Trump heads to Nebraska in attempt to shore up the GOP’s midterm vote
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 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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
Key events
New polling shows Democrats leading governors races in red states
New polling from the New York Times/Siena college shows four key Democratic gubernatorial candidates leading in their respective races against Republicans in key red states that have become more competitive in recent weeks.
While we’ve been covering dozens of races that will shape the make-up of Congress, there are a number of races for governor across the country that will be vital – particularly when it comes to the ensuing redistricting battles we expect in the lead up to 2028.
According to the Times/Siena survey, Gina Hinojosa – the Democratic state lawmaker challenging sitting governor Greg Abbott – is leading the Republican incumbent by three points. Meanwhile in Iowa, which has become a source of hope for national Democrats, sees Rob Sand – a moderate who serves as the state auditor – ahead of GOP nominee Zach Lahn by 11 points. Staying in the midwest, in Ohio the closely watched competition between Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton sees the latter with an edge over the billionaire and former presidential candidate. In Alaska, where a Democrat hasn’t won the governor’s mansion in almost 30 years, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins is up by four points over Bernadette Wilson, the Republican nominee.
Below is some of the Guardian’s reporting on these key races as we head into the final month of campaigning before election day on 3 November.
Ariana Baio
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general chosen by Donald Trump to run as the Republican candidate for a Senate seat, admitted in private that his campaign was being controlled by outside forces in DC.
“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming – you know – from DC,” Paxton told people at a fundraising event in September, according to an audio recording obtained by Politico.
“I don’t control message or what we’re doing,” Paxton added.
Paxton has been locked in a competitive race with progressive Democrat James Talarico.
An unnamed attender told Politico that Paxton never explicitly said he was referring to Trump’s team controlling his campaign messaging, but that Paxton’s comments arose during a conversation about the national political environment.
The Guardian has asked Paxton’s campaign for comment.
Paxton’s campaign adviser Nick Maddux told Politico that, “Campaigns don’t coordinate with Super Pacs, and that’s obviously what AG Paxton was referring to.”
“AG Paxton is thankful for the support and knows how important Texas is to keeping the majority which is why he’s on the ground every day talking to Texas, raising money, and taking his message directly to the people including with his statewide television buy that started over this past weekend,” Maddux said.
Hilary Beaumont
As the supreme court hears oral arguments this morning, it’s worth noting that if the justices side with Boulder or decide that the case is not in their jurisdiction, then it would continue in state court.
But if the fossil fuel industry convinces the justices, the decision could apply not only to the Boulder case, but also to the many other climate cases brought by state and local governments around the US that we mentioned earlier.
“The hope of the industry side is that this is going to be the death blow,” said Dennis Fan, the founder and director of the Appellate Litigation Clinic at Columbia Law School who wrote an amicus brief in the case. “The industry is going for the home run, they’re going for the grand slam. They’re thinking, ‘if we win this argument, there will never, ever be climate change litigation again.’”
Boulder officials filed a lawsuit in Colorado court in 2018 arguing that Exxon and Suncor concealed and misrepresented to the public what they knew about the damage that burning fossil fuels would do to the climate, and that they should pay for the resulting costs of disasters. Initially, the firms sought to have the case moved to federal court. Then when the Colorado supreme court allowed Boulder’s case to make its way toward trial in state court, Exxon and Suncor appealed that ruling up to the supreme court arguing it should be dismissed on grounds of federal preemption.
Typically, cases must be decided by lower courts before reaching the supreme court, but the justices agreed to hear this case while the state case is ongoing. “That’s an incredibly weird thing to have happen,” Fan said.
The supreme court will consider whether it has proper jurisdiction to hear Boulder’s case right now, and whether federal law preempts Boulder’s case from being heard in state court.
Trump falsely calls counting windows in blue states and cities ‘corrupt’
Donald Trump has, once again, falsely claimed the counting window – the time between voters casting their ballots and the official results of an election being released – is an example of how voting is “corrupt” in the US.
He used the first round of Brazil’s general elections, where Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro will now head to a runoff, as the basis for his claims.
“The results came out shortly after the vote closed, on the SAME DAY!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “In Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and numerous other U.S. Cities and States, the results, with much smaller numbers, will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate. Voting in America is CORRUPT!!!”
My colleague, George Chidi, has been reporting on how the president and his allies could seize on this period – as we wait for states to announce results – to amplify unfounded allegations in a bid to challenge results that don’t go their way. Some states take days – even weeks, in California’s case – to complete a count of votes after an election.
Karoline Leavitt to join Fox News as on-air contributor
Karoline Leavitt, who stepped down as White House press secretary in August, is joining Fox News as an on-air contributor, according to an announcement from the network.
Leavitt, 29, the youngest press secretary in White House history, left the administration after the birth of her second child earlier this year. She said at the time that she planned to spend more time with her family and take a role with the Trump-aligned Super Pac Maga Inc. When she announced her pregnancy in December, she became the first sitting White House press secretary to do so.
Leavitt is the second Trump White House press secretary to join Fox News. Kayleigh McEnany joined the network as an on-air contributor after leaving the White House at the end of Trump’s first term.
Suzanne Scott, Fox News’s CEO, said in a statement that Leavitt’s “firsthand experience in the White House and on the presidential campaign trail gives her a distinct understanding of today’s political landscape”. Scott said Leavitt will begin providing on-air analysis on 1 November, ahead of the midterm elections.
In the announcement, Leavitt said she looked forward to “bringing my unique perspective from my experience as White House press secretary, along with the same energy and candor that defined my tenure, to Fox’s millions of viewers across their many platforms”.
During her time in the West Wing, Leavitt sought to reshape the White House media landscape. She moved to exert greater control over the press pool, the small group of journalists who closely track the president’s daily activities; created a “new media” briefing-room seat often filled by conservative commentators and pro-Trump personalities; and frequently clashed with reporters.
One of Trump’s most steadfast defenders, Leavitt emerged as a key ally to the president and regularly drew praise from him during her time in the administration.
Supreme court to hear first oral arguments of new term
The supreme court will hear the first arguments of its 2026-27 term today at 10am ET. The case was filed by local officials in Boulder, Colorado, against Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil. It focuses on whether states can sue oil companies for the impact of climate change on their communities.
The energy companies argue that only federal law can be used to address this issue. Boulder is one of dozens of local governments that have filed lawsuits against energy companies that demands compensation for past and future harms to the environment.
Notably, only eight of the court’s nine justices will hear today’s arguments, after Samuel Alito recused himself from the case after facing calls to step aside due to stock holdings in oil companies.
While Alito does not own stock in Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil, he does have holdings in other oil companies such as ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, according to his disclosures. The group Consumer Watchdog says that means he could indirectly benefit from a decision in the industry’s favor.
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 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 20 points in 2024 – is the latest stop on the president’s midterms blitz in the final month until the election. He’s set to deliver remarks at 7pm 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.
Melody Schreiber
JD Vance, widely considered to be the Republican frontrunner for the presidential election in 2028, 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 2024 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 (68%) 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 2024 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 $250bn 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.
US bombers pulled from UK’s RAF Fairford base after suspected terror plot
Dan Sabbagh
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 10 B-1 bombers of 12 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.
Ariana Baio
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 18 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 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.
Trump heads to Nebraska in attempt to shore up the GOP’s midterm vote
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 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.
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