Tim Walz vs JD Vance: Fact-checking the US vice-presidential debate

Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz took on his Republican rival Ohio Senator JD Vance on Tuesday (October 1) in the first and possibly only United States vice presidential debate. Hosted by CBS News, the high-stakes debate saw the duo focusing on policies rather than personal attacks.

Both of them also made some false and misleading claims that we will debunk here. From abortion to immigration, let’s take a look at the big claims made by the vice presidential nominees and how true they are.

Abortion

Tim Walz, running mate of US Vice President Kamala Harris, claimed that Project 2025 says people will have to register their pregnancies. “Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” he said.

This claim is false. Project 2025, a right-wing policy document by the Heritage Foundation think tank for the next Republican administration, does not propose making people register their pregnancy with any federal agency, noted CNN.

But it does call for state reporting of “how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”

Speaking about it further, Walz said, “It’s going to make it more difficult, if not impossible, to get contraception, and limit access, if not eliminate access, to infertility treatments.”

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This claim needs context. Project 2025 calls for reimposing of “Trump religious and moral exemptions to the contraceptive mandate.”

The policy document’s proposal to criminalise the mailing of abortion medication and devices could make it more difficult to terminate a pregnancy.

When former US President Donald Trump was asked in a Time magazine interview earlier this year whether states should monitor women’s pregnancies to ensure they comply with abortion laws, he had dodged the question. The Republican presidential candidate said they “might do that” but that “you’ll have to speak to the individual states.”

Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, falsely claimed that he never favoured a national abortion ban. “I never supported a national ban. I did, during when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard,” he said.

Vance, in fact, has said in 2022 while running for the Ohio Senate seat that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally”. The VP nominee also stated that he supported a “minimum national standard” to ban abortion last year.

Immigration

Vance claimed that Vice President Harris was appointed the “border czar” during the Joe Biden administration. “The only thing that she did when she became the vice president when she became the appointed border czar, was to undo 94 Donald Trump executive actions that opened the border,” he said during the VP debate.

This is a false claim. Harris was not made Biden’s “border czar” or to supervise immigration policy at the US-Mexico border. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the official in charge of border security, noted CNN.

Harris’ role was to lead the Biden administration’s diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to address the “root causes” of migration, including poverty, corruption and violence.

A White House “fact sheet” in July 2021 states, “On February 2, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order that called for the development of a Root Causes Strategy. Since March, Vice President Kamala Harris has been leading the Administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”

Harris also did not “undo Donald Trump executive actions”. Executive orders are signed by presidents, a post she does not hold currently. Biden had reversed some of Trump’s executive orders related to the border.

Vance said that schools and hospitals in Ohio’s Springfield are “overwhelmed” because of “illegal immigrants.” “Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed … because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” he claimed.

His statement is misleading. Hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants in Springfield have legal permission to live and work there. According to the Springfield city website, “YES, Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).”

During the debate, Vance also claimed that there are “20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country.” His statement is not supported by any available data.

According to the US Department of Homeland Security’s estimate in an April report, there were 11 million unauthorised immigrants in the US, as of January 2022.

West Asia conflict

Vance claimed that the Biden-Harris administration unfroze $100 billion in Iranian assets. Referring to Iran’s missile attack on Israel on Tuesday, the Republican VP nominee said, “Iran, which launched this attack, has received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration. What do they use that money for? They use it to buy weapons that they’re now launching against our allies and, God forbid, potentially, launching against the United States as well.”

This is a false claim. Last September, a prisoner exchange between the US and Iran led to unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian assets. However, the process for Tehran to use those funds was expected to take months.

According to a CNN source, the US and Qatar reached a “quiet understanding” not to allow Iran to access any of those funds for the time being following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

As part of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Iran could have accessed frozen assets abroad, which some estimates said were valued at more than $100 billion. However, the deal fell apart as the US withdrew under Trump’s presidency.

Climate change

Vance accused VP Harris of making climate change worse by backing clean energy, saying her policies “actually led to more energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas.”

This is somewhat misleading and needs context. Vance is right that China is the biggest supplier of clean energy technologies and components worldwide. The Biden-Harris administration has worked to bring more clean energy production to the US and end China’s domination of the global clean energy supply chain.

The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which has the largest climate investment in US history, is aimed at incentivising domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, large batteries and other components.

Vance claimed during the debate that the US has the “cleanest economy in the entire world.” This statement is not accurate if we look at carbon dioxide emissions. According to Our World in Data, the US emitted 0.26 kilogrammes per dollar of its GDP (gross domestic product), more than many European and South American countries, reported USA Today.

Walz said that Vance has previously admitted “there’s a climate problem”, while Trump has called climate change “a hoax”.

“Senator Vance said there was a climate problem in the past. Donald Trump called it a hoax and then joked that these things would make more beachfront property to be able to invest in,” Harris’ running mate said.

This is true. In 2020, Vance said in a speech at Ohio State University, “We, of course, have a climate problem in our society.”

On the other hand, Trump has labelled global warming or climate change a “hoax” multiple times, reported CBS News.

Healthcare

Vance claimed that Trump “salvaged” the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. This is not true.

In reality, the former president tried to repeal the Act several times. In 2020, the Trump administration asked the US Supreme Court to overturn the law. The top court rejected the action in 2021.

Trump also reduced millions in funding to help people enrol in healthcare.

With inputs from agencies