Harris and Trump: In USA president election campaign, the debate will catapult the campaigns of Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris into the two-month sprint to November. High-Stakes Debate for Harris and Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump will square off Tuesday night for what could be their only debate of the compressed presidential election campaign, with the race exceedingly close and voters still craving more information about the Democratic nominee.
The stakes are high for both candidates. For Ms. Harris, the debate on ABC, scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern time, will be an opportunity to show voters hoping for change that she is the candidate to help the nation turn the page on an era of extraordinary division.
For Mr. Trump, it is yet another chance to try to show discipline as he seeks to portray Ms. Harris as a California liberal who is out of step with voters worried about inflation, crime and illegal immigration.
Election Day is now eight weeks away, and early voting begins within days. After the debate, both campaigns will spring into high gear, especially in the critical battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The only remaining milestone currently on the calendar is a vice-presidential debate scheduled for Oct. 1.
Another date may also loom: Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, when the federal government will run out of money if Congress fails to fund it. Republican leaders do not want a government shutdown barely a month before the election, wary that they would be blamed.
But on Tuesday, Mr. Trump threw a wrench into those hopes, calling for a Republican-orchestrated government shutdown unless House leaders secure legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.
The legislation is ostensibly aimed at ensuring undocumented immigrants cannot cast ballots this fall, something that is already illegal. The gambit, which Democrats oppose, appeared to be running out of steam before Mr. Trump weighed in, writing in all capital letters that Republicans “should, in no way, shape, or form, go forward” with a stop-gap funding measure to keep the government open without the provision. “Don’t let it happen — close it down!!!” he wrote just hours before the debate.
The rules: The campaigns agreed to the same guidelines that were used in June, when Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden faced off. That means that microphones will be muted when a candidate is not talking, the candidates cannot ask each other questions and there will be no audience, among other things.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaking to the news media at a Penzeys Spices store in Pittsburgh on Saturday. Kamala Harris preached unity when she took a break from debate prep and visited a spice shop in Pittsburgh on Saturday, saying it was time to “turn the page on the divisiveness.”
