Harris and Trump will debate in September. And, a COVID mystery unraveled

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Today's top stories

Vice President Harris and Former President Donald Trump have agreed to a debate on Sept. 10 on ABC. At his first news conference since Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Trump said he was open to doing three debates in September on three different networks: ABC, NBC and FOX. Harris said she’s open to the other debates but hasn't committed to them.

• 🎧 Trump took questions for nearly an hour as he addressed Harris' race, the size of her rallies and abortion, NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben tells Up First. When asked about his comments that Harris has only recently started saying she's Black, he repeatedly said, “You’ll have to ask her.” Kurtzleben says questions about recent crowds at Harris' rallies got under his skin. He claimed 107,000 people came to his New Jersey stop. Though it was a big rally, a fact check determined attendance wasn’t that high. When asked if his FDA would revoke mifepristone access, he indicated he was open to it. Meanwhile, Harris and Walz stopped in the battleground state of Michigan to speak with the United Auto Workers Union. Kurtzleben says it's striking how the two are excited to be on the trail and making sure people know it. In contrast, the Biden-Trump race felt boring.

Researchers have discovered what caused some children to develop a serious but rare condition called multi-system inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C, weeks after a COVID infection. When the pandemic began, children showed up in the emergency department with symptoms including persistent high fevers, vomiting, fatigue and heart inflammation. Scientists knew it was related to COVID, but didn't know how. According to a report in the journal Nature, researchers determined that children who developed MIS-C had an out-of-control immune response because their immune systems locked onto a part of the COVID virus that closely resembles a protein found in immune cells located in the body. This causes the immune system to attack itself instead of the virus.

U.S. track and field athletes marked a triumph last night during the final days of the Paris Olympics. Three gold medals were awarded and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone broke her own world record in the women’s 400 meter hurdles. But Noah Lyles' night didn't go as planned: He won bronze in the 200-meter final and said he had tested positive for COVID two days earlier. In basketball, the U.S. team pulled off a nail-biting win against Serbia. They'll play for Olympic gold against France tomorrow night. The women's soccer team, newly reinvigorated by a trio of stars, will play their gold medal game against Brazil tomorrow morning.

• ➡️ The U.S. now has over a hundred medals in the Paris Olympic Games so far, with three days of competition left. Here’s a closer look at the count — and how the competitors are doing.

From our hosts

This essay was written by Michel Martin, Morning Edition and Up First host.

You know how, when it comes to files, some people are savers and some are minimizers? This is to say, some people keep every scrap of paper (ok, digital file) and some people throw things out the minute they don’t need them anymore.

I live in both camps. I tend to keep things until I get sick of myself or move — which is why I was surprised to find a ten-year-old binder on my shelf. It was my notes from a town hall that St. Louis Public Radio asked me to moderate back in August 2014. The station put it together just a few weeks after a young man black man named Michael Brown Jr. was shot to death by a white police officer in a St. Louis suburb called Ferguson, after Brown had a confrontation at a gas station. Numerous investigations later, many people here still don’t agree on exactly what happened that Saturday afternoon; whether, as investigators believe, Brown tried to grab the officer’s gun or the officer shot the unarmed Brown for no reason.

There’s no argument about what came next: 400 days of protests in and around Ferguson. These protests shed a light on issues that locals had been trying to fight for years: heavy-handed policing practices that were not only unconstitutional but also, more about generating revenue than public safety. Many believe that set the table for the worldwide wave of protests against police violence after George Floyd was killed in 2020.

Has anything changed? We’ve been reporting here all week and we helped out with another town hall. I am keeping my notes. We’ll see.

Weekend picks

Check out what NPR is watching, reading and listening to this weekend:

🎵 Music: Atlanta rapper Killer Mike’s Song for Sinners and Saints offers listeners a new way to perceive rap’s deacon of contradiction — from the political to the profane — in the context of his upbringing.

🍿Movies: Colman Domingo stars in Sing Sing as the leader of a tight-knit theatre ensemble in one of the most notorious maximum-security prisons in the U.S.

 📺 TV: Industry is returning and if you don’t remember what happened, you probably aren’t alone. It has been two years since Season 2, so here’s a recap to help refresh your memory.

📚 Books: Whether you’re taking a trip or working to beat the heat, here are three fiction audiobook recommendations to help you pass the time.

❓Quiz: It has been a big week for political news. Want to test your knowledge on all the meme-worthy moments. Plus, there is an unrelated bonus question. Do you think you can ace this quiz?

3 things to know before you go

1. New research shows that cats exhibit behaviors associated with grief, such as eating and playing less, after a fellow cat or dog in the household died.
2. Jeremy Green Eche, the self-proclaimed GOAT of cybersquatting, is $15,000 richer after selling HarrisWalz.com on Tuesday.
3. Mortgage rates fell to a 15-month low this week. Buyers aren't out of the woods yet, though: Buying a home will likely remain tough for a while.

This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.