Trump says he will not debate Harris again
Donald Trump announced he will not participate in a second debate Kamala Harris, saying she has turned down previous opportunities to meet and alleging she lost their Tuesday night face-off.
“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH.’ Polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate, on Tuesday night, and she immediately called for a Second Debate,” the former president wrote on Truth Social.
Trump restated his much-repeated claim that Harris and Joe Biden have “destroyed our Country”, then said:
Everyone knows this, and all of the other problems caused by Kamala and Joe – It was discussed in great detail during the First Debate with Joe, and the Second Debate with Comrade Harris. She was a no-show at the Fox Debate, and refused to do NBC & CBS. KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!
The Harris campaign has previously said she would be willing to debate Trump again sometime in October. Trump’s running mate JD Vance remains scheduled to debate the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz on 1 October in New York.
Key events
Trump campaign says support is increasing in swing states following debate
Donald Trump’s pollsters say support for the former president has increased in swing states since his debate against Kamala Harris.
In a memo, Tony Fabrizio and Travis Tunis write that the candidates were tied before the debate, but after surveying 1,893 likely voters in seven swing states, Trump now leads Harris 48% to 46% when third-party candidates are included, and 50% to 47% in a head-to-head matchup.
“Clearly, target state voters were not impressed by Kamala Harris’ empty platitudes and while the media would have people believe she is cruising to victory, this couldn’t be farther from the truth,” the pollsters write.
A bomb threat prompted the evacuation and closure of the city hall in Springfield, Ohio, which has been thrust into national focus after Donald Trump and Republicans pushed false and unsubstantiated claims of Haitian immigrants in the city eating pets and local wildlife.
The bomb threat “was issued to multiple facilities throughout Springfield”, the city said.
We ask the community to avoid the area surrounding City Hall vicinity while the investigation is ongoing and to report any suspicious activity to the Springfield Police Division.
The city’s mayor, Rob Rue, indicated that the threat included complaints about Haitian immigrants in the city, according to NBC News.
Local police and officials have said there were no credible reports of Haitian immigrants stealing pets to eat them.
Robert Tait
Republicans are blaming the influence of Laura Loomer, a rightwing conspiracy theorist, for this week’s botched debate performance by Donald Trump, which included the former president repeating a bizarre and unfounded claim that pet cats and dogs were being eaten by Haitian immigrants.
Loomer flew with Trump on his private plane to Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia and has been identified as a key promoter of the pets rumour, which has been dismissed as false by authorities in Springfield, Ohio, where the practice was alleged to have been taking place.
The Semafor website quoted an unnamed source close to Trump’s campaign as saying they were “100%” concerned about Loomer’s sway over the Republican nominee. “Regardless of any guardrails the Trump campaign has put on her, I don’t think it’s working,” the source said.
Trump this year proposed giving Loomer an official role on his campaign, but the idea was resisted by staffers. Loomer, who styles herself as an “investigative journalist”, last year promoted a conspiracy theory alleging that 9/11 was an “inside job”. On Wednesday she posted an unfounded allegation that Harris had worn earphones disguised as earrings during the debate.
Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris following the debate on Tuesday drove hundreds of thousands of people to voter-registration resources, according to multiple reports.
Swift’s Instagram post included a link to Vote.org, the federal government’s voting registration site. According to the General Services Administration:
There were a total of 405,999 visitors referred to vote.gov from the custom URL created and shared by Ms Swift during the 24 hour period the post was live.
The day so far
It’s back to the campaign trail for both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, two days after their first and perhaps only debate. The vice-president has two events planned for this afternoon in North Carolina, while Trump will be in Arizona. Speaking of the debate, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds Harris the overall winner of the Tuesday evening face-off, and slightly improving her lead nationally. In the legal arena, a New York appeals court just rejected another attempt by Trump to get the gag order imposed on him in his hush-money case lifted.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
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North Dakota’s strict ban on abortion was tossed out by a judge who said it ran afoul of the state constitution and was vague.
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The joint session of Congress scheduled for 6 January 2025 to count and certify electoral votes will be considered a “national special security event” by the homeland security department, all because of what happened last time.
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Alberto Gonzales, a Republican who served as attorney general under George W Bush, announced he will vote for Harris.
Polls finds Harris victorious in debate, building lead over Trump nationally
Reuters is out with one of the first polls since Kamala Harris and Donald Trump debated on Tuesday evening, and found voters view the vice-president as the winner in the debate, where Trump came off as the less sharp candidate.
Harris is also building her lead among registered voters nationally to 47% over Trump’s 42%, a slight jump from previous weeks, according to the survey, which was conducted with Ipsos. Here’s more about it:
The two-day poll showed Harris with a five percentage point lead among registered voters, just above the four-point advantage she had over Trump in an Aug 21-28 Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Among voters who said they had heard at least something about Tuesday’s debate, 53% said Harris won and 24% said Trump won. Some 52% of respondents said that Trump stumbled and didn’t appear sharp, while 21% said that of Harris.
Harris, 59, put Trump, 78, on the defensive with a stream of attacks on his fitness for office and his myriad legal woes.
The poll surveyed 1,690 US adults nationwide, including 1,405 registered voters. It had a margin of error of around three percentage points for registered voters.
Joe Biden traveled to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, yesterday on somber business: laying a wreath at the site where Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on 9/11, crashed.
He then traveled to the local fire station, where the mood lightened considerably when the 81-year-old president met a similarly mature resident, who was wearing a Trump cap.
Biden offered the man, whose name reporters did not catch, a hat with the presidential seal on it, prompting the old-timer to ask the president for an autograph.
“You remember your name?” he asked the president. “I don’t remember my name, I’m slow,” Biden replied. “You’re an old fart!” the resident told him. “Yeah, I know, man, I’m an old guy,” the president gamely replied.
After more banter, the pair traded hats, with Biden putting a red Trump cap over one he was already wearing, before advising the room not to eat dogs or cats (cuisine that is not so bad, the elderly resident advised him).
Watch the exchange here:
A White House spokesperson later said Biden had put on the hat in a show of “bipartisan unity”:
At the Shanksville Fire Station, @POTUS spoke about the country’s bipartisan unity after 9/11 and said we needed to get back to that.
As a gesture, he gave a hat to a Trump supporter who then said that in the same spirit, POTUS should put on his Trump cap. He briefly wore it. https://t.co/7VKZnkVMY7
— Andrew Bates (@AndrewJBates46) September 11, 2024
Judge strikes down North Dakota’s abortion ban
A North Dakota judge struck down its near-total ban on abortions, saying the state constitution protects some access to the procedure, and the law as written is vague, the Associated Press reports.
District judge Bruce Romanick’s decision comes in a lawsuit filed by North Dakota’s sole abortion clinic, which has moved to neighboring Minnesota since the ban was signed by Governor Doug Burgum in 2022. Burgum made a failed run for the Republican presidential nomination this year, and has since become a top surrogate to Donald Trump.
Appeals court rejects Trump’s attempt to lift gag order in hush-money case
Donald Trump has failed in his latest attempt to lift the limited gag order imposed on him by Juan Merchan, the judge who presided over the trial in which the former president was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments.
New York’s appeals court declined Trump’s request today “upon the ground that no substantial constitutional question is directly involved”.
Trump has repeatedly complained about the gag order, which prevents him from making public statements about the case’s prosecutors, court staff and their families.
The top House Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, said the homeland security department’s designation of the upcoming January 6 joint session of Congress as a “national special security event” is “necessary”.
He cited Donald Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in his 2020 election loss, and the possibility he may make the same allegations if he loses in November:
Homeland security gives Congress top protection for upcoming 6 January 2025 joint session
The Department of Homeland Security announced yesterday that the joint session of Congress scheduled for 6 January 2025 to certify the winner of the November election will be given high-level protection as a “national special security event”.
The January event be the first gathering of senators and House representatives to count electoral votes since Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol on the same day in 2021.
The designation puts the Secret Service in charge of security for the day and allows “significant resources from the federal government, as well as from state and local partners”, to be deployed, the homeland security department said.
“National special security events are events of the highest national significance,” the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s dignitary protective division, Eric Ranaghan, said in a statement.
“The US Secret Service, in collaboration with our federal, state and local partners, are committed to developing and implementing a comprehensive and integrated security plan to ensure the safety and security of this event and its participants.”
Capitol police officers battled Trump’s supporters throughout the building in 2021, and had this to say about the designation:
This national special security event (NSSE) designation will help us build on the plans that we have already put into place to protect the members of Congress and the constitutional process on January 6. Our department has made more than 100 improvements during the last few years to prepare for anything. We are working closely with our law enforcement partners, as we do during other NSSEs such as the State of the Union, to ensure the legislative process goes smoothly.
Perhaps the most important viewers of Tuesday’s evening’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were voters living in the swing states expected to decide the election.
The Guardian’s Rachel Obordo and Nyima Jobe heard from several about who they thought came out on top. Here’s what they had to say:
The occupant of the White House is not all that voters will decide in the November election.
Thirty-four Senate elections will be held in states nationwide, which will determine if Democrats hold on to their 51-seat majority in the chamber. It has long been viewed as a difficult task for the party, since they are believed to have slim chances of picking up a seat, and are almost certain to lose one thanks to Democrat Joe Manchin’s retirement in deep-red West Virginia.
The Cook Political Report today forecast that the Senate is likely to flip to GOP control, thanks to polling that shows Republican Tim Sheehy overtaking Jon Tester, the Democrat running for a fourth term in red state Montana:
But today we are making a major shift – moving the Montana Senate race from Toss Up to Lean Republican. This means that Republicans are now an even heavier favorite to win back control of the Senate, regardless of the result at the top of the ticket.
Montana Sen Jon Tester has been a political unicorn for nearly two decades, but in a presidential year with an even more polarized electorate, he is now the underdog heading into the final stretch of the race to his Republican opponent, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy.
In Ohio, Sen Sherrod Brown has consistently led in public polling over his GOP challenger, Bernie Moreno, but it’s within the margin of error. While Sheehy appears to have consolidated enough Republican and Trump voters behind him – an easier lift given the state’s far deeper red hue – there is still work for Moreno to do in the final weeks. And the key difference may be that Sheehy has been doing work to hone his positive image with voters while Moreno has left many attacks on his character and business record unanswered.
A loss in only Montana would give Republicans an outright majority of 51 seats, and their ranks could possibly climb as high as 54. The range of possible pickups is now between one and four for Republicans. At this point, a GOP gain of two to three seats is the likeliest scenario, but this could change in the coming weeks once polls tighten and candidates solidify their bases and woo undecided voters.
Lauren Gambino
The vice-president is also planning to sit for media interviews with local news outlets across the battleground states, the memo said. Next week she will participate in an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ).
Harris was unable to attend the group’s convention in July, which took place just days after she became the Democratic nominee. Trump participated, however, and shocked the room of NABJ reporters by attacking Harris’s biracial identity and insulting the hosts.
During the debate on Tuesday, Trump was asked about his comments, in which he suggested Harris had “turned Black”. Trump replied that he didn’t care how Harris identified, then repeated his claim that the vice-president, the daughter of a Jamaican economist who graduated from one of the nation’s most prestigious Black colleges, hadn’t identified as Black until recently.
Harris, who is Black and south Asian, did not engage with Trump’s false assertions about her identity. Instead she called it a “tragedy” that he sought to use “race to divide the American people”.
Harris sets ‘aggressive’ campaign schedule after debate
Lauren Gambino
The Harris campaign is embarking on an “aggressive” new phase, building off of the vice-president’s commanding performance in Tuesday night’s debate against Donald Trump.
According to a memo released this morning, the campaign is launching a “New Way Forward” tour that begins on Thursday with two stops in North Carolina, a Republican-leaning state where Harris has shown strength. On Friday, Harris will return to Pennsylvania for events in Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre.
The stepped-up battleground state travel will be paired with a series of new TV and digital advertisements featuring moments from the debate, the first of which, Leadership, aired on Wednesday night.
It features moments from the debate, including the vice-president saying Americans are seeing “two very different visions for the country: one that is focused on the future, one that is focused on the past”. The ad then cuts to Trump saying: “We’re a failing nation. A nation that is dying. We’re a nation that’s in serious decline.”
The campaign, newly energized after Harris’s performance, said it spent hours on Wednesday reviewing footage of the debate, culling what it believes are revealing exchanges that show Trump on the defensive and Harris’s offering a vision for the future.
Kamala Harris is spending today in North Carolina, where she’ll hold campaign events in Charlotte and Greensboro.
The first appearance begins at 3.40pm ET, and the second at 5.40pm.
Joe Biden is at the White House, and will hold an event to mark the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act at 5.45pm. The press briefing is scheduled for 2.30pm.
Tens of millions of Americans watched Tuesday evening’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – and so, too, did European diplomats looking for an idea of which direction the country might take under whoever wins, the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour reports:
The TV debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was as keenly watched by European diplomats and politicians as by US voters, eager to see who may be next in the White House and – crucially – the direction that a vital ally may next take.
One diplomat said they empathised when Harris adopted a series of poses that ranged from pity, bemusement and genuine curiosity about what craziness would emerge from Trump’s mouth next as she listened to his conspiracy-laden theories. However, the diplomat said they still did not underestimate Trump and the hold he had over one part of a divided America, adding: “Never write him off.”
Another European observer judged Harris to have been the victor in the debate. “Objectively on any count she won. She showed her teeth, broke with [Joe] Biden and showed she is a leader, and that is something Americans love,” they said.
In Germany, Michael Roth, the Social Democratic party chair of the Bundestag foreign affairs committee, said Harris had succeeded in making Trump seem “like an ageing incumbent, old, angry and confused”, despite having been in government herself for much of the past four years. “Harris has dismantled Trump on the open stage and positioned herself as a candidate of change. She deliberately provoked Trump, and he fell into the trap,” Roth said.
