Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio are facing off in the "CBS News Vice Presidential Debate."
The debate, which will feature no studio audience, will last 90 minutes and have two four-minute commercial breaks.
WATCH THE "CBS NEWS VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE SIMULCAST" ON SCRIPPS NEWS
Candidates take the stage
Walz and Vance began with a review of the rules and took their first questions on recent events in the Middle East.
Moderators asked: "Would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran?"
"Israel's ability to defend itself is absolutely fundamental," Gov. Walz said. But "steady leadership is going to matter."
Walz elaborated by saying a second Trump presidency would be a danger to the world.
"What we've seen out of Vice President Harris is steady leadership," Walz said.
Sen. Vance began by introducing himself and reviewing his background.
"Donald Trump delivered stability in the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence," Vance said.
"It is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe, and we should support our allies wherever they are," Vance said.
Reducing the impacts of climate change
"Donald Trump and I support clean air, clean water," Vance said.
If you believe that carbon emissions drive climate change, Vance said, "you'd want to re-shore as much American manufacturing as possible, and you'd want to produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we're the cleanest economy in the entire world."
Vance repeatedly emphasized that more domestic manufacturing would help make the economy more environmentally friendly.
"If we actually care about getting cleaner air and cleaner water, the best thing to do is double down and invest in American workers and the American people. And unfortunately, Kamala Harris has done exactly the opposite," Vance said.
Investment through the Inflation Reduction Act has already spurred the growth of green jobs and manufacturing in the U.S., Walz said.
"Climate change is real," Walz said. "Reducing our impact is absolutely critical. But this is not a false choice. You can do that at the same time you're creating the jobs we're seeing all across the country."
On immigration policies
"We have to stop the bleeding," Vance said of immigration. "We have a historic immigration crisis because Kamala Harris started and said she wanted to undo all of Donald Trump's border policies."
This has enabled the flow of fentanyl into the country "at record levels," Vance said.
"We start with the criminal migrants," Vance said. "You start with deportations on those folks. Then you make it harder for illegal aliens to undercut the wages of American workers."
"Most of us want to solve this," Walz said.
"We had the fairest and the toughest bill on immigration that this nation's seen," Walz said, referencing the bipartisan immigration bill that was up for consideration early in 2024. "Donald Trump said no."
"Pass the bill, [Harris] will sign it," Walz said.
Both Walz and Vance referenced Springfield, Ohio, where during the last presidential debate, Trump amplified false claims that immigrants were eating pets.
"The people that I'm most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who've had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris' open border," Vance said.
Paying for economic policies
Gov. Walz highlighted Harris' economic plans, including down payment assistance for homebuyers and reduced costs for drugs like insulin.
"Kamala Harris has said to do the things she wants to do, we'll just ask the wealthiest to pay their fair share. When you do that, our system works best, more people are participating in it and folks have the things that they need," Walz said.
Vance said Trump's historic tax cuts as president "went to giving more take home pay to middle class and working class Americans."
"That is a record I'm proud to run on, and we're going to get back to that common-sense wisdom so that you can afford to live the American dream again," Vance said.
Reproductive rights in America
"In Minnesota, what we did was restore Roe v. Wade," Gov. Walz said, explaining that the state had ensured abortion protections for women after the Supreme Court overturned federal protections in 2024. "We made sure that we put women in charge of their healthcare."
"This is a basic human right," Walz said. "This is about healthcare."
"We've got to do so much better of a job at earning the American peoples' trust back on this issue, where they frankly just don't trust us," Sen. Vance said. "I want us as a Republican Party to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word."
But "the proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these decisions. Let the individual states make their abortion policy," Vance said.
Addressing gun violence
"The gross majority of the gun violence in this country is committed with illegally obtained firearms," Vance said. "I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools."
"The idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys — it just doesn't fit with recent experience. We've got to make our schools safer, and I think we've got to have some common sense, bipartisan solutions for how to do that," Vance said.
"We understand that the Second Amendment is there, but our first responsibility is to our kids, to figure this out," Gov. Walz said. "There are reasonable things that we can do to make a difference."
"We have and we should look at all of the issues," Walz said. But "sometimes it just is the guns. It's just the guns."
"I think there's a capacity to find solutions on this that work — protect the Second Amendment, protect our children. That's our priority," Walz said.
Rules of the debate
The candidates selected certain aspects of the debate based on a coin flip: Vance chose to give his closing statement last, and Walz chose to stand at the leftmost podium on screen during the broadcast.
According to CBS News, Walz and Vance would be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water, but they were not allowed to bring any pre-written notes or props with them to the stage.
Each candidate gets two minutes to answer questions, two minutes to deliver rebuttals, and one minute for responses or follow-ups as granted.
Moderators are allowed to mute the candidates' microphones during the debate when it is not their turn to speak.
Closing statements will run for two minutes per candidate and there will be no opening statements.
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