Trump heads to Nebraska in attempt to shore up GOP’s midterm vote – US politics live

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  Trump heads to Nebraska in attempt to shore up the GOP's midterm vote

The White House has defended a newly hired press aide who posed for a holiday photograph in 2021 wearing a “Fuck Joe Biden” T-shirt and holding a rifle.

Beni Rae Harmony, the new assistant White House press secretary, revealed on Friday that she was going to work for Donald Trump just days after covering him as a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, a partisan rightwing outlet originally created as a video podcast platform for the president’s former adviser Steve Bannon.

According to a LinkedIn profile, Harmony, 24, previously worked as a producer for the far-right Turning Point USA host Jack Posobiec – and as a press aide “focusing on crisis management” for two far-right Republicans: congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona and former congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida.

In 2021, when Gosar was censured by the US House for posting an animated video that depicted him killing Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Joe Biden, Harmony recorded an outraged defense of her boss for his YouTube channel.

The photograph of Harmony and an older man posing with rifles in matching anti-Biden shirts, in front of Christmas decorations, was reportedly posted on Instagram in November 2021 by a far-right Republican House candidate, Jarome Bell, who mounted a failed campaign for Congress in 2022.

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Donald Trump will be in Nebraska later today, campaigning alongside Republican senator Pete Ricketts, in an attempt to salvage the GOP’s dwindling midterms campaign.

The president is headed to Grand Island, located in the solidly conservative south-central part of the state. It’s part of what Trump says is a 32-day blitz of rallies ahead of 3 November that so far has taken him to ruby-red territory such as Oklahoma and Alabama.

On Wednesday, he will make his second stop in two weeks in Texas with a rally in San Antonio.

“The president’s coming to Nebraska to help me campaign, so I can get reelected,” Ricketts, who is running against an independent candidate backed by national Democrats, told the Associated Press last week on Capitol Hill.

The administration’s plan to allow more imports of foreign beef has particularly roiled the agriculture-rich state of Nebraska. Trump wants to lower beef prices for consumers but ranchers have rebelled against the import proposal, arguing it would undercut them.

“The plan to import low-quality foreign beef is not helping Nebraska ranchers,” Ricketts told the AP. “I would advise the White House to change that policy and look for longer-term things that will help us build the size of the herd and ultimately bring the price of beef down for consumers.”

This campaign is set against the president’s plummeting approval ratings, the unravelling of his Maga movement and an affordability crisis escalated by his unpopular war on Iran. But Trump supporters are also among the most motivated to vote and Republicans have far deeper coffers to mobilise their base.

Meanwhile, vice-president JD Vance will rally in Alaska for senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican locked in a tight reelection campaign.

In other developments:

• The White House has defended a newly hired press aide who posed for a holiday photograph in 2021 wearing a “Fuck Joe Biden” T-shirt and holding a rifle. Beni Rae Harmony, the new assistant White House press secretary, revealed on Friday that she was going to work for Donald Trump just days after covering him as a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, a partisan rightwing outlet originally created as a video podcast platform for the president’s former adviser Steve Bannon.

• Trump on Sunday named Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence, to also serve as the new White House AI czar. Clayton, who leads the US’s 18 intelligence agencies, previously served as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan and led the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term.

• The United States has removed ⁠its B-1 bombers from a ⁠British air base one ​week after five men were arrested nearby on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts, a suspected plot that British prime minister Andy Burnham said was likely backed by Iran. The planes had been stationed at ⁠RAF Fairford, the preferred European base for US bombers 90 miles west of London, which had recently been used for US strikes on Iran.