Former President Donald Trump announced Thursday he would not participate in another presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump reiterated this during a campaign rally in Tucson, Arizona, after making the announcement on social media.
“Because we’ve done two debates and because they were successful, there will be no third debate. It’s too late anyway, the voting’s already begun,” Trump said to the Tucson crowd.
Harris’ campaign previously called for another debate. She doubled down on that call during a rally in Charlotte on Thursday, saying “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.”
Here are other headlines you should know:
After the debate:
- A new poll from Reuters/Ipsos finds little change in the state of the presidential race after Tuesday’s debate between Harris and Trump.
- Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance defended Trump’s debate performance, and he didn’t explicitly say if he believes there should be another.
- Harris’ campaign raised $47 million in the 24 hours following the vice president’s debate against Trump Tuesday night, according to a campaign official, making it, so far, one of the strongest single fundraising days of the vice president’s campaign.
The Taylor Swift effect:
- Taylor Swift’s call to encourage people to register to vote may be having an impact, according to the General Services Administration (GSA), a federal agency that provides government services.
- A GSA spokesperson told CNN that “there have been 337,826 visitors to vote.gov referred from the custom URL created and shared by Ms. Swift” as of Wednesday afternoon. It was not immediately clear how many of those visitors registered to vote.
New ads launched:
- The Trump campaign is up with a new ad in Pennsylvania warning voters that Harris wants to ban fracking — despite her recent statements to the contrary — seizing on a key issue in the battleground state.
- The Harris campaign is launching a new abortion-focused ad Thursday, capitalizing on what officials believe was one of the most pivotal exchanges between Harris and Trump during Tuesday’s presidential debate.
Lawsuits:
- New York’s highest court rejected two separate attempts to hear Trump’s appeals on the gag order in his hush money case, according to a decision list posted Thursday.
- A judge on Thursday threw out three charges in the sweeping Georgia election subversion case, including two charges that Trump is facing. The decision hasn’t yet been formally applied to Trump because his case has been paused pending appeals.
- A nearly four-year-old legal effort by Black voters to convince a court to prevent Trump and the Republican Party from potentially intimidating voters and poll workers is quietly coming back to life as the 2024 election approaches.
Trump campaign proposals:
- Vance said he believes Trump’s across-the-board tariff proposals are part of a negotiation tactic and claimed that tariffs are “not always” inflationary.
- Asked explicitly if he would consider privatizing the Veterans Affairs health system, Vance said he’s in favor of giving veterans “more optionality.”
- Trump on Thursday announced that, if reelected, he would push for legislation that would end taxes on overtime pay.
More headlines to know:
- Attorney General Merrick Garland slammed efforts to turn the Justice Department into a “political weapon” during a fiery speech Thursday to department staff and US attorneys from across the country.
- Biden donned a Trump cap while visiting a firehouse in Pennsylvania on Wednesday as a unifying gesture while he commemorated the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 attacks, according to press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Biden’s message, Jean-Pierre said, was “that we needed to go back to that bipartisan unity as a country.”
