First Thing: Harris and Trump agree to televised debate

ABC confirms US presidential candidates will face off for the first time on 10 September. Plus: the return of panda diplomacy

Good morning.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off for the first time on 10 September in a highly anticipated televised debate on ABC, the network confirmed Thursday, as Harris continues to gain momentum, leaving the Trump campaign scrambling.

The vice-president told reporters in Michigan she was “looking forward to it”, while Trump held court at Mar-a-Lago in an hour-long, rambling press conference. Harris, a former prosecutor known for her no-nonsense line of questioning in Senate hearings, was celebrated for her performance in the vice-presidential debate during the 2020 election in which she refused to allow Mike Pence to speak over her.

What did Trump say at the press conference? Trump attacked Harris and falsely claimed that no one was killed in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. He grew heated over comparing crowd sizes, and claimed he wanted to do three debates. Earlier, Trump had suggested he would back out of the 10 September debate that had previously been set with Joe Biden before he stepped down from his re-election campaign.

What do the polls say? While Biden had been trailing Trump in key swing states, Harris has made gains, particularly after announcing Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate. An Ipsos poll published on Thursday found Harris ahead of Trump by 42% to 37%, compared to a 22-23 July Reuters/Ipsos survey, which showed her up 37% to 34% over Trump.

How has the Trump campaign been reacting to the rise of Harris? Concerns have created fractures inside Trumpworld, with some Maga allies criticizing Trump’s political advisers who are working to paint Harris as more progressive than she is and launch “Willie Horton” attacks from the old Republican playbook that suggest she is directly responsible for any crimes some migrants committed.

One killed as tornadoes spawned by Tropical Storm Debby level homes

Tropical Storm Debby hit North Carolina, bringing heavy rain and flooding and tornadoes that leveled homes, damaged a school and killed one person early Thursday. The North Carolina governor, Roy Cooper, said at a briefing that the state had activated more national guard troops and added additional vehicles that could rescue people in floods.

How many people have died from Tropical Storm Debby? At least seven people have died due to the storm, which made first landfall early Monday on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Debby made a second landfall in South Carolina early on Thursday, and more flooding is expected in North and South Carolina before the storm clears those states.

In other news …

Three suspected attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels were targeting a crude oil tanker in the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait linking the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. Follow here for more live updates on the Middle East crisis.

Wall Street saw its best day of trading in nearly two years, recovering most of the losses it suffered earlier this week during a sell-off sparked by US economic fears.

The US supreme court’s immunity decision is expected to delay the prosecution of Donald Trump over his purported efforts to overturn the 2020 election for another month.

A 57-year-old woman was found dead and entangled in machinery in a baggage-processing area at O’Hare international airport in Chicago.

Stat of the day: senior citizens make up more than a quarter of all homeless deaths in Los Angeles

A Guardian analysis of public records found that residents aged 60 and over represented more than a quarter of all deaths of unhoused people in Los Angeles over the past 10 years. More than 3,000 of the 11,500 people who died while unhoused in Los Angeles county between 2014 and 2023 were senior citizens, highlighting the vulnerability of older residents in one of the US’s most expensive regions. Of the 3,000 unhoused senior citizens who died, 221 were age 75 and older, including dozens of people in their 80s and two 92-year-olds.

Don’t miss this: extreme heat in the state prisons of Texas

With extreme heat now a part of daily summer life in the US due to the climate crisis, inmates in the Texas prison system are suing the state’s department of criminal justice over the lack of air conditioning in the state prisons after the deaths of several individuals whose loved ones assert they died from overheating. “Texas prisoners are being cooked to death,” reads the opening line of the complaint, which accuses the state of subjecting inmates to cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution.

“You would be arrested if you treated a dog like this,” testified lead plaintiff Bernie Tiede, who told the court that he suffered a stroke last year when he was in a prison lacking air conditioning.

… or this: running in America’s worst air

Denver, Colorado has long been ranked one of the fittest cities in the country, attracting runners, hikers, cyclists and climbers. But the city also often has the worst air pollution in the US, thanks to a meteorological phenomenon called the “inversion effect” where cold air on the ground gets trapped by a layer of warm air above it, preventing air pollution from drifting into the sky. That, plus a population boom that has led to increased traffic jams and forest fire smoke that blankets the city in a thick fog, America’s fittest city is often an unhealthy place to exercise.

“The natural ‘runner’s high’ that I – and scores of other Denver runners – pursue, can be tainted when breathing deeply in polluted air, leaving my lungs heavy, throat scorched and head dizzy, like I just spent the last hour sucking on the tailpipe of a big-rig truck,” writes Josiah Hesse.

Climate check: how networked geothermal power could change cities

Geothermal energy is a massive energy source humming through the ground beneath the feet of Americans across the country. Big utilities are now beginning to look into ways to tap into it as a source to heat or cool homes. A few months ago, Eversource Energy commissioned the country’s first networked geothermal neighborhood opeated by a utility in Framingham, Massachusetts, running pipes down boreholes 600-700ft (about 180-215 metres) deep to where the temperature of the rock is consistently 55F (13C). Through these pipes, a mixture of water and propylene glycol (a food additive that works here as an antifreeze) is pumped through to absorb that geothermal energy before flowing to 31 residential and five commercial buildings, where fully electric heat pumps use the liquid to either heat or cool a space.

Last Thing: pandemonium returns to the US

“Panda diplomacy” has returned to the US for the first time in 21 years, with two giant pandas making their debut at the San Diego zoo to much fanfare and ceremony. Yun Chuan is a nearly five-year-old male panda described by the zoo as “mild-mannered, gentle and lovable” and Xin Bao is a nearly four-year-old female panda described by the zoo as a “gentle and witty introvert with a sweet round face and big ears”.

The Chinese government has for decades loaned out their furry giants to zoos around the world, but stopped renewing panda loans to the US as relations soured between the two countries. Only four other giant pandas currently reside in the US, all at the zoo in AtlantaBut the Chinese president, Xi Jinping said last year that he was “ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation”. In addition to Yun Chuan and Xin Bao in San Diego, the Smithsonian’s National zoo is to receive a new pair of pandas by the end of the year after its last bears returned to China last November.

Sign up

First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.

Get in touch

If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email [email protected]