Today in history:

On Sept. 10, 1991, the Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. The proceedings would become a watershed moment in the discussion of sexual harassment when Anita Hill, a law professor who had previously worked under Thomas, came forward with allegations against him.

Also on this date:

In 1608, John Smith was elected president of the Jamestown colony council in Virginia.

In 1960, running barefoot, Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia won the Olympic marathon in Rome, becoming the first Black African to win Olympic gold.

In 1960, Hurricane Donna, a dangerous Category 4 storm blamed for 364 deaths, struck the Florida Keys.

In 1963, 20 Black students entered Alabama public schools following a standoff between federal authorities and Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace.

In 1979, four Puerto Rican nationalists imprisoned for a 1954 attack on the U.S. House of Representatives and a 1950 attempted killing of President Harry S. Truman were freed from prison after being granted clemency by President Jimmy Carter.

In 1987, Pope John Paul II arrived in Miami, where he was welcomed by President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan as he began a 10-day tour of the United States.

In 2005, teams of forensic workers and cadaver dogs fanned out across New Orleans to collect the corpses left behind by Hurricane Katrina.

In 2008, the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) was powered up for the first time, successfully firing the first beam of protons through its 17-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) underground ring tunnel.

In 2022, King Charles III was officially proclaimed Britain’s monarch in a pomp-filled ceremony two days after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

Today’s Birthdays:

• Scientist-author Jared Diamond is 87.
• Jazz/funk musician Roy Ayers is 84.
• Singer José Feliciano is 79.
• Former Canadian first lady Margaret Trudeau is 76.
• Political commentator Bill O’Reilly is 75.
• Rock musician Joe Perry (Aerosmith) is 74.
• Actor Amy Irving is 71.
• Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., is 70.
• Actor-director Clark Johnson is 70.
• Actor Kate Burton is 67.
• Film director Chris Columbus is 66.
• Actor Colin Firth is 64.
• Cartoonist Alison Bechdel is 64.
• Baseball Hall of Famer Randy Johnson is 61.
• Actor Raymond Cruz is 60.
• Rapper Big Daddy Kane is 56.
• Film director Guy Ritchie is 56.
• Actor Ryan Phillippe (FIHL’-ih-pee) is 50.
• Ballerina Misty Copeland is 42.
• Former MLB All-Star Joey Votto is 41.

Pearson is the founder and president of Project 1619, a nonprofit that has played a crucial role in correcting the narrative about the arrival of enslaved Africans in English-speaking North America. The organization notes the first enslaved Africans, who were kidnapped from Angola, first landed at Point Comfort, today’s Fort Monroe in Hampton, not in Jamestown.

“Calvin’s passing is a monumental loss,” said Melinda Steele, Project 1619’s vice president. She said “correcting the narrative” of the first Africans in America was a passion of his.

“We’re going to miss him dearly,” Steele said. “He was such a pioneer.”

Pearson was born in Newport News and grew up in Hampton.

Hampton School Board member Ann Stephens Cherry recalled Pearson’s longstanding commitment to preserving Black history. Friends since the 1960s, Cherry remembered when Phenix High School — a school for Black students during segregation — was renamed Pembroke High School in 1968 and the school staff started throwing trophies and other Phenix memorabilia into the trash. She said Pearson went “dumpster diving” to retrieve as many trophies and awards as possible to preserve the school’s history.

“I’ll miss the fact that he was genuine,” she said. “He had no ulterior motive, and what he said, you could take it to the bank. Didn’t matter whether you agreed with him or not. He was genuine. You don’t have a lot of that now.”

Project 1619 also researched and promoted African history before slavery and Hampton’s African-American history.

Fort Monroe Authority Chief Executive Officer Glenn Oder described Pearson as “dogmatic and persistent” about the importance of identifying Point Comfort as the site where the first Africans landed. Oder said he was one of the driving forces behind promoting an accurate narrative and a “new understanding of history.”

Pearson was also instrumental in development and planning of the African Landing Memorial — an ongoing $9 million project to honor the first documented Africans brought to English North America in 1619. Oder said Pearson was involved in committee work, site selection, the design process and the selection of the artist.

“He wasn’t afraid to share his position,” Oder said. “He wasn’t afraid to express his opinion if something wasn’t going in the direction that he felt would correctly tell the story. He was a force of nature when it came to telling the story.”

Pearson was also chairman of the National Juneteenth Grassroots Enslavement Legacy Commission and a frequent speaker at conferences nationwide — sharing his knowledge about the horrors and long-lasting impact of slavery.

Project 1619 board member Larry Gibson, who grew up with Pearson, commended his lifelong friend for his advocacy in telling truthful history.

Due to human trafficking and slavery, Gibson said it felt like the culture and history of Black people living in America were being erased. He believes Pearson’s work highlighting the history and culture of Africans before enslavement and the acknowledgment of “where we came from” created a space for African descendants to find reconciliation and healing.

After decades of friendship, Gibson said he will miss having one-on-one conversations with Pearson.

“I’ll miss the personal engagement with him, but the things that we’ve shared and the things that he’s done — that’ll be with me for the rest of my life,” he said.

William “Bill” Wiggins, who co-founded Project 1619, is the organization’s new president.

“To have (Pearson) gone is going to be a huge void, but Project 1619, Inc. will continue and move forward,” Steele said. “We’re going to continue with his legacy.”

A funeral service will be held 11 a.m. Tuesday at First Baptist Church of Hampton. Entombment will follow at Hampton Memorial Gardens.

Josh Janney, joshua.janney@virginiamedia.com

Police responded to the 6100 block of Old Townpoint Road following a report of a shooting at about 2 p.m. Officers found a man with a gunshot wound in his chest.

The victim later died at a hospital. The investigation is ongoing.

No further information was made available as of Monday evening.

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA on Monday approved next month’s launch to Jupiter’s moon Europa after reviewing the spacecraft’s ability to withstand the intense radiation there.

Questions about the reliability of the transistors on the Europa Clipper spacecraft arose earlier this year after similar problems cropped up elsewhere. With the tight launch window looming, NASA rushed to conduct tests to verify that the electronic parts could survive the $5 billion mission to determine whether the suspected ocean beneath Europa’s icy crust might be suitable for life.

Liftoff remains scheduled for Oct. 10 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. NASA has three weeks to launch the spacecraft before standing down for more than a year to await another proper planetary alignment; the spacecraft needs to swing past Mars and then Earth for gravity assists.

Project manager Jordan Evans said the transistors — located in circuits across the entire spacecraft — are expected to degrade when Europa Clipper is exposed to the worst of the radiation during the 49 flybys of the moon. But they should recover during the three weeks between each encounter, said Evans of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Teams from labs across the country came to that conclusion following round-the-clock testing over the past four months.

The project has “high confidence we can complete the original mission for exploring Europa as planned,” Evans said. “We are ready for Jupiter.”

It will take six years for Europa Clipper to reach Jupiter, where it will orbit the gas giant every three weeks. Dozens of flybys are planned of Europa as close as 16 miles (25 kilometers), allowing cameras and other instruments — including ice-penetrating radar — to map virtually the entire moon.

Europa Clipper is the biggest spacecraft ever built by NASA to investigate another planet, spanning more than 100 feet (30 meters) with its solar panels unfurled.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

When the Indian Health Service can’t provide medical care to Native Americans, the federal agency can refer them elsewhere. But each year, it rejects tens of thousands of requests to fund those appointments, forcing patients to go without treatment or pay daunting medical bills out of their own pockets.

In theory, Native Americans are entitled to free health care when the Indian Health Service foots the bill at its facilities or sites managed by tribes. In reality, the agency is chronically underfunded and understaffed, leading to limited medical services and leaving vast swaths of the country without easy access to care.

Its Purchased/Referred Care program aims to fill gaps by paying outside providers for services patients might be unable to get through an agency-funded clinic or hospital, such as cancer treatment or pregnancy care. But resource shortages, complex rules, and administrative fumbles severely impede access to the referral program, according to patients, elected officials, and people who work with the agency.

The Indian Health Service, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, serves about 2.6 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives.

Native Americans qualify for the referred-care program if they live on tribal land — only 13% do — or within their nation’s “delivery area,” which usually includes surrounding counties. Those who live in another tribe’s delivery area are eligible in limited cases, while Native Americans who live beyond such borders are excluded.

Eligible patients aren’t guaranteed funding or timely help, however. Some of the Indian Health Service’s 170 service units exhaust their annual pool of money or reserve it for the most serious medical concerns.

Referred-care programs denied or deferred nearly $552 million in spending for about 120,000 requests from eligible patients in fiscal year 2022.

As a result, Native Americans might forgo care, increasing the risk of death or serious illness for people with preventable or treatable medical conditions.

The problem isn’t new. Federal watchdog agencies have reported concerns with the program for decades.

Connie Brushbreaker, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, has been denied or waitlisted for funding at least 14 times since 2018. She said it doesn’t make sense that the agency sometimes refuses to pay for treatment that will later be approved once a health problem becomes more serious and expensive.

“We try to do this preventative stuff before something gets to the point where you need surgery,” said Brushbreaker, who lives on her tribe’s reservation in South Dakota.

Many Native Americans say the U.S. government is violating its treaties with tribal nations, which often promised to provide for the health and welfare of tribes in return for their land.

“I keep having my elders here saying, ‘There’s treaty rights that say they’re supposed to be able to provide these services to us,’” said Lyle Rutherford, a council member for the Blackfeet Nation in northwestern Montana who said he also worked at the Indian Health Service for 11 years.

Native Americans have high rates of diseases compared with the general population, and a median age of death that’s 14 years younger than that of white people. Researchers who have studied the issue say many problems stem from colonization and government policies such as forcing Indigenous people into boarding schools and isolated reservations and making them give up healthy traditions, including bison hunting and religious ceremonies. They also cite an ongoing lack of health funding.

Congress budgeted nearly $7 billion for the Indian Health Service this year, of which roughly $1 billion is set aside for the referred-care program. A committee of tribal health and government leaders has long made funding recommendations that far exceed the agency’s budget. Its latest report says the Indian Health Service needs $63 billion to cover patients’ needs for fiscal year 2026, including $10 billion for referred care.

Brendan White, an agency spokesperson, said improving the referred-care program is a top goal of the Indian Health Service. He said about 83% of the health units it manages have been able to approve all eligible funding requests this year.

White said the agency recently improved how referred-care programs prioritize such requests and it is tackling staff shortages that can slow down the process. An estimated third of positions within the referred-care program were unfilled as of June, he said.

The Indian Health Service also recently expanded some delivery areas to include more people and is studying whether it can afford to create statewide eligibility in the Dakotas.

Jonni Kroll of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana doesn’t qualify for the referred-care program because she lives in Deer Park, Washington, nearly 400 miles from her tribe’s headquarters.

She said tying eligibility to tribal lands echoes old government policies meant to keep Indigenous people in one place, even if it means less access to jobs, education, and health care.

Kroll, 58, said she sometimes worries about the medical costs of aging. Moving to qualify for the program is unrealistic.

“We have people that live all across the nation,” she said. “What do we do? Sell our homes, leave our families and our jobs?”

People applying for funding face a system so complicated that the Indian Health Service created flowcharts outlining the process.

Misty and Adam Heiden, of Mandan, North Dakota, experienced that firsthand. Their nearest Indian Health Service hospital no longer offers birthing services. So, late last year, Misty Heiden asked the referred-care program to pay for the delivery of their baby at an outside facility.

Heiden, 40, is a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, a South Dakota-based tribe, but lives within the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s delivery area. Native Americans who live in another tribe’s area, as she does, are eligible if they have close ties. Even though she is married to a Standing Rock tribal member, Heiden was deemed ineligible by hospital staff.

Now, the family has had to cut into its grocery budget to help pay off more than $1,000 in medical debt.

“It was kind of a slap in the face,” Adam Heiden said.

White, the Indian Health Service spokesperson, said many providers offer educational materials to help patients understand eligibility. But the Standing Rock rules, for example, aren’t fully explained in its brochure.

When patients are eligible, their needs are ranked using a medical priority list.

Connie Brushbreaker’s doctor at the Indian Health Service hospital in Rosebud, South Dakota, said she needed to see an orthopedic surgeon. But hospital staffers said the unit covers only patients at imminent risk of dying.

She said that, at one point, a worker at the referred-care program told her she could handle her pain, which was so intense she had to limit work duties and rely on her husband to put her hair in a ponytail.

“I feel like I am being tossed aside, like I do not matter,” Brushbreaker wrote in an appeal letter. “I am begging you to reconsider.”

The 55-year-old was eventually approved for funding and had surgery this July, two years after injuring her shoulder and four months after her referral.

Patients said they sometimes have trouble reaching referred-care departments due to staffing problems.

Patti Conica, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, needed emergency care after developing a serious infection in June 2023. She said she applied for funding to cover the cost but has yet to receive a decision on her case despite repeated phone calls to referred-care staffers and in-person visits.

“I’ve been given the runaround,” said Conica, 58, who lives in Fort Yates, North Dakota, her tribe’s headquarters.

She now faces more than $1,500 in medical bills, some of which have been turned over to a collection agency.

Tyler Tordsen, a Republican state lawmaker and member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota, says the referred-care program needs more funding but officials could also do a “better job managing their finances.”

Some service units have large amounts of leftover funding. But it’s unclear how much of this money is unspent dollars versus earmarked for approved cases going through billing.

Meanwhile, more tribes are managing their health care facilities — an arrangement that still uses agency money — to try new ways to improve services.

Many also try to help patients receive outside care in other ways. That can include offering free transportation to appointments, arranging for specialists to visit reservations, or creating tribal health insurance programs.

For Brushbreaker, begging for funding “felt like I had to sell my soul to the IHS gods.”

“I’m just tired of fighting the system,” she said.

Have you had an experience navigating the Indian Health Service’s Purchased/Referred Care program that you’d like to share with KFF Health News for our reporting? Tell us here.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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Christina Kashiwada was traveling for work during the summer of 2018 when she noticed a small, itchy lump in her left breast.

She thought little of it at first. She did routine self-checks and kept up with medical appointments. But a relative urged her to get a mammogram. She took the advice and learned she had stage 3 breast cancer, a revelation that stunned her.

“I’m 36 years old, right?” said Kashiwada, a civil engineer in Sacramento, California. “No one’s thinking about cancer.”

About 11,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021 and about 1,500 died. The latest federal data shows the rate of new breast cancer diagnoses in Asian American and Pacific Islander women — a group that once had relatively low rates of diagnosis — is rising much faster than that of many other racial and ethnic groups. The trend is especially sharp among young women such as Kashiwada.

About 55 of every 100,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander women under 50 were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021, surpassing the rate for Black and Hispanic women and on par with the rate for white women, according to age-adjusted data from the National Institutes of Health. (Hispanic people can be of any race or combination of races but are grouped separately in this data.)

The rate of new breast cancer cases among Asian American and Pacific Islander women under 50 grew by about 52% from 2000 through 2021. Rates for AAPI women 50 to 64 grew 33% and rates for AAPI women 65 and older grew by 43% during that period. By comparison, the rate for women of all ages, races, and ethnicities grew by 3%.

Researchers have picked up on this trend and are racing to find out why it is occuring within this ethnically diverse group. They suspect the answer is complex, ranging from cultural shifts to pressure-filled lifestyles — yet they concede it remains a mystery and difficult for patients and their families to discuss because of cultural differences.

Helen Chew, director of the Clinical Breast Cancer Program at UC Davis Health, said the Asian American diaspora is so broad and diverse that simple explanations for the increase in breast cancer aren’t obvious.

“It’s a real trend,” Chew said, adding that “it is just difficult to tease out exactly why it is. Is it because we’re seeing an influx of people who have less access to care? Is it because of many things culturally where they may not want to come in if they see something on their breast?”

There’s urgency to solve this mystery because it’s costing lives. While women in most ethnic and racial groups are experiencing sharp declines in breast cancer death rates, about 12 of every 100,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander women of any age died from breast cancer in 2023, essentially the same death rate as in 2000, according to age-adjusted, provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The breast cancer death rate among all women during that period dropped 30%.

The CDC does not break out breast cancer death rates for many different groups of Asian American women, such as those of Chinese or Korean descent. It has, though, begun distinguishing between Asian American women and Pacific Islander women.

Nearly 9,000 Asian American women died from breast cancer from 2018 through 2023, compared with about 500 Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women. However, breast cancer death rates were 116% higher among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women than among Asian American women during that period.

Rates of pancreatic, thyroid, colon, and endometrial cancer, along with non-Hodgkin lymphoma rates, have also recently risen significantly among Asian American and Pacific Islander women under 50, NIH data show. Yet breast cancer is much more common among young AAPI women than any of those other types of cancer — especially concerning because young women are more likely to face more aggressive forms of the disease, with high mortality rates.

“We’re seeing somewhere almost around a 4% per-year increase,” said Scarlett Gomez, a professor and epidemiologist at the University of California-San Francisco’s Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. “We’re seeing even more than the 4% per-year increase in Asian/Pacific Islander women less than age 50.”

Gomez is a lead investigator on a large study exploring the causes of cancer in Asian Americans. She said there is not yet enough research to know what is causing the recent spike in breast cancer. The answer may involve multiple risk factors over a long period of time.

“One of the hypotheses that we’re exploring there is the role of stress,” she said. “We’re asking all sorts of questions about different sources of stress, different coping styles throughout the lifetime.”

It’s likely not just that there’s more screening. “We looked at trends by stage at diagnosis and we are seeing similar rates of increase across all stages of disease,” Gomez said.

Veronica Setiawan, a professor and epidemiologist at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, said the trend may be related to Asian immigrants adopting some lifestyles that put them at higher risk. Setiawan is a breast cancer survivor who was diagnosed a few years ago at the age of 49.

“Asian women, American women, they become more westernized so they have their puberty younger now — having earlier age at [the first menstrual cycle] is associated with increased risk,” said Setiawan, who is working with Gomez on the cancer study. “Maybe giving birth later, we delay childbearing, we don’t breastfeed — those are all associated with breast cancer risks.”

Moon Chen, a professor at the University of California-Davis and an expert on cancer health disparities, added that only a tiny fraction of NIH funding is devoted to researching cancer among Asian Americans.

Whatever its cause, the trend has created years of anguish for many patients.

Kashiwada underwent a mastectomy following her breast cancer diagnosis. During surgery, doctors at UC Davis Health discovered the cancer had spread to lymph nodes in her underarm. She underwent eight rounds of chemotherapy and 20 sessions of radiation treatment.

Throughout her treatments, Kashiwada kept her ordeal a secret from her grandmother, who had helped raise her. Her grandmother never knew about the diagnosis. “I didn’t want her to worry about me or add stress to her,” Kashiwada said. “She just would probably never sleep if she knew that was happening. It was very important to me to protect her.”

Kashiwada moved in with her parents. Her mom took a leave from work to help take care of her.

Kashiwada’s two young children, who were 3 and 6 at the time, stayed with their dad so she could focus on her recovery.

“The kids would come over after school,” she said. “My dad would pick them up and bring them over to see me almost every day while their dad was at work.”

Kashiwada spent months regaining strength after the radiation treatments. She returned to work but with a doctor’s instruction to avoid lifting heavy objects.

Kashiwada had her final reconstructive surgery a few weeks before COVID lockdowns began in 2020. But her treatment was not finished.

Her doctors had told her that estrogen fed her cancer, so they gave her medicine to put her through early menopause. The treatment was not as effective as they had hoped. Her doctor performed surgery in 2021 to remove her ovaries.

More recently, she was diagnosed with osteopenia and will start injections to stop bone loss.

Kashiwada said she has moved past many of the negative emotions she felt about her illness and wants other young women, including Asian American women like her, to be aware of their elevated risk.

“No matter how healthy you think you are, or you’re exercising, or whatever you’re doing, eating well, which is all the things I was doing — I would say it does not make you invincible or immune,” she said. “Not to say that you should be afraid of everything, but just be very in tune with your body and what your body’s telling you.”

Phillip Reese is a data reporting specialist and an associate professor of journalism at California State University-Sacramento.

This article was produced by KFF Health News , which publishes California Healthline , an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation . Supplemental support comes from the Asian American Journalists Association-Los Angeles through The California Endowment.

(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Sutton’s attorney, Ari Stein, confirmed his client had decided to drop out but didn’t offer a reason for the change of heart. The decision leaves Sutton’s opponent, Mark Bohenstiel, as the only candidate who will appear on the November ballot. Incumbent Jessica Owens is not seeking reelection.

Sutton’s decision came shortly after Virginia Beach Circuit Court Judge Afshin Farashahi declined a request from Bohenstiel for an emergency order that would have prevented Sutton’s name from being included on the ballot as the registrar’s office prepares to send out mail-in ballots and begin early voting next week. Bohenstiel filed a lawsuit last week in which he claimed Sutton had failed to meet all the requirements needed to be eligible to run.

Farashahi’s ruling on Monday, however, was only a temporary measure until a trial on the matter could be held. No trial date was set, but it would have been held before the election.

Bohenstiel’s case centers on the petitions Sutton submitted to qualify for the race. Candidates had to obtain 125 valid signatures from qualified voters in the district. While Bohenstiel’s lawsuit didn’t challenge the authenticity of the signatures, it did question the dates included with some of them, as well as the process followed when the petitions were notarized.

During a hearing Friday before Farashahi, Sutton testified he did his best to follow all the rules for obtaining and submitting signatures. The retired teacher and school administrator said he dated the pages of signatures he collected as Feb. 3, which is when he began gathering them. Some, however, were obtained on Feb. 4 and Feb. 5, he said.

A former student of Sutton’s who attends the University of Virginia helped collect signatures, along with two of his fraternity brothers, Sutton said. A notary public in Charlottesville who notarized the petitions submitted a written statement in which he said the petitions were signed before they were presented to him. In such cases, he wrote, the standard practice is to have the presenters swear to their signatures in the notary’s presence and then re-date them. They weren’t re-dated in this case, he said.

Farashahi said there wasn’t enough evidence presented at last week’s hearing to indicate whether Bohenstiel was likely to succeed at trial.

He also said that while Bohenstiel would suffer “irreparable harm” if Sutton’s name is included on the ballot at this time, and then he’s later determined to be ineligible, the harm to Sutton would be greater if he were kept off the ballot now and then were to prevail at trial.

Jane Harper, jane.harper@pilotonline.com

A school resource officer at Tabb High School learned the student had on Sunday posted on social media a threat to “shoot up the school,” according to a news release. The officer told school administrators about the threat and the student was interviewed.

The student is charged with one felony count of making threats of bodily injury to persons on school property.

Investigators with the York County Sheriff’s Office determined she did not have the means to carry out the threat.

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — It could be a well-rehearsed zinger, a too-loud sigh — or a full performance befuddled enough to shockingly end a sitting president’s reelection bid.

Notable moments from past presidential debates demonstrate how the candidates’ words and body language can make them look especially relatable or hopelessly out-of-touch — showcasing if a candidate is at the top of their policy game or out to sea. Will past be prologue when Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday?

“Being live television events, without a script, without any way of knowing how they are going to evolve — anything can happen,” said Alan Schroeder, author of “Presidential Debates: 50 years of High-Risk TV.”

Here’s a look at some highs, lows and curveballs from presidential debates past.

Biden blows it

Though it’s still fresh in the nation’s mind, the June debate in Atlanta pitting President Joe Biden against Trump may go down as the most impactful political faceoff in history.

Biden, 81, shuffled onto the stage, frequently cleared his throat, said $15 when he meant that his administration helped cut the price of insulin to $35 per month on his first answer and inexplicably gave Trump an early chance to pounce on the chaotic 2021 withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. It got even worse for the president 12 minutes in, when Biden appeared lose his train of thought entirely.

“The, uh — excuse me, with the COVID, um, dealing with, everything we had to do with, uh … if … Look …” Biden stammered before concluding ”we finally beat Medicare.” He meant that his administration had successfully taken on “big pharma,” some of the nation’s top prescription drug companies.

Biden at first blamed having a cold, then suggested he’d overprepared. Later, he pointed to jetlag after pre-debate travel overseas.

In the frantic hours immediately after the debate, a Biden campaign spokesperson said, “ Of course, he’s not dropping out.” That was correct until 28 days later, when the president did just that, bowing out and endorsing Harris on July 21.

The age question

Biden was asked in Atlanta about his age and got into an argument with Trump over golf. It was the opposite of knowing a sensitive question was coming and still making the answer sound spontaneous — a feat President Ronald Reagan pulled off while landing a line for the ages during 1984’s second presidential debate.

Reagan was 73 and facing 56-year-old Democratic challenger Walter Mondale. In the first debate, Reagan struggled to remember facts and occasionally looked confused. An adviser suggested afterward that aides “filled his head with so many facts and figures that he lost his spontaneity.”

So Reagan’s team took a more hands-off approach toward the second debate. When Reagan got a question about his mental and physical stamina that he had to know was coming, he was ready enough to make the response feel unplanned.

Asked whether his age might hinder his handling of major challenges, Raegan responded, “Not at all,” before smoothly continuing: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” The audience, and even Mondale, cracked up.

Then, capitalizing on years of Hollywood-honed comedic training, the president took a sip of water, giving the crowd more time to laugh. Finally, he grinned and left little doubt that he’d rehearsed, adding, “It was Seneca, or it was Cicero, I don’t know which, that said, ‘If it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.’”

Years later, Mondale conceded, “That was really the end of my campaign that night.”

Reagan is further remembered for using a light touch to neutralize criticisms from Democratic President Jimmy Carter in a 1980 debate. When Carter accused him of wanting to cut Medicare, Reagan scolded, “There you go again.”

The line worked so well that he turned it into something of a trademark rejoinder going forward.

Gaffes galore

In 1976, Republican President Gerald Ford had a notable moment in a debate against Carter — and not in a good way. The president declared that there is “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.”

With Moscow controlling much of that part of the world, the surprised moderator asked if he’d understood correctly. Ford stood by his answer, then spent days on the campaign trail trying to explain it away. He lost that November.

Another awkward moment came in 2012, when Republican nominee Mitt Romney got a debate question about gender pay equality and recalled soliciting women’s groups’ help to find qualified female applicants for state posts: “They brought us whole binders full of women.”

Aaron Kall, director of the University of Michigan’s debate program, said key lines affect not just who a debate’s perceived winner is but also fundraising and media coverage for days, or even weeks, afterward.

“The closer the election, the more zingers and important debate lines can matter,” Kall said.

Not all slips have a devastating impact, though.

Then-Sen. Barack Obama, in a 2008 Democratic presidential primary debate, dismissively told Hillary Clinton, “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” That drew backlash, but Obama recovered.

The same couldn’t be said for the short-lived 2012 Republican primary White House bid of then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Despite repeated attempts and excruciatingly long pauses, Perry could not remember the third of the three federal agencies he’d promised to shutter if elected.

Finally, he sheepishly muttered, “Oops.”

The Energy Department, which he later ran during the Trump administration, is what slipped his mind.

Getting personal

Another damaging moment opened a 1988 presidential debate, when Democrat Michael Dukakis was pressed about his opposition to capital punishment in a question that evoked his wife.

“If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” CNN anchor Bernard Shaw asked. Dukakis showed little emotion, responding, “I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent.”

Dukakis later said he wished he’d said that his wife “is the most precious thing, she and my family, that I have in this world.”

That year’s vice presidential debate featured one of the best-remembered, pre-planned one-liners.

When Republican Dan Quayle compared himself to John F. Kennedy while debating Lloyd Bentsen, the Democrat was ready. He’d studied Quayle’s campaigning and seen him invoke Kennedy in the past.

“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy,” Bentsen began slowly and deliberately, drawing out the moment. “Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

The audience erupted in applause and laughter. Quayle was left to stare straight ahead.

Wordless blunders

Quayle and George H.W. Bush still easily won the 1988 election. But they lost in 1992 after then-President Bush was caught on camera looking at his watch while Democrat Bill Clinton talked to an audience member during a town hall debate. Some thought it made Bush look bored and aloof.

In another instance of a nonverbal debate miscue, then-Democratic Vice President Al Gore was criticized for a subpar opening 2000 debate performance with Republican George W. Bush in which he repeatedly and very audibly sighed.

During their second, town hall-style debate, Gore moved so close to Bush while the Republican answered one question that Bush finally looked over and offered a confident nod, drawing laughter from the audience.

A similar moment occurred in 2016, as Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton faced the audience to answer questions during a debate with Trump. Trump moved in close behind her, narrowed his eyes and glowered.

Clinton later wrote of the incident: “He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.”

That didn’t stop Trump from claiming the presidency a few weeks later.