Vance and Walz keep it civil in a policy-heavy discussion: VP debate takeaways

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice presidential hopefuls Tim Walz and JD Vance focused their criticism on the top of the ticket on Tuesday as they engaged in a policy-heavy discussion that may be the last debate of the 2024 presidential campaign.

It was the first encounter between Minnesota’s Democratic governor and Ohio’s Republican senator, following last month’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. It comes just five weeks before Election Day and as millions of voters are now able to cast early ballots.

Tuesday’s confrontation played out as the stakes of the contest rose again after Iran fired missiles into Israel, while a devastating hurricane and potentially debilitating port strike roiled the country at home. Over and again, Walz and Vance outlined the policy and character differences between their running mates, while trying to introduce themselves to the country.

Here are some takeaways from Tuesday’s debate.

Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel on Tuesday elicited a contrast between the Democratic and Republican tickets on foreign policy: Walz promised “steady leadership” under Harris while Vance pledged a return to “peace through strength” if Trump is returned to the White House.

The differing visions of what American leadership should look like overshadowed the sharp policy differences between the two tickets.

The Iranian threat to the region and U.S. interests around the world opened the debate, with Walz pivoting the topic to criticism of Trump.

“What’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter,” Walz said, then referenced the “nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes” and responding to global crises by tweet.

Vance, for his part, promised a return to “effective deterrence” under Trump against Iran, brushing back on Walz’s criticism of Trump by attacking Harris and her role in the Biden administration.

“Who has been the vice president for the last three and a half years and the answer is your running mate, not mine,” he said. He pointedly noted that the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, happened “during the administration of Kamala Harris.”

Vance and Walz trained the bulk of their attacks not on their onstage rivals, but on the running mates who weren’t in the room.

Both vice presidential nominees sought to convey a genial mien as they lobbed criticism at Harris and Trump, respectively.

It was a reflection of the fact that most voters don’t cast a ballot based on the vice president, and on a vice presidential nominee’s historic role in serving as the attack dog for their running mates.

Walz pointedly attacked Trump for failing to meet his pledge of building a physical barrier across the entire U.S.-Mexico border at the country’s southern neighbor’s expense.

“Less than 2% of that wall got built and Mexico didn’t pay a dime,” Walz said.

Underscoring the focus on the top of the ticket, during a back-and-forth about immigration, Vance said to his opponent, “I think that you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think that Kamala Harris does.”

In an age of world-class disses optimized for social media, Tuesday’s debate was a detour into substance. Both candidates took a low-key approach and both enthusiastically delved into the minutiae.

Walz dug into the drafting of the Affordable Care Act when he was in the House in 2009, and pushed Vance on the senator’s claim that Trump, who tried to eliminate the law, actually helped preserve it. Vance, defending his claim that illegal immigration pushes up housing prices, cited a Federal Reserve study to back himself up. Walz talked about how Minneapolis tinkered with local regulations to boost the housing supply. Both men talked about the overlap between energy policy, trade and climate change.

It was a very different style than often seen in presidential debates over the past several election cycles.

Walz pounced on Vance repeatedly over abortion access and reproductive rights as the Ohio senator tried to argue that a state-by-state matrix of abortion laws is the ideal approach for the United States. Walz countered that a “basic right” for a woman should not be determined “by geography.”

“This is a very simple proposition: These are women’s decisions,” Walz said. “We trust women. We trust doctors.”

Walz sought to personalize the issue by referencing the death of Amber Thurman, who waited more than 20 hours at the hospital for a routine medical procedure known as a D&C to clear out remaining tissue after taking abortion pills. She developed sepsis and died.

Rather than sidestep the reference, Vance at one point agreed with Walz that “Amber Thurman should still be alive.”

Vance steered the conversation to the GOP ticket’s proposals he said would help women and children economically, thus avoiding the need for terminating pregnancies. But Walz retorted that such policies — tax credits, expanded childcare aid, a more even economy — can be pursued while still allowing women to make their own decisions about abortion.

In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Helene, Vance took a question about climate change and gave an answer about jobs and manufacturing, taking a detour around Trump's past claims that global warming is a “hoax.”

Vance contended that the best way to fight climate change was to move more manufacturing to the United States, because the country has the world’s cleanest energy economy. It was a distinctly domestic spin on a global crisis, especially after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the international Paris climate accords during his administration.

Walz also kept the climate change focus domestic, touting the Biden administration’s renewable energy investments as well as record levels of oil and natural gas production. “You can see us becoming an energy superpower in the future,” Walz said.

It was a decidedly optimistic take on a pervasive and grim global problem.

The two running mates agreed that the number of migrants in the U.S. illegally is a problem. But each laid the blame on the opposing presidential nominee.

Vance echoed Trump by repeatedly calling Harris the “border czar” and suggested that she, as vice president, single-handedly rolled back the immigration restrictions Trump had imposed as president. The result, in Vance’s telling, is an unchecked flow of fentanyl, strain on state and local resources and increased housing prices around the country.

Harris was never asked to be the “border czar” and she was never specifically given the responsibility for security on the border. She was tasked by Biden in March 2021 with tackling the “root causes” of migration from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and pushing leaders there and in Mexico to enforce immigration laws. Harris was not empowered to set U.S. immigration policy — only the president can sign executive orders and Harris was not empowered as Biden’s proxy in negotiations with Congress on immigration law.

Walz advanced Democrats’ arguments that Trump single-handedly killed a bipartisan Senate deal to tighten border security and boost the processing system for immigrants and asylum seekers. Republicans backed off the deal, Walz noted, only after Trump said it wasn’t good enough.

Asked directly whether Trump’s promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants would remove parents of U.S.-born children, Vance never answered the question. Instead, the senator tried to put his best spin on Trump’s plan to use the military to help with deportations and pivot to attacking Harris for a porous border. Asked to respond to Trump’s having called climate change a “hoax,” Vance also avoided a response.

The debate kicked off with Walz being asked if he’d support a preemptive strike by Israel against Iran. Walz praised Harris’ foreign policy leadership but never answered that question, either.

And at the end of the debate, Vance would not answer Walz’s direct question of whether Trump indeed lost the 2020 election.

Walz had several verbal stumbles on a night in which he admitted to “misspeaking” often. In the debate’s opening moments, he confused Iran and Israel when discussing the Middle East.

At one point he said he had “become friends with school shooters,” and he stumbled through an explanation of inaccurate remarks about whether he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. ( He was not.)

But the governor noticeably put Vance on the defensive over abortion and, near the end of the debate, with a pointed question about whether Trump won the 2020 election.

The candidates went out of their way to be polite to each other until the very end, when Vance refused to back down from his statements that he wouldn’t have certified Trump's 2020 election loss.

Vance tried to turn the issue to claims that the “much bigger threat to democracy” was Democrats trying to censor people on social media. But Walz wouldn’t let go.

“This one is troubling to me,” said Walz, noting that he’d just been praising some of Vance’s answers. He rattled off the ways Trump tried to overturn his 2020 loss and noted that the candidate still insists he won that contest. Then Walz asked Vance if Trump actually lost the election.

Vance responded by asking if Harris censored people.

“That is a damning non-answer,” said Walz, noting that Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, wasn’t on the debate stage because he stood up to Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, and presided over Congress’ certification of the former president’s loss.

“America,” Walz concluded, “I think you’ve got a really clear choice on this election of who’s going to honor that democracy and who’s going to honor Donald Trump.”

Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, with Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and his wife Usha Vance and and Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife Gwen Walz stand on stage after the vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, talks with Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after the vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife Gwen Walz walk from stage after a vice presidential debate with Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, hosted by CBS News, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and his wife Usha Vance leave that stage as Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife Gwen Walz greet moderators Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan after a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Viewers in the spin room watch the CBS News vice presidential debate, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Let the chunk-off begin.

Voting starts Wednesday in the annual Fat Bear Week contest at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, with viewers picking their favorite among a dozen brown bears fattened up to survive the winter.

The contest, which is in its 10th year, celebrates the resiliency of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest corner toward the Aleutian Islands. The animals gorge on the abundant sockeye salmon that return to the Brooks River, sometimes chomping the fish in midair as they try to hurdle a small waterfall and make their way upstream to spawn.

Organizers introduced this year's contestants on Tuesday — a day late — because one anticipated participant, a female known as Bear 402, was killed by a male bear during a fight on Monday. Cameras set up in the park to livestream footage of the bears all summer captured the killing, as they also captured a male bear killing a cub that slipped over the waterfall in late July.

“National parks like Katmai protect not only the wonders of nature, but also the harsh realities,” park spokesperson Matt Johnson said in a statement. “Each bear seen on the webcams is competing with others to survive.”

The nonprofit explore.org, which streams the uncensored bear cameras and helps organize Fat Bear Week, on Tuesday hosted a live conversation about the death. Katmai National Park ranger Sarah Bruce said it wasn’t known why the bears started fighting.

“We love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and ample body fat, but the ferocity of bears is real,” said Mike Fitz, explore.org’s resident naturalist. “The risks that they face are real. Their lives can be hard, and their deaths can be painful.”

The bracket this year features 12 bears, with eight facing off against each other in the first round and four receiving byes to the second round. They've all been packing on the pounds all summer.

Adult male brown bears typically weigh 600 to 900 pounds (about 270 to 410 kilograms) in mid-summer. By the time they are ready to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon — each eats as many as 30 fish per day — large males can weigh well over 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms). Females are about one-third smaller.

Bear 909 Jr., who last week won the Fat Bear Junior competition for the second time, will face Bear 519, a young female in the first round. The winner will face the defending champion, Grazer, described as one of the most formidable bears on the river.

Another first-round match pits Bear 903, an 8-year-old male who was given the nickname Gully after he developed a taste for seagulls, against Bear 909, the mother of Bear 909 Jr. The winner faces a two-time champion, a bear so large he was given the number of the equally massive airplane, Bear 747.

In the other half of the bracket, the first-round match has Bear 856, an older male and one of the most recognizable bears on the river because of his large body, challenging a newcomer, Bear 504, a mother bear raising her second known litter. The winner will face perhaps the largest bear on the river, 32 Chunk, a 20-year-old male who once devoured 42 salmon in 10 hours. He's estimated to weigh more than 1,200 pounds.

The last first-round match has Bear 151, a once-playful young bear nicknamed Walker now showing more dominance, versus Bear 901, a solo female who has returned to the river after her first litter did not survive. The winner will face Bear 164, called Bucky Dent because of an indentation in his forehead.

Voting in this year's tournament-style bracket is open through Oct. 8.

More than 1.3 million votes were cast last year.

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 504 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 16, 2024. (F. Jimenez/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 909 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 19, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 128 Grazer at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 12, 2024. (M. Carenza/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 856 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on July 3, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 151 Walker at Katmai National Park in Alaska on July 5, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 909 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on July 6, 2024. (K. Moore/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows 151 Walker at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 12, 2024. (F. Jimenez/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 747 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 26, 2024. (E. Johnston/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 519 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on June 29, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 519 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 12, 2024. (F. Jimenez/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 164 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on June 24, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear bear 128 Grazer at Katmai National Park in Alaska on July 12, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 903 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 8, 2024. (C. Cravatta/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 903 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on July 3, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 32 Chunk at Katmai National Park in Alaska on June 29, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 901 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on July 5, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 747 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on June 22, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 504 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on June 26, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 164 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Aug. 31, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 901 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 13, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 856 at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 19, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows bear 32 Chunk at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 19, 2024. (E. Johnston/National Park Service via AP)