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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Maanvi Singh in San Francisco (now), Joanna Walters and Adam Gabbatt in New York (earlier)

Nancy Pelosi takes aim at Trump and 'slumlord' Jared Kushner – as it happened

Pelosi said of Kushner: ‘Maybe you could ask [Trump’s] son-in-law, who’s a slumlord there, if he wants to talk about rodent infestations.’
Pelosi said of Kushner: ‘Maybe you could ask [Trump’s] son-in-law, who’s a slumlord there, if he wants to talk about rodent infestations.’ Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Summary

As Trump carries on with his rally in North Carolina, we’re going to wrap up the liveblog for today. Check The Guardian’s homepage for updates.

  • A majority of House Democrats now support impeaching Trump.
  • The Pentagon is reviewing a $10 billion contract with Amazon after criticism from the president.
  • Joe Biden is not displeased with his debate performance last night but is affronted that his opponents found fault with Barack Obama’s presidency instead of directing more fire at the Republicans.
  • Nancy Pelosi refers to Jared Kushner as a “slumlord”, in the context of the president’s damnation of Baltimore and Elijah Cummings this week.
  • Trump threatened further tariffs on China in September.
  • A budget deal is headed to Trump’s desk, after passing the Senate.

Congressman Will Hurd of Texas, a critic of Trump and one of the few Republican lawmakers who voted to condemn Trump’s racist attacks, announced that he will not be seeking reelection in order to “pursue opportunities outside the halls of Congress”.

Hurd is the third by a Texas Republican in the past week to announce retirement, following in the footsteps of representatives Mike Conaway and Pete Olson.

Updated

Trump’s rally in Cinncinati, Ohio is now underway. His supporters have yet to revive the “send her back” chants from the president’s previous rally in North Carolina, aimed at progressive women lawmakers.

A mention of Trump’s 2016 rival Hillary Clinton, however, did incite chants to “lock her up”.

Updated

State prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed Trump’s family business, reviving an investigation into his role in hush-money payments made to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign, The New York Times is reporting.

The subpoena, issued by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, demanded the Trump Organization provide documents related to money that had been used to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.

The inquiry from the district attorney’s office, which is in early stages, is examining whether any senior executives at the company filed false business records about the hush money, which would be a state crime, the people said.

Marc L. Mukasey, an attorney for the Trump Organization, called the inquiry a “political hit job” ...

The investigation will focus on a $130,000 payment Michael D. Cohen, the president’s lawyer and fixer at the time, gave Ms. Daniels. Mr. Cohen also helped arrange for a tabloid media company to pay the Playboy model Karen McDougal, a second woman who said she had had an affair with the president. The disclosure of the payments ignited a scandal that threatened to derail the Trump presidency.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Thursday separately subpoenaed the media company, American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer.

The Guardian has not independently verified the reporting.

The subpoenas come just two weeks after federal investigators announced they had concluded their inquiry into the hush-money payments, without charging anyone but Cohen.

Updated

A majority of House Democrats are now calling for impeachment. Nancy Pelosi is expected to make a statement later today on impeachment, though it’s unclear whether her position on the matter has changed.

Representative Pete Aguilar of California is the latest member of Congress to express support for opening an impeachment inquiry.

The Trump administration is extending protections for about 7,000 Syrians in the US:

From the Associated Press:

The Trump administration is extending protections that allow about 7,000 Syrians to live and work legally in the U.S.

The decision by acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan was announced Thursday and extends temporary protected status for 18 months for those who have been in the U.S. since Aug. 1, 2016.

Temporary protected status is granted to countries ravaged by natural disasters or war and lets citizens of those countries remain in the U.S. until the situation improves back home. About 300,000 people have received those protections. McAleenan says the continued armed conflict in Syria merited the extension.

Trump administration officials had moved to discontinue protections for many countries; several lawsuits have been filed. A judge ruled protections for people from Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti and El Salvador cannot be immediately ended.

As Trump equivocates over his supporters’ racist chanting ahead of his rally in Ohio, representative Ilhan Omar – the target of those chants – joked, “They said ‘send her back’ but [Speaker Nancy Pelosi] didn’t just make arrangements to send me back, she went back with me.”

A congressional delegation including Pelosi, Omar and civil rights icon John Lewis was in Ghana to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans arriving in the US.

Yesterday, The AP reported that Pelosi found the visit to be “humbling”:

The visit by Pelosi’s delegation marks Ghana’s Year of the Return, which reaches out to the millions of Africans in the diaspora. “It is important that this symbolic year, 400 years later, we commemorate their existence and their sacrifices,” Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo said.

Pelosi called the Year of the Return a “beautiful gesture” that also recognizes a “terrible atrocity” in slavery.

She said she and others had been transformed by this week’s visit.


Updated

Late afternoon summary

It’s been a busy day so far and there’s plenty more action to come, as Donald Trump heads to Ohio for a rally in Cincinnati. And the Democratic 2020 candidates try to capitalize on the attention resulting from the debates this week, whether positive or negative attention (no such thing as bad publicity and all that). Guardian east coast team now handing over to Maanvi Singh in California.

Here’s what today has brought so far:

  • The Pentagon is reviewing a $10bn contract with Amazon after criticism from the president.
  • Trump is equivocating over the prospect of a repeat of the racist chanting that marked his last rally (without mentioning that if he chooses not to pick another fight with Ilhan Omar from the stage then there won’t be a spur for a repeat of the “send her back” chanting anyway...)
  • Joe Biden is not displeased with his debate performance last night but is affronted that his opponents found fault with Barack Obama’s presidency instead of directing more fire at the Republicans.
  • Nancy Pelosi refers to Jared Kushner as a “slumlord”, in the context of the president’s damnation of Baltimore and Elijah Cummings this week.
  • Trump threatened further tariffs on China in September

Updated

Pentagon reviewing $10bn contract after Trump criticizes Amazon

Trump’s new defense secretary, Mark Esper, is reviewing a $10bn cloud computing contract after the president suggested the Pentagon’s selection process was rigged in favor of Amazon.

Trump has frequently attacked the retail giant and its CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post. The president has repeatedly dismissed the newspaper’s reporting by calling it “the Amazon Washington Post”.

Politico reports:

Esper, who assumed his post July 23, is now reviewing accusations of unfairness in the fiercely fought competition, the Pentagon announced Thursday, marking the president’s latest incursion into the arcane world of Defense Department contracting. Oracle has reportedly waged an aggressive lobbying campaign to push back on the competition, including talking with members of Congress and preparing a graphic that made its way to the president’s desk.

Updated

Trump also raised doubts about whether he would be able to “stop” his supporters if they started a racist chant tonight.

“If they do the chant, we’ll have to see what happens,” the president said, according to an NBC News reporter. “I don’t know that you can stop people.”

So stay tuned to see if the “send her back” chant makes an ugly return tonight.

Trumps says he would "prefer" rally attendees not participate in racist chants

As Trump heads to Cincinnati for a campaign rally, he made a minor request of the attendees: don’t initiate racist chants.

Trump was asked as he prepared to leave for Ohio what he would do if another “send her back” started. “I prefer that they don’t,” Trump said.

The chant at his North Carolina rally was directed at Ilhan Omar, the Somali-American congresswoman who Trump previously suggested should “go back” to where she came from. Despite outcry over the racist rhetoric, Trump praised the rally attendees as “incredible patriots”.

Updated

Cory Booker’s campaign said the New Jersey senator has seen his biggest online fundraising day since his debate performance last night.

From Booker’s campaign manager:

Booker had already made the cut for the fall debate, receiving contributions from at least 130,000 donors and registering at 2% or more in four polls.

But Booker has been generally unable to break past 2 or 3% in most polls. If this post-debate bump materializes in his polling numbers, it could help push him into the race’s top tier of candidates.

Updated

Trump is en route to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he will hold a campaign rally tonight at 7pm EDT.

The rally will be Trump’s first since some of his supporters initiated a racist “send her back” chant about the representative Ilhan Omar at a North Carolina event. The chant came days after Trump tweeted that four minority congresswomen, including Omar, should “go back” to where they came from.

So all eyes will be on the Ohio crowd to see if they mirror the behavior of the North Carolina rally attendees, who Trump praised as “incredible patriots”.

But the vice-president, Mike Pence, said that, if the chant were to occur again, Trump “might” try to intervene. “If it happened again, he might make an effort to speak out about it,” Pence said recently.

Updated

Kamala Harris has also stuck around Detroit after last night’s debate, and the California senator said she had issues with the event’s format.

“So many of these issues just cannot be captured in 60 seconds,” Harris said.

Candidates in this week’s debates were given 60 seconds to answer moderator-directed questions and 30 seconds for responses or rebuttals.

The CNN moderators’ received some criticism, particularly after the first night, for adhering strictly to the time limits for candidates’ answers. It seemed to stifle the debate among the candidates, who were repeatedly cut off mid-point.

After passing the budget deal, the Senate has joined the House in adjourning for Congress’ summer recess.

No votes will be held in either chamber until Sept. 9.

Biden expresses confidence about his debate performance

Joe Biden has launched a counter-attack against critics of Barack Obama’s presidency, insisting his former boss has nothing “to apologise for”.

Although opinion polls suggest that Obama remains the most popular Democratic politician in the country, his record on health care, immigration and other issues came under harsh scrutiny during last night’s debate.

“I must tell you I was a little surprised at how much incoming there was about Barack, about the president,” Biden said during a campaign stop in Detroit today. “I mean, I’m proud of having served with him, I’m proud of the job he did. I don’t think there’s anything he has to apologize for and I think it kind of surprised me, the degree of the criticism.”

After spending more than an hour with customers and supporters at the Detroit One Coney Island Restaurant, where he was met with a cheer, Biden told reporters: “I hope the next debate we can talk about how we fix the things that Trump has broken, not how Barack Obama made all these mistakes. He didn’t. He didn’t.”

Asked what he would do differently from his former boss on immigration policy, the 76-year-old former senator replied: “Look, this is three years later, the world has changed, President Trump has turned it upside down internationally, he has turned it upside down economically. ... We have to be honest, straightforward and authentic about what we’re going to do and I’m looking forward to being able to go into some detail and explain and deal with the differences we have.”

The Affordable Care Act has had few defenders in the current campaign as candidates focus attention on variations of Medicare for all. But Biden insisted: “There’s nothing moderate about what Barack did in Obamacare. Nothing. No president had come close, and they tried and they tried and they tried. Seven presidents. This guy did an incredible thing.”

Biden, who had a rocky first debate in Miami, expressed satisfaction with his performance this time around. He said: “This is a marathon. I feel good. We’ve passed the quarter mark and I’m feeling good.”

Pelosi refers to Kushner as 'slumlord'

Nancy Pelosi defended representative Elijah Cummings, the House oversight chairman who was has recently been attacked by Trump. The president also went after Cummings’ Baltimore district as a “rat and rodent infested mess.”

“The president – this comes as no surprise – really doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Prelosi said.

She then took aim at Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “But maybe you could ask his son-in-law, who’s a slumlord there, if he wants to talk about rodent infestations,” Pelosi said.

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that Kushner’s company owns more than a dozen apartment complexes in Baltimore, and they have been cited for hundreds of code violations -- including for mouse infestations.

Updated

Pelosi to issue statement later today on impeachment

Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill that she would release a statement later today on launching an impeachment inquiry.

Congressional reporters shouted questions to the House speaker about whether her position on impeachment has changed now that a majority of her caucus backs an inquiry.

Representative Ted Deutch of Florida announced his support of launching impeachment proceedings today, becoming the 118th House Democrat to do so, according to Politico. His endorsement means a majority of the 235-member caucus now back an inquiry.

Joe Biden is still in Detroit after last night’s debate, and he provided more context on that rumble jumble of numbers he provided in his closing statement.

As he was delivering his final pitch last night, Biden said, “If you agree with me, go to ‘Joe 30330’ and help me in this fight.” The odd request led some to wonder if the former vice president was announcing his White House bid for the next millennium.

But it turns out he meant to say “text,” as he explained to a CBS News reporter:

Trump’s tariff announcement also comes one day after the Federal Reserve announced that it was cutting interest rates to reflect the slowing growth of the US economy.

From a CNBC reporter:

Trump reportedly met with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer this morning.

The pair were in Shanghai this week for trade talks with Chinese officials. Trump’s tariff announcement came just hours after the meeting.

In practical terms, Trump’s new tariffs mean many products could soon become more expensive, as a Washington Post reporter noted:

In political terms, Trump is acknowledging that all of the progress his administration was allegedly making with Beijing was never realized, as a CNN reporter explained:

Stock markets had a swift, negative reaction to Donald Trump’s announcement that his administration would impose a 10 percent tariff on $300 billion of Chinese goods starting next month:

Trump has consistently bragged about the success of stock markets during his presidency. But his trade threats have repeatedly upended that success, damaging a key talking point for his reelection bid.

Trump announces 10% tariff on Chinese goods starting next month

Donald Trump announced over Twitter that his administration’s trade talks with China have been deteriorating.

As negotiations continue, Trump said he would impose a 10 percent tariff on the remaining $300 billion worth of Chinese imports starting Sept. 1.

Updated

Joe Biden’s campaign clarified his stance on fossil fuels after the former vice president got into a heated back-and-forth last night with Jay Inslee, who has centered his campaign around the climate crisis.

Inslee argued that Biden’s plan did not address the climate crisis with the urgency required to try to turn the tide. “Look these deadlines are set by science,” Inslee told Biden. “Mr Vice President, your argument is not with me, it’s with science. And unfortunately your plan is just too late.”

When Biden was pressed on whether there would be a place for fossil fuels in his administration, he initially stumbled. “We will work it out,” he said. “We will make sure it’s eliminated and no more subsidies for either of those, any fossil fuels.”

His campaign has now clarified that answer, per our climate reporter Emily Holden:

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee released its logo for the 2020 nominating convention in Charlotte:

And it prompted some questions, like this one:

But the Republican Party is facing some larger problems in Charlotte -- namely that many in the North Carolina city don’t want the convention to be hosted there.

Charlotte’s city council narrowly approved the RNC contract last summer, and local leaders are now having second thoughts on it, as HuffPost reports.

The council even discussed the possibility last week of backing out of the agreement, but it was determined that the legal costs associated with such a move would be too steep.

The budget bill does lift the debt ceiling into July 2021, but it does not necessarily prevent a government shutdown, as a CQ Roll Call reporter noted:

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who opposed the budget deal, introduced an amendment earlier today to cut and cap spending while introducing a constitutional amendment to balance the budget over the next decade.

The amendment was easily defeated, with only 23 Republicans backing the proposal.

“Today is the final nail in the coffin. The Tea Party is no more,” Paul said of the deal’s approval.

The Republicans who opposed the budget deal argued that the legislation would put the US on an increasingly unstable fiscal path, as Senator Mitt Romney of Utah explained in a Twitter video:

But Mitch McConnell told the dissenting members of his caucus that they should defer to the president’s support of the deal.

“This is the agreement the administration has negotiated,” the Senate majority leader said on the floor this morning. “This is the deal the House has passed. This is the deal President Trump is waiting [for] and eager to sign into law. This is the deal that every member of this body should support when we vote later this morning.”

Budget deal headed to Trump's desk after passing the Senate

The Senate passed the massive spending bill negotiated between Nancy Pelosi and Steven Mnuchin by a vote of 67-28.

The bill, which would lift the debt ceiling until 2021 and increase spending by $320 billion over two years, is now headed to Donald Trump’s desk.

A narrow majority of Senate Republicans backed the bill, thanks to lobbying from majority leader Mitch McConnell. Trump had pushed more Republicans to support the legislation after about two-thirds of House Republicans voted against it.

In an effort to sway more Republicans, Trump ominously suggested he may roll back the spending increases sooner rather than later:

This is Joanie Greve, taking over for Adam Gabbatt.

Here is where the day stands so far:

  • Donald Trump initiated a phone call with Vladimir Putin yesterday to offer “help and assistance” in combating Siberia’s wildfires. Or at least that was what the Kremlin reported over Twitter. The White House initially would not even confirm the call had taken place.
  • Kelly Knight Craft was confirmed as the next US ambassador to the United Nations, overcoming Democrats’ objections about her family’s ties to the fossil fuel industry.
  • More analysis continues to roll in from this week’s Democratic debates. But for many candidates, it might have been their last debate. Only seven candidates so far have qualified for the September debate.

The blog is also covering the budget deal headed to Trump’s desk and the climbing number of Democrats calling for an impeachment inquiry. Stay tuned.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has just retweeted this, from meteorologist Eric Holthaus. It’s not good news.

At Rolling Stone, Holthaus writes:

The record-setting heat wave that sweltered northern Europe last week has moved north over the critically vulnerable Greenland ice sheet, triggering temperatures this week that are as much as 25 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal.

Weather models indicate Tuesday’s temperature may have surpassed 75 degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of Greenland, and a weather balloon launched near the capital Nuuk measured all-time record warmth just above the surface. That heat wave is still intensifying, and is expected to peak on Thursday with the biggest single-day melt ever recorded in Greenland. On August 1 alone, more than 12 billion tons of water will permanently melt away from the ice sheet and find its way down to the ocean, irreversibly raising sea levels globally.

Donald Trump is relying on lots of Democratic votes to pass his budget deal in the Senate, with many Republicans opposed to the amount of borrowing, according to Associated Press.

The bill passed in the House last week, and is up for a vote in the Senate today. From AP:

Democrats in the GOP-controlled Senate appeared poised to deliver most of their votes for the deal, but many of the more solidly conservative Republicans said it allowed for unchecked borrowing and too much spending.

According to libertarian-ish senator Rand Paul, the passing of this budget will mean “the tea party is no more”, which I can’t imagine will upset too many people:

“Adoption of this deal marks the death of the tea party movement in America. Fiscal conservatives those who remain should be in mourning for Congress. Both parties have deserted you.”

Remember the tea party?
Remember the tea party? Photograph: Jeff Haynes/REUTERS

Only seven candidates have qualified for the next Democratic debates, according to the New York Times.

They are: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Beto O’Rourke.

That’s less than a third of the 24 ‘major’ Democrats in the field. To qualify, Democrats need 130,000 individual donors, and to have broken 2% in at least four polls.

Apparently three others are close: Julian Castro, Andrew Yang and Amy Klobuchar, but that would still mean ABC cutting the debate schedule to one night. (There’ll just be one debate if 10 or fewer candidates qualify.)

Of the 14 Democrats not mentioned above:

Only three candidates have even a single qualifying poll to their name: the impeachment activist Tom Steyer (2 polls), Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii (1) and former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado (1).

August 28 is the cut off point for Dems to achieve the qualification quota.

Here he is:

And another!

Kamala Harris has picked up an endorsement this morning, from Michigan congresswoman Brenda Lawrence. Harris attended an event held by Lawrence, whose district includes much of east Detroit. That’s handy, I guess, given Michigan’s importance in the presidential election, although Michigan is one of the later states to vote in the actual Democratic primaries.

Earlier this morning Julian Castro was endorsed by the Latino Victory Fund, a group which aims to build Latino political power.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s endorsement tracker, Harris is second to only Joe Biden in endorsements from governors, senators, representatives and suchlike. Interestingly, Cory Booker is third, making up a podium of centrists.

Updated

Pompeo criticizes China after meeting

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo earlier today criticized China’s actions in Asia, after meeting his Chinese counterpart for the first time this year amid political tension between the two countries.

He spoke out against Chinese “coercion” of southeast Asian neighbors in disputes over the South China Sea and the People’s Republic’s dam-building on the Mekong River, which causes problems for countries down-river.

Pompeo spoke at a meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Reuters reports.

After meeting China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, Pompeo said both countries wanted to improve ties that have soured on issues ranging from trade, US sanctions on Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, issues over Taiwan and the busy South China Sea waterway.

“We are working with them on many fronts,” Pompeo said. “But we are also very candid about the places we are hoping China will behave in ways that they are not behaving today and we talked about each of those as well.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife, Susan, meeting with staff at the US Embassy in Bangkok today
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife, Susan, meeting with staff at the US Embassy in Bangkok today
 Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Kelly Knight Craft to be US ambassador to UN

Donald Trump has congratulated this morning Kelly Knight Craft after her confirmation by the Senate, over Democrats’ objections, to become the new US ambassador to the United Nations.

The President praised her on Twitter this morning.

Craft was nominated in February, a week after Trump’s first choice to replace Nikki Haley at the UN, the former Fox News host and state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, withdrew her candidacy.

During the congressional confirmation process, Craft struggled to allay Democrats’ concerns about her family’s significant investments in the fossil fuel industry, though notably she separated herself from the president on the topic of the climate crisis. Craft believes fossil fuels and human behavior contribute to the crisis. The planet is facing critical issues such as dangerous global heating, now, an alarming increase in severe weather patterns.

On climate change, “Let there be no doubt,” she said, as reported yesterday by the Washington Post.

Kelly Knight Craft, ambassador to Canada, will now become US ambassador to the UN
Kelly Knight Craft, ambassador to Canada, will now become US ambassador to the UN Photograph: Adrian Wyld/AP

White House on the call with Putin

Don’t hold your breath, here’s the latest statement from the White House:

President Donald J. Trump spoke with President Vladimir Putin today and expressed concern over the vast wildfires afflicting Siberia. The leaders also discussed trade between the two countries.”

Some on the interwebs see this as a strong overture/naked appeal for fully restored bilateral relations between the US and Russia.

Updated

Candidates look fresh as daisies

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and Senator Kamala Harris of California all appeared on CNN’s New Day breakfast news program this morning shortly after the 7AM mark, after what must have been very little sleep.

Maybe that’s not so surprising but what was astonishing was how refreshed they looked. Not even a tiny snack bag under the eye, not a hair out of place, eyes twinkling. TV make-up can only cover so much.

Gillibrand walked up on to the little CNN TV stage, which they’ve set up in a half-indoors, half-outdoors style outside the debate venue in Detroit, with a large cup of coffee but looking utterly impeccable in a blue dress and with sharp answers.

And Harris and Bennet were laughing. Of course they all denied it was a cage fight/Hunger Games contest the night before, that the first 20 minutes was lost in a wonk forest on healthcare and they ate each other, not the Republicans. But you’ve got to hand it to these three for their energy.

When the CNN hosts asked Harris how she was coping on no sleep, she cheerily cited the Godfather and said it was “the business we’ve chosen.”

For all the amazing analysis of last night’s event, check out my colleagues’ stories leading our US online front page today. Here’s our Sabrina Siddiqui’s main story.

I honestly can’t promise that this pic matches Harris’s quote. But here’s the inimitable Marlon Brando, and it’s The Godfather, so.

MARLON BRANDO, THE GODFATHER, 1972
MARLON BRANDO, THE GODFATHER, 1972
 Photograph: Allstar Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Stock Photo

Updated

•Donald Trump initiated a call with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, the Kremlin says, in a move Putin hopes will restore “fully fledged bilateral relations”. The White House did not initially reveal the call had taken place – news instead coming from the Russian foreign ministry’s Twitter feed. Russia said Trump had offered “help and assistance” in fighting wildfires in Siberia. The White House belatedly confirmed the call on Wednesday night.

•The main Democratic candidates are cooling themselves off (probably) after last night’s debate. Some (Joe Biden) will be happy they don’t have to do this again for five weeks, while the likes of Cory Booker, who put in a good performance, probably wish they could go again sooner. Many of the contenders we’ve seen over the last two nights won’t be debating again at all, given the stricter requirements for the 12 September debate. Fewer than half the main contenders have qualified so far.

•The Guardian’s panelists were largely unimpressed with the debate spectacle. Joe Biden was ailing on climate change, Kate Aronoff reckoned, while Jessa Crispin lamented that the stage was made up of: “Lackluster candidates all around.” Our man David Smith says the Democratic party is yet to find the one, which “will suit Donald Trump just fine”.

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