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.
Key events
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 statement 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.
Conservative billionaire Leonard Leo announces push to ‘crush liberal dominance’ in US
In an interview with the Financial Times, Leonard Leo, the conservative activist who was involved in the effort to build the current rightwing supermajority on the supreme court, says he will spend $1b to fight liberal cultural influence in the United States.
“We need to crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious, so we’ll direct resources to build talent and capital formation pipelines in the areas of news and entertainment, where leftwing extremism is most evident,” Leo told the FT in a rare interview.
“Expect us to increase support for organisations that call out companies and financial institutions that bend to the woke mind virus spread by regulators and NGOs, so that they have to pay a price for putting extreme leftwing ideology ahead of consumers.”
In a separate letter obtained by Axios, Leo writes that his 85 Fund will review its support of rightwing groups, saying it wants to prioritize efforts to “weaponize the conservative vision”.
“The 85 Fund intends to gap-fill by placing much, much greater emphasis on projects and leaders that operationalize or weaponize ideas and policies, much in the same way the Left has,” Leo wrote.
Senate Democrats have attempted to get Leo to testify about his activities, but he has so far frustrated them:
Republican former attorney general Gonzales says he will vote for Harris
Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general under Republican president George W Bush, says he will vote for Kamala Harris.
Gonzales made the announcement with a column in Politico, where he wrote:
As the United States approaches a critical election, I can’t sit quietly as Donald Trump – perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation – eyes a return to the White House. For that reason, though I’m a Republican, I’ve decided to support Kamala Harris for president.
His reasons center less on support for Harris’s policies than disgust with Donald Trump’s actions, including his involvement in January 6:
Trump failed to do his duty and exercise his presidential power to protect members of Congress, law enforcement and the Capitol from the attacks that day. He failed to deploy executive branch personnel to save lives and property and preserve democracy. He just watched on television and chose not to do anything because that would have been contrary to his interests. Trump still describes that day as beautiful. And as for those subsequently convicted of committing crimes, he describes them as hostages.
His felony convictions:
Any discussion about fidelity to the rule of law has to include Trump’s 34 state felony convictions, his state civil financial judgment of libel based on sexual abuse, as well as the pending federal elections interference case, not to mention the recently dismissed federal documents case that Special Counsel Jack Smith is continuing to pursue. Standing alone, these charges, convictions and judgments show that Trump is someone who fails to act, time and time again, in accordance with the rule of law.
And the fact that so many of the former president’s senior officials have turned against him:
To be fair, I have spoken with Trump only once. I do not really know him. It is telling, however, that several senior officials who worked for him in the White House now refuse to support him, including his vice president, chief of staff, defense secretary and national security adviser. Their unwillingness to endorse their former boss is an indictment of his character at a level equal to his many, many criminal indictments.
Gonzales, interestingly, also says he thinks the supreme court should adopt “a tougher ethics code of disclosure”.
Here’s the latest on the ongoing controversy over the justices’ ethics:
Axios has obtained a letter from the White House News Photographers Association to Kamala Harris’s top aides, complaining about a lack of access to the vice-president as she campaigns for the White House:
Jessica Koscielniak, the president of the WHNPA, wrote to Harris’ top aides last month protesting that “the four independent news photographer seats have been downgraded to one.”
She proposed either adding a “chaser plane” for additional media or the WHCA reorganizing who gets a… pic.twitter.com/OZL99bKHwy
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) September 12, 2024
The complaints are reminiscent of those made by reporters at the Democratic national convention in Chicago last month, where there were fewer accommodations for the press in the venue than at July’s Republican national convention.
The first ballots of the presidential race were mailed to voters yesterday in Alabama, the Associated Press reports.
North Carolina was expected to be the first state to mail out its ballots, but Robert F Kennedy Jr’s successful court challenge to remove his name caused a delay.
Young women are more liberal than they have been in decades, the Associated Press reported.
Over the past few years, about 4 in 10 young women between the ages of 18 and 29 have described their political views as liberal, compared with two decades ago when about 3 in 10 identified that way, according to a Gallup analysis of polling data.
The share of young women who hold liberal views on the environment, abortion, race relations and gun laws has also jumped by double digits, Gallup found.
X’s AI chatbot spread voter misinformation – and election officials fought back
Rachel Leingang
Soon after Joe Biden announced he was ending his bid for re-election, misinformation started spreading online about whether a new candidate could take the president’s place.
Screenshots that claimed a new candidate could not be added to ballots in nine states moved quickly around Twitter, now X, racking up millions of views. The Minnesota secretary of state’s office began getting requests for fact-checks of these posts, which were flat-out wrong – ballot deadlines had not passed, giving Kamala Harris plenty of time to have her name added to ballots.
The source of the misinformation: Twitter’s chatbot, Grok. When users asked the artificial intelligence tool whether a new candidate still had time to be added to ballots, Grok gave the incorrect answer.
Finding the source – and working to correct it – served as a test case of how election officials and artificial intelligence companies will interact during the 2024 presidential election in the US amid fears that AI could mislead or distract voters. And it showed the role Grok, specifically, could play in the election, as a chatbot with fewer guardrails to prevent the generating of more inflammatory content.
Read the full story here.
Donald Trump a de facto Russian asset, FBI official he fired suggests
Martin Pengelly
Donald Trump can be seen as a Russian asset, though not in the traditional sense of an active agent or a recruited resource, an ex-FBI deputy director who worked under the former US president said.
Asked on a podcast if he thought it possible Trump was a Russian asset, Andrew McCabe, who Trump fired as FBI deputy director in 2018, said: “I do, I do.”
He added: “I don’t know that I would characterize it as [an] active, recruited, knowing asset in the way that people in the intelligence community think of that term. But I do think that Donald Trump has given us many reasons to question his approach to the Russia problem in the United States, and I think his approach to interacting with Vladimir Putin, be it phone calls, face-to-face meetings, the things that he has said in public about Putin, all raise significant questions.”
McCabe was speaking to the One Decision podcast, co-hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, the British intelligence service.
Read the full story here.
Trump campaign publicly claims debate win but aides privately express doubts
Hugo Lowell
Donald Trump’s campaign publicly claimed victory in the debate against Kamala Harris on Tuesday night, but at least some of his aides privately conceded it was unlikely that he persuaded any undecided voters to break for him, according to people familiar with the matter.
“Will tonight benefit us? No, it will not,” one Trump aide said.
The sentiment summed up the predicament for the Trump campaign that with 55 days until the election, Trump is still casting around for a moment that could allow his attack lines against Harris to break through and overwrite her gains in key battleground state polls.
And it was an acknowledgment that despite their hopes of getting Happy Trump on stage, they got Angry Trump, who seemingly could not shake his fury at being taunted over his supporters leaving his rallies early and being repeatedly fact-checked by the moderators.
Read the full story here.
Harris and Trump to campaign in battleground states after debate
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are focusing on swing states today.
Harris is scheduled to hold rallies in North Carolina – in Charlotte and Greensboro, the Associated Press reported.
Trump is heading west to Tucson, Arizona.
Yesterday, the candidates marked the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
At a fire station in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, close to where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed, Trump posed for photos with children who wore campaign shirts. Joe Biden and Harris visited the same fire station earlier in the day.
Harris-Trump debate watched by 67m people, beating pivotal Biden showdown
Helen Sullivan
Hello and welcome back to our rolling US political coverage.
An estimated 67.1 million people watched the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a 31% increase from the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden that eventually led to the president dropping out of the 2024 race.
The debate was run by ABC News but shown on 17 different networks, the Nielsen company said. The Trump-Biden debate in June was seen by 51.3 million people.
Tuesday’s count was short of the record viewership for a presidential debate, when 84 million people saw Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s first face-off in 2016. The first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 reached 73.1 million people.
There was a marked increase in younger and middle-aged viewers, with 53% more adults aged 18-49 tuning in to see Harris debate Trump than watched Biden do the same, according to Nielsen data.
Read the full story here.