2020 election

The Democratic National Committee announced Thursday the list of presidential candidates who will take the stage at the first primary debates, on June 26 and 27.

To accommodate the massive field of candidates, the debates will be spread over two nights, with 10 candidates taking the stage for each two-hour debate.

Here are the candidates who the DNC said have made the cut, in alphabetical order:

• Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet
• Former Vice President Joe Biden*
• New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker*

Updated at 8:45 p.m. ET

President Trump says he might accept dirt from another country on his potential Democratic rivals if offered, raising new questions and concerns about foreign influence on American elections.

"It's not an interference, they have information — I think I'd take it," Trump said. "If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI — if I thought there was something wrong."

Updated at 11:35 a.m. ET

Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are very much on each other's minds.

At his campaign rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, the former vice president went off script — twice — to deride a protester with a whistle.

"That must be Bernie or somebody," Biden apparently said, raising eyebrows and drawing laughs.

(The line is at 8:21 into this video. You can decide for yourself what he said.)

Should people convicted of a crime be allowed to vote while in prison?

It's a question that's divided 2020 Democratic presidential candidates and sparked attacks from President Trump and his allies.

At a CNN town hall event on April 22, presidential hopeful and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was asked whether his support for allowing inmates to vote would extend to Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death for his role in the 2013 attack.

It sounds a lot like how Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton ran their campaigns.

Lapel pins, exclusive retreats, private conference calls with party leaders, special invitations to leadership dinners. Those are just a few of the perks that President Trump's re-election campaign is offering to supporters who help gather donations from others, a practice known as bundling.

The past few presidential campaigns, environmental activists have "been left begging for there to be a single question at a campaign debate about climate change," longtime climate change activist and author Bill McKibben recently told NPR.

The current storyline in the 2020 presidential campaign goes something like this:

Donald Trump and his allies run a campaign demonizing Democrats in general as horrid, lying socialists who hate America with a passion, who wouldn't be caught dead in a cheap foam hat that says Make America Great Again because they want to destroy it.

Voters in northwest Illinois have a lot of questions for their congresswoman, Democrat Cheri Bustos. They want to know about rail plans around Moline, federal transportation dollars and health care costs.

If there's one thing she says they don't usually ask about, it's her thoughts on impeaching President Trump.

"We talk about different things here," Bustos said in a recent interview with NPR in her district.

Now that the 2020 Democratic field is pretty much set (barring a last-minute Stacey Abrams or John Kerry bid) with former Vice President Joe Biden getting in Thursday, let's look at what we've learned so far about the field and what to watch for going forward:

1. How far does name identification go? Biden is a huge boulder in the lake, and his entry into the presidential campaign is sending ripples throughout the primary field. So far, he leads the pack. That's largely a product of the fact that people know the former vice president and recognize his name.

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown bowed out of the 2020 presidential race weeks ago, and many speculated that was because former Vice President Joe Biden was planning to run.