Californians head to the polls as governor primary goes down to the wire – US politics live | US news

Dozens of members of Congress and Capitol Hill staffers have enjoyed lavish gifted travel to Israel funded by an Aipac affiliate since 7 October 2023, amid Israel’s expanding wars on its neighbors and despite plummeting levels of support among Americans for the country’s policies, a Guardian analysis has found.

Congressional ethics filings and other public records show the trips, led by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), revolved around one-sided briefings on Middle East politics and Israeli domestic and foreign policy. Lawmakers and their staffers from both parties met Israeli officials, military contractors and civil society figures, including Benjamin Netanyahu and advocates for the annexation of the West Bank and the displacement of Palestinians from Jerusalem.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and other pro-Israel groups have sponsored such trips for years, and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have joined. But the continued participation of Democratic lawmakers and their staff on recent trips is particularly noteworthy given how much sympathy for Israel has ebbed among Democratic voters, and the pains that some Democratic politicians have recently taken to distance themselves from the lobby group.

A recent poll found that eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have an unfavorable view of Israel, along with six in 10 Americans broadly.

The congressional ethics filings show that members of Congress and their staffers were hosted at luxurious hotels, dined at top-tier restaurants and received briefings in at least one West Bank settlement. While one of the trips referenced in this story has previously been reported in broad terms, the Guardian is revealing details relating to itineraries, costs and other trips for the first time.

Journalists may no longer enter the Pentagon’s press office, which has been designated as a classified space amid growing moves to restrict press access to the defense department.

“This is the most transparent war department in history. No amount of spin from the Fake News media will change that,” Jose Valdez, the acting defense department press secretary, said in a social media post. “The Pentagon Press Office has been redesignated as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility due to speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War sharing the facility.”

Valdez added that, because speechwriters handle classified material, “journalists will no longer be permitted to enter the office space”. The move was first reported by the Washington Post, and later confirmed by Valdez on social media.

The defense department, which the Trump administration prefers to call the war department, began rolling out new restrictions to press access in September, when the military demanded journalists pledge not to gather any information – including unclassified documents – that had not been authorized for release or else risk revocation of their press passes.

Credentialed journalists have long had broad access to the Pentagon, but after the defense department announced sweeping restrictions to their work in October, many longtime reporters refused to agree and began turning over their press passes. That month, the department announced a “next generation of the Pentagon press corps” featuring 60 journalists from far-right outlets. The New York Times sued the Pentagon over those policies, which designated journalists as “security risks”, and a federal judge found in the Times’s favor in March.

Donald Trump is reconsidering whether to keep pressing for a $1.8bn fund to compensate his allies, a person familiar with his thinking said on Monday, as the justice department paused the program to comply with a court order.

Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund has faced legal setbacks since it was announced two weeks ago. The idea has also faced a mounting political backlash from Republicans concerned by a lack of oversight and the possibility of payouts to participants in the January 6 2021 riot at the US Capitol.

Some Republicans are pressing the White House to commit to giving up on the fund.

“I do think the best way to handle it is if the administration decides to shut [the fund] down themselves,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters.

Democrats in the US Senate had vowed to force Republicans to vote on what they deride as a $1.8bn “Maga slush fund” established as part of a resolution of Donald Trump’s long-shot lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.

The US president has described the secretive and loosely controlled fund as a means of paying the victims of politicized prosecutions. Members of his own party are among those who have expressed alarm.

The terms of the fund do not require the disclosure of how much is paid to whom. Administration officials have said payees could include pardoned January 6 rioters.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Californians go to the polls today in the first round of voting for a new governor, with a tight three-way race for two run-off spots.

The golden state will also vote on House districts for the first time since it approved Proposition 50 – its response to Texas redrawing its congressional lines to create five Republican leaning districts at the behest of President Trump – in November last year.

Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota and New Mexico also hold elections on Tuesday.

Focussing on California, the state’s governor primary pits all candidates against each other, regardless of party, with the top two advancing to November’s general election to replace the term-limited Gavin Newsom, AFP reports.

More than 60 names appear on the lengthy ballot papers that have been mailed out to all registered voters in the heavily Democratic state of 40m people. The latest polls show a three-way split, with former president Joe Biden’s health secretary Xavier Becerra in the lead.

In the battle for second place and the chance to take on Becerra in November are Democrat Tom Steyer and Donald Trump-backed Republican Steve Hilton.

Incumbent Newsom is believed to have his eyes on the White House in 2028, following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, who occupied the governor’s mansion from 1967 to 1975.

It comes as voters in Los Angeles will also vote in the city’s mayoral primary.

Incumbent Karen Bass, who is making her case for a second term, facing a challenge from the left by her former ally on the city council Nithya Raman – and another from the right by reality TV star Spencer Pratt.

If anyone secures 50% of the votes on Tuesday, they win outright, whie anything less means the top two candidates go through to the 3 November general election.

In other developments:

• Democrats in the US Senate vowed to force Republicans to vote on a $1.8bn “Maga slush fund” established as part of a resolution of Donald Trump’s long-shot lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. The US president has described the secretive and loosely controlled “anti-weaponization fund” as a means of paying the victims of politicized prosecutions.

• Tina Peters, the former clerk convicted of participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories promulgated by Donald Trump, was released from prison on Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado’s Democratic governor into commuting her sentence.

• On Monday afternoon, over an hour south of Newark, a few dozen protesters outside the New Jersey state legislature in Trenton condemned Democratic governor Mikie Sherrill’s decision to send in the state police to Delaney Hall, the Newark immigration detention center that has seen more than a week of chaotic and often violent clashes.

• Transgender troops can remain in the US military, but the armed services can continue to block their enlistment, an appeals court ruled on Monday in a split decision with potentially significant consequences for the Trump administration’s anti-diversity agenda.