Closing summary
Last night, Joe Biden and Donald Trump took to the debate stage at CNN studios in Atlanta, looking to break through in a presidential race where polls have for months shown a close contest. While we can’t quite say that Trump achieved that, Biden certainly did not. The president struggled to land his lines, seemed to stare into space while Trump spoke, and had a cough that marred his answers. It served to further heighten already prominent concerns among voters about the 81-year-old’s ability to do the job, and sparked a panic among Democrats. In the hours after the debate finished, even Biden’s allies openly wondered if the party wouldn’t be better off replacing him, despite the fact that it would be historically short notice. At a rally in North Carolina today, a comparatively energetic Biden seemed to acknowledge his poor debate performance, but told the crowd, “when you get knocked down, you get back up”. In the weeks to come, we’ll see if voters think he can do that.
Here’s more about what happened today:
Biden reportedly still plans to participate in a second debate with Trump in September.
The supreme court will almost certainly rule on Trump’s petition for immunity from prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election on Monday.
A Biden campaign official tried to prevent a New York Times reporter at a Kamala Harris event from hearing critical comments from voters about the president’s debate performance.
Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker and Trump ally, called last night “the greatest mismatch in the history of presidential debates”.
‘Bad debate nights happen’ – so says Barack Obama, who had at least one rough go at it during his presidency.
Abortion was among the issues debated by Donald Trump and Joe Biden last night, with the Democratic president attempting to channel voters’ frustration at the fall of Roe v Wade against his Republican adversary.
This morning, Iowa’s supreme court allowed a six-week ban on the procedure to go into effect, making it the latest Republican-led state to cut off access at a point when many women do not yet know they are pregnant.
Here’s what Biden had to say about that, in a statement distributed by the White House:
This should never happen in America. Yet, this is exactly what is happening in states across the country since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade. And it’s not stopping at the state level – Republican elected officials in Congress have proposed four national abortion bans while refusing to protect nationwide access to IVF and contraception.
Vice-President Harris and I believe that women in every state must have the right to make deeply personal decisions about their health. We will continue to call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v Wade in federal law and stand firm against efforts made by Republican elected officials to undermine Americans’ fundamental freedoms.
And here’s more on the court’s ruling:
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