2024 hopefuls argued over education, spending and border security.
The second Republican debate of the 2024 presidential primary, taking place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, has just come to an end.
The affair was more raucous than the first debate, which took place over a month ago. Candidates interrupted one another much more regularly and several — most notably former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — have directly criticized front-runner Donald Trump, who elected not to show up tonight. The two candidates from South Carolina, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, went after one another for their records on spending, and seemingly everyone who had the chance to take a shot at entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy did so.
Read below for highlights, excerpts and key moments.
In our pre-debate 538/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, we asked likely Republican primary voters to select up to three issues that were most important in determining who they will vote for in the primaries. Economic inequality ranked 17 out of 20 issues, with only 3 percent selecting it.
—Analysis by Holly Fuong of 538
Scott’s claim is misleading. Deaths from fentanyl jumped 23 percent in Biden’s first year in office to more than 70,000, but they’ve been increasing since 2014 and also rose during Trump’s administration.
Although immigration encounters at the southern U.S. border have spiked under Biden’s watch, experts say most of the fentanyl coming into the U.S. from Mexico is coming through legal ports of entry. The vast majority of people sentenced for fentanyl trafficking are U.S. citizens, data shows.
-Analysis by Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact
I'm at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, for the Republican debate tonight and so far it's been a Democrat who's caused the biggest stir in the spin room. California Gov. Gavin Newsom came through for an interview with Univision and a rather lengthy gaggle with the national press corps. He defended his decision to debate DeSantis later this year, defended his presence at a Republican debate in the first place and he answered a question from yours truly.
I asked him about one of the issues that Biden is currently faring worst with the American public on: immigration, and specifically border security. Newsom told me he supports Biden's plan on this issue, but that: “The one thing I would add to it, not what’s wrong with it, is we need to do more on the asylum space as it relates to how the asylum system is being gamed and that is legitimate.”
The first question of the night goes to Scott, who is the subject of a UAW labor complaint for suggesting that striking auto workers should be fired. This time around, he says that the president doesn’t have the authority to fire private-sector workers and then pivots.
—Analysis by Nathaniel Rakich of 538
