FactChecking the Vice Presidential Debate

Despite a mostly civil debate between Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the two disagreed repeatedly not just on policy, but also on the facts. 

• Vance claimed that housing “is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.” But economists and housing experts say that the primary reason for the tight housing market is the decline in new residential construction that followed the Great Recession.

• Walz misleadingly linked former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts to “an $8 trillion increase in the national debt, the largest ever.” But trillions of that debt were due to bipartisan COVID-19 relief packages. And the debt increase so far under the Biden administration is nearly as high.

• In describing an abortion law Walz signed in Minnesota, Vance said physicians were no longer required to provide life-saving care to infants “born alive.” But he neglected to say that the law still requires such infants to be given proper medical care and be “accorded immediate protection under the law.” Such cases pertain to situations involving induced labor for medical reasons such as fetal abnormalities.

• Vance claimed that “we have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost.” An August inspector general report said about that many unaccompanied minors who illegally entered the U.S. had not shown up for immigration court between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, or had not received a summons to appear in court. The report did not say they were “lost.”

• Walz falsely claimed that “their” Project 2025 will establish a registry of pregnancies, referring to what might happen under a Trump-Vance administration. However, the Trump campaign has disavowed Project 2025. The conservative document advocates mandatory state reporting of abortions and miscarriages, but not the tracking of pregnancy in general.

• Walz said that Project 2025 “is going to make it more difficult, if not impossible, to get contraception and limit access, if not eliminate access, to infertility treatments.” Some policies in the document could in effect limit contraception and infertility treatments, but Trump has said he does not want to restrict access to contraception and that he would expand access to in vitro fertilization.

• Vance incorrectly claimed the U.S. has the “cleanest economy,” while falsely hinting that carbon emissions might not be driving climate change. 

• Vance claimed that because of Vice President “Kamala Harris’ open border, we’ve seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartels.” But the concern of the U.S. and Mexican governments has been American-made guns trafficked from the U.S. to Mexico.

• Walz said “less than 2%” of the border wall that Trump promised “got built.” That undersells the amount of wall built during the Trump administration relative to what was promised.

• Vance blamed Harris for “letting in … 25 million illegal aliens.” That’s a grossly exaggerated figure.

• Walz countered that illegal border “crossings are down compared to when Donald Trump left office,” which is true when comparing the last two months to the last two months under Trump. But looking at Harris’ entire time as vice president, illegal border crossings are up substantially.

• Vance claimed that Harris “let fentanyl into our communities at record levels.” That’s not clear. The amount of fentanyl seized by border officials has increased during the Biden administration, which may indicate that more fentanyl is crossing the border undetected.

• Walz said that the “last 12 months saw the largest decrease in opioid deaths in our nation’s history.” Provisional data show that reported opioid deaths have declined significantly in the 12 months ending in April. But the figure is still higher than it was at the start of the Biden-Harris administration.

• Vance claimed that Trump “could have destroyed” the Affordable Care Act, but instead “worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.” Trump did try to destroy the ACA, including by backing a lawsuit that would have nullified it.

• Walz said that if Trump had repealed the ACA “you lose your preexisting conditions,” adding that if you’ve “got asthma, too bad.” Ending the law would significantly reduce protections for those with preexisting conditions, but before the ACA, employer-based plans couldn’t deny issuing a policy.

• Vance slightly overstated the inflation rate for groceries under Biden and ignored macroeconomic causes for rising prices when blaming Biden and Harris for food inflation.

• Walz claimed that “Donald Trump hasn’t paid any federal tax in the last 15 years,” but that’s not quite right. The former president didn’t pay federal income taxes in 2020, but he did pay various amounts between 2015 and 2018. Trump also did not pay taxes in 10 of the 15 years before he became president.

• Vance said that Trump told his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, to “protest peacefully.” Vance ignored Trump’s role in mobilizing his supporters to gather at the Capitol, and the overall tone and tenor of Trump’s defiant speech.

• Vance falsely claimed that Harris “became the appointed border czar” as vice president. However, Harris was specifically tasked with leading efforts to address the root causes of migration from three Central American countries and was never put in charge of U.S. border security.

For full explanations of each visit FactCheck.org

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