Thread by @FinancialTimes

Welcome to our live coverage of the US vice-presidential debate. We’ll be posting updates here throughout the night.
on.ft.com/3jGHTNg

Tonight for the first time in US debating history, the candidates will be separated by a pane of plexiglass and at a distance of 12 feet and 3 inches. #VPDebate ft.com/content/6283ac…

A little background on live blogger @RanaForoohar. She grew up in rural Indiana. “The Indiana of my youth was a lot like Mike Pence — white, religious, conservative… But Indiana has changed. It has become much more diverse,” she notes #VPDebate ft.com/content/6283ac…

The debate kicks off with a question about the pandemic. “It's exactly what the Biden campaign wants [Harris] to talk about,” @SpiegelPeter notes #VPDebate ft.com/content/6283ac…

This is the first vice-presidential, or presidential, debate featuring a candidate with Jamaican or Indian ancestry (Kamala Harris has both). She’s also the first Gen-X candidate on a national ticket, our writers point out #VPDebate
ft.com/content/6283ac…

"You've got to be a pretty good debater to make the case that Donald Trump is an environmentalist. Mike Pence is a good debater, but he's not that good." @SpiegelPeter says in our live blog. More commentary on the #VPdebates here: ft.com/content/6283ac…

Are you fact-checking the #VPDebate? Our US National Editor and columnist @EdwardGLuce says he’s lost the will ft.com/content/6283ac…

As Harris gives a history lesson on court packing at the #VPDebate, @EdwardGLuce and @SpiegelPeter discuss Franklin D Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court to put the issue in context: ft.com/content/6283ac…

No, you're not seeing things. There was a third guest in tonight's #VPDebate: a fly ft.com/content/6283ac…

Pence had a chance to differentiate himself from Trump: to accept a peaceful transfer of power if it comes to that, but he declined

“I suspect he had to give that answer otherwise Trump would have reconsidered his running mate,” @EdwardGLuce wrote ft.com/content/6283ac…