HOUSTON — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump met on the presidential debate stage in Philadelphia Tuesday night ahead of the 2024 presidential election in November.
This event comes more than two months after President Joe Biden and Trump took the debate stage. A little less than a month after that, Biden dropped his reelection bid for president.
This debate marks the first time Harris and Trump met face-to-face.
The KHOU 11 VERIFY Team fact-checked these claims made by Harris and Trump during Tuesday night’s debate.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS' CLAIM:
Harris said under Trump's abortion ban, women (who) suffer a miscarriage are being denied care in an emergency room because healthcare providers are "afraid they might go to jail."
THE SOURCES:
THE ANSWER:
In Texas, healthcare providers do face the possibility of jail time.
WHAT WE FOUND:
Chapter 171 of the Texas Health and Safety Code covers abortion law.
Sec. 171.065 makes providing a medical abortion in violation of Subchapter D (abortion-inducing drugs) of this chapter a state jail felony.
According to the code, an abortion-inducing drug is a "Medicine, or any other substance, including a regimen of two or more drugs, medicines, or substances, prescribed, dispensed, or administered with the intent of terminating a clinically diagnosable pregnancy of a woman and with knowledge that the termination will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of the woman's unborn child. The term includes off-label use of drugs, medicines, or other substances known to have abortion-inducing properties that are prescribed, dispensed, or administered with the intent of causing an abortion, including the Mifeprex regimen, misoprostol (Cytotec), and methotrexate. The term does not include a drug, medicine, or other substance that may be known to cause an abortion but is prescribed, dispensed, or administered for other medical reasons."
A medical abortion is defined as the administration or use of an abortion-inducing drug to induce an abortion.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS' CLAIM:
Harris said that during the debate, people would hear about the "detailed and dangerous plan" called Project 2025 that "the former president intends on implementing."
THE SOURCES:
THE ANSWER:
WHAT WE FOUND:
Project 2025 was unveiled in 2023 by the Heritage Foundation.
During the debate, Trump said, "Number one, I have nothing to do as you know and as she knows better than anyone, I have nothing to do with Project 2025. That's out there. I haven't read it. I don't want to read it purposely. I'm not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together. They came up with some ideas, I guess, some good, some bad, but it makes no difference."
Last month, Trump said, in part, on social media "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it."
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS' CLAIM:
Harris said that Trump said he was going to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices but never did. She said the Biden-Harris administration capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month.
THE SOURCES:
THE ANSWERS:
WHAT WE FOUND:
As part of President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, nearly four million seniors on Medicare with diabetes started to see their insulin costs capped at $35 per month beginning January 2023.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP'S CLAIM:
Trump said all over the world crime is down, but not in the U.S. He claimed "crime here is up and through the roof."
THE SOURCES:
THE ANSWER:
WHAT WE FOUND:
The Quarterly Uniform Crime Report (Q1) provides a preliminary look at crime trends for January through March 2024 compared to January through March 2023.
Data for January through March 2023 and 2024 indicates that violent crime decreased by 15.2 percent. Murder decreased by 26.4 percent, rape decreased by 25.7 percent, robbery decreased by 17.8 percent and aggravated assault decreased by 12.5 percent.
Reported property crime also decreased by 15.1 percent.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP'S CLAIM:
"Our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote," Trump said during the debate.
THE SOURCES:
THE ANSWER:
WHAT WE FOUND:
Director of Voting Rights at the Brennan Center for Justice, Sean Morales-Doyle, told the KHOU 11 Verify Team that "non-citizen voting again is a vanishingly rare phenomenon."
"The Brennan Center a few years ago, we did a survey of election officials, to ask them how frequently they were finding suspected cases of non-citizen voting and even just cases where there was a suspicion, not proven, that someone that might have been a non-citizen voting in elections and that was referred for further investigation, was less than 0.0001% of all ballots cast in the elections, that were covered by this survey," Sean Morales-Doyle said.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP'S CLAIM:
Trump said Harris was the border czar.
"Remember that she was the border czar. She doesn't want to be called the borders czar because she's embarrassed by the border," Trump said during the debate.
THE SOURCES:
- The White House
- University of Houston
- Rice University
THE ANSWER:
WHAT WE FOUND:
The references to Harris as the border czar are practically everywhere. It's even in a U.S. House resolution filed by a Texas congressman in March of 2023. This all started at a White House meeting about immigration on March 24th, 2021. One of two announcements made by President Biden is assigning the handling of the border to Harris.
"There is no question that Kamala Harris was named border czar," said Rice University Professor Mark Jones. "However, I think there is some doubt regarding what actual influence she's had on Biden administration border policy over the course of the past three years."
As University of Houston Professor Brandon Rottinghaus shared via email, "There are technically czars in the White House, personnel who have a single administrative policy task. What Harris did as VP is more of a diplomatic assignment as a VP, rather than a full-fledged policy role. But she was clearly intended to be the point person for the immigration issue."