FactChecking the Vice Presidential Debate

Summary

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. We referee some of those competing claims, and other factual missteps by the vice presidential candidates.

• 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.

The Oct. 1 debate was hosted by CBS News.

Analysis

Vance Brings Immigration to Housing Debate

Vance brought one of his campaign’s key issues — immigration — to the discussion on housing prices, claiming, “You’ve got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.”

For support, the Ohio senator later cited a “Federal Reserve study that we’re happy to share after the debate — we’ll put it up on social media, actually — that really drills down on the connection between increased levels of migration, especially illegal immigration, and higher housing prices.”

But the link he provided on his X account after the debate wasn’t a report from the central bank. Instead, it was the written remarks — about 10 paragraphs long — delivered in May at the annual convention of the Massachusetts Bankers Association by Michelle Bowman, who is on the board of governors for the Federal Reserve.

In her remarks, Bowman offered an overview of the current economy, noting at one point, “Payroll employment has increased at a strong pace through April this year, partly reflecting increased immigrant labor supply.” And, in the same cursory way a couple of paragraphs later, Bowman said, “Given the current low inventory of affordable housing, the inflow of new immigrants to some geographic areas could result in upward pressure on rents, as additional housing supply may take time to materialize.”

So, Vance overstated it when he claimed that this document “really drills down on the connection between increased levels of migration, especially illegal immigration, and higher housing prices.” Her brief remarks recognized a demographic reality that has often been noted by researchers.

Economists and housing experts have agreed that immigration is one of many contributing factors to the tight housing market. But the biggest contributor to the problem is the slowdown in new home construction that followed the Great Recession from December 2007 to June 2009. “Fewer new homes were built in the 10 years ended 2018 than in any decade since the 1960s,” according to Fannie Mae.

Similarly, a report released earlier this year by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University found, “In the homebuying market, a decade plus of underbuilding, elevated mortgage interest rates, and shifting demographics has left homebuyers with few affordable options as home prices continue to rise.”

Vance wasn’t wrong that immigrants — along with growing Gen Z and Millennial households — are part of the demographic changes that have contributed to the tight housing market. But he overstated their impact. As we said, the biggest part of the housing puzzle is the slowdown in home construction after the 2008 recession.

Deficit Under Trump

Walz claimed that Trump “gave the tax cuts that predominantly went to the top class. What happened there was an $8 trillion increase in the national debt, the largest ever.”

As we have written before, the amount of total national debt is correct; however, Trump is not singlehandedly responsible for this increase — nor is the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Trillions of dollars of debt were due to bipartisan coronavirus relief packages.

Also, the total national debt has gone up nearly as much under the Biden administration. During Trump’s term, the total debt went up by $7.8 trillion. So far under President Joe Biden, it has risen by $7.7 trillion, with more than three months until the end of Biden’s term.

The 2017 tax cuts did go “predominantly,” as Walz said, to upper-income groups, but most households paid less in taxes under the law, according to Tax Policy Center estimates. In 2018, 63.6% of the benefits of the law went to the top quintile of earners, but 82% of middle-income earners got a tax cut, the TPC estimated.

The tax cut law added to the debt. Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told us when we wrote about this issue a few years ago that the tax cut law could account for about $1 trillion of the debt increase under Trump. 

But then there were bipartisan bills that added to spending. Trump signed bipartisan budget acts for 2018 and 2019 that “dramatically increased discretionary spending,” Goldwein said. And there were the bipartisan bills to help the U.S. cope with the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic effects. A ProPublica/Washington Post report estimated more than $3 trillion went to COVID-19 relief spending.

Scuffle Over Minnesota Abortion Law

In one of the more heated exchanges of the evening, Walz and Vance argued over the text of an abortion law passed in Minnesota after Roe v. Wade was overturned and ended a constitutional right to abortion.

“The statute that you signed into law,” Vance said of Walz. “It says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide life-saving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion.”

Walz quickly interjected, “That’s not true,” while Vance added, “That is fundamentally barbaric.”

As the two men discussed the issue of abortion more broadly over the next couple of minutes, they again tussled over whether Vance’s description was accurate, with Vance repeatedly asking Walz to explain how he was wrong, and Walz saying it was incorrect and had been fact-checked in the Trump-Harris debate.

The issue came up tangentially in the last debate when Trump said that Walz “says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says, execution after birth — it’s execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born — is OK.”

As we explained before, killing a baby after birth is illegal in all states and is considered infanticide.

Minnesota’s abortion law, which was passed in 2023, does not have gestational limits, so an abortion can legally occur at any time during pregnancy. This does not mean, however, that women are commonly getting abortions very late in pregnancy.

According to the latest available data from the Minnesota Department of Health, for 2022, 88% of induced abortions in the state occurred at or before 12 weeks of pregnancy. Only two abortions were performed at or after 25 weeks — and none occurred in the ninth month.

Vance’s comments refer to a small change in a provision of the law that eliminated the requirement that medical personnel “preserve the life and health” of an infant “born alive.” 

The law still says that such infants “shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law” and that “[a]ll reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice … shall be taken by the responsible medical personnel to care for the infant who is born alive.”

While Vance refers to “botched” abortions, doctors have said such “born alive” measures pertain to situations involving induced labor for medical reasons such as fetal abnormalities. When we wrote about a federal “born alive” bill, Dr. Colleen McNicholas, an obstetrician and gynecologist speaking on behalf of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told us the “vast majority” of abortions later in pregnancy would be performed with dilation and evacuation, which “is not survivable.” The “only conceivable situation” she could imagine the federal bill being relevant would be “catastrophic pregnancies” in which the parents and care team “intend to deliver the baby,” but know that there’s a chance the baby won’t survive.

Citing an obstetrician, an editorial in the Minnesota Star Tribune explains that the rationale for the removal of mandatory life-saving care is “rooted in compassion for parents who face a devastating diagnosis late in a pregnancy” — and allows, for example, a family to hold a dying child and say goodbye, instead of being forced to provide futile medical care.

“It’s important to note that the 2023 law does not prevent a parent or a doctor from pursuing all medical options,” the editorial notes. “Nor does it remove or reduce the ethical and legal obligations of doctors and hospitals toward any child.”

320,000 ‘Lost’ Children?

While criticizing the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies, Vance claimed that hundreds of thousands of children who illegally came to the U.S. without an adult were missing because of the Department of Homeland Security.

“Right now in this country, Margaret, we have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost,” Vance said. “Some of them have been sex trafficked, some of them, hopefully, are at homes with their families. Some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules. The real family separation policy in this country is unfortunately Kamala Harris’ wide open southern border.”

Vance appeared to be referring to figures in a report the office of the DHS inspector general published in August. In a summary, the report said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, “could not monitor the location and status of all unaccompanied migrant children” who were released from Department of Health and Human Services custody from fiscal years 2019 to 2023, “or initiate removal proceedings as needed.”

The report later said that more than 32,000 minors did not show up for their immigration court hearings in that period, which includes time during the Trump and Biden administrations. In addition, as of May 2024, ICE had not issued a Notice to Appear in court to more than 291,000 minors, the report said. Such notices are sent at the start of removal proceedings.

“By not issuing NTAs to all UCs [unaccompanied migrant children], ICE limits its chances of having contact with UCs when they are released from HHS’ custody, which reduces opportunities to verify their safety,” the report said. “Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”

But the report did not say that all the children were missing, or “lost,” as Vance claimed.

In a response letter included as an appendix to the report, ICE indicated that it may delay sending notices for various reasons, including if the child has already applied for asylum or another legal status with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Exaggerated Claims About Project 2025 and Pregnancy

Walz’s statements about Project 2025 and pregnancy misstate or overstate what the document proposes. “Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” 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.”

The Trump-Vance campaign has attempted to distance itself from Project 2025, a document from the conservative Heritage Foundation laying out policies for a future conservative administration. “President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” campaign spokespeople said in a July 30 statement.

As we’ve written, the 887-page document suggests expanded tracking of abortions and miscarriages, making it mandatory for states to report these events to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the document does not mention a registry of pregnancies in general. Nearly all states already report anonymous data on abortions to the CDC, although such reporting is not mandatory. Trump has stated that he does not want to monitor women’s pregnancies.

Trump also has said in the past that he does not want to limit access to contraceptives. Project 2025 does directly advocate eliminating the mandate for insurance coverage of an emergency contraceptive, called Ella, while incorrectly suggesting that the pill causes abortions. The document does not comment on more typical contraceptives, such as birth control pills or intrauterine devices. But some recommendations, if followed, could indirectly reduce access. For instance, it calls for ending taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood, which people use to access contraceptives.

Project 2025 also does not directly mention infertility treatment, although, as we have written, it expresses support for the concept of fetal personhood, or the idea that embryos and fetuses have rights starting at “the moment of conception.” These ideas could be used to justify further laws that could reduce access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, on the basis that embryos created in a lab are people with rights.

Trump has expressed support for IVF, recently saying that under his administration insurance companies would be required to pay for it.

‘Weird Science’ and Not the Cleanest Economy

When the moderators broached the subject of climate change, Vance backed into the issue, making a show of agreeing for a moment that carbon emissions cause climate change — as if the science is not, in fact, settled.

“This idea that carbon emissions drives all the climate change. Well, let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument, so we’re not arguing about weird science,” he said. “Let’s just say that’s true.”

Vance also said that the U.S. had “the cleanest economy in the entire world.” He later specified he was talking about “the amount of carbon emissions they’re doing per unit of economic output.”

To be clear, there is no question that carbon dioxide emissions, along with emissions of other heat-trapping greenhouse gases — many of them due to the burning of fossil fuels — are primarily responsible for climate change.

Vance is wrong to claim that the U.S. has the “cleanest economy.” According to the most recent figures from Our World in Data, the United States’ carbon intensity, or CO2 emissions emitted per dollar of gross domestic product, is middling, similar to Mexico’s and India’s. American carbon intensity is better than China’s — and is significantly better than places such as Venezuela and Libya — but is worse than all of Western Europe and much of Africa.

Before mentioning climate change, Vance said he and Trump “support clean air, clean water.” It’s worth noting that while Trump has long claimed to be in favor of clean air and water — often when asked about the issue of climate change — his administration rolled back some 100 environmental protection rules.

Illegal Firearms

While the candidates were talking about the rash of gun violence and illegal firearms in the U.S., Vance said: “We know that thanks to Kamala Harris’ open border, we’ve seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartels.”

But we could find no evidence that there has been a “massive influx” of guns brought into the U.S. by the cartels. Instead, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the problem is the flow of American-made weapons into Mexico.

The ATF describes its anti-firearms trafficking campaign as an “ongoing problem of firearms smuggling at the northern and southern borders. Firearms trafficking occurs when individuals illegally purchase firearms in the United States and smuggle the weapons across the southern U.S. border into Mexico and into other countries.” 

“A large number of firearms are procured in the U.S. by straw purchasing cells operating at the direction of cartels which are then smuggled across the southern U.S. border and into Mexico,” the ATF website explains.

A New York Times report on American gun ownership said Mexico’s “cartels and their traffickers are overwhelmingly armed with American guns. They are also armed with American ammunition. Much of the ammunition that cartels rely on is unavailable in Mexico’s legal markets, but anyone can buy a truckload in the United States without even so much as a background check.”

In addition, the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, said in a February 2024 report that the U.S. and Mexico “have grappled with increasing arms and drug trafficking for several years.” A joint effort to track the origin and number of guns in Mexico found that 70% to 90% of “traced firearms originated from and passed through” the U.S.

As for crime guns used in the U.S., the ATF said in a March 2024 report that U.S. law enforcement agencies in 2021 submitted 460,024 requests for the bureau to trace guns used in the commission of a crime. The ATF was able to trace 365,501, or 79.5%, of the guns to the purchaser. “Nearly all crime guns” it was able to trace came from a licensed U.S. firearm dealer, the report said.

We reached out to the Trump-Vance campaign for evidence to support Vance’s claim, but we didn’t receive a reply.

Border Wall

Walz ridiculed Trump’s progress toward building a border wall, saying, “Donald Trump had four years. He had four years to do this, and he promised you, America, how easy it would be. ‘I’ll build you a big, beautiful wall, and Mexico will pay for it.’ Less than 2% of that wall got built, and Mexico didn’t pay a dime.”

As we have written, Trump fell well short of the border wall he promised repeatedly during the 2016 campaign. But Walz is significantly minimizing the amount of wall that Trump actually got built.

In our report on “Trump’s Final Numbers” we noted that, in total, 458 miles of “border wall system” was built during the Trump administration, according to a CBP status report on Jan. 22, 2021. Most of that, 373 miles of it, was replacement for primary or secondary fencing that was dilapidated or outdated. In addition, 52 miles of new primary wall and 33 miles of secondary wall were built in locations where there were no barriers before.

Walz’s “less than 2%” calculation is based on 52 miles of new wall where there wasn’t any before across a southwest land border that is 1,954 miles long (which actually comes to 2.6%). But Trump did not promise to build a wall across the entire border. During the 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly talked about needing 1,000 miles of wall, or about 350 miles more than existed when he took office. (After he took office, Trump attempted to move the goalpost to fewer than 1,000 miles.)

So one could argue Trump only got 15% of the way toward the 350 miles of wall needed to complete the wall he promised during the campaign.

Walz’s comment also underplays the sheer amount of wall built during the Trump administration — more than under any other U.S. president. Specifically, Walz’s estimate minimizes the hundreds of miles of replacement border fencing.

As we wrote in December 2020, “[B]order experts warn not to minimize the impact of the replacement fencing. In some cases, the new barriers erected replaced fencing made from Vietnam-era landing mats. U.S. Customs and Border Protection also has replaced nearly 200 miles of vehicle barriers — the type that people could walk right through — with 30-foot-high steel bollards, lighting and other technology.”

As for Trump’s claim that Mexico would pay for the wall, Walz is correct that that never materialized, despite Trump’s false claims that Mexico was paying through the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement or via a border toll.

According to CBP data provided to FactCheck.org, the Trump administration secured a total of $15 billion during his presidency for wall construction. Some of it was appropriated in annual budgets by Congress, and some was diverted by Trump from counternarcotics and military construction funding. But it was all borne by American taxpayers.

Illegal Immigration

Vance argued that Harris is to blame for “letting in … 25 million illegal aliens.” (Earlier in the debate, Vance put the number at 20 million to 25 million.) Either way, that’s a grossly inflated figure for the number of immigrants who have entered the country illegally during the Biden-Harris administration.

We last wrote about this when, during his debate with Biden in June, Trump put the number at 18 million to 20 million.

We took a deep dive into the immigration numbers in February, and again in mid-June, and we came up with an estimate of at most a third of Trump’s number, and a quarter of the figure cited by Vance in his debate.

Here’s the breakdown:

Department of Homeland Security data show nearly 8 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border between February 2021, the month after Biden took office, and May, according to monthly data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s a figure that includes both the 6.9 million apprehensions of migrants caught between legal ports of entry – the number typically used for illegal immigration – and nearly 1.1 million encounters of migrants who arrived at ports of entry without authorization to enter the U.S.

DHS also has comprehensive data, through February, of the initial processing of these encounters. That information shows 2.9 million were removed by CBP and 3.2 million were released with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or given other classifications, such as parole. (Encounters do not represent the total number of people, because some people attempt multiple crossings. For example, the recidivism rate was 27% in fiscal year 2021, according to CBP.) 

As we’ve explained before, there are also estimates for “gotaways,” or migrants who crossed the border illegally and evaded the authorities. Based on an average annual apprehension rate of 78%, which DHS provided to us, that would mean there were an estimated 1.8 million gotaways from February 2021 to February 2024. The gotaways plus those released with court notices or other designations would total about 5 million.

There were also 407,500 transfers of unaccompanied children to the Department of Health and Human Services and 883,000 transfers to ICE. The ICE transfers include those who are then placed in ICE custody, enrolled in “alternatives to detention,” which include technological monitoring, or released by ICE. We don’t know how many of those were released into the country with a court notice. But even if we include those figures, it still doesn’t get us to anywhere near the 25 million cited by Vance.

And we should note that these figures do not reflect whether a migrant may ultimately be allowed to stay or will be deported, particularly since there is a yearslong backlog of immigration court cases.

Border Apprehensions

Asked if he wanted to respond to Vance’s claim about the number of people who crossed the border illegally and were “let in” by Harris, Walz responded, “I guess we agreed not to fact-check. I’ll check it. Look, crossings are down compared to when Donald Trump left office.”

It’s true that the number of apprehensions of immigrants caught illegally crossing into the U.S. was lower in July and August — the latest two months of available data — than the last two months under Trump.

The number of apprehensions of immigrants attempting to enter the U.S. illegally has dropped dramatically after Biden announced a series of executive actions on June 4 designed to address “substantial levels of migration” due to “global conditions,” including “failing regimes and dire economic conditions,” “violence linked to transnational criminal organizations” and “natural disasters” in some countries in Central and South America. Specifically, the proclamation directs border officials to temporarily restrict asylum eligibility and promptly remove many who cross the border illegally between ports of entry when the daily average of encounters reaches 2,500 or more for seven straight days. The policy was immediately implemented on June 5 because levels were already well above that. (For more on the policy, see our story “Q&A on Biden’s Border Order.”)

But comparing the last two months of data under Biden to the last two months under Trump involves some cherry-picking. Prior to the new policies enacted by Biden in June, illegal immigration had soared under the current administration.

In our latest “Biden’s Numbers” update in July, for example, we noted that for the 12 months ending in June, apprehensions totaled 1,894,715, according to Customs and Border Protection. That’s 273% higher than during Trump’s last year in office.

Fentanyl Seizures

While talking about drug addiction, Vance claimed that more fentanyl than ever before has entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration.

“I don’t want people who are struggling with addiction to be deprived of their second chance because Kamala Harris let in fentanyl into our communities at record levels,” he said.

But we don’t know how much illicit fentanyl enters the country each year, because that data is not tracked by the federal government. As the Congressional Research Service explained in a 2020 report, “There are no comprehensive data on the total quantity of foreign-produced illicit drugs smuggled into the United States at or between official ports of entry (POEs) because these are drugs that have generally evaded seizure by border officials.”

For a 2021 story, Bryce Pardo, a drug policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, told us that he sensed that Mexican drug trafficking organizations were producing more fentanyl and that flows of the drug, which is lethal in small doses, were increasing to the U.S. “But we don’t know that for sure,” Pardo said.

What we do know is how much fentanyl is seized by federal officials at the border, most of which is captured in vehicles crossing at legal ports of entry — not on people illegally crossing between those ports. Before fiscal year 2024, which is on track for a year-over-year decrease in fentanyl seized, annual figures had been increasing for several years.

As we’ve written before, the amount of fentanyl seized by border officials had increased by about 462% under Biden and Harris, going from almost 4,800 pounds seized in fiscal year 2020 to roughly 27,000 pounds in fiscal year 2023. Through August, there had been about 19,700 pounds of fentanyl seized in fiscal year 2024, which ended on Sept. 30.

When Trump left office, there had been a 586% increase from the 700 pounds of fentanyl seized in fiscal year 2016, the last full fiscal cycle before the start of his presidency.

Some critics believe that an increase in fentanyl seizures means that more of the drug, not less, is entering the country illegally.

Opioid Deaths

When Walz got a chance to respond to Vance’s claim about an increase of fentanyl coming into the country, the governor said, “And the good news on this is the last 12 months saw the largest decrease in opioid deaths in our nation’s history, 30% decrease in Ohio.”

Opioid deaths in the U.S. are currently trending down, according to provisional data from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System. There were 72,603 reported opioid deaths in the 12 months ending in April, which was down more than 14% from 84,186 reported deaths for the 12 months ending April 2023, according to the figures.

In Ohio, the figures show a 24.5% decline over the same period, dropping from 4,273 reported deaths to 3,268.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, and synthetic opioids account for the vast majority of all opioid-related deaths, as well as most of all drug overdose deaths.

But the decrease in opioid deaths in the U.S., at least based on the provisional data, comes after years of almost annual increases. From 1999 to 2022, opioid deaths increased every year except 2018, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the CDC.

Also, the 72,063 reported opioid overdose deaths for the 12 months ending in April is still higher than the 68,630 opioid-related deaths in 2020, the year before Biden and Harris took office.

In his remarks, Walz did acknowledge that “there is still more work to do” to get overdose deaths down.

Affordable Care Act

Echoing a claim Trump made in the presidential debate, Vance said that the Affordable Care Act “was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along” and that Trump “could have destroyed the program. Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.” Trump did try to destroy the ACA. In addition to trying to repeal and replace it, Trump’s administration supported a lawsuit that would have nullified the entire law.

The lawsuit ultimately failed in 2021.

As we wrote after the last debate, Trump supported a 2017 Republican bill that would have included some, but not all, of the ACA’s protections for those with preexisting conditions. He also pushed the expansion of cheaper short-term health plans that wouldn’t have to abide by the ACA’s prohibitions against denying or pricing coverage based on health status. His administration also slashed advertising and outreach aimed at enrolling people in ACA plans.

Under Trump, the number of people without health insurance went up by 3 million, and the percentage of the uninsured went up by about a half a percentage point.

Preexisting Conditions

Walz countered that if Trump had repealed the ACA “you lose your preexisting conditions” protections. Ending the ACA would reduce the protections for people with preexisting conditions considerably, but there were some protections for those with employer-based plans even before the ACA.

“If you’re sitting at home and you got asthma, too bad,” Walz said of losing the ACA’s protections. “If you’re a woman, probably not. Broke your foot during football? Might kick you out.”

The ACA prohibits insurers from denying coverage or charging people more based on their health status. The law also bars insurers from refusing to cover a certain condition, and it requires plans to cover 10 essential benefits.

But before the ACA, the type of coverage denial Walz described would have happened on the individual market, where people buy their own insurance. Pre-ACA, employer plans couldn’t deny issuing a policy — and could only decline coverage for some preexisting conditions for a limited period if a new employee had a lapse in coverage, as we’ve explained before.

As of 2022, 20 million people, or about 6.3% of the U.S. population, got coverage on the individual market.

The ACA’s expanded protections would benefit people who lost their jobs, retired early or became self-employed and found themselves seeking insurance on the individual market. 

Grocery Inflation

Vance repeatedly focused on the theme of food prices being too high because of the Biden-Harris administration.

“Because she’s been the vice president for three and a half years, she had the opportunity to enact all of these great policies, and what she’s actually done instead is drive the cost of food higher by 25%,” Vance said. Later he referred to “Kamala Harris’ atrocious record, which has made gas, groceries and housing unaffordable for American citizens.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for food at home, the indexed price of groceries increased by 6.5% in total under the Trump administration and 20.9% in total under the Biden administration so far. The inflation rate has slowed in recent months, with grocery prices increasing by only 1.1% over the last year.

However, as we’ve written before, economists we’ve interviewed say that while Biden’s policies bear some responsibility for rising inflation under his administration, other external factors played a larger role in raising prices. Economists primarily blame rising inflation on the disruptions inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as supply shortages, labor market distortions and increased consumer spending on goods, as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Rising inflation was a global phenomenon in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Trump’s Taxes

During a discussion about the economy, Walz called out teachers, nurses and truck drivers, asking how it was fair for them to pay taxes while “Donald Trump hasn’t paid any federal tax in the last 15 years.”

But that’s not quite right.

Trump didn’t release his tax returns when he ran for president in 2016, and he continued to keep them private during his presidency, so we don’t know about many years of his tax filings.

But the House Committee on Ways and Means reviewed Trump’s returns for tax years 2015 through 2020 after Trump lost a legal battle in 2022 to keep them confidential. On Dec. 15, 2022, the committee released a report, which showed:

• In 2015, Trump reported losses of about $32 million and paid $641,931 in federal income tax;
• In 2016, Trump again reported losses of about $32 million, but paid $750 in federal income tax;
• In 2017, Trump reported losses of about $13 million and, again, paid $750 in federal income tax;
• In 2018, Trump reported an income of about $24 million and paid $999,466 in federal income tax;
• In 2019, Trump reported an income of about $4 million and paid $133,445 in federal income tax;
• In 2020, Trump reported losses of about $5 million and paid no federal income tax.

Previous reporting from the New York Times in 2020 had also detailed some of Trump’s tax returns and found that in 10 of the 15 years before Trump ran for office, he hadn’t paid income taxes. But, for five of them, he had.

Revisionist History

Vance and Walz had a lengthy back-and-forth over Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Vance engaged in revisionist history in his defense of his running mate. Vance said that Trump told his supporters in a speech on Jan. 6, 2021, to “peacefully protest.” But Vance ignored Trump’s role in mobilizing his supporters to gather at the Capitol, and the tone and tenor of Trump’s defiant speech.

As we’ve written, Trump spoke for more than an hour on Jan. 6, 2021, on the Ellipse not far from the Capitol, where members of Congress were gathering to begin the process of accepting the electoral votes that would make Joe Biden president. Trump started his speech by accusing the “radical left Democrats” and the “fake news media” of stealing the election, and urging his supporters not to concede or give up.

“All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats, which is what they’re doing, and stolen by the fake news media,” Trump said. “That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.”

He went on to make numerous false and unsupported claims about election fraud in swing states, and called on then-Vice President Mike Pence to “do the right thing” and reject electoral votes for Biden, so that Trump could remain president. He criticized other Republicans for being “weak,” threatening to “primary” them “if they don’t fight.”

“You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” Trump said.

Trump did — as Vance said — use the word “peacefully” once in his speech. Trump said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” Trump said.

But the former president spent most of the speech telling his supporters that Republicans needed to fight back, and he closed by telling them to “fight like hell.”

“Our brightest days are before us, our greatest achievements still wait,” Trump said. “I think one of our great achievements will be election security because nobody, until I came along, had any idea how corrupt our elections were. And again, most people would stand there at 9 o’clock in the evening and say, ‘I want to thank you very much,’ and they go off to some other life, but I said, ‘Something’s wrong here. Something’s really wrong. Can’t have happened.’ And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

After the speech, many of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, attacked law enforcement officers and interrupted the counting of the electoral votes, which wasn’t completed until the early hours of Jan. 7, 2021.

Trump also heavily promoted the Jan. 6, 2021, protest on social media, telling his followers in one post: “Be there, will be wild!”

During the debate, Vance focused on the one time that Trump used the word “peacefully.” Vance said, “Remember, he [Trump] said that on January the 6th, the protesters ought to protest peacefully, and on January the 20th, what happened? Joe Biden became the president.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell remembered that day differently. In a Feb. 13, 2021, floor speech in the Senate, McConnell blamed Trump for provoking what he called an act of “terrorism” to prevent Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, from certifying Biden as winner of the 2020 election.

“They did this because they’d been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he lost an election,” McConnell said. “Former President Trump’s actions [that] preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

Vance engaged in false equivalency by saying, “We have to remember that for years in this country, Democrats protested the results of elections. Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that Donald Trump had the election stolen by [Russian President] Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought, like, $500,000 worth of Facebook ads. This has been going on for a long time.”

Unlike Trump, Clinton conceded the 2016 election to Trump in less than 24 hours after the polls closed, despite having won the popular vote in a race that turned on the outcome in three states that she lost by less than 80,000 votes. Subsequently, Clinton did criticize Putin for interfering in the 2016 election, which was well documented in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and went far beyond Facebook ads. The federal investigation uncovered Russia’s sophisticated computer hacking operation designed to help Trump and hurt Clinton.

Vance Wrongly Repeats ‘Border Czar’ Title

Vance falsely claimed that when Harris was vice president, she “became the appointed border czar.” She did not.

As we have written, in March 2021 Biden tasked Harris with leading efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The Central American initiative, known as the “Root Causes Strategy,” seeks to deter migration from those countries by, among other things, providing funds for natural disasters, fighting corruption, and creating partnerships with the private sector and international organizations.

Harris was not put in charge of U.S. border security, as the “border czar” title implies. That is the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security, currently led by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

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