Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of US politics for the day, but we will be back on Thursday. Here are the latest developments:
Senate Republicans on Wednesday voted down an attempt to require Donald Trump to receive Congress’s permission before continuing the war with Iran, batting aside concerns from Democrats that the campaign is illegal and risks plunging the United States into a prolonged conflict.
Pete Hegseth and Karoline Leavitt were evasive when asked about the bombing of an Iranian girls’ elementary school four days ago, which killed 175 people.
A retired US marine was dragged out of a Senate hearing in Washington on Wednesday by the Capitol police and a Republican senator, Tim Sheehy, as he protested the US-Israeli attack on Iran by shouting: “No one wants to fight for Israel!”
As Trump tried to end a bitter Republican primary contest between John Cornyn, a four-term Republican senator, and Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, saying that he would endorse one and call on the other to drop out, Paxton went on a rightwing news channel to say he is not dropping out.
Steve Daines, a Republican senator from Montana, ended his bid for re-election on Wednesday, three minutes before a deadline, and endorsed an ally who filed paperwork to run for the seat just five minutes earlier.
Tony Gonzales, a Republican congressman from Texas who faces a House ethics investigation into a reported affair with a former aide who died by suicide, admitted on Wednesday that he did have the affair.
In victory speech, Talarico offers Texas a vision of Jesus as a radical, anti-corruption activist
Speaking on Wednesday as the Democratic nominee in the US Senate race in Texas, Jame Talarico, a state representative and Presbyterian seminarian, centered his campaign on a vision of Jesus as a radical, anti-corruption activist.
“My grandad was a Baptist preacher in South Texas. He told me at an early age that we follow a barefoot rabbi who gave us two commandments: love God and love neighbor, Talarico said as supporters held up “Love Thy Neighbor” campaign signs behind him.
“My faith teaches me to love my neighbor as myself. Not just my neighbor who looks like me. Not just my neighbor who prays like me. Not just my neighbor who votes like me. I am called to love all of my neighbors the way I love myself,” he continued. “That’s what motivated me to go into public service — first as a public school teacher and now as a public official.”
At the end of his address, Talarico suggested that the story of how Jesus expelled merchants from the Temple was a model for how he hopes to fight against corporate interests.
“We’re running against the billionaire megadonors and their corrupt political system. They’ll call me a radical leftist. They’ll call me a fake Christian,” he said.
“Two thousand years go, when the powerful few at the top hurt those at the bottom, that barefoot rabbi didn’t stay in his room and pray. He walked into the seat of power and flipped over the tables of injustice,” he said. “It’s time to start flipping tables.”
