Maine oyster farmer Graham Platner is leading Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) by 9 points in polling ahead of their November faceoff.

The Pine Tree State Poll from the University of New Hampshire, released Wednesday, found that 51 percent of likely voters said they would cast their ballot for Platner while 42 percent said they’d back Collins. Another 2 percent said they would choose another candidate and 6 percent are undecided.

The findings resemble results from February, when the numbers showed the Democratic candidate with 49 percent support compared to the incumbent’s 38 percent. Platner rose as a front-runner for Democrats in the state after Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) dropped her bid.

Several weeks after NBC News reached out to Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield about the denial, the insurer changed its policy to include coverage of deep brain stimulation for certain children.

Alabama on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to use a congressional map favoring Republicans in this year’s elections, despite a lower court’s ruling that the redistricting plan intentionally discriminates against Black people.

The state’s Republican leadership filed an emergency appeal with the justices a day after a three-judge court refused to let the state use a map it adopted three years ago that has a majority Black population in just one of its seven congressional districts.

The judges instead required Alabama to continue using a court-ordered map that was put in place for the 2024 elections that includes two districts where Black residents comprise a majority or close to it.

Refunds came after the supreme court ruled Trump overstepped his authority in enacting sweeping tariffs

US importers are expected to receive $85bn in tariff refunds after the supreme court struck down Donald Trump’s tariffs in February, according to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency that collects tariffs.

Importers and shippers have so far been refunded $20bn, according to court documents filed on Tuesday, with about $65bn more on the way.

After months of uncertainty and higher costs, American businesses largely welcomed the supreme court’s ruling that Trump overstepped his authority in enacting sweeping tariffs, including a baseline 10% tariff on all imports. It was the first time the highest court overruled Trump’s policies in his second term.

US president calls on US ally to ‘behave … or else we’ll have to blow them up’ in casual aside during cabinet meeting

Donald Trump has threatened to “blow up” Oman if it fails to “behave” in a casual aside during a cabinet meeting, as the US scrambles to reopen the strait of Hormuz.

The US president made the threat after reports of talks between Iran and Oman about jointly charging a toll for ships passing through the crucial waterway, which has been all but closed since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran.

The strait – which typically carries about a fifth of the world’s oil supplies – has been blockaded by Iran since late February, triggering a global energy crisis and raising fears for the world economy.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump gleefully painted his opponents as trigger-happy interventionists who would get the United States bogged down in all manner of foreign wars — up to and including World War III.

As president, Trump has racked up an astonishing list of countries he’s both threatened to attack and actually attacked.

Trump added a new entry to that list on Wednesday, threatening to strike Oman if it tries to control the Strait of Hormuz along with Iran.

“Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ‘em up,” Trump said at a White House Cabinet meeting.

The U.S. announced Tuesday it has selected five companies, including Oklo, for advanced discussions on potentially repurposing its Cold War-era plutonium as nuclear reactor fuel.

This initiative follows reports last year that the administration of Donald Trump planned to make approximately 20 metric tons of plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads available to American power companies.

Trump had previously ordered a halt in May to a significant program aimed at diluting and disposing of surplus plutonium. Instead, his directive sought to provide this material as fuel for advanced nuclear technologies.

However, the plan has faced opposition. Democratic lawmakers have urged Donald Trump to cancel his surplus plutonium initiative, warning it poses a proliferation risk and involves enough plutonium to create 2,000 atomic bombs.

If Trump’s name is removed, a ‘vital fundraising connection will be severed,’ the center’s chief executive argued

A Trump-Kennedy Center official warned a federal judge that stripping the president’s name from the renowned arts institution would cause unbearable financial damage, marking the latest twist in a months-long legal battle.

Charles Matthew Floca, the center’s 39-year-old executive director, filed a declaration Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing the institution’s funding is inextricably linked to President Donald Trump.

“President Trump’s fundraising on behalf of the Center is exemplified by the tens of millions of dollars already raised,” Floca wrote. “Further, the President has committed to raise $150 billion on its behalf from private donors over the next two years.”

NBC News projects that Paxton, who received a late endorsement from Trump, will advance to the general election to face Democrat James Talarico.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has defeated Sen. John Cornyn for the Republican Senate nomination, NBC News projects, the latest challenger backed by Donald Trump to unseat an incumbent.

Paxton will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in a November race that could become key to the fight for the Senate majority.

Trump endorsed Paxton last week, giving him a last-minute boost in his bid to oust Cornyn, who has been in the Senate since 2003. Cornyn and Paxton faced off Tuesday in a head-to-head runoff after no candidate won more than 50% of the vote in the initial multicandidate March primary.

DOJ’s Truth Social-inspired filing lists out ‘Top Secret’ additions to sprawling project after gunman opens fire near checkpoint

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice says a recent shooting near the White House underscores the “critical need” for the president’s $400 million ballroom project as government lawyers demand a federal judge lift an order blocking its construction.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche sprinted to federal court one day after a gunman opened fire near a security checkpoint and struck a bystander. The suspect, 21-year-old Nasire Best, was fatally shot by Secret Service officers.

Trump was inside the White House at the time and unharmed, but the proposed ballroom would provide a “SAFE HAVEN” from would-be attackers in the future, according to Sunday night’s Truth Social-inspired filing from the Justice Department.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a new "block by block" initiative to tackle the city's affordable housing crisis Tuesday morning.

The plan focuses on 400,000 affordable housing units, enhancing tenant protections and investing in public housing. Some 200,000 of those units will be new, rent-stabilized homes built over the next decade, as well as preserving and stabilizing an additional 200,000 homes.

The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will admit an additional 10,000 white South Africans into the U.S. as refugees this year, increasing its historically low annual cap but still blocking people from other countries from entering through the program.

Trump suspended the refugee program on his first day in office and, since then, has turned it into a vehicle to allow Afrikaners — a group of white South Africans descended mainly from Dutch settlers — into the U.S. Advocates say the decision to focus a decades-old program on one group has left people around the world fleeing war and strife stranded and with few options.

The administration says Afrikaners are subject to persecution in their home country, a charge the government in South Africa denies.