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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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      Republicans dismayed by Trump’s ‘bad’ and ‘unprepared’ debate performance

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      Donald Trump’s campaign was in damage control mode on Wednesday amid widespread dismay among supporters over a presidential debate performance that saw Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, repeatedly goad him into going wildly off-message and missing apparent opportunities to tackle her on policy.Even with Trump insisting to have won the debate “by a lot”, Republicans were virtually unanimous that Trump had come off second best in a series of exchanges that saw the vice-president deliberately bait him on his weak points while he responded with visible anger.The Republican nominee – who took the unusual step afterwards of visiting the media spin room, a venue normally frequented only by candidates’ surrogates – was non-committal on Wednesday to the Harris campaign’s proposal for a second debate. Despite widespread opinion to the contrary, Trump suggested she needed it because she had lost. “I’d be less inclined to because we had a great night. We won the debate,” he told Fox & Friends.Harris had not commented herself on her debate performance by Wednesday afternoon, accompanying Joe Biden on official appearances as the US president and vice-president attended a series of events commemorating the 23rd anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, traditionally a non-partisan occasion.Some of the Fox network’s high-profile presenters took a different view from Trump, too. “Let’s make no mistake. Trump had a bad night,” the Fox News analyst Brit Hume said immediately after the debate. “We just heard so many of the old grievances that we all know aren’t winners politically.”Many commentators said the tone of the debate was set at the beginning when Harris walked on to the stage and – after a slight hesitation – approached Trump’s lectern to introduce herself and shake his hand. It was the first handshake at a presidential debate since 2016.The gesture enabled Harris to turn the tables on Trump – who has a track record of condescension towards women – by establishing dominance, wrote Politico.Another defining moment of the 105-minute encounter came when Trump’s eyes flashed as Harris depicted people leaving his rallies “early out of exhaustion and boredom”. Rather than let the jibe go or respond to a follow-up question by the ABC moderator David Muir on an immigration bill, Trump went off on a tangent to compare the two candidates’ rallies. Harris smiled and stared at him, resting her chin on her hand.That exchange – along with several others – crystallised what many Republicans described as a clear defeat for Trump. There was also grudging praise from Republicans for Harris, who won respect for being well-prepared.“She was exquisitely well prepared, she laid traps and he chased every rabbit down every hole instead of talking about the things that he should have been talking about,” Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who helped Trump prepare for his 2016 debates with Hillary Clinton, told ABC.“This is the difference between someone who is well prepared and someone who is unprepared. Whoever prepared Donald Trump should be fired.”“Trump was unfocused and poorly prepared,” agreed Guy Benson, editor of the conservative website Townhall on X . “[Harris] basically accomplished exactly what she wanted to here. I suspect the polls about the debate will show that she won it.”Congressional Republicans voiced disappointment over Trump’s inability to discipline himself and press home key policy issues. He even seemed preoccupied with the absence of Joe Biden, whose calamitous performance at the previous debate in Atlanta in June prompted his withdrawal from the race, to be replaced by Harris. “Where is he?” Trump asked. “They threw him out of the campaign like a dog.”“I’m just sad,” one House Republican told the Hill. “She knew exactly where to cut to get under his skin. Just overall disappointing that he isn’t being more composed like the first debate. The road just got very narrow. This is not good.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven as pro-Trump commentators criticised Muir and his fellow moderator, Linsey Davis, for fact-checking Trump but not Harris, there was acknowledgment that the Republican nominee was the architect of his own failings.“Trump lost the debate and whining about the moderators doesn’t change it,” the conservative radio host Erick Erickson wrote on social media. “He didn’t lose because of their behavior. He lost because of his own performance while his lips were moving, not theirs.”Harris also provoked Trump by saying he was deemed “weak” by US allies, who saw him as toadying up to Vladimir Putin, “who would eat [him] for lunch”.Insisting that he was widely respected, Trump invoked the support of Viktor Orbán, the far-right prime minister of Hungary, who has dissented from Nato’s support for Ukraine in its war with Russia and shares much of the former president’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.“Viktor Orbán is known for destroying Hungarian democracy using techniques Trump has tried to copy,” said David Driesen, a constitutional law professor at Syracuse University, who has written on the capture of democratic institutions by autocratic leaders. “It was surreal to hear Trump cite Orbán’s praise as validation of his own leadership.”“The headline for the next few days will be how he lost this thing,” one GOP representative told Politico. “I expect him to do something drastic, whether it’s a campaign shake-up or some other wild antic, by the end of the week to change the upcoming news cycle.” More

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      Mike Johnson scraps vote on funding bill after Republicans signal opposition

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      The House Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, hastily scrapped a planned vote on his government funding package on Wednesday after at least eight members of his own conference signaled opposition to the plan, raising more questions about how Congress will avert a partial shutdown before the end of the month.Johnson had combined a six-month stopgap funding bill with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, a controversial proposal that would require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote.Donald Trump had already further complicated Johnson’s efforts by insisting on Tuesday that Republicans should not pass any government funding bill without addressing “election security”, as he leveled baseless accusations against Democrats of “trying to ‘stuff’ voter registrations with illegal aliens”.Johnson acknowledged he did not have enough support to pass the bill, given that he could only afford four defections within his conference if every House Democrat opposed the plan. Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill that he and his team would work through the weekend to reach an agreement on funding the government.“No vote today because we’re in the consensus-building business here in Congress. With small majorities, that’s what you do,” Johnson said. “We’re having thoughtful conversations, family conversations within the Republican conference, and I believe we’ll get there.”Johnson’s bill would have extended government funding until 28 March, more than two months after the new president takes office in January. If Congress does not take action on federal funding this month, the government could partially shut down starting 1 October.Despite the lack of appetite for a government shutdown so close to election day on 5 November, Democrats and some Republicans balked at Johnson’s proposal. Democrats largely oppose the Save Act, which Republicans claim is necessary to prevent noncitizens from casting ballots. Critics of the Save Act note that it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote, and they warn that the policy could prevent valid voters from casting their ballots. The House passed the Save Act in July, but Senate Democrats have shown no interest in advancing the bill.In a “Dear Colleague” letter sent on Monday, the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, condemned Johnson’s proposal as “unserious and unacceptable”. He called on Congress to pass a stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution, that would keep the government funded past election day and allow lawmakers to pass a full-year spending package before the new year.“In order to avert a GOP-driven government shutdown that will hurt everyday Americans, Congress must pass a short-term continuing resolution that will permit us to complete the appropriations process during this calendar year and is free of partisan policy changes inspired by Trump’s Project 2025,” Jeffries said. “There is no other viable path forward that protects the health, safety and economic wellbeing of hardworking American taxpayers.”Even among fellow Republicans, Johnson had encountered resistance. At least eight Republicans had indicated they would oppose the bill, complaining that it did not do enough to cut government spending. Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman `of Kentucky who has repeatedly clashed with Johnson, mocked the speaker’s proposal as “an insult to Americans’ intelligence”.“The [continuing resolution] doesn’t cut spending, and the shiny object attached to it will be dropped like a hot potato before passage,” Massie said on Monday.Johnson had simultaneously fielded criticism from the congressman Mike Rogers, the Republican chair of the House armed services committee, who expressed concern about how the stopgap bill might affect military readiness. The defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has described passing a full-year spending bill for the Pentagon as “the single most important thing that Congress can do to ensure US national security”.Johnson will now confer with fellow House Republicans to try to cobble together a majority, but even if he does manage to drag his bill across the finish line, the proposal has virtually no chance of passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate.In his own “Dear Colleague” letter sent on Sunday, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, suggested that Democrats would only pass a clean funding bill with no “poison pills” attached.“As I have said before, the only way to get things done is in a bipartisan way,” Schumer said. “Despite Republican bluster, that is how we’ve handled every funding bill in the past, and this time should be no exception. We will not let poison pills or Republican extremism put funding for critical programs at risk.”Trump’s ultimatum, meanwhile, could put Johnson in a bind, and it increases the risk of a partial government shutdown taking effect just weeks before Americans go to the polls.Trump said on Tuesday on his social media platform, Truth Social: “If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET.” More

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      Harris clearly beat Trump – not that you’d know it from the rightwing media. Shame on them | Emma Brockes

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      Short of sticking two pencils up his nose and muttering the word “wibble”, Trump’s appearance on the debate stage on Tuesday night was never going to prove, decisively, to those on the fence, that he is unfit for high office. Unlike Biden’s disastrous turn two and a half months ago, chaos is part of Trump’s appeal – and if his thoughts are garbled, it signifies nothing beyond business as usual. And yet, even for Trump, aspects of his debate performance in Pennsylvania came so close to the edge on Tuesday that the next day what seemed most astonishing wasn’t that Harris had performed so well but that so many apparently sentient human beings were still shilling for her unhinged opponent.Heading into the encounter, one had the strangest sense both of the height of the stakes and also of the sheer entertainment value of the encounter. I found myself wondering about Harris’s nerves – how a person handles them in such a unique situation. In the debate’s opening moments, the vice-president did indeed seem nervous. But she settled, and about 15 minutes in, it started to happen: while Harris’s keenly controlled anger rose to a point, Trump, mouth bunching, eyes disappearing into his head, unravelled.A reference by Harris to her endorsement from Trump’s alma mater, the Wharton School, and some senior Republicans including – confusing for liberals! – Dick Cheney triggered a volley of “she”s from Trump. She, she, she, he said – always a sign he is losing it against a female antagonist. “She copied Biden’s plan and it’s like four sentences, like Run Spot Run!” And off he went on his downward spiral.The next day, consumers of American rightwing media were partially apprised of Trump’s performance, but it was pretzeled around a lot of excuse-making. Even this very mild acknowledgement of Trump’s weakness, however, was a departure from the full-throated support of the Murdoch press in 2016. In the pro-Trump New York Post, the paper admitted that Trump had been “rattled” but bleated about unfairness from the debate moderators on ABC News. (They pulled Trump up on his lies about immigrants eating American pets and Democrats legalising infanticide – there were times, on Tuesday night, when the task of debating Trump looked a lot like trying to debate a copy of the National Enquirer.)Over on Fox News, there was a lot of glum post-debate punditry. Brit Hume said sadly of Harris: “She came out in pretty good shape.” The most Sean Hannity could manage was that the “real loser” was ABC. Jesse Watters said: “This was rough,” pronounced that most people watching wouldn’t think “any of these people won”, and observed: “All the memorable lines were from Donald Trump.” Which, of course, technically was true. (Apart from the pet-eating thing, my two favourite Trump lines were “Venezuela on steroids” and “I told Abdul: don’t do it any more!” – an absolute corker from Trump on the subject of how he stuck it to the Taliban.) Then Trump himself popped up on the network to accuse the debate of being “rigged” – a sure sign, whatever the competition, that he had in fact lost.On X, eugenics fan and world’s richest man Elon Musk admitted Trump had had a bad night and that Harris had “exceeded most people’s expectations”. This was grudging but had the advantage over the reaction of other Trump supporters of actually acknowledging reality. He followed up with: “We will never reach Mars if Kamala Harris wins” – a fact that, assuming Musk himself plans to undertake the journey, would be one drawback to a Harris win indeed.In the rightwing British press, meanwhile, there were various milquetoast attempts to mitigate Trump’s failure, including the Daily Telegraph’s post-debate assertion that it was “difficult to crown Harris the victor when she said so little about her own platform”. Was it, though? Was it really that difficult to pick a winner between the woman who, if she loses in November, we can be fairly certain won’t refuse to accept the decision versus the guy shouting “Execute the baby!” and citing Viktor Orbán as a character witness? And yet the conclusion in the Daily Mail was: “Pathetic, both of them.”Given the evidence before us, these moments of cognitive dissonance are becoming increasingly hard to process. Because the truth, of course, is that Trump looked like a lunatic on Tuesday night. As he got angrier, his shoulders slumped, his body twisted and certain familiar phrases started to pop up in his speech. “I’m not, she is”; repeated use of the word “horrible”. Of Biden he said, referring to Harris: “He hates her; he can’t stand her.” For my money, however, his craziest moment wasn’t any of this, or even the pets thing, but when he wandered off on a diversion about the horrors of solar energy, then said: “You ever see a solar plant? By the way I’m a big fan of solar.” During some of these rants, Harris, despite the tremendous pressure of the moment, actually succeeded in looking bored.Much has been made of how calm she was, and of how her smirk – what the New York Post disapprovingly called her “dismissive laugh” – goaded Trump to greater depths of incoherence. But I think the best parts of the debate were when Harris, too, grew angry. As a candidate, she has had the problem of being tricky to read and has been accused of being too scripted. But in the abortion section of the debate, one felt she jumped beyond the rehearsed remarks, and you could feel the engine of her conviction roaring to life.She was angry – seething, in fact – when she delivered the line about a miscarrying woman “bleeding out in a car in the parking lot” because an emergency doctor might be too frightened to treat her. I got that same flash of genuine outrage when, in relation to Russia’s expansionist ambitions, she said to Trump: “You adore strongmen instead of caring about democracy.” She was, one felt, a beat away from taunting him with: “You want to kiss Putin on the lips, you do.”And then her language changed register, moving into a realm generally more favoured by Republicans than Democrats. “That is immoral,” Harris said of Trump making decisions about women’s bodies. It was a striking moment, this use of a word that might apply equally to all the high-information Americans and their allies in Britain continuing to excuse Trump this far into the game.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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      Trump and Harris clash over abortion and immigration in fierce debate – live US election updates

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      US presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Kamala Harris went head to head on Tuesday night in their first – and potentially only – debate before voters head to the polls on 5 November.Democratic candidate Harris put her Republican rival Trump on the defensive with a stream of attacks on his fitness for office, his support of abortion restrictions and his myriad legal woes.A former prosecutor, Harris, 59, controlled the debate from the start, getting under her rival’s skin repeatedly and prompting a visibly angry Trump, 78, to deliver a series of falsehood-filled retorts.At one point, she goaded the former president by saying that people often leave his campaign rallies early “out of exhaustion and boredom.”Trump, who has been frustrated by the size of Harris’ own crowds, said, “My rallies, we have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”He then pivoted to a false claim about immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, that has circulated on social media and was amplified by Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, Senator JD Vance.The debate ended with Harris vowing to be “a president for all Americans” while Trump attacked her as “the worst vice-president in the history of our country”. It was a fitting end for two candidates who offered starkly different visions for the nation in what might be their only presidential debate.No other presidential debate has yet been officially scheduled, so the face-off on Tuesday may represent the last time that Harris and Trump meet before election day. The days ahead will determine whether the debate made a lasting impression on the undecided voters who will decide what appears to be a neck-and-neck race.More on that in a moment, but first here are some other key updates:Russia has accused both presidential candidates of using Vladimir Putin’s name as part of a domestic political fights, saying: “we really, really don’t like it”.Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that the US was hostile and negative towards Russia, Reuters reports, and the Kremlin hoped that candidates would drop such references to Putin.Last week the White House said Putin should stop commenting on the US election after he said in an apparently teasing comment that he favoured Harris over Trump and that her “infectious” laugh was one of the reasons why.Trump Media & Technology Group shares fell 17% in premarket trading on Wednesday following the combative presidential debate between the former president and Kamala Harris.After the debate, pricing for a Trump victory slipped by 6 cents to 47 cents on online betting site PredictIt, while Harris’s odds climbed to 57 cents from 53 cents.Harris’s candidacy also received a boost after pop star Taylor Swift said she will vote for the Democratic candidate to her 280m on Instagram.Trump is the biggest shareholder in Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the parent of Truth Social app, which is popular among retail traders and is often sensitive to the former president’s chances of winning the 2024 US election, Reuters reports.According to a flash poll by CNN, registered voters who watched Tuesday’s presidential debate broadly agreed that Kamala Harris outperformed Donald Trump.This is based on a CNN poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS, that also found that Harris “outpaced both debate watchers’ expectations for her and Joe Biden’s onstage performance against the former president earlier this year”.The CNN snap poll found:

      Watchers said, by 67% to 37%, that Harris turned in a better performance onstage in Philadelphia

      96% of Harris supporters who watched said that their chosen candidate had done a better job

      A smaller 69% of Trump’s supporters thought he had done a better job

      Voters who watched the debate found their views of Harris were improved

      Trump was seen to have an advantage on the economy, immigration and being commander in chief. Harris was more trusted on abortion and protecting democracy
      However, the vast majority who tuned in said the debate had no effect on who they were going to vote for in the November election.Following the debate between Trump and Biden in June, watchers said, 67% to 33%, that Trump outperformed the president.And finally, the fifth key exchange of the night was on the Biden legacy, writes Bland:Donald Trump: Where is our president? We don’t even know if he’s a president.Kamala Harris: You’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me.This line from Harris, clearly scripted, was nonetheless a useful shorthand for the way she wants the race to be framed: as a chance to move on from the political division that has exhausted Americans for the last eight years, with her as a candidate who is not wedded to every aspect of the Biden record. In her closing statement, she said: “You’ve heard tonight two very different visions for our country: one that is focused on the future and the other that is focused on the past, and an attempt to take us backward. But we’re not going back.’”In his own closing statement, Trump finally did what his team would have wanted him to do throughout – blame Harris relentlessly for everything voters dislike about Biden. “She’s been there for three and a half years,” he said. “They’ve had three and a half years to fix the border. They’ve had three and a half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn’t she done it?”But by then, it felt like the narrative of the night was irreversibly set. And when Trump rambled into the claim that “we’re going to end up in a third world war, and it will be a war like no other because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry,” it merely seemed like normal service had been resumed.The third key exchange, writes Bland, is on abortion. Namely, the last night’s factcheck on a wild claim that Democrats will execute babies after birth.Donald Trump: Her vice-presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth … and that’s not OK with me.Moderator Linsey Davis: There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.While it’s not exactly a Woodward and Bernstein moment to observe that murdering babies is illegal in America, it was significant that Trump was much more thoroughly factchecked by the debate moderators than he was when he faced Biden. And it was part of a section on abortion rights, up there with the economy as one of the key issues driving this election, which did him few favours.Meanwhile, if you had “baby killers” on your bingo card, you may nonetheless have been caught unawares by Trump’s other truly wild lie of the night: his reference to false claims that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating their neighbours’ pets. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he said. “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” Harris turned to a visual shorthand she used repeatedly over the course of the debate (above) – cocking her head and looking at Trump with a bemused look on her face and her chin resting on her hand. You will certainly see this memed endlessly in the days ahead.The Spingfield city manager said that there have been no such reports, moderator David Muir noted. “But the people on television say their dog was eaten,” Trump replied. After the debate, Trump and his supporters characterised this kind of exchange as evidence of a “three-on-one” debate, which you can make your own mind up about. Harris, for her part, responded by saying “talk about extreme” and immediately pivoting to her own attack lines – the inverse of Trump’s approach.The fourth key exchange was on healthcare:Linsey Davis: So just a yes or no, you still do not have a plan?Donald Trump: I have concepts of a plan.By coincidence, this is exactly what I told my editor when she asked how close I was to filing about an hour ago. It is also the kind of wafty answer on a matter of substance that is likely to be clipped up and used in Harris attack ads repeatedly over the next few weeks.Trumps “concepts of a plan” refer to how he would replace the Affordable Care Act, the popular Obama era law that mandated the availability of health insurance to low-income families. There were other evasions, too, like his complicated language on abortion, and on whether he had any regrets about January 6. On Ukraine, Trump would not say that he wanted Kyiv to win, instead saying “I want the war to stop” and claiming that he would end it before even taking office by making Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskiy talk to each other.Archie Bland writes that there are five key exchanges that are likely to dominate the campaign in the days ahead. The first is on the economy, as Kamala Harris promised to lift up the middle class while Donald Trump blamed her for high inflation.Moderator David Muir: When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?Kamala Harris: So, I was raised as a middle-class kid. And I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America.Donald Trump: We have inflation like very few people have ever seen before. Probably the worst in our nation’s history.The debate kicked off with a section on the economy, arguably the toughest section of the night for Harris, who must contend with the fact that many voters blame the Biden administration for years of high inflation. While Harris set out more details of her own agenda, from a $6,000 child tax credit to a tax deduction for small businesses, her point that she and Biden were dealing with the Trump legacy of “the worst unemployment since the Great Depression” did not really make an affirmative case for the record of the last four years.Trump did land his points about inflation and the dubious claim that he created “one of the greatest economies in the history of our country” in his first term. But he also got distracted: by Harris calling his plan to raise tariffs a “Trump sales tax”, and by his own digression into a claim that “millions of people [are] pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums”. That was a hint of what was to come.Second, writes Bland, is Harris tempting Trump into going off topic:Kamala Harris: You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about “windmills cause cancer”. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you.Donald Trump: People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That’s because people want to take their country back.Can it really be this easy to wind him up? Again and again, Harris chose lines that keyed into Trump’s personal preoccupations – and managed to goad him into responding to them at length instead of focusing on the kinds of issues that matter to voters. This exchange about crowd sizes, during a section of the debate that was supposed to be about immigration, meant that he had less time to talk a subject that is one of the areas where voters have the most doubts about Harris.Similarly, during a section about Harris’ changing position on fracking, he allowed himself to be sidetracked by her claim that he was given $400m by his father. Then there was the sales tax thing; the controversial conservative roadmap for a second Trump term, Project 2025; and the way he let a discussion about the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal turn into one about his invitation to Taliban leaders to come to Camp David for talks.None of these subjects would have been on his campaign managers’ list of the talking points they would have wanted him to hit – and none of them mean very much to swing voters.After a period of undoubted momentum for Kamala Harris, the vice-president came into this debate having stalled somewhat. Recent polls suggest that the race is effectively tied, both nationally and in most of the battleground states that will likely decide the outcome. Because the way voters are distributed gives Republicans an advantage in the electoral college, and because you would usually expect to see Harris’ post-convention bump fade somewhat, polling experts like Nate Silver have recently seen Donald Trump as the favourite to prevail.Many presidential candidates have “won” debates and ultimately lost the race – but there is little doubt that Harris had a good enough night to change those odds in her favour. Trump’s team wanted him to hang the Biden administration’s unpopular policies around her neck, but instead he repeatedly lapsed into rambling and extreme Maga talking points that seem likely to have left many voters nonplussed.The problem is not so much that he revealed himself as an erratic character, which any swing voter surely already knows: the problem is that he gifted Harris, who appeared supremely well-prepared, the chance to present him as the exhausting candidate of the all-too-familiar past – and herself as the optimist with a vision for the future.In the Guardian’s First Edition newsletter, Archie Bland writes that even Fox News said Kamala Harris won last night’s presidential debate. Bland writes:Democrats’ moods can only have been improved by the news, a few minutes after it ended, that Taylor Swift had endorsed Harris, and signed her post “childless cat lady”. And CNN’s snap poll suggested that voters thought Harris won by a margin of 63% to 37% – nearly as big a margin as Trump achieved over Biden last time around. Key to Harris’ success was baiting her opponent into rants on marginal topics, instead of talking about the issues that voters are interested in.But while millions watched, Harris and Trump will reach millions more through the clips that will now be distributed through news and social media. For further reading on the debate, take a look at Gabrielle Canon’s key takeaways and this factcheck on both candidates.Investors were watching for any market impact from the debate between the US presidential candidates, vice-president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump.Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the yen hit a nine-month high after a Bank of Japan official hinted at more monetary tightening. But, the news agency reports, the Japanese unit was also boosted by bets on a Harris presidency after she was considered to have come out on top in the US presidential debate.According to AFP, The chances of Trump losing also weighed on bitcoin after he had previously vowed to be a “pro-bitcoin president” if elected in November.US presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Kamala Harris went head to head on Tuesday night in their first – and potentially only – debate before voters head to the polls on 5 November.Democratic candidate Harris put her Republican rival Trump on the defensive with a stream of attacks on his fitness for office, his support of abortion restrictions and his myriad legal woes.A former prosecutor, Harris, 59, controlled the debate from the start, getting under her rival’s skin repeatedly and prompting a visibly angry Trump, 78, to deliver a series of falsehood-filled retorts.At one point, she goaded the former president by saying that people often leave his campaign rallies early “out of exhaustion and boredom.”Trump, who has been frustrated by the size of Harris’ own crowds, said, “My rallies, we have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”He then pivoted to a false claim about immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, that has circulated on social media and was amplified by Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, Senator JD Vance.The debate ended with Harris vowing to be “a president for all Americans” while Trump attacked her as “the worst vice-president in the history of our country”. It was a fitting end for two candidates who offered starkly different visions for the nation in what might be their only presidential debate.No other presidential debate has yet been officially scheduled, so the face-off on Tuesday may represent the last time that Harris and Trump meet before election day. The days ahead will determine whether the debate made a lasting impression on the undecided voters who will decide what appears to be a neck-and-neck race.More on that in a moment, but first here are some other key updates: More

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      Harris targets Trump for falsehoods on abortion and immigration in fiery debate

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      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump sparred on Tuesday in a contentious presidential debate that repeatedly went off the rails, as Trump pursued bizarre and often falsehood-ridden tangents about crowd sizes, immigration policy and abortion access.The Philadelphia debate marked arguably the most significant opportunity for both Harris and Trump since Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race in July, and the event began cordially enough. Harris crossed over to Trump’s podium to shake his hand and introduce herself, an acknowledgement that the two presidential nominees had never met face to face before Tuesday night.But the cordiality did not last long. After delivering some boilerplate attack lines about the high inflation seen earlier in Biden’s presidency, Trump pivoted to mocking Harris as a “Marxist” and peddling baseless claims that Democrats want to “execute the baby” by allowing abortions in the ninth month of pregnancy.That false claim was corrected by both Harris and the ABC News anchor Linsey Davis, who joined her fellow moderator David Muir in fact-checking some of Trump’s statements throughout the evening. Harris then segued into a stinging rebuke of Trump’s record on abortion, criticizing him for nominating three of the supreme court justices who ruled to overturn Roe v Wade in 2022.“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” Harris said. “And I pledge to you, when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v Wade, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it in to law.”Despite broad public support for Roe v Wade, Trump boasted about his role in reversing it and applauded the supreme court’s “great courage” in issuing its ruling, while he dodged repeated questions about whether he would veto a national abortion ban as president.Trump seemed to trip over himself even when moderators offered questions on his strongest issues, such as immigration. When asked about Biden’s handling of the US-Mexico border, Harris pivoted to discussing Trump’s campaign rallies.“I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch,” Harris said. “You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about [how] windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you, the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you.”The tangent appeared to be a blatant attempt by Harris to bait Trump into squabbling over attendance at his rallies instead of discussing immigration policy – and it worked. Trump began attacking Harris with baseless accusations that her campaign was paying people to attend her rallies while celebrating his own events as “the most incredible rallies in the history of politics”.Then, rather than highlighting his immigration proposals, Trump chose to spread debunked claims that Haitian migrants in an Ohio city have started capturing and eating their neighbors’ pets.“They’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”The outburst instantly became a source of mockery on social media, as Democrats celebrated Trump for “doubling down on the crazy uncle vibe”, in the words of the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg.Even as moments of the debate bordered on absurdity, other exchanges regarding foreign policy and the January 6 insurrection felt heavy with meaning. Pressed on his false claims regarding widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, Trump again refused to acknowledge his defeat, prompting a stark warning from Harris.“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people, so, let’s be clear about that. And, clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that,” Harris said. “But we cannot afford to have a president of the United States who attempts, as he did in the past, to upend the will of the voters in a free and fair election.”On foreign policy, Harris fielded difficult questions on the war in Gaza, as she expressed her support for Israel’s “right to defend itself” while calling for “security, self determination and the dignity they so rightly deserve” for Palestinians.Asked about his own stance on the war, Trump reiterated his bombastic claims that his presence in the White House would have prevented the wars in both Gaza and Ukraine.“If I were president, it would have never started,” Trump said. “If I were president, Russia would have never, ever. I know Putin very well. He would have never –and there was no threat of it either, by the way, for four years – have gone into Ukraine.”And yet, when asked directly whether he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Russia, Trump deflected.“I want the war to stop,” Trump said. “I think it’s the US’s best interest to get this war finished and just get it done, all right? Negotiate a deal because we have to stop all of these human lives from being destroyed.”The debate ended with Harris vowing to be “a president for all Americans” while Trump attacked her as “the worst vice-president in the history of our country”. It was a fitting end for two candidates who offered starkly different visions for the nation in what might be their only presidential debate.No other presidential debate has yet been officially scheduled, so the face-off on Tuesday may represent the last time that Harris and Trump meet before election day. The days ahead will determine whether the debate made a lasting impression on the undecided voters who will decide what appears to be a neck-and-neck race.Read more about the 2024 US election:

      Fact-checking the presidential debate

      Harris slams Trump for falsehoods in fiery debate

      Taylor Swift endorses Harris in post signed ‘childless cat lady’

      ‘Maga mad libs’: How the debate played out on social media

      Presidential poll tracker

      Rally sizes, abortion and eating cats: the Trump and Harris debate – podcast More