Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are gearing up to take the stage for Tuesday night’s debate in Philadelphia, where they’ll fight to sway 2024 election voters on the biggest stage in U.S. politics.

The event, at 9 p.m. Eastern, will offer Americans their most detailed look at a campaign that’s dramatically changed since the last debate in June. In rapid fashion, President Joe Biden bowed out of the race after his disastrous performance, Trump survived an assassination attempt and bothsides chose their running mates.

Here’s the latest:

Do debates still matters? A top expert on presidential debates says yes

It’s easy to say presidential debates no longer matter in an a hyper-partisan era with dwindling numbers of true independents and swing voters. But one of the nation’s foremost experts on political communications and presidential debate history says that opinion is wrong.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said debates mostly “reinforce voters’ ideas” but still are important in moving voters who have yet to decide whom to support or whether to vote at all. And that “can change the outcomes in close races.” Indeed, both Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and Joe Biden’s in 2020 were decided by fewer than 100,000 votes spread across three states.

Jamieson said that even with the focus on theater and declaring a so-called winner, “the public does learn from debates” and that research shows debates “increase the likelihood that audience members can accurately report the positions articulated by the candidate.”

Many voters might sound skeptical that politicians follow through on their platforms, but Jamieson said research shows that “in general, candidates act on their promises.”

She said policy substance can be overshadowed sometimes — most recently in June when the debate fallout was about President Joe Biden’s fitness to seek and serve another term. But even in that Trump-Biden match-up, she said “there were at least seven or eight important issue distinctions” that were clear if you look beyond Biden’s rhetorical struggles.

“So debates are an important democratic structure,” she said. “They are what tie campaigns to governance.”

Voting rights advocates renew push for voter protections

Several civil rights organizations gathered outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to once again urge Congress to pass federal voting rights protections immediately after the 2024 presidential election.

These safeguards include the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, Native American voting legislation that would address the need for equitable access to polling places on tribal lands, and a bill that would give Washington DC statehood.

Speakers, including voting rights advocates, Rep. Terri Sewell, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Raphael Warnock, highlighted that communities of color are disproportionately affected by voter suppression tactics particularly since the Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the federal Voting Rights act over a decade ago.

“The right to vote is the bedrock of our democracy,” Sewell said. “These are a package of bills that must go together, in order to ensure our democracy.”

Sewell, author of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, said she’s filed the measure at least five times and will continue to do so despite the Senate filibuster, which is a delaying tactic Republicans have used to stop previous efforts to pass sweeping voting legislation. “We know that it’s been stymied in the Senate,” she said. “We can be tired. We can be frustrated, but we cannot be denied, and we cannot be deterred.”

Harris tours the debate stage before Tuesday night’s event

Vice President Kamala Harris stopped by Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center on Tuesday afternoon to tour the debate stage ahead of tonight’s event with Donald Trump.

Harris was expected to check out the space before the 9 p.m. ET debate, but the pool of journalists trailing her weren’t permitted to exit the motorcade and document her tour.

Some Democrats are hoping Donald Trump repeats his June performance

The June debate between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump was perhaps most consequential in the history of presidential debates, with the 81-year-old incumbent putting on such a disjointed, halting display that the Democratic party ultimately pressed Biden to end his reelection bid.

Trump has crowed repeatedly over that turn of event.

“As I walked off the stage on Thursday night, at the end of the highly anticipated ‘Debate,’ anchors, political reporters and all screamed that I had had the greatest debate performance in the long and storied history of Presidential Debates,” he wrote on Truth Social at one point.

The reality is different. Against Biden, Trump offered a litany of exaggerations and untruths, refused to disavow the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and had plenty of his own disjointed answers that reflected his stream-of-consciousness speaking style.

But some Democrats hope Trump maintains his confidence from June. The difference, they note, is that Harris is not 81 years old and has a history of successful debates, even if Tuesday night is her first presidential general election debate. (It will be Trump’s seventh.)

“It could really come back to bite him this time, because to the extent that people listen to him, he’s lowered the bar so much for her and raised it so much for himself,” said Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s debate preparations in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary season. “If Trump turns in a performance like he did in the last debate – which people said he won – he will lose this time.”

The expectations game is a key part of presidential debates

In a time-honored debate tradition, some Democrats have been lowering expectations for Kamala Harris’ debate against Donald Trump.

“She’s going to do great, of course, but Donald Trump will be good too. I mean, we can all remember he wrecked all of the Republicans,” Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman said on CNN’s “State of the Union” leading up to the debate.

But perhaps no one has lowered expectations for Harris more than Trump himself. The former president has repeatedly called the Democratic nominee a “low IQ individual,” mocked her laugh as evidence of being unqualified and trashed her as “the worst vice president in history.” He’s even suggested that the first woman to hold national office climbed the political ladder through a relationship with a powerful San Francisco political boss — a long-ago relationship before she ever ran for public office.

Trump’s rally audiences love his scathing and sexist barbs. But there’s a risk once Harris and Trump step on to the debate stage as equals, with Harris having every opportunity to upend the caricature.

“Donald Trump has done her an enormous favor by underestimating her capacity as a debater and underestimating her intellect,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a political communications professor the University of Pennsylvania, Trump’s alma mater.

Jamieson noted a long history of presidents seeking reelection — and now Trump seeking a second, nonconsecutive term — belittling their opponents as underqualified, weak or dangerous. “And then the person steps on to the debate stage and seems to have judgment that’s perfectly comparable” to their opponent who’s already been president, Jamieson said. “They get to come off as experienced, talk about foreign policy and other issues and not seem dangerous at all.”

Pence aide says Trump should focus on issues but worried he won’t

Donald Trump’s inner circle says Kamala Harris has plenty of weaknesses she’ll have to defend on the debate stage, from inflation under President Joe Biden to the more liberal positions she took in her own 2020 presidential campaign before tacking toward the center.

Some Republicans are worried the freewheeling former president may miss some opportunities to put Harris on the defensive.

“Some of the biggest concerns of the American people remain the border crisis, the economy and inflation,” said Marc Short, who led debate preparations for Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, when he took Harris on in the the 2020 campaign.

“My advice would be to force real conversations on the border, economics and international affairs. And put her on the defensive on all the things she’s flip-flopped on,” Short said. “But I’m not sitting here with confidence that he’s going to be able to prosecute the case effectively.”

Short recalled how detailed Pence was in preparing for Harris, with days of “full dress rehearsals” against stand-ins who knew questions ahead of time and had prepared answers based on Harris’ positions and public statements. “That’s just not Trump’s style,” said Short. “You know, I would not anticipate a deeply substantive debate. But you never know.”

Trump to visit sites in New York and Pennsylvania on Wednesday to mark 9/11 anniversary

That’s according to a person familiar with his plans who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

The Republican former president, who’s from New York, is scheduled to visit the memorial site in lower Manhattan.

Biden and Harris are also set to visit as the president and vice president make stops at ground zero in New York for a ceremony at the National Sept. 11 Memorial plaza, the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon.

Trump is also set to visit the Pennsylvania site Wednesday but it wasn’t clear if he and Harris would come face-to-face on any of their stops as they mark the 23rd anniversary of the attacks the day after their debate.

— Michelle L. Price

Longtime Pence aide warns that voters’ debate takeaways can be unpredictable

Four years ago, Kamala Harris and Mike Pence met in the 2020 vice presidential debate in what was mostly a civil, substantive debate. But a tiny insect ended up stealing more of its fair share of the spotlight.

Marc Short, who led Pence’s debate prep, still shakes his head thinking about the fly that landed on Pence’s head during the debate, a stark image of the dark insect set against Pence’s white hair.

“On the actual substance you we were very pleased with Pence’s answers back and forth in that debate,” Short said. Unfortunately, he added, “a lot of the after coverage was focused on the fly.”

Indeed, it became an immediate social media sensation, made its way into the ubiquitous takeaway analysis pieces that every major news outlet produces and was part of NBC’s Saturday Night Live “Cold Open” skit days later.

The lesson, Short said, is that candidates, no matter how much they prepare, cannot always control the conversation coming out of a debate.

Harris gets advice from two prominent backers ahead of the debate: Just be yourself

“She just needs to be herself, and she will be fine,” South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn told reporters at a White House celebration for the South Carolina Gamecocks, the 2024 NCAA women’s basketball champs.

Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chairman, said he was confident Harris will show herself to be more presidential than former President Donald Trump.

“Listen, I think if the vice president is herself, she’s going to be fantastic,” said Harrison, another South Carolinian who attended the White House ceremony. “She’s going to be presidential, and we know Donald Trump is going to do what Donald Trump does.”

Poll shows how voters think Trump’s age will affect his candidacy

If he wins in November, Trump, who’s 78, will be the oldest person ever elected to the presidency. And a new Pew Research Center poll finds that about half of voters think his age will hurt his candidacy. Only 3% of voters think his age will help him, and the rest say it won’t make a difference.

The results are the opposite for Harris, who at 59 is nearly two decades younger than her opponent. About half say her age will help her, while only 3% say it will hurt her.

With Harris as the Democratic candidate, Trump may have lost an advantage over President Joe Biden – the perception that he’s more mentally prepared for the job. About 6 in 10 voters say the phrase “mentally sharp” describes Harris very or fairly well, while about half say that about Trump. Back in July, when Biden was still his opponent, about 6 in 10 voters said Trump was “mentally sharp,” while only about one-quarter said the same of Biden.

New poll shows how voters think Harris’ identity and gender will affect the race

Harris’s candidacy is historic – if elected, she’d be the first woman president, as well as the first Asian American and first Black woman president. Voters are more likely to think those identities will help her than hurt her at the ballot box this fall, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center.

About 4 in 10 voters think Harris’s Asian and Black identity will help her in November, and a similar share think the same about her identity as a woman. They’re more likely to see her gender as a liability than her race: About 3 in 10 say the fact that Harris is a woman will hurt her in November, while about 3 in 10 say that about the fact that she is Asian and Black.

The voters who are most concerned that Harris’s race and gender will be a liability are her own supporters. About 4 in 10 Harris supporters, for instance, say the fact that Harris is a woman will hurt her with voters, compared to 16% of Trump supporters.

A look at false and misleading claims as Trump and Harris meet for their first debate

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet face-to-face for the first time in a highly-anticipated debate Tuesday night. The two presidential candidates describe the state of the country in starkly different terms. Trump often paints a dark picture centered around issues such as immigration and high inflation, while Harris focuses on optimism for the future, promising that “we’re not going back.”

The first debate of the 2024 election in June — at which President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance ultimately forced him from the race — featured multiple false and misleading claims from both candidates and it’s likely that Tuesday’s match-up will include much of the same.

Two former Trump White House officials will attend the presidential debate as guests of Harris

And both of them plan to say why the Democrat would be better than Republican Donald Trump.

Anthony Scaramucci was briefly the Trump White House’s communications director, while Olivia Troye was a homeland security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence and was involved in Trump’s coronavirus task force. The Harris campaign said both will speak out against Trump before the debate starts.

In a form of political judo, the Harris campaign has been trying to use Trump’s former aides against him, trying to show that those who know him best see him as unfit to return to the White House.

Harris and Trump offer worlds-apart contrasts on top issues in presidential race

This year’s presidential race is a genuine contest of ideas between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump — with clear differences on taxes, abortion, immigration, global alliances, climate change and democracy itself.

Since replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, Harris has pledged to chart a new way forward even as she’s embraced many of his ideas. She wants middle class tax cuts, tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations, a restoration of abortion rights and a government that aggressively addresses climate change, among other stances.

Seeking a return to the White House, Trump wants to accomplish much of what he couldn’t do during a term that was sidetracked by the global pandemic. The Republican wants the extension and expansion of his 2017 tax cuts, a massive increase in tariffs, more support for fossil fuels and a greater concentration of government power in the White House.

The two candidates have spelled out their ideas in speeches, advertisements and other venues. Many of their proposals lack specifics, making it difficult to judge exactly how they would translate their intentions into law or pay for them.

Trump’s rhetoric on elections is turning ominous as voting nears

With early voting fast approaching, the rhetoric by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has turned more ominous with a pledge to prosecute anyone who “cheats” in the election in the same way he believes they did in 2020, when he falsely claimed he won and attacked those who stood by their accurate vote tallies.

He also told a gathering of police officers last Friday that they should “watch for the voter fraud,” an apparent attempt to enlist law enforcement that would be legally dubious.

Trump has contended, without providing evidence, that he lost the 2020 election only because of cheating by Democrats, election officials and other, unspecified forces.

On Saturday, Trump promised that this year those who cheat “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” should he win in November. He said he was referencing everyone from election officials to attorneys, political staffers and donors.

A look at the rules for tonight’s debate

The debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump won’t have an audience, live microphones when candidates aren’t speaking, or written notes, according to rules ABC News, the host network, shared with both campaigns last month.

The parameters in place for the Tuesday night debate are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden, a disastrous performance for the incumbent Democrat that fueled his exit from the campaign.

It’s the only debate that’s been firmly scheduled and could be the only time voters see Harris and Trump go head to head before the November general election.

previous coverage

• Televised presidential debates have changed since Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, but they’re still crucial