In our pre-debate 538/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, we asked likely Republican primary voters to select up to three issues that were most important in determining who they will vote for in the primaries. Economic inequality ranked 17 out of 20 issues, with only 3 percent selecting it.

—Analysis by Holly Fuong of 538

Scott’s claim is misleading. Deaths from fentanyl jumped 23 percent in Biden’s first year in office to more than 70,000, but they’ve been increasing since 2014 and also rose during Trump’s administration.

Although immigration encounters at the southern U.S. border have spiked under Biden’s watch, experts say most of the fentanyl coming into the U.S. from Mexico is coming through legal ports of entry. The vast majority of people sentenced for fentanyl trafficking are U.S. citizens, data shows.
-Analysis by Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact

I'm at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, for the Republican debate tonight and so far it's been a Democrat who's caused the biggest stir in the spin room. California Gov. Gavin Newsom came through for an interview with Univision and a rather lengthy gaggle with the national press corps. He defended his decision to debate DeSantis later this year, defended his presence at a Republican debate in the first place and he answered a question from yours truly.

I asked him about one of the issues that Biden is currently faring worst with the American public on: immigration, and specifically border security. Newsom told me he supports Biden's plan on this issue, but that: “The one thing I would add to it, not what’s wrong with it, is we need to do more on the asylum space as it relates to how the asylum system is being gamed and that is legitimate.”

The first question of the night goes to Scott, who is the subject of a UAW labor complaint for suggesting that striking auto workers should be fired. This time around, he says that the president doesn’t have the authority to fire private-sector workers and then pivots.

Abortion was a big topic in last month’s debate, so we asked about it specifically in this month’s pre-debate 538/Washington Post/Ipsos poll. We asked if a new federal law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy except in the case of rape, incest, or when the mother's life is in danger, to which 57 percent of likely Republican primary voters said that they’d support the policy and 36 percent said they’d oppose it (8 percent didn’t know or skipped the question).

However, when we asked who they think should make the decision whether a woman can have an abortion, 54 percent said the decision should be left to the woman and her doctor, while 44 percent said abortion should be regulated by law.

—Analysis by Holly Fuong of 538