Trump to rally in Florida after stoking Ramaswamy ad furor – US politics live

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics. Donald Trump is travelling to Florida today to speak at another rally as midterm election day races nearer.

The president will stump for gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds. Whether Donalds regards this as helpful remains to be seen after he removed mentions of the president from his website and has barely uttered his name during the race for governor.

My colleague Richard Luscombe has more on that race:

Last night, Trump further stoked the controversy over an attack ad by Vivek Ramaswamy, featuring the mother of his Democratic rival, Dr Amy Acton – telling supporters at a rally that he personally told the Republican candidate for Ohio governor to keep running the spot.

Acton’s mother lost custody of her daughter at age 12 because her husband was charged with raping the young girl. Trump told the rally in Iowa: “I said, ‘You’ve got to ride with it.’”

Trump looks increasingly out of step with his own party over the ad after yet another Republican denounced the ad on Thursday. Iowa Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson broke with the president by denouncing the attack ad, saying: “I think it’s absolutely terrible, and I think they should take the ad down.”

Americans heading to the polls for next month’s midterm elections are not just choosing whom to send to Washington, or their state capitols. There are also 145 statewide measures on ballots across 39 states, polling voters on actions from a novel wealth tax on California’s billionaires to requiring Alabama’s public schools to broadcast or perform the first stanza of the national anthem each week.

Voters in Idaho, Nevada and Virginia are asked to protect abortion rights; voters in Missouri are asked to give those rights back. Property tax issues appear on dozens of state ballots. Several state referendums ask voters to bar trans athletes from competing in women’s sports, or bar gender-affirming medical care for minors.

Voters like referendums, in principle, as a tool of direct democracy. “Polls in every state show at least 2-to-1 support for having an initiative process,” said John Matsusaka, a business professor at the University of Southern California (USC) and executive director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute.

Here are the big topics voters are being asked to decide this year:

Ashley Hinson’s criticism of the ad came after similar condemnation by Ohio governor Mike DeWine triggered a swift rebuke from Donald Trump.

Speaking to ABC News, Hinson said: “It’s terrible. I think about it as a mom and you think about your kids surviving childhood sexual abuse and having to relive that trauma on TV again.”

Hinson also criticised vice-president JD Vance for striking “absolutely the wrong tone” when he said he was “disgusted” by Republicans “whining” about the ad.

“Iowans want - and probably Ohioans want – someone who’s going to be an empathetic leader, and I think it sends absolutely the wrong message.

“And I would bet that Amy Acton and I probably don’t agree on anything, either. But like the last thing I would want as someone who’s running against is to force them to relive the childhood trauma. So, I think, again, I think it’s wrong, and it should come down.