Trump repeats attacks and falsehoods in free-wheeling press conference at his golf club – as it happened

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Donald Trump’s campaign has made a slew of new hires as he looks to get his footing against Democrat Kamala Harris, including bringing Corey Lewandowski, who managed part of his 2016 run, on to its leadership team.

Other hires on the team include Washington Times columnist and communications strategist Tim Murtaugh, political consultant Alex Bruesewitz and Taylor Budowich and Alex Pfeiffer, both of whom are associated with the Make America Great Again Super Pac.

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Vance lashes out at Harris and Walz as he attempts to seize back momentum

Amid a faltering campaign, Republican VP hopeful claims pair are ‘uncomfortable in their own skin’

Republican vice-presidential hopeful JD Vance lashed out at Kamala Harris and Tim Walz during a whirlwind tour of political shows on Sunday as he attempted to seize back momentum to his own faltering campaign.

The Ohio senator claimed the pairing on the Democratic presidential ticket were “uncomfortable in their own skin” over their policy positions ahead of November’s election.

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Trump blames Iran for email hack and says only publicly available information stolen

Microsoft appears to confirm that alleged hackers with ties to Iran sent email from ‘account of a former senior adviser’

Donald Trump said that only “publicly available information” had been stolen by a hack of his campaign for the presidency as he pinned the dramatic theft on the Iranian government.

The news of an alleged hack emerged amid reports from the news website Politico that it had begun getting emails from an anonymous account with internal documents from the Trump campaign, including a vetting dossier on his running mate JD Vance.

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New poll shows Harris four points ahead of Trump in three key swing states

Crucial states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan are now leaning Democratic according to a NYT/Siena poll

A major new poll puts Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in three key swing states, signaling a dramatic reversal in momentum for the Democratic party with three months to go until the election.

The vice-president leads the ex-president by four percentage points in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, 50% to 46%, among almost 2,000 likely voters across the three states, according to new surveys by the New York Times and Siena College.

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Biden, Harris to attend first joint event since he quit campaign race – as it happened

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Ahead of her and Tim Walz’s campaign in Arizona later today, Kamala Harris wrote on X:

“We are running a campaign on behalf of all Americans.

It is great to be in Arizona with governor Tim Walz.”

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Polls show Kamala Harris building lead over Trump in 2024 election

Democratic party’s presumptive nominee 2.1 points over Trump in FiveThirtyEight’s national average

Kamala Harris continues to gain strength in the US presidential election, as polls nationally and in battleground states show her building leads or catching Donald Trump.

On Friday morning, FiveThirtyEight, a leading polling analysis site, puts Harris, the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee for president, up by 2.1 points over her Republican rival in its national average.

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Harris continues battleground campaign blitz after Trump’s rambling press conference – live

Harris campaigns with Walz in Detroit; ABC News confirms Trump and Harris will debate on 10 September

In a new tweet on Thursday ahead of her address with workers from the United Auto Workers union in Detroit, Michigan Kamala Harris wrote:

“This campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump. Our campaign is about fighting for the future.”

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JD Vance attacks Tim Walz’s military record as election race heats up

Vance, who served as a correspondent in the marines, accused Walz of ‘stolen valor garbage’

JD Vance went on the offensive on Wednesday, attacking the military record of Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick.

Speaking in Michigan, Donald Trump’s Republican running mate said: “You know what really bothers me about Tim Walz? When the United States Marine Corps … asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do and I did it honorably, and I’m very proud of that service.

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The coach v the couch: key takeaways from the first Harris-Walz rally

Harris praises Walz’s time as a football coach as her VP pick says he’ll debate JD Vance ‘if he’s willing to get off the couch’

Kamala Harris introduced her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, to supporters at a packed, energetic rally at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The event, which kicks off a week-long tour through the most politically competitive US states, marks a new chapter for the Harris campaign after securing enough delegates to be the Democratic nominee.

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Tim Walz thanks Kamala Harris for ‘honor of a lifetime’ as she praises running mate for ‘fighting for middle-class families’ – live

Democrats welcome choice of Minnesota governor to be Harris’s running mate in race against Donald Trump and JD Vance

As we await Kamala Harris’s running mate announcement, Americans in some states are heading to the polls today.

Voters in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington state will cast ballots in their congressional primaries today. Results in Michigan will be especially scrutinized, as the battleground state will play a key role in the presidential election.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) pumped more than $8.5m into the race in Missouri’s first congressional district in support of Bush’s rival, St Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell, through its campaign funding arm, the United Democracy Project (UDP). …

The UDP accounts for more than half of all the money spent on the race outside of the campaigns themselves. Much of it comes from billionaires who fund hardline pro-Israel causes and Republicans in other races, including some who have given to Donald Trump’s campaign.

With the support of 99% of all participating delegates in the virtual roll call, Vice-President Harris has historic momentum at her back as we embark on the final steps in officially certifying her as our Party’s nominee.

We thank the thousands of delegates from all across the country who took seriously their responsibility throughout this process to make their voices – and the voices of their communities – heard.

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US supreme court won’t stop Trump sentencing from going ahead – as it happened

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Climate activist, feminist and screen legend Jane Fonda has put out a video message endorsing Kamala Harris to win the White House in November.

“Today I’m proud to endorse Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States,” Fonda begins, talking to camera in close-up.

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Name-calling and hyperbole: Trump continues fear-mongering fest at Georgia rally

Ex-president touched upon a range of topics from crime to immigration in his speech with mostly made-up statistics

Donald Trump addressed a fully-packed venue in downtown Atlanta on Saturday, with thousands of people waiting in the Georgia heat outside to enter, or to protest his appearance in a city he has condemned repeatedly.

His remarks were consistent with the tenor and comportment of restraint and probity Atlantans are used to hearing at this point.

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Kamala Harris ‘honored’ after earning enough votes to become Democratic nominee – as it happened

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Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, is widely speculated to be among Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential finalists.

Martin Pengelly explores Shapiro’s background for the Guardian:

July was the best grassroots fundraising month in presidential history.

Team Harris raised more across grassroots channels in the four days following President Biden’s endorsement of Vice-President Harris than Trump’s big donor-reliant operation raised in the entire month.

More than 3 million donors made over 4.2m contributions – with more than 2 million donors making their first donation this cycle.

This month, 94% of all our donations were under $200, and teachers and nurses continue to be among the most common donor occupations.

Compared with June, we saw more than 10 times the number of gen Z donors, and more than eight times the number of millennial donors.

Sixty per cent of all donors in July were women.

Coalition groups that organized calls since launch – like Black Women for Harris, Latinas for Harris, and White Dudes for Harris – raised more than $20m for Team Harris.

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JD Vance attacked AOC for ‘sociopathic attitude’ towards children and family

Trump running mate made remarks to Catholic group in 2021, the same year he criticized ‘childless cat ladies’

In remarks to a Catholic group, JD Vance attacked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for having “a sociopathic attitude” about families and children.

“One of the politicians that I criticised is AOC,” said Vance in 2021, while campaigning for the US Senate seat in Ohio he would win the following year.

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Trump says running mates have ‘virtually no impact’ in apparent JD Vance snub

Trump says ‘you’re voting for the president … you’re voting for me’ when asked about vice-presidential pick

Donald Trump has said that vice presidential picks have “virtually no impact” on elections when asked about JD Vance’s fitness for office, in an apparent attempt to downplay his running mate’s role on the Republican ticket.

Trump made the comments during a combative interview at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in Chicago. Asked by the Fox News journalist Harris Faulkner whether Vance would be ready to take over “on day one, if he has to be”, Trump avoided answering directly and instead downplayed the significance of the Vance’s role.

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

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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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JD Vance calls Trump ‘morally reprehensible’ in resurfaced emails

Former friend releases messages largely from 2014-2017 in which Republican VP nominee also says: ‘I hate the police’

Questions continued to mount about the political transformation of Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, after the release of emails from a former friend in which Vance called Trump a “morally reprehensible human being” and said: “I hate the police.”

The messages between Vance and Sofia Nelson, who sent them to the New York Times, were largely dated between 2014 and 2017. In one, Vance sent Nelson a section of Hillbilly Elegy, his bestseller about his Appalachian boyhood.

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From rising star to potential liability: how JD Vance’s fortunes have turned

Ohio senator’s ratings are at a record low and his hardline views on issues might prove to be a liability than an asset

He was supposed to be his master’s mini-me, his elevation as Republican vice-presidential nominee hailed as a virile celebration of Donald Trump’s near-total conquest of the GOP.

Now – days after receiving a rapturous response at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee – JD Vance is being lamented within party circles as a potentially fatal liability in Trump’s quest to recapture the White House.

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Biden says ‘history is in your hands’ – as it happened

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Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican House speaker, has described attacks by his former colleagues on Kamala Harris claiming that she was hired as part of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are “stupid and dumb”.

McCarthy, speaking to NBC News’ Meet the Press NOW last night, said:

I disagree with DEI, but she is the vice-president of the United States, she is the former US senator. These congressmen saying it, they are wrong in their own instincts.

If President Biden is committed to passing the torch to his vice president, and wants to be able to seed her campaign with the current Biden for President campaign war chest, he’ll first have to become his party’s legal nominee. After shuffling through the Democratic National Committee’s planned roll call vote he’d be free to drop out. Ms Harris could seamlessly slip into the driver’s seat.

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