Vance and Walz face off in civil and policy-focused VP debate

Our live coverage of the 2024 campaign has moved here.

Walz speaks during a debate with Vance on Tuesday.

The?vice presidential debate?between Ohio Sen.?JD Vance?and Minnesota Gov.?Tim Walz?was something that’s become increasingly rare in modern American politics: Normal.

In an event that is unlikely to change the trajectory of the presidential race, the two VP candidates?were cordial with each other, training their attacks instead on the tops of the opposing tickets and focusing largely on policy differences. Vance repeatedly hit Vice President Kamala Harris on border security, while Walz lambasted former President Donald Trump on abortion rights.

Here are some key takeaways from Tuesday’s debate:

Springfield pet-eating claims feature in immigration clash: During a debate over immigration and border security, Walz invoked Vance’s?false claims?about Haitian immigrants eating the pets of residents in Springfield, Ohio.

“There’s consequences for this,” Walz said, pointing out that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, dispatched state troopers to Springfield to ensure the safety of children after a series of bomb threats. Vance shot back, “The people I care most about in Springfield are the American citizens.”

What Vance didn’t say: The 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian migrants in Springfield are in the United States legally. But Walz didn’t fact-check Vance on that matter. And when he didn’t, CBS moderator Margaret Brennan explained those immigrants’ legal status.

Vance dodges on January 6: The clearest divide of the night came when Walz put Vance on the spot during a discussion of the January 6, 2021, insurrection and Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election.

“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked Vance, attempting to force the Ohio senator to acknowledge a reality that Trump himself won’t.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” was how Vance began his response.

“That is a damning nonanswer,” Walz shot back.

Midwestern nice … up to a point: In many ways, this vice presidential debate reflected the way typical Americans argue about contentious issues. There was no name-calling, few canned zingers and a clear directive for both Vance and Walz not to get personal – unless they were aggressively agreeing that the issues were, in fact, issues. The housing crisis, they agreed, was a crisis. Gun violence, both said, needed to be reduced.

Instead of jousting among themselves, Vance and Walz behaved agreeably in the service of trying to depict the respective presidential candidates as uniquely divisive or misguided.

Read more takeaways from the debate and watch one of the moments below.

Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s vice presidential see Democratic nominee Tim Walz as more in touch with them and their vision for America, according to a CNN instant poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS.

They give Republican nominee JD Vance a slight edge in doing a better job defending his running mate. And practically none see the event as a reason to change which ticket they’re supporting for the presidency.

Debate watchers say, 48% to 35%, that Walz is more in touch with the needs and problems of people like them than Vance is. The share who say that both vice presidential hopefuls are in touch with their problems is twice as large as the share who say that neither is, 12% to 6%.

Following Tuesday night’s debate, viewers say, 48% to 39%, that Walz, rather than Vance, more closely shares their vision for America, with 8% saying that both candidates share their vision, and 5% saying that neither do. They say, 37% to 33%, that Vance, rather than Walz, did the better job defending his running mate, with 27% saying that each candidate did an equally good job, and 3% that neither did.

The poll’s results reflect opinions of the debate only among those voters who tuned in and aren’t representative of the views of the full voting public. Debate watchers in the poll were 3 points likelier to be Democratic-aligned than Republican-aligned, making for an audience that’s about 5 percentage points more Democratic-leaning than all registered voters nationally. That’s a difference from the audience for the two presidential debates this year, both of which were slightly more GOP-leaning than the potential American electorate overall.

A negligible 1% of voters who tuned into the debate said it had changed their minds about whom to vote for.

The CNN poll was conducted by text message with 574 registered US voters who said they watched the debate Tuesday, and the poll findings are representative of the views of debate watchers only. Respondents were recruited to participate before the debate and were selected via a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results for the full sample of debate watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

Sen. JD Vance on Tuesday claimed that part of the United States’ issue with gun violence stems from Mexican drug cartels smuggling guns into the country from across the border.

“Thanks to Kamala Harris’ open border, we’ve seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartel … then the amount of illegal guns in our country is higher today than it was three and a half years ago,” Vance said.

Facts First:?Vance’s claim is misleading. There is a proliferation of illegal guns crossing the US-Mexico border – but they are going from the US into Mexico, not the other way around.

Mexico has been plagued by gun violence for years — and the Mexican government has pinned bloodshed on the free flow of guns over the border from the United States.

An estimated 200,000 guns are trafficked from the US into Mexico each year, the Mexican Foreign Ministry?has said?— an average of nearly 550 per day. In 2021,?Mexico sued several US-based gun manufacturers?claiming they “design, market, distribute and sell guns in ways” that arm cartels in Mexico.

Mexico strictly controls the sale of firearms.?There is only one gun store in Mexico, and it’s controlled by the army. That makes the large-scale smuggling of guns from Mexico into the US, where laws are laxer and gun stores plentiful, unfeasible.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife Gwen Walz visit Justino's Pizzeria after his debate with Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance on Tuesday in New York.

After the debate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, were spotted grabbing a slice of pizza from a New York pizza shop.

When asked what he believes was his strongest moment tonight, Walz said, “I think it was a good debate.”

He was also asked by a reporter to speak more about his religion. “We’re Lutherans, we don’t talk about it,” he quipped quietly to Gwen.

Walz did not respond to questions on his travel to Hong Kong during Tiananmen Square protests. He also did not respond to a question about what he meant when he said he “became friends with school shooters” during the debate.

Before the debate, a reporter from Crain’s New York spotted Walz jogging through Central Park and noted the governor was “recognized by seemingly no one.”

This post has been updated with more comments from Walz.

Sen. JD Vance argued that former President Donald Trump’s economic policies have helped American workers, specifically citing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Facts first:?Vance’s comments need context. While the 2017 law reduced taxes for most people, the rich benefited far more than others, according to a 2018 analysis by the?Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group.?

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act contained an array of individual income tax reductions – including lowering many individual income tax rates, notably the top rate, from 39.6% to 37% for the highest earners.

More than 60% of the benefits were expected to go to those whose incomes are in the top 20%, and they were projected to get the largest bump in after-tax income, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Only a little more than a quarter of those in the lowest-income households would see their taxes reduced, and they were projected to have a very small bump?in after-tax income.

Most middle-income taxpayers were expected to see a tax cut, but their boost in after-tax income was projected to be smaller than those at the top of the income ladder.

About two dozen people gathered to watch the debate at a bar blocks away from the Capitol in Washington, where the pro-Harris Win With Black Men PAC hosted a viewing party.

While none of the attendees changed their position on who they will support in the election as a result of the face off, some did acknowledge JD Vance showed up tonight and was especially strong.

They said they felt he really didn’t have a choice given how dominant Vice President Harris was over former President Donald Trump a few weeks ago.

Kevin Hooks, an attendee, said Vance “was strong because the bar was so low.”

Huda Mumin said Walz “wears his heart on his sleeve and kind of speaks from a place of wholesomeness.”

“So we didn’t see a lot of the back and forth, getting into the dirt,” said Mumin, who runs the Chefs for Kamala group.

She said that she knows being overly confrontational wasn’t Walz’ style, but perhaps would’ve appreciated him being more forceful. “I think it’s really interesting that Walz kind of came alive towards the end of the debate. He felt more comfortable,” she said.

Sen. JD Vance said in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate that former President Donald Trump could have “destroyed” the Affordable Care Act during his first term, but instead he “saved” it.

“He saved the very program from a Democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership,” Vance said.

Facts First:?Vance’s claim is misleading. During Trump’s administration, he and his officials took many steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act after failing to repeal it, though they did continue to operate the Obamacare exchanges. Also, during his term, the Department of Health and Human Services approved several state waiver requests that resulted in lower premiums for Affordable Care Act plans.

As president, Trump initially tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act but failed because congressional Republicans could not amass enough votes to kill the law in 2017.

Then, Trump put in place many measures aimed at?undermining the law, which led to a decline in enrollment. He cut the open enrollment period in half, to only six weeks. He also?slashed funding?for advertising and for navigators, who are critical to helping people sign up. At the same time, he increased the visibility of insurance agents who can also sell non-Obamacare plans.

Trump signed an?executive order?in October 2017 making it easier for Americans to access alternative policies that have lower premiums than Affordable Care Act plans – but in exchange for fewer protections and benefits. And he?ended subsidy payments?to health insurers to reduce eligible enrollees’ out-of-pocket costs.

Plus, his administration?refused to defend?several central provisions of the Affordable Care Act in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican-led states, arguing that key parts of Obamacare should be invalidated. The Supreme Court ultimately?dismissed the challenge?and left the law in place.

Enrollment declined?until the final year of his term, which was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, the Trump administration did approve several states’ waiver applications to implement reinsurance programs in their Affordable Care Act exchanges. This generally lowered Obamacare premiums by providing funding for insurers that enrolled many high-cost patients.

Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance left with more positive views of both, according to a CNN instant poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS, with both men viewed by a majority of the audience as qualified to assume the vice presidency if needed.

Following the debate, 59% of debate watchers said they had a favorable view of Walz, with just 22% viewing him unfavorably – an improvement from his already positive numbers among the same voters pre-debate (46% favorable, 32% unfavorable).

Debate watchers came away with roughly net neutral views of Vance following the debate: 41% rated him favorably and 44% unfavorably. That’s also an improvement from their image of Vance pre-debate, when his ratings among this group were deeply underwater (30% favorable, 52% unfavorable).

The poll’s results reflect opinions of the debate only among those voters who tuned in and aren’t representative of the views of the full voting public. Debate watchers in the poll were 3 points likelier to be Democratic-aligned than Republican-aligned, making for an audience that’s about 5 percentage points more Democratic-leaning than all registered voters nationally. That’s a difference from the audience for the two presidential debates this year, both of which were slightly more GOP-leaning than the potential American electorate overall.

A 65% majority of debate watchers now say Walz is qualified to serve as vice president if necessary, with 58% saying the same of Vance. Before the debate, 62% thought Walz was qualified to assume the vice presidency if needed, and 50% that Vance was qualified to do so.

In a CNN poll of all Americans taken prior to the debate, views of Walz were narrowly above water, with 36% of voters viewing him favorably, 32% unfavorably and 33% saying they hadn’t heard of him or had no opinion of him. By contrast, views of Vance tilted negative, with 30% of registered voters rating him favorably, 42% unfavorably and 27% offering no opinion.

The CNN poll was conducted by text message with 574 registered US voters who said they watched the debate Tuesday, and the poll findings are representative of the views of debate watchers only. Respondents were recruited to participate before the debate and were selected via a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results for the full sample of debate watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he was “not looking to” participate in another debate after the Harris campaign reiterated its challenge for Trump to join Vice President Kamala Harris in accepting an invitation from CNN to debate on October 23.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of Harris’ campaign, said: “Vice President Harris believes that the American people deserve to see her and Trump on the debate stage one more time. She will be in Atlanta on October 23 – Donald Trump should step up and face the voters.”

Trump had previously said he would not participate in another debate with Harris, as he argues its too late for another debate because people have already started voting.

Vance speaks to Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel in the spin room after a CBS News vice presidential debate on Tuesday in New York.

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance said Tuesday night that he had been nervous on the debate stage and that he didn’t notice whether his opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had felt the same way, instead pivoting to the Democratic vice presidential nominee’s ability to defend his running mate’s policy record.

Responding on Fox News to Sean Hannity’s assertion that Walz seemed “very nervous,” Vance responded, saying “I didn’t notice,” adding that his adrenaline was “going so much I was nervous.”

He later expanded: “I’m not surprised that Tim couldn’t defend that record. Who could? If you put me on that debate stage, I mean, you clearly think I did a good job, I hope that I did a good job, but if you asked me to defend Kamala Harris’s record, I’d melt into a puddle, because there is no defending what she’s done the last three and a half years.”

Vance said he “just wanted to talk about issues,” adding, “it’s an unbelievable opportunity for a person who wants to be the next vice president, and you should just make it as much as possible about substance.”

Vance said making the case for Trump’s leadership is an “easier argument to make tonight,” because of the “incredible tragedy” unfolding in Israel, which “could become a broader regional conflict.”

Some undecided voters in battleground Michigan said the vice presidential debate on Tuesday was refreshing to see.

The seven voters on the CNN focus group panel in Grand Rapids shared their reactions in real-time through a tracking device where they could gauge if they felt favorably or not about moments happening on stage. The voters told CNN’s Phil Mattingly that overall they viewed both candidates in a better light after the debate, regardless of how they felt at the beginning.

Two voters remarked on the tone of the policy-focused debate. She said she felt like she hadn’t “seen a debate like this in a very long time.” The voter said she felt like Republican JD Vance and Democratic rival Gov. Tim Walz “supported each other” and were kind.

Another voter said they were “not attacking each?other personally but more of?the policies and then what they?stand for.”

Some of the moments that stood out favorably to the voters were Vance’s answer that he wants the Republican Party “to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word.”

“Just saying that?they should have a choice, was a?complete different response?than I was expecting,” one voter said, adding that it sounded “very progressive.” She said hearing that response from a Republican vice presidential candidate was encouraging.

One of those voters said the debate helped him make up his mind about who to vote for in November. The moment that pushed him to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris was when the candidates were talking about the January 6 insurrection.

The moderators were asking Vance if he would certify the election if Donald Trump lost in November.

“JD Vance didn’t really?give us a definitive answer and?I am disappointed in that fact.?And I don’t think that I can?trust someone, you know, with?my vote, if they’re not going?to respect it,” the voter said.

Sen. JD Vance claimed at Tuesday’s debate that former President Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered 1.5% inflation for Americans.

“Because Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered the highest take-home pay in a generation in this country, 1.5% inflation, and to boot, peace and security all over the world,” Vance said.

Facts First:?Vance’s claim needs context. The annual inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, was indeed 1.5% in May 2019; however, the average inflation rate was north of 2.1% from January 2017 through February 2020, prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic,?according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and its quick and deep economic recession in the US, inflation slowed drastically as Americans sheltered at home and reduced spending on in-person services.

Including the pandemic-distorted pricing environment, the CPI averaged 1.9% from 2017 through 2020, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

For comparison purposes, during the Biden-Harris administration, the CPI averaged an annual rate of 5.2%

Inflation’s?rapid ascent – which began in early 2021 and peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 before moderating to 2.5% in August 2024 – was the result of a?confluence of factors, including effects from the Covid-19 pandemic, such as?snarled supply chains,?and?geopolitical fallout?(specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) that triggered food and energy price shocks.?Heightened consumer demand?boosted in part by fiscal stimulus from both the?Trump?and?Biden?administrations also led to higher prices, as did the post-pandemic imbalance in the labor market.

Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s debate between vice presidential nominees Tim Walz and JD Vance were closely split on which candidate turned in a better performance, according to a CNN instant poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS, with 51% saying that Vance did the better job, and 49% picking Walz.

Prior to the debate, the same voters gave Walz an edge as the candidate they expected to perform more strongly, 54% to 45%.

The poll’s results reflect opinions of the debate only among those voters who tuned in and aren’t representative of the views of the full voting public. Debate watchers in the poll were 3 points likelier to be Democratic-aligned than Republican-aligned, making for an audience that’s about 5 percentage points more Democratic-leaning than all registered voters nationally. That’s a difference from the audience for the two presidential debates this year, both of which were slightly more GOP-leaning than the potential American electorate overall.

Viewers’ closely divided opinions about the outcome of Tuesday’s debate also stand in sharp contrast to the more decisive audience reaction following this year’s top-of-the-ticket debates. In June, two-thirds of debate watchers thought that former President Donald Trump outperformed President Joe Biden, while a 63% majority who tuned in to the September debate between Trump and Kamala Harris said that the vice president did the better job.

In the vice presidential debate four years ago, viewers saw Harris as the clear winner over then-Vice President Mike Pence, backing her debate performance by a 21-point margin. Debate watchers were more divided in 2016 (when they favored?Pence over Democrat Tim Kaine?by a 6-point margin) and 2012 (when they favored Republican Paul Ryan over Biden by a 4-point margin).?In 2008, debate watchers gave Biden the win over Republican Sarah Palin by a 15-point margin.

The CNN poll was conducted by text message with 574 registered US voters who said they watched the debate Tuesday, and the poll findings are representative of the views of debate watchers only. Respondents were recruited to participate before the debate and were selected via a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results for the full sample of debate watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

Former President Donald Trump watched tonight’s debate from his plane on the way to Houston, Texas, posting his criticism of Tim Walz on social media.

Trump privately praised Vance to those around him, as his advisers celebrated the Republican vice presidential nominee’s performance, a source close to Trump said.

It was a far different tone than the aftermath of Trump’s debate in Philadelphia against Vice President Kamala Harris, in which his advisers cringed during various parts of his debate and privately expressed concern that it could hurt him in November.

The general consensus among Trump’s orbit is not this debate is not going to move the needle; however, they are pleased with Vance’s performance and the fact that they don’t feel like they will be playing clean up tomorrow.

Former President Donald Trump has posted several times on social media about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz misspeaking during the debate when the governor said he had “become friends with school shooters.”

A Harris-Walz campaign official told CNN that the governor was referring to meeting with the families of school shooting victims when he said he’d “become friends with school shooters.” The campaign noted Walz had been speaking about the families of victims in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting prior to making the remark.

During the debate, Walz was asked about why he changed his position in support on assault weapons and he credited it to meeting the parents of children who were killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school.

Sen. JD Vance claimed Tuesday that migrants who apply for legal status through a Customs and Border Protection app can have it granted “at the wave of a… wand.”

“There’s an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole, and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand,” he said.

Facts First:?This claim is false.?CBP One allows users?to schedule appointments to claim asylum with border authorities, but that does not mean that their request will be granted. The app is not a means to make an asylum application. It allows applicants to enter their information through the app rather than going directly to a port of entry.

The app was launched in October 2020, during the Trump administration,?so people could access?Customs and Border Protection services on their mobile devices.

Donald Trump Jr., former President Donald Trump’s eldest son, celebrated Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s performance in the vice presidential debate, telling CNN it was a “masterclass.”

“I think he literally won every issue across the board,” Trump Jr. told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in the spin room following the debate. “I think he was actually very comfortable in so many of the issues that Republicans tend to fail. He was probably more comfortable in those issues than most Republicans are, even on our strong points.”

Trump Jr. had urged his father to select Vance as his running mate, CNN has previously reported.

Trump Jr. also told Collins that his father shouldn’t do another debate because “I don’t think he can have a chance at getting a fair debate.”

Former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, claimed during the debate Tuesday that there are “20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country.”

Facts First: That number is significantly higher than most estimates.?

While the exact number of undocumented immigrants in the country difficult to track, multiple estimates show it is probably smaller than the number Vance floated during the debate. For instance, a 2024 report from Pew Research Center, estimated that the undocumented immigrant population in the US grew to 11 million in 2022. The report used data from the US Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey.

In 2024, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimated that there were about 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the US in 2021.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports curbing immigration and criticized the Biden administration’s border policies, estimated that there were approximately 12 million in May 2023.

Heading into tonight’s vice presidential debate, advisers to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz consistently sought to lower expectations, predicting that stylistically, they believed Ohio Sen. JD Vance could outperform Walz.

Walz aides don’t deny that Vance came across tonight as practiced and polished – anyone could see that particularly in the beginning, the governor appeared nervous. But they insist that putting aside the question of style, the governor won when it comes to substance.

One aide said the campaign has been pleased with how much focus the VP debate has placed on Donald Trump and his record, his past statements and proposals – including on issues like immigration and reproductive rights.

Prior to tonight’s debate, Harris-Walz aides had said one of the most important goals for Walz tonight was to show what a stark difference in vision there is between the Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance tickets. The campaign believes that difference was in fact, on clear display tonight.

Vance and his wife Usha Vance talk with Walz and his wife Gwen Walz after the vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News on Tuesday in New York.

During the first commercial break of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, the candidates left the stage, according to the pool reporter present in the room.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz returned to the stage with about 45 seconds to go, while Ohio Sen. JD Vance cut it close and rushed back onstage right before the end of the break. The stagehand announced, “10 seconds.”

The two men smiled at each other as the break ended.

When the second commercial break began, the candidates asked how much time remained and they left the stage, the pool reported, adding that they did not look at each other and did not interact.

At the end of the debate, there was a handshake and some crosstalk. Vance laughed, and the two patted each other on their arms while shaking hands, the pool noted.

As their spouses entered the stage area, Vance introduced his wife, Usha, to Walz and his wife, Gwen. Walz gave a big smile, the pool reported. Then the Vances and Walzes moved on to chat with the moderators before leaving.

Sen. JD Vance told Fox News after his debate on Tuesday that he tried making the case that his running mate, former President Donald Trump, isn’t the “caricature” that Kamala Harris makes him out to be.

“I just wanted to talk about issues,” Vance told Fox News after the debate. “… You should just make it as much as possible about substance.”

Vance added: “And one of the things I tried to do is obviously criticize Kamala Harris’ record, but also remind the American people that Donald Trump is not the caricature that Kamala Harris and the media have made him out to be, but he was an incredibly effective president for four years in the Oval Office, and he actually solved problems.”

The Democratic chairwoman of a key battleground state said that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was able to “explain and articulate his vision for our country,” while accusing GOP Ohio Sen. JD Vance of dodging a lot of questions during tonight’s vice presidential debate.

Arizona Democratic chairwoman Yolanda Bejarano said Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate was able to talk about “where our rights are protected,” including abortion rights and healthcare.

She accused Vance of spending tonight’s debate “attacking and vilifying immigrants, which is what he did recently in Ohio. He even admitted to making up stories about the Haitian community to get attention. It’s just so dangerous, and it’s not what we need in a leader.”

“He changes his mind all the time, and right now he feels he needs to endorse everything that Donald Trump is saying,” she said of Vance.

Asked about Walz’s handling of questions about his past embellishments and misstatements, Bejarano said that Walz has been “very forthcoming about any errors he’s made.”

“I think what’s important here is that folks resonate with somebody who’s really authentic, speaks from the heart,” she said. “He’s fighting to protect our rights.”

In this January 6, 2021 file photo, then-President Donald Trump speaks during a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 presidential election results in Washington, DC.

Sen. JD Vance claimed that Trump said protesters should protest peacefully on January 6, 2021, when the Capitol was attacked and overrun by Trump supporters.

“He said that on January the sixth, the protesters ought to protest peacefully,” Vance said.

Facts First: This claim leaves out some key context. During his speech, Trump did tell protesters to “peacefully” make their voices heard and, in the same speech, told protesters they should “fight like hell” and used other combative language.?

During his speech that day, Trump told those attending “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Trump, however, also?made numerous other?remarks in the speech?in which he struck a far more combative tone.

Trump, for example, urged Republicans to stop fighting like a boxer “with his hands tied behind his back.”

Trump alleged that there would be dire consequences if his supporters did not take immediate action – saying that, if Biden took office, “You will have an illegitimate president. That’s what you’ll have. And we can’t let that happen.” And he said: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Trump also spent much of the speech laying out a false case that the election was marred by massive fraud. And he falsely claimed: “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide.”

A screen displays the CBS vice presidential debate between Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in Times Square in New York on October 1.

Vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance took the stage on Tuesday in their first and only debate before the 2024 election in November.

Each candidate made a pitch to Americans about why they should vote for their ticket in a policy-focused discussion. Walz touted his running mate Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposals, and Vance said former President Donald Trump is the better choice to tackle key issues.

The debate was hosted by CBS in New York City.

Here are some of the key lines:

CNN Political commentator Van Jones said the vice presidential debate was like watching “the kitchen table vs. the Ivy League.”

Jones said both he and Vance graduated from Yale Law School and “that’s how they teach us to do it, slick, slick, slick.”

“Donald Trump is the gaslighter-in-chief and this is his loyal lieutenant who came out here to try to polish up the crazy.”

While there are two versions of Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the one that showed up on the debate stage tonight was “what Donald Trump isn’t,” CNN commentator David Axelrod said.

In Tuesday’s debate, Sen. JD Vance spoke for about 38 minutes and 59 seconds overall, while Gov. Tim Walz spoke for about 40 minutes and 42 seconds.

Here’s how long each candidate spoke for:

Sen. JD Vance claimed the Department of Homeland Security has “effectively lost” 320,000 children.

“You ask about family separation. Right now, in this country, we have 320,000 children that the department of Homeland Security has effectively lost,” Vance said, referring to separating migrant families.

“Some of them have been sex trafficked. Some of them hopefully are at home with their families. Some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules. The real family separation policy in this country is, unfortunately, Kamala Harris’ wide-open southern border,” the Republican vice presidential candidate said.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told CNN last month:

“Long story short, no, there are not 320,000 kids missing. 32,000 kids missed court. That doesn’t mean they’re missing, it means they missed court (either because their sponsor didn’t bring them or they are teenagers who didn’t want to show up). The remaining 291,000 cases mentioned by the OIG are cases where ICE hasn’t filed the paperwork to start their immigration court cases.”

Some right-leaning outlets, such as the New York Post and the Washington Times, took the report from the Office of Inspector General and combined those numbers, reaching the 320,000 figure of migrant children who are unaccounted for.

Vance attends a debate with Walz hosted by CBS in New York.

Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, Donald Trump’s co-campaign managers, praised JD Vance’s debate performance and said in a statement it showed “why President Trump chose him as his running mate.”

“Senator Vance unequivocally?won tonight’s debate in dominating fashion. It was the best debate performance from any Vice-Presidential candidate in history. Senator Vance spoke the truth, eloquently prosecuted the case against Kamala Harris’ failed record, and effectively held Governor Tim Walz accountable for his lies on behalf of the Harris-Biden Administration,” Wiles and LaCivita’s statement read.

“Senator Vance also perfectly articulated the Trump-Vance vision to make America safe again with their plan to launch the largest mass deportation operation in history; to make America strong again with a peace through strength foreign policy agenda; and to make America wealthy again by cutting taxes, unleashing American energy dominance, and ending inflation,” the statement read.

“Tonight, Senator Vance proved why President Trump chose him as his running mate. Together, they make the strongest and most dynamic presidential ticket ever, and they are going to win on November 5th.”

Sen. JD Vance claimed that Gov. Tim Walz signed a law that says doctors aren’t required to provide lifesaving care to babies that survive a botched abortion.

Facts First:?This needs context. The?law?Walz?signed in 2023?says that an infant born alive must be “fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law,” and must be provided “all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice.” While previous Minnesota law said that medical personnel needed to take steps to “preserve the life and health” of that infant using all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, the new law says that medical personnel must take steps to “care” for the infant using all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice.

The key difference between the “preserve the life and health” language and the “care” language, experts say, is that the new law gives families the option to choose comfort care if their infant does not have a legitimate chance of survival.

Dave Renner, director of advocacy for the Minnesota Medical Association, which supported Walz’s change to the law, said:

Former President Donald Trump has?previously claimed?that the new law allows the execution of Minnesota babies after birth. That is still murder in the state.

“This change does not allow ‘the execution of babies’ and to suggest so does not understand the change,” Renner said.

Vance speaks during a debate on Tuesday in New York.

In his final remarks of during the vice presidential debate, Sen. JD Vance said he believes every American, whether they’re rich or poor, deserves to have basic needs met.

He also noted Harris has made many promises about what she will do “on day one” as president during the presidential campaign.

“She’s been the vice president for three-and-a-half years. Day one was 1,400 days ago, and her policies have made these problems worse,” he said.

“We need change, we need a new direction, we need a president who’s already done this once before – and did it well. Please vote for Donald Trump.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz used his closing remarks at the vice presidential debate Tuesday night to tout the coalition his ticket mate, Kamala Harris, has assembled.

The coalition, he stressed, represents the optimism that “our politics can be better than it is” and that “freedom really means something.”

Walz also said his running mate is “bringing us a new way forwar?d.”

Former President Donald Trump speaks to guests during a campaign event at the Falk Productions manufacturing facility on September 27, 2024 in Walker, Michigan.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would veto a federal abortion ban if reelected.

The post came as Trump was reacting to abortion being discussed on stage at the CBS vice presidential debate between Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

In the same post, Trump again falsely claimed that Democrats support “THE POSSIBILITY OF EXECUTION OF THE BABY AFTER BIRTH.” Killing babies after birth is illegal in every state.

Some context: Trump has repeatedly said he would not sign a federal abortion ban, but during last month’s ABC News debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he would not commit to vetoing a federal abortion ban. Trump argued at the time he “wouldn’t have to.” When Trump was asked about Vance telling NBC that Trump would veto such legislation, Trump said he hadn’t spoken to Vance about it and said, “I don’t think he was speaking for me.”

Workers inspect solar panels at a rooftop of a power plant in Fuzhou, in southern China's Fujian province in February.

Vance accused Vice President Kamala Harris of making climate change worse by supporting clean energy, saying her policies “actually led to more energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas.”

The Inflation Reduction Act, which contained the largest climate investment in US history,?was designed to bring more manufacturing of electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, large batteries and other components to the United States. The law’s EV tax credits were crafted with the intention of moving the EV supply chain away from China, which has long dominated the industry. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who authored much of the IRA, changed its federal EV tax credits to move the supply chain for the critical minerals needed for things like EV batteries, solar panels and smaller rechargeable batteries away from China.

China will likely continue to dominate the global?clean energy supply chain in the coming years. But the US is catching up; companies have announced over $346-billion-worth of investments building new clean energy projects and factories in the US since the law was passed. According to the nonpartisan Rhodium Group and MIT, in the last two years, companies have invested $89 billion in clean energy manufacturing alone – a 305% increase from the prior two years.

Sen. JD Vance claimed the Biden-Harris administration had unfrozen more than $100 billion in Iranian assets, which he said were then used to buy weapons.

Facts first: Vance’s statement is false. There is no evidence that the Biden-Harris administration unfroze more than $100 billion in Iranian assets.?As part of a prisoner exchange last year, $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets were moved from restricted accounts in South Korea to restricted accounts in Qatar to be used for humanitarian purchases. The process for Iran to be able to spend those funds was expected to take months, if not years.

In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told House lawmakers that the US and Qatar had reached a “quiet understanding” not to allow Iran to access any of the $6 billion in Iranian funds for the time being, according to a source familiar.

Under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, sanctions waivers would allow Iran to access frozen assets abroad. Estimates varied but some said those assets could be worth?more than $100 billion. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was California attorney general at the time, had no involvement with the nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew under former President Donald Trump.

Sen. JD Vance speaks during a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday in New York.

Sen. JD Vance said at Tuesday’s?debate that he never supported a national abortion ban.?“I never supported a national ban. I did, during when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard. For example, we have a partial-birth abortion ban … in place in this country at the federal level. I don’t think anybody is trying to get rid of that, or at least, I hope not, though I know the Democrats have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance,” Vance said.

In 2022, while running for his Senate seat in Ohio, Vance?said,?“I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and that he was “sympathetic” to the view that a national ban was necessary to stop women from traveling across states to obtain an abortion. He also?said?on his website during that Senate campaign that he was “100 percent pro-life” and that he favored “eliminating abortion”; these words?remained on his website?until Trump selected him as his running mate in July.?And?Vance?said in an?interview?during the 2022 campaign that he wanted abortion to be “primarily a state issue,” but also said, “I think it’s fine to sort of set some minimum national standard.”

In November 2023, Vance told CNN’s Manu Raju and Ted Barrett in the Capitol: “It seems to suggest there needs to be some more interest in this building among Republicans in setting some sort of minimum national standard, whether that it’s 15 weeks or 20 weeks or the different ranges that are thrown out there.” He said, “We keep giving in to the idea that the federal Congress has no role in this matter. Because if it doesn’t … then the pro-life movement is basically not gonna exist, I think, for the next couple of years.”

Vance, emphasizing his support for certain exceptions to abortion bans,?said?on CNN in December 2023, “We have to accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans. They just don’t. And I say that as a person who wants to protect as many unborn babies as possible. We have to provide exceptions for life of the mother, for rape, and so forth.”

During his vice presidential campaign this year, Vance has aligned himself with Trump’s professed desire for a state-by-state approach to abortion policy rather than federal legislation. Vance?said?on Fox News in July, “Alabama’s going to make a different decision from California. That is a reasonable thing. And that’s how I think we build some bridges and have some respect for one another.”

Roughly 90 minutes into the debate broadcast, Sen. JD Vance had spoken for about 36 minutes and 56 seconds, while Gov. Tim Walz used roughly 38 minutes and 40 seconds.

Follow our live graphic to see the candidates’ speaking times as the debate continues.

Data will be updated every 5 seconds.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz are facing each other Tuesday night in this year’s only vice presidential debate.

The debate, hosted by CBS News, is taking place in New York without a live audience.

US Sen. JD Vance, left, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz take part in a vice presidential debate at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York on Tuesday, October 1.

Walz answers a question during the debate. The Democrat is in his second term as governor of Minnesota.

People watch the debate from a nearby "spin room" in New York. The spin room is where supporters of each candidate put their “spin” on the debate as they talk with journalists.

Vance makes a point during the debate. The Republican was elected to the US Senate in 2022.

People attend a debate watch party in Kendall, Florida.

Vance and Walz shake hands before the start of the debate.

See more photos from the debate.

Republican Sen. JD Vance claimed that housing affordability in the US has been worsened “because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.”

The ongoing housing affordability crisis was driven by a confluence of factors – specifically extraordinarily low inventory – and exacerbated by pandemic-era trends (including remote work and the economic environment that drove interest rates to historic lows).

The long-run effect of increased immigration on inflation and housing is unclear, Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari wrote in a policy essay in May, which Vance alluded to during the debate.

However, Kashkari noted, “immigrants nonetheless need a place to live, and their arrival in the US has likely also increased demand for housing,” although he wasn’t specifically discussing undocumented immigrants.

In 2023, the number of undocumented immigrants who purchased homes was a drop in the bucket: Only 5,000 to 6,000 mortgages were made to holders of Individual Tax Identification numbers, according to a recent?Urban Institute report. Those who are not legally authorized to work in the US obtain ITINs to file taxes, since they are not eligible for Social Security numbers. Most ITINs are issued to those from Latin American countries.

Some 4.3 million first mortgages were originated in 2023, according to Equifax, meaning that holders of ITINs accounted for only 0.1% of those.

Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz confronted his Republican counterpart and directly asked him if he believed Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Sen. JD Vance dodged and changed the topic to censorship.

Here’s how the exchange went:

Gov. Walz: “(Trump)?is?still saying he didn’t lose the?election. I would just ask that — did he lose the 2020 election?”

Sen. Vance: “Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris?censor Americans from speaking?their mind in the wake of the?2020 Covid situation?”

Gov. Walz: “That is a?damning non-answer.”

Sen. Vance:?“It’s a damning non-answer for you to?not talk about censorship.”

Ohio Sen. JD Vance called for a more comprehensive approach when it comes to paid family leave and child care policies.

He went on to celebrate Trump-era policies on child care, but he said that generally “we could do a heck of a lot better” on the issue as a country.

“One of the biggest complaints I hear from young families is people who feel like they don’t have options, like they’re choosing between going to work or taking care for their kids,” he said. “That is an incredible burden to put on American families.”

This post has been updated with more of Vance’s comments.?

Sen. JD Vance speaks during a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday in New York.

Asked whether former President Donald Trump would again contest the result of the election if he loses, Ohio Sen. JD Vance did not directly answer.

“Remember, he said that on January 6, the protesters ought to protest peacefully, and on January 20, what happened? Joe Biden became the president. Donald Trump left the White House, and now, of course, unfortunately, we have all of the negative policies that have come from the Harris/Biden administration,” Vance said.

Vance then said there was a threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz don’t want to talk about.

“It is the threat of censorship. It’s Americans casting aside lifelong friendships because of disagreements over politics. It’s big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens, and it’s Kamala Harris saying that rather than debate and persuade her fellow Americans, she’d like to censor people who engage in misinformation. I think that is a much bigger threat to democracy than anything that we’ve seen in this country in the last four years, in the last 40 years,” the senator said.

Vance ended his answer with yet another conciliatory moment toward Walz, telling the governor that the two will shake hands after the debate and offering his help to Walz if he is elected vice president and needs it.

Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz participate in a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1 in New York City.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s team is already celebrating the GOP vice presidential nominee’s debate performance Tuesday night.

Vance’s goal was to portray himself as calmer and more in control than the attack-dog image he has embraced on the campaign trail thus far, while also forcing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to go on the defense. They feel he succeeded, people close to Vance told CNN.

Vance’s team had long argued that his tendency to frequently take questions on the road and sit for interviews with what they describe as “hostile” media was the best way to prepare to answer attacks on his policy positions.

Instead, Vance’s main goal heading into Tuesday night was to needle Walz on his record as well as try to undercut the governor’s folksy image,?CNN previously reported.

Vance and his team, which had closely studied footage of Walz over the past few months in the lead up to the debate showdown, had anticipated that Walz would attempt to circumvent answering tough questions and pivot to other subjects.

Those close to Vance argued Tuesday night that Vance was able to force him to go back to the issues in question, claiming that was a key victory for the Ohio senator.

Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz participate in a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1 in New York City.

Gov. Tim Walz claimed that Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation think tank’s?detailed right-wing blueprint?for the next Republican administration, says you’re going to have to register your pregnancy.

“Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” Walz said.

Facts First:?Walz’s claim is false. Project 2025 does not propose to make people register with any federal agency when they get pregnant. And there is no indication that a Trump-Vance administration is trying to create a new government entity to monitor pregnancies.

Project 2025 is firmly anti-abortion; it proposes, among other things, to criminalize the mailing of abortion medication and devices. But it does not propose to require people to register their pregnancies.

The?Project 2025 policy document, released in 2023, proposes that the federal government take steps to make sure it is receiving detailed after-the-fact, anonymous data from every state on abortions and miscarriages.?The vast majority of states?already submit anonymous abortion data to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?on a voluntary basis?– the CDC has collected “abortion surveillance” data for decades – and?all?states already submit some anonymous miscarriage data?under federal law.

Minnesota, the state run by Walz, is one of the states that voluntarily submits abortion data to the CDC. And Minnesota?posts?anonymous abortion and miscarriage data on the state health department’s website?every year.

The Project 2025 policy document says the existing federal Department of Health and Human Services should “use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”

The document also says the department “should also ensure that statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion.” And it says, “In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion.”

In the context of the CDC, the word “monitoring” is used to mean statistical tracking. For example, the?existing?CDC webpage that displays anonymous state-by-state abortion data says, “Since 1987, CDC has monitored abortion-related deaths” through its?Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System. Neither “monitored” nor “surveillance” means the CDC is spying on individuals during their pregnancies.

Trump dodged the question when asked in a Time magazine?interview?earlier this year whether states should monitor women’s pregnancies to ensure compliance with an abortion ban, saying “I think they might do that” but that “you’ll have to speak to the individual states.” Walz is free to criticize Trump for this answer, but nowhere in the interview did Trump make an actual proposal to create a new pregnancy-monitoring government body.

Heritage Foundation Vice President Roger Severino?wrote?on social media earlier this month that Project 2025 “merely recommends CDC restore the decades-long practice of compiling *anonymous* abortion statistics for all states” – and noted that Minnesota already compiles such data.

Vance denied that a Trump-Vance administration would create a federal pregnancy monitoring agency when asked by CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell.

“Certainly, we won’t,” Vance said.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said that “Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered the highest take-home pay in a generation in this country,” which was true at the time, according to government data.

But before inflation erupted, real disposable income rose to its highest point on record in March 2021 under President Joe Biden. Then, of course, price hikes took off that year, which took a bite out of take-home pay. Still, even when take-home pay fell to its lowest point under Biden in the summer of 2022, that was still higher than anything seen during the Trump’s presidency.

Real disposable income has been on a firm upswing over the past two years, and in August, it reached its highest level since March 2021, when it reached a record high.

Sen. JD Vance participates in a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1 in New York City.

JD Vance was asked how his plan to change how chronically?ill Americans get health?insurance would work and if he can guarantee that Americans with?preexisting conditions won’t?pay more.

“Of course we’re going?to cover Americans with?preexisting conditions,” he said.

He acknowledged that people have criticized Donald Trump for saying during his debate with Kamala Harris that he had “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act.

But he declined to detail any parts of his plan, saying he is “not?going to propose a 900-page?bill standing on a debate?stage. It would bore everybody?to tears.”

“And it wouldn’t?actually mean anything, because?part of this is the give-and-take of bipartisan negotiation,” he said.

Former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance look on during the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 16 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Defending his?prior criticisms?of the former president, Sen. JD Vance said he has always been “extremely open” about how he “was wrong about Donald Trump.”

Vance also defended comments he made in newly uncovered messages from 2020, reported by the?Washington Post, where he said Trump “thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism.”

After the Washington Post story broke, Vance spokesperson William Martin said in a statement to CNN, “The Trump economy was one of the strongest and most successful periods of American history, where working families saw increasing take home pay and low prices of basic necessities like groceries and gasoline. There is no comparison between President Trump’s record of unprecedented success and Kamala Harris’s record of abject failure, rising prices, and shrinking wages.”

US Customs and Border Protection Border Patrol vehicles sit parked along border wall fencing between the United States and Mexico on August 1 in Jacumba Hot Springs, California.

Sen. JD Vance said that the United States has a “historic immigration crisis” because Vice President Kamala Harris “wanted to undo all of Donald Trump’s border policies” with “94 executive orders” that did things like “suspending deportations” and “decriminalizing illegal aliens.”

Facts First: While the Biden-Harris administration has signed dozens of executive orders about immigration, Vance’s comments about the administration decriminalizing illegal immigration through executive order aren’t true. Harris did, however, say she supported decriminalizing illegal immigration — a position she’s since reversed.

When she was a candidate for president and a sitting US senator, Harris filled out an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire in which she expressed support for sweeping reductions to Immigration and Custom Enforcement?operations, including drastic cuts in ICE funding and an open-ended pledge to “end” immigration detention.

Harris has since acknowledged that some of her stances have evolved over time but that she holds core beliefs that remain unshakable: “My values have not changed,” she said in an August interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

The flag of Iran is seen in front of the building of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Headquarters ahead of a press conference by Rafael Grossi, Director General of the IAEA, about the agency's monitoring of Iran's nuclear energy program on May 24, 2021 in Vienna, Austria.

During the debate, Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Waltz clashed on the issue of Iran.

Vance claimed that former President Donald Trump had made the world “more secure” by taking the United States out of the Iranian nuclear deal in 2018 that had been negotiated by the Obama administration three years earlier, which kept the Iranians from enriching uranium above around 4%.

To make nuclear weapons you need around 90% enriched uranium.

Just hours after Iran had sent missiles against Israeli targets, Vance claimed that the Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal had made the world more secure.

This is simply nonsense, and that’s according to Trump’s own top intelligence official, the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, a former Republican senator, who testified before a Congressional committee in 2019 that the Obama-negotiated nuclear deal was working.

In fact, because the Trump administration pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal, the United Nations says that Iran today has enough fissile material to make several nuclear weapons.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said publicly in July that Iran is?now probably “one or two weeks”?from being able to make a nuclear weapon.

The Middle East is now a more volatile place than in decades and the fact that Iran is just weeks away from having nuclear weapons is a very dangerous place to be. And that is at least in part on Trump whatever Vance claimed in Tuesday’s debate.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaks following a tour of the Family Housing Expansion Project (FHEP) community in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Monday, June 24.

As the nation grapples with a housing affordability crisis – one driven by years of extraordinarily low inventory and exacerbated by the pandemic – Vice Presidential candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz pointed to Minneapolis as an example of a success story.

During Tuesday night’s debate, Walz noted that Minneapolis increased its housing stock by 12%, which he claimed drove rents down as a result by 4%.

Walz appears to have misspoken on the rent decline: A Pew Charitable Trusts report released earlier this year showed that Minneapolis grew its housing stock by 12% from 2017 to 2022 while rents grew by just 1%. During the same period, the rest of Minnesota added 4% to its housing stock while rents went up 14%.

The stark increase in Minneapolis housing stock was driven by zoning policy changes, including plans to encourage the development of multi-family units in areas previously zoned for solely single-family houses.

Gov. Tim Walz emphasized Kamala Harris’s plans to make housing affordable as a way to help build wealth for Americans.

“We need to make it more affordable,” he said, laying out Harris’s plans to build an additional 3 million housing units and offer up to $25,000 in down-payment support for first-time homebuyers. The nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners, for example, estimates that the US needs 7 million new units in order to stabilize the housing market.

That lack of housing has contributed to historically high home prices in the United States, driving prices up and putting the American Dream out of reach of many would-be homebuyers.

Even Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last month highlighted the dearth of homes in a press conference after the Fed cut interest rates by half a percentage point.

“The real issue with housing is that we have had and are on track to continue to have not enough housing,” he said. “Where are we going to get the supply? This is not something that the Fed can really fix… the supply question will have to be dealt with by the market and also by government.”

An answer on gun violence led to a brief conciliatory moment between Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Walz, after Walz mentioned one of his children witnessed a shooting at a community center.

Walz said he’d met with parents of victims killed in the Sandy Hook shooting before making the case for gun laws that respect the Second Amendment.

Walz said Minnesota has passed strengthened red-flag laws and mentioned Finland as a country with high gun ownership rates and low rates of gun violence.

Walz also said he’s “become friends with school shooters.” It’s unclear whether the governor misspoke.

During his answer, Vance offered his condolences for what Walz’s son witnessed. “I’m sorry about that,” he said.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he “misspoke” when he previously said he’d visited Hong Kong in the spring of 1989 during protests in China’s Tiananmen Square, but again insisted he “was in Hong Kong and China” during the pro-democracy protests.

When asked about reporting by CNN and other outlets that newly unearthed contemporaneous newspaper reports contradict Walz’s claim that he was in China during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, Walz talked about his history of travel to the country, which began in 1989 and continued throughout his teaching career as a chaperon for education trips. Walz also said he had been “caught up in the rhetoric” while discussing the issue and called himself a “knucklehead at times.”

When pressed by moderators specifically about the discrepancy between his past comments and the media reports on his travel, Walz first said he “misspoke on this.”

“All I said on this was is I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just– that’s what I’ve said,” he said.

But Walz then said he was in “Hong Kong and China” during the pro-democracy protests. The protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square began in April of 1989 and ended on June 4th, 1989 in a deadly massacre of protesters by the Chinese government.

“I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests went in. And from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in—in governance,” he said.

More on the remarks: The comment during the debate marks Walz’s first public response to reporting from CNN and other outlets on the discrepancies between his comments on his travel to China. Newspaper reports from the time place Walz in Nebraska in May of 1989, and indicate he had planned to travel in August of that year.

Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks during a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, with Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday in New York.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance called for more school security when answering a question about gun violence in schools.

The CBS moderators asked the Republican vice presidential nominee if he thinks holding parents criminally responsible for mass school shootings committed by their children could help curb the problem.

He went on to say that he thinks he and his Democratic rival, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, “probably agree that we need to do better on this,” as Walz, looking at Vance, nodded. Vance said the question is what is the right approach to curbing gun violence.

Vance then talked about “illegally obtained firearms” and attacked Vice President Kamala Harris’ border policies. He also said there needs to be more security in schools, including stronger windows and more school resource officers.

Some background:?Last month on the campaign trail, Vance said that school shootings in the US have become “a fact of life” and repeated his pitch for more security. As part of his remarks, Vance also said that strict gun laws are not the determining factor in preventing school shootings. The comments came in the wake of?the shooting in Winder, Georgia, that left four people dead.

The Democratic National Committee slammed Vance in a statement: “Let’s be clear: no matter what Donald Trump and JD Vance say, tragedies like this do not need to be a ‘fact of life,’ and we don’t just have to ‘get over it’ when Americans, including young children, are violently murdered.”

This post has been updated with additional comments from Vance.

CNN’s Kit Maher contributed reporting to this post.

As Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance sparred over the issue of abortion access, Walz repeated a line that’s become something of a catch phrase during the presidential campaign: “Mind your own business.”

Walz told the story of Amber Thurman, a woman who died driving from Georgia to North Carolina to access abortion care, and noted that she might still be alive if she had lived in his state, where abortion rights are protected.

“How can we as a nation say that your life and your rights, as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography,” Walz said.

He said that’s why he and Harris are pushing for the protections to abortion access in?Roe v. Wade to be restored. In response, Vance accused the Harris-Walz campaign of being pro-abortion.

“No, we’re not.?We’re pro-women, we’re pro-freedom to make your own choice,” Walz said.

Walz added, “There’s a continuation of these guys to try and tell women, or to get involved. I used this line on this, ‘Just mind your own business on this.’ Things worked best when Roe v. Wade was in place, when we do a restoration of Roe that works best.”

Thurman’s family thanked the governor for sharing her story and for his “unwavering commitment to defending women’s reproductive rights,” in a statement shared through the family’s attorney, Ben Crump, after the debate.

“We are grieving an unimaginable loss that no family should have to endure. We must continue to fight against laws that put women’s lives at risk, and we are grateful to leaders like Governor Walz who advocate for common sense laws while exhibiting such compassion,” the family said in the statement.

This post has been updated with comment from Thurman’s family.

A man walks through downtown Springfield, Ohio, on September 16.

Sen. JD Vance said that schools and hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, are “overwhelmed” because of “illegal immigrants.”

“Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed … because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s statement, referencing the Ohio town subject to a firestorm of misinformation about Haitian migrants this summer, is misleading.

We don’t know the immigration status of each and every immigrant in Springfield, but hundreds of thousands of Haitians have official permission to live and work legally in the US. The Springfield city website says, “YES, Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).” Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wrote in a New York Times op-ed about Springfield in September that the Haitian immigrants “are there legally” and that, as a Trump-Vance supporter, he is “saddened” by the candidates’ disparagement of “the legal migrants living in Springfield.”

Many Haitians came into the country under a Biden-Harris administration parole program that gives permission to enter the US to vetted participants with US sponsors. And many have “temporary protected status,” which shields Haitians in the US from deportation and allows them to live and work here for a limited period of time. Some received that protection after the Biden-Harris administration expanded the number of Haitians eligible in June. Others have been living in the US with temporary protected status since before the Biden-Harris administration.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said at Tuesday’s debate that he wants the Republican Party “to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word.”

Acknowledging that many Americans “just don’t trust” the GOP when it comes to the issue of abortion, Vance stressed that “one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do” is earn people’s trust on the issue, which both tickets have made critical to their campaigns.

“I want us to support fertility treatments. I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies. I want to make it easier for young families to afford a home, so they can afford a place to raise that family,” Vance said. “I think there’s so much we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options.”

When pressed by CBS moderators why he has shifted from supporting a 15-week federal ban on abortion to arguing the issue should be left to the states, Vance attempted to clarify that he didn’t support a federal ban, but rather “a national standard.”

He added that the success of a pro-abortion-rights ballot measure in his home state of Ohio was “one of the things that changed.”

“The people of Ohio voted overwhelmingly, by the way, against my position,” Vance said. “I think what I leaned from that, Norah, is that we’ve got to do a better job at winning back people’s trust.”

This post has been updated with additional comments from Vance.

Screens shows Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH) and Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Governor Tim Walz attending a debate hosted by CBS in New York, U.S., October 1, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance are attacking each other and making a pitch to Americans in the first and only matchup between the two vice presidential candidates on Tuesday.

The debate is being hosted by CBS in New York City.

Here are some of the key lines so far:

In this March 14 photo, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, right, listens as Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Gov. Tim Walz argued that abortion is the issue “on everyone’s mind” and defended a bill he signed into law in Minnesota that made abortion more accessible in the state.

He cited “horrific” anecdotes involving rape and medical complications where an abortion could have put doctors into legal trouble.

“This is basic human right,” he said during Tuesday night’s debate.

“This is about health care,” he added.

Walz went on to swipe at Project 2025,?the conservative blueprint published by the Heritage Foundation.

His opponent, Sen. JD Vance, said “certainly we won’t” have a federal pregnancy monitoring agency. Project 2025 also does not propose to make people register with any federal agency when they get pregnant. And there is no indication that Trump is trying to create a new government entity to monitor pregnancies.

Trump has also made clear that he has “no idea” who is behind Project 2025 although many people Trump knows quite well are behind it.

Some context: Walz last year signed legislation further enshrining the right to abortion and gender-affirming care into law.

This post has been updated with background and more of Walz’s comments.?

Sydney Kashiwagi, CNN’s Daniel Dale and Steve Contorno contributed reporting.?

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has repeatedly used Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s past comments before he joined the Republican presidential ticket to attack former President Donald Trump on Tuesday night on key issues, including immigration, foreign policy and the environment.

Walz appeared to be citing a CNN report on a 2012 blog post authored by Vance in which he criticized proposals to enforce mass deportations of undocumented immigrants – a proposal both Trump and Vance push repeatedly on the campaign trail.

As CNN previously reported, Vance wrote in 2012 that a proposal to “deport millions of unregistered aliens” is a plan that “fails to pass the laugh test.”

During an answer on Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel, Walz sharply attacked Trump’s foreign policy record and referred to a New York Times opinion piece Vance?wrote?in 2016 in which Vance criticized Trump’s foreign policy vision and called him “unfit for our nation’s highest office.”

“Now the person closest to them – to Donald Trump, said he’s unfit for the highest office. That was Sen. Vance,” Walz said.

Walz pointed out that Vance previously acknowledged that there is a “climate problem,” with the Minnesota governor also attacking Trump for referring to climate change as a “hoax.”

Vance participates in a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1 in New York City.

Sen. JD Vance was asked why Americans should trust that he will give honest advice to Donald Trump as his vice president — and not just what the former president wants to hear — given that he has gone from being a fervent critic of Donald Trump to being a staunch Trump supporter and aligning his policies with the former President.

“Donald Trump delivered for the?American people — rising wages,?rising take-home pay, an?economy that worked for normal?Americans, a secure southern?border — a lot of things,?frankly that I didn’t think?he’d be able to deliver on,” Vance said.

“When you screw up, when?you misspeak, when you get?something wrong and you change?your mind, you ought to be?honest with the American people?about it,” he said, adding that he is doing interviews “to actually explain to the?American people where I come?down on the issues and what?changed.”

So far in the debate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance has clocked approximately 17 minutes, 7 seconds, while Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has clocked approximately 16 minutes, 24 seconds. Follow our live graphic to see the vice presidential candidates’ speaking times as the debate continues.

Data will be updated every 5 seconds.

President Joe Biden walks onto the stage before speaking about Bidenomics at CS Wind on November 29, 2023 in Pueblo, Colorado. CS Wind, the largest wind turbine tower manufacturer in the world, announced they were expanding operations as a direct result of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Touting the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a major climate law for which Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate, her running mate Gov. Tim Walz spoke of how the law created “200,000 jobs in the country,” including building electric vehicles and solar panels.

Facts First:?This claim needs context. While it’s clear that a significant number of new clean energy jobs were created as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, the “200,000” figure includes jobs that companies have promised to create but aren’t finalized. And other counts of new clean energy jobs have come up with smaller figures.

There are several data sets that track climate law investments, all of which differ slightly. Walz’s number of jobs created by Biden’s climate law is slightly smaller than a June tally by communications group Climate Power that found a total of 312,900 jobs publicly announced by companies following the IRA passage through May 2024.

E2, another clean energy group that tracks Inflation Reduction Act-related investments and jobs, has counted over 109,000 new clean energy jobs created or announced from August 2022 to May 2024 – significantly lower than the Climate Power number. A recent report from the US Department of Energy found 142,000 new clean energy jobs were created in 2023.

Not all of these jobs have already been created. Climate Power’s topline number also didn’t distinguish between construction jobs building new factories and the long-term jobs at those factories – jobs building batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles, among other things.

Different entities use different methodologies when analyzing data, so it is difficult to determine an exact figure. Regardless, there’s no question there’s a huge amount of clean energy investment, and a significant number of new jobs building EVs and renewables like wind and solar are being created by the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits. The 2024 Energy Department report showed clean energy jobs made up more than half of the total for new energy sector jobs and grew at a rate twice as large as the overall US economy.

The report also acknowledged how the sudden growth in the clean energy sector from the Inflation Reduction Act has made it difficult to track all the jobs that are being created.

Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are seen on a television at a watch party hosted by the New York Young Republican Club in New York on Tuesday.

Gov. Tim Walz touted Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic plans, saying he and his running mate “do believe in the middle class.”

He emphasized the role of increasing the available housing stock to help bring down unaffordable housing prices. Harris has proposed building 3 million new homes across the country. (Some experts say the US needs 7 million new housing units to stabilize the market.)

“A house is much more than just an assert to be traded somewhere. It’s foundational to where you’re at,” he said.

He also argued for “making sure tax cuts go to the middle class,” such as child tax credits, as well as “fairness” in pricing for everyday goods.

Harris has released a plan to combat price gouging. However, some economists have criticized that plan as potentially causing more higher prices through unintended consequences. And economists have also said her attempts to help Americans with down payments could have an unintended consequence: It could boost housing prices.

Read more about Kamala Harris’s campaign promises here.

Vance gestures as he speaks during a debate.

Sen. JD Vance claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris?was appointed the “border czar” during the Biden administration.?“The only thing that she did when she became the vice president, when she became the appointed border czar, was to undo 94 Donald Trump executive actions that opened the border,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s claim about Harris’ border role is false. Harris was never made Biden’s “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the official in charge of border security. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.

Some Republicans have scoffed at assertions that Harris was never the “border czar,” noting on social media that news articles sometimes described Harris as such. But those articles were wrong. Various news outlets, including CNN, reported as early as the first half of 2021 that the White House emphasized that Harris had not been put in charge of border security as a whole, as “border czar” strongly suggests, and had instead been handed a diplomatic task related to Central American countries.

A White House “fact sheet” in July 2021 said: “On February 2, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order that called for the development of a Root Causes Strategy. Since March, Vice President Kamala Harris has been leading the Administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”

Biden’s own comments at a March 2021 event announcing the assignment were slightly more muddled, but he said he had asked Harris to lead “our diplomatic effort” to address factors causing migration in the three “Northern Triangle” countries. (Biden also mentioned Mexico that day.) Biden listed factors in these countries he thought had led to migration and said that “if you deal with the problems in-country, it benefits everyone.” And Harris’ comments that day were focused squarely on “root causes.”

Republicans can fairly say that even “root causes” work is a border-related task. But calling her “border czar” goes too far.

Defending former President Donald Trump’s economic plan, which most mainstream economists have lambasted, Senator JD Vance said he acknowledges Americans are struggling to pay bills and that the cost-of-living crisis “is gonna stop on Day One” of a second Trump term.

Trump has promised to attack America’s affordability crisis by imposing historic tariffs and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. But an analysis conducted by the Peterson Institute for International Economics concluded that Trump’s plan would cause inflation to spike and would lower employment growth in America.

Goldman Sachs in an analyst note last month said Trump’s economic policies – particularly on trade – would cause America’s economy to shrink. By contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic policy proposals would grow the economy, Goldman Sachs predicted.

Read more?about the campaign promises Trump has made so far.

Vance and Walz participate in a debate on Tuesday in New York.

CBS moderators cut the vice presidential candidates’ mics for the first time during a back-and-forth about an immigration parole program that allows Haitian immigrants to be in the country legally.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance pushed back on the legality of the program, as the moderators attempted to move on to the next question. After Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz chimed in, they cut the mics.

More context: Republicans, including Vance, have fueled a firestorm of misinformation when they spread false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, injecting the town with chaos.

The city of Springfield notes on its website that approximately 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants live in Clark County and that Haitian immigrants are there legally as part of a parole program that allows citizens and lawful residents to apply to have their family members from Haiti come to the United States.

Sen. JD Vance speaks during a debate on Tuesday in New York.

Republican Sen. JD Vance did not directly answer a question about if he would support separating children from their parents at the US southern border.

“My point is that we already?have massive child separations,?thanks to Kamala Harris’ open?border,” Vance said.

The senator also accused Harris of enabling cartels “to operate?freely in this country,” claiming that they use children to smuggle drugs into the country.

Vance continued to slammed Harris and the Biden administration for repealing many of the controversial policies Donald Trump put in place while he was president.

Some background: In 2018, the Trump administration announced the so-called “zero tolerance” policy, in which the Justice Department initiated criminal prosecutions of every adult illegally crossing the border. Doing so resulted in the separation of thousands of families, including those with infants,?some only a few months old, because children can’t be kept in federal jail with their parents.

Walz speaks during a debate on Tuesday in New York.

Immigration has emerged as a key issue during the 2024 presidential campaign, and it was among the first topics discussed during tonight’s vice presidential debate.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz noted that a bipartisan group in Congress worked to draft new legislation that would have provided funding and additional security at the southern border, but former President Donald Trump urged Republicans to vote against it.

Walz said the former president had four years to deliver on his border promises while he was in office.

“He promised you, America, how easy it would be: ‘I’ll build you a big beautiful wall and Mexico will pay for it.’ Less than 2 percent of that wall got built, and Mexico didn’t pay a dime. But here we are again, nine years after he came down that escalator dehumanizing people and telling them what he was going to do.”

Viewers in the spin room watch the CBS News vice presidential debate on October 1 in New York.

Before Ohio Sen. JD Vance answered a question about whether he would support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran, he took a moment to introduce himself to the viewers, acknowledging that many of them would be unfamiliar with him and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

“I was raised in a working-class family. My mother required food assistance for periods of her life. My grandmother required Social Security help to raise me, and she raised me in part because my own mother and mother struggled with addiction for a big chunk of my own life,” Vance said.

“I went to college on the GI bill after I enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in Iraq, and so I stand here asking to be your vice president with extraordinary gratitude for this country, for the American Dream that made it possible for me to live my dreams,” the senator said.

Vance said his goal is to convince voters that a second Donald Trump presidency would make the American Dream more attainable.

“I want to try to convince you tonight, over the next 90 minutes, that if we get better leadership in the White House and we get Donald Trump back in the White House, the American Dream is going to be attainable once again,” Vance said before moving to answer the question.

Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz participate in a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1 in New York City.

Gov. Tim Walz acknowledged that Ohio Sen. JD Vance has previously noted the existence of a climate problem, but mentioned former President Donald Trump’s reference to the issue as “a hoax.”

He said he has spoken to farmers who “know climate change is real” and who have experienced the Harris’ improvements.

Some background: Walz referenced Trump’s 2016 comments, when he claimed that “nobody really knows” if climate change is real. At the time while on the campaign trail, the former president called climate change a “hoax” that is being pushed by China.

Later, in 2018, Trump clarified in an interview that he does not believe climate change is a hoax – but added that?“it’ll change back again.”

This post has been updated with background on Trump’s previous comments.?

Caroline Kenny contributed reporting.?

Sen. JD Vance speaks during a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1 in New York City.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance was asked about what responsibility a potential Trump administration would have to try and reduce the impact of climate change.

He started his answer by saying the devastation from Hurricane Helene is “an?unbelievable, unspeakable human?tragedy.”

“I’m sure Governor Walz joins?me in saying our hearts go out to those innocent people, our?prayers go out to them. And we?want as robust and aggressive?as a federal response as we can?get to save as many lives as?possible,” he added.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz chimed in and called the hurricane a “horrific tragedy,” saying “my heart goes out” to those affected.

He pointed to h?is role as co-chair of the Council of Governors, a group that works together on emergency management where there is “no partisanship.”

This post has been updated with Walz’s response.

Sen. JD Vance speaks during a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday, October 1, in New York.

CBS moderators issued their first fact check of the vice presidential debate after asking Ohio Sen. JD Vance about past comments made by his ticket mate, former President Donald Trump, referring to climate change as a hoax.

Vance did not directly answer, instead opting to criticize Vice President Kamala Harris’ policies surrounding clean-energy manufacturing.

After Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz gave a brief rebuttal at the end of Vance’s answer, CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell said: “The overwhelming consensus?among scientists is the Earth’s?climate is warming at an?unprecedented rate.”

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday took a swipe at CBS News moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell before the debate had even begun.

“Both young ladies have been extremely biased Anchors!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

His criticism of the CBS anchors comes as Trump has been railing against ABC News and claiming its moderators were biased against him during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1 in New York City.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the United States needs to continue to have a presence in the Middle East and said he supports continuing to stand with Israel against Iran-backed proxies.

“The expansion of?Israel and its proxies is an?absolute fundamental necessity?for the United States to have?the steady leadership there,” Walz said, presumingly misspeaking, saying Israel instead of Iran.

Walz was asked if he were the final voice in the situation room, would he support a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran. The governor did not directly answer that question.

Republican JD Vance shot back, touting Trump’s record. He said that while he was in office Trump “delivered stability” by establishing “effective deterrents.”

Vance did answer the question about if he would support a preemptive strike by Israel, saying that it would be up to them about “what they think they need to do to keep their country safe.”

“We should support our allies wherever they are when they’re fighting the bad guys,” he said.

Iran launched dozens of missiles toward Israel on Tuesday in what it said was a response to the?killing of Hezbollah leader?Hassan?Nasrallah?and others — potentially taking the region closer to a wider conflict.

This post has been updated with additional comments from Vance.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance attend a debate hosted by CBS News in New York on Tuesday.

Republican vice presidential nominee?JD Vance?and his Democratic counterpart, Tim Walz, are just about to participate in tonight’s debate hosted by CBS.

There will be 90 minutes of debate time, with two breaks of four minutes each, and there will be no studio audience, according to CBS.

The moderators are going over the rest of the rules, which include:

Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz shake hands at the start of the Vice Presidential debate hosted by CBS News on October 1 in New York.

Both vice presidential nominees shook hands as their debate in New York kicked off.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz briefly shook hands after being introduced by the CBS moderators.

Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz participate in the Vice Presidential debate hosted by CBS News at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City on October 1.

Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance are taking the stage in the first and only vice presidential debate?of the 2024 election.

The matchup is being hosted by CBS News and taking place in New York City, without a live audience.

Here are some things to watch for during the showdown:

Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz visit Liberty County High School in Hinesville, Georgia, on August 28.

Vice President Kamala Harris called Gov. Walz this evening to wish him good luck before the debate, a source tells CNN.

We’re tracking how long each candidate speaks during the only scheduled vice presidential debate between GOP Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate. Follow our live graphic to see who uses the most and least airtime.

Data will be updated every 5 seconds.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries holds his weekly news conference at the US Capitol Visitors Center in Washington, DC on September 12.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday stopped by a Harris-Walz campaign watch party for the vice presidential debate in the key battleground state of Arizona, urging supporters to elect Democrats “so we can do the work of the people.”

“Who’s in office matters, and that’s why tonight’s debate is going to be so important. The Harris-Walz ticket is so important,” Jeffries said at the watch party in Phoenix, Arizona, also hosted by the Human Rights Campaign.

The New York Democrat called this “a very challenging moment. We, as a country, can go in one direction, move the country forward. The other side wants to turn back the clock.”

Efforts to elect Democratic Senate nominee Ruben Gallego are “incredibly important,” Jeffries added.

“We’re working hard to bring people together, every single community. They’re trying to tear us apart. We will continue to put people over politics. They want to jam Trump’s Project 2025 down the throats of the American people, but we’re not going back,” he added.

Jeffries vowed that if Democrats win control of the US House, their top priorities will be to pass the Equality Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Women’s Health Protection Act.

Sen. JD Vance introduces former President Donald Trump during a rally at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on July 27, 2024 in St Cloud, Minnesota.

Former President Donald Trump was asked what advice he had given his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, ahead of his debate tonight with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Trump praised Vance as a “very hard worker,” a “real warrior” and a “brilliant guy.”

Former President Donald?Trump?on Tuesday confused the leaders of North Korea and Iran when he said North Korean leader?Kim?Jong Un was “basically trying to kill me.”

Trump?has been lamenting the fact that US Secret Service is mandated to protect all foreign heads of state while they are on US soil, which included Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian when he came to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly.?Trump?said he was forced to change the location of his rally in Wisconsin on Saturday because of a shortage of Secret Service resources.

The US government has been “intensely?tracking” an ongoing threat by Iran against current and former US officials, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week, and CNN has reported that law enforcement officials have been concerned about the persistent threat of Iran potentially attempting to assassinate former?Trump officials and the former president himself.

The leader of North Korea, on the other hand, is someone?Trump?has frequently pointed to on the campaign trail as a leader he got along well with while in office. Kim did not attend the UN General Assembly.

The gaffe comes after?Trump?confused Iraq and Iran earlier during the news conference with reporters in Wisconsin.

Former President Donald Trump debates Vice President Kamala Harris for the first time during the presidential election campaign at The National Constitution Center on September 10 in Philadelphia.

Some allies of Donald Trump have continued to urge the former president to commit to another debate.

With JD Vance set to hit the debate stage Tuesday night in what could be the last face-to-face of the 2024 campaign, some Trump advisers are hoping that a vigorous?performance by the Ohio senator could convince the former president to do another debate.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s motorcade has arrived at the CBS News broadcast center in New York City.

“Unmoored by facts and reality.”

“A casual relationship with the truth.”

Those are a few of the ways in which advisers to Gov. Tim Walz have described to CNN some of the statements that Donald Trump and JD Vance have made in the lead-up to Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate.

How to navigate potential assertions from Vance tonight on the debate stage that may not be backed up by evidence and facts, sources say, has been a significant part of Walz’ debate preparations.

But it’s not an easy task with a clear playbook, they acknowledge — as much as advisers believe in the importance of real-time fact-checking, they are also wary of Walz using precious time to unintentionally give more oxygen to unfounded claims.

And aides and advisers also say there is just no way to know what, if anything, might take off after tonight’s debate. Donald Trump’s claim that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets became a political storyline that took on a life of its own after the last presidential debate.

Those inside the Harris campaign are mixed on whether that storyline has been ultimately harmful or good for the Trump-Vance campaign.

JD Vance, Republican vice presidential nominee, spent time preparing for how to handle potential deflections from his Democratic opponent,?Tim?Walz, a source familiar told CNN.

Advisers to Vance believe some of Walz’ strength when it comes to debating is his ability to disarm his opponent and deflect on answers using what has been referred to as “folksy charm.” Vance has been preparing for how to handle these potential pivots from Walz.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer helped with this effort by intensely studying Walz’s mannerisms and using them while playing Walz in a mock debate session with Vance.

As for former President Donald Trump, he and his team arranged Trump’s schedule tonight to ensure that Trump was not counterprogramming the debate and was able to watch.

Trump is expected to watch the debate on his plane tonight as he travels to Texas and live respond on social media.

Undecided voters in Michigan will be watching the vice presidential debate on Tuesday closely as they weigh which ticket to cast their ballot for in November.

Seven voters in Grand Rapids are participating in a CNN focus group during the debate. They will share their reactions and be tracking how they feel about moments that happen on the stage.

One voter on the panel told CNN’s Phil Mattingly that she leans Republican, but has a problem “trusting Donald Trump.” She said she hopes Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance get into more specific policy positions rather than “zingers and personal attacks.”

Another voter said he doesn’t think Vice President Kamala Harris has distinguished herself enough from President Joe Biden — but he’s not a fan of former President Donald Trump, either. He said he hopes the debate between their running mates would help him decide.

“A good president has a good vice president,” the voter said.

Why Michigan is key: It is a pivotal battleground state for both Harris and Trump and critical to their path to the White House. Kent County, where Grand Rapids is located, is particularly important to both parties — it swung to Joe Biden in 2020 after voting for Trump in 2016.

Donald Trump said Tuesday he’s asked CBS News for an apology over an interview he did in 2020 with CBS’ Lesley Stahl, and the former president suggested he would need that before agreeing to another “60 Minutes” interview.

CBS News said earlier on Tuesday that Trump had backed out of a “60 Minutes” interview with veteran CBS anchor and correspondent Scott Pelley.

“Well, right now I went to, they came to me and would like me to do an interview, but first I want to get an apology, because the last time I did an interview with them, if you remember, they challenged me on the computer,” Trump said as he spoke to reporters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Trump sat down with Stahl in October 2020 and abruptly ended the interview when he apparently objected to Stahl’s questions.

“If you remember Lesley Stahl, we got into a little bit of an argument on the camera, talking about that and other things. And you know, they really owed me an apology,” Trump said.

“I never got an apology. So, I’m sort of waiting. I’d love to do ’60 Minutes’, I do everything,” Trump said.

The former president added, “I’d like to get an apology, so I’ve asked them for an apology, let’s see if they do it.”

CBS said earlier Tuesday that correspondent Bill Whitaker is slated to follow Vice President Kamala Harris on the campaign trail and interview her later this week.

Tim Walz' wife, Gwen, cries during the introduction video before his speech at the DNC on August 21.

Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz said she’s “so proud” of her husband, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in a message of support ahead of Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate.

“Tim has always held true to the values he grew up with: loving your country, helping your neighbor, and fighting for what’s right,” she said in the social media post. “We’re so proud of you, Tim.”

Tonight’s debate will serve as an opportunity for Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance to prove he was the best pick to be former President Donald Trump’s running mate — despite his rocky rollout and polls showing he is underwater in public opinion.

Part of Trump’s selection of Vance rested on his perceived skill as a debater. Vance is keenly aware of this and doesn’t not want to let Trump down, according to a source close to Vance.

Trump and Vance spoke about the debate earlier today, a source familiar with their conversation told CNN. The source declined to go into detail about the call but noted that Trump’s team and the former president feel Vance is ready for the debate tonight.

President Joe Biden posted on X in support of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz ahead of Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate.

“Coach, I got your back tonight,” Biden wrote on X.

Ahead of tonight’s vice presidential debate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has made at least three false claims over the last couple of weeks about the Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump.

Two of Walz’s false claims are related to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation think tank’s?detailed right-wing blueprint?for the next Republican administration. Project 2025 has been the subject of?multiple?false?or misleading claims?from Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign this summer.

The campaign declined to comment for this article.

Trump, Project 2025 and pregnancies

Walz?claimed?in a speech in North Carolina last Tuesday: “And now Trump is trying to create this new government entity that will monitor all pregnancies to enforce their abortion bans.” He?made?an even more dramatic claim in a speech in Wisconsin on September 14: “Think about what they’re saying in Project 2025: you’re going to have to register with a new federal agency when you get pregnant.”

Facts First:?Walz’s claims are false. Project 2025 does not propose to make people register with any federal agency when they get pregnant. And there is no indication that Trump is trying to create a new government entity to monitor pregnancies.

Project 2025 is firmly anti-abortion; it proposes, among other things, to criminalize the mailing of abortion medication and devices. But it does not propose to require people to register their pregnancies with the federal government.

The?Project 2025 policy document, released in 2023, proposes that the federal government take steps to make sure it is receiving detailed?after-the-fact, anonymous data from every state on abortions and miscarriages.?The vast majority of states?already submit anonymous abortion data to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)?on a voluntary basis?– the CDC has collected “abortion surveillance” data for decades – and?all?states already submit some anonymous miscarriage data?under federal law.

Read more of the fact checks here.

Pete Buttigieg speaks at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 21.

Hunkered down at a small waterfront resort town in northern Michigan to prepare for Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz spent much of the past few days standing a short distance away from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who played the role of JD Vance during the governor’s debate prep sessions.

As the Walz team worked through their long list of potential questions and topics that could come up at tonight’s debate, Buttigieg was often prepared with two versions of answers and responses that Vance might give, a source familiar with debate preparations told CNN.

Buttigieg, as that source described it, was prepared with both the answer Vance might give to the “big audience,” as well as the answer he would give to the “rally audience.”

The “big audience” answer is the “common sense, ‘We’re normal, this is not scary,’” response, this source said; the “rally audience” response, the source said, more resembles the red meat commentary Vance and Donald Trump might offer up at campaign events to fire up their base.

Preparing for both versions of Vance in this way offers one window into how the Harris-Walz campaign has been trying to push the narrative that a Trump-Vance administration would be extreme — filled with fringe and reckless ideas.

In debate prep, Buttigieg did not fully embrace imitation acting, sources said, but did try to emulate the aggressive tone and style that Vance can often take in interviews.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will hold a rally in York, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday alongside Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman in his first campaign rally after Tuesday’s vice presidential debate.

The Harris campaign said the event will kick off a daylong bus tour through Central Pennsylvania, with the governor expected to make stops in Harrisburg and Reading as well as York. The trip will mark Walz’s fifth visit to the state since joining the Democratic ticket, the campaign said.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s former students filmed a “pep talk” for the former teacher ahead of the most high-profile moment of his life when he participates in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate.

Some of Walz’s former students from his tenure at Mankato West High School in Mankato, Minnesota, shared their support for Walz ahead of Tuesday’s debate. Many of them said they wanted to return the favor after he supported them as students.

“You had a way of bringing excitement to all that we did every single day,” one student said in the video posted on X.

“So now it’s our turn to give you a pep talk,” another said.

“We know it’s a big night for you, and we just want to say thank you,” a third student said.

Some of the students recalled specific moments from their time in Walz’s classroom. One student talked about “Jeopardy Fridays in geography class” and another student mentioned that Walz’s rise to the Democratic vice presidential nomination is “all anybody can talk about.”

A couple students urged Walz on with a cry of “Go Scarlets,” a reference to Mankato West’s mascot.

“Thank you for the support,” Walz wrote in the post sharing the video ahead of Tuesday’s debate. “Let’s do this.”

Outiside the site of the CBS News vice presidential debate between Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday in New York.

The campaigns for both Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz spent Tuesday afternoon keeping a close eye on the fallout from Iran’s latest missile attack against Israel, a source from each camp told CNN, preparing for how it could factor into their debate tonight.

After the attack, Donald Trump argued it happened because “they don’t respect our country anymore” — an argument Vance could echo on stage tonight as an attack against Vice President Kamala Harris, sources said.

As for the debate itself, the former president has privately voiced confidence in Vance, though at times he has focused less on Vance and more on attacking Walz, sources told CNN. Trump has teased that he will offer a “play-by-play” of his reaction.

Vance will take a page out of his running mate’s playbook and plans to go to the spin room following the debate. Unlike Trump’s decision, which was made after the debate, Vance’s team decided beforehand that he would go in regardless of how the evening goes.

CNN reported that Walz and Vance intend to join other US officials in condemning the Iranian missile attack on Israel, aides told CNN. Vance is poised to follow Trump’s lead and Walz is expected to walk a finer line, given that Harris is part of the Biden administration, but aides say he will warn of “chaos” under a Trump second term.

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.

Tim Walz and JD Vance.

Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance are set to meet Tuesday night in the?only vice presidential debate?of the 2024 election — and in what might be the last time the two campaigns square off onstage.

The matchup between Walz, the 60-year-old Minnesota governor, and Vance, the 40-year-old Ohio senator, is being hosted by CBS News and taking place in New York, without a live audience.

The debate coincides with huge news stories unfolding at home and abroad – including Hurricane Helene recovery efforts across the southeastern United States, and the Middle East on the brink as Israel escalates its campaign against Iran-backed militant groups in Lebanon.

The debate is being moderated by CBS’ Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan. It starts at 9 p.m. ET and will be simulcast on CNN.

Here’s what to watch for at the vice presidential debate:

The coach vs. the ex-pundit: The Middle America roots at the heart of both Walz’s and Vance’s well-cultivated political identities will be on display Tuesday night as the two men vying to be a heartbeat away from the presidency introduce their biographies to the largest audience of voters they’ve likely had to date.

Walz, a two-term governor and former congressman, was first elected to the US House in 2006. But expect him to lean into the roles he held before entering politics: high school teacher and assistant football coach.

Vance, meanwhile, is a Marine veteran and the author of a best-selling memoir about the his Appalachian family values and the socioeconomic problems of his hometown. He’s likely to highlight how he came around on the former president in recent years, without making much mention of his past as a political commentator who was a strident Trump critic.

Both candidates’ biographical pitches are born of an effort to showcase their authenticity — a precious political commodity, particularly in a race in which undecided voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could determine the outcome.

Keep reading here for more of the five things to watch for ahead of tonight’s debate.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance has sought to fill in some details about the “concepts” of a health plan that former President Donald Trump mentioned in the?presidential debate in September.

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” the following week, Vance said that Trump’s plan is “actually quite straightforward.”

“You want to make sure that preexisting coverage – conditions – are covered, you want to make sure that people have access to the doctors that they need, and you also want to implement some deregulatory agenda so that people can choose a health care plan that fits them,” Vance told the show’s anchor, Kristen Welker.

“We want to make sure everybody is covered,” he continued. “But the best way to do that is to actually promote some more choice in our health care system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools, that actually makes it harder for people to make the right choices for their families.”

Facts first:?Vance’s claim that preexisting conditions would be covered if insurers didn’t have to put people into the same risk pools is misleading and needs context. A key pillar of the Affordable Care Act’s sweeping protections for people with preexisting conditions is requiring insurers to put all their individual market enrollees into the same risk pool.
That is crucial for guaranteeing that insurers don’t charge people with chronic conditions higher premiums, which could lead to many of them being unable to afford coverage.

Obamacare’s protections for those with preexisting conditions is one of its?most popular provisions?– roughly two-thirds of the public say it’s “very important” to retain the law’s mandates prohibiting insurers from charging sick people more and from denying coverage based on their medical records, according to a February?KFF poll.

Read the full fact check here.

Two moving billboards of a viral TikTok song mocking JD Vance for?his past criticism of former president Donald Trump passed in front of Trump Tower moments ago in New York City.

“I’m a never Trump guy. I’m a never Trump guy. I never liked him,” Vance said in the song, as a beat blasted on the speaker with images of his face.

The billboard said it was paid for by the Kamala Harris campaign.

One man in front of the Trump Tower doors yelled at the billboard trucks to leave.

Vance has said he doesn’t hide from his prior criticism of Trump and admits he changed his mind due to the results of his presidency.

Rockets fly in the sky, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, as seen from Tel Aviv, Israel, on October 1.

Foreign policy hangs over tonight’s vice presidential race in ways that were unexpected only hours ago.

Both Tim Walz and JD Vance intend to join other US officials in condemning the Iranian missile attack on Israel, aides told CNN, but their agreement could end there.

Vance is poised to follow Donald Trump’s lead, saying Iran would not have gone forward with its provocation if Trump was in office. Walz is expected to walk a finer line, given that Vice President Kamala Harris is part of the Biden administration, but aides say he will warn of “chaos” under a Trump second term.

Tonight is the latest example of how presidential campaigns often turn on external events outside the control of the candidates – five weeks before election day.

Tim Walz speaks to a gathered crowd of supporters during a campaign rally at the Highmark Amphitheater on September 5, 2024 in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz is a second-term governor who has championed several progressive legislations in Minnesota, including free lunch for public school students and a paid family and medical leave program.

Yet, Democrats think Republicans will struggle to paint Walz as an ultra-liberal – an advantage to Vice President Kamala Harris, whom the GOP ticket has gone after for her previous progressive positions.

In Congress, Walz had a moderate voting record during his 12 years as a lawmaker, where he represented a rural, red district that he managed to flip, becoming only the second Democrat in 100 years to hold the seat. He approved the Keystone XL?pipeline and blocked gun control?measures, although he did stand with his Democratic colleagues to support the Affordable Care Act.

Once elected as governor, however, Walz took a more progressive stance, particularly when Minnesota Democrats were able to secure the majority in both chambers in 2022. He signed protections for abortion and gender-affirming care, and enacted free college tuition for students from families who earn less than $80,000.

Yet, Walz’s supporters have told CNN that they’re excited to have someone on the ticket who personally understands the issues facing rural America.

On the campaign trail, Walz often discusses his Nebraska upbringing to connect with rural, Midwest voters, as well as his service in the Army National Guard. And he repeatedly touts that he – along with his wife, Gwen – are former educators, leaning into the “Coach Walz” persona and even approaching his remarks at the Democratic National Convention as a pep talk.

Walz has also shared his and his wife’s fertility struggles to highlight how personal reproductive rights is to the couple – their daughter was conceived through a fertility treatment – as the Democratic ticket looks to make abortion and IVF access central to their campaign.

Workers take part in a port strike at Port Newark in New Jersey on Tuesday. Tuesday.

Former President Donald Trump attempted to place blame on?his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, for the port workers’ strike happening across the East and Gulf Coasts.

“The situation should have never come to this and, had I been President, it would not have. This is only happening because of the inflation brought on by Kamala Harris’ two votes for massive, out-of-control spending, and her decision to cut off energy exploration,” Trump said in a statement. “Americans who thrived under President Trump can’t even get by because of Kamala Harris - this strike is a direct result of her actions.”

Nearly 50,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association started to strike on Tuesday.

“American workers should be able to negotiate for better wages, especially since the shipping companies are mostly foreign flag vessels, including the largest consortium One,” Trump said.

The strike will stop the flow of a wide variety of goods over the docks of almost all cargo ports from Maine to Texas.

Former President Donald Trump speaks to attendees during a campaign rally at the Prairie Du Chien Area Arts Center on September 28, 2024 in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

Former President Donald Trump has backed out of an interview with “60 Minutes,” the most-watched newsmagazine in the United States, according to CBS News.

CBS disclosed Trump’s change of plans on Tuesday evening, a few hours before the network is set to host a vice presidential debate between Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, and Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz.

“For over half a century, 60 Minutes has invited the Democratic and Republican tickets to appear on our broadcast as Americans head to the polls,” the network said in a statement. “This year, both the Harris and Trump campaigns agreed to sit down with 60 Minutes.”

Trump committed first, followed by Harris, through campaign spokespeople, CBS said. Veteran correspondent Scott Pelley was lined up to interview Trump.

“After initially accepting 60 Minutes’ request for an interview with Scott Pelley, former President Trump’s campaign has decided not to participate,” CBS said in a statement.

The network was notified earlier Tuesday – throwing a wrench into its programming plans, since the Harris and Trump interviews were supposed to air on a special Monday night edition of “60 Minutes” next week.

CBS says the special edition will go forward in some fashion. Correspondent Bill Whitaker is slated to follow Harris on the campaign trail and interview her later this week.

“Our original invitation to former President Donald Trump to be interviewed on 60 Minutes stands,” the network said in a statement.

Trump sat down with “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl in October 2020 and abruptly ended the interview when he apparently objected to Stahl’s questions.

Sen. JD Vance speaks to supporters during a campaign event at the Northwestern Michigan Fair grounds on September 25, 2024 in Traverse City, Michigan.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance had just a little over a year of experience in the Senate when he was tapped as former President Donald Trump’s running mate.

Like Trump before his first presidency, Vance is a political newcomer. He was elected to the Senate in 2022 following a career as a venture capitalist, which now allows him to bring his ties to traditionally liberal-leaning Silicon Valley to the GOP presidential ticket. He is also the author of the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” and a veteran, who served a tour in Iraq in 2005 as a combat correspondent. He also spent four years in the Marines.

Vance was once a fervent critic of Trump. CNN has previously reported that Vance called Trump a “moral disaster”?and possibly “America’s Hitler” in private messages and publicly – in since deleted tweets – called the former president “reprehensible.”

But Vance has since risen?to political stardom, largely by touting Trump’s election lies and supporting the former president’s legislative priorities as he has sought to return to the White House.

In his limited voting record in Congress, Vance?opposed a Ukraine aid bill?earlier this year, adopting Trump’s criticism of providing more aid. And as he eyed the vice presidential nomination, Vance sowed doubt on whether Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, “was ever in danger”?on January 6, 2021, the day of the riot at the US Capitol.

On the campaign trail, Vance has emerged as an ardent defender of Trump – reminding voters of the years the former president was in the office and touting his tough economic and immigration stances,?while attacking the Biden-Harris administration’s policies.

Vance has adopted the former president’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and has vehemently pushed the baseless claim of Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, which has surged threats against the community.

And as border security emerges as a key issue in this cycle, Vance has used his wife Usha, who is the daughter of immigrants from India, to argue that only documented immigrants should be welcomed.

Vance met Usha, a trial lawyer and former judicial clerk, at Yale Law School. The couple share three young children.

Even in the hours leading up to Tim Walz’s face-off against Sen. JD Vance in tonight’s?vice presidential?debate, the Minnesota governor’s advisers are doing their best to keep lowering expectations.

“His communication strengths don’t line up with debates,” one adviser to the Harris-Walz campaign familiar with debate preparations said of Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate.

That offers just a sampling of the narrative that Walz allies are pushing ahead of Tuesday night, as they anticipate that Vance will be prepared, polished and eager to throw punches at the governor.

Still, sources say they see a potential scenario in which Walz comes out of the first and only scheduled VP debate with a good story to tell.

For one, sources familiar with debate preparations say Walz has been preparing to use the stage to share his own personal story — from his Midwestern roots to his time as a teacher — a clear recognition that the campaign sees authenticity as one of his biggest political strengths.

Secondly, if Walz can successfully hammer home the point that the vision for the Harris-Walz administration is starkly different from what former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Vance, are proposing, campaign officials will consider that a successful night.

Walz has spent the past few days hunkered down at “debate camp” in northern Michigan, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg helping to play the role of Vance.

Gov. Tim Walz speaks at a campaign rally in Superior, Wisconsin, on September 14.

Ahead of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s appearance at Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, Walz gathered with campaign aides for a series of debate preparation sessions in northern Michigan, where they strategized on how best to communicate the campaign’s key messages to voters.

One message was subtly on display during the sessions: “MYODB”

The acronym, which stands for “mind your own damn business” according to Harris campaign aides, was stitched on the sleeves of custom sweaters given to staffers who joined Walz in Harbor Springs, Michigan for “Camp North Star,” the name given to the Walz team’s preparation sessions. Several staffers were seen sporting the sweaters in the days leading up to Tuesday’s debate.

The expression is a regular feature of Walz’s stump speeches and offers the vice-presidential nominee the opportunity to put a folksy twist on Vice President Kamala Harris’ call to protect rights and freedoms as the campaign seeks to portray former president Donald Trump and his Republican allies as a threat to those freedoms.

During a rally in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, his last campaign rally before Tuesday’s debate, Walz used the phrase to attack Trump and his Republican counterpart Ohio Sen. JD Vance for socially conservative policies Walz characterized as them “trying to legislate what type of family you should have.”

Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks in support of Israel during a visit to Josephine Butler Park Center in Washington, DC, on October 1.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday denounced Iran’s massive missile attack on Israel and warned that the regime’s actions are putting US personnel in danger.

She noted that she had been in the Situation Room monitoring the attack.

Harris also said she “will?always ensure Israel has the?ability to defend itself?against Iran and Iran-backed?terrorist militias.”

“Let us be clear,” Harris later said, “Iran is not only a threat to Israel, Iran is also a threat to American personnel in the region, American interests and innocent civilians across the region who suffer at the hands of Iran-based and -backed terrorist proxies.”

“We will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend US forces and interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists,” the vice president said.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, is in his second term as Minnesota governor and chairs the Democratic Governors Association.

A onetime high school teacher and football coach who served in the Army National Guard, Walz later spent 12 years in Congress, representing a conservative-leaning rural district in Southern Minnesota.

Walz had been an outspoken defender of Joe Biden, but when the president dropped out, he endorsed Harris and has since emerged as a reliable, energetic and cutting advocate for the campaign.

Former President Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, was elected to the US Senate from Ohio in 2022 after receiving a boost from Trump in a contentious Republican primary.

A venture capitalist and the author of the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance had once been a key voice in the “Never Trump” movement during the 2016 election.

But he later became a leading MAGA proponent, courting the former president at meetings in Mar-a-Lago and through appearances on Fox News.

Read more about the 2024 candidates and their key policies here.

Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, on Tuesday.

Former President Donald?Trump?on Tuesday criticized President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ leadership and said the world was “spiraling out of control” and “very close to global catastrophe” after?Iran?launched missiles toward Israel on Tuesday.

“The world right now is spiraling out of control,”?Trump?said at a campaign event in Waunakee, Wisconsin.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the attack focused on Israeli security and military targets and was?in response?to the killing of?Hezbollah leader?Hassan Nasrallah and others. The Israeli military — which initially estimated?about 180 missiles?were fired — said the attack “will have consequences.”

The former president later said: “The whole world is laughing at us. That’s why Israel was under attack just a little while ago, because they don’t respect our country anymore.”

This post has been updated with additional remarks from Trump.

Len Frisbee dumps a wheelbarrow of dirt as he helps with clean up in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on Tuesday in Hot Springs, North Carolina.

The enormous scope and scale of Hurricane Helene’s devastation in two key battleground states that could determine the election’s outcome, Georgia and North Carolina, have made the storm an instant campaign issue.

The Biden-Harris administration is dealing with what is expected to be a massive — and lengthy — federal response, while former President Donald Trump?is also seeking to gain a political advantage, jabbing at the administration by falsely claiming that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp couldn’t reach President Joe Biden.

It amounted to a remarkable political flashpoint in the Oval Office Monday as Biden sharply rebutted Trump’s earlier assertion, underscoring both men’s recognition of the high stakes.

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, have sought to mobilize a robust effort publicly and behind the scenes — though the reality of federal storm response is often a very long tail of assistance needed.

About 3,600 federal personnel are currently deployed, and Biden has approved major disaster declarations for Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. State and local officials from both parties have so far praised the Biden administration’s response.

Trump, as a former president, is keenly aware of how Biden and Harris will be judged on how the federal government responds to the hurricane. Over the weekend, Trump held campaign events in Michigan and Wisconsin but lambasted both Biden and Harris for being away from the White House as those in the storm’s path braced for impact — Harris fundraising on the West Coast, Biden at his Delaware beach house.

Then on Monday, Trump was the first of the three to traveled to the storm-hit area. In Valdosta, he said, he came bearing truckloads of relief aid and gasoline. But the trip also required a significant law enforcement and emergency personnel footprint.

CNN Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny takes a look at past debate moments from both Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Walz ahead of their vice presidential debate on Tuesday.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance.

Republican vice presidential nominee?JD Vance?and his Democratic counterpart, Tim Walz, are gearing up to participate?in tonight’s debate hosted by CBS.

There will be 90 minutes of debate time, with two breaks of four minutes each, and there will be no studio audience, according to a news release from CBS News on Friday.

Here’s a look at more of the debate rules CBS News released:

CNN’s Kit Maher contributed reporting to this post.

Donald Trump delivers remarks to the press in Valdosta, Georgia, on September 30.

Former President Donald Trump said that his running mate, JD Vance, will be going up against “a moron” during the vice-presidential debate Tuesday against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate.

His assessment seemed to go against his own senior campaign adviser Jason Miller, who said this morning that Walz is a “wily political veteran” who is “very good in debates.”

Trump, who has?previously said?he will not debate Harris again, reiterated he thinks it’s too late for another debate but claimed “I’d rather debate, I’d rather have another one.”

“The problem is we’re so far down the line, and also I had a three-on-one debate last time. So I, I debated Biden, and I must say CNN was very fair. And then I had the other debate, and ABC was totally crooked,” Trump said, again complaining about the ABC moderators, who fact-checked the former president during the debate with Harris.

Harris earlier this month?accepted an invitation from CNN?to again debate Trump on October 23, but the former president said at the time it is “too late” to have another presidential debate because Americans have begun casting their ballots in the 2024 election.

Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, won the coin toss to determine the order in which the candidates give their closing statements and which side of the stage they will appear on at Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, according to CBS News.

Vance chose to give his closing remarks last, which left Kamala Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, to pick which side of the screen he will appear on.

Walz chose the right side.

Tim Walz delivers remarks at an election campaign event in Superior, Wisconsin, on September 14.

The Trump campaign is aiming to undercut the idea that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is?fighting nerves?about facing off Ohio Sen. JD Vance at the vice presidential debate tonight.

On a call with reporters on Monday, senior Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller stressed multiple times that Walz is a seasoned politician who is “very good in debates.”

While Miller said that Vance is “great” and “ready to step up and lead,” he reminded that the first-term Ohio senator has less experience in politics than his opponent.

“JD is ready to step up and lead, but Tim Walz is a wily political veteran. He’s run countless campaigns. So really, it’s two years in official politics for JD Vance but two decades in politics for Tim Walz. So don’t let any of this ‘Tim Walz is real nervous and chewing on his fingernails about how tomorrow night is going to go,’ — he’ll have things memorized,” Walz said. “He’ll be very polished.”

GOP Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer also joined the call and talked about his role standing in for Walz during Vance debate preparations.

“Quite frankly, it’s tough because he is really good on the debate stage,” Emmer said. “He will stand there, and he lies with conviction, and he has these little mannerisms where it’s just hey, I’m the nice guy, but he’s not nice at all.”

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN - JULY 17: Donald Trump Jr. at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 17, 2024.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance will have the following surrogates in the spin room after the vice presidential debate taking place on Tuesday, according to two sources familiar:

The list was first reported by NOTUS.

All signs suggest that the partisan divide over changing gender roles in society could widen even further in the 2024 election, adding a new source of uncertainty to a contest already on a knife’s edge.

Donald Trump’s?recent declaration to female voters that?“I will be your protector”?offered the latest demonstration of the former president’s determination to consolidate the voters most committed to traditional gender roles and family structures — a culturally conservative group that includes not only many men but also a large number of women.

Subscribe to CNN to read Brownstein’s full analysis.

A voter picks up an "I Secured My Vote" sticker after casting a ballot at a polling location in Atlanta in May 2022.

A Georgia?judge?signaled Tuesday that he sees a need to bring clarity to the meaning of a “vague” new election certification rule that critics say will inject chaos into the battleground state after Election Day.

State and national Democrats have sued the Georgia State Election Board over a pair of rules passed in August that require county election officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into election results before certifying them and allow them to “examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results.”

During a bench trial in the case on Tuesday, Fulton County Superior Court?Judge?Robert McBurney said at one point that the “reasonable inquiry” rule “on its face is vague and needs clarification.”

Some background: Last month, the SEB passed a rule that requires counties to hand-count the number of ballots cast at polling places on Election Day. Democrats sued to block that new rule on Monday.

But as McBurney on Tuesday seemed to agree that clarity needed to be brought to the “reasonable inquiry” rule passed by the SEB in August, he threw cold water on Democrats’ argument that the “examination rule” will disrupt the certification process, which must be completed this year by November 12.

“That seems to be a permissive rule, and I struggle to see how that presents uncertainty to anyone because it permits access but doesn’t obligate anyone to do anything, It says you may, but not that you must,” McBurney said of the “examination rule.”

At the start of Tuesday’s trial, attorneys for the Democrats, as well as lawyers representing the SEB and the Republican intervenors, agreed that certification must be completed by 5:00 p.m. on November 12, as state law requires. But Democrats are still arguing that a ruling is still needs to guard against county election officials who may refuse to certify the election results under the new rules

CNN’s Jason Morris and Sara Murray contributed to this report.