The Latest: Trump and Harris to debate on ABC News in September

With both major party tickets now decided, the campaign is set to play out as a 90-day sprint, and the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt are prime fronts. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have agreed to a Sept. 10 presidential debate on ABC, setting up a face-off between the Republican and Democratic nominees.

Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz showed their support for organized labor by appearing at a United Auto Workers event in Detroit.

Meanwhile, former President Trump held a news conference Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, making his first public appearance since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee and selected Walz as her running mate.

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Here’s the Latest:

The ABC debate will take place on a day her campaign has long stuck to as the Republican nominee waffled on his commitment.

“I hear that Donald Trump has finally committed to debating me on September 10,” she wrote on the social media site X. “I look forward to it.”

Earlier Thursday, Trump recommitted to the Sept. 10 debate — which had been arranged when Biden was still in the race — and proposed additional debates on other networks. The Harris campaign has not responded to Trump’s proposal of more debates.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, has rallied a group of enthusiastic donors in Paris, France, telling them his wife is “ready” and heaping praise on her newly minted running mate, Gov. Tim Walz.

The private fundraiser held in the French capital’s tony 16th arrondissement was hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s mother, Judith Pisar, the widow of Holocaust survivor Samuel Pisar, who died in 2015. Organizers said it had raised $285,000.

Emhoff, who took time out of his Olympic duties as head of the U.S. delegation to the closing ceremony in Paris, was quick to highlight her choice of Walz, saying “she made the right choice” and touted the governor’s resume.

Emhoff also said he “cannot wait” to see his wife debate former President Trump, but urged the friendly crowd not to get “too comfortable” in the 89 days before the presidential election.

The former president’s statement on the Fed during his news conference earlier Thursday was a direct challenge to the U.S. central bank’s political independence. Most economists say the country is well-served by having the Fed make choices to address inflation without the risk of political interference, which could lead them to make policy mistakes by focusing instead on a president’s electoral goals.

Trump said he felt he had better instincts on the economy than Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who hiked a benchmark interest rate to help lower inflation after it spiked in 2022 to a four-decade high.

In response to a July question about whether the Fed should coordinate more with the White House, Powell said, “People have learned that a central bank that’s independent of political consideration does a better job of getting inflation under control, and that is now the accepted wisdom in all advanced economies around the world.”

Kamala Harris is tying her Oakland, California, upbringing by a single mother with running mate Walz’s childhood in small-town Nebraska in an address to United Auto Workers.

“The same people raised us, good people, hardworking people, people who had pride in their work,” she says in the Detroit union hall. “People who had pride in knowing we were a community of people who looked out for each other.”

“No one should ever be made to fight alone,” she said. “We are all in this together.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was sounding a little hoarse after his third day on the campaign trail.

“This is a bit of preaching to the choir. But the choir needs to sing. The choir needs to sing, right now,” Walz, Harris’ new running mate, told a room full of United Auto Workers union members in a Detroit union hall.

The rasp in Walz’s voice didn’t stop him from joining in the chants that have become a regular part of Harris’ rallies, “We’re not going back! We’re not going back! We’re not going back!”

The vice president and her Democratic running mate are set to play up their support for organized labor during an appearance at a Detroit-area union hall.

The two are on stage, waiting to speak to several dozen United Auto Workers members at Local 900 Hall, which represents Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant.

Those members were the first Ford workers to strike in 2023 when the union’s contract with the company expired. Workers at the assembly plant went on strike Sept. 15 and remained on the picket lines until Oct. 25, when the union announced a tentative agreement with Ford.

Trump said he has not “recalibrated” his campaign despite facing a new opponent, a dynamic some Republican strategists have quietly complained about.

Trump continued to criticize Biden, against whom he has been running since before the 2020 election, during his press conference at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, all while hurling personal insults at Harris, the new Democratic nominee.

When asked what assets Harris possessed, Trump said, “She’s a woman. She represents certain groups of people.”

Four times he questioned the intelligence of Harris, a former California attorney general and former U.S. senator.

He said the strategy for the campaign would not change because it’s not about Harris, it’s about the policies of the Biden-Harris administration that will decide the election.

During his news conference, the former president suggested that abortion “has become much less of an issue” since the Supreme Court ended the federal right to abortion services and returned control of the matter to state governments.

Trump argued that Democrats, Republicans and “everybody” is pleased with the results of the 2022 ruling that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Trump’s actions within the GOP, however, suggest he knows that Democrats have already capitalized on Republican opposition to abortion rights and could do so again this fall. Trump single-handedly ensured that the Republican Party platform adopted at the 2024 convention in Milwaukee does not call for a national abortion ban, and he has said repeatedly that hardliners in the party could cost the GOP in November.

The court’s decision, issued months ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, is widely cited as a reason why Democrats fared much better than expected in House and Senate contests. And Democrats have hammered Trump on paid advertisements blaming him and the justices he appointed for ending Roe.

ABC News says both the Trump and Harris campaigns have agreed to a Sept. 10 debate. That was the date Trump had initially agreed to debate President Biden, before Biden dropped out of the race.

Trump says almost being assassinated by a gunman has not changed his position opposing any new federal regulations or restrictions on weapons.

“People need the guns for protection,” he said, pointing to U.S. cities that have attempted local gun restrictions and still see violent crime.

Trump accused Harris of wanting to “take away everyone’s guns.”

Harris’ proposals call for universal background checks and a ban on certain near-military grade weapons like those that were banned from 1994 until a decade later, when then-President George W. Bush and Republicans on Capitol Hill allowed the ban to expire.

Trump has falsely claimed that “nobody was killed on Jan. 6,” the date in 2021 when pro-Trump rioters breached the U.S. Capitol amid Congress’ effort to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Five people died in the riot and its aftermath, including Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter shot and killed by police, and Brian Sicknick, a police officer who died the day after battling the mob.

Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from San Diego was shot and killed by a police officer as she climbed through a broken part of a Capitol door during the violent riot. To be sure, Trump has often cited Babbitt’s death while lamenting the treatment of those who attended a rally outside the White House that day and then marched to the Capitol, many of whom fought with police.

Federal prosecutors had weighed charging the officer involved in the shooting but opted not to file charges.

“I think those people were treated very badly when you compare it to other things that took place in this country where a lot of people were killed,” Trump said Thursday.

Trump misrepresented the realities of the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol and the electorates of several Southern states as he repeated the lie that President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was due to fraud.

He insisted there “was a peaceful transfer of power” after the 2020 election. Certainly, Biden was inaugurated on schedule. But Washington was on lockdown that day, with the streets patrolled by military personnel and domestic police two weeks after Trump’s supporters had attacked the Capitol as Congress convened to certify Biden’s win.

Trump, meanwhile, argued, “You don’t win Alabama and South Carolina by records and lose Georgia. It doesn’t happen.”

Except Alabama and South Carolina are overwhelmingly Republican and Georgia has been trending toward a two-party battleground for years.

Alabama and South Carolina have about 5 million residents and heavily Republican electorates. Georgia, driven by decades of growth in metro Atlanta, now has about 11 million residents -- and 5 million presidential voters.

As a comparison, Barack Obama lost Georgia by about 5 percentage points in 2008 without spending significant resources in the state. That same year, he lost Alabama by more than 22 points and lost South Carolina by 9 points.

Trump began his press conference with a three-pronged attack on Harris, her new running mate Gov. Walz of Minnesota and even President Biden, who has been out of the presidential race for weeks.

Trump began the event with a statement before calling into question Harris’ legitimacy as the nominee. “We have somebody who hasn’t received one vote for president,” he said. Harris was nominated by virtual roll call by the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday.

He called Walz “a radical left man,” adding that “he has positions that it’s not even possible to believe they exist.”

And he said “the presidency was taken away” from Biden, whom Trump has spent years focusing on, even as he said he did not plan to recalibrate his campaign, in light of a new opponent.

Trump suggested he would participate in as many as three debates against Harris. He said he’s willing to appear separately on Fox, NBC and ABC, all spread across September.

The former president has been inconsistent in recent weeks about his debate preferences, and Harris has not committed to any of Trump’s more recent ideas. Trump had agreed previously to a debate against President Biden on ABC in late September but then he pulled out of that commitment and called on Harris to join him in a Fox News debate.

ABC has said it would continue its regularly scheduled event and host whichever of the candidates shows up. Trump was noncommittal when asked if he would move forward if Harris only agreed to the ABC debate.

Trump has opened a press conference at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, his first since Vice President Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday.

He warned of World War III, a depression of “the 1929 variety” and a nation overrun with migrants from south of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I think that our country is right now in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in, from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint,” he said, adding that President Joe Biden is the “worst president in the history of our country” and that Vice President Kamala Harris also ranks at the bottom of the people to hold the No. 2 spot.

Trump’s supporters typically hear his “America First” and “Make America Great Again” rallying cries as a fundamentally optimistic vision for fixing deep-seated problems. The question is whether more moderate voters hear the same message or are turned off by such sweeping, often-hyperbolic critiques of the country.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is leading the U.S. presidential delegation to the Paris Olympics’ closing ceremony Sunday, cheering on with American athletes over the next few days and holding events such as a UNESCO roundtable to discuss combating antisemitism.

At the roundtable Thursday, Emhoff said the Biden administration is “working with Congress” to support a $2.2 million grant for UNESCO’s international program on Holocaust and genocide education.

“UNESCO plays a vital role in ensuring that Holocaust education is taught and used to combat antisemitism all around the world,” he said. “And in the wake of the horrific Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel where hostages were taken, this work has never been more urgent.”

President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, will meet with campaign staffers in Wilmington, Delaware on Thursday, using the time to thank them for their hard work over the past year and their continued work in support of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. That’s according to a person familiar with the president’s plans, who insisted on anonymity to discuss plans that are not yet public.

The event at a local venue in Wilmington will feature food and, naturally for Biden, ice cream.

The president exited the presidential race two weeks ago and wanted to say hello to the hundreds of staffers expected to attend.

-Josh Boak

Nancy Pelosi’s influence can be seen all across the Democratic Party shakeup that in a few short, agonizing weeks has reengineered the 2024 presidential ticket and the race for the White House.

It was Pelosi who publicly encouraged President Joe Biden to make a decision about his reelection campaign when he had already insisted he had no plans to step aside. Once he exited and endorsed Kamala Harris atop the ticket, it was Pelosi who was a big fan of her future running mate, Tim Walz.

For the House speaker emerita, the upheaval is less about Biden, a friend of 40 years, and more about Republican Donald Trump, the former president she refers to as “Bozo,” “a snake-oil salesman,” “what’s his name” and the “Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

“How can I say this in the nicest possible way: My goal in life was that man would never step in the White House again,” Pelosi said, slapping the table with every word.

Pelosi spoke Wednesday with reporters and columnists about her new book, “The Art of Power, My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House,” which calls for an end to political violence in the U.S.

Deputy Wayne County Executive Assad I. Turfe, the highest ranking Arab American official in Michigan’s largest county, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for president shortly after she gave remarks just outside Detroit on Wednesday.

Turfe told The Associated Press he spoke with Harris backstage at the event prior to his endorsement.

“Kamala Harris embodies the America we deserve – an America that stands for strength, inclusivity and unwavering commitment to justice,” Turfe said in a statement. “I wholeheartedly endorse Kamala Harris, as she represents the true spirit of our nation and the values we hold dear.”

Metro Detroit, home to one of the largest Arab American populations in the United States, has become a focal point of tension and unrest due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. Harris’ speech outside Detroit was interrupted for several minutes Wednesday by a small group of pro-Palestinian protesters yelling.

Turfe also pressed the need for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, but said Harris “gives us the best chance of achieving peace in that region moving forward.”

The Thursday news conference would be his first public appearance since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee and selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.

The former president announced the 2 p.m. EDT news conference on his Truth Social network and then posted he was eager to debate Harris. He had teased an announcement on the presidential debate earlier this week after pulling down from the scheduled ABC News debate. Trump had said he would rather the debate be on Fox News, but on Wednesday was showing willingness to reconsider ABC News.

“I will expose Kamala during the Debate the same way I exposed Crooked Joe, Hillary, and everyone else during Debates,” he said on Truth Social. “Only I think Kamala will be easier.”

Trump’s running mate JD Vance has criticized Harris for not conducting news conference or sitting down for interviews since President Joe Biden stepped aside and she launched her presidential bid. Harris sometimes answers shouted questions while boarding or leaving her plane for campaign stops.

Five secretaries of state are urging Elon Musk to fix an AI chatbot on the social media platform X, saying in a letter sent Monday that it has spread election misinformation.

The top election officials from Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington told Musk that X’s AI chatbot, Grok, produced false information about state ballot deadlines shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race.

While Grok is available only to subscribers to the premium versions of X, the misinformation was shared across multiple social media platforms and reached millions of people, according to the letter. The bogus ballot deadline information from the chatbot also referenced Alabama, Indiana, Ohio and Texas, although their secretaries of state did not sign the letter. Grok continued to repeat the false information for 10 days before it was corrected, the secretaries said.

The letter urged X to immediately fix the chatbot “to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year.” That would include directing Grok to send users to CanIVote.org, a voting information website run by the National Association of Secretaries of State, when asked about U.S. elections.