Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Donald Trump will attend campaign rallies in Arizona and Montana later today, having spent the past 24 hours in Alaska – a sign of his party’s recent polling woes.

Conservative Alaska is one of several where the Democrats have a chance of flipping a Senate seat amid voter dissatisfaction with the cost of living and the Iran war.

Polling has shown Democratic candidate Mary Peltola tied ⁠or slightly ahead of incumbent Republican senator Dan ⁠Sullivan in a state the president carried by 14 percentage points in 2024.

Here, as in much of the United States, the president’s approval rating is flopping, hit by rising diesel and gasoline prices and a conflict in the Middle East that has proven deeply unpopular with voters.

Opening for Trump, Sullivan acknowledged that Alaskans face “challenges” when it comes to energy costs. But “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary,” he said. “The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas ⁠and our jobs.“

The president has taken to campaigning in conservative-leaning ​parts of competitive states, rather than in more politically diverse areas with more votes potentially up for grabs.

At one point, Trump pardoned two local repair shop owners who were convicted of violating the federal Clean Air Act for removing pollution controls on diesel engines.

He also encouraged Republicans to vote by mail – a process he has repeatedly sought to curtail and discredit. Trump will spend Wednesday campaigning in Arizona and Montana.

In other developments:

  • In Alaska, Donald Trump repeated his false claim that he had to start his war on Iran because, “they were two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon”. In fact, US intelligence agencies reported to Congress in 2025 that Iran had suspended its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003. Despite that assessment, in the summer of 2025, Trump ordered the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities which he later claimed had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program. Eight months after that, he launched a full-scale war on Iran justified, he now says, by Iran being just weeks away from getting the bomb.

  • Aboard Air Force One on his way to Alaska for a campaign rally, the president of the United States posted video of a British man who was fatally mauled by a tiger last week on his social media platform with the mocking caption: “Don’t ever mess with nature!”

  • The new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, passed on an opportunity to set the record straight on whether she is licensed to practice law anywhere in the United States. Asked “Where did you pass the bar exam?” Zacharia just said: “I moved to China.”