VP debate fact-check: What JD Vance and Tim Walz got right, wrong on abortion, immigration

Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz met in an Oct. 1 vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News that was cordial and heavy on policy discussion.

It was a striking change from the Sept. 10 debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, a matchup that often devolved into personal attacks.

Vance and Walz acknowledged occasional agreement with each other on policy points and respectfully addressed one another throughout the debate. But they also blamed each other’s running mates for problems facing the U.S., including immigration and inflation, with Walz pointing to Trump’s policies and Vance asking why Harris hasn’t executed her policies while vice president.

The moderators, "CBS Evening News" anchor Norah O’Donnell and "Face the Nation" host Margaret Brennan, had said they planned to encourage candidates to fact-check each other, but sometimes made clarifying comments after candidates’ answers. They also pressed the candidates when they evaded answers, causing Walz to say he "misspoke" in the past about being in China’s Tiananmen Square during the deadly 1989 protests.

The candidates sparred on numerous topics, including immigration, school shootings, reproductive rights and the economy. We fact-checked several of their statements.

Vance: "We have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost."

This is not what a federal oversight report said.

The claim refers to a federal oversight report about unaccompanied minors — children who came to the U.S. without a parent and guardian. The report mentioned 32,000 children who failed to appear for their immigration court hearings and 291,000 children who Immigration and Customs Enforcement had not served a "Notice to Appear." 

A Notice to Appear is a charging document authorities issue and file in immigration court to start removal proceedings. The report said that by not issuing these notices to the children, Immigration and Customs Enforcement limits its chances of verifying their safety after they are released by the federal government.

The report led Republican lawmakers and conservative news outlets to say that Immigration and Customs Enforcement "lost" the children or that they are "missing." But the report did not make that claim.

Vance: "Iran, which launched this attack (on Israel), has received over $100 billion and unfrozen assets, thanks to the Kamala Harris administration."

False. 

Under President Barack Obama, Iran did take possession of $100 billion in unfrozen assets after the signing of the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump later overturned. But Harris was not involved in the Obama administration.

Something that occurred on Biden and Harris’ watch was a hostage-release agreement with Iran that was supposed to free up $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets. There is no evidence that any of the $6 billion reached Iran.

In August 2023, the U.S. announced an agreement with Iran to secure freedom for five U.S. citizens who’d been detained in the country in exchange for allowing Iran to access $6 billion of its own funds that had been frozen in South Korean banks.

The money consisted of Iranian oil revenue frozen since 2019, when Trump banned Iranian oil exports and sanctioned its banking sector. It was not U.S. taxpayer money. In April 2024, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said that those funds had been frozen after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel and had not reached Iran.

Walz: "When Iranian missiles did fall near U.S. troops and they received traumatic brain injuries, Donald Trump wrote it off as ‘headaches.’"

True.

Walz was referring to a Jan. 8, 2020, Iran attack on U.S. soldiers in Iraq. More than 100 soldiers were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries, according to the Pentagon.

Trump has repeatedly called the injuries "headaches."

In 2020, Trump said he had "heard that they had headaches" and added it "is not very serious." Trump repeated this claim in a press conference Oct. 1 in Wisconsin.

After Iran attacked Israel Oct. 1, Trump responded to a question about whether he should have been stronger on Iran after the 2020 attack that injured U.S. troops. He said: "What does injured mean? You mean because they had a headache because the bombs never hit the fort?"

Vance: "Donald Trump could have destroyed the (Affordable Care Act). Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care."

False.

As president, Trump worked to undermine and repeal the Affordable Care Act. He cut millions of dollars in federal funding for ACA outreach and navigators who help people sign up for health coverage. He enabled the sale of short-term health plans that don’t comply with the ACA consumer protections and allowed them to be sold for longer durations, which siphoned people away from the health law’s marketplaces.

His administration backed state Medicaid waivers that imposed first-ever work requirements, reducing enrollment. He also ended insurance company subsidies that helped offset costs for low-income enrollees, and he backed an unsuccessful repeal of the landmark 2010 health law. He also backed the demise of a penalty imposed for failing to purchase health insurance.

Affordable Care Act enrollment declined by more than 2 million people during Trump’s presidency, and the number of uninsured Americans rose by 2.3 million, including 726,000 children, from 2016 to 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau reported; that includes three years of Trump’s presidency.

Walz: "Their Project 2025 is gonna have a registry of pregnancies."

False. 

Project 2025 recommends that states submit more detailed abortion reporting to the federal government. It calls for more information about how and when abortions took place, as well as other statistics for miscarriages and stillbirths.

The manual does not mention, nor call for, a new federal agency tasked with registering pregnant women.

Walz: "We are producing more natural gas and more oil at any time than we ever have."

True.

U.S. natural gas production has reached new highs during Joe Biden’s presidency, as has U.S. crude oil production, U.S. Energy Information Administration data shows.

Walz: "Donald Trump hasn't paid any federal tax in the last 15 years. The last year as president." 

Mostly False.

Trump paid no federal income tax some years, including his last year as president, but not every year in the last 15 years — and we don’t know what he’s paid since 2020 because his tax returns have not been made public.

In September 2020, The New York Times reported that it obtained copies of Trump’s tax returns. They showed that Trump paid $641,000 in 2015, $750 in federal income taxes in both 2016 and 2017, and, as of that 2020 report, "no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years."

In 2022, the House Ways and Means Committee released Trump’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020. According to those returns, Trump reported paying $999,456 in taxes in 2018, $133,445 in taxes in 2019 and $0 in taxes in 2020, ABC News reported. 

Walz: 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."

Mostly True.

Saying which income class earned a greater share of the tax cuts varies depending on the year studied. 

A 2017 analysis of the Republican tax law by the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center said that by 2027, the tax bill would deliver 82.8% of its benefits to the top 1% of  income earners.

The distribution of the benefits before 2027 also skewed toward wealthier Americans, but by a lower percentage. For instance, in 2018, the bill was projected to deliver 20.5% of the benefits to the top 1%, the center’s analysis showed. And as late as 2025, 25.3% of the benefits would flow to the top 1%.

Looking at the increase in federal debt on a president’s watch, Trump currently ranks first for debt accumulated in a single term, at $7.8 trillion. However, Biden is projected to pass Trump’s total by the time he leaves office in January 2025.

Using a different method — counting how much future debt a president’s actions created — Trump’s policies are projected to accumulate roughly double the amount of future debt as Biden’s.

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PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman, Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson, Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman, Staff Writers Grace Abels, Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu, Maria Briceño, Jeff Cercone, Madison Czopek, Marta Campabadal Graus, Samantha Putterman, Sara Swann, Loreben Tuquero, Maria Ramirez Uribe, Researcher Caryn Baird, KFF Health News Senior Editor Stephanie Stapleton and KFF Health News Senior Correspondent Stephanie Armour contributed to this story. 

Our debate fact-checks rely on both new and previously reported work. We link to past work whenever possible. In some cases, a fact-check rating may be different tonight than in past versions. In those cases, either details of what the candidate said, or how the candidate said it, differed enough that we evaluated it anew.