AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn tried for more than a year to show Donald Trump and Texas Republicans that he and the president were on the same team.

Cornyn posted a photo of himself reading Trump's “The Art of the Deal.” He proposed legislation to rename a stretch of interstate in Trump's honor. Perhaps most glaringly, the Senate institutionalist who long supported the filibuster reversed his position in a failed effort to advance voting restrictions that are a priority for the president.

None of it worked. On Tuesday, Cornyn became the latest in a line of Republicans who lost their primaries after falling out of favor with a president with little tolerance for dissent and a seemingly insatiable appetite for retribution. The four-term senator lost by double digits to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Trump endorsed last week as “a true MAGA Warrior.”

Cornyn, on the other hand, “was VERY disloyal to me,” Trump wrote on social media.

Trump gathers Cabinet as he looks to seal deal to end war that some backers worry will embolden Iran

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will meet with his Cabinet on Wednesday at a precarious moment for talks aimed at ending the war with Iran, just days after insisting that his administration and Tehran had “largely negotiated” a settlement but with the negotiations still in a state of flux.

As he prepares to huddle with his top aides, Trump is projecting confidence that he's closing in on a deal that will reopen the Strait of Hormuz and provide him a credible argument that Iran’s nuclear capability has been diminished enough to declare victory, winding down a conflict that's been politically unpopular for Republicans.

But as things stand, Trump also risks finding closure to his war of choice comes with an unsatisfactory ending.

The emerging deal puts off many critical issues to be resolved later and has already exposed the president to fierce criticism — even from some of his own supporters — that Iran's hardline leaders will emerge from the conflict battered but emboldened. It all comes to a head just as the midterm elections to determine control of Congress come into focus and as Republicans worry that rising costs and fuel prices are darkening the American electorate's mood.

Talks were further complicated after U.S. forces carried out what the Pentagon called “defensive” strikes on missile launch sites and mine-laying boats in southern Iran on Monday. The U.S. said it acted with “restraint” in light of the weekslong ceasefire, while Iran decried the action as a sign of “bad faith and unreliability.”

Spanish police search headquarters of PM Sánchez’s ruling Socialist party

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish police are searching the headquarters of the ruling Socialist Party as part of an ongoing investigation into possible financial wrongdoing, the Civil Guard said Wednesday.

The raid on the office in central Madrid is another blow to the party of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose Socialists have been hammered by a series of corruption scandals.

The Civil Guard told The Associated Press that the police were under judicial orders to find material relevant to a National Court probe into accusations of corruption against a former party member involved in a state-run company.

The police said the search is strictly limited to a probe led by National Court judge Santiago Pedraz into the possible wrongdoing of Socialist party member Leire Díaz.

The alleged case against Díaz started in 2025 when audio recordings appeared in Spanish media of her apparently being involved in attempts to discredit a member of the Civil Guard’s anti-corruption unit. Further reports linked her to alleged attempts to influence the work of state prosecutors.

Paxton dominates Cornyn in Texas US Senate runoff, the latest sign of Trump's hold on GOP

PLANO, Texas (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, easily defeating four-term Sen. John Cornyn in the latest contest where President Donald Trump sought to oust an incumbent he saw as insufficiently loyal.

Trump endorsed Paxton last week, calling him a “true MAGA warrior." Paxton's victory in Tuesday’s runoff makes Cornyn — who was first elected to the Senate in 2002 — the first Republican senator from Texas to lose the party’s nomination for reelection.

Cheers rang through the ballroom at Paxton's election night party when the race was called, and he took the stage to supporters chanting his name. He quickly gave credit to Trump.

“When everyone in Washington told him to abandon me and abandon the people of Texas, he didn’t listen," Paxton said. "President Trump is the leader of our party, and his endorsement is the most powerful force in politics.”

Cornyn's loss followed primaries this month where Trump successfully backed challengers to Republican lawmakers who had displeased him in Louisiana, Kentucky and Indiana, a sign of his enduring influence among primary voters.

Chemical tank implosion in Washington state kills 1 and leaves 9 missing

LONGVIEW, Wash. (AP) — A massive chemical tank holding nearly a million gallons of a highly corrosive liquid imploded and collapsed Tuesday at a Washington paper mill, killing at least one worker and leaving nine others unaccounted for with no hope for rescue, authorities said.

Another nine people were injured, some severely, in the spill at Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. in Longview. The cause remained unclear.

“At the moment we are not aware of any rescues that are yet to be made," Cowlitz Fire and Rescue Chief Scott Goldstein said during a Tuesday evening news conference in which officials repeatedly referred to the situation as a recovery effort.

That effort would not resume until Wednesday morning, when emergency responders planned to work on stabilizing the collapsed tank, which still had about 90,000 gallons (more than 340,000 liters) of a chemical brew known as “white liquor" inside, and then search for the missing, Goldstein said.

The severity of the injuries ranged from minor to critical, with some suffering burns or inhalation injuries, authorities said. Among those injured was a responding firefighter.

Billionaire Tom Steyer's ad spending breaks records in California governor's race

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Win or lose, billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer will leave a mark in the history books in his bid to become California's next governor — he’s running the most expensive political advertising campaign in the country this year.

Steyer — a former hedge fund manager turned liberal activist — has spent or booked more than $195 million in ads for broadcast TV, cable and radio with the tally still growing, according to data compiled by advertising tracker AdImpact.

His torrent of ads have opened the one-time presidential candidate to criticism that he is trying to buy the governor's chair, and his ad total represents more than 20 times the amount spent by his nearest rival, fellow Democrat Xavier Becerra, as the two duel for a spot in the November election.

Nationally, no one is close.

In Georgia, Republican health care executive Rick Jackson has spent about $83 million on advertising in his primary race for governor, which is headed for a June runoff, ranking him second. The third place spot is held by his Republican rival, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who has President Donald Trump’s endorsement and has spent nearly $31 million on ads, according to AdImpact.

ICE detainees are dying by suicide at an 'alarming' rate, an AP investigation finds

Brayan Rayo Garzon was distraught. Detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was on his fourth day of isolation in a Missouri jail as he battled the fevers and chills of COVID-19.

His request for mental health treatment had been put off, records show, and staff had forbidden Rayo from making his nightly call to his mother as a precaution intended to prevent the spread of illness.

He pleaded with his jailers in handwritten notes to arrange a conversation with her. “I feel in my heart that she’s very worried about me,” he wrote in Spanish.

A guard collected the note and walked away. Within an hour, jail records show, he was found unconscious in his cell. An autopsy determined he killed himself.

Rayo’s April 2025 death was the first suicide in a spike among ICE detainees that has alarmed public health officials and jail experts. They said the unprecedented number of suicide deaths is an indication that authorities are failing to properly oversee the detention of tens of thousands of immigrants swept up in the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategy.

For one Ukrainian war amputee, rebuilding is painful after a Russian strike killed her husband

KRYVYI RIH, Ukraine (AP) — After Iryna Nakonechna lost her left leg last year in a Russian missile attack that also killed her husband, the Ukrainian woman decided everything tied to her former self had to go.

She cut off her dark wavy hair and removed furniture, clothes, trinkets and photographs from her home. Just one reminder of her previous life remained: a portrait of herself and her husband, Serhii Nakonechnyi.

Shedding her old identity was necessary, she said, to endure the painful reinvention required to build a life with a prosthetic.

Today, Nakonechna is quick-witted and effervescent, her laughter loud and sudden. She wears a pixie haircut and bold red cat-eye glasses, and knits small toy capybaras — an animal that has become an unofficial symbol among amputees in Ukraine. But beneath the sparkle in her eyes lies a grief woven into the painful process of becoming someone new. It's an often unspoken reality beneath the narratives of resilience surrounding the tens of thousands of people in Ukraine who have lost limbs in the war that began more than four years ago when Russia launched a full-scale invasion.

“The hardest thing was accepting myself with these injuries, wounds that are not only physical,” she said. “Coming to terms with how much my life has changed has been very difficult.”

Iran condemns US strikes as a show of 'bad faith' and begins restoring internet after long shutdown

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran on Tuesday denounced the most recent U.S. strikes as a sign of “bad faith and unreliability” as negotiations pressed on toward a possible deal to end the war, and the Islamic Republic began restoring internet access after one of the longest nationwide shutdowns ever.

The U.S. military characterized Monday's strikes in southern Iran as defensive, with targets that included missile launch sites and minelaying boats, and said the U.S. acted with “restraint" in light of the weekslong ceasefire.

Iran's foreign ministry called the strikes a ceasefire violation and warned that Washington would bear responsibility for “all consequences,” without elaborating.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will leave no act of aggression unanswered,” it added in a statement.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Tuesday that it shot down at least one drone and deterred another drone and a fighter jet that entered its airspace, according to Iran’s official Mizan news agency. It didn't specify when the incidents occurred.

South Carolina Senate rejects Trump’s call to redraw congressional map for midterm elections

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s push to reshape congressional districts ahead of the November elections suffered a double setback Tuesday, as South Carolina senators declined to do so and a federal court blocked a Republican-backed map in Alabama.

As early in-person voting began Tuesday in South Carolina’s primaries, the state Senate rejected a Republican plan to cancel those congressional votes and instead schedule a new primary under revised districts designed to help the GOP oust a longtime Democrat.

Some senators said it was simply too late to make a change.

“South Carolina citizens are going to the polls today. And neither my conscience or common sense is going to let me stop an election that is already underway,” Republican state Sen. Richard Cash said.

The political drama in South Carolina is part of a Republican strategy — propelled by Trump — to redraw voting districts to the GOP’s advantage in an attempt to hold on to a slim House majority in the midterm elections. Republicans have moved quickly to try to leverage a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened minority protections under the federal Voting Rights Act.