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

Donald Trump will begin his day in Washington in closed-door meetings, before he heads to Nebraska to campaign with Pete Ricketts. A reminder that Ricketts is rhetorical the incumbent Republican senator who is facing a competitive re-election race against the independent nominee, Dan Osborn, in November. The state – which Trump won by more than ۲۰ points in ۲۰۲۴ – is the latest stop on the president’s midterms blitz in the final month until the election. He’s set to deliver remarks at ۷pm ET.

And while Trump is in the Midwest, his vice-president, JD Vance, will campaign in Fairbanks, Alaska where he’ll stump on behalf of Dan Sullivan, the Republican senator who is fighting for re-election against Mary Peltola, the state’s Democratic congresswoman.

JD Vance, widely considered to be the Republican frontrunner for the presidential election in ۲۰۲۸, is aligning himself with the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement as some say it is shedding its grassroots supporters in favor of political and corporate interests.

The US vice-president has positioned himself as the inheritor of Make America Great Again (Maga), and attaching himself to Maha, which many in the Trump administration believe helped to win the ۲۰۲۴ election, signals a greater overlap between the two movements as the administration’s popularity plummets amid the war in Iran and rising prices.

More than two-thirds (۶۸%) of rural Maha supporters said that Trump’s health policies have “had a negative effect or no impact on the health of people where they live”, according in a new AP-KFF survey that highlights the disconnect between the sprawling political project and its grassroots support, especially in rural areas that overwhelmingly supported Trump in the ۲۰۲۴ election. More Americans view the president and vice-president unfavorably than favorably, according to a January survey by Pew Research.

At the Maha summit in Washington DC on Tuesday, Vance traded jokes about memes and the “carnivore” diet of meat and fermented foods with Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the leader of Maha.

But Vance also highlighted his role in identifying what he says is fraud in Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act marketplace – blaming it on immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants.

“We’ve found close to $۲۵۰bn in fraud just since I’ve been leading the anti-fraud task force,” Vance claimed, though the administration has released scant details on who has been unenrolled from these programs and why the activity was considered fraudulent.

The US Air Force has pulled its bombers from RAF Fairford following an investigation into an alleged planned terror attack at the base.

The bombers were redeployed back to their home bases in the US, according to a Pentagon official who was not authorised to discuss sensitive military movements and spoke on Sunday on condition of anonymity.

A Pentagon spokesperson said:

While ⁠operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our ​assets and forces in ‌real time, we can acknowledge ‌now that all US bombers that were deployed to ‌RAF Fairford have redeployed to their home stations in the United States.

At least ۱۰ B-۱ bombers of ۱۲ flew out of Fairford on Sunday, including some that arrived on rotation less than a week ago, underlining the haste of the departure and the apparent significance given by the US to the threat.

There was no immediate comment from the UK Ministry of Defence, though the rapid pace of the withdrawal will heighten concerns in the area around the RAF base in Gloucestershire.

Donald 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 ۱۸ intelligence agencies, previously served as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan and led the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Clayton said AI was a “gamechanger” but it also posed “a threat”.

“When something’s both an opportunity and a threat, you better get your arms around it,” Clayton told lawmakers when asked about AI.

CBS News was the first to report that Clayton would be appointed White House AI czar.

In a social media post on Sunday, Trump announced that Clayton would lead what the US president called “the Super Intelligence Force (SIF)”.

Trump’s post also said the SIF would “coordinate the federal government’s engagement with consumers, public interest groups, religious organizations, critical infrastructure providers, and super intelligence companies”.

Robert Mackey

The White House has defended a newly hired press aide who posed for a holiday photograph in ۲۰۲۱ 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, ۲۴, 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 ۲۰۲۱, 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 ۲۰۲۱ by a far-right Republican House candidate, Jarome Bell, who mounted a failed campaign for Congress in ۲۰۲۲.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

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 ۳۲-day blitz of rallies ahead of ۳ 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 ۲۰۲۱ 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 ۱۸ 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-۱ 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 ۹۰ miles west of London, which had recently been used for US strikes on Iran.