Vice President Kamala Harris drew on her prosecutorial background to make her first expansive pitch on immigration to border-state voters as she and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, attracted thousands to a campaign rally in Arizona during their tour of battleground states. Harris, the former attorney general of California, reminded the crowd that she as a law enforcement official targeted transnational gangs, drug cartels and smugglers. “I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won,” Harris said in front of a crowd of more than 15,000 in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix. “So I know what I’m talking about.”

If Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz officially steps down later this year to accept the position of U.S. vice president, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan would become the first Native woman to govern a state. Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, became the highest ranking Native American statewide official in the country when she was elected to office in 2018, and she has helped shape Walz’s administration as one focused on improving tribal sovereignty and autonomy across Minnesota. She is one of several Indigenous women who have taken seats of power in the U.S. over the last decade, and many in Indian Country see her rise to power as an opportunity for increased Indigenous rights and visibility.

In his first news conference since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, former President Donald Trump said he would debate her on Sept. 10 and pushed for two more debates. The Republican presidential nominee spoke for more than an hour, discussing a number of issues facing the country and then taking questions from reporters. He made a number of false and misleading claims. Many of them have been made before.

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have agreed to a Sept. 10 presidential debate on ABC News, setting up a face-off between the Republican and Democratic nominees. The campaign is set to play out as a 90-day sprint, and the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt are prime fronts. Thursday, Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz showed their support for organized labor by appearing at a United Auto Workers event in Detroit. Meanwhile, former President Trump held a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, making his first public appearance since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee and selected Walz as her running mate.

A poll shows that most Americans believe this year's presidential race will be crucial for the future of the country's democracy. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs survey finds that they see the threat differently based on their political leanings. Nearly 6 in 10 Democrats say the November election is “extremely important” to the future of U.S. democracy, compared to about 4 in 10 independents and Republicans. Many Democrats continue to view former President Donald Trump as a threat to democracy after he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. But the results also suggest that many of Trump’s supporters agree with him that President Joe Biden is the real threat to democracy.