes, the second-biggest prize after California’s 54.

By Sam Gauntt
National

WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against a transgender healthcare nonprofit Wednesday, accusing it of misleading and coercing parents over gender-affirming treatment for their children.

The FTC’s complaint against the World Professional Association of Transgender Health is the latest in a series of legal actions from the Trump administration against organizations that provide gender-affirming treatment or work on transgender healthcare issues.

“WPATH deceived parents and children about the medical and scientific basis for such services, as well as their medical necessity, safety and efficacy,” a senior FTC official, who wished not to be identified, said in a call with reporters Wednesday.

The FTC was joined by Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas in the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Texas. Another senior FTC official on the call Wednesday said that the suit is seeking to prevent the nonprofit from making “future false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims to parents and children.”

The suit alleges that the association’s standards of care, which are widely adopted by healthcare providers, were crafted with the specific goal of guaranteeing that insurance companies would cover the treatment as medically necessary, in turn generating profit for the association’s members.

But the association described the complaint as “baseless,” and said in a statement Wednesday that it’s just another example of the Trump administration’s attempts to “interfere with Americans’ rights to seek and obtain the healthcare that should be decided between a patient and their physician.”

The guidelines are informed by established scientific standards, expert consensus, and patient-centered values, the association said, adding that it supports individualized patient care, rather than a “one size fits all” approach.

The association also said the FTC is not a medical provider, and as such, has no right to interfere with individualized medical decision-making and doesn’t have jurisdiction over WPATH or its speech. It said the states’ claims have similar factual and legal flaws.

WPATH likes its chances

The lawsuit comes after the association filed its own suit against the FTC in February, seeking to block an investigation which it described as being part of an “all-of-government campaign to undermine access to gender-affirming care and attack the First Amendment rights of medical organizations.”

A federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the association in May, temporarily pausing the FTC’s probe into the organization.

The association said Wednesday it’s predicting a similar outcome this go-around as well.

“A federal district court has already found WPATH is in a strong position to prove that the FTC is acting out of pure retaliation as part of the federal government’s relentless and targeted campaign to undermine gender-affirming care by attacking the First Amendment rights and the independence of professional medical organizations,” the organization said in its statement. “We expect the same result when we oppose this latest attack on WPATH and its mission to promote evidence-informed care and guidance for doctors and their patients.”

By Ashley Murray
National

WASHINGTON — The White House on Wednesday read to reporters a 14-point memorandum of understanding with Iran to stop the ongoing war and allow for further negotiations, but did not release the exact text.

The 60-day MOU outlines the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, sanctions relief and reconstruction funds for Iran, and the promise of negotiations on Iran ending its nuclear program. Senior administration officials say economic and sanctions relief will only occur if Iran is on “good behavior.”

“If we think that they’re just dragging us along and kind of bull- – – -ting us, then we’ll be very quick to pull the plug on it and go back to tightening the screws on them very, very aggressively,” a senior administration official who did not want to be identified said on a Wednesday afternoon call with reporters.

President Donald Trump told reporters in France he “might” stay in Europe for the ceremonial signing of the memo, but doubted it.

“This is a memorandum of understanding. It’s very important, but it might not be the kind of a document that I should be signing,” Trump told reporters at his final press conference of the G7 summit, a meeting of the world’s wealthiest capitalist economies.

Earlier Wednesday he told reporters at the G7, “If I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their head.”

Trump announced Monday he had reached a ceasefire agreement with Iranian officials to temporarily end the war, which has lasted longer than 100 days, but the administration had not released any part of the agreement until Wednesday. Members of the U.S. Senate complained they had not seen the details and some said they wanted to vote on a final agreement.

Iran’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif confirmed in a social media post Monday that a deal had been reached.

Iranians requested the United States not release the text until language was finalized, according to a second senior administration official who added “it was obviously unfortunate we weren’t able to put it out right away.”

“We were trying to accommodate their domestic messaging and their domestic politics. We’re trying to build trust with them, and that’s what they asked us to do, so we agreed to do it.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi warned on social media June 12 against speculation on the deal which “has never been closer” and said details would be shared with the public “in due course.”

Nuclear weapons

The 14-paragraph “Islamabad memorandum of understanding between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” which the second senior administration official read on the call, declares an “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”

The White House declined to provide a written copy of the MOU to reporters.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not agreed publicly to withdraw forces from Lebanon, which emerged as a second front of the war that the U.S. launched in tandem with Israel in February.

The U.S. and Iran have 60 days, “extendable with consent” to reach a final deal.

According to the agreement, Iran “reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons.”

The document charges the U.S. and Iran to agree on how to deal with Iran’s buried stockpile of enriched uranium, with the minimum arrangement being the “down blending” of the material on site under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“The two parties also agreed to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final deal,” according to the MOU.

In 2018, Trump pulled the U.S. out of a previous nuclear agreement brokered by former President Barack Obama’s administration.

Obama appeared skeptical Saturday of Trump’s nuclear negotiations with Iran.

“It is doubtful that any agreement that arises is going to be significantly different or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the first place and had worked for, for a long stretch of time before we, the United States, pulled out of it,” he told ABC News’ Robin Roberts.

Reopening Strait of Hormuz

The agreement also commits the U.S. to “immediately” begin the removal of its naval blockade on Iranian ports, with a full and final stoppage to occur within 30 days.

The U.S. will also have to remove military forces from the vicinity of Iran, meaning the American forces “will return our force posture in the region to that which existed before the conflict started,” according to the administration official.

Roughly 40,000 troops were in the region prior to the war. That number increased to approximately 50,000 after Feb. 28.

For its part, Iran must “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa,” according to the agreement.

However, the MOU continues: “The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start in considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles, and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran will be instated within 30 days.”

From there, Iranian officials agreed to negotiate a plan with the sultan of Oman and Persian Gulf states on “future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz.”

The war’s de facto closing of the strait has rocked economies across the globe, as 20% of the world’s petroleum exports passed uninterrupted through the narrow waterway prior to the conflict. Oil prices reached $120 per barrel during the height of the conflict but have fallen to roughly $79 this week.

Article 38 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea declares passage through straits a right that should not be impeded, though neither the U.S. nor Iran are party to the international agreement.

$300B in reconstruction funds

In perhaps one of the most “controversial” parts of the MOU, according to the senior official, Iran could see up to $300 billion in reconstruction funds.

The White House official was quick to downplay the prospect of Iran reaping billions of U.S. dollars.

“Note that it doesn’t require us to do anything to, one, to ever pay a cent of money to the Iranians, (and) to ever contribute money to this reconstruction fund,” the official said.

“What it says is that if we get to a final deal, and if the Iranians behave, we will permit the sanctions relief that would allow, for example, the Emiratis to build a power plant in Iran. That’s all it says. If they do what they have to do, we will permit the investment and the reconstruction of their country,” the official said.

Additionally, upon the signing of the MOU, the U.S. Department of Treasury will immediately issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil and other petroleum products, as well as associated activities, including bank transactions and insurance, according to the document.