Kamala Harris campaign raises $310m in July as presidential race is transformed

Vice-president’s fundraising haul dwarfed Trump’s $138.7m with polls indicating a tight contest in battleground states

Kamala Harris’s campaign said on Friday it raised $310m in July, the latest dramatic illustration of a US presidential race polls show has transformed from an apparent romp to victory by Donald Trump into a neck-and-neck race in battleground states, though Trump retains a narrow lead.

Harris doubled Trump’s July fundraising haul of $138.7m, which in any normal year would be an impressive result, boosted by the assassination attempt he survived in Pennsylvania and by the Republican convention in Milwaukee.

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Is this the end of Project 2025? – podcast

This week, Paul Dans, the leader of the controversial Project 2025, resigned and signalled in a company email that work on it was ‘winding down’. The project had become a manifesto of rightwing policies that would serve as a guide for the next Republican president. However, there is a significant stumbling block: Donald Trump wants nothing to do with it.

Joan E Greve and Rachel Leingang discuss whether this marks the beginning of the end of Project 2025

Archive: CNN, PBS Newshour, CSPAN, Tik Tok: heathergtv

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Evan Gershkovich release: Biden and Harris greet Americans freed after prisoner swap

Emotional scenes at Andrews air force base as Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva step onto American soil

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris met the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other freed American prisoners just hours after Washington and Moscow completed their largest prisoner exchange since the cold war.

On a muggy evening at Andrews air force base near Washington DC, Gershkovich and the other freed prisoners, the ex-marine Paul Whelan and the journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, touched down on US soil and shortly later disembarked a Bombardier jet from Turkey. They were met by their families and the US president and vice-president.

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Trump holds first Pennsylvania rally since assassination attempt hours after heated interview with Black journalists – live

Ex-president says he will travel back to Butler where assassination attempt took place; White House condemns Trump after he questions Harris’s racial identity at NABJ event

Journalists at the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) began trickling in to the Hilton hotel in downtown Chicago this morning for a 12pm CT/1pm ET panel – featuring Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

He will be quizzed by the prominent political reporters Kadia Goba of Semafor, Rachel Scott of ABC News and Harris Faulkner of Fox News.

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Black journalists respond to ‘disastrous’ Trump panel at annual convention

Many expressed frustration with National Association of Black Journalists for inviting ex-president ‘into our home’

On Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump participated in a contentious panel hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). The discussion, held in Chicago at the organization’s annual convention, began after an hour-long delay, with a room full of journalists tensely awaiting the program.

During the wait, Philip Lewis, the HuffPost deputy editor, shared on X that the hold-up was being caused by a disagreement between the NABJ and the former president. “I’m told that Trump is demanding that NABJ not do the live factchecking and that’s why the event hasn’t started yet,” he wrote. “We’re in a standoff.”

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‘Cat ladies’ come together to show support for Kamala Harris

Zoom call – with pets included – organized as riposte to comments made by JD Vance about ‘childless cat ladies’

A group of pet lovers and self-described “cat ladies” came together for the latest in a series of Zoom calls in support of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. The Tuesday evening call was hosted by Christine Pelosi, a political consultant and the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, and Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic party.

The call was not organized around racial and ethnic identity, but as a rebuff to comments made in 2021 by JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, who told the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”.

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Atlanta rally: Harris tells Trump to ‘say it to my face’ and challenges him to debate

VP touts prosecution record to cheering crowd after state leaders including Stacey Abrams take stage to show support

Three weeks ago, the political commentariat was writing off Georgia and talking of narrow pathways for Joe Biden to hold the White House. Georgia was a desert. Tuesday evening, an Atlanta crowd greeted Kamala Harris like she backed up a truck full of sweet tea to that desert.

It’s probably too early – nine days since the president’s withdrawal and the vice-president’s ascension – to know if sentiment in Georgia had shifted enough to justify jubilation. But the crowd in Atlanta treated the new presumptive presidential nominee as a reason to celebrate after months of her quieter campaigning in the city as the vice-presidential nominee.

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Republican Arizona mayor John Giles endorses Harris for President

Mesa mayor crosses party line to back vice-president and rebuke Trump’s ‘political extremism’ in op-ed

John Giles, the Republican mayor of Arizona’s third largest city and a previous thorn in the side of his party for endorsing Democrats, has thrown his support behind Kamala Harris for president.

Giles, who since 2014 has been mayor of Mesa near Phoenix, also rebuked Donald Trump in an opinion piece for the Arizona Republic published Monday.

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‘Say it to my face’ says Kamala Harris as she again challenges Donald Trump to debate – as it happened

This blog is closed. You can find our latest US elections coverage here.

Kamala Harris’s campaign has announced a $50m advertising blitz ahead of the Democratic national convention next month with a television ad that portrays the presumptive Democratic nominee as “fearless”.

The 60-second ad will be the first in a series of paid media efforts ahead of the convention, which begins 19 August in Chicago.

We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead. Where every senior can retire with dignity. But Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act. But we are not going back.

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Celebrity-studded ‘White Dudes for Harris’ call raises $4m for vice-president

Jeff Bridges, Mark Hamill, Mark Ruffalo and contenders for Harris’s VP pick among 190,000 participants in Zoom call

A Zoom call meant to rally “white dudes” in support of vice-president Kamala Harris’s run for the White House raised more than $4m from about 190,000 participants, including numerous celebrities, according to the presumptive Democratic nominee’s campaign.

Guests on the call not only included contenders for Harris’s vice-presidential running mate: the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, and the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg. They also included the actors Jeff Bridges – famous for portraying the Dude in The Big Lebowski – and Mark Hamill, who secured a $50,000 donation during the call by delivering his renowned Star Wars line: “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.”

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US elections live: Harris backs Biden’s supreme court reforms as House speaker calls them ‘dead on arrival’

Vice-president says action needed amid ‘clear crisis of confidence’ in the court; Mike Johnson rejects effort, saying they would ‘tilt the balance of power’

Joe Biden has called for a series of reforms to to the supreme court, including the introduction of 18-year term limits and a binding code of conduct for justices.

Biden, in an op-ed for the Washington Post, also called for a constitutional amendment to remove immunity for crimes committed by a president while in office.

This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one.

When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it. Our democracy is under assault by criminal Donald Trump.

Donald Trump wants to take America backward, to a politics of hate, chaos, and fear – this November America will unite around Vice President Kamala Harris to stop him.

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Elon Musk accused of spreading lies over doctored Kamala Harris video

Doctored campaign video featuring US vice-president reposted by Tesla chief executive watched 128m times

Kamala Harris’s election campaign has accused Elon Musk of spreading “manipulated lies” after the Tesla chief executive posted a doctored video featuring the vice-president on his X account.

Musk reposted a manipulated Harris campaign video on Friday evening in which a fake Harris voiceover says: “I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire,” and that anyone who criticises her is “both sexist and racist”.

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‘Terrifying’: Democrats react to Trump saying people won’t have to vote again

Former president told Christian supporters on Friday ‘it’ll be fixed’ in four years if he wins 2024 election

Democrats have expressed outrage after Donald Trump told a group of Christian supporters on Friday that if he wins the presidency in November, they would never need to vote again.

“Christians, get out and vote, just this time,” the former president and current presidential nominee told the crowd at at Turning Point Action’s Believers’ Summit on Friday. “You won’t have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.”

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Kamala Harris allies deploy new Trump attack line: he is ‘just plain weird’

Tactic calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are now more engaged with election

US Democrats have spent recent days trying out a relatively new attack line on Donald Trump: that he is weird. The tactic is almost certainly calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are moving from marked disinterest in the now-dropped matchup between Joe Biden and his presidential predecessor to engagement in the 100-day contest between Trump and Kamala Harris.

In a press release Thursday, vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris issued a list of the main takeaways of what Trump had given the American people. “Is Donald Trump OK?” the X message said. The seventh of nine entries was: “Trump is old and quite weird?”

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Top Republicans call Kamala Harris a ‘dangerous liberal’ as attacks ramp up

Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham and Ron DeSantis try to paint Harris, a centrist Democrat, as having far-left politics

Republicans took to the airwaves Sunday to criticize a surging Kamala Harris, calling the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee a “dangerous liberal” as US conservatives’ lines of attack on the vice-president began to solidify.

In appearances across CNN and Fox News, senior Republican figures Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham and former presidential candidate Ron DeSantis each attempted to paint Harris – who is typically seen as a centrist Democrat – as having far-left politics.

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Gen-Z voters spread the ‘Kamalove’ as Harris’s popularity earns youth support

Pramila Jayapal, progressive Seattle representative, says of ‘undeniable’ enthusiasm: ‘I have not seen anything like this’

Kamala Harris pledged to earn the votes of young people this election, as the vice-president and newly elevated presumptive Democratic nominee rides a gen Z-powered wave of online “Kamalove” .

In a virtual address to attendees of a two-day summit in Atlanta, hosted by the liberal gen Z-led organization Voters of Tomorrow, Harris said she had been elected the first female vice-president of the United States “because young voters showed up” in 2020. She touted “historic progress” made by the Biden-Harris administration on combating gun violence and climate change, all of which she said was again “at stake this November”.

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Record-breaking Zoom supporting Harris mobilizes white female voters

Over 160,000 attendees in a key demographic ‘answered the call’ on Thursday, with nearly $8.5m raised for Harris

Following the success of a virtual call to mobilize Black women voters for Kamala Harris, a similar event with more than 160,000 attendees was held on Thursday aimed at white women, and appeared to break records.

White women will be a key demographic for the Democrats to win over this election.

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Kamala Harris calls Sonya Massey family to give ‘heartfelt condolences’

James Wilburn, father of Black woman shot dead by Illinois police, says vice-president ‘let us know she is with us 100%’

Vice-President Kamala Harris on Friday called the family of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy in her Illinois home, according to Massey’s family members, who spoke to NBC News.

Massey was killed on 6 July after she called the Sangamon county sheriff’s office because she was afraid there might be a prowler outside, according to an attorney for her family and Illinois state police.

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Harris ‘erases’ Trump’s lead in new poll; Trump says VP’s comments about Israel-Gaza war ‘weren’t very nice’ – as it happened

This blog is now closed. You can read our full report on Kamala Harris closing the gap in polling here

Don Davis, a North Carolina Democratic representative, has issued a statement endorsing Kamala Harris, just a day after he broke party rank and joined House Republicans in condemning Harris’s border policies.

In a statement, Davis said:

Today, I announce my endorsement and support of Vice-President Kamala Harris for president. I also believe governor Roy Cooper, an eastern NC native, would be an excellent choice for vice-president. The stakes of this presidential election are incredibly high, with far reaching implications.

At the same time, the administration and Congress must address the concerns of the southern border. These issues cannot be overlooked …

Yesterday, the department of justice arrested Ismael Zambada Garcia (AKA ‘El Mayo’) and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, two of the most notorious leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, one of the deadliest enterprises in the world.

They are being charged for leading the Cartel’s deadly drug manufacturing and trafficking networks. I commend the work of our law enforcement officials who made this arrest for their ongoing work to bring Sinaloa cartel leaders to justice.

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Israeli right wing hits out at Kamala Harris as Netanyahu visit polarises opinion

Amid anger at US vice-president’s call to end Gaza war, many families of hostages held by Hamas agree with her

Members of Israel’s rightwing government have hit back at Kamala Harris over her demands for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza after she met Benjamin Netanyahu during his US visit.

After a brief meeting with the Israeli prime minister, which Harris described as “frank and constructive”, the US vice-president and presidential candidate said it was “time for this war to end, and end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self-determination”.

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