Democrats eye rare window of opportunity in Georgia runoff to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
The Democrat Shawn Harris will go head-to-head with Republican Clay Fuller in a runoff after they came out ahead in a special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress on Tuesday night.
The election for the state’s 14th congressional district has been seen as a test of Donald Trump’s sway and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in a deep-red pocket of north-west Georgia.
Former prosecutor Fuller has Trump’s endorsement and had raised more than $1m leading into voting on Tuesday, but Harris, a retired army general who faced Greene two years ago, has raised more than four times as much.
Fuller said he was confident he could bring Republicans together. Speaking on Tuesday evening, he said:
I think the Republican party is going to unite around us because they know that the Democrat is too dangerous. We can’t have a Democrat representing Georgia 14. That would be a tragedy for our community, a tragedy for Georgia 14 and a tragedy for the Maga movement.
Even though four Republican candidates dropped out before the election, the Republican field was fractured among more than a dozen candidates, including former state senator Colton Moore, a combative agitator to the right of most Republican legislators in Georgia.
By contrast, Harris contrasted himself with Greene’s bomb-throwing style, saying practical-minded Republicans should vote for him because he will work for constituents “not for somebody else who’s already in DC”. He said:
The way I’m going to go to Congress is that it’s going to be a coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans.
Fuller and Harris will face each other again on 7 April, and the winner will complete the rest of Greene’s term through the end of this year with hopes of re-election.
Read our full report here:
In other developments:
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The Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, has warned that Tuesday would be the “most intense” day of US strikes yet, even as he blamed Iran for civilian casualties by claiming its forces were firing missiles from schools and hospitals. Speaking alongside Gen Dan Caine, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Hegseth alleged Iran was deliberately firing missiles from schools and hospitals, describing the country’s leadership as “desperate and scrambling like the terrorist cowards they are”. More here.
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The minelayers near the strait of Hormuz were among multiple Iranian vessels taken out by US forces today, according to a post by the US Central Command. In a post on X, the military published unclassified footage of some of the vessels after Donald Trump warned Iran against laying mines in the critical waterway.
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Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, declined to condemn Republican lawmakers who recently made Islamophobic comments, saying only that he had spoken to them about their “tone”. Democrats and groups advocating religious tolerance have decried the statements from congressmen Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Randy Fine of Florida, with the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, calling on Johnson to discipline the latter. More here.
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Donald Trump said that America First Refining plans to open a new oil refinery in Brownsville, Texas, as part of a $300bn deal. “THE BIGGEST IN US HISTORY, A MASSIVE WIN for American Workers, Energy, and the GREAT People of South Texas! Thank you to our partners in India, and their largest privately held Energy Company, Reliance, for this tremendous Investment,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.
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Donald Trump has appointed Erika Kirk, the widow of murdered rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, to a key advisory board of the US Air Force Academy. The 37-year-old joins a number of other loyalists to the president on the 16-member panel of the academy’s board of visitors, which according to its website “inquires into the morale, discipline, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods and other matters” of the Colorado Springs military training facility. More here.
Key events
Senator Rick Scott says Trump has ‘no interest’ in boots on the ground in Iran
The Republican senator Rick Scott, who sits on the upper chamber’s armed services and foreign relations committees, said that Donald Trump “has no interest in troops on the ground” in Iran, during an interview with CNN.
On Tuesday, after a closed-door briefing with defense and state officials, Democrats on the Senate armed services committee lambasted the Trump administration’s “incoherent” strategy when it comes to the US-Israel war on Iran. “This is a disaster of epic proportions. It’s already getting Americans killed. It’s driving up prices here at home,” Chris Murphy said in a TV interview after the meeting.
Scott said that Democrats were being “disingenuous” about the possibility of Trump sending US soldiers to Iran – a move that he hasn’t entirely ruled out.
“There’s nothing in this briefing that said that we are going to put troops on the ground. There was nothing,” the GOP lawmaker from Florida told CNN.
Scott added that while it is going to be “very difficult” to open the strait of Hormuz, the administration “clearly” has a plan. This comes after the US military said it attacked and destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the crucial waterway. On Tuesday, CNN reported that Iran has begun laying explosive devices in the strait in recent days.
“Nobody wants to see gas prices up,” Scott said. “So we want prices to come down. I think, unfortunately, prices are going to be up for a while until this ends.”
Rachel Leingang
A Democrat won a special election for a state house seat in New Hampshire on Tuesday, flipping a Republican district that Donald Trump carried and marking the latest in a string of 28 Democratic upsets that could usher in a blue wave in the midterms.
Bobbi Boudman beat Republican Dale Fincher in New Hampshire’s Carroll county district 7. It was Boudman’s third try at the seat – she lost to incumbent representative Glenn Cordelli in the last two cycles by several points. Cordelli resigned from the seat after moving, leading to the special election on 10 March.
Unofficial results show Boudman winning with about 52% of the vote among the more than 4,000 voters who turned out.
Marissa Hebert, a spokesperson for the New Hampshire Democratic party, noted on X the swing Boudman made in the district: she lost in 2024 by more than 13 points. “Bad day for @NHGOP!” Hebert wrote.
National Democrats pointed to Boudman’s win as part of a pattern of Democrats winning in red and toss-up areas: Democrats have now flipped 28 seats since Trump won in November 2024, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) said. Republicans have not flipped any.
The committee hopes for more wins this year, with a strategy that could deliver the biggest Democratic gains in two decades, Heather Williams, the DLCC’s president, said.
Trump says ‘practically nothing left to target’ in Iran and war will end ‘soon’ – report
Donald Trump said that the US-Israel war in Iran will end “soon” because there is “practically nothing left to target” in a phone interview with Axios.
“Any time I want it to end, it will end,” the president told the outlet. “The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period.”
It’s the latest update in a series of inconsistent messages from the administration on the estimated timeline of the war. On Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president would ultimately determine when Iran is “in a place of unconditional surrender”. However, earlier this week, Trump told CBS News that the war is “very complete”, while touting how US forces have degraded the Iranian regime’s military capabilities.
This appears to be in contrast to his comments last week, where he suggested that the conflict could continue for as long as he deems necessary: “Whatever the time is, it’s OK, whatever it takes.”
In the midst of these mixed messages, defense secretary Pete Hegseth has insisted that the war would not be an exercise in “endless nation building”, while putting daylight between the bombing campaign on Iran and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Centcom commander says US hit Iranian ballistic missile facility in ‘most intense’ day of strikes
In a video update, Adm Brad Cooper – the commander of US Central Command (Centcom) – said that the US has “hit more than 5500 targets inside Iran, including more than 60 ships,” since the beginning of Operation Epic Fury 11 days ago.
Cooper also noted that US forces took out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ four remaining “Soleimani class warships”, and hit a large Iranian ballistic missile manufacturing facility. “It’s not just about what’s shooting at us today. It’s also about eliminating the threat in the future,” Cooper said.
The admiral added that Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks “have dropped drastically”, but pointed out that Iranian forces continue to “deliberately target innocent civilians in Gulf countries while hiding behind their own people”.
In response to the latest inflation data, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Elizabeth Warren, top Democrat on the Senate banking committee, said that the fact US inflation remained at 2.4% last month is proof that Donald Trump is “making life less affordable” for Americans.
“Instead of fixing the economic pain he’s caused, Trump single-handedly dragged the United States into a war with Iran, which will lead to even higher prices for families – from the gas pump and the grocery store to airline tickets and shipping costs,” the Massachusetts lawmakers said in a statement.
It’s worth noting that the latest figures from BLS capture the price of goods before the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran, and oil prices whipsawed in the last week.
Ahead of his visit to congressman Thomas Massie’s district in northern Kentucky, Donald Trump has continued to denigrate the Republican lawmaker on Truth Social.
“I predict that ‘Representative’ Thomas Massie will go down as the WORST Republican Congressman in the long and fabled history of the United States Congress,” the president wrote, before listing several other GOP representatives who have bucked Trump in recent years. Including those like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who sat on the congressional committee that investigated the president’s role in the January 6th insurrection.
“They are all misfits and losers,” Trump said, “but Massie, who is running against a great American Patriot in the Kentucky Primary, will hopefully lose BIG.” As I noted earlier, Trump has backed Massie’s challenger, Ed Gallrein.
Latest data shows that US inflation remains at 2.4%
The latest consumer price index report showed that US inflation remained at an annual rate of 2.4% in February.
The data does not reflect the hike in average gasoline prices since the beginning of the US-Israel war on Iran.
Overall, prices rose 0.3% from January.
Donald Trump will make the next stops on his affordability tour on Wednesday. He’ll start the day in Washington, before travelling to Cincinnati, Ohio for a site visit of a pharmaceutical company. Then he’ll deliver remarks in Hebron, Kentucky at a packaging facility.
We can certainly expect more from Trump about his administration’s aims to lower the cost of prescription drug prices. And we’ll be listening out for more about the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, and escalating gas prices for every day Americans.
Notably, this patch of northern Kentucky sits in Thomas Massie’s congressional district. Trump has insulted the Republican representative on several occasions, and even endorsed Massie’s GOP primary challenger, Ed Gallrein.
We’ll bring you the latest lines things get under way.
Melody Schreiber
New details are leading experts to fear that an “unethical” vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau is the “prototype” for studies under Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US department of health and human services (HHS) and longtime vaccine critic.
At the center of US vaccine policy is an unlikely set of Danish researchers whose work on the health effects of vaccines has been called into question. The study in Guinea-Bissau would have looked at the overall health effects of giving hepatitis B vaccines by only vaccinating half of the newborns in the study at birth despite an 18% prevalence rate in adults of the illness, which can lead to serious and sometimes fatal health consequences.
Stand Up for Science, a science and health nonprofit in the US, sent an investigator to Guinea-Bissau to look at public records and interview experts. The organization met with members of Congress on 19 February to share these results in an unreleased report, obtained by the Guardian, that raises concerns about how deeply the Bandim Health Project is enmeshed in public health in Guinea-Bissau and the challenges to conducting ethical research in this setting – with immense repercussions for how US research will be carried out under Kennedy.
“We are fearful that this is a prototype for other studies,” said Colette Delawalla, founder of Stand Up for Science. The US could fund global studies with the similar ethical concerns as the Tuskegee experiment five or 10 or 100 times a year, she said. “It could be extraordinarily deadly.” Stand Up for Science held nationwide rallies on Saturday to protest moves like these.
Trump’s pick for state department role withdraws after backlash over past ‘anti-Israel’ and race remarks
David Smith
Donald Trump’s nominee for a top diplomatic post has been withdrawn from consideration after a growing backlash over his past remarks on race and Jewish people left him without crucial Republican support.
Jeremy Carl, who had been tapped to serve as the assistant secretary of state for international organisations – a role overseeing US policy towards bodies such as the UN – announced on Tuesday that he was stepping aside after failing to secure unanimous backing from Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee.
In a statement posted on X, Carl thanked Trump and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, for their support but acknowledged that it would not be enough to secure confirmation.
“With unanimous opposition from Senate Democrats to my candidacy, we also needed the unanimous support of every GOP [Grand Old Party] senator on the Committee on Foreign Relations,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, at this time this unanimous support was not forthcoming.”
The Senate foreign relations committee normally votes on nominations before sending them to the full Senate. Carl’s prospects had appeared shaky since his confirmation hearing in February, when one Republican member of the panel publicly broke ranks.
John Curtis, a Senator for Utah, who is regarded as one of the more moderate Republicans in the chamber, said afterwards that he could not support the nomination, citing Carl’s record of comments on Israel and Jewish people.
“I find his anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated,” Curtis said.
Jeffrey Epstein’s former accountant who went on to become the executor of his estate, Richard Kahn, will face questions behind closed doors today before the House Oversight Committee.
Kahn, who was associated with the paedophile for over a decade, managing investments and finances in his final years. He was also responsible for renovations on Epstein’s Caribbean island.
He was one of two executors of of Epstein’s estate, with the other, lawyer Darren Indyke scheduled to answer questions next week.
In February, Epstein’s estate agreed to pay as much as $35m to resolve a class-action lawsuit that accused the two advisers of aiding and abetting his sex trafficking of young women and teenage girls, according to a court filing.
In the 2024 lawsuit, lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner said Indyke and Kahn helped Epstein create a complex web of corporations and bank accounts that let him hide his abuses and pay victims and recruiters, while leaving them “richly compensated” for their work.
Democrats eye rare window of opportunity in Georgia runoff to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
The Democrat Shawn Harris will go head-to-head with Republican Clay Fuller in a runoff after they came out ahead in a special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress on Tuesday night.
The election for the state’s 14th congressional district has been seen as a test of Donald Trump’s sway and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in a deep-red pocket of north-west Georgia.
Former prosecutor Fuller has Trump’s endorsement and had raised more than $1m leading into voting on Tuesday, but Harris, a retired army general who faced Greene two years ago, has raised more than four times as much.
Fuller said he was confident he could bring Republicans together. Speaking on Tuesday evening, he said:
I think the Republican party is going to unite around us because they know that the Democrat is too dangerous. We can’t have a Democrat representing Georgia 14. That would be a tragedy for our community, a tragedy for Georgia 14 and a tragedy for the Maga movement.
Even though four Republican candidates dropped out before the election, the Republican field was fractured among more than a dozen candidates, including former state senator Colton Moore, a combative agitator to the right of most Republican legislators in Georgia.
By contrast, Harris contrasted himself with Greene’s bomb-throwing style, saying practical-minded Republicans should vote for him because he will work for constituents “not for somebody else who’s already in DC”. He said:
The way I’m going to go to Congress is that it’s going to be a coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans.
Fuller and Harris will face each other again on 7 April, and the winner will complete the rest of Greene’s term through the end of this year with hopes of re-election.
Read our full report here:
In other developments:
-
The Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, has warned that Tuesday would be the “most intense” day of US strikes yet, even as he blamed Iran for civilian casualties by claiming its forces were firing missiles from schools and hospitals. Speaking alongside Gen Dan Caine, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Hegseth alleged Iran was deliberately firing missiles from schools and hospitals, describing the country’s leadership as “desperate and scrambling like the terrorist cowards they are”. More here.
-
The minelayers near the strait of Hormuz were among multiple Iranian vessels taken out by US forces today, according to a post by the US Central Command. In a post on X, the military published unclassified footage of some of the vessels after Donald Trump warned Iran against laying mines in the critical waterway.
-
Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, declined to condemn Republican lawmakers who recently made Islamophobic comments, saying only that he had spoken to them about their “tone”. Democrats and groups advocating religious tolerance have decried the statements from congressmen Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Randy Fine of Florida, with the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, calling on Johnson to discipline the latter. More here.
-
Donald Trump said that America First Refining plans to open a new oil refinery in Brownsville, Texas, as part of a $300bn deal. “THE BIGGEST IN US HISTORY, A MASSIVE WIN for American Workers, Energy, and the GREAT People of South Texas! Thank you to our partners in India, and their largest privately held Energy Company, Reliance, for this tremendous Investment,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.
-
Donald Trump has appointed Erika Kirk, the widow of murdered rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, to a key advisory board of the US Air Force Academy. The 37-year-old joins a number of other loyalists to the president on the 16-member panel of the academy’s board of visitors, which according to its website “inquires into the morale, discipline, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods and other matters” of the Colorado Springs military training facility. More here.