The second debate is here and it's clear where the Republican presidential hopefuls stand on the big issues. With a long year ahead, it's still too early to know which issues will matter most at the ballot box, but GOP candidates aren't waiting around to deliver their pitches. Watch the below videos to hear each candidate's carefully crafted messages.

Abortion

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Donald Trump’s dominance over the Republican primary field is on the precipice of no return. Fox News is approaching this week's debate as if it's now or never for everyone else.

“It's crunch time for them,” Fox News host Dana Perino told POLITICO ahead of Wednesday’s debate. “They have supporters and donors who want to see a breakout moment.”

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Top Republican donors shopping for a candidate not named Donald Trump had high hopes that Ron DeSantis would be their savior. Then it was Tim Scott who caught their eye. More recently, Nikki Haley has left them optimistic they could avert their nightmare outcome.

But increasingly, it’s become evident to a large segment of the donor class that salvation isn’t coming. And in a lopsided primary, their money matters less than ever.

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A major liberal group has drawn up a multimillion dollar plan to make Joe Biden cooler online. And the initiative has the blessing of a top White House official.

The organization, ProgressNow, is launching a $70 million project to help the president and down-ballot Democrats win the war for voters’ digital attention. The idea is to create, in their own words, an “echo chamber” on the left. At its heart, it is an effort to compete with one they say already operates on all cylinders on the right.

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North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is making a last-minute charge to the primary debate stage next week.

Burgum appears to have qualified for the second GOP debate, which is on Wednesday in California, according to POLITICO’s analysis.

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It was once unthinkable for a Democrat running statewide in a red state like Kentucky to win on abortion. Now, in the final stretch of a campaign to defend the governor's mansion, Democrats are betting hard that they can ride it to victory.

The investment in abortion rights messaging comes after Democrats have seen the issue deliver for them electorally again and again — especially after a blowout victory in conservative-leaning Ohio in a proxy war over abortion rights just last month.

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Special counsel Jack Smith has added a veteran war crimes prosecutor — who served as Smith’s deputy during his stint at the Hague — to his team as it prepares to put former President Donald Trump on trial in Washington and Florida.

Alex Whiting worked alongside Smith for three years, helping prosecute crimes against humanity that occurred in Kosovo in the late 1990s. The Yale-educated attorney also worked as a prosecutor with the International Criminal Court from 2010 to 2013. He has taught law classes at Harvard since 2007 as well, hired as an assistant professor by then-Dean Elena Kagan — now a Supreme Court justice — and rising to a visiting professorship in 2013.

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SAUGUS, Mass. — Massachusetts Republicans just handed Donald Trump another win in his quest to tilt state delegate-selection rules in his favor.

Republican state committee members in this Super Tuesday state voted unanimously on Thursday night to pass a primary delegate plan that keeps a winner-take-all threshold likely to benefit Trump.

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Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley laced into Donald Trump in a speech laying out her economic plan on Friday, faulting the former president for “reckless spending.”

“Joe Biden is proving reckless spending is the road to socialism. But he's not the only culprit," the former South Carolina governor said in a speech in New Hampshire, which focused on tax cuts and reducing spending. "Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Barack Obama added more to our national debt than the previous 42 presidents combined.”

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This is the third story of a five-part series diving into the rise of the anti-vaccine political movement.

Ron DeSantis rose to national fame as the Covid-skeptical governor of Florida — giving voice to people frustrated by lockdowns, wary of facemasks and irate over vaccine mandates.

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SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — The shadowboxing between one former Republican president and another’s legacy was bursting out into the open.

On one side of the country, Donald Trump was airing his vision of a “lost” and weakened “nation in decline.” On the other — just days before a debate at the Reagan Library here that Trump is not expected to attend — keepers of Ronald Reagan’s flame were calling Trump a “spoiled brat in a sandbox,” or “Voldemort.”

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is losing his clout in Florida.

College boards, stacked with DeSantis appointees, are rejecting job candidates with ties to the governor.

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PITTSBURGH — Dave McCormick really wants you to know he’s from Pennsylvania.

Flanked by two official state flags as he launched his second Senate campaign on Thursday in a museum devoted to western Pennsylvania history and named after the iconic Pittsburgh Heinz family, McCormick offered up a detailed family history to a cheering crowd. His ancestors had been in the state for some 200 years, he said. His dad was the state’s chancellor for higher education. He, himself, was a proud Bloomsburg High School Panther.

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Former Detroit Police Chief James Craig will enter the race for Michigan’s open Senate seat in the first week of October, setting the stage for a messy Republican primary in a state that’s already tough territory for the GOP.

Craig has been inching closer to a run for months but he is nearly ready to launch, according to two people familiar with his plans who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them. His decision will come as unwelcome — though not unsurprising — news to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has been trying to whittle down the GOP field. The committee recruited former Rep. Mike Rogers, who launched a run earlier this month.

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A powerful network of liberal donors is joining the push to stop No Labels’ threatened plan to launch a third-party presidential run — warning major political funders to stay away from the group.

The donors club, Democracy Alliance, shared its thinking about the bipartisan organization’s operation exclusively with POLITICO. Democrats have grown increasingly concerned that an independent No Labels ticket would function as a spoiler and help former President Donald Trump or another Republican candidate defeat President Joe Biden in 2024.

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In just the last week, Donald Trump called Florida's six-week abortion ban "terrible," refused to endorse national restrictions, blamed abortion opponents for Republicans' 2022 election disappointments and pledged to compromise with Democrats on the issue if elected.

Anti-abortion groups can’t agree on what to do about it.

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Donald Trump has said many shocking things in his time, but perhaps none that should have been as shocking to a key element of his political base than his abortion comments on “Meet the Press” last weekend.

Asked by moderator Kristen Welker if he’d sign a 15-week abortion ban at the federal level, he remained steadfastly non-committal. Trump insisted instead that he “would sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something, and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years.”

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This is the second story of a five-part series diving into the rise of the anti-vaccine political movement.

The Covid-19 pandemic eroded trust in science. The 2024 election, public health officials fear, may make it worse.

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Ron DeSantis is in freefall in New Hampshire.

The Florida GOP governor, who once polled ahead of former President Donald Trump in the first primary state, has now fallen solidly back into the pack, competing in a crowded race with biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for second place in a new survey.

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Tim Scott’s campaign is moving to tamp down expectations for next week’s presidential primary debate, while seeking to calm donors’ nerves about the lack of movement in national polls.

“I’d encourage you to remember that these nights are merely a single moment in time,” Scott’s campaign manager, Jennifer DeCasper, wrote in a memo to donors obtained by POLITICO. “Any candidate who hopes to truly capitalize on it must be disciplined and built for the long haul.”

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