Democrats say supreme court rejection of Trump mail ballot restrictions will ensure ‘safe, secure and accurate elections’ – US politics live

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

• 44m ago

  Trump facing AI backlash in Congress as push for guardrails intensifies

• 1h ago

  Supreme court rejection of Trump mail ballot restrictions will ensure 'safe, secure and accurate elections'

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.“

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.

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”.