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      Trump and Harris head for swing states amid fallout from presidential debate – US politics live

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      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.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.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. More

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      Donald Trump a de facto Russian asset, FBI official he fired suggests

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      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.The conversation, in which McCabe also questioned Trump’s attitude to supporting Ukraine and Nato in the face of Russian aggression, was recorded before the debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, in which Trump made more controversial comments.Claiming Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had he been president, Trump would not say a Ukrainian victory was in US interests.“I think it’s in the US’s best interest to get this war finished and just get it done,” he said. “Negotiate a deal.”Claiming to have good relationships with Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, Trump falsely said his opponent, Kamala Harris, failed to avert war through personal talks.The vice-president countered that she had helped “preserve the ability of Zelenskiy and the Ukrainians to fight for their independence. Otherwise, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.”In one of the most memorable lines of the night, Harris added: “And why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch.”The candidates were not asked about recent indictments in which the Department of Justice said pro-Trump influencers were paid to advance pro-Russia talking points.McCabe was part of FBI leadership, briefly as acting director, during investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and links between Trump and Moscow. Trump fired McCabe in March 2018, two days before he was due to retire. McCabe was then the subject of a criminal investigation, for allegedly lying about a media leak. The investigation was dropped in 2020. In October 2021, McCabe settled a lawsuit against the justice department. Having written The Threat, a bestselling memoir, he is now an academic and commentator.Speaking to One Decision, McCabe said: “You have to have some very serious questions about, why is it that Donald Trump … has this fawning sort of admiration for Vladimir Putin in a way that no other American president, Republican or Democrat, ever has.“It may just be from a fundamental misunderstanding of this problem set that’s always a problem. That’s always a possibility. And I guess the other end of that spectrum would be that there is some kind of relationship or a desire for a relationship of some sort, be it economic or business oriented, what have you.“I think those are possibilities. None of them have been proven. But as an intelligence officer, those are the things that you think about.”Saying he had “very serious concerns” about the prospect of a second Trump term, McCabe said he would always be concerned about Russia’s ability to interfere in US affairs.He said: “Their desire to kind of wreak havoc or mischief in our political system is something that’s been going on for years, decades and decades and decades.“Their interest in just simply sowing chaos and division and polarization. If they can do that, it’s a win. If they can actually hurt a candidate they don’t like, or help one that they do like, that’s an even bigger win.” More

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      Harris-Trump debate watched by 67m people, beating pivotal Biden showdown

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      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.Of the viewers who watched on cable networks, the highest number of viewers were on Fox News, with 9.1 million people tuning in on the channel known for its positive coverage of Trump.Harris was widely seen to have won the debate. A CNN flash poll of debate watchers showed 63% to 37% that Harris had performed better. Prior to the debate, those voters were split 50-50 on who would win. Of the Harris-supporting viewers polled by CNN, 96% said she had done a better job, while 69% of Trump supporting viewers said so.Trump’s campaign publicly claimed victory, but some of his aides privately conceded it was unlikely that he persuaded any undecided voters to break for him, people familiar with the matter told the Guardian.The viewership puts the debate roughly between the Seinfeld (76.3 million) and Friends (52.5 million) series finales.Minutes after it ended, Taylor swift endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket to her 283 million Instagram followers in a post that included a link to the government voter registration website Vote.gov. The site saw almost 338,000 new visitors in the hours that followed, a General Services Administration spokesperson told MSNBC.Swift’s endorsement is likely to be most influential among Americans under 35, since about 30% of that group say they are more likely to vote for someone Swift supports, according to polling conducted for Newsweek. The polling found that 18% of voters say they are “more likely” or “significantly more likely” to vote for a Swift-backed candidate, while 17% say they are less likely.No other debates are currently scheduled between the two presidential candidates, although the Harris campaign have asked for one, and the Fox News Channel has publicly offered alternatives. CBS will host a vice-presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance on 1 October.Tuesday’s debate stakes were high to begin with, not only because of the impending election itself but because the last presidential debate set off a series of events that resulted in Biden’s withdrawal from the race.While CNN chose not to correct any misstatements by the candidates during Trump’s debate with Biden in June, ABC instead challenged statements that Trump made about abortion, immigration, the 2020 election and violent crime. More

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      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump attend New York 9/11 commemoration

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      Bereaved families, local and national dignitaries and first responders gathered in New York City on Wednesday to mark the 23rd anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.Kamala Harris and Donald Trump attended the annual commemoration, just hours after their fiery presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening.Joe Biden, the US president, accompanied Harris, his vice-president and now the Democratic nominee since Biden ended his re-election campaign in July after his own disastrous debate against Trump.Biden and Harris observed the anniversary of the al-Qaida attacks on the US with visits to each of the three sites where hijacked planes crashed in 2001: the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon near Washington and a field in southern Pennsylvania.Trump attended the event in New York with his Republican running mate, JD Vance. Trump and Harris shook hands, with tight smiles, before lining up solemnly for the ceremony.On Tuesday night, Harris had consciously crossed the stage before the debate began and thrust her hand towards Trump, introducing herself. They had never met in person before, obliging Trump to shake hands.After the subsequent handshake at the memorial and a brief exchange between the two presidential candidates, Harris positioned herself to Biden’s right, with the former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg between Biden and Trump, and Vance to Trump’s left.Missing from that central group was the sitting New York mayor, Eric Adams, whose administration is caught up in a series of federal investigations.Harris traveled to New York just a few hours after most polling declared her the winner of the debate against the Republican nominee for president in Philadelphia, with just eight weeks left before the 5 November presidential election.No remarks from the politicians were scheduled at the site of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, still sometimes popularly known as Ground Zero, where relatives read the names of those who died.Biden and Harris then went to Shanksville, where passengers on United Flight 93 overcame the hijackers and the plane crashed in a field, preventing another target from being hit.Later they headed back to Washington DC and laid a wreath at the Pentagon memorial.Almost 3,000 people were killed in the attack, with more than 2,750 killed in New York, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania; that figure excludes the 13 hijackers, who also died.“We can only imagine the heartbreak and the pain that the 9/11 families and survivors have felt every day for the past 23 years and we will always remember and honor those who were stolen from us way too soon,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters onboard Air Force One on Tuesday evening.Biden issued a proclamation honoring those who died as a result of the attacks, as well as the hundreds of thousands of Americans who volunteered for military service afterwards.“We owe these patriots of the 9/11 generation a debt of gratitude that we can never fully repay,” Biden said, citing deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq and other war zones, as well as the capture and killing of the September 11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUS congressional leaders on Tuesday posthumously awarded the congressional gold medal to 13 of those service members who were killed in the 26 August 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport during the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan.In New York, political tensions were high even though the event is always officially a non-partisan commemoration.“You’re around the people that are feeling the grief, feeling proud or sad – what it’s all about that day, and what these loved ones meant to you. It’s not political,” said Melissa Tarasiewicz, who lost her father, a New York City firefighter, Allan Tarasiewicz.Increasingly, tributes delivered in New York and the name-reading of those who died come from children and young adults who were born after the attacks killed a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle.“Even though I never got to meet you, I feel like I’ve known you forever,” Annabella Sanchez said last year of her grandfather, Edward Joseph Papa. “We will always remember and honor you, every day. “We love you, Grandpa Eddie.”A poignant phrase echoes more and more from those who lost relatives: “I never got to meet you.”It is the sound of generational change. Some names are read out by children or young adults who were born after the strikes. Last year’s observance featured 28 such young people among more than 140 readers. Young people were expected again at this year’s ceremony on Wednesday.Some are the children of victims whose partners were pregnant. More of the young readers are victims’ nieces, nephews or grandchildren. They have inherited stories, photos and a sense of solemn responsibility.Being a “9/11 family” reverberates through generations, and commemorating and understanding the September 11 attacks one day will be up to a world with no first-hand memory of them.“It’s like you’re passing the torch on,” says Allan Aldycki, 13. He read the names of his grandfather, Allan Tarasiewicz, and several other people.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Father of Ohio boy, 11, tells Trump and Vance to stop using son’s death for ‘political gain’

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      The father of an 11-year-old boy who was killed last year when a minivan driven by an immigrant from Haiti collided with his school bus has asked Donald Trump and JD Vance to stop using his son’s name for “political gain”.During a city commission meeting on Tuesday in Springfield, Ohio, Nathan Clark, the father of Aiden Clark, addressed the forum alongside his wife, Danielle. Speaking at the meeting, Clark said: “I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone,” the Springfield News-Sun reports.Clark went on to list politicians including Trump and Vance, who he said have been using his son’s name for “political gain”.“Bernie Moreno [the Ohio Republican senate candidate], Chip Roy [the Texas Republican representative], JD Vance and Donald Trump … have spoken my son’s name and used his death for political gain. This needs to stop now. They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio,” said Clark.“I will listen to them one more time to hear their apologies. To clear the air, my son, Aiden Clark, was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti. This tragedy has been all over this community, the state and even the nation. But don’t spin this towards hate,” he continued.Clark went on to say: “Did you know that one of the worst feelings in the world is to not be able to protect your child? Even worse, we can’t protect his memory when he’s gone. Please stop the hate.”Clark’s comments come after the Trump campaign and Vance mentioned Aiden Clark’s death earlier this week amid hateful and baseless rumors surrounding the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield.In a post on X on Tuesday, Vance alluded to Clark’s death by saying a “child was murdered by a Haitian migrant” on X. In the same post, Vance also repeated the falsehoods surrounding Haitian immigrants eating local pets – a rumor brought up again by Trump during Tuesday’s debate with Kamala Harris.Meanwhile, the Trump War Room, an X account used by the Trump campaign, also mentioned Aiden Clark, accusing Harris of refusing to say his name.Aiden Clark died last August when the school bus he was riding in collided with a minivan driven by 36-year old Hermanio Joseph, a Haitian father of four children. More than 20 other students were injured in the collision and Joseph was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide. In May, Joseph was sentenced to nine to 13.5 years in prison.In a statement to NBC on Clark’s remarks, a spokesperson for Vance said that people should hold Harris “and her open border policies accountable for the deaths of their children”, adding: “The Clark family is in senator Vance’s prayers.”The Guardian’s Julius Constantine Motal contributed reporting More

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      Taylor Swift’s Harris endorsement has thrilled fans – but will it move the election needle?

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      Addy Al-Saigh had already gone to bed on Tuesday night when her phone woke her up with a notification: Taylor Swift had added a post on Instagram.The pop star had endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Al-Saigh was thrilled.“She has this impact on such a large amount of people that it is super important that she uses her voice, which I’m so glad she did,” said Al-Saigh, a 19-year-old college student who lives in Virginia. “I am hopeful, definitely hopeful, that this will help push voter registration and push more people to get out and speak up and use their voice.”Perhaps no celebrity endorsement has ever been as hotly anticipated as Swift’s – and she delivered in Miss Americana style on Tuesday, voicing her support for Harris and Tim Walz just minutes after the presidential debate between Harris and Donald Trump concluded.“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” Swift wrote of Harris. “I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate Tim Walz,” who Swift tagged, “who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF and a woman’s right to her own body for decades”.The question on many minds is: does it matter? Although it’s difficult to measure the impact of celebrity endorsements, they can move the needle in elections, especially by energizing voters who may otherwise sit on the sidelines. After Swift encouraged her fans to vote in 2023, Vote.org recorded more than 35,000 registrations in a single day. Al-Saigh first registered to vote because Swift had posted a voter registration link in her Instagram Stories.In January, polling conducted for Newsweek found that 18% of voters say they are “more likely” or “significantly more likely” to vote for a Swift-backed candidate, while 17% say they are less likely. Swift’s endorsement is likely to hold particular sway among Americans under 35, since about 30% of that group say they are more likely to vote for someone Swift supports. More than half of Swift’s most avid fans already identify as Democrats, a 2023 Morning Consult poll found. The other half of her fanbase is split evenly between Republicans and independents.Swifties for Kamala, which is working to mobilize fans of Swift and has raised more than $150,000 for the Harris campaign, celebrated the endorsement. “We knew she would speak when the time was right and are so excited to keep up the fight,” Irene Kim, the organization’s co-founder and executive director, said in a statement. “Swifties are a diverse group – it’s what strengthens our connections to one another and shapes our shared values.”Trump, meanwhile, dismissed Swift’s endorsement. “She’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace,” he said Wednesday on Fox & Friends. Matt Gaetz, the Republican congressman from Florida, said that although he liked Swift’s music, he wanted “to live in a world where liberals make my art and conservatives make my laws”.Jasmine Amussen, a 35-year-old Democrat in the swing state of Georgia who previously responded to a Guardian survey about Swift’s political power, was particularly struck by the musician’s mention of how Trump had used AI-generated images of the pop star to falsely suggest that Swift had endorsed him.“It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” Swift wrote in her Instagram post.“I think young people, especially young women, are, like, really grossed out and horrified by things like that,” said Amussen, who said her vote was not personally affected by Swift’s endorsement. “For people who have spent their whole life online and who have experienced a lot of really negative things about being online, like revenge porn and the Nudify websites and things like that, I think it really meant something that she said it like that.”Swift signed off her endorsement as “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady” – a reference to comments by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, denigrating women who do not have children. Shortly afterward, Elon Musk, a Trump supporter, responded with a tweet that drew widespread condemnation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life,” Musk tweeted.“I found it disgusting,” Jared Quigg, a 22-year-old Swift fan in Indiana, said of Musk’s post. “I despise that man.”Still, Quigg doesn’t think that Swift’s post will motivate many voters. “If she were to speak up on specific issues, I think that would move the needle on things. But as far as her endorsement, she didn’t really delve too much into issues,” said Quigg, who plans to vote for Harris even though he doesn’t “really like her much at all”.“Now, if she were to speak up about fracking or Palestine, issues that might be considered more important to progressives, perhaps that could have an impact on the party”, Quigg added.Al-Saigh, for her part, wants to get her Virginia college’s Swift fan club to do work around the election, such as helping register people to vote, now that the musician has made her views clear.“Taylor Swift is such a global sensation that if she cares about something, it’s important,” Al-Saigh said. “That’s the way I feel, and that’s the way I think a lot of other people feel too.” More

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      ABC’s debate moderators did what they said was impossible: fact-checking Trump | Margaret Sullivan

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      They said it couldn’t be done. For years, we’ve heard all the reasons – excuses, really – that presidential debates cannot and should not be fact-checked in real time.Countering lies is not the job of the moderators, we were told; it is strictly the role of the candidates themselves. Fact-checking would take up too much time and interrupt the flow of the debate, we were told. And what about impartiality? How could moderators be expected to decide whom to challenge with fact checks?Fact-checking, we were told, was impractical and inappropriate, and simply a very, very bad idea. Yes, even in the age of Donald Trump, who wakes up each day and immediately begins lying about his dreams.But then came Tuesday night’s debate between Trump and Kamala Harris – and that memorable moment when the moderator Linsey Davis of ABC News piped up with just a few words after Trump went into one of his evidence-free rants about babies being executed.“There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” Davis said in an even tone. It didn’t take a lot of time, it did correct an oft-repeated lie and it did establish something important: the most egregious falsehoods might well be challenged by these moderators. The candidates were put on notice.Davis wasn’t alone in this. Her co-moderator, David Muir – in much the same neutral, polite tone and with much the same admirable brevity – did the same. After Trump made a wild claim about migrants in Ohio eating pets, Muir calmly stated that ABC had pre-checked this one and determined that it wasn’t true. And in another instance, Muir countered Trump’s charges of uncontrolled and rising crime, especially involving migrants, with this: “As you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”It was noticed. And largely, though not universally, praised. The moderators also did a good job of returning to questions that had not been answered, and in some cases, pressing for a clear yes or no.Trump’s allies were outraged, naturally, that he wasn’t allowed to fib at will. How terribly unfair, they charged. Why weren’t there equal numbers of fact checks and challenges for Harris, they demanded, never stopping to acknowledge that she had mostly stuck to that crazy little thing called the truth. (A lengthy New York Times listing of questionable statements by both candidates, published after the debate, identified a couple of times that Harris has strayed from reality or misled; but, as expected, there was really no comparison with Trump’s litany of lies.)Trump later posted on social media calling the moderator “hacks”. The debate, he charged, was “THREE ON ONE!”But, as CNN’s Abby Phillip drily observed: “When there is asymmetrical lying, there will be asymmetrical fact-checking.”The post-debate media coverage, in general, was up to its usual tricks of giving Trump the benefit of the doubt. Overall, it too often failed to convey with clarity what had happened in a debate dominated by the cool strength of Harris and the angry, incomprehensible ravings of Trump. Headlines tended to lapse into neutralizing, conventional language like this one in the Washington Post: “Harris crisply attacks Trump, prompting retorts with fiery language.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNPR, to its credit, noted: “The spotlight should now be on Trump’s incoherence and general lack of any serious grasp on policy.”And even over on Fox News, there were some abnormal glimmers of reality, as when Brit Hume allowed that Trump had “had a bad night”.No doubt, the debate was a win for Harris.And, with the help of ABC’s moderators, a better-than-usual night for the truth.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      The Guardian view on the US presidential debate: Kamala Harris’s triumph isn’t transformative, but it was essential | Editorial

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      If presidential debates don’t really matter, as some have contended, Kamala Harris would not have been on the stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. Yes, the spectacle can lead to excessive focus on their impact. But Joe Biden’s disastrous performance, which triggered his withdrawal from the race, showed how these choreographed political events can catalyse, if not create, voters’ sentiment about candidates.Only weeks before the nation makes its choice, Ms Harris’s success was critical. Debates are often remembered, as in Mr Biden’s case, when things go wrong. The vice-president didn’t merely clear the very low bar set by her boss – basic competence – but soared over it. Her desire to stick it to Donald Trump may not have elucidated matters for undecided voters who say they want to know more about her and her policies. She did mention a few, including measures to codify abortion rights and promote an “opportunity economy”, but was keener to focus on the broad messages.However, Donald Trump thought the 2024 election would be about his supposed strength against Mr Biden. In contrast, it was Ms Harris who dominated the debate, from the moment she took the physical initiative by crossing the stage to shake his hand – dispelling uncomfortable memories of him looming behind Hillary Clinton in 2016 – to her remark that Vladimir Putin “would eat you for lunch”.Mr Trump’s vanity made him incapable of resisting the obvious bait she laid out for him, especially her observation that supporters were so bored they were leaving rallies during his rambling, incoherent speeches. Her air of amused disdain for his lies gave her the air of, well, an experienced prosecutor listening to the desperate bluster of a felon. In hitting him on abortion, on healthcare, on democracy itself, she was clear and incisive. When he lied about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets, she simply mocked him: “Talk about extreme.”Mr Trump’s claim was symptomatic of his reliance on rightwing memes, while Ms Harris sought to reach across the aisle, touting her gun ownership and talking of an America where “we see in each other a friend”. He is still struggling to navigate a position on abortion that will maintain his evangelical support without alienating other voters, but on Tuesday he ludicrously claimed that Democrats wanted to “execute the baby”.There was no doubt that this was the vice-president’s victory, albeit one facilitated by strong moderation. In a flash CNN poll, 63% of viewers said that Ms Harris had turned in the better performance, while 37% opted for her rival. Yet Ms Clinton was judged to outperform Mr Trump by a similar margin after their first debate in 2016 – and edged up less than 1% in the polls over the next week.A boost for Ms Harris is desperately needed because polls suggest the candidates are effectively deadlocked, with Mr Trump gaining some ground recently after her initial surge. Inflation has softened to the lowest level since February 2021, and the Federal Reserve is preparing to cut interest rates. But improvements in the economic picture may not feed through to voting intentions quickly enough to help the Democrats. Cumulative disgruntlement at the cost of living is not quickly dispelled even when price rises slow and are offset by wage growth.An extraordinarily turbulent race may yet have more surprises in store. Nonetheless, in a contest that comes down to a tiny fraction of the electorate, across a handful of battleground states, everything matters, be it debate success or – yes – Taylor Swift’s endorsement. Ms Harris’s campaign knew they needed a clear victory on Tuesday. But even as they celebrate, they know it is only one step along the way.

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