How to publish a private package to a private registry without using semantic-release?

Given a private library published to a private Nexus registry

My package.json configuration

{
    "name": "@me/my-repo",
    "version": "14.2.0",
    "main": "build/lib/index.js",
    "types": "build/lib/index.d.ts",
    "private": false,
    "repository": {
        "type": "git",
        "url": "git://github.com/me/my-repo.git"
    },
    "publishConfig": {
        "registry": "https://url.goes.here/nexus/.../"
    }
}

My .npmrc configuration

registry=https://url.goes.here/nexus/.../
_auth=mYtOkEn
always-auth=true
save-exact=true

We moved away from semantic-release because we don't need all the extra stuff anymore and the Github action was just too slow. Based on my configuration I want to publish the library but

npm publish

is not enough, it seems npm doesn't know about the configuration ( I must login first ). I used the following step for my Github action

  - name: Release the application
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: $
    run: npx semantic-release

but how can I publish to npm without using semantic-release? How can I tell npm to have a look at the .npmrc file?

from How to publish a private package to a private registry without using semantic-release?