US elections: Tim Walz and JD Vance to face off in VP debate – live updates

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Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Saginaw, Michigan, on Thursday at 3pm ET.

In 2016, the former president narrowly won Saginaw county, which sits around 100 miles north-west of Detroit and is home to around 200,000 people. However, in 2020, Joe Biden won the county.

A win for Trump in Saginaw and in the battleground state of Michigan in November would be a significant blow to Kamala Harris’s campaign.

Last year, Trump supporters in Saginaw led a takeover of the Republican party there, and packed the local party with delegates aligned with the America First movement.

You can read more about that here.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are closely monitoring the strike at the east coast and Gulf coast ports, the White House has said. Dockworkers on the two coasts began a strike earlier today, in effect halting the flow of about half the nation’s ocean shipping after negotiations for a new labor contract broke down over wages.

As my colleague Michael Sainato explains in this story, talks over a new contract between the Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance have faltered, and the union dismissed a last-ditch offer from operators hours before the strike was due to begin.

Biden’s administration – which has tried to forge close relations with trade unions – has repeatedly ruled out the use of federal powers to break a strike in the event of an impasse. Alex Gangitano, the White House correspondent for the Hill, said Biden has directed his team to reiterate his message to both sides that they need to negotiate terms “at the table” fairly, quickly and in good faith.

Jimmy Carter celebrates 100th birthday

Jimmy Carter, a Democrat who served in the White House between 1977 and 1981, celebrates his 100th birthday today, making him the first US president to reach the milestone. Carter, who has suffered from health issues, including a melanoma that spread to his liver and brain, has been in hospice care at home in Plains, Georgia, since February 2023. “I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris” in November’s election, he said, according to his grandson.

We reported in an earlier post about Joe Biden, the US president, issuing stark comments about the devastating impact of Hurricane Helene. Donald Trump has said he has spoken to Elon Musk and would enlist the billionaire owner of X to help restore communications to communities ravaged by the hurricane.

“We want to get Starlink hooked up, because they have no communication whatsoever,” Trump was quoted by Bloomberg as having said yesterday during a visit to Georgia, a state expected to be decisive in November’s presidential election. The Harris campaign believes she has a chance to win Georgia, which Biden narrowly won in 2020.

“Throughout the region, our hearts are with you, and we are going to be with you as long as you need it,” Trump said.

Georgia is the state with the second most power outages caused by the storm, according to PowerOutage.US, which estimates about 471,000 customers were without power as of 05.18ET on Tuesday morning.

Starlink – Musk’s satellite network and the world’s largest satellite operator – provides internet services via a huge network of satellites. It is typically aimed at people who live in remote areas who otherwise would not be able to get fast-speed internet connections.

He said that SpaceX has sent “as many Starlink terminals as possible to help areas in need” of internet connection after Hurricane Helene, including those in North Carolina he says Trump alerted him to.

Georgia hand-count trial to get under way on Tuesday

A trial is set to get under way today on a lawsuit filed by Democrats challenging two new rules passed by the Georgia state election board that have to do with county certification of election results.

The Associated Press has the following report:

Supporters of the rules say they are necessary to ensure the accuracy of the vote totals before county election officials sign off on them. But critics say they worry that supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump could use the rules to delay or deny certification if the former president loses the state to Democratic vice president Kamala Harris, causing confusion and casting doubt on the results.

The lawsuit is to be decided in a bench trial, which means there’s a judge but no jury, before Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney.

One of the rules provides a definition of certification that includes requiring county officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results, but it does not specify what that means. The other includes language allowing county election officials “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections”…

The lawsuit was filed against the state election board, which is dominated by three Republican partisans whom Trump praised by name at a recent rally in Atlanta. The state and national Republican parties have joined the lawsuit on the side of the election board.

My colleague Sam Levine has more:

Entire communities 'wiped out' by 'catastrophic' impact of Hurricane Helene, Biden says

Joe Biden said entire communities have been “wiped out” by the “catastrophic” impact of Hurricane Helene which has left about 600 people missing or unaccounted for, according to White House estimates.

In a video clip of Biden speaking with North Carolina governor, Roy Cooper, the US president said thousands of federal personnel are being deployed to help support search and rescue missions and remove debris from collapsed buildings.

The other priorities are getting cell networks back online and power restoration, Biden said, adding that recovery is “going to take a while” as the destruction of roads poses a huge logistical challenge to relief efforts.

He said:

I want to express condolences to all the families, to all the families whose loved ones have died or are missing.

Matter of fact, it’s almost equally as bad missing, not knowing whether or not your brother or sister, husband, wife, son or daughter are alive.

And to the survivors, I want you to know the administration is going to be there til we finish the job.

Helene made landfall last Thursday in Florida’s Big Bend region as a category 4 hurricane. Even though it weakened to a tropical storm before moving through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, the storm’s winds, rainfall, storm surge and flooding ravaged entire communities in its path and has left over 1 million Americans without power. More than 120 people are reported to have been killed across several states.

The Biden administration and local officials have struggled to deliver support to the most heavily impacted states areas, where many survivors have been stranded with no electricity or running water.

Biden will visit North Carolina, where the western part of the state has been devastated by flooding, tomorrow. Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have expressed condolences to those impacted by the hurricane and are receiving recovery briefings from Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).

Trump says he will do play-by-play commentary on VP debate

Democratic US vice-president Kamala Harris and former Republican president Donald Trump are expected to watch the VP debate tonight, and Trump has said he would offer a play-by-play commentary of the event on social media.

Harris was viewed by many as the winner of her debate with Trump on 10 September in Philadelphia, which was watched by an estimated 67 million people. Most of the national polls carried out in the week after indicated that her performance had helped her make small gains in the race.

Her lead over Trump rose from 2.5 percentage points on the day of the debate to 3.3 points just over a week later. However, the battleground states – where the election will be decided – remain too close to call. Only one or two percentage points are separating the presidential candidates.

According to Reuters/Ipsos polling, 51% of registered voters say they view JD Vance unfavorably, compared with 39% who view him favourably. That’s a contrast with Tim Walz, who 44% of registered voters view favourably, with 43% reporting an unfavorable view. These results came from a poll conducted between 20 and 23 September.

Kit Maher, a campaign producer with CNN’s political unit, has been told by two sources that these are the surrogates for JD Vance who will be in the spin room for him tonight at the debate:

Jason Miller, senior adviser to Donald Trump

Donald Trump Jr, Donald Trump’s son

Tom Cotton, Arkansas senator

Katie Britt, Alabama senator

Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman representing New York’s 21st district in the House of Representatives and serves as the House Republican conference chair

Byron Donalds, a Republican Florida congressman

Howard Lutnick, the longtime chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald LP

The 90-minute debate between Vance, 40, a senator for Ohio, and Tim Walz, the 60-year-old governor of Minnesota, will kick off at 9pm New York time and can be viewed on host network CBS News. We will be bringing you the latest updates in our live blog.

My colleague Rachel Leingang took a look at what we know so far about Vance and Walz’s debate style. She writes:

Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, and Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, have been honing their public speaking skills – and their pointed barbs at each other – in TV appearances and at events around the country in the past few months.

Their experiences in electoral debates haven’t reached the levels or notoriety that come along with a presidential campaign, but both have faced opponents in public debates in past elections.

And given the tightness of the presidential race, and how poorly the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump went, there will probably be more people tuned in to the vice presidential debate than in past cycles.

While VP debates don’t usually tip the scales much, they could matter in a close race – and they build profiles for lower-profile politicians who will probably stay on the national scene for years to come.

You can read the full story here:

Tim Walz and JD Vance to face off in VP debate

Good morning, US politics readers.

It’s the day of the vice-presidential debate and Tim Walz and JD Vance are preparing to go head to head in New York City.

The debate will start at 9pm ET and, like the Harris-Trump debate, it will be held in a studio without an audience. Unlike the main presidential debate, the candidates’ microphones will not be muted when it is not their turn to speak – but moderators can mute mics throughout the event.

To practice before Tuesday’s VP debate, Walz has used Pete Buttigieg, transportation secretary and frequent TV news interviewee, as a Vance stand-in – both Buttigieg and Vance are Ivy Leaguers from the midwest and roughly the same age.

Vance has been preparing for the debate with Minnesota Republican congressman Tom Emmer as a stand-in for Walz. On Monday, Emmer gave an insight into how debate practice has been going, telling reporters about portraying Walz: “Quite frankly it’s tough because he is really good on the debate stage.”

Republicans are seeking to frame Walz, the folksy Minnesota governor who has proved to be the most popular figure in the presidential race, as a mean-spirited, ogreish figure. Emmer, who ran unsuccessfully for Minnesota governor in 2010, said: “[Walz] is going to stand there and he lies with conviction, and he has these little mannerisms where he’s just, hey, I’m the nice guy, but he’s not nice at all.”