Fact Check: JD Vance and Tim Walz at the Vice Presidential Debate

CNN
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Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio face off in their first — and only — vice presidential debate Tuesday night in New York City.

The CNN team is fact-checking the candidates and this story will be updated throughout the evening.

Senator JD Vance claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was appointed “border czar” during the Biden administration. “The only thing she did when she became vice president, when she was appointed border czar, was to reverse 94 of Donald Trump’s executive actions that opened the border,” Vance said.

Facts first: Vance's claim about Harris' borderline role is false. Harris was never named Biden's “border czar,” a designation the White House has always insisted is inaccurate. The official in charge of border security is Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. In realityIn 2021, Biden gave Harris a more limited assignment related to immigration, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that led its citizens to attempt to emigrate to the United States.

Some Republicans have scoffed at claims that Harris was never the “border czar,” pointing out on social media that Harris was sometimes described as such in news articles. But these articles were wrong. Various news outlets, including CNN, reported as early as the first half of 2021 that the White House had emphasized that Harris had not been entrusted with responsibility for border security as a whole, as “Border Czar” strongly suggests, but instead with responsibility for the Border security as a whole has been entrusted with diplomatic tasks in connection with Central American countries.

A July 2021 White House “fact sheet” said: “On February 2, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling for the development of a root cause strategy.” Since March, Vice President Kamala Harris has led the administration's diplomatic efforts “To address the causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.”

Biden's own comments at a March 2021 event announcing the order were somewhat more muddled, but he said he had asked Harris to “lead our diplomatic efforts” to address the factors affecting migration in the three countries of the “Northern Triangle”. (Biden also mentioned Mexico that day.) Biden listed factors in those countries that he said had led to migration, saying, “Addressing the problems in the country benefits everyone.” And Harris' Comments that day clearly focused on “root causes.”

Republicans may well say that even working on “root causes” is a borderline task. But calling her a “border tsarina” goes too far.

By Daniel Dale of CNN

Her vice president, Tim Walz, touted the Biden-Harris administration's Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a major climate bill for which Vice President Kamala Harris was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, and talked about how the bill would “create 200,000 U.S. jobs.” “I created land,” including building electric vehicles and solar panels.

Facts first: This claim needs context. While it is clear that the Inflation Reduction Act created a significant number of new clean energy jobs, the “200,000” number also includes jobs that companies have promised to create but have not yet completed. And other numbers for new clean energy jobs have shown lower numbers.

There are multiple datasets tracking investments in climate legislation, all slightly different. Walz's number of jobs created by President Joe Biden's climate law is slightly lower than a June tally from the communications group Climate Power, which found a total of 312,900 jobs publicly announced by companies following passage of the IRA through May 2024.

E2, another clean energy group that tracks investments and jobs related to the Inflation Reduction Act, created or announced over 109,000 new clean energy jobs between August 2022 and May 2024 – significantly fewer than Climate Power's figure. According to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy, 142,000 new clean energy jobs were created in 2023.

Not all of these jobs have already been created. Climate Power's topline numbers also did not distinguish between construction jobs that build new factories and the long-term jobs in those factories – including jobs building batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles.

Different companies use different methods when analyzing data, making it difficult to come up with an exact number. Regardless, there is no doubt that huge investments are being made in clean energy, and the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits are creating a significant number of new jobs in the construction of electric vehicles and renewable energy such as wind and solar power. The Department of Energy's 2024 report showed that clean energy jobs accounted for more than half of all jobs in the new energy sector and grew at twice the rate of the entire U.S. economy.

The report also acknowledged that the sudden growth of the clean energy sector through the Inflation Reduction Act has made it difficult to track all the jobs created.

By CNN's Ella Nilsen

Sen. JD Vance said schools and hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, are “overwhelmed” because of “illegal immigrants.”

“Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities across the country, there are schools that are overwhelmed and hospitals that are overwhelmed… because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce housing. said Vance.

Facts first: Vance's statement referring to the Ohio city that is the subject of a Firestorm of misinformation about Haitian migrants this summer is misleading.

We don't know the immigration status of every single immigrant in Springfield, but hundreds of thousands of Haitians have official permission to live and work legally in the United States. The City of Springfield website states: “YES, Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program.” Once here, immigrants can apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).” Republican Gov Ohio Rep. Mike DeWine wrote in a New York Times op-ed about Springfield in September that the Haitian immigrants “are there legally” and that as a Trump-Vance supporter, he was “saddened” by the candidates' disparagement of the candidates. the legal migrants living in Springfield.”

Many Haitians came to the country under a Biden-Harris administration parole program that allows vetted participants with U.S. sponsors to enter the United States. And many have “temporary protected status,” which protects Haitians in the U.S. from deportation and allows them to live and work here for a limited period of time. Some received those protections after the Biden-Harris administration increased the number of eligible Haitians in June. Others have been living in the United States with temporary protected status since before the Biden-Harris administration.

By CNN's Daniel Dale and Danya Gainor