Vice President Harris debates former President Trump tonight.

It's their only scheduled meeting, and it comes as early voting dates approach. How can each candidate make the case that they're the change people want?

I'm E. Martinez with Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News. Israeli forces struck an area where Palestinians were told they'd find safety. Israel contends it targeted Hamas fighters in a place where people were living in tents. It's our producer stood by the bomb craters after the strike. What did he see?

Also, what does police body cam footage reveal about the officers who removed Tyreek Hill from his car? Get out. What part of the problem do you understand? They handcuffed The NFL Star shortly before a game. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.

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The last time presidential candidates met for a debate, it transformed the presidential campaign.

Now, one candidate has changed, and vice President Harris meets former President Trump for their first and only scheduled meeting. An NPR, CBS News, Marist Poll shows a statistical dead heat, and close to one-third of those responding say tonight's debate will help them decide on their vote.

Npr's Frank Ordonias and Scott Horsley will be watching and are here to help us sort through the Thanks, gentlemen. Good morning.

Good morning.

I'm thinking about that finding that 30% or so of those responding say the debate will help them decide on their vote. I guess there aren't nearly so many undecided voters, but there are people who are still assessing Kamala Harris, the newer candidate here. What does she bring to the debate that Joe Biden couldn't in that disastrous debate in June?

Steve, frankly, she's younger. She has more energy, and she's less likely to struggle when Trump attacks her. As a former prosecutor, she also hold Trump to account in a way that Biden couldn't and didn't. Biden didn't call out Trump's inability to answer questions. He didn't call out his lies, any missteps. Also, let's just point out that Harris is looking to keep this momentum going after her really big explosion onto the scene. She's still seeking to define herself in the eyes of voters, trying to show that she can be the one to chart a new course for the country. She needs to show that she can be presidential, that a woman can be President. As for Trump, I'll just point out that he wants to end what they see as this extended honeymoon. He wants to paint her as just the same as Biden and tie her to his most controversial policies while presenting himself as a change candidate.

And Scott Horsley, I guess we should just note that although Harris has improved in polling compared to Joe Biden, it's still very, very, very close. And voters' top concern is the economy for which they tend to blame the incumbent administration. How do you expect the candidates to lean on Well, based on what we've heard elsewhere on the campaign trail, I imagine Trump will try to paint Harris as responsible for a lot of the inflation that people are unhappy about.

I imagine Harris will try to paint Trump as somebody who cuts taxes for the rich but doesn't do much for the middle class. And both candidates might talk about tariffs. Sweoping tariffs are a centerpiece of Trump's economic platform. Talking in New York last week, they seem to be his solution to just about every problem. Harris might remind people that Trump's tariffs in the first term invited a lot of retaliation from trading partners and wound up hurting US farmers and other exporters.

In addition to talking routinely about tariffs, Trump talks about domestic energy, a traditional energy drill, baby drill, that thing.

Yeah, we may hear more from him on that tonight. Harris could come back and saying, Look, the United States is already producing a record amount of oil and natural gas while also boosting its production of clean energy like wind and solar.

Us is the world's number one oil producer right now. Now, more broadly, Do people tell Polsters they're feeling a little more confident or less bad about the economy than they were a few months ago? What's the overall economic report card?

It is still chugging along. Employers are not adding jobs as fast as they had been, but the unemployment rate is still quite low, 4.2%. Inflation has cooled off considerably, although prices are still higher than most people would like. Gasoline prices are a bright spot. They're down about 50 cents a gallon from a year ago. But grocery bills are still pretty high, and we know that's a source of frustration operation for a lot of people. Americans are still spending money, though, and as long as that's the case, the economy is going to continue to bob along. What people aren't doing is saving a lot of money. The savings rate dropped to just 2.9% this summer. A lot of the extra savings that had piled up during the pandemic are now gone, and some people are relying on credit cards to pay their bills. At today's high interest rates, that's a very costly form of debt.

Aren't interest rates about to start falling, we think?

Yeah, we're pretty sure the Federal Reserve is going to start cutting interest rates next week when policymakers meet, and mortgage rates have already come down a little bit.

Okay, and what does that add up to then when you look at the big picture economic message from each side?

Well, I think Donald Trump is going to paint a dark picture of the US economy, just as he does with immigration and foreign policy, and he'll present himself as the would-be rescuer. There's a sizable constituency that buys into that narrative. Even back in 2020, a lot of voters gave Trump an edge on the economy, even though unemployment had soared to almost when the pandemic hit. Remember, Trump was the first President since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than when he came in. Harris's challenge will be to remind people about that checkered history and defend the economic record of the Biden administration, while also acknowledging people are unhappy about today's high prices.

Okay, thanks very much, Scott Horsley. Franco Ordonias is still with us, and I'm thinking about the personalities on stage here, Franco. Trump, when the candidates changed, when his opponent changed, he publicly said, They're telling me to speak differently and be more polite. I'm not going to do it. So to what extent, if at all, would he adjust his tone because he is facing a woman?

Yeah, I mean, the campaign insists that he's not going to adjust his tone. It's essentially because she's a woman. But you're absolutely right. I mean, he boasts himself as this great negotiator, but he has really struggled with women, especially women in power who he sees as competition. I mean, you can think of Hillary Clinton, you can think of Nancy Pelosi. He's mean to everyone, of course, but he is different with women. I mean, he criticizes their appearance, he belittles their intelligence. So that's absolutely something I'll be watching for, whether Trump tones down his rhetoric. Another thing I'll just add that I'll be watching for is whether age creeps up in this debate. Biden was considered the old candidate in the last debate, but Trump is only a few years younger, and his rambling speeches have been getting a lot more attention recently now that Biden is out. So I'll be watching for that as well to look to see if you have more tangents and whether that leads to questions about his age and fitness for the job.

Has it Trump also been going on his social media platform and elsewhere, by the way, and repeating promises to violate the Constitution, repeating promises to imprison people also?

Yeah. I mean, he's saying he'll prosecute those he says are going to steal the election from him. I mean, he's not giving any evidence of how, but these are tactics that we've seen before where lays the groundwork to claim large-scale voter fraud. This time it is a little bit different, though, with the threat of prison time for folks like the election workers and political operatives and donors to his opponent. I mean, it's really reminiscent of things he has said before when he posted about terminating parts of the Constitution. As for the debate, I anticipate it's going to come up because these are intimidating threats that really have no basis in fact.

And no basis in law. How are the candidates preparing for the debate?

Well, Harris spent several days in Pittsburgh going through traditional debate prep. She's practicing with mock debates. She's working with advisors, studying issues like the economy, but also immigration in Israel, Gaza. Now, Trump, he scoffs that formal debate preparation. He says he prepares by going out on the campaign trail. They've scheduled a bunch of events over the last couple of weeks on the key issues, like the talk at the Economic Club. I will just note that his campaign boasts that Harris can't prepare for Trump, arguing that he's like the legendary boxer, Muhammad Ali, and all full of surprises.

Okay, NPR's Frank Ordonias and Scott Horsley. Thanks to you both.

Thank you.

Good to be with you.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Southern Gaza were told they would find relative safety from Israeli airstrikes in a neighborhood called Al-Mawasi.

It's a densely packed area with hundreds of hence, and that is where the Israeli military struck today. Israel says it was targeting Hamas operations center in the camp, a claim Hamas denies. Gaza officials said the strike killed more than a dozen people.

Npr Sadil Al-Shalchi has been following this. She's in Tel Aviv. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. Okay, I want to pass on a description of what it looked like in this neighborhood that was struck. Our producer Anas Baba was on the scene. What did he see?

Yeah. So Anas rushed over early this morning, and he talked to a number of survivors when he got there. When he got back, he described a chaotic scene. Three massive craters in the middle of the area that he said looked like they were maybe 150 feet deep. Tents were destroyed under rubble. First responders told him that they took all night to pull the bodies out from underneath it. Enes talked to 52-year-old Mahashar. She said that her family went to bed at 11:00 PM last night and then woke up by massive booms about an hour later. Mahashar said she was disoriented. Where am I sleeping? Where am I? She asked herself. Then, after making sure her kids were safe, Mahas said she looked around for her husband, Ahmed, and found him buried under the debris and rubble of the attack. Then she said she had to use her bare hands to dig him out. Mahha said she was screaming her husband's name, Ahmed, Ahmed, until she was able to rescue him.

Okay, so we have this picture of a wife, a woman, pulling her husband out of the rubble and rescuing him. In this case, a number of other people were killed. Can you pull back now from that scene? What was this neighborhood? What was this area exactly?

Right. El Mouassi is what Israel designated as a humanitarian zone. It's a place where they say Palestinians can find shelter, some resources. It's a narrow strip of land that's about eight square miles outside Khan Younes. And overnight, Palestinians said that there was no warning to civilians to evacuate before this strike. And it's worth noting that the Israeli military normally says when it's an evacuation, but this time in a statement, it didn't say anything about that. This is the deadliest strike in the south of Gaza since a brief polio campaign that ended a couple of days ago. During the vaccinations, there was a brief pause, but now it obviously appears that the bombardment has resumed. If Al-Mouassi sounds a bit familiar, it's because the Israeli military struck there in July and killed at least 90 Palestinians, according to health officials. It was also a humanitarian zone back then. So, yeah, today's Today's strike wasn't the first time that the area has seen one. To Palestinians, it really enforces the impression that nowhere is safe in Gaza, even those that are designated safe.

Where do ceasefire negotiations stand?

If you've been trying to follow the negotiations and feel a little dizzy, I Don't blame you. It's been months and months of talking. Let's fast forward to now. Last month, there were some real impatients from international mediators. President Biden and the leaders of Qatar and Egypt said that they had presented a final bridging proposal to Israel and Hamas. Israel and Hamas have been blaming each other for stalling the talks, not budging on some major sticking points, which is on brand for them since these talks began. But then over the weekend, the CIA head, Bill Burns, said that the US is making now a new ceasefire proposal to end the war. He said it hasn't been presented to either side yet, but he's hoping it'll come, in the coming days. So the final deal didn't end up being final after all.

Okay. Npr Sadil Al-Shalji, thanks so much for the update. Really appreciate it.

You're welcome.

Bodycamp footage released by the Miami Dade Police Department shows the encounter between officers and NFL star, Tyreek Hill on Sunday.

The Dolphin Star was on his way to the game when a traffic stop for speeding escalated quickly.

Get out.

What part of your knowledge do you understand?

Npr Sports Correspondent, Becky Sullivan has watched the footage. Becky, so what did the video show?

Well, it starts like what seems like a pretty normal traffic stop. You see a pair of officers sitting on motorcycles, monitoring game day traffic. They're just right outside Hard Rock Stadium near Miami. It's a few hours before kickoff of Sunday's game, before the Dolphins and the Jacksonville Jaguars. And so you can see fans walking around in jerseys, and a black sports car zips by. The two policemen immediately flip on their lights to pursue him. It's Tyree Kill. He pulls over, he rolls his window down a bit to hand over his license and then rolls his window back up, which prompts this verbal disagreement between Hill and the police over whether to leave the window up or down. And soon, one officer decides that Hill needs to get out of the car.

Yeah, and the footage shows the officer opening Tyeik Hill's door to get him out of the car. So how did it escalate to that?

Yeah, I mean, it was really this disagreement over the window thing that you heard in this clip that you played just now. This officer really just decides it's time to come out, opens the door. He uses his You can see in the video to forcefully yank Hill out of the car, holding the back of Hill's head, pressing him to the ground. A minute or two later, after he's in handcuffs, there's another little disagreement when an officer has walked Hill over to the curb and asks him to sit down, which Hill declines. That same officer who pulled him out of the car then runs over and forces Hill to the ground. You can just hear the tenor of the interaction in this clip and throughout the videos.

I just had surgery on my knee, bro. I just had surgery on my knee, bro. I just had surgery on my knee, bro. I did have surgery in your ears when we got there, what you went to know. Chill, bro.

There's a lot of officers involved. There's maybe at least half a dozen. Most of them are much more calm. But really, honestly, it was pretty surprising to see how quickly it escalated. Ultimately, this is all over Hill going perhaps 55 or 60 miles an hour on a road with a speed limit of 40 miles an hour. And he ends up just getting excited for careless driving and failure to wear a seatbelt.

What did Miami police have to say so far?

Well, department officials are tight-lipped, as you might imagine. The investigation is ongoing. They say they say. They did release this video last night. They say, In the interest of keeping the public informed, one officer who is not yet been identified has been placed on administrative duty.

Okay, and what about Tyric Hill and the Dolphins.

Well, Hill's lawyer says they will pursue legal action. One thing that Hill said last night that I do think is worth probably bringing up is he was talking in an interview on CNN after the footage had come out, and he explained why he'd kept that window rolled up, which was this initial disagreement that seemed to prompt the dramatic reaction from the officer. Basically, Hill explains that he wanted to keep it up as a way of not making a scene. So all these passers-by fans walking to the stadium, he was worried they would all notice it was him and just caused some commotion. And so I should also note that it wasn't just Hill involved in all of this because on the way to the game, two other Dolphins players stopped, saw what was happening, got out of their own cars and tried to de-escalate, tied into Johnny Smith and defensive lineman and Kaleas Campbell, who, worth noting, won the NFL's Walter Payton Man of the Year Award back in 2019 for his own charitable work. So they're seen on the footage, too. You can hear police yelling at them to back away or else be cuffed themselves.

So the Dolphins put out a statement last night commending police for releasing the footage, but they called the officer's conduct, aggressive and violent and urge officials. The Department takes swift and strong action against those officers.

All right, NPR's Becky Sullivan. Thank you.

You're welcome.

That's a first for this Tuesday, September 10th. I'm Steve Inskeep.

I'm Amei Martinez. Stay connected with NPR for full coverage of tonight's presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. You can listen live to the ABC News presidential debate simulcast starting at 9:00 PM Eastern on the NPR app and many NPR stations. Then join us tomorrow on Up First and Morning Edition for analysis and reaction.

Today's Up First was edited by Megan Prantz, Vincent Lee, Russell Lewis, Mohamed El Bardisi, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziyad Batch, Iman Mahani, Nia Dumas, Lindsay Tadi, and Chris Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent and our equally supportive technical director is Zack Coleman. Join us tomorrow.

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