Trump isn’t at the debate, but he’s very clearly on candidates’ minds, with the former president getting direct attacks from Christie, DeSantis, and others for not being present. (Christie’s unforgettable line: “You’re ducking these things... We’re going to call you Donald Duck.”)

But with the opening of the debate so focused on labor and the autoworkers strike, Trump’s campaign is using that ducking as a bragging point, boasting about the fact that Trump is the only one out with autoworkers tonight.

"Amazing that the first question of the debate is about the UAW strike …at this moment where is @realDonaldTrump? He’s in Michigan …talking to striking workers," senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita wrote on X.

However, as ABC News has previously reported, the place Trump spoke at tonight is one of the few non-union auto-parts plants in Michigan, according to AFL-CIO, and very few of those who came to see Trump in Clinton Township, Michigan, Wednesday evening that ABC News spoke with were on actually on strike.

There are a lot of factors at play over this: Trump’s power in being part of the debate narrative while absent, ongoing labor strikes, and where Republicans show solidarity with labor (and the optics of how they do so). And then candidates like Christie add some nicknames to the mix.

-ABC News’ Soorin Kim, Lalee Ibssa, and Oren Oppenheim

Ramaswamy was asked about whether parents have the right to know about children’s identification in schools. According to a Selzer & Co./Grinnell College poll conducted in March, 71 percent of Republicans say it’s “very important” for a teacher to notify parents if a middle school student has adopted a gender identity different from the one assigned to them at birth.
—Analysis by 538

DeSantis is asked about the Florida education guidelines on teaching slavery. He immediately calls it a hoax and attacks Vice President Kamala Harris (America's first Black vice president), which has been his campaign's strategy on this issue since it first broke. The moderators are quick to tee up a discussion between DeSantis and Scott, though, since the South Carolina senator was among the most outspoken Republicans against the DeSantis plan.
-Jacob Rubashkin, 538 contributor

Moderators questioned Haley on "school choice." Seven Republican states, including Florida, passed "universal school choice" this year, which mostly means vouchers for private schools that are available to nearly all students, without income limits. Public school supporters have said these vouchers are a backdoor way of defunding public schools. In most states, states take the per-pupil allocation of tax dollars and give the money directly to parents instead, allowing them to pay for private, religious, or homeschooling courses. In many states the vouchers could go to parents who could otherwise pay for private school, and aren't enough to pay for full tuition for parents who couldn't afford it. The public is divided on these policies, but trust in public schools and public education has been declining, especially among Republicans.
— Analysis by Monica Potts of 538

At PolitiFact, this is our fifth presidential cycle. We’ve published more than 23,000 fact-checks since launching in 2007, all using our Truth-O-Meter, which rates claims on a scale from “True” to “Pants on Fire” false.

If PolitiFact is new to you, there are a couple of rules of the road. First, we don’t fact-check every claim every candidate says. We couldn’t … we’d be dead. We focus on claims that are particularly interesting, in the news or obviously potentially wrong. Our grading scale tries to measure both the literal truth and how voters might interpret a politicians’ words. So if Pence tonight claims that he and Trump “achieved energy independence” in their first three years of office, it can be more complicated to fact-check than you think.

In Pence’s case, yes, the United States did produce more energy than its citizens consumed during the Trump-Pence administration, but that was built on more than a decade of improvements in shale oil and gas production, as well as renewables. And the U.S. did not produce more gasoline than it consumes (which is maybe what you were thinking about). And if that’s not enough, even though the U.S. didn’t use all the energy it produced, it still imported a substantial amount of energy to serve domestic markets.

So far in this cycle, we’ve published more than 50 fact-checks of the GOP candidates. Our checks tend to follow the polling of the race. We'll be drawing on those previous fact-checks, as well as the thousands of other claims we've vetted, throughout the night.
—Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact