Vice presidential debates don’t tend to matter much. Then there’s Pence vs. Harris.

WASHINGTON — The vice presidential debate is usually the undercard of the fall campaign, a secondary clash between the understudies of the major party tickets.

Not this year.

President Trump’s battle with COVID-19 has dramatically upped the stakes for Vice President Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris as they prepare to face off Wednesday night in Salt Lake City.

In no other election in US history has the audience had such a stark reminder that the vice president will be just a heartbeat away from becoming commander in chief, historians and political analysts said.

Trump, 74, and Biden, 77, are the oldest major party presidential nominees the nation has ever seen, and they’re running in the midst of a pandemic that has hit the US as hard as any developed nation.

“This is as intriguing, and perhaps, as important as a vice presidential debate could possibly get,” longtime Democratic pollster Paul Maslin said.

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Biden and Democrats try to strike a balance between compassion and criticism of Trump on coronavirus

WASHINGTON — On a day that rattled the country and the race for the White House, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden tried to strike a delicate balance as he appeared at a Michigan campaign stop wearing a blue surgical face mask.

After noting he was delayed by two coronavirus tests — both negative — he offered his prayers and hopes for a quick recovery to President Trump and the first lady, whose latest tests, the nation learned Friday morning, were positive.

“This is not a matter of politics,” Biden told about 50 socially distanced reporters and union members at a union hall in Grand Rapids, Mich. “It’s a bracing reminder to all of us, that we have to take this virus, seriously.”

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A debate and a rally show Trump’s closing strategy: Tapping into the white grievance of his political bubble

DULUTH, Minn. — President Trump’s failure to forcefully condemn white supremacists during this week’s debate has left even some of his staunch Republican allies urging him to correct course.

Not Bo Ernst.

As the president flew into this city on the shores of Lake Superior for his first post-debate rally, the white retiree from North Mankato was waiting to celebrate him. Ernst, 61, arrived in a pickup truck spray-painted with crossed-out phrases like “BLM” and “woke." He said he was glad that Trump had denounced racial sensitivity training as fundamentally racist during the debate.

“They’re telling the white kids to kneel down in front of the Black kids and beg for forgiveness,” Ernst said, inaccurately describing programming that teaches people about implicit racial biases. “I don’t think so. We have nothing to forgive.”

On Wednesday night, Air Force One touched down on an airfield as the Village People’s “Macho Man” boomed over the speakers. Trump emerged to bask in the wild cheers of supporters and once again leaned into the politics of white grievance.

Trump touted his efforts to limit low-income housing in the suburbs and teach “pro-American” lessons in schools, and attacked Representative Ilhan Omar of Minneapolis, a Somali refugee and an American citizen, as the crowd chanted “lock her up.”

“She tells us how to run our country. Can you believe it?” Trump said.

The back-to-back spectacles of the debate and the rally highlighted a key component, along with voter fraud allegations, of the closing strategy of Trump’s reelection campaign: Hammer home a message about racial division that appeals powerfully to the people inside his political bubble and ignore the shifts in public opinion that made doing so a liability on the national stage Tuesday night.

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Trump isn’t just picking conservatives for the courts. He’s picking young conservatives like Amy Coney Barrett

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is not just a conservative, she’s a relatively young conservative.

At 48, Barrett is the youngest person to be nominated to the nation’s highest court since Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991 and she exemplifies President Trump’s push to seed the federal judiciary with judges who could still be handing down rulings into the second half of the century.

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In the final count, a test for democracy

Experts worry about a nightmare election during a pandemic marred by disenfranchisement and chaos, followed by an acrimonious legal and political dispute over the results that would test the nation’s democratic resolve.

The warnings sound one state or city at a time. This will be an Election Day like no other.

In Denver, the capital of hotly -contested Colorado, intimations of approaching trouble come early. Workers coughing at the city’s ballot-printing facility are the first sign — an outbreak of coronavirus, right before ballots are set to go out.

Elsewhere in town, protests force the closure of an early voting site on a college campus, and an autumn blizzard renders some other voting centers unusable. A nameless malefactor falsely claims to have hacked the voter rolls, sowing unease in a critical hour. And many poll workers fail to show up, fearing COVID, leaving enormous lines of frustrated voters snaking down city blocks.

Across the nation, preemptive legal challenges claiming fraud are launched by both parties. Mailed in ballots pile up; some arrive too late to be counted, and others are thrown out over tiny mistakes. Rival, surly factions collide near polling places and government offices, as voting sites in Black, Latino, and immigrant neighborhoods report harassment and intimidation. Will federal officers move to intervene?

It is a nightmare scenario — nothing that has happened, or necessarily will. It is not a prediction, but rather a sum of the fears of those who closely track how the combination of pandemic and partisan extremes could test this country’s fragile election system as never before.

The Globe’s Washington Bureau staff fanned out last month and consulted voters, voting advocates, officials, and experts all over, including those who “gamed out” the Denver scenario. They see much to worry about, but also voiced optimism that elections officials and average Americans will take steps now to make sure votes are properly cast and counted, laying the groundwork for a peaceful and credible democratic outcome.

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A Republican strategist and a Bernie Sanders adviser find common ground: spurring Latino voters to defeat Trump

WASHINGTON — Republican strategist Mike Madrid and progressive Democratic consultant Chuck Rocha have spent much of their decades in politics on opposite sides of the same cause, helping campaigns reach, court, and organize Latino voters.

But in recent months they’ve formed an unlikely alliance fueled by a new shared goal: Preventing President Trump’s reelection by ensuring his campaign does not lure more support from the crucial and growing Latino slice of the electorate.

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Amid multiple crises, Trump delivers RNC acceptance speech from the White House

WASHINGTON — President Trump officially accepted the Republican nomination Thursday evening and framed the upcoming election as a stark choice between law and order or anarchy.

“At no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies, or two agendas,” Trump said. “This election will decide whether we save the American Dream, or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.”

Despite the ongoing pandemic, a new flare of police violence that spurred more civil unrest, and a Category 4 hurricane, Republicans worked to project an image of a president firmly in control of what they portrayed as a largely coronavirus-free country on the rise. More than 1,000 supporters packed the White House grounds on Thursday evening to watch his speech, with few masks in sight, in a spectacle that flouted social distancing guidelines.

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Biden accepts nomination, vows to lead nation out of ‘season of darkness'

WILMINGTON, Del. — Joe Biden, a politician born during World War II whose life was twice rocked by tragedy, accepted the Democratic nomination for president Thursday night with a speech that framed the upcoming election as a stark choice between “light” and “darkness” and vowed to unite the country if elected.

From inside a nearly empty convention center room in his home state of Delaware, Biden vowed to lead Americans out of a “season of darkness in America” that’s been generated by the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic fallout.

“May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here, tonight, as love and hope and light join in the battle for the soul of the nation,” Biden said.

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As Kamala Harris faces racist and sexist online attacks, women’s groups and Democratic operatives say they have her back

WASHINGTON — Not an hour had passed since Senator Kamala Harris made history as the first woman of color to land on a major party’s presidential ticket when political strategist Adrianne Shropshire was already bracing herself for what was sure to come next.

“I am trying to hold on to the joy,” she said, taking in the weight of the moment.

But the racist and sexist attacks on Harris’s gender, identity, and appearance were already rolling in online. False information about her record and criticism of her running mate, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, was circulating, including the erroneous assertion that she is ineligible to serve as president because her parents were immigrants.

For women of color in politics, and specifically Black women, the Internet has been a powerful tool to tell their own stories and circumvent the traditional, predominantly white media establishment that too often ignores their campaigns or provides coverage that plays to racist or sexist stereotypes.

But in recent years, Black women have become frequent targets of an onslaught of online hate from domestic and foreign perpetrators whose tactics have become more sophisticated and harder to trace, disinformation and media analysts said.

This presidential election, Harris — whose committed fans refer to themselves as the “KHive” (a nod to Beyoncé’s “BeyHive”) — won’t be alone to fight her battles. An online campaign has emerged to defend her from the attacks: #WeHaveHerBack.

“We are prepared and have been preparing for this moment,” said Shropshire, founder of the political action committee BlackPAC. “We are preparing precisely because we think it’s going to be very ugly.”

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Biden’s running mate is Kamala Harris, first woman of color on major party’s ticket

WASHINGTON — Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden made history Tuesday by tapping Senator Kamala Harris of California to be his running mate, elevating the first Black and Asian Pacific American ever to that role ahead of next week’s party convention.

Biden announced the long-awaited decision via Twitter, calling Harris “a fearless fighter for the little guy and one of the country’s finest public servants.” His campaign said the two will deliver remarks together Wednesday in Wilmington, Del., then attend a virtual fund-raiser.

Harris said in a tweet that she was “honored” to join Biden’s ticket, declaring he “can unify the American people because he’s spent his life fighting for us. And as president, he’ll build an America that lives up to our ideals.”

Harris, 55, the former attorney general of California and the only Black woman in the US Senate, clashed with Biden on the issue of race during her short-lived presidential run last year. But she later shot to the top of his vice presidential list as he vowed to pick a woman and underscored the importance of experience.

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Devastated by multiple tragedies, a border city seeks a bridge to the future

EL PASO — The El Paso Del Norte International Bridge, known as the Santa Fe, winds from downtown over the mural-splashed concrete edges of a parched Rio Grande, the liveliest of five arteries connecting this city at the western edge of Texas with Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Thousands come across the bridge each way, for school or work, to shop, dine, and visit family in a region where the United States and Mexico have historically been as close as relatives. That intimacy was shattered one year ago Monday, when a white supremacist unleashed a terror attack against Latinos in a Walmart in El Paso, killing 23 people in one of the deadliest mass shootings in recent US history.

Many drew a direct line from the violence to the rhetoric of President Trump. During his campaign and presidency, he has vilified Mexicans and rallied supporters with his signature promise of a wall along the US-Mexico border.

But this isn’t a story about a wall. It centers on a bridge — one that is a focal point in a city at the intersection of major crises facing the United States.

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On top of battling Trump, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is among the Black female mayors navigating a new political landscape

WASHINGTON — Over 16 years in politics, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser cultivated a reputation as a measured, pro-business technocrat adept at the less flashy aspects of government: managing the budget, spurring development, and addressing the concerns of a city which is home to transient federal workers and a thriving — and largely Black — middle-class constituency.

But in a matter of months Bowser, 47, has catapulted toward the front of the national stage, as she has grappled with the pandemic, pushed for D.C. statehood, and become an outspoken critic of President Trump and his aggressive response to protests against racism and police brutality. Her boldest retort — “Black Lives Matter” painted in bright, yellow capital letters on two blocks of asphalt leading up to the White House — has been imitated in other cities.

For the Black women who see themselves or their dreams in her political journey, she is a powerhouse and fellow sister in the fight against the racism and sexism.

“I applaud her wholeheartedly,” Baton Rouge, La., Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said of Bowser’s efforts to take on the president and the racism that permeates society. “As an African American woman, I don’t think you tolerate it, you have to confront it, which I think is what Mayor Bowser has done.”

And yet, Bowser is also part of an old guard of Black mayors and city officials who came of age politically in another season of the civil rights struggle and find themselves now on the front lines in a time of protest that is, and feels, very different. Focused on ensuring economic growth, low crime rates, and other broadly beneficial policies, this seasoned cohort of leaders is increasingly out of sync with energized multiracial and multigenerational coalitions of young people and progressive activists demanding that they do more to uplift the most vulnerable, reign in police, and overthrow policies that are disproportionately depriving Black and Latino residents of their livelihoods.

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All migrant children must be released from US detention because of coronavirus. Some parents fear that could mean separation

WASHINGTON ― She lost her first child while pregnant in her native Haiti when armed men raped and beat her for speaking out against the country’s human rights abuses.

She thought she would find safety in Santiago, Chile, where she fled to join her husband. But their second child barely survived after she was forced to give birth to him on a city street when hospital workers denied her medical care because she is Haitian.

The racism and violence sent them fleeing to the United States, but they’re still not safe. The couple is fighting deportation from inside a Pennsylvania detention center, and now a judge’s ruling and the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration approach is forcing the couple and dozens of other immigrants to make a cruel choice.

A federal judge has ordered the release of immigrant children in the nation’s three family detention centers by Friday because of the coronavirus outbreak and possible violations of public health practices at the facilities. But immigration officials aren’t expected to allow their parents to leave with them.

So the parents must decide: abandon their asylum claims and face imminent deportation with their children to countries where their lives are in danger or allow their children to be released to a sponsor or relative here and risk separation if the parents are later deported.

“The thought of being separated from my child is literally killing me,” the woman said, her voice shaking with emotion on a phone call from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Berks County Family Residential Center this week. She asked that her name be withheld out of concern for her safety.

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Trump is projecting a sunny vision of a vanquished virus. But as case counts rise, that strategy is crashing into reality

WASHINGTON — The daily number of new coronavirus cases in the country continued to top a troubling 60,000 over the weekend, led by an outbreak in Florida, while California on Monday became the latest large state to significantly reverse its reopening.

It’s an urgent public health crisis that is dominating the country’s attention. But President Trump’s focus mostly has been elsewhere.

He has no coronavirus-related events on his public schedule this week, instead holding events on “rolling back regulations,” infrastructure, and praising law enforcement officers. On Twitter, Trump spent the past few days delivering his thoughts about how often he plays golf, his Friday night commutation of the jail sentence of his friend Roger Stone, the border wall, the “lamestream” media and recent polls.

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Back to the Battleground: Examining four crucial states in 2020

The four states pivotal to electing Donald Trump occupy special ground on America's electoral map, right on the fault line where the political and economic priorities of the East meet the concerns and sensibilities of the nation's old industrial core. Between the Democratic Party and the voters of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin there was a failure of understanding in 2016, and Trump emerged as the answer. Will that history repeat in 2020? The Globe dispatched reporters all over this varied, fascinating, and critical turf to seek the stories of people and communities and explore what may have changed for them since the last election.

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In DACA ruling, Sonia Sotomayor shows she’s ‘a voice of one’ on systemic racism on the most conservative Supreme Court in decades

WASHINGTON ― Along with the Supreme Court’s majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered a widely celebrated ruling this month that temporarily kept in place an Obama-era program shielding hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation. But in her own short and piercing partially concurring opinion, she went further than any of her colleagues.

Sotomayor declared the court erred by rejecting claims that anti-Mexican and anti-Latino racial hostility was at the root of President Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative.

“I would not so readily dismiss the allegation that an executive decision disproportionately harms the same racial group that the President branded as less desirable mere months earlier,” she wrote, citing Trump’s own statements likening Mexican immigrants to “‘people that have lots of problems,’ ‘the bad ones,’ and ‘criminals, drug dealers, [and] rapists.’”

Trump rode to the White House on an overtly anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim platform. His two picks for the Supreme Court — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — have made it the most conservative in more than 75 years and a poor venue to challenge systematic racial bias, legal experts said. But Sotomayor, a liberal who is the first and only Hispanic justice, has emerged as a sharp, steady and often lonely critic of administration policies she sees as clearly motivated by racial and ethnic discrimination — and of her colleagues’ willingness to look the other way.

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Kamala Harris rises to a top Democratic VP contender despite long concerns about her criminal justice past

WASHINGTON — As protests continued after the killing of George Floyd, community organizers in a recent virtual town hall pressed California Senator Kamala Harris on what should be done about racist cops and whether Congress would be “a wet blanket” on the hopes of young activists clamoring for big change.

In a warm but direct tone, the moderators also hit on perhaps the most significant concern regarding Harris as a top potential running mate for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden: How can people trust you to change the criminal justice system when, as California’s attorney general for six years, you were part of that system?

For Harris, the question wasn’t new. She’s faced similar probing in recent years, first as a Senate candidate in 2016, then during her presidential run last year. Both campaigns came after earlier waves of Black Lives Matter demonstrations opened the way for more critical examination of the nation’s laws on crime, justice, and punishment.

Now, after Floyd died while begging for breath as a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes, Democratic voters are grappling with their own question: With America at a tipping point over police brutality and institutional racism, will voters see Harris’s law enforcement past as an asset or a liability?

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