With Ken Paxton positioned to face off against James Talarico in the November general election for John Cornyn’s former US Senate seat, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is trying to walk back fears that a Democrat could win the seat.

“A state President Trump won by nearly 14 points isn’t going to elect James Talarico — a radical leftist who thinks God is nonbinary and that Texas should be a welcome mat for illegals,” said regional press secretary Samantha Cantrell. “He is the most dangerous flank of the far left. Texas isn’t swapping brisket for open borders.”

An April survey by The Texas Public Opinion Research (TPOR) has Talarico ahead of both Cornyn and Paxton in one-on-one contests. According to the poll, which surveyed the intentions of 1,865 likely voters, Talarico has a five point lead – 46% to 41% over Paxton.

Ken Paxton has won the Republican nomination for Texas’s open US Senate seat, after receiving Donald Trump’s endorsement last week.

The scandal-ridden state attorney general was competing against four-term incumbent John Cornyn.

Paxton will face off against Democrat James Talarico in November’s general election. Recent polls have put Talarico, with his blend of faith-based populism, bipartisan appeal and generational energy, in a tight race that could see Texas unexpectedly elect a Democrat.

Polls have closed across all of Texas, as the clock strikes 7pm in the Mountain time zone.

Christian Menefee has defeated Al Green to represent Texas’s newly redrawn 18th congressional district.

Green, 78, had served 11 terms as a Democrat, earning a reputation as one of Donald Trump’s top critics, when he became the first member of Congress to call for his impeachment, as early as 2017.

Menefee, 38, began serving in Congress earlier this year after he won a special election. The two Democrats faced off against each other in this year’s election after Republican redistricting saw their home districts near Houston redrawn.

Although Menefee still has to win the November general election, he’s favored in the heavily Democratic district.

Donald Trump has appointed Pam Bondi to an advisory committee focused on artificial intelligence, Axios reports.

The news that the former US attorney general will join the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology comes about two months after Trump fired Bondi from her post as head of the justice department.

“Pam has been an enormously valuable asset to the president’s team, and I’m thrilled for her and for all of us that she’s going to remain involved in confronting some of the most important issues the administration faces,” JD Vance said in a statement.

The majority of polls in Texas, where Republican voters are considering whether to nominate Ken Paxton or John Cornyn for US Senate, have closed.

The state is spread across two time zones, Central and Mountain, meaning some polls in the Westernmost parts of the state will remain open one more hour.

A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked the re-detention of Mahmoud Khalil as his legal team prepares to petition his case with the US supreme court.

My colleague Maya Yang has the full story:

The decision on Tuesday from the third circuit court of appeals gives the 31-year-old activist and US green card holder a temporary reprieve as the broader legal fight over his detention and immigration status continues.

In a statement following the ruling, Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Democracy, said: “We’re grateful that the court recognized the irreparable harm Mahmoud would face if he were re-detained before the supreme court has a chance to review his case.

“Detention would serve only to cruelly separate him from his family and further chill his speech. We look forward to asking the supreme court to make clear that the government cannot use the threat of detention and deportation to silence dissent,” Kaufman added.

The case of Khalil, a Palestine-born recent Columbia University graduate, has become a flashpoint across the US over free speech and the Donald Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism across US campuses.

Protests continued on Tuesday outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey where US senator Andy Kim said he was pepper-sprayed by federal agents the day before during a demonstration against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) outside the facility.

As my colleagues José Olivares, Richard Luscombe and Victoria Bekiempis report:

Video posted on social media showed Kim, a Democrat representing New Jersey, receiving help from a volunteer on Monday, who is seen pouring water in his eyes outside Delaney Hall in Newark, where detainees have said they are staging a hunger strike against poor conditions and the denial of medical care.

Demonstrators had clashed with immigration officers who used batons and pepper spray over the weekend as they attempted to transfer a detainee who organized the hunger strike to another facility. On Tuesday, masked ICE officials forced people out of the way as vehicles moved in and out of the facility.

Kim, a senator from New Jersey, had joined the state’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, also a Democrat, at the protest to speak with relatives of some of those detained. He told USA Today that the incident in which he was sprayed by a chemical substance came shortly after he had been inside Delaney Hall to see conditions for himself.

Angela Paxton, the Texas state senator and wife of attorney general and US Senate hopeful Ken Paxton, has not endorsed her husband.

In a social media post today, Paxton endorsed candidates for state attorney general, railroad commissioner and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals – but made no mention of her husband, who received Donald Trump’s endorsement in his runoff bid for the Republican nomination last week.

Although Paxton stood by her husband during his impeachment trial in 2023, she filed for divorce “on biblical grounds”, citing adultery, last year.

Construction is under way on the White House lawn for a UFC arena that will host a cage-match next month to mark the United States’s 250th anniversary and Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. The mixed martial arts fight is planned for 14 June.

Photos of cranes and other construction equipment on the White House lawn today show the beginnings of the temporary construction. Trump has said that the finished project will feature “a 5,000-seat arena right outside the front door of the White House.”

Trump first floated the idea of hosting a UFC fight on the White House grounds last year, during an appearance in Idaho on 4 July 2025 when he announced festivities planned to celebrate the United States’s 250th birthday on 4 July 2026.

“Think of this on the grounds of the White House. We have a lot of land there,” he said, originally adding that it would be a “full fight” with 20,000 to 25,000 people in attendance.

In December, Trump said the White House event would host “eight or nine championship fights – the biggest fights they’ve ever had.” But like the size of the crowd, the number of fights expected to be held on the White House lawn has shrunk. The fight card includes two title fights: a lightweight championship fight between Ilia Topuria and Justin Gaethje in the main event, and an interim heavyweight title fight between Alex Pereira and Ciryl Gane.

Trump has long been a fan of mixed martial arts, and is close friends with Dana White, the UFC’s president.

As construction began on the White House lawn, competitors at the Scripps National Spelling Bee navigated around it Tuesday. After 15 years at a convention center in Maryland, the spelling bee was relocated to Washington DC’s Constitution Hall. Families staying at the nearby J.W. Marriott would usually walk across the Ellipse to reach the hall, but with construction ongoing there, families are making a longer trek around. The parent of one speller, Rajeev Malhotra, described the scene as “two very disparate forms of entertainment.”

Nasa announced on Tuesday ambitious plans for three uncrewed lunar missions this year to kickstart construction of a $20bn moon base, and said it had chosen the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to conduct the first.

The revelation by Nasa’s administrator, Jared Isaacman, at a press conference in Washington DC marked the first detailed public explanation of how and when the moon base will be built.

He said the three missions planned for 2026 would be followed by “more than a dozen” more in the coming years to test systems and equipment. He said the highly successful Artemis II mission last month that sent four astronauts around the moon for the first time since 1972 had been both a catalyst and incentive to advance the moon base plan.

“People are looking up again, believing in big things again, and paying attention as America returns to the moon again, and this time to stay,” he said.

He added, without mentioning any names, that the agency had been “having the tough conversations with those failing to meet expectations” since the Artemis splashdown on 10 April.

Today, Texans are voting for a Republican nominee for US Senate in a runoff election. Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, is competing against four-term incumbent John Cornyn.

The winner of the runoff will go up against Democrat James Talarico in November’s general election. Recent polls have put Talarico, with his blend of faith-based populism, bipartisan appeal and generational energy, in a tight race with Cornyn and Paxton.

Last week, Donald Trump endorsed Paxton, who Trump called “a true Maga warrior”. But Paxton has been embroiled in a series of controversies. He was acquitted in a 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges. He also reached a deal in 2024 to end a long-running securities fraud case.

The Guardian follows the Associated Press in calling an election. We’ll bring you the results from Texas’s runoff election as the AP calls the races. Polls in Texas close at 7pm local time, with polls split across the Central and Mountain time zones.

Here’s more of our latest coverage of the runoff:

Brazilian senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the country’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, met with Donald Trump at the White House today, Reuters reports, citing Bolsonaro.

Flávio Bolsonaro is currently running for Brazil’s presidency against incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who met with Trump earlier this month. Bolsonaro has been trying to shore up his election bid after The Intercept published leaked messages showing the senator received millions in donations from a Brazilian banker accused of defrauding customers of millions of dollars.

Uber and Lyft drivers in Massachusetts have become the first in the nation to certify a union for gig-economy workers of ride-hailing apps. On Friday, the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations certified the App Drivers Union, which represents nearly 70,000 drivers classified as independent contractors.

“It changes the ​game for ride-share workers across this country,” Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said at a rally ​with drivers and labor activists in Boston today. Labor leaders hailed the victory as the largest organizing win since Ford autoworkers unionized in 1941.

The victory comes as drivers say they’re contending with rising gas, insurance and other costs, alongside the rise of self-driving vehicles. Similar efforts to unionize ride-share drivers are under way in California and Illinois.

The winning plan to rebuild Penn Station features Donald Trump’s name and preferred architectural style throughout, according to documents obtained by the New York City news site Gothamist.

Trump’s transportation department took control of the Penn Station rebuild alongside Amtrak last year, saying it would save taxpayers money and champion a public-private partnership in the redesign. Earlier this year, the White House proposed renaming Penn Station as “Trump Station”, Gothamist reported in February.

Last week, the transportation department announced it had chosen Penn Station Partners as the “master developer” for the station. Gothamist reports that “New York elected officials criticized the bidding process for a lack of transparency. The details of Amtrak’s request for proposals, as well as the three final bidders’ plans for Penn, were kept under wraps.”

Internal documents obtained by Gothamist include a rendering of the station’s proposed new Eighth Avenue entrance, which includes a large plaque with Donald Trump’s name etched into marble alongside a presidential seal. The renderings also show gold-accented railings throughout the station and American flags at the entrance, echoing designs for the new White House ballroom.

The United States Space Force has awarded a $2.29 bn contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which would see the tech billionaire’s aerospace and artificial intelligence company build a satellite communications network to connect military sensors and weapons platforms around the world.

SpaceX has previously won several military contracts for work on satellite communications. Here’s more of our previous reporting on the subject:

Vice President JD Vance held a roundtable for state attorneys general on anti-fraud initiatives Tuesday afternoon. Democratic attorneys general declined, reported the Washington Examiner, claiming it was not a good-faith effort.

About two dozen Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter to Vance, saying:

“While we would appreciate the opportunity to engage in serious discussions, the invitation was provided with less than one business day’s notice with no agenda. This short notice does not match the spirit of collaboration that has long defined our joint efforts with federal partners. Accordingly, we respectfully decline to attend at this time.”

• Trump urges Texas Republicans to vote for Ken Paxton in runoff election. As Texas heads to the polls for the primaries, Trump reminded his supporters to vote for Attorney General Paxton, who is running against John Cornyn, the incumbent.

• Two Republican-led efforts to redraw congressional maps in Alabama and South Carolina hit setbacks. In Alabama, a federal court said the proposed map could not be used because it was drawn to intentionally discriminate against Black voters. The South Carolina Senate voted against redrawing the state’s congressional map due to political and administrative reasons.

• Trump completes annual physical after year of public attention to health issues. Trump, the oldest inaugurated president in US history, completed a physical exam on Tuesday at Walter Reed national military medical center, amid questions around his health. “Everything checked out PERFECTLY,” the US president declared in a social media post.

• Trump administration considers asking federal workers to sign NDAs. The goal of asking federal employees to sign nondisclosure agreements is to prevent them from sharing confidential information with journalists.

• Iran says US broke ceasefire with overnight strikes, with impact on peace talks unclear. Further to that, while Donald Trump continues to insist that a peace deal is close, Iran has accused the United States of violating the ceasefire after conducting what the US called “self-defense” strikes overnight.

The goal of asking federal employees to sign nondisclosure agreements is to prevent them from sharing confidential information with journalists.

The office of personnel management (OPM), the human resources office for the US government, released a draft nondisclosure agreement designed for federal agencies to use with new and existing employees. Under the draft agreement, the administration could pursue civil and criminal penalties against employees who violate it. The US government would be entitled to all “royalties” that employees receive from disclosing information that violates the agreement, according to the draft.

The OPM did not immediately offer further explanation.

The draft form is the latest step in the president’s effort to exert more control over US government workers and the flow of information to the public.

“This move is rooted in concerns that unauthorized disclosures of sensitive government information are disrupting agency operations and eroding trust across government,” an OPM spokesperson, McLaurine Pinover, said in an email to Reuters.

Former government employees would need “written permission from an authorized agency official” to speak to journalists about information the Trump administration deems “confidential” after leaving their jobs, according to the draft. Former employees who violate that rule could be subject to civil and criminal penalties.