CNN
—

Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz and Ohio Republican Senator JD Vance will face off in New York City on Tuesday evening for their first – and only – vice-presidential debate.

The CNN team fact-checks 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. “All she did when she became vice president, when she became the appointed border czar, was undo 94 executive actions of Donald Trump that opened the border,” Vance said.

Facts first: Vance’s claim about Harris’ borderline role is incorrect. Harris was never made Biden’s “border czar,” a label the White House has always insisted is false. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas is the official responsible for border security. In realityBiden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an effort to address the circumstances that led their citizens to attempt to migrate to the United States.

Some Republicans have scoffed at claims that Harris was never the “border czar,” noting on social media that news articles sometimes describe Harris as such. But those articles were wrong. Several news outlets, including CNN, reported as early as the first half of 2021 that the White House emphasized that Harris had not been put in charge of border security as a whole, as the “border czar” strongly suggests, and had instead been given a command. diplomatic task regarding Central American countries.

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

Biden’s own comments at a March 2021 event announcing the assignment were slightly muddled, but he said he had asked Harris to lead “our diplomatic efforts” to address the factors driving migration in the three countries of the Cause “Northern Triangle”. (Biden also mentioned Mexico that day.) Biden listed factors in these countries that he believed had led to migration, saying that “if you address the problems in the country, everyone benefits.” And Harris’ comments that day were squarely focused on “root causes.”

Republicans can rightly say that even the “root causes” work is a border-related task. But calling her “border czar” goes too far.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

While praising the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a major climate bill for which Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, her running mate, Tim Walz, spoke of how the bill would create “200,000 jobs in created the world’. land,” including building electric vehicles and solar panels.

Facts first: This statement needs context. While it is clear that a significant number of new clean energy jobs have been created as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, the “200,000” figure also includes jobs that companies have pledged to create but have not yet completed. And other counts of new clean energy jobs have produced smaller numbers.

There are several datasets that track investments in climate law, all of which differ slightly. The number of jobs created by Walz by President Joe Biden’s climate law is slightly smaller than a June figure from the communications group Climate Power, which found a total of 312,900 jobs publicly announced by companies after the IRA passage through May 2024 .

E2, another clean energy group that tracks investments and jobs related to the Inflation Reduction Act, counted more than 109,000 new clean energy jobs created or announced between August 2022 and May 2024 – significantly lower than the Climate Power figure. A recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy shows that 142,000 new clean energy jobs will be created by 2023.

Not all of these jobs have been created yet. Climate Power’s topline figure also did not distinguish between construction jobs building new factories and the long-term jobs in those factories – jobs building batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles, among other things.

Different entities use different methodologies when analyzing data, so it is difficult to determine an exact figure. Regardless, there is no doubt that a huge amount of investment is being made in clean energy, and a significant number of new jobs are being created in the construction of electric cars and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy through the Inflation tax credits Reduction Act. The Energy Department’s 2024 report found that clean energy jobs accounted for more than half of total new energy sector jobs and were growing at a rate twice that of the entire U.S. economy.

The report also recognized how the sudden growth in the clean energy sector due to the Inflation Reduction Act has made it difficult to track all the jobs being created.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Senator JD Vance said schools and hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, are “overwhelmed” by “illegal immigrants.”

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

Facts first: Vance’s statement, referring to the Ohio city, subject to a a storm of disinformation about Haitian migrants this summer is misleading.

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

Many Haitians entered the country under a conditional program of the Biden-Harris administration that allows entry into the U.S. to vetted participants with U.S. sponsors. 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 that protection after the Biden-Harris administration expanded the number of eligible Haitians in June. Others have been living in the US with Temporary Protected Status since before the Biden-Harris administration.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Danya Gainor