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Here is a summary of today’s key developments:
The Federal Reserve cut US interest rates for the first time in four years, news that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris greeted as an important positive sign, though Harris said in a statement that prices were still too high.
Several polls today showed Donald Trump performing better than Harris. Majorities of Americans view both candidates unfavorably, Gallup found. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Trump has a narrow edge with voters in Georgia, which Joe Biden won four years ago. Harris’s weakness in Georgia may be due to lackluster support among both Democratic faithful and Black voters, the Journal-Constitution found.
Harris announced she will travel to Georgia on Friday, with a focus on the effect of Trump’s abortion policies on women’s lives. She has cited a ProPublica investigation that named Georgia resident Anna Nicole Thurman, 28, as the first woman officially confirmed to have died a “preventable death” in the wake of the supreme court overturning the federal right to an abortion. Georgia lawmakers had made the simple procedure that would have saved Thurman’s life into a felony.
Meanwhile, the Teamsters declined to join other unions in endorsing Harris, releasing internal polling data they said showed a majority of their members supported Trump, but saying they would not endorse either presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, Harris has gained the endorsement of more than 100 Republican former national security officials and lawmakers, who say she is a better choice to manage foreign policy and America’s relationships with its allies and enemies than Donald Trump.
Harris spoke at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference in Washington DC, where she condemned Trump’s plans for mass deportations, and said better border security and sorting out the problem of Dreamers are not mutually exclusive.
The Associated Press reported that, according to the FBI and other federal agencies, Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election. There is no evidence that any of the recipients responded, officials said, preventing the hacked information from surfacing in the final months of the closely contested election.
Trump responded to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cuts, saying the size of the cut suggested the economy may be in trouble. “To cut it by that much, assuming they’re not just playing politics, the economy would be very bad,” Trump told reporters. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who was appointed by Trump to lead the Fed, said was meant to show policymakers’ commitment to sustaining a low unemployment rate now that inflation has eased. Powell said the economy remained strong, with many job market indicators like unemployment claims and even the current 4.2% unemployment rate not at worrying levels.
Trump held an election rally in New York state where he claimed that the planet – which last year saw the hottest year on record and is likely to do so again this year after the hottest summer on record, is cooling. He also announced that he would turn the 9/11 memorial and museum into a national monument.
