Vice Presidential Debates Are Mostly Irrelevant

“Through public remarks, Truth Social screeds and more than 100 preemptive lawsuits, Donald Trump is assembling a detailed catalog of excuses for rejecting the results of the 2024 election — if he loses,” Axios reports. “The Trump-aligned efforts to overturn the 2020 election — both overtly and covertly, peacefully then violently — shocked the American public.

“Donald Trump escalated his personal attacks on his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, on Sunday by repeating an insult that she was ‘mentally impaired’ while also saying she should be ‘impeached and prosecuted,’” the AP reports. “With just over a month until the election, Trump is intensifying his use of personal and offensive attacks, even as some Republicans say he’d be better sticking to the issues.” USA Today: Donald Trump falsely calls Kamala Harris, Joe Biden “mentally impaired” again, ramping up attacks.

“I’m here because they cheat… they cheat in this state and I’ll mention a couple of the areas. Philadelphia is out of control. Detroit is out of control. Atlanta is out of control.” — Donald Trump, at a rally in Pennsylvania.

Nate Silver’s latest forecast gives Kamala Harris a 56% chance to win the presidential election. “I’ll grant you that a 56/44 forecast is in kind of a weird, uncomfortable zone. To be clear, the forecast is that Harris will win the Electoral College 56 percent of the time — not that she’ll beat Trump by 12 points — in other words that the race is basically a toss-up.

At Tuesday’s vice presidential debate between Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), something will be missing: on-air fact-checking. The Associated Press reports that moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan of CBS will not point out the candidates’ inaccuracies during the 90-minute debate, scheduled to take place in New York City at 9 p.m.

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. For five years, reactor one at Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Pennsylvania has lain dormant. Now, thanks to a deal with Microsoft, the reactor will start running again in 2028—this time to exclusively supply the tech firm with oodles of low-carbon electricity. It’s all part of an ongoing flirtation between Big Tech and nuclear power.