Exclusive: Anti-Trump Republicans back Democrat in hopes of ousting Maga congressman in Pennsylvania
A group of anti-Trump Republicans have endorsed the Democratic nominee in a pivotal House race in Pennsylvania, according to details first provided to the Guardian.
Republicans Against Perry (Rap) revived their effort to oust hardline congressman Scott Perry last year. Now, the group is formally backing Democrat Janelle Stelson in Pennsylvania’s 10th District, which includes Harrisburg.
Rap is backed by WelcomePac, which focuses its support for Democratic candidates across the country. The group is also launching a new ad which focuses on Perry’s support for restarting the infamous nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island.
Craig Snyder, Rap’s executive director, said the new campaign aims to show Perry “kowtowing to Washington and the handful of the super rich by supporting a billion taxpayer dollars to restart the reactor … known the world over as the site of the first major nuclear accident ever in the free world”.
Stelson’s race to unseat Perry is a rematch. The former local news anchor previously challenged the incumbent in 2024 and lost by just one percentage point.
Perry, the four-term representative, is a member, and former chair, of the House’s ultra-conservative Freedom caucus. Following Joe Biden’s presidential victory in 2020, he maintained that the election was stolen, and in the lead-up to the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, Perry introduced Trump to Jeffrey Clark, a fellow election denier who was then a justice department official.
Snyder is hoping the small margin Stelson fell short by in the last cycle will be easy to overcome in the November midterms. “This year, with Governor Josh Shapiro at the top of the ticket, and many more Republicans having second thoughts about the real impacts of Maga policies in our lives, Perry is going to be retired by the people of Central Pennsylvania,” he told the Guardian.
European confidence in an American “security guarantee” has hit a historic low, a survey suggests, with only one in 10 people across 15 countries seeing the US as an ally and majorities in all doubting it would come to their aid if they were attacked.
The survey, published on Wednesday by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank before critical G7 and Nato summits in France and Turkey over the coming weeks, revealed “deep European distrust in the US”, the authors said.
It also showed that, while many Europeans felt relations with Washington would improve once Donald Trump leaves office, they were increasingly ready in the meantime to protect themselves against US unreliability by bolstering Europe’s defence.
The US president’s Middle East aggression, threats against Greenland, vows to withdraw troops from European bases and scepticism on the future of Nato had also prompted a growing European pragmatism, the report said.
“Across the continent, there’s clear support for reducing dependence on Washington,” said Jana Kobzová, a co-author and ECFR senior policy fellow. “Europeans are increasingly open to higher defence spending and, crucially, show a striking degree of confidence that neighbouring countries would come to their aid in a crisis.”
Trump presses on with plan to install Bill Pulte as acting intelligence chief
Donald Trump is pushing ahead with his controversial plan to install political loyalist Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence, a move that has sparked bipartisan congressional backlash and imperiled the reauthorization of a powerful surveillance law set to expire at the end of this week.
Trump’s Tuesday evening announcement came after he met earlier in the day with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, to discuss Pulte’s elevation to the role, which has prompted widespread concern over his complete lack of national security experience and the prospect that he could use the office’s spying powers to continue his campaign of targeting Trump’s perceived political enemies.
Writing on social media, Trump said Pulte was already working with the outgoing director, Tulsi Gabbard, and will take her place on 19 June, while remaining head of the federal mortgage agency.
Gabbard, a former congresswoman who served in the military and then on a House subcommittee with oversight of military intelligence, had announced in her resignation letter that she would step down on 30 June.
Trump offered no explanation for Pulte taking over before that date, but the president has suggested in public comments that he expects his political ally to investigate elections that he has falsely claimed were “rigged” once he is installed as the country’s top intelligence officer.
Bill Gates to face questions from House committee over links to Jeffrey Epstein
Bill Gates is set to testify in front of the House committee on oversight and reform on Wednesday as part of the panel’s investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The Microsoft co-founder will appear in a closed-door session, where lawmakers are expected to question him about his past relationship with Epstein. A transcript of the interview is expected to be released at a later date.
In a statement to the Guardian before his appearance, a spokesperson for Gates said that Gates “welcomes the opportunity to appear before the committee” and said that “while he never witnessed or participated in any of Epstein’s illegal conduct, he is looking forward to answering all the committee’s questions to support their important work”.
The committee, chaired by James Comer, requested Gates’s appearance in March, following the justice department’s release of millions of documents related to Epstein earlier this year. The files included numerous mentions of Gates, as well as several photographs of him, and records showing that he met with Epstein on several occasions, renewing scrutiny of Gates’s past ties to the disgraced financier.
Progressives rallied round the controversial Graham Platner after his primary victory in Maine on Tuesday, while Donald Trump again exerted his grip on the Republican party, helping to defeat a politician who had pushed for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Primary elections were held in four states – Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina – ahead of November’s midterms to decide control of both houses of Congress. The results offered mixed signals about the direction of the two major parties.
The marquee race was a Senate primary election in Maine, where Platner won 72% of the vote, defeating the state governor, Janet Mills, who had suspended her campaign but remained on the ballot, and third-placed David Costello, based on early results reported by Reuters.
The result sets up a bruising general election battle against the Republican incumbent, Susan Collins. Maine is among a handful of states where Democratic strategists believe a Republican-held seat is genuinely vulnerable.
Platner, 41, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer from the small coastal town of Sullivan, had in effect wrapped up the nomination weeks ago when Mills suspended her campaign after concluding there was little prospect of catching him.
Controversial Platner overcomes allegations to seal Democratic nomination for Senate race
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Graham Platner won the Maine Democratic primary for Senate and called for supporters to “believe people can change” amid his controversial candidacy.
The Marine veteran won 72% of the vote, defeating the state governor, Janet Mills, who suspended her campaign in April but remained on the ballot, and third-placed David Costello, based on early results reported by Reuters.
Reports emerged that Platner had exchanged sexually explicit messages with several women while married. Former partners described him as volatile and unfaithful.
One ex-girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, a Republican operative, alleged in the New York Times that more than a decade ago he had twisted her arm behind her back during an argument and held her in a room against her will – claims that Platner categorically denied.
“If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and our country then you must also believe that people can change,” Platner, 41, told supporters in Blue Hill. “And the reason I believe is that is because I have lived it. And the reason I have lived it is because of my wife.”
In a nod to his troubled past, Platner said:
Redemption is not just some simple or easy destination; it’s a journey. I’ve made mistakes in my life, mistakes I regret, that I live with, that I continue to learn from. I’m still far from perfect. But every day I wake up and I try to be a little bit better and a little kinder than I was the day before. And if you give me the chance, I will be a senator for the people who cannot afford to buy a senator.
Platner also earned supportive hollers and whoops from the crowd when he took a swipe at his critics outside Maine.
“Now, the national pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by. But in trying so hard to understand me, they fail to understand that this is not about me at all. This is a movement about us.”
Platner will face the senator Susan Collins, a Republican running for a sixth six-year term, in November. The race is seen as a must-win for Democrats to take control of the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.
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In other developments:
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House Republicans narrowly passed a reconciliation bill on Tuesday, by two votes, to provide another $70bn in funding over the next three years to the Department of Homeland Security, ensuring that agencies carrying out Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda remain funded until the end of his presidency.
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At nearly the same moment, the US struck Iran again, in retaliation for the downing of a US helicopter near the strait of Hormuz.
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JD Vance, the US vice-president, said that a deal with Iran to end the war launched by the US and Israel 102 days ago, “could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.”
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Lesley Groff, longtime executive assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades, testified before the House oversight and reform committee.
