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      What you need to know about the first and only vice-presidential debate

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      It’s been a chaotic few days since Donald Trump was hospitalized after testing positive for coronavirus. But there’s a chance for something approaching an episode of normality in US politics on Wednesday, when the first and only vice-presidential debate takes place.Democratic challenger Kamala Harris and Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, will face each other in Utah, where debate organizers have been forced to take extra precautions after Trump and a growing number of his entourage came down with Covid-19 shortly after last week’s first presidential debate.The coronavirus crisis is expected to dominate the proceedings. Having downplayed the risk and impact of Covid-19 for months, Trump has continued to disregard medical advice even after his diagnosis, and left hospital on Monday to return to the White House.Here’s what you need to know.When is the debate?It will begin at 9pm eastern time (ET) on Wednesday, and run until 10.30pm ET.Where is it?Salt Lake City, Utah – specifically, at the University of Utah’s Kingsbury Hall. In election terms, Utah is strategically unimportant. It’s a solidly Republican state that last backed a Democrat in 1964, and Trump, while unpopular in Utah, is still expected to win there in November.Who is moderating?Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief of USA Today and a biographer of former first lady Barbara Bush.In September, USA Today was forced to defend Page, after it emerged she hosted a “Girl’s Night Out” party at her home to honor Trump health official Seema Verma.Details of Page’s party, held in November 2018, emerged after a congressional investigation into Verma.USA Today said Page spent $4,000 of her own money hosting the event. The newspaper said the event was intended to honor both Republican and Democratic women, and fell “well within the ethical standards that our journalists are expected to uphold”.Fox News host Chris Wallace faced much criticism after he had the difficult task of hosting the first presidential debate, which descended into chaos as Trump repeatedly interrupted both Wallace and Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden. The vice-presidential debate is expected to be more civil.What’s the format?There’ll be nine 10-minute segments, and each candidate will have two minutes to respond to the opening question in each segment.This should mean more topics can be covered than in the presidential debate, which was divided into six sections.What are they going to discuss?Page hasn’t revealed the topics yet, but coronavirus is likely to be at the top of her list.On Tuesday public health experts said Trump had endangered Americans by saying people should not fear coronavirus, while a mask-free event at the White House has been linked to a number of government-officials falling ill.Pence, who served as head of the coronavirus task force, is likely to be asked about the government’s efforts to combat the virus, which has now killed 210,000 people in the US.Are there any extra coronavirus protections?The Biden-Harris campaign asked the commission on presidential debates to adopt more protective measures after Trump contracted coronavirus last week.Harris and Pence will be 13ft away from each other – in the presidential debate Biden and Trump were 7ft apart – and there will be a plexiglass barrier between the candidates.Pence’s staff has mocked Harris’s push for stricter safety measures.“If Sen Harris wants to use a fortress around herself, have at it,” Pence spokeswoman Katie Miller told Axios.The university of Utah ran a lottery to decide which students would attend the debate. Fewer than 100 students will be allowed in Kingsbury Hall, and face masks will be mandatory.How are Harris and Pence preparing?Pete Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former mayor who ran against Harris and Biden for president before Biden emerged as the candidate, has taken on the role of Pence in a series of mock debates. Buttigieg, like Pence, is from Indiana, although the two are eons apart politically and personally.Harris, a former prosecutor, won rave reviews for her performance in an early Democratic debate, when she criticized Biden for his record on race.Axios reported that Harris had similarly planned to go on the attack on Wednesday, tying Pence to Trump and rebuking the pair over their coronavirus response, healthcare and beyond. The California senator had apparently “planned a handful of anti-Trump zingers”, but given the president’s ill-health, she will tone it down.Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, has been helping Pence with his debate prep, filling in for Harris. Some of Pence’s preparation has involved developing ways to attack Harris “without opening himself up to criticism that he is acting in a disrespectful or sexist way”, according to NBC News.How can I watch?ABC, CBS, CNN, C-Span, FOX and NBC will all stream the event, according to the commission on presidential debates. News channels Fox News and MSNCBC will also feature the debate, and it will be available on the websites of most of those channels.Outside the US, viewers can watch the debate on C-Span, a non-profit bipartisan cable channel which televises government proceedings. C-Span will run coverage on its website and YouTube channel.The Guardian will also be streaming the debate, as well as offering live coverage, fact-checking and analysis. More

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      Mike Pence v Kamala Harris: Trump's health raises stakes of vice-presidential debate

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      It is always about who will be a heartbeat away from the presidency. But this time, that applies more than ever.The incumbent, Mike Pence, and the California senator Kamala Harris are set to take part in a vice-presidential debate in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Wednesday with both under pressure to show their readiness to step up to the top job.The presidential race has been upended again, this time by 74-year-old Donald Trump’s infection with the coronavirus, focusing minds on the potential for Pence to take over even before election day on 3 November. The Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, is even older at 77, raising the prospect that if elected, he might not serve two terms but rather pass the torch to Harris in 2024.“The stakes of the debate just got much higher,” said Aaron Kall, director of debate at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “Typically, vice-presidential debates don’t really make much of a difference and aren’t very well viewed – the one in 2016 was only watched by 37m people, a much smaller audience than the three presidential debates.“But now, given what happened with President Trump, it really increases the stakes of this debate because of the health of the candidates. You have a 74-year-old, a 77-year-old and so these two have to be ready to step in at a moment’s notice.”Trump left hospital on Monday night, but the two remaining presidential debates between Trump and Biden later this month remain in serious doubt. “This may be the last debate of the cycle and another reason why it’s extra important,” Kall said. More

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      Kamala Harris says she wouldn't trust Trump on safety of Covid vaccine before election

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      Kamala Harris said that she would not trust Donald Trump’s word on the safety of any coronavirus vaccine approved for use in America before the November election.In an interview with CNN – excerpts of which were released on Saturday – the Democratic vice-presidential nominee warned of the potential for political interference by the US president over the approval of a coronavirus vaccine in order to boost his re-election chances.Asked if she would personally take any vaccine given the green light in the US before the November poll, Harris replied: “I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he’s talking about. I will not take his word for it.”There have been widespread reports of pressure being put on administration health officials to accelerate the development and approval of a vaccine that could halt or blunt the impact of a pandemic that has cost more than 185,000 American lives and wreaked havoc on the economy not seen since the Great Depression.Harris said she expected that medical experts would not be allowed to make decisions on a vaccine without interference from above.“If past is prologue that they will not, they’ll be muzzled, they’ll be suppressed, they will be sidelined,” Harris told CNN. “Because he’s looking at an election coming up in less than 60 days and he’s grasping to get whatever he can to pretend he has been a leader on this issue when he is not.”Concerns over potential politicization of a Covid-19 treatment and vaccine began in the spring, when Trump touted anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as the cure for Covid-19 despite weak evidence that the drug was effective against the virus.The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the federal agency in charge of approving vaccines and treatments for public use, carried out an emergency use authorization (EUA) order to allow the use of the drug without the testing and trials that are usually accompanied with a drug rollout.The EUA for hydroxychloroquine was revoked in June, with the FDA saying the drug has not proven effective against Covid-19 and can have severe side effects.In late August, Trump announced another EUA for convalescent plasma, a type of blood therapy where blood plasma from a recovered Covid-19 patient who has developed antibodies is given to a patient trying to fight the illness.While one study conducted on the therapy suggested that the treatment could be helpful, public health experts, including Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said that there needs to be larger, randomized trials in order to ensure the efficacy of the treatment.Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asked states to expedite approval for vaccine distribution sites by 1 November. Stephen Hahn, the head of the FDA, indicated that he would be willing to authorize a vaccine before phase three trials were complete – a controversial move that has been taken by China and Russia. Hahn insisted he would not expedite a vaccine to appease the president.Moncef Slaoui, the co-chief of the White House initiative to release a vaccine, said that it was possible but unlikely that a vaccine would be ready by 1 November. “There is a very, very low chance that the trials that are running as we speak could [be completed] by the end of October,” Slaoui told NPR.For weeks, Trump has been touting that a vaccine is right on America’s doorstep, an optimism that is not shared by public health experts. Trump told a cheering crowd at the Republican national convention last week that “we will have a safe and effective vaccine by the end of the year”.The Trump administration has dismissed accusations that its claims of confidence in a vaccine in the next few months are a way to boost Trump for election day on 3 November.“I think it’s very irresponsible how people are trying to politicize notions of delivering a vaccine to the American people,” Alex Azar, the health and human services department secretary, told CBS on Thursday.Trump himself has denied that any motivation to get a vaccine out around election day has anything to do with the election itself. “I’m optimistic that it will be around that date … It wouldn’t hurt,” he said. “I’m not doing it for the election. I want it fast because I want to save a lot of lives.” More