Trump ally pledges to ‘work with people’ he disagrees with after Arizona primary win – US politics live

Key events

Trump ally pledges to 'work with people' he disagrees with after Arizona primary win

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Andy Biggs – a hard-right congressman endorsed by Donald Trump – won the Republican nomination for Arizona governor, saying he will “work with people that don’t necessarily agree with me”.

He will now challenge the incumbent Democrat, governor Katie Hobbs, in a race that is expected to be among the most fiercely contested in the country this fall.

Biggs, a former chair of the House freedom caucus who was a central figure in the effort to overturn Trump’s election defeat, trounced fellow congressman David Schweikert, by appealing to the party’s deeply conservative base.

“Let’s make this the year that we turn Arizona red again,” Biggs said.

Schweikert argued during the campaign that Biggs would continue a decade of Republican backsliding. However, he struggled to raise money and did not even return to Arizona for Election Day, remaining in Washington as the House passed a government funding bill .

Biggs rejected Schweikert’s claim that he’ll be another Republican judged by voters to be too extreme.

“I am a conservative - and a principled conservative - but I work with people that don’t necessarily agree with me on every issue,” Biggs told a reporter after his victory speech.

Throughout the campaign, Biggs and Schweikert offered constrasting visions for reclaiming the governorship. Schweikert, who gave up his toss-up congressional seat to run for governor after eight terms, argued that Biggs’ hard-right politics and unswerving embrace of the president had allowed Democrats to make gains in once-ruby-red Arizona.

Read the full story here:

In other developments:

• As he wages war on Iran to prevent that country from enriching uranium, Donald Trump has reportedly approved a deal with ⁠Saudi Arabia to have US firms build a civilian nuclear energy program in the kingdom, which could include a uranium enrichment facility, US officials told the Wall Street Journal. The deal, which the administration plans to submit ⁠to Congress ⁠in the ​coming days, does not include safeguards to stop ‌materials being used in nuclear weapons programs, Reuters reports.

• The US-Israeli war on Iran has cost the Pentagon $37.5bn so far, defense secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.

• “Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people,” New York mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a video statement in which he called the International Criminal Court warrant for the Israeli prime minister’s arrest justified but admitted that he lacks the legal authority to enforce it.

• Donald Trump announced a new package of tariffs on Tuesday, this time on generic drugs made overseas, to begin in 2028.

• The Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday advanced the nomination of Jay Clayton to serve as the US intelligence director, despite criticism from Democrats.

• The Trump administration paused more than $1bn in Medicaid funding to California and Minnesota, two states run by elected Democrats, citing “suspected fraud and noncompliance”.