Tim Walz and JD Vance faced off in a vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night, which, while less dramatic than the September presidential debate, highlighted clear differences on issues such as abortion, school shootings, and immigration.

Just three weeks earlier, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump engaged in a heated 90-minute exchange, where an agitated Trump veered into boasting about rally attendance, labeled the vice president a "Marxist", and reportedly threatened to sue one of the moderators. Harris experienced a short-lived boost in the polls following the debate.

However, during Tuesday's debate, Walz and Vance primarily refrained from personal attacks on one another, focusing instead on criticizing each other’s running mates. The discussion leaned more toward policy than the previous debate, but it included a few missteps that could overshadow some of the substantive points made in the coming days.

In a pivotal moment regarding abortion, Walz, the governor of Minnesota, mirrored Harris’ approach by sharing personal stories to emphasize his points.

Roe v Wade 

Trump “brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe v Wade," Walz said. He highlighted the case of Amanda Zurawski, who faced serious health complications during her pregnancy but was denied an abortion in Texas. She is now part of a group of women suing the state. He also mentioned a young girl in Kentucky who became pregnant after being raped by her stepfather.

“If you don’t know [women like this], you soon will. Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” Walz said, which Vance refuted.

Walz also condemned the Trump-Vance stance that leaves the decision of abortion access to individual states.

“That’s not how this works. This is basic human rights. We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world,” he said.

Immigration

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Walz also aimed at Trump and Vance for their inflammatory remarks about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. He highlighted their unfounded claims that Haitian immigrants are engaging in acts of cannibalism, which have incited bomb threats and necessitated police escorts for children traveling to school.

When asked about immigration—one of the critical issues for the upcoming November elections—Walz referenced Harris’ track record in California. This approach underscored the real intention of both candidates: to highlight their running mates’ achievements rather than promote their records.

“Kamala Harris was the attorney general of the largest border state in California. She’s the only person in this race who prosecuted transnational gangs for human trafficking and drug interventions,” Walz said.

Vance held Harris accountable for the surge of individuals crossing the border during the Biden administration. In response, Walz pointed to a bipartisan border bill, supported by the National Border Patrol Council, that was derailed by Trump earlier this year.

“As soon as that was getting ready to pass and actually tackle this, Trump said ‘no’, told them to vote against it, because it gives them a campaign issue,” Walz said.

Trump has pledged that if elected, he would implement "the largest deportation in the history of our country." However, in a nation where some children may be US citizens born to non-citizen parents, he has not clarified how such a plan would be feasible.

School shootings

On the issue of school shootings and whether AR-15-style guns, which have been used in several mass shootings, should be banned, Vance called school shootings “terrible stuff” before he sought to blame Harris for gun violence.

He claimed there has been “a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartels," knowing that in the majority of school shootings, the weapons used have been legally purchased. Democrats have pushed for stricter gun controls to curb mass shootings, but Vance took a different approach.

“What do we do to protect our kids? And I think the answer is, and I say this not loving the answer, because I don’t want my kids to go to school in a school that feels unsafe or there are visible signs of security, but I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the door stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger,” Vance said.

Walz, on his part, was more forthright. He said he had met with the parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting, and said “our first responsibility is to our kids,” detailing his red flag policies in Minnesota.

“I ask all of you out there: your schools hardened to look like a fort – is that, is that what we have to go through?” he said.

“I think what we end up doing is we start looking for a scapegoat. Sometimes it’s just the guns.”

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