Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Republican Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance squared off Tuesday night in a vice presidential debate that marked the last scheduled in-person meeting for the campaigns as Americans decide the country’s next chapter.

Meeting for the first time, Walz and Vance engaged in a policy-heavy, nearly two-hour back-and-forth hosted by CBS News at its studios in New York City. The debate was moderated by Norah O’Donnell, host of the “CBS Evening News,” and Margaret Brennan, who anchors the network’s Sunday political show “Face the Nation.”

The vice presidential candidates emphasized their modest upbringings and laid out their visions to lower high living costs, address charged issues like reproductive rights, immigration and gun violence, and navigate a quickly worsening conflict in the Middle East.

And, with the presidential contest marking the first since the violent aftermath of the 2020 election, and Trump’s continued false claims that he won, the moderators pressed the men on whether voters would see a peaceful transfer of power, no matter the winner. Vance would not provide a direct answer whether he would have certified the 2020 vote.

Walz is a second-term governor who previously served six terms in the U.S. House. Prior to his election, Walz worked as a public school teacher and football coach while also enlisted in the Minnesota Army National Guard for 24 years.

Vance served in the U.S. Marines for four years before earning his Yale law degree and becoming a venture capitalist and bestselling memoirist. He was first elected to public office in late 2022 to serve as Ohio’s junior U.S. senator.

The mostly amicable debate, with some moments of tension, was a noticeable departure from the bitter polarization on display daily during the presidential campaign. Walz and Vance shook hands and lingered onstage afterward chatting and introducing each other to their wives.

The presidential nominees, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, met on the debate stage last month in a more acrimonious exchange during which the former president falsely claimed immigrants were eating pets in Ohio and Harris ripped into him for his remarks on race and abortion.

Trump has refused to debate again. Following the Vance-Walz exchange, the Harris campaign renewed its offer for another presidential meetup offered by CNN in Atlanta later this month.

Growing Middle East conflict

Answering the first question from the moderators Tuesday night, Walz and Vance sparred over which administration, if elected, would best quell signs of a widening war in the Middle East.

Tensions in the region escalated earlier Tuesday when Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, according to the Pentagon.

Walz accused Trump of being “fickle” on foreign policy and said the world is worse off since Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal. Walz argued for “steady leadership.”

“You saw it experienced today where, along with our Israeli partners and our coalition, (we were) able to stop the incoming attack,” Walz said.

“It’s clear, and the world saw it on that debate stage a few weeks ago, a nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment,” the governor continued.

Vance maintained that Trump headed off heated global conflict by invoking fear.

“We have to remember that as much as Governor Waltz just accused Donald Trump of being an agent of chaos, Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence,” Vance said. “People were afraid of stepping out of line.”

The barrage in the Middle East followed Israel’s ground incursion into Southern Lebanon and its recent assassination in Beirut of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iranian proxy militant group Hezbollah.

While Israel intercepted the majority of the rockets Tuesday, U.S. Navy destroyers in the Middle East fired roughly a dozen interceptors at incoming Iranian missiles, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said.

The Biden administration promised “severe consequences,” though it has not provided details. Harris said late Tuesday that Iran poses a “destabilizing, dangerous force in the Middle East” and her commitment to Israel is “unwavering.”

Despite a visit to Washington less than a week ago from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the CBS moderators did not ask about the ongoing war in Ukraine, and neither candidate brought up the costly and ongoing fight against Russia’s continued invasion.

2020 election

Vance and Walz sparred over how Trump handled his loss in the 2020 presidential election and his actions leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol following a rally that Trump hosted.

Walz said while he and Vance found some areas of common ground at other points during the debate, the two were “miles apart” on Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.

“This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen, and it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say – he is still saying he didn’t lose the election,” Walz said.

Vance didn’t directly answer whether he would have certified the electoral count for President Joe Biden had he been a member of Congress at the time, to Walz’s dismay.

“I’m pretty shocked by this,” Walz said. “He lost the election. This is not a debate.”

Walz said he was concerned that Vance wouldn’t follow the example set by former Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to go along with a scheme to recognize fake slates of electors and deny Biden the presidency.

Vance tried to pivot to Harris’ actions following the COVID-19 pandemic and whether she “censored Americans from speaking their mind” before saying that both he and Trump “think that there were problems in 2020.”

There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud during the last presidential election, during which Trump lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

Walz also criticized Trump and Vance for using the same narrative ahead of this November’s elections, saying they were “already laying the groundwork for people not accepting” the results should Trump lose.

Taxes and tariffs

Both Harris and Trump have released economic plans that would add trillions to the national deficit — though analysis after analysis shows Trump’s proposals outpacing Harris’ by at least a few trillion.

Harris and Walz are running on an “opportunity economy” theme that would permanently expand the Child Tax Credit, including giving $6,000 to new parents, and provide tax credits and deductions to first-time homebuyers and entrepreneurs.

Harris, following Biden’s earlier budget proposal, has said she would impose a minimum tax on high-wealth individuals, but vowed steeper levies on long-term capital gains.

Trump has promised to fund the Treasury’s coffers with money raised by taxing imported goods. Largely he wants to extend his signature 2017 tax law and permanently lower the corporate tax rate.

When asked by the moderators how the candidates could accomplish those goals without ballooning the national debt, both Vance and Walz sidestepped directly answering the question. Rather they touted Trump and Biden administration policies and then went on the attack.

“Donald Trump made a promise, and I’ll give you this: He kept it. He took folks to Mar-a-Lago (and) said, ‘You’re rich as hell. I’m gonna give you a tax cut,’” Walz said, adding that Trump’s tariff plan would be “destabilizing” for the economy.

Economists warn that Trump’s plan to slap tariffs on imports across the board —? as high as 60% on Chinese imports and 100% to 200% on cars and John Deere tractors manufactured in Mexico — could cause consumer prices to increase and invite retaliation.

But Vance said he wanted to “defend my running mate” on the issue.

“We’re going to be taking in a lot of money by penalizing companies for shipping jobs overseas and penalizing countries who employ slave laborers and then ship their products back into our country and undercut the wages of American workers. It’s the heart of the Donald Trump economic plan,” the senator said.

High costs and housing

Both candidates spent significant time addressing housing and child care costs.

Walz touted Harris’ “bold forward plan” that calls for construction of 3 million new homes and “down payment assistance on the front end to get you in a house.”

“A house is much more than just an asset to be traded somewhere. It’s foundational to where you’re at,” Walz said.

Vance said some of Walz’s ideas on housing were “halfway decent.”

One of the central pillars of Trump and Vance’s housing plans is to turn over federal lands to private hands for development.

“We have a lot of federal lands that aren’t being used for anything. They’re not being used for national parks. They’re not being used, and they could be places where we build a lot of housing,” Vance said.

On child care, Walz pledged a paid federal family and medical leave mandate as a priority for the Harris campaign, and advocated a parallel workforce development program for the care professions.

“We have to make it easier for folks to be able to get into that business, and then to make sure that folks are able to pay for that,” Walz said.

The dual goals, he said, “will enhance our workforce, enhance our families, and make it easier to have the children that you want.”

Vance said he sees an opportunity for a “bipartisan solution” to the high cost of child care, though he stopped short of agreeing with a federal paid leave law.

Instead he proposed expanding the potential recipients for federal child care grants.

“These programs only go to one kind of child care model. Let’s say you’d like your church maybe to help you out with child care. Maybe you live in a rural area or an urban area, and you’d like to get together with families in your neighborhood to provide child care and the way that makes the most sense. You don’t get access to any of these federal monies,” Vance said.

Immigration, again

Vance also repeatedly connected the housing shortage and high costs to immigration — the central issue for Trump’s campaign and a common answer from him for several of the nation’s woes.

The Ohio senator said housing is “totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.”

“The people that I’m most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’ open border,” Vance said, referring to the town where he and Trump falsely claimed over and over that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating pets.

Debate moderator Brennan pressed Vance on his claim: “Senator on that point, I’d like for you to clarify. There are many contributing factors to high housing costs. What evidence do you have that migrants are part of this problem?”

Vance said he would share on social media following the debate a Federal Reserve study that supported his claim.

Reproductive rights?

Access to abortion and fertility treatments was one of the more contentious areas of disagreement, though neither candidate trod new ground for their party.

Vance maintained the Trump stance that abortion laws should be set by voters or state lawmakers, while Walz said women and their doctors are best suited to make those decisions.

Vance told a story about a woman he grew up with having an abortion, then telling him a few years ago that “she felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship.”

“And I think that what I take from that, as a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable, is that my party, we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue, where they frankly, just don’t trust us,” Vance said. “And I think that’s one of the things that Donald Trump, and I are endeavoring to do.”

Walz rejected Vance’s position that state lawmakers should determine women’s access to the full slate of reproductive decisions, including fertility treatments.

Walz referenced some of the stories women have told in the last two years about being denied medical care for miscarriages or other dangerous pregnancy complications because of vaguely written state laws that banned or significantly restricted access to abortion.

“This is a very simple proposition: These are women’s decisions to make about their health care,” Walz said, later adding that people should “just mind their own business on this.”

Gun violence

The two vice presidential candidates had one of the more genuine exchanges of the debate after the moderators asked them about solutions for gun violence.

Vance conceded that he and Walz both want to reduce the number of people killed by guns every year, but said the solution should center around addressing illegal guns, including those used in drug trafficking, and through changing how schools are designed.

“Unfortunately, I 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. “And of course, we’ve got to increase school resource officers, because the idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys, it just doesn’t fit with recent experience.”

Walz said school shootings are every parent’s “worst nightmare” before telling a story about how his son witnessed a shooting at a community center while playing volleyball.

“Those things don’t leave you,” Walz said, before talking about meeting with parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, when he was a member of Congress.

“We understand that the Second Amendment is there, but our first responsibility is to our kids to figure this out,” Walz said. “In Minnesota, we’ve enacted enhanced red flag laws, enhanced background checks.”

Walz said he absolutely believes Vance hates it when children die from gun violence, but added that’s “not far enough when we know they’re things that work.”

“No one’s trying to scaremonger and say, ‘We’re taking your guns,” Walz said. “But I ask all of you out there, ‘Do you want your schools hardened to look like a fort?’ … when we know there’s countries around the world that their children aren’t practicing these types of drills.”

Vance expressed sympathy that Walz’s son had witnessed a shooting and thanked him for bringing up Finland as an example of a country with a high rate of gun ownership that doesn’t have school shootings.

“I do think it illustrates some of the, frankly, weird differences between our own country’s gun violence problem and Finland,” Vance said, before mentioning higher rates of substance abuse and mental health issues within the United States.

“I don’t think it’s the whole reason why we have such a bad gun violence problem, but I do think it’s a big piece of it,” Vance said.

Hurricane Helene response, climate change?

The two candidates expressed dismay about the destruction stemming from Hurricane Helene in states in the Southeast, but disagreed about how best to address climate change.

Vance said “a lot of people are justifiably worried about all these crazy weather patterns,” before criticizing how Democrats have drafted climate change laws.

“This idea that carbon emissions drive all the climate change; well let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of arguments,” Vance said. “Well, if you believe that, what would you want to do? The answer is that you’d want to restore as much American manufacturing as possible, and you’d want to produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world.”

Walz said that Biden and Harris have worked with Congress to enact legislation addressing climate change that also created jobs.

“We are producing more natural gas and more oil at any time than we ever have. We’re also producing more clean energy,” Walz said. “Reducing our impact is absolutely critical, but this is not a false choice. You can do that at the same time you’re creating the jobs that we’re seeing all across the country.”

Walz also said that farmers in Minnesota know climate change is real because some years they experience significant drought and other years they’re inundated with too much rain for their crops to handle.

“They’ve seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods back-to-back,” Walz said. “But what they’re doing is adapting, and this has allowed them to tell me, ‘Look, I harvest corn, I harvest soybeans, and I harvest wind.’”