Tennessee governor halts executions after second botched lethal injection attempt this year – US politics live

President Donald Trump and vice-president JD Vance will both hit the campaign trail on Thursday, but they will be heading to heavily Republican areas to shore up lagging enthusiasm in their party ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

Trump’s travel on Thursday to Texas and Oklahoma kicks off what the president said will be a ۳۲-day campaign blitz, AP reported. Vance will be stumping in Florida, putting the Republican party’s highest-ranking officials in areas where GOP candidates once expected to have glide paths to victory but are now facing tougher races.

Republicans have expressed growing pessimism about their chances in the election, which will determine control of Congress, as the president has repeatedly dismissed concerns about high costs and gas prices as his unpopular war in Iran drags on.

According to Trump, his party’s headwinds are merely a matter of poor public relations about a job he says is well done. “We’re not getting the word out,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “I mean, we’re just not getting it.”

Democratic senators have accused Donald Trump’s administration of worsening the country’s childcare crisis, warning that rising costs and daycare closures are leaving families with fewer affordable options.

In a letter seen by the Guardian and addressed to Alex Adams, assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), senators led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts argue that federal cuts and changes to childcare programs like Head Start are destabilising an already fragile system.

Childcare costs rose faster than overall inflation in ۲۰۲۵, the letter notes, while the cost of daycare and preschool increased by ۳.۵% in the year to May ۲۰۲۶.

“American families face skyrocketing child care costs,” the senators write, asserting that rising prices for food, supplies, insurance, rent and utilities are forcing providers to choose between increasing tuition fees and closing.

The letter says more than ۴۰۰ daycare centres have closed in Oklahoma since November, while more than ۳۰۰ programmes have shut in Indiana since September last year.

The senators also criticise the administration’s handling of Head Start, the federal programme providing early education and other services to low-income children.

“The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) unlawfully froze program funding for grantees mere weeks after President Trump took office – which forced some Head Start programs to temporarily close and left thousands of the country’s most vulnerable families’ child care with uncertainty – and withheld funding from grantees until they complied with the administration’s rigid requirements,” the letter says.

The letter also highlights an ACF decision in January to freeze $۲.۴bn in Child Care and Development Fund grants for five states. The freeze was subsequently rescinded after legal challenges, but the senators warned that a similar move could happen again.

Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, three decades ago, survived Tennessee’s effort to execute her by means of an unprecedented two lethal injections, prison officials said.

This was the state’s first attempted execution of a woman in ۲۰۰ years. “At one point … she said, ‘my arm feels like it’s about to burst open’,” said Tori Gessner, a news anchor for ABC affiliate WKRN, who witnessed the attempted execution, before adding “then she smiles really big”.

Other journalists present described Pike snoring, exhaling loudly and gasping.

Lauren Gambino

Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton, the candidates running to be California’s next governor, clashed Wednesday over taxes, immigration and regulating artificial intelligence in a testy debate held days before voters begin receiving their ballots in the heavily Democratic state.

Hilton, the former Fox News host endorsed by Donald Trump, used the hourlong matchup, hosted by CNN, to argue that Becerra, a former congressman who served as health and human services secretary during the Biden administration, was not actively campaigning and instead taking voters for granted.

“He wasn’t even supposed to be the candidate,” Hilton, ۵۷, said, referring to Becerra’s unexpected success after an unusually wild primary campaign. “I just want to ask every Californian: Aren’t you tired of that?”

Becerra, ۶۸, pitched his experience as an asset, vowing to tackle the state’s punishing cost of living crisis while being a bulwark against the Trump administration’s policies. He accused Hilton of owing loyalty to Trump – and not the state that roundly rejected the president in each of the last three presidential elections.

“If you listen closely, you can hear Donald Trump in that response,” Becerra said of Hilton’s reply to a question about regulating the development of AI.

Americans are deeply frustrated with president Donald Trump’s handling of the economy and rising prices, with most panning his performance and blaming his policies as higher costs threaten his party’s chances in November.

A new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only ۱۷% of US adults approve of the Republican president’s handling of the cost of living. Just ۲۶% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.

A majority, ۶۵%, of US adults now blame Trump’s policies for persistently high costs more than factors outside of his control, signaling growing weariness over his aggressive use of tariffs and continued unhappiness with the war with Iran.

The dismal numbers come just weeks before midterm elections that will determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress and while Trump is hitting the campaign trail with an aggressive schedule of rallies.

But Trump – who has asked voters to pretend that he is on the ballot as he tries to bolster turnout – remains deeply unpopular, with even many Republicans faulting him for failing to deliver on promised relief.

Trump officials abandon effort to investigate election threats, experts warn

George Chidi

The Trump administration has abandoned key security bodies meant to investigate direct threats to US elections by foreign actors and domestic terrorists, according to former officials and a recent report.

While administration officials have been actively focused on unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud by noncitizens, other credible election threats appear to have been overlooked, the officials say.

Between ۲۰۲۱ and ۲۰۲۴, the justice department’s election threats taskforce prosecuted ۲۱ cases, like that of Solomon Peña, a failed candidate for the New Mexico house of representatives who organized shootings at the houses of election officials, or Quintez Brown, who shot up a campaign meeting of Louisville’s mayor.

Democrats and Republicans faced prosecution for harassing, intimidating and threatening elections workers, noted Nikki Fisher, former chief election security officer for the Oregon secretary of state, now the executive director of the Oregon District Attorneys Association.

Since then, the taskforce seems to have gone quiet.

“While officials are being trained to handle threats, the federal deterrent meant to punish the people making them appears to have gone quiet,” Fisher said. “To date, no new cases have been prosecuted, and the DoJ’s election threats taskforce appears to be defunct in practice.”

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Tennessee governor Bill Lee has halted the state’s remaining executions for the rest of the year after officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death yesterday.

Pike, ۵۰, was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her attorneys said. She was being treated at a hospital, but they said they hadn’t been told about her condition.

She had been scheduled for execution at ۱۰am on Wednesday for the killing she committed at age ۱۸ and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than ۲۰۰ years.

Governor Lee said that he was halting the one remaining execution for the rest of ۲۰۲۶ and ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.”

“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” Lee said in a statement.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that they “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”

Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings late Wednesday. The state’s execution protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set. It does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.

It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution. In May, state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in ۱۹۹۴, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.

In other developments:

• The latest in a series of pro-Trump ads the Trump administration is using taxpayer funds to air on television in the run-up to the the midterm elections is a ۱-minute spot that celebrates his decision to go to war with Iran.

• Pete Hegseth announced that Elon Musk will co-lead a government project to study the future of warfare, with Palmer Luckey, CEO of the defense tech company Anduril, and Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House.

• An internal watchdog said the Federal Reserve mismanaged costs associated with a $۲.۴bn renovation of its Washington DC headquarters, but noted that no criminal violations occurred, according to a report released Wednesday.

• Trump said South Korea plans to invest about $۵۴bn in a natural gas project in Alaska.

• Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton, the candidates running to be California’s next governor, clashed Wednesday over taxes, immigration and regulating artificial intelligence in a testy debate held days before voters begin receiving their ballots in the heavily Democratic state.