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Pete Hegseth to campaign with Thomas Massie rival in Kentucky as Trump lays into Republican critic – US politics live | US news
Eyes on Kentucky as Massie and Gallrein race to the primary
It’s election day in Kentucky’s fourth congressional district tomorrow and the race for the Republican representative is between the incumbent Thomas Massie – a consistent thorn in Trump’s side – and Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein.
Massie is hosting a pulled pork and chicken dinner for his supporters at Veteran’s Memorial Park tonight to talk about what he hopes to achieve in congress, while defense secretary Pete Hegseth is expected on the ground in Kentucky at 1pm to support Gallrein. Hegseth and Gallrein will appear together at an event organized by America First Works, a conservative grassroots advocacy organization.
Representatives Lauren Boebart and Warren Davidson stood by Massie during a campaign event Sunday, as Trump continued to lambast him on Truth Social.
“Third Rate Congressman Thomas Massie, a Weak and Pathetic RINO from the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky,” said Trump. “Must be thrown out of office, ASAP!”
The chances appear higher for Trump and Gallrein. On Saturday, Bill Cassidy, the Republican senator from Louisiana who voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment over the January insurrection, was voted out of his primary election.
Key events
Trump and President Xi Jinping of China reached a consensus on multiple issues, including that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, the Strait of Hormuz should be reopened with no country charging tolls, the denuclearization of North Korea and that the US and China should “build a constructive relationship of strategic stability,” according to a fact sheet released by the White House Sunday.
China approved the purchase of 200 US-made Boeing aircraft for its airlines, and agreed to purchase at least $17B worth of US agricultural products per year in 2026, 2027 and 2028 – this was additional to the soybean purchase China committed to earlier, according to the White House.
China and the US will establish trade and investment councils and discuss tariff reductions on specific products, said China’s Ministry of Commerce on Saturday, without stating more details, according to Xinhua News, China’s official state news.
Eyes on Kentucky as Massie and Gallrein race to the primary
It’s election day in Kentucky’s fourth congressional district tomorrow and the race for the Republican representative is between the incumbent Thomas Massie – a consistent thorn in Trump’s side – and Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein.
Massie is hosting a pulled pork and chicken dinner for his supporters at Veteran’s Memorial Park tonight to talk about what he hopes to achieve in congress, while defense secretary Pete Hegseth is expected on the ground in Kentucky at 1pm to support Gallrein. Hegseth and Gallrein will appear together at an event organized by America First Works, a conservative grassroots advocacy organization.
Representatives Lauren Boebart and Warren Davidson stood by Massie during a campaign event Sunday, as Trump continued to lambast him on Truth Social.
“Third Rate Congressman Thomas Massie, a Weak and Pathetic RINO from the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky,” said Trump. “Must be thrown out of office, ASAP!”
The chances appear higher for Trump and Gallrein. On Saturday, Bill Cassidy, the Republican senator from Louisiana who voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment over the January insurrection, was voted out of his primary election.
Taiwan would “welcome” an opportunity for its leader to speak to US president Donald Trump after he raised the possibility, a senior Taiwanese diplomat said on Monday.
Trump told reporters on Friday that he had to speak to the man “running Taiwan” – an apparent reference to president Lai Ching-te – about arms sales.
A conversation between Lai and Trump would be a major break in US diplomatic policy and risk a rupture with China, which claims Taiwan is part of its territory.
Trump made the remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One on the way back to Washington after a summit in Beijing where Chinese president Xi Jinping had pushed him not to support Taiwan.
“I’m going to make a determination. I’m going to see,” Trump said in response to a question about whether he would go ahead with arms sales to Taiwan.
“I have to speak to the person that right now is – you know who he is – that’s running Taiwan.”
Dozens of state anti-vaccine bills backed by Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) supporters have failed after public health groups won over Republican state lawmakers, marking a series of defeats for the backers of health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.
The failures show a limit to the political power of the MAHA coalition groups that had set out this year to pass laws against mandatory vaccinations in at least 10 states, hoping to capitalize on a rise in anti-vaccine sentiment and their role in helping elect president Donald Trump.
Pro-vaccine groups and medical associations including American Families for Vaccines, the American Academy of Pediatrics and others lobbied in statehouses against bills seeking to end policies like school vaccine mandates, according to Reuters interviews with seven organizations.
Vaccine advocates used polling data and personal appeals to convince lawmakers in Republican-controlled states such as West Virginia, Louisiana and Florida that their constituents support vaccination and that the MAHA-backed bills posed a threat to public health.
Trump may have to wait for rate cuts until the Iran war is over, he tells Fortune
President Donald Trump conceded in an interview with Fortune magazine published on Monday that he may have to wait until the war with Iran was over for more interest rate cuts.
“You can’t really look at the figures until the war is over,” he said.
Trump said Iran was “dying to sign” a ceasefire deal with the US. “But they make a deal, and then they send you a paper that has no relationship to the deal you made.” he told Fortune.
The president also said he “should have asked for more” of a stake in Intel on behalf of the US government.
The Trump administration last year took a 10% stake in Intel and announced an investment of about $10 billion in the chipmaker for building or expanding factories in the U.S.
Eight months after the deal, the government’s Intel position has grown to be worth more than $50 billion.
Redistricting debate shifts to South Carolina as Republicans seek clean sweep of House seats
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
An effort to reshape South Carolina’s congressional districts will get its first full airing Monday in the state House.
Lawmakers will launch a lengthy – and potentially testy discussion – over whether to accede to president Donald Trump’s calls for a US House map that could yield a clean sweep for Republicans, AP reports.
Debates already have played out in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana as Republicans push to leverage a recent Supreme Court ruling that weakened Voting Rights Act protections for minority districts.
The ruling has opened the way for Republicans to redraw districts with large black populations that have elected Democrats. In South Carolina, that means targeting a seat long held by representative Jim Clyburn, the only Democrat among the state’s seven representatives in the House.
Clyburn has said he has no intention of retiring, even if his district gets changed. He told reporters last week in Washington that he has addresses in Columbia, Charleston and Santee, adding:
I live in three districts. I’ll decide which one to run in.
“It ain’t about Jim Clyburn’s district,” he added. “This isn’t about voting. This is about turning the clock back to Jim Crow 2.0.”
Early voting is scheduled to begin on 26 May for South Carolina’s statewide primaries on 9 June. In addition to redrawing congressional districts, legislation pending in the state House would move the House primaries to August. If it clears the House, the legislation then must go to the Senate.
In other developments:
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A US Senate official on Saturday removed security funding that could be used for Donald Trump’s planned $400m White House ballroom from a massive spending package, Democratic lawmakers said, imperilling Republican efforts to devote taxpayer money to the contentious project.
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The Republican senator Bill Cassidy lost his primary on Saturday, as voters in Louisiana opted instead to advance two challengers to a runoff election after an extraordinary intervention by Trump to oust the incumbent.
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With two days to go before the next big test of Trump’s iron grip over his party, the president went head-to-head on Sunday with his nemesis, Thomas Massie the Kentucky congressman who is in a fight for his political life in Tuesday’s Republican primary.
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Workers renovating one of Washington DC’s most historically symbolic sites in a project ordered by Trump may be risking their safety as they race to finish on time for the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations, a union monitoring the site has warned.
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The FBI director, Kash Patel, is facing new scrutiny following reports that he participated in a snorkelling excursion around the USS Arizona during a trip to Hawaii last summer.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union calls off a series of 24-hour strikes starting on Tuesday.
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Darren Prosser says he is lost for words after the golf star makes history and wins the US PGA.
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Middle East crisis live: Trump warns ‘clock is ticking’ for Iran to reach peace deal | US-Israel war on Iran
Trump warns ‘clock is ticking for Iran’ to reach peace deal
We are restarting our coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran and Israel’s war on Lebanon. Donald Trump has issued an extreme warning to Iran to quickly agree to a peace deal with the US or face devastation.
As Washington struggles to break an impasse on ending the war, the US president said on his Truth Social platform on Sunday: “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”
Trump is expected to meet top national security advisers on Tuesday to discuss options for military action on Iran, according to a report in the US outlet Axios.
It came as a drone strike in the United Arab Emirates caused a fire at a nuclear power plant – which the country called a “dangerous escalation” and blamed on Iran or its proxies – and Saudi Arabia reported intercepting three drones.
Tehran has demanded a lasting ceasefire in Lebanon before any broader peace deal with Washington.
Israel’s airstrikes killed seven people in Lebanon on Sunday, including an Islamic Jihad commander, Lebanese authorities and state media said, despite the fragile ceasefire as Hezbollah called US-brokered talks between the two countries a “dead end”.
In other key developments:
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Iranian media said the US had failed to make any concrete concessions in its latest response to Iran’s proposed agenda for negotiations to end the war. The Fars news agency said on Sunday that Washington had presented a five-point list that included a demand for Iran to keep only one nuclear site in operation and transfer its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to the US.
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Islamic Jihad commander Wael Abdel Halim and his 17-year-old daughter were killed in an Israeli missile strike on an apartment in eastern Lebanon on Sunday, Lebanese state media said. Israeli strikes on towns in southern Lebanon earlier killed five people, including two children, and left at least 15 people injured, the Lebanese health ministry said, despite Israel and Lebanon agreeing to extend their ceasefire by 45 days.
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Hezbollah had fired about 200 projectiles at Israel and its troops over the weekend, an Israeli military official said on Sunday.
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Israel’s cabinet approved a plan to build a defence compound on the site of the recently demolished premises of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) in East Jerusalem. Israel seized the site last year in an act the agency condemned as a violation of international law.
Key events
The Israeli military has ordered residents of three towns and villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately by a “distance of no less than 1000 meters to open areas” in advance of attacks against the locations.
The affected towns and villages are: Harouf, Burj Al-Shamali and Dibal, according to a social media post by the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, who claimed the attacks are being launched due to Hezbollah, the Iranian backed Lebanese militant group, violating the US-mediated ceasefire agreement Israel signed with the Lebanese state in mid April.
International law experts say Israel’s warnings are inconsistent and often overly broad and open-ended. Sometimes there is no warning at all before the airstrikes. More than one million people have already been displaced by the renewed Israeli war on Lebanon which started when Hezbollah launched missiles at Israel on 2 March after the US-Israeli bombing of Iran in late February.
In its latest update, the Lebanese health ministry said since 2 March Israeli attacks have killed at least 2,988 people, including many women and children.
Friedrich Merz has been embroiled in a row with Donald Trump over his war on Iran ever since the German chancellor suggested the Trump team was being outplayed in its negotiations with Tehran and said he would not advise his children to study or work in the US in the current climate.
The Guardian’s Berlin correspondent, Deborah Cole, has looked at the declining relationship between the two leaders in this story. Here is an extract:
Disputes over trade and military aid for Ukraine have fuelled tensions between the US and its European allies and tested the Nato alliance.
Merz is struggling to revive an anaemic German economy and has said the impact of the US-Israeli military action in Iran and the ensuing closure of the strait of Hormuz has been severely damaging to European interests.
Late last month he stunned listeners in Germany as well as the US with blunt comments stating that the Americans were being “humiliated” by Iran’s leadership in the current conflict, angering Trump.
Days later, Washington announced a partial troop withdrawal from Germany, where it has about 36,000 military service members, and tariff hikes on cars imported from the EU, a sector crucial to the German economy.
Merz, whose popularity ratings are plumbing record depths in German polls, has since then said he was “not giving up on working on the transatlantic relationship”, while declining opportunities to retract his criticism of Trump.
German chancellor Friedrich Merz has posted the following statement on his X account:
We strongly condemn the renewed Iranian airstrikes against the United Arab Emirates and other partners. Attacks on nuclear facilities pose a threat to the safety of people throughout the entire region. There must be no further escalation of violence.
Iran must enter into serious negotiations with the USA, stop threatening its neighbours, and open the strait of Hormuz without restrictions.
Merz’s comments come after a drone strike caused a fire on the edge of the UAE’s only nuclear power plant on Sunday in what authorities called an “unprovoked terrorist attack” (see post at 08.48 more details).
Iran announces new body to manage strait of Hormuz
Iran’s top security body has announced the formation of a new body to manage the strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has effectively closed to countries it deems hostile to it – and wants to charge ships to traverse.
On its official X account, the Supreme national security council shared a post for the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) saying it would provide “real‑time updates on the Hormuz Strait operations and latest developments”.
Gaza’s health ministry said in its latest update that at least six people were killed and 40 others injured in Israeli attacks across the territory over the past day.
The health ministry says 877 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire in October 2025.
It says that 72,769 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since October 2023, when Isreal launched its assault on the territory following the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed.
Israel has widely been accused of committing genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza, including by human rights groups. Amnesty International has said Israel is still committing genocide in Gaza during the ceasefire by continuing to target Gaza’s now mostly destroyed civilian infrastructure and restrict access to medical supplies and humanitarian relief. Israel denies the charge of genocide.
The October 2025 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas explicitly required the immediate resumption of humanitarian aid. Over half a year into the ceasefire, the amount of aid being let into Gaza is still wholly inadequate to meet the needs of the population, despite a small increase from before the agreement.
“Israel’s intermittent closure of crossings, restrictions on the flow of humanitarian aid, and continued ban on the entry of essential supplies have produced chronic shortages of food, medicine, and basic goods across Gaza,” a recent reliefweb report noted.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has accused Israel of manufacturing a malnutrition crisis in Gaza. “The malnutrition crisis is entirely manufactured,” Mercè Rocaspana, MSF medical adviser for emergencies, said.
“Before the war, malnutrition in Gaza was almost nonexistent. For two and a half years, the systematic blockade to humanitarian aid and commercial goods, on top of insecurity, have severely restricted access to food and clean water. Healthcare facilities have been forced out of service and living conditions have profoundly deteriorated. As a result, vulnerable groups of people are placed at heightened risk of malnutrition.”
Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas has systematically diverted aid supplies for military or political purposes and infiltrated aid organisations but has provided limited evidence to support the allegations.
Israeli forces were intercepting a Gaza-bound aid flotilla on Monday after it set sail from Turkey last week.
“Military vessels are currently intercepting our fleet and IDF forces are currently boarding the first of our boats in broad daylight,” the Global Sumud Flotilla posted on X.
“We demand safe passage for our legal, non-violent humanitarian mission. Governments must act now to stop these illegal acts or piracy meant to maintain Israel’s genocidal siege on Gaza. Normalisation of the occupation’s violence is a threat to us all.”
About 50 ships had departed from southwestern Turkey on Thursday as part of the flotilla that set off for Gaza to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza and attempt to reach the territory – devastated by relentless Israeli attacks – with humanitarian aid. On Monday, Israel had vowed to block the vessels.
“Israel will not allow any breach of the lawful naval blockade on Gaza,” the foreign ministry posted on X. “Israel calls on all participants in this provocation to change course and turn back immediately.”
Israel and Egypt have imposed varying degrees of a blockade on Gaza since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007. Israel claims the blockade is needed to prevent Hamas from importing arms, but many say it amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s Palestinian population.
Revised Iranian proposal to end war shared with US – report
The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei also confirmed in the news conference that Tehran had responded to a new US proposal aimed at ending the war.
“As we announced yesterday, our concerns were conveyed to the American side,” he told journalists.
Baghaei said exchanges were “continuing through the Pakistani mediator”, without providing details.
Citing a source, the Reuters news agency reported this morning that Pakistan had shared a revised peace proposal from Iran with the US.
“We don’t have much time,” the source told Reuters when asked if it would take time to close gaps, adding that both countries “keep changing their goalposts”.
It is not immediately clear what is in the revised proposal but Iran’s previous demands have reportedly included compensation for war damage, an end to Israel’s war on Lebanon and the US’s blockade of Iranian ports, guarantees of no further attacks on Iran and a recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the strait of Hormuz, something the US has rejected.
Washington is reportedly losing patience with Iran’s negotiators and is weighing up a resumption of military operations if Tehran does not make the sort of concessions on its nuclear programme it wants.
The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei has been speaking at a news conference.
He told reporters that Iranian and Omani technical teams have met in Oman to negotiate a mechanism for safe transit in the strait of Hormuz, a strategic stretch of water located between Iran, the UAE and Oman at the heart of the impasse in the peace talks, Al Jazeera is reporting.
About a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas usually passes through the strait. But Iran closed the shipping route to so-called “hostile” countries in response to being attacked by Israel and the US on 28 February, causing global energy prices to surge and raising bills for consumers around the world.
Iran effectively closed the strait by attacking – or just threatening to attack – some ships and told others not affiliated with the US or Israel that they could pass through the waterway if they paid a toll.
Donald Trump imposed a counter-blockade of ships using Iranian ports on 13 April to try to pressure Tehran into accepting concessions to bring an end to the war – but this failed. The US has said repeatedly there can be no permanent solution to the blockade that involves the payment of a toll to Iran, and claims that Oman holds a similar view.
Oman’s foreign ministry has condemned the drone strike that caused a fire at the perimeter of UAE’s Barakah nuclear power plant on Sunday.
In a statement shared to X, the ministry expressed its solidarity with the UAE but stressed that it rejected all “hostile and escalatory acts” as it urged for dialogue to address regional issues and called for international law to be respected by all parties.
The UAE did not say who launched the attack and there was no immediate claim of responsibility. No injuries were reported and officials said there was no impact on radiological safety levels.
Trump warns ‘clock is ticking for Iran’ to reach peace deal
We are restarting our coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran and Israel’s war on Lebanon. Donald Trump has issued an extreme warning to Iran to quickly agree to a peace deal with the US or face devastation.
As Washington struggles to break an impasse on ending the war, the US president said on his Truth Social platform on Sunday: “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”
Trump is expected to meet top national security advisers on Tuesday to discuss options for military action on Iran, according to a report in the US outlet Axios.
It came as a drone strike in the United Arab Emirates caused a fire at a nuclear power plant – which the country called a “dangerous escalation” and blamed on Iran or its proxies – and Saudi Arabia reported intercepting three drones.
Tehran has demanded a lasting ceasefire in Lebanon before any broader peace deal with Washington.
Israel’s airstrikes killed seven people in Lebanon on Sunday, including an Islamic Jihad commander, Lebanese authorities and state media said, despite the fragile ceasefire as Hezbollah called US-brokered talks between the two countries a “dead end”.
In other key developments:
-
Iranian media said the US had failed to make any concrete concessions in its latest response to Iran’s proposed agenda for negotiations to end the war. The Fars news agency said on Sunday that Washington had presented a five-point list that included a demand for Iran to keep only one nuclear site in operation and transfer its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to the US.
-
Islamic Jihad commander Wael Abdel Halim and his 17-year-old daughter were killed in an Israeli missile strike on an apartment in eastern Lebanon on Sunday, Lebanese state media said. Israeli strikes on towns in southern Lebanon earlier killed five people, including two children, and left at least 15 people injured, the Lebanese health ministry said, despite Israel and Lebanon agreeing to extend their ceasefire by 45 days.
-
Hezbollah had fired about 200 projectiles at Israel and its troops over the weekend, an Israeli military official said on Sunday.
-
Israel’s cabinet approved a plan to build a defence compound on the site of the recently demolished premises of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) in East Jerusalem. Israel seized the site last year in an act the agency condemned as a violation of international law.
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