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Meet the moderators for tonight’s VP debate, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan
The vice presidential debate between Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will take place on Tuesday, hosted by CBS News in New York.
It is the first and only meeting between the two vice presidential candidates, and comes as voters in several states have begun receiving their ballots for November’s election.
The debate will be moderated by “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” moderator and chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan.
There will be no audience for the debate, and only O’Donnell and Brennan will be asking questions. Here’s what to know about the moderators and how they’re preparing:
How O’Donnell and Brennan prepared for tonight’s VP debate
O’Donnell said the vice presidential debate is a “unique opportunity for the American public to see the two vice presidential candidates debate the most important issues for voters.”
“We recognize the historic nature of these debates; and our goal as moderators is to ensure a substantive and civil conversation that helps voters understand more about what can be complex policy positions,” she said.
“Margaret and I are fortunate to work with the CBS News political team and researchers to help prepare for this debate,” O’Donnell added. “They’ve worked with us to make sure we have all the information we need for a substantive conversation.”
Brennan said she thinks of moderating the debate “as a public service to the viewer.”
“We’ve been studying each campaign’s views on policies and the issues our CBS News polling show us people care about,” she said. “Our goal is to give these two vice presidential candidates opportunities to make their case to the American people and draw a contrast to the other on the debate stage.”
Brennan said preparing to moderate the debate is “like cramming for a final exam,” noting that it takes “a lot of reading, taking notes, talking it through with my colleagues about how to craft a smart question.”
“We have an incredible team who is working with us to think through the questions that reflect what our own CBS News polling tells us voters care about ahead of November,” she said.
The “Face the Nation” moderator said that preparing for the debate is similar in some ways to preparing for an interview, but different in key respects.
“In both cases, I’m making sure that I’m fully read-in on the facts as well as the nuances of policy positions,” she said. “But moderating a debate is a different format from what I do on ‘Face the Nation,’ where I follow up, follow up and follow up again if I don’t get an answer to my question, or if I feel like an answer deserves further explanation. In a debate, there is a formula with hard time limits for Norah’s and my questioning.”
She added: “The intent is different, too. In a debate, we’re performing a public service and that is to tee up a conversation in which the candidates use the time themselves to make their case about why their policy is best for Americans — and why their ticket should be elected.”
What is Norah O’Donnell’s background?
O’Donnell has earned multiple Emmy Awards over her nearly three decades of experience in journalism. She is covering her eighth presidential election and has interviewed every living president of the United States.
She has been anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News” since 2019, leading CBS News’ flagship broadcast from Washington, D.C. O’Donnell recently secured a historic interview with Pope Francis.
O’Donnell has conducted interviews with newsmakers in Washington and beyond for the “CBS Evening News,” including President Biden’s first interview since taking office; an exclusive sit-down with Vice President Mike Pence after the killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani; the first-ever interview with the four highest-ranking women in the U.S. military; an exclusive interview with a former staffer for New York’s then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo who alleged sexual harassment; and more.
She also contributes to “60 Minutes” and is the host of CBS News 24/7’s “Person to Person.”
O’Donnell joined CBS News in 2011 as chief White House correspondent and was the co-anchor of “CBS This Morning” from 2012 to 2019.
She began her career as a print reporter for Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, before working for more than a decade at NBC News, where she covered the Pentagon, Congress and the White House. O’Donnell is a graduate of Georgetown University’s College of Arts and Sciences.
What is Margaret Brennan’s background?
Brennan has been moderator of “Face the Nation” since 2018, when she became the second woman to host the prestigious Sunday morning public affairs program. She has interviewed world leaders like Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron, as well as congressional leaders including House Speakers Mike Johnson, Kevin McCarthy and Nancy Pelosi.
In 2023, “Face the Nation” was recognized with a Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in TV Political Journalism, citing Brennan’s moderating approach as “measured, completely consistent, researched and prepared.”
Before becoming moderator of “Face the Nation,” she held several roles at CBS News, including State Department and White House correspondent. She remains the network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent.
She has covered historic moments such as the landmark nuclear deal with Iran; restoration of diplomatic ties with Cuba; the standoff with North Korea; the conflict in Ukraine; and the accord to transfer control of Syria’s chemical weapons. She broke the news that members of Trump’s Cabinet were discussing invoking the 25th Amendment following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and her interview with McCarthy in 2023 played a role in his ouster as speaker just days later.
She began her career as a producer at CNBC and spent a decade covering global financial markets before joining CBS News in 2012. Brennan graduated from the University of Virginia in 2002.
CBS News will host the only planned vice presidential debate between Vance and Walz tonight at 9 p.m. ET on CBS and CBS News 24/7. Download the free CBS News app for live coverage, post-debate analysis, comprehensive fact checks and more.
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Claudia Sheinbaum took office Tuesday as Mexico’s first female president in the nation’s more than 200 years of independence.
The 62-year-old former Mexico City mayor and lifelong leftist campaigned on a promise of continuity and of protecting and expanding the signature initiatives of her mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In the four months between her election and inauguration she held that line, backing López Obrador on issues big and small. But Sheinbaum is a very different person; she likes data and doesn’t have López Obrador’s backslapping personal touch.
Mexico now waits to see if she will step out of his shadow.
Manuel Velasquez / Getty Images
Sheinbaum’s background is in science. She has a Ph.D. in energy engineering. Her brother is a physicist. In a 2023 interview with The Associated Press, Sheinbaum said, “I believe in science.”
Observers say that grounding showed itself in Sheinbaum’s actions as mayor during the COVID-19 pandemic, when her city of some 9 million people took a different approach from what López Obrador espoused at the national level.
Sheinbaum set limits on businesses’ hours and capacity when the virus was rapidly spreading and expanded its testing regimen. She also publicly wore masks and urged social distancing.
She comes from an older, more solidly left tradition that predates López Obrador’s nationalistic, populist movement.
Colombia’s President, Gustavo Petro, dropped a bit of a bombshell before Sheinbaum’s inauguration, telling reporters she had been a sympathizer of Colombia’s leftist guerrilla group, M-19 – the group that Petro himself once belonged to – and that she helped out exiled rebel fighters when they passed through Mexico. “A lot of Mexicans came to help us, and among them was Claudia.”
While Sheinbaum’s office did not immediately respond to queries about Petro’s comments, the idea is not improbable: Sheinbaum comes from a far more traditionally ‘leftist’ background than López Obrador, and has herself said she belonged to a number of leftist youth groups during her university years, at a time when they would have supported rebel groups in Central America and South America.
Her parents were leading activists in Mexico’s 1968 student movement, which ended tragically in a government massacre of hundreds of student demonstrators in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco plaza just days before the Summer Olympics opened there that year.
Sheinbaum is also the first president with a Jewish background in the largely Catholic country.
Sheinbaum led wire to wire and won convincingly in June with almost 60% of the vote, about double the number of her nearest competitor, Xóchitl Gálvez.
As López Obrador’s chosen successor, she enjoyed the boost of the high popularity he maintained throughout his six years in office.
The opposition’s coalition led by Gálvez struggled to gain traction, while support for the governing party carried over to Congress, where voters gave Morena and its allies margins that allowed it to pass important constitutional changes before López Obrador left office.
Before passage of a controversial constitutional overhaul of Mexico’s judiciary that will make all judges stand for election, Sheinbaum stood with López Obrador who had pushed it.
Felix Marquez/picture alliance via Getty Images
Sheinbaum said “the reforms to the judicial system will not affect our commercial relations, nor private Mexican investments, nor foreign ones. Rather the opposite, there will be a greater and better rule of law and democracy for everyone.”
Shortly after, when López Obrador’s proposal to put the National Guard under military command was being considered, Sheinbaum defended it against critics. She said it would not militarize the country and that the National Guard would respect human rights.
And just days before she took office, Sheinbaum stood with López Obrador in his long-running diplomatic spat with Spain. She defended her decision to not invite Spain’s King Felipe VI to her inauguration, saying in part that the king had failed to apologize for Spain’s conquest of Mexico as López Obrador had demanded years earlier.
Sheinbaum’s victory came 70 years after women won the right to vote in Mexico.
The race really came down to two women, Sheinbaum and Gálvez, but Mexico’s prevailing machismo still pushed both women to explain why they thought they could be president.
Since 2018, Mexico’s Congress has had a 50-50 gender split, in part due to gender quotas set for party candidates. Still, Sheinbaum inherits a country with soaring levels of violence against women. Barely 24 hours after Sheinbaum’s election victory, the female mayor of a town in western Mexico, Yolanda Sanchez Figueroa, was gunned down on a public road, according to local media. The Michoacan attorney general’s office said that the mayor’s bodyguard was also killed.
There are also still many parts of the country, especially rural Indigenous areas where men hold all the power. And some 2.5 million women toil in domestic work where despite reforms they continue to face low pay, abuse by employers, long hours and unstable working conditions.
Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that national laws prohibiting abortions are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights.
Although the Mexican ruling orders the removal of abortion from the federal penal code and requires federal health institutions to offer the procedure to anyone who requests it, further state-by-state legal work is pending to remove all penalties.
Feminists say that simply electing a woman as president does not guarantee she will govern with a gender perspective. Both Sheinbaum and López Obrador have been criticized before for appearing to lack empathy toward women protesting against gender violence.
CBS News
6 people killed in Tel Aviv mass shooting moments before Iran launches missile attack on Israel, police say
Israeli police said six people were killed in a shooting attack in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening.
Two suspects opened fire on a boulevard in the Jaffa neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv, police said. The two suspects were killed.
The attack came moments before a massive barrage of rockets from Iran sent people into bomb shelters across Israel, including in Tel Aviv.
Israel’s MDA ambulance service said Tuesday it received a report at 7:01 p.m of people wounded by gunfire. It later said it was treating seven people for wounds.
Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images
The shooting came just before Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel in response to the killings of Iran-backed militant leaders; the missile attack sent Israelis to shelters and prompted alarm across the region.
A U.S. defense official said the United States intercepted some of the missiles to help defend Israel.
“A short while ago, missiles were launched from Iran towards the State of Israel,” the Israeli military said in a statement, as sirens sounded across Israel.
After about an hour, the military announced there was no longer a threat and “it was decided that it is now permitted to leave protected spaces in all areas across the country,” after a “large number” of Iranian missiles were intercepted.
The explosions from the Iranian missile barrage rang out just hours after a senior White House official told CBS News the U.S. had “indications that Iran is preparing to imminently launch a ballistic missile attack against Israel.”
That warning, which Israel’s military said had been communicated from Washington, came after Israel announced the beginning of “limited, localized, and targeted ground raids” against the Iran-backed group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
