Reality Check

Earlier in the debate, Pence and Harris clashed over the state of the US economy with the Democratic senator claiming that the Trump administration's “so-called trade war with China" lost Americans manufacturing jobs.

This figure isn't right.

Manufacturing jobs have dropped under the Trump administration, but only since the coronavirus outbreak.

The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, external shows that, as of September, there were 179,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than when Trump took office.

Prior to the pandemic, the US added almost half a million during his first three years in office.

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America reporter

The sharpest exchanges of the entire debate came late in the evening, on the topic of race and law enforcement.

As Trump did a week earlier, Pence tried to quickly pivot from a discussion of discrimination and excessive police force into a condemnation of the sometimes violent protests in some US cities.

He said he trusted the justice system and that suggesting the nation is systemically racist is an insult to police officers.

That set up Harris’s most powerful rejoinder.

“I will not sit here and be lectured by the vice-president on what it means to enforce the laws of this country,” the former San Francisco prosecutor and California attorney general said curtly.

She noted Trump’s difficulties – as recently as the debate last week – in clearly and concisely condemning white supremacists, concluding “this is who we have as president”.

The candidates leave the stage, and the curtain falls on the only vice-presidential debate of 2020.

A far less rancorous encounter than the one their respective bosses engaged in last week - though not without its interruptions.

According to a count by CBS News tonight, Mike Pence interrupted Kamala Harris 10 times, while Harris interrupted Pence five times.

It might say something about the debate that a fly which landed on Pence's head has become its own celebrity on social media.

The jokes have come thick and fast, with some on social media dubbing Pence "Lord of the Flies", and Merriam-Webster Dictionary tweeting that the word "fly" is now trending on its website.

Joe Biden has tweeted a picture asking for a political donation which could "help this campaign fly".

And elsewhere, a Twitter page dedicated to the fly has already amassed thousands of followers.

The candidates face a question from an 8th grader from Utah: "If our leaders can't get along, how are the citizens supposed to get along?"

Addressing that, Pence says people shouldn't assume what they see on news networks is the view of the American people.

He says, "here in America we can disagree, but when the debate is over we come together as Americans".

We love a good debate, we love a good argument, he says.

Kamala Harris says one of the reasons Joe Biden decided to run for the presidency is that he was distressed by hate and division created over the last four years.

She says the future is bright, "because we fight for each person's voice".

The question over a peaceful transfer of power is a trickier one for the vice-president than the senator, but Pence deflects by saying "first and foremost I think we're gonna win this election".

He's asked what his role would be in the event that Trump refuses to accept a loss in November.

"When you talk about accepting the outcome of the election, I must tell you, your party has spent the last three and half years trying to overturn the results of the last election," he says to Harris, referring to investigations of alleged wrongdoing in the 2016 Trump campaign and an impeachment inquiry over the president's dealings with Ukraine.

Democrats in the House of Representatives impeached Trump, whom they said attempted to convince a foreign power to meddle in the 2020 presidential election. However, he was not removed from office by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America reporter

If Pence was on his back foot on the coronavirus pandemic, when the topic turned to the environment, it was his turn to go on the attack. Biden has expanded his plan to address climate change since the Democratic primaries, and Harris was an original sponsor of the Green New Deal climate proposal.

While that has won them plaudits from environmentalists on the left, there are voters in swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio who might view more government regulation as a threat to their economic livelihood – a reality Pence tried to exploit.

While acknowledging that “the climate is changing”, he warned that the Green New Deal would “crush American energy”. He accused Biden of wanting to “abolish” fossil fuels and ban fracking, which Harris pointed out was false.

Biden has had to walk a fine line on the environment, however. During the debate Harris said that climate change is an “existential threat” to the globe, but both she and Biden have avoided a full-throated defence of the kind of government response such a threat would require – probably because it risks alienating key voters in key states.

The final topic question is on the election itself.

Susan Page says the president has repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. So what, she asks Harris, would she and Biden do if he refused to stand aside?

Harris responds that she and Biden have built a broad coalition of supporters.

She says: "Vote! Please! Vote early! Come up with a plan to vote... We have it within our power in these next 27 days" to change the next four years.

She accuses President Trump of attempting to suppress the vote during the presidential debate last week.

Reality Check

A fact check from the foreign policy portion of tonight's debate. It's true the Islamic State group's territory across parts of Iraq and Syria - which it declared a "caliphate" in 2014 - came to an end during Trump's time in office.

The US-led alliance overcame the group in its last stronghold in Syria in March 2019.

But as the BBC reported at the time "despite the demise of its physical caliphate, IS remains a battle-hardened and well-disciplined force whose "enduring defeat is not assured."

On 12 August, a top US military official, external laid out what was needed to score an enduring defeat against IS, noting the group still posed a threat.

Pence responds that there's no excuse for rioting and looting amid protests against racism. He also pushes back against the idea that America is a racist country.

"We don't have to choose between supporting law enforcement...and supporting minority communities," says the Republican vice-president.

It's certainly in line with Trump's "law and order" mantra over the summer.

He adds that the Trump administration will always stand with law enforcement but will also better the lives of African-Americans.

Our next topic brings criminal justice and race issues on the table.

Was justice done in the case of Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker who was shot and killed by Louisville police officers in March while they raided her apartment?

Harris is up first. She says her life was taken "unjustifiably, tragically, violently".

She then brings up George Floyd's death too, and how it brought diverse people together across the country to fight for change.

"We are never going to condone violence but we always must fight for the values we hold dear."

"Bad cops are bad for good cops," she says, bringing up her prosecutorial past.

Now here's the list of things Biden-Harris administration want to do:

• Banning chokeholds and carotid holds
• Registry for police who break the law
• Ending private prisons and cash bail
• Decriminalise marijuana and expunge marijuana records

Reality Check

A few minutes ago, Vice-President Mike Pence said “President Trump and I have a plan to improve healthcare and protect pre-existing conditions for every American.”

The Affordable Care Act, passed during the Obama presidency, made it illegal to deny coverage if you have a pre-existing condition. The Trump administration has sought to repeal and replace it and now seeks to dismantle the law in the Supreme Court.

In September, President Trump signed an executive order , externalwhich said: "access to health insurance despite underlying health conditions should be maintained".

But there is no detail about how this will be done or how it will be funded.

When Trump picked evangelical Christian Mike Pence to join his ticket in 2016, it was a clear appeal to anti-abortion voters.

So what has the Trump administration done with abortion, one of the most contentious issues here, in the last four years?

He's appointed a slew of conservative judges across US courts - including the Supreme Court.

This has led to a rise in anti-abortion laws across the country. Anti-abortion advocates and Republican lawmakers hope that continuing legal challenges will make it up to the newly conservative-leaning top court and federal abortion protections might be overturned.

The Trump-Pence administration has also hit family planning funding and free birth control. The pair were also the first president and vice-president to attend the anti-abortion March for Life in person.

Read more:

• Abortion: How do Trump and Biden's policies compare?
• What's going on in the US fight over abortion rights?

Image source, Getty Images

Moderator Susan Page is coming under fire for her handling of the debate.

The journalist is the second-top trend on Twitter in the United States, with people suggesting that the candidates are finding it too easy to dodge her questions and talk beyond their allotted time.

Axios journalist Jonathan Swan asks if there is an unspoken rule which means the moderator cannot "sharply interrupt the second [the candidates] start asking themselves a completely different question to the one they were asked [by Page]".

However, despite this start, she is being praised for interrupting Pence with a recap of the debate rules.

"I did not create the rules for tonight," she said. "Your campaigns agreed to the rules for tonight's debate. I'm here to enforce them, which involves moving from one topic to another, giving roughly equal time to both of you, which is what I am trying very hard to do."

Tara McKelvey
BBC News, Washington

Trump won the presidency in 2016 partly because of white evangelicals, a group Pence helped shepherd to the polls.

Many see Pence, a Christian evangelical, as their true leader – not Trump.

One of Pence’s fans, Laurel Bryant of Amherst, Virginia, shook his hand at a Washington event a while back.

“I’m shaking like a Chihuahua,” she told me afterwards, saying it was “a dream come true” to meet Pence, “a very good, godly man”.

With his remarks about moving the US embassy to Jerusalem - a dream that conservative evangelicals had long held - he is reminding conservative evangelicals that he has been fighting for them.

Meet Tristan, a deeply religious first-time voter from rural North Carolina. He's conservative, Christian and ... socially liberal.

"If somebody is gay or lesbian or trans, I just tell them if that's what they want, that's what they want to be."

A big supporter of Donald Trump in 2016, Tristan says he is now questioning his faith in the president. He also cites Trump's treatment of Latinos and his response to racial justice protests as problematic.

"This new wave of Christianity is all about learning to accept," he says.

Many white evangelical Christians don't embrace that message of change in the church. They are still firmly behind Trump - and are big fans of Vice-President Pence, who describes himself as a "Christian, conservative and Republican - in that order".

Almost two-thirds of Americans call themselves Christian, but they are a diverse bunch. Our Global Religion reporter Lebo Diseko spoke to some about what role their faith plays in how they pick a president.

Image source, Reuters

The next question is: If Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalised abortion across the US in 1973, is to be lifted, and states are given the right to decide whether or not to allow it there, would Pence support abortion access in his home state of Indiana?

Without answering the question, Pence says that he and Trump "could not be more enthusiastic to see judge Amy Coney Barrett made into Justice Amy Coney Barrett".

Harris starts by saying she and Biden are both "people of faith" and would never attack Barrett for her Catholic faith, as Republicans say Democrats have done.

Same question goes to Harris, who responds: "I will always fight for a women to make her own decision about her own body."

Regarding the Supreme Court nomination, Harris says "let the American people fill the White House, and we will fill that Supreme Court seat".

Harris says a conservative bent to the Supreme Court will lead to an end of healthcare access for millions of Americans with pre-existing health conditions.

Read more: Who is Trump's Supreme Court pick?

Reality Check

A little earlier Mike Pence said “according to all of the best estimates, our air and land are cleaner than at any time ever recorded, our water is among cleanest in the world.”

He’s right about clean air - the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says the US currently has the cleanest air on record.

However, this is a long-term trend.

Over the past few decades, air quality - a measure of six major pollutants - has improved significantly in the US.

From 1970 to 2019, the overall level of these pollutants fell by 77%, according to the EPA.

And this trend has largely continued into Trump's administration, with a 7% fall between 2017 and 2019.

On clean water, however, the US lags behind, according to global indices.

The US is ranked 26th in the world on sanitation and drinking water, according to Yale University's 2020 Environmental Performance Index, external.

On this ranking, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and the UK have the cleanest water.

Read more: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2020-54103861

Referring to a report that Trump allegedly called dead and wounded US soldiers "losers" and "suckers", Harris says that the president went to Arlington National Cemetery and "stood above the graves of our fallen heroes and asked 'what's in it for them?'"

"Because of course he only thinks about what's in it for him," she says.

She also condemns Trump for allegedly not confronting Vladimir Putin about reported bounties Russia paid for American deaths in Afghanistan.

Looks like President Trump is watching the debate along with all of us tonight.

And he's got an unsurprising take.