Trump vs Harris live: Poll shows Harris winning in swing states as new Vance audio on women sparks uproar

The non-partisan Cook Political Report has suggested that the presumptive Democratic nominee has all but erased Trump’s lead in six of the seven key battleground states, getting ahead in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The two candidates are tied in Georgia and Trump is leading in Nevada, the poll indicates, but Harris has even narrowed the Republican’s lead in deep red Florida.

Here’s our data correspondent Alicja Hagopian on the prospect of the Sunshine State turning blue for Kamala.

Trump delivered a meandering speech in Asheville, North Carolina, yesterday that was supposed to be focused on the economy, as inflation fell below three per cent for the time since 2021, but instead ended up descending into the usual attacks on Harris and false statements that Republicans have been imploring him to abandon in recent days.

This is what he had to say about Harris and Walz…

…and here’s a selection of the other topics he strayed into, from taking credit for policies he played no part in to griping that his disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic does not get the credit he believes it deserves.

Here’s more from Andrew Feinberg.

Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick Tim Walz has agreed to take part in a debate in New York City on October 1 hosted by CBS News and challenged his GOP counterpart to join him.

Vance doesn’t seem so sure, however, insisting he’ll have no part in a “fake news garbage debate”.

Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance is embroiled in fresh controversy over his “weird” views on women’s rights after audio resurfaced of him declaring in a 2020 podcast interview that raising grandchildren was “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female”.

Gustaf Kilander has this report.

Kamala Harris’s team has provoked backlash for its practice of running Google ad campaigns featuring manipulated headlines from published news articles to make them appear more favorable to her campaign.

The headlines which appear on Google as sponsored posts link to articles about Harris and her rival, Donald Trump, in nearly a dozen publications, most of which have confirmed they had no idea their headlines were being repurposed and used in a political campaign.

James Liddell has the details.

Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign revealed it was the target of a “foreign actor influence operation,” just days after Donald Trump’s campaign blamed Iran for an apparent hacking attempt following a wad of documents being leaked to reporters.

The vice-president’s team was notified of a purported breach by the FBI last month and continues to liaise with authorities, an anonymous campaign official revealed on Tuesday.

“We have robust cybersecurity measures in place, and are not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from those efforts,” they told Reuters.

James Liddell and Alex Woodward have the details.

More than 1,000 US military veterans and family members of veterans have signed on to an open letter condemning what they describe as “politically motivated attacks” on Democratic vice presidential pick Tim Walz’s military service by former President Donald Trump and his running-mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance.

The thousand-strong group of “veterans, veteran families, military families, caregivers, and survivors” said they are all “appalled” at the attacks on Walz, who retired from the Minnesota Army National Guard after a 24-year career that saw him ascend to the rank of command sergeant major, the highest rank for any enlisted person in the Army.

Andrew Feinberg has the details.

The Minnesota governor and the Ohio senator have been embroiled in a feud over their time served in the naval and armed forces.

While neither actively fought in combat roles, Republicans have accused Walz of “stolen valor” for allegedly overstating his military record and have claimed, without merit, that he purposely avoided deployment to Iraq.

On Tuesday night, Walz fiercely defended his 24 years in the Army National Guard – the US Army’s combat reserve – while speaking on stage at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union convention in Los Angeles.

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial won’t be stepping away after the former president failed to kick him off the case for a third time.

In a late filing on Tuesday, Judge Merchan shot down a third recusal motion from Trump, who has alleged that there is a conflict of interest because Merchan’s daughter works as a Democratic political consultant.

Alex Woodward has the latest.

The former South Carolina governor – who served as US ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration before incurring the former president’s wrath by running against him for the Republican presidential nomination this year– appealed to Trump to focus on substantive policy issues rather than crude identity politics.