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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accepted his get together’s vice presidential nomination, and repeated claims he has made earlier than in regards to the Republican ticket. Different audio system tried to hyperlink former President Donald Trump to Venture 2025, amongst different claims.
- Walz made the unsupported declare that Trump and his operating mate, Sen. JD Vance, will “intestine Social Safety and Medicare.” Trump has promised to not minimize both program.
- Walz stated the Republican ticket “will ban abortion throughout this nation with or with out Congress.” Trump and Vance voiced assist for a nationwide ban of some form prior to now, however now each say the abortion challenge must be left to the states.
- A number of audio system cited Venture 2025, a conservative plan printed by the Heritage Basis, and tied Trump to its insurance policies. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware went as far as to falsely say Trump “wrote” it. He didn’t. Trump has distanced himself from Venture 2025, saying “it doesn’t converse for me.”
- Colorado Gov. Jared Polis known as Venture 2025 “Donald Trump’s roadmap to ban abortion in all 50 states,” alluding to the doc’s suggestion that the Comstock Act must be enforced to stop the mailing of abortion tablets. However Trump lately stated he wouldn’t implement the Comstock Act.
- Polis’ declare that Venture 2025 “places limits on contraception” and “threatens entry to IVF” requires extra context. However Trump has stated he helps each contraceptives and in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
- Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries misleadingly claimed that “83% of the advantages” from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act “went to the wealthiest 1% in America.” That’s estimated to be the case in 2027, if the revenue tax adjustments within the 2017 legislation expire. In earlier years, the highest 1% of revenue earners obtained a a lot smaller share of the advantages.
- Alongside the identical traces, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg claimed that Trump solely saved a promise to “minimize taxes for the wealthy,” when the Tax Coverage Middle estimated that the tax legislation “would scale back taxes on common for all revenue teams.”
- Former President Invoice Clinton stated Trump had “implied that if his lovely individuals voted yet one more time, they’d have the ability to rig it. Any more, they wouldn’t must vote once more.” Trump didn’t say he would rig something.
- Buttigieg stated that “crime was greater on his watch,” referring to Trump’s presidency. Murders and aggravated assaults went up, although the rise all got here in 2020. The general violent crime price, nonetheless, declined barely.
- Lastly, Clinton claimed that since 1989 a complete of fifty million jobs had been added below Democratic presidents, whereas simply 1 million had been added below Republican presidents. The stat checks out, however it’s a bit cherry-picked and is tremendously influenced by components outdoors a president’s management.
Social Safety and Medicare
Walz, like other convention speakers this week, made the unsupported declare that Trump and his operating mate, Sen. JD Vance, will “intestine Social Safety and Medicare.” He said it whereas predicting what’s going to occur “if these guys get again within the White Home.”
Trump has promised to guard each packages for seniors, if elected, and he hasn’t launched any detailed proposal to chop both program. Nevertheless, his plan to eradicate taxes on Social Safety revenue for seniors could result in lowered Social Safety and Medicare advantages within the subsequent decade, except Trump supplies a plan to interchange the revenues that each packages would lose below his no-tax plan. In any other case, a future Congress and president must substitute the misplaced funds.
As FactCheck has written before, Trump’s budgets when he was president didn’t suggest cuts to Social Safety’s retirement advantages, though his budgets did suggest reducing the Social Safety Incapacity Insurance coverage and Supplemental Safety Revenue packages. His budgets additionally included bipartisan proposals to scale back the expansion of Medicare with out reducing advantages.
Democrats have accused Trump of wanting to chop Social Safety and Medicare based mostly on his feedback in a March 11 interview with CNBC. When requested how he would tackle the rising prices of each packages, Trump said: “So to begin with, there’s a lot you are able to do when it comes to entitlements when it comes to reducing and when it comes to additionally the theft and the dangerous administration of entitlements, super dangerous administration of entitlements.” His marketing campaign said Trump was speaking about reducing waste and fraud, not advantages.
Abortion ban
After predicting that Trump and Vance would “intestine Social Safety and Medicare,” Walz repeated the outdated declare that “they’ll ban abortion throughout this nation with or with out Congress.” Trump used to assist that place, however now says the difficulty must be left completely as much as every particular person state.
Walz has made this declare earlier than, together with at his first campaign appearance as a vice presidential candidate. At a rally with Harris in Philadelphia, Walz stated Trump “stated he’d ban abortion throughout this nation.”
In his 2016 marketing campaign and as president, Trump supported a federal abortion ban after 20 weeks of being pregnant. In a letter to anti-abortion leaders in 2016, he stated he would signal a bill that will institute that ban, with some exceptions for victims of rape or incest and if the mom’s life is at risk. He made the identical dedication whereas speaking to March for Life contributors in January 2018.
Since then, the Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade, the court docket’s 1973 choice establishing a constitutional proper to abortion, because of the three justices Trump was in a position to appoint to the court docket. The court docket’s June 2022 ruling returned the jurisdiction on abortion rights to the states.
Now, Trump says he received’t assist a nationwide ban. On April 8, he released a four-minute video on Reality Social saying that he would depart the abortion challenge to the states. “The states will decide by vote or laws or maybe each, and no matter they determine should be the legislation of the land,” Trump stated.
Two days later, he definitively said “no” when requested whether or not he would signal a nationwide abortion ban if Congress handed one.
Throughout his 2022 election, Vance told the Cincinnati Enquirer that abortion must be “primarily a state challenge,” however he left open the opportunity of “some minimal nationwide normal.” Extra lately, Vance, in an Aug. 11 interview on CBS Information’ “Face the Nation,” stated that “we have to let the states determine their particular abortion coverage.”
“I believe that what we actually need is when states and voters in these states make selections, we in fact need the states and the federal authorities to respect these selections, and that’s what President Trump has stated is, persistently, we have to get out of the tradition battle aspect of the abortion challenge,” Vance stated. “We have to let the states determine their particular abortion coverage.”
What states do might have nationwide implications — no matter Trump’s place — since lawsuits over these actions might ultimately make their approach to the Supreme Courtroom. That’s how Roe was overturned: The court docket ruled on a problem to a Mississippi legislation that banned abortion after 15 weeks.
The 2024 Republican platform additionally stated that states would decide the difficulty. Nevertheless, the platform refers to legal guidelines that will grant fetuses the identical rights as individuals. The information web site the 19th wrote that if states handed the so-called fetal “personhood” legal guidelines, it “would have the sensible impact of prohibiting abortion in any respect levels of being pregnant. Its impression might turn into nationwide if courts affirm state-level legal guidelines that reach the appliance of the 14th Modification to fetuses.”
Venture 2025 and abortion
A number of audio system cited Project 2025, a conservative plan for a future administration printed by the Heritage Basis, and tied Trump to the insurance policies within the 900-page doc. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware went as far as to say Trump “wrote” it. He didn’t.
Trump has distanced himself from the venture and stated he agrees with some issues in it and disagrees with others, with out providing many specifics.
In April 2022, at a Heritage Basis convention, Trump appeared to seek advice from the venture, saying, “This can be a nice group, they usually’re going to put the groundwork and element plans for precisely what our motion will do.” CNN has reported that greater than 100 individuals concerned within the venture labored within the Trump administration. However the former president has said that a few of it’s “critically excessive” and “I don’t know something about it,” as he stated in a July 22 rally in Michigan.
“And it’s a bunch of very conservative people who most likely like me, however it doesn’t matter as a result of it doesn’t converse for me,” Trump stated in an interview on “Fox & Buddies” on July 25. “They wrote one thing that I disagree with in lots of circumstances — and in some circumstances, you agree.”
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis called Venture 2025 “Donald Trump’s roadmap to ban abortion in all 50 states,” alluding to the doc’s suggestion that the Comstock Act must be enforced to stop the mailing of abortion tablets. However Trump lately has indicated he wouldn’t implement the Comstock Act.
“Look, that sounds loopy, however proper right here on web page 562, it says that Donald Trump might use an obscure legislation from the 1800s to single-handedly ban abortion in all 50 states, even placing docs in jail,” Polis stated.
Underneath a broad interpretation, the Comstock Act — an 1873 anti-vice law — might certainly be used to ban cargo of all abortion-related supplies, with penalties involving imprisonment. The page Polis cited from Venture 2025 suggests the act must be enforced particularly to stop the mailing of abortion tablets. Greater than half of all abortions within the U.S. are remedy abortions.
Throughout an Aug. 19 interview with CBS Information, when requested whether or not he would implement the act, Trump stated, “We shall be discussing specifics of it, however typically talking, no, I’d not.”
On the subject of the provision of abortion medicines, Trump stated: “Nicely, it’s going to be out there, and it’s now. And as I do know it, the Supreme Courtroom has stated, ‘Preserve it going the way in which it’s.’ I’ll implement and agree with the Supreme Courtroom.”
The Comstock Act features a section that prohibits mailing each “article, instrument, substance, drug, medication, or factor which is marketed or described in a way calculated to steer one other to make use of or apply it for producing abortion.”
Attainable penalties for utilizing the mail in such a method embrace fines, imprisonment of as much as 5 years or each for a primary offense.
As Polis steered, Venture 2025 advocates on page 562 that the Division of Justice “within the subsequent conservative Administration” ought to “announce its intent to implement federal legislation towards suppliers and distributors of such tablets,” referring to abortion tablets and referencing the Comstock Act.
Well being coverage specialists have steered that the Comstock Act could possibly be interpreted much more broadly. “A literal interpretation of the Comstock Act would criminalize sending and receiving shipments of any supplies mandatory to supply any type of abortion care with out exceptions, though it might be virtually unimaginable to implement,” according to an article printed by KFF, a nonprofit well being coverage analysis group.
Venture 2025 and contraception, IVF, working dads
Polis’ claim that Venture 2025 “places limits on contraception” and “threatens entry to IVF” requires extra context. However Trump has stated he helps each contraceptives and IVF.
Venture 2025 doesn’t name for putting direct limits on typical contraception strategies, akin to contraception tablets or intrauterine gadgets, or IUDs, as PolitiFact has explained. It does, nonetheless, wish to remove mandatory insurance coverage for Ella, an emergency contraceptive that works as much as 5 days after sexual activity (web page 485), and rescind a rule the Biden administration proposed that pertains to ethical and spiritual exemptions for employers who don’t want to cowl contraceptives for his or her workers (web page 483).
Venture 2025 explains that it needs to “eradicate” Ella from the federal government’s contraceptive mandate as a result of it’s a “potential abortifacient,” or able to inducing an abortion. The Reasonably priced Care Act requires that medical insurance plans cowl preventive care, together with contraception, at no cost to the affected person. Emergency contraceptives, nonetheless, work by stopping ovulation and being pregnant, and the concept that they trigger abortions is not backed by science.
The doc additionally says policymakers “ought to finish taxpayer funding” of Deliberate Parenthood as a result of the group performs abortions. This might not directly restrict entry to contraception, since many individuals depend on Deliberate Parenthood for these providers.
Venture 2025 doesn’t straight tackle IVF, both. Some statements, nonetheless, could possibly be interpreted to assist fetal “personhood” laws, or the concept that embryos or fetuses must be granted the identical rights as an individual who has been born.
“From the second of conception, each human being possesses inherent dignity and price, and our humanity doesn’t rely upon our age, stage of growth, race, or talents,” web page 450 reads. “The Secretary should make sure that all HHS packages and actions are rooted in a deep respect for harmless human life from day one till pure loss of life: Abortion and euthanasia should not well being care.”
Fetal “personhood” legal guidelines complicate IVF as a result of within the process eggs are retrieved and blended with sperm to create embryos within the lab. Embryos are usually frozen and transferred to a affected person’s uterus one after the other, as wanted. Leftover embryos are sometimes discarded.
In February, Alabama’s state Supreme Courtroom ruled that frozen embryos are legally kids and sufferers might sue clinics for the wrongful loss of life of their embryos. Earlier than a state legislation was passed that explicitly gave IVF clinics and sufferers immunity, a number of clinics halted their providers as a result of they didn’t wish to threat authorized jeopardy.
Trump has been clear that he helps IVF, as FactCheck.org has written. “I strongly assist the provision of IVF for {couples} who’re making an attempt to have a valuable child,” he said in a video he posted to social media in April.
The 2024 GOP platform, which Trump endorsed, additionally affirms assist for IVF, though it simultaneously nods to fetal personhood — with out making clear the way it reconciles the 2 points.
Trump has equally maintained assist for contraceptives. “I HAVE NEVER, AND WILL NEVER ADVOCATE IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS ON BIRTH CONTROL, or different contraceptives,” he wrote in a post on his social media platform, Reality Social, in Might.
FactCheck.org requested the Trump marketing campaign to remark particularly on emergency contraception, however didn’t obtain a reply.
Polis additionally went too far when he claimed Venture 2025 “says the one authentic household is a married mom and father the place solely the daddy works.” The doc states that households with a mom and father who’re married “are the muse of a well-ordered nation and wholesome society” and extols the advantages of working fathers — however doesn’t say moms shouldn’t work.
Deceptive tax claims
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the Home minority chief, misleadingly claimed that “Trump was the mastermind of the GOP tax rip-off, the place 83% of the advantages went to the wealthiest 1% in America.”
Jeffries was referring to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed into legislation in December 2017. As FactCheck.org has written, the Tax Coverage Middle did estimate that about 83% of the tax advantages would go to the highest 1% of earners – however not till 2027, a 12 months after the legislation’s particular person revenue tax cuts are scheduled to run out. At that time, the remaining tax cuts for firms would largely profit people in that revenue group.
Earlier than then, the highest 1% would obtain a smaller share of the tax legislation’s advantages, the TPC stated. In 2018, 20.5% of the tax minimize advantages would go to that group of revenue earners, and by 2025 — the 12 months earlier than the tax adjustments expire — the share of the tax cuts going to the wealthiest 1% would improve to about one-quarter.
General, the TPC evaluation stated that the TCJA “would scale back taxes on common for all revenue teams in each 2018 and 2025” — contradicting Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s claim that “the one financial promise that [Trump] really saved was to chop taxes for the wealthy.”
Greater-income teams would see bigger tax cuts, on common, however different revenue teams additionally would profit from Trump’s tax cuts, the nonpartisan tax analysts stated.
Trump’s ‘received’t must vote anymore’ feedback
Each former President Invoice Clinton and discuss present host/creator Oprah Winfrey referenced a considerably cryptic remark Trump made final month at a conservative Christian summit hosted by the political advocacy arm of Turning Point USA.
Clinton claimed that Trump had “implied that if his lovely individuals voted yet one more time, they’d have the ability to rig it. Any more, they wouldn’t must vote once more.” Trump didn’t promise to “rig” something. Somewhat, he made a imprecise remark about voting and hasn’t achieved a lot to make clear it.
Winfrey made a basic reference to Trump’s remark, saying, “Now, there’s a sure candidate that claims, if we simply go to the polls this one time, that we’ll by no means must do it once more.”
On the finish of his roughly hourlong speech on July 26, Trump stated:
“If you wish to save America — get your pals, get your loved ones, get everybody you understand and vote. Vote early, vote absentee, vote on Election Day — I don’t care how, however it’s a must to get out and vote. And, Christians, get out and vote — simply this time. You received’t must do it anymore — 4 extra years, you understand what, it’ll be mounted, it’ll be high quality. You received’t must vote anymore, my lovely Christians. I really like you Christians. I’m a Christian. I really like you. Get out, you’ve obtained to get out and vote. In 4 years you don’t must vote once more, we’ll have it mounted so good you’re not going to must vote.”
That remark generated press coverage, together with the Trump marketing campaign’s response to a request to make clear the remarks. Marketing campaign spokesman Steven Cheung didn’t straight reply, however stated Trump “was speaking about uniting this nation,” when requested about it by Reuters.
Some Democratic politicians took to social media to recommend that Trump was hinting at authoritarianism.
Three days after Trump made his remarks, Fox Information’ Laura Ingraham pressed him to make clear, though he largely reiterated his preliminary feedback, saying that if Christians vote for him on this election, “We received’t even want your vote anymore as a result of, frankly, we may have such love, for those who don’t wish to vote anymore, that’s OK.”
Ingraham then requested if he would depart workplace after a four-year time period.
“After all and, by the way in which, I did final time,” stated Trump, who did depart workplace in 2021, whereas falsely claiming that the election had been stolen from him after he misplaced to President Joe Biden.
Crime
Buttigieg said that “crime was greater on his watch,” referring to Trump’s presidency. Murders and aggravated assaults went up, although the rise all got here in 2020. The general violent crime price, nonetheless, declined barely.
The nationwide homicide price elevated from 5.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2016, the 12 months earlier than Trump took workplace, to six.8 in 2020, in accordance with the FBI’s 2022 Crime in the United States report, the newest report out there. (See Desk 1 after downloading the CIUS Estimations file.) The aggravated assault price went from 250.4 to 277.2. The general violent crime price, nonetheless, which additionally contains rape and theft, dropped from 389.9 in 2016 to 385.2 in 2020. The property crime price was down, too, from 2,467.5 in 2016 to 1,963.9 in 2020, a 20.4% decline.
The large improve in murders got here in 2020, when the variety of murders rose 32.2%. Consultants have told FactCheck that a number of components had been possible behind the rise, most notably the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted a lack of jobs and disproportionately affected susceptible populations.
Underneath the Biden/Harris administration, the speed and variety of murders have gone down, after a small uptick within the variety of murders in 2021. Preliminary FBI figures for 2023 and the primary quarter of 2024 — in addition to information collected by different teams, such because the Main Cities Chiefs Affiliation — point out that downward pattern has continued, as FactCheck.org has written.
Regardless of the continuing disagreement between the Harris and Trump campaigns over violent crime, specialists say that presidents, no matter get together, have little to do with noticeable adjustments in crime.
The late criminologist Richard Rosenfeld, who wrote about crime tendencies for the nonpartisan Council on Legal Justice on the finish of his lengthy profession on this area, told FactCheck in 2021 that presidents “can facilitate a response,” citing an initiative by Biden on the time to work with cities to scale back gun violence. “However no president, in my reminiscence, has ever single-handedly been answerable for a pointy crime improve or for that matter a pointy crime decline. Crime is pushed by different components and the president has little management over these components.”
“Who’s within the White Home has little to no direct connection to what’s inherently a state/native crime downside,” John L. Worrall, a prison justice professor on the College of Texas at Dallas, additionally advised us.
Clinton’s triple-checked jobs stat
Former President Invoice Clinton cited a statistic about jobs created below Democratic presidents versus Republican ones since 1989, and he stated he triple-checked it.
“You’re going to have a tough time believing this, however so assist me, I triple-checked it,” Clinton said. “For the reason that finish of the Chilly Struggle in 1989, America has created about 51 million new jobs. I swear I checked this thrice, even I couldn’t consider it. What’s the rating? Democrats 50, Republicans 1.”
Regardless of Clinton’s assurances, and his history of giving fact-checkers little fodder, FactCheck.org determined to verify it a fourth time. And we discovered that, below the framing Clinton supplied, he’s proper.
Since 1989, there was a internet of 1.3 million jobs added below Republican presidents (George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump) and 50.3 million below Democratic presidents (Clinton, Barack Obama and Biden), in accordance with employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Technical be aware: The BLS on Aug. 21 announced that its preliminary estimate for the annual benchmark revisions to employment information signifies that 818,000 fewer jobs had been created within the final 12 months, which might drop the overall for Democratic presidents to about 49.5 million. The BLS stated the ultimate revision shall be issued subsequent 12 months.)
However some caveats are so as. Democrats had been in workplace longer — 16 years below Republicans to 19.5 years below Democrats. (Had Clinton included statistics from President Ronald Reagan, say, that will’ve added 16 million jobs to the Republican ledger.)
Extra importantly, components largely outdoors a president’s management usually form the job market. For instance, there have been 6.4 million jobs added in Trump’s first three years in workplace, in accordance with the BLS. After which the pandemic hit. Between February and April 2020, 21.9 million jobs had been misplaced. Almost 12.5 million of these jobs had returned by the point Trump left workplace, however the entirety of Trump’s presidency exhibits a internet lack of 2.7 million jobs.
Conversely, there have been 15.8 million jobs created throughout Biden’s presidency as of July, pending the ultimate benchmark revision to be issued in February 2025. However lots of these had been jobs recovered after the pandemic subsided. There are actually 6.4 million extra individuals employed than earlier than the pandemic hit.
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(FactCheck.org Undergraduate Fellow Logan Chapman contributed to this story.)
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