Trump says he won’t participate in future debates as Harris says ‘we owe it to the voters to have another’ – live

9.55pm BST

Donald Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow has released a statement on the ruling.

“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again. The trial court has decided that counts 15 and 17 in the indictment must be quashed/dismissed,” he said.

Two of several charges brought against Trump by Fani Willis , the Fulton county district attorney, for allegedly trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 elections were dropped.

The dropped charges dealt with filing false documents in federal court. But the judge in the case allowed eight other allegations against the former president to stand.

Updated at 9.56pm BST

9.31pm BST

“It is important that the vice-president continues to define and expose Trump,” Bernie Sanders wrote in an op-ed for the Guardian. “ But it may not be enough to secure a victory. Voters are hungry for a candidate that will deliver meaningful, material change to their lives.”

The Vermont senator writes:

I applaud Harris for laying out the fundamentals of her economic vision: she promised to cap the cost of prescription drugs for all Americans at $2,000, address the severe housing crisis we face by building 3m units of affordable housing, eliminate medical debt, and take on corporate price gouging that has made it impossible for working families to afford groceries and other basic necessities.

The American people want change, and that’s what Harris must deliver

These are valuable policies. I believe, however, that her chances of winning improve if she expands that agenda to include popular solutions to the most important economic and political realities facing this country.

The American people want change, and that’s what she must deliver.

Read more:

Related: Kamala Harris was great in the debate. Will that be enough to win? | Bernie Sanders

Updated at 9.41pm BST

9.17pm BST

Kamala Harris, riding high off Donald Trump’s poor debate performance, has honed in on one line from her opponent:

During the debate this week, moderator Linsey Davis asked Trump to detail his new approach to healthcare – which he had repeatedly promised to deliver in his previous two presidential runs.

When Trump equivocated, Davis doubled down: “So just a yes or no,” she said. “You still do not have a plan?”

“I have concepts of a plan,” Trump replied.

The fumble was especially unfortunate given that surrogates and advisers talked up the president’s dedication to talk policy.

Updated at 9.20pm BST

8.57pm BST

Harris says 'we owe it to the voters to have another' debate with Trump

Kamala Harris just took the stage at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she continued to push Donald Trump to debate again, despite his announcement that he would not do so.

“Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate, And I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate, because this election and what is at stake could not be more important,” the vice-president said to applause.

Updated at 9.20pm BST

8.42pm BST

Georgia judge dismisses some charges against Trump in election meddling case

An Atlanta-area judge dismissed two of the charges brought against Donald Trump by Fani Willis , the Fulton county district attorney, for allegedly trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 elections, but allowed the rest of the case to proceed, Reuters reports.

The charges dismissed by judge Scott McAfee deal with filing false documents in federal court. McAfee allowed eight other allegations against the former president to stand.

Updated at 9.04pm BST

8.21pm BST

Trump says he will not debate Harris again

Donald Trump announced he will not participate in a second debate with Kamala Harris , saying she has turned down previous opportunities to meet and alleging she lost their Tuesday night face-off.

“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH.’ Polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate, on Tuesday night, and she immediately called for a Second Debate,” the former president wrote on Truth Social .

Trump restated his much-repeated claim that Harris and Joe Biden have “destroyed our Country”, then said:

Everyone knows this, and all of the other problems caused by Kamala and Joe - It was discussed in great detail during the First Debate with Joe, and the Second Debate with Comrade Harris. She was a no-show at the Fox Debate, and refused to do NBC & CBS. KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!

The Harris campaign has previously said she would be willing to debate Trump again sometime in October. Trump’s running mate JD Vance remains scheduled to debate Tim Walz , the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, on 1 October in New York.

Updated at 8.31pm BST

8.05pm BST

Trump campaign says support is increasing in swing states following debate

Donald Trump ’s pollsters say support for the former president has increased in swing states since his debate against Kamala Harris .

In a memo , Tony Fabrizio and Travis Tunis write that the candidates were tied before the debate, but after surveying 1,893 likely voters in seven swing states, Trump now leads Harris 48% to 46% when third-party candidates are included, and 50% to 47% in a head-to-head matchup.

“Clearly, target state voters were not impressed by Kamala Harris’ empty platitudes and while the media would have people believe she is cruising to victory, this couldn’t be farther from the truth,” the pollsters write.

Updated at 8.15pm BST

7.44pm BST

A bomb threat prompted the evacuation and closure of the city hall in Springfield, Ohio, which has been thrust into national focus after Donald Trump and Republicans pushed false and unsubstantiated claims of Haitian immigrants in the city eating pets and local wildlife.

The bomb threat “was issued to multiple facilities throughout Springfield”, the city said.

We ask the community to avoid the area surrounding City Hall vicinity while the investigation is ongoing and to report any suspicious activity to the Springfield Police Division.

The city’s mayor, Rob Rue , indicated that the threat included complaints about Haitian immigrants in the city, according to NBC News.

Local police and officials have said there were no credible reports of Haitian immigrants stealing pets to eat them.

Updated at 8.30pm BST

7.29pm BST

Republicans are blaming the influence of Laura Loomer, a rightwing conspiracy theorist, for this week’s botched debate performance by Donald Trump, which included the former president repeating a bizarre and unfounded claim that pet cats and dogs were being eaten by Haitian immigrants.

Loomer flew with Trump on his private plane to Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia and has been identified as a key promoter of the pets rumour, which has been dismissed as false by authorities in Springfield, Ohio, where the practice was alleged to have been taking place.

The Semafor website quoted an unnamed source close to Trump’s campaign as saying they were “100%” concerned about Loomer’s sway over the Republican nominee. “Regardless of any guardrails the Trump campaign has put on her, I don’t think it’s working,” the source said.

Trump this year proposed giving Loomer an official role on his campaign, but the idea was resisted by staffers. Loomer, who styles herself as an “investigative journalist”, last year promoted a conspiracy theory alleging that 9/11 was an “inside job”. On Wednesday she posted an unfounded allegation that Harris had worn earphones disguised as earrings during the debate.

Related: Republicans point finger at Laura Loomer for Trump’s pet-eating rant

Updated at 8.30pm BST

7.10pm BST

Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris following the debate on Tuesday drove hundreds of thousands of people to voter-registration resources, according to multiple reports.

Swift’s Instagram post included a link to Vote.org, the federal government’s voting registration site. According to the General Services Administration:

There were a total of 405,999 visitors referred to vote.gov from the custom URL created and shared by Ms Swift during the 24 hour period the post was live.

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

Updated at 8.30pm BST

6.49pm BST

The day so far

It’s back to the campaign trail for both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump , two days after their first and perhaps only debate. The vice-president has two events planned for this afternoon in North Carolina, while Trump will be in Arizona. Speaking of the debate, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds Harris the overall winner of the Tuesday evening face-off, and slightly improving her lead nationally. In the legal arena, a New York appeals court just rejected another attempt by Trump to get the gag order imposed on him in his hush-money case lifted.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• North Dakota ’s strict ban on abortion was tossed out by a judge who said it ran afoul of the state constitution and was vague.

• The joint session of Congress scheduled for 6 January 2025 to count and certify electoral votes will be considered a “national special security event” by the homeland security department, all because of what happened last time .

• Alberto Gonzales , a Republican who served as attorney general under George W Bush , announced he will vote for Harris.

Updated at 6.52pm BST

6.36pm BST

Polls finds Harris victorious in debate, building lead over Trump nationally

Reuters is out with one of the first polls since Kamala Harris and Donald Trump debated on Tuesday evening, and found voters view the vice-president as the winner in the debate, where Trump came off as the less sharp candidate.

Harris is also building her lead among registered voters nationally to 47% over Trump’s 42%, a slight jump from previous weeks, according to the survey, which was conducted with Ipsos. Here’s more about it:

The two-day poll showed Harris with a five percentage point lead among registered voters, just above the four-point advantage she had over Trump in an Aug 21-28 Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Among voters who said they had heard at least something about Tuesday’s debate, 53% said Harris won and 24% said Trump won. Some 52% of respondents said that Trump stumbled and didn’t appear sharp, while 21% said that of Harris.

Harris, 59, put Trump, 78, on the defensive with a stream of attacks on his fitness for office and his myriad legal woes.

The poll surveyed 1,690 US adults nationwide, including 1,405 registered voters. It had a margin of error of around three percentage points for registered voters.

Updated at 7.49pm BST

6.19pm BST

Joe Biden traveled to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, yesterday on somber business: laying a wreath at the site where Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on 9/11, crashed.

He then traveled to the local fire station, where the mood lightened considerably when the 81-year-old president met a similarly mature resident, who was wearing a Trump cap.

Biden offered the man, whose name reporters did not catch, a hat with the presidential seal on it, prompting the old-timer to ask the president for an autograph.

“You remember your name?” he asked the president. “I don’t remember my name, I’m slow,” Biden replied. “You’re an old fart!” the resident told him. “Yeah, I know, man, I’m an old guy,” the president gamely replied.

After more banter, the pair traded hats, with Biden putting a red Trump cap over one he was already wearing, before advising the room not to eat dogs or cats (cuisine that is not so bad, the elderly resident advised him).

Watch the exchange here:

A White House spokesperson later said Biden had put on the hat in a show of “bipartisan unity”:

Updated at 7.48pm BST

5.55pm BST

Judge strikes down North Dakota's abortion ban

A North Dakota judge struck down its near-total ban on abortions, saying the state constitution protects some access to the procedure, and the law as written is vague, the Associated Press reports.

District judge Bruce Romanick ’s decision comes in a lawsuit filed by North Dakota’s sole abortion clinic, which has moved to neighboring Minnesota since the ban was signed by Governor Doug Burgum in 2022. Burgum made a failed run for the Republican presidential nomination this year, and has since become a top surrogate to Donald Trump .

Updated at 5.57pm BST

5.35pm BST

Appeals court rejects Trump's attempt to lift gag order in hush-money case

Donald Trump has failed in his latest attempt to lift the limited gag order imposed on him by Juan Merchan , the judge who presided over the trial in which the former president was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments.

New York’s appeals court declined Trump’s request today “upon the ground that no substantial constitutional question is directly involved”.

Trump has repeatedly complained about the gag order , which prevents him from making public statements about the case’s prosecutors, court staff and their families.

Updated at 5.52pm BST

5.16pm BST

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:

Updated at 5.58pm BST

4.56pm BST

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.

Updated at 5.02pm BST

4.34pm BST

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:

Related: Swing state voters respond to the presidential debate: ‘Trump couldn’t even look at her!’

4.08pm BST

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.

Updated at 4.18pm BST

3.46pm BST

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”.

Updated at 3.49pm BST

3.29pm BST

Harris sets 'aggressive' campaign schedule after debate

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.

Updated at 3.34pm BST

3.11pm BST

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.

Updated at 3.25pm BST

2.55pm BST

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.

Related: Europe watches Harris-Trump debate for clues on direction US may take

2.29pm BST

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:

Related: Billionaire Leonard Leo rejects Senate subpoena over supreme court gifts

2.02pm BST

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:

Related: Biden to reportedly push for supreme court term limits and new ethics code

Updated at 2.50pm BST

1.38pm BST

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:

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.

1.16pm BST

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.

Updated at 1.20pm BST

11.49am BST

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.

11.46am BST

X’s AI chatbot spread voter misinformation – and election officials fought back

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 .

10.57am BST

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

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 .

10.38am BST

Trump campaign publicly claims debate win but aides privately express doubts

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 .

10.17am BST

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.

Updated at 2.49pm BST

10.17am BST

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

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 .

Updated at 10.17am BST