The Republican and Democratic tickets are now set, but plans for getting the four presidential and VP candidates on debate stages are anything but, with networks jockeying for position, campaigns negotiating, and various dates being floated less than three months out from Election Day.

Donald Trump kicked off this latest media free-for-all last Saturday when he announced he’d be skipping a planned ABC debate on September 10, which would’ve originally pitted him against Joe Biden but would now see him sparring with Kamala Harris. Instead, he called for a Fox News debate on September 4. “I’ll see her on September 4th or, I won’t see her at all,” the former president wrote Saturday on Truth Social.

But on Wednesday, after a fresh round of polls showed Harris closing the gap or leading in some battleground states, Trump struck a different tone. “We have to get on with debates,” he said in a phone call with Fox & Friends. He said that “it’s gonna be announced fairly soon.”

“She doesn’t want to debate,” Trump continued. “She wants to say I don’t want to debate, but I do want to debate.”

Harris, meanwhile, has upheld Biden’s agreement to participate in the ABC debate. “I do hope Trump will agree to meet me on the debate stage,” she said last week, “because as the saying goes—if you got something to say, say it to my face.”

Until Tuesday, however, both campaigns had some wiggle room when it came to debate negotiations, as the Democratic ticket hadn’t yet been set. The September 10 face-off was scheduled before Biden’s campaign-ending performance at the CNN debate in Atlanta on June 27. Some Trump allies have argued that Biden’s exit from the race changed everything, including the ABC debate agreement. But Harris was certified this week as the Democratic presidential nominee, and Minnesota governor Tim Walz was named Tuesday as her running mate, so there are no more unknowns. “I can’t wait to debate the guy,” Walz said that night at a rally in Philadelphia, referring to JD Vance.

When and where such an event will happen remains unclear. Back in May, around the same time Biden and Trump agreed to the CNN and ABC debates, Harris also accepted an invitation from CBS for a vice presidential debate sometime in the summer. July 23 and August 13 were floated as possible dates. But “the Trump campaign never agreed,” Harris campaign spokesman Brian Fallon wrote on X last weekend. Fallon asserted that the Trump campaign was “afraid to debate her as the running mate. Now they are afraid to debate her at the top of the ticket.”

Once Harris ascended and needed to pick her own running mate, CBS went back to the debate drawing board. The network is currently in talks with both campaigns about getting Walz and Vance onstage together, and is offering “several dates in September,” according to a source.

Trump and Biden’s rejection of the decades-old Commission on Presidential Debates created a network scramble earlier this year, with half a dozen TV networks all competing to secure a presidential or vice presidential contest. (CNN ultimately decided to allow its rivals to simulcast the June debate, with an expectation that future debate hosts would do the same.) “The fall schedule is a blank piece of paper now,” one network executive remarked, noting that Trump and Harris have never debated before.

Officials at several networks told Vanity Fair that they are hoping multiple debates will materialize in September—the sooner the better, since absentee or mail-in ballots are set to be sent out on September 6 in North Carolina, September 16 in Pennsylvania, and September 19 in Wisconsin.

NBC News, for example, which did not land a debate back in May, is in active talks with both the Trump and Harris campaigns now. Fox News is trying to get Harris to commit to a debate moderated by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, though the conservative network may be a nonstarter for the Democratic ticket. Last month Fox pitched both parties on a September 17 matchup, but then Trump seemingly out of nowhere proposed September 4 instead, possibly with an eye toward the absentee and mail-in ballot calendar.

“Conversations are happening,” Baier said Tuesday on Fox. “We have a lot on the table that we’ve offered, obviously, and we hope September 4 works.”

A Harris campaign source pushed back on the suggestion that Fox is seriously in the mix for a debate.

But Harris remains committed to the ABC date of September 10. “We’re happy to discuss further debates after the one both campaigns have agreed to,” a campaign spokesman said last weekend.

Trump sounded Wednesday like a man willing to take that deal. “We’ll be debating her,” he told his Fox friends, adding that his “preference would be Fox” as the host, “but we have to debate.” He bragged that ABC, NBC, and CBS are all wooing him: “They’re all in love with me now so that, you know, I say yes, because it’s up to me, obviously.”

When asked for an update on the state of the debates, and specifically whether the ABC event was back in play, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said, “Stay tuned!”