Maine Democrats plan convention to replace scandal-hit Platner – US politics live

Senate pick announced his withdrawal in angry video accusing party and media of acting as ‘judge, jury and executioner’

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The Maine Democratic party has voted to hold a convention after its Senate pick Graham Platner withdrew from the race following accusations of sexual assault.

Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would ask the US supreme court to reconsider its ruling that the 14th amendment to the US constitution guarantees birthright citizenship in light of what he described as shocking new evidence: a hospital in Texas advertising its services to expectant mothers in Mexico on a pair of billboards. “Signs and Billboards are being put up all over our Southern Border, and Mexico, advertising BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP, with ‘Deliveries starting at $4000’, the president wrote on his social media platform, in what appeared to be a wild exaggeration of a Fox News report on just two billboards.

Donald Trump flew from Turkey to England onboard the older Air Force One on Wednesday, rather than the new, Qatari-gifted aircraft he used to travel to the Nato summit in Ankara, an unexpected change in plans that prompted questions about security fears. Trump later boarded the new plane at Mildenhall air force base in the United Kingdom for the trip back to Washington.

Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House’s World Cup taskforce, has defended Donald Trump’s lobbying of Fifa to lift the suspension of US player Folarin Balogun for Monday’s game against Belgium. The US president claimed that Brazilian referee Raphael Claus, who showed Balogun a red card in the match against Bosnia and Herzegovina, was “a little bit suspect, if you check his past”.

US stock markets fell on Wednesday as the US continued strikes on Iran and the Federal Reserve flagged concerns that would warrant higher interest rates. Donald Trump’s declaration at the Nato summit in Ankara that the Iran-US ceasefire is over sent oil prices sharply higher on Wednesday. Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped more than 5% to crest $80 a barrel.

A Manhattan federal court judge on Wednesday ordered the release of the more than $5m Donald Trump owes E Jean Carroll following her successful 2023 sexual abuse and defamation trial against him. Less than an hour after the judge issued his order, Trump filed paperwork indicating he was appealing the decision.

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