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Do debates matter? A million thoughtful commentators used to tell you that they did not, right up until the moment Joe Biden’s face melted off his skull during the first 2024 debate like the bespectacled Nazi at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. (“Don’t look at the livestream, Marion!”) So for 2024, at least, I think it’s fair to say that debates matter, especially when there’s only one for the final presidential match-up between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. And in terms of what each...

Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly unleashed on debate hosts ABC News following Tuesday’s showdown between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, saying she was “disgusted” as she accused the network of blatant bias in favor of the Democratic nominee. “I’m disgusted. I’m ashamed of those moderators at ABC News,” Kelly declared in a post-debate monologue on her SiriusXM show. “It was three against one on that debate stage...

US Vice President Kamala Harris asserted that Israel has the right to defend itself after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, as Republican candidate Donald Trump accused her of “hating” the Jewish state, during a bitter televised debate Tuesday that poured fuel on an already explosive US presidential election. When asked by the moderators how she would secure a hostage-ceasefire deal and about her remarks from months ago that “Israel has a right to defend itself, but it matters how,” Harris started...

During Tuesday's presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump repeated his false claim that crime is rising. Crime has been going down everywhere else around the world, Trump said at ABC News' debate in Philadelphia, but "crime in this country is through the roof." In fact, the 2020 crime wave has been receding for the past two years. Violent crime dropped in 2022 and 2023 and, according to preliminary data, is on track for another steep...

Twenty-three years ago today, millions of Americans woke up to just another day. By the time the sun set across the country on September 11, 2001, skylines would be irreversibly marred, thousands would grapple with searing loss while even more wouldn’t yet know the fate of their loved ones, and stories of everyday heroes forged in the day’s hell began to emerge. For the rising generation, however, the attacks of September 11, 2001, are only slightly more real than the attack on Pearl Harbor and...

Mortgage rates fell for the sixth straight week last week, but mortgage demand still seems to be waiting for something bigger. The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($766,550 or less) decreased to 6.29% from 6.43%, with points falling to 0.55 from 0.56 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. That is the lowest level since February 2023 and nearly a full...

Times Opinion asked 14 of our columnists and contributors to watch the presidential debate on Tuesday night and assess who won and who lost. We also asked them to weigh in on the quality of the debate. Were the candidates inspiring, or was their face-off a depressing sign of everything that’s wrong with American politics? Here’s what our columnists and contributors thought of the event. In a new feature, readers can score the debate, too, by dropping a pin on the scorecard to see how they...

Going into Tuesday’s debate, Kamala Harris had a bigger challenge than Don­ald Trump. She had to comport herself in ways that would allow undecided voters to imagine her sitting in the Oval Office. She passed that test. She was composed and mostly clear and there was nary a word salad to be heard. That’s not to say she’s now on the path to victory. It’s simply that because of the unprecedented way and timing of how and when she got the party’s nomination, and because she would be the...