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Third Night of the Democratic Convention
The VP nominee and others hit upon the familiar themes of abortion, Social Security and Medicare, and taxes.

By Jessica McDonald, Kate Yandell, Lori Robertson, Eugene Kiely, Robert Farley, D'Angelo Gore and Saranac Hale Spencer

Posted on August 22, 2024 | Updated on September 3, 2024

Summary
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accepted his party’s vice presidential nomination, and repeated claims he has made before about the Republican ticket. Other speakers tried to link former President Donald Trump to Project 2025, among other claims.

Walz made the unsupported claim that Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, will “gut Social Security and Medicare.” Trump has promised not to cut either program.
Walz said the Republican ticket “will ban abortion across this country with or without Congress.” Trump and Vance voiced support for a national ban of some kind in the past, but now both say the abortion issue should be left to the states.
Several speakers cited Project 2025, a conservative plan published by the Heritage Foundation, and tied Trump to its policies. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware went so far as to falsely say Trump “wrote” it. He did not. Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, saying “it doesn’t speak for me.”
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis called Project 2025 “Donald Trump’s roadmap to ban abortion in all 50 states,” alluding to the document’s suggestion that the Comstock Act should be enforced to prevent the mailing of abortion pills. But Trump recently said he would not enforce the Comstock Act.
Polis’ claim that Project 2025 “puts limits on contraception” and “threatens access to IVF” requires more context. But Trump has said he supports both contraceptives and in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries misleadingly claimed that “83% of the benefits” 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 income tax changes in the 2017 law expire. In earlier years, the top 1% of income earners received a much smaller share of the benefits.
Along the same lines, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg claimed that Trump only kept a promise to “cut taxes for the rich,” when the Tax Policy Center estimated that the tax law “would reduce taxes on average for all income groups.”
Former President Bill Clinton said Trump had “implied that if his beautiful people voted one more time, they’d be able to rig it. From now on, they wouldn’t have to vote again.” Trump didn’t say he would rig anything.
Buttigieg said that “crime was higher on his watch,” referring to Trump’s presidency. Murders and aggravated assaults went up, though the increase all came in 2020. The overall violent crime rate, however, declined slightly.
Finally, Clinton claimed that since 1989 a total of 50 million jobs were added under Democratic presidents, while just 1 million were added under Republican presidents. The stat checks out, but it’s a bit cherry-picked and is greatly influenced by factors outside a president’s control.
Analysis
Social Security and Medicare
Walz, like other convention speakers this week, made the unsupported claim that Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, will “gut Social Security and Medicare.” He said it while predicting what will happen “if these guys get back in the White House.”

Trump has promised to protect both programs for seniors, if elected, and he hasn’t released any detailed proposal to cut either program. However, his plan to eliminate taxes on Social Security income for seniors could result in reduced Social Security and Medicare benefits in the next decade, unless Trump provides a plan to replace the revenues that both programs would lose under his no-tax plan. Otherwise, a future Congress and president would have to replace the lost funds.

As we’ve written before, Trump’s budgets when he was president didn’t propose cuts to Social Security’s retirement benefits, although his budgets did propose cutting the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs. His budgets also included bipartisan proposals to reduce the growth of Medicare without cutting benefits.

Democrats have accused Trump of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare based on his comments in a March 11 interview with CNBC. When asked how he would address the rising costs of both programs, Trump said: “So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements.” His campaign said Trump was talking about cutting waste and fraud, not benefits.

Abortion Ban
After predicting that Trump and Vance would “gut Social Security and Medicare,” Walz repeated the outdated claim that “they will ban abortion across this country with or without Congress.” Trump used to support that position, but now says the issue should be left entirely up to each individual state.

Walz has made this claim before, including at his first campaign appearance as a vice presidential candidate. At a rally with Harris in Philadelphia, Walz said Trump “said he’d ban abortion across this country.”

In his 2016 campaign and as president, Trump supported a federal abortion ban after 20 weeks of pregnancy. In a letter to anti-abortion leaders in 2016, he said he would sign a bill that would institute that ban, with some exceptions for victims of rape or incest and if the mother’s life is in danger. He made the same commitment while speaking to March for Life participants in January 2018.

Since then, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the court’s 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion, due to the three justices Trump was able to appoint to the court. The court’s June 2022 ruling returned the jurisdiction on abortion rights to the states.

Now, Trump says he won’t support a national ban. On April 8, he released a four-minute video on Truth Social saying that he would leave the abortion issue to the states. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said.

Two days later, he definitively said “no” when asked whether he would sign a national abortion ban if Congress passed one.

During his 2022 election, Vance told the Cincinnati Enquirer that abortion should be “primarily a state issue,” but he left open the possibility of “some minimum national standard.” More recently, Vance, in an Aug. 11 interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” said that “we need to let the states decide their specific abortion policy.”

“I think that what we really want is when states and voters in those states make decisions, we of course want the states and the federal government to respect those decisions, and that’s what President Trump has said is, consistently, we need to get out of the culture war side of the abortion issue,” Vance said. “We need to let the states decide their specific abortion policy.”

What states do could have national implications — regardless of Trump’s position — since lawsuits over those actions could eventually make their way to the Supreme Court. That’s how Roe was overturned: The court ruled on a challenge to a Mississippi law that banned abortion after 15 weeks.

The 2024 Republican platform also said that states would determine the issue. However, the platform refers to laws that would grant fetuses the same rights as people. The news site the 19th wrote that if states passed the so-called fetal “personhood” laws, it “would have the practical effect of prohibiting abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Its impact could become national if courts affirm state-level laws that extend the application of the 14th Amendment to fetuses.”

Project 2025 and Abortion
Several speakers cited Project 2025, a conservative plan for a future administration published by the Heritage Foundation, and tied Trump to the policies in the 900-page document. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware went so far as to say Trump “wrote” it. He did not.

Trump has distanced himself from the project and said he agrees with some things in it and disagrees with others, without offering many specifics.

In April 2022, at a Heritage Foundation conference, Trump appeared to refer to the project, saying, “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” CNN has reported that more than 100 people involved in the project worked in the Trump administration. But the former president has said that some of it is “seriously extreme” and “I don’t know anything about it,” as he said in a July 22 rally in Michigan.

“And it’s a group of very conservative people that probably like me, but it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t speak for me,” Trump said in an interview on “Fox & Friends” on July 25. “They wrote something that I disagree with in many cases — and in some cases, you agree.”

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis called Project 2025 “Donald Trump’s roadmap to ban abortion in all 50 states,” alluding to the document’s suggestion that the Comstock Act should be enforced to prevent the mailing of abortion pills. But Trump recently has indicated he would not enforce the Comstock Act.

“Look, that sounds crazy, but right here on page 562, it says that Donald Trump could use an obscure law from the 1800s to single-handedly ban abortion in all 50 states, even putting doctors in jail,” Polis said.

Under a broad interpretation, the Comstock Act — an 1873 anti-vice law — could indeed be used to prohibit shipment of all abortion-related materials, with penalties involving imprisonment. The page Polis cited from Project 2025 suggests the act should be enforced specifically to prevent the mailing of abortion pills. More than half of all abortions in the U.S. are medication abortions.

During an Aug. 19 interview with CBS News, when asked whether he would enforce the act, Trump said, “We will be discussing specifics of it, but generally speaking, no, I would not.”

On the topic of the availability of abortion medications, Trump said: “Well, it’s going to be available, and it is now. And as I know it, the Supreme Court has said, ‘Keep it going the way it is.’ I will enforce and agree with the Supreme Court.”

The Comstock Act includes a section that prohibits mailing every “article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion.”

Possible penalties for using the mail in such a way include fines, imprisonment of up to five years or both for a first offense.

As Polis suggested, Project 2025 advocates on page 562 that the Department of Justice “in the next conservative Administration” should “announce its intent to enforce federal law against providers and distributors of such pills,” referring to abortion pills and referencing the Comstock Act.

Health policy experts have suggested that the Comstock Act could be interpreted even more broadly. “A literal interpretation of the Comstock Act would criminalize sending and receiving shipments of any materials necessary to provide any kind of abortion care without exceptions, although it would be practically impossible to enforce,” according to an article published by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization.

Project 2025 and Contraception, IVF, Working Dads
Polis’ claim that Project 2025 “puts limits on contraception” and “threatens access to IVF” requires more context. But Trump has said he supports both contraceptives and IVF.

Project 2025 does not call for placing direct limits on typical contraception methods, such as birth control pills or intrauterine devices, or IUDs, as PolitiFact has explained. It does, however, want to remove mandatory insurance coverage for Ella, an emergency contraceptive that works up to five days after sexual intercourse (page 485), and rescind a rule the Biden administration proposed that relates to moral and religious exemptions for employers who do not wish to cover contraceptives for their employees (page 483).

Project 2025 explains that it wishes to “eliminate” Ella from the government’s contraceptive mandate because it is a “potential abortifacient,” or capable of inducing an abortion. The Affordable Care Act requires that health insurance plans cover preventive care, including contraception, at no cost to the patient. Emergency contraceptives, however, work by preventing ovulation and pregnancy, and the idea that they cause abortions is not backed by science.

The document also says policymakers “should end taxpayer funding” of Planned Parenthood because the organization performs abortions. This could indirectly limit access to contraception, since many people rely on Planned Parenthood for those services.

Project 2025 doesn’t directly address IVF, either. Some statements, however, could be interpreted to support fetal “personhood” laws, or the idea that embryos or fetuses should be granted the same rights as a person who has been born.

“From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities,” page 450 reads. “The Secretary must ensure that all HHS programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural death: Abortion and euthanasia are not health care.”

Fetal “personhood” laws complicate IVF because in the procedure eggs are retrieved and mixed with sperm to create embryos in the lab. Embryos are typically frozen and transferred to a patient’s uterus one at a time, as needed. Leftover embryos are often discarded.

In February, Alabama’s state Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are legally children and patients could sue clinics for the wrongful death of their embryos. Before a state law was passed that explicitly gave IVF clinics and patients immunity, several clinics halted their services because they did not want to risk legal jeopardy.

Trump has been clear that he supports IVF, as we’ve written. “I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby,” he said in a video he posted to social media in April.

The 2024 GOP platform, which Trump endorsed, also affirms support for IVF, although it simultaneously nods to fetal personhood — without making clear how it reconciles the two issues.

Trump has similarly maintained support for contraceptives. “I HAVE NEVER, AND WILL NEVER ADVOCATE IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS ON BIRTH CONTROL, or other contraceptives,” he wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, in May.

We asked the Trump campaign to comment specifically on emergency contraception, but did not receive a reply.

Polis also went too far when he claimed Project 2025 “says the only legitimate family is a married mother and father where only the father works.” The document states that families with a mother and father who are married “are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society” and extols the benefits of working fathers — but does not say mothers shouldn’t work.

Misleading Tax Claims
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, misleadingly claimed that “Trump was the mastermind of the GOP tax scam, where 83% of the benefits went to the wealthiest 1% in America.”

Jeffries was referring to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed into law in December 2017. As we’ve written, the Tax Policy Center did estimate that about 83% of the tax benefits would go to the top 1% of earners – but not until 2027, a year after the law’s individual income tax cuts are scheduled to expire. At that point, the remaining tax cuts for corporations would largely benefit individuals in that income group.

Before then, the top 1% would receive a smaller share of the tax law’s benefits, the TPC said. In 2018, 20.5% of the tax cut benefits would go to that group of income earners, and by 2025 — the year before the tax changes expire — the share of the tax cuts going to the wealthiest 1% would increase to about one-quarter.

Overall, the TPC analysis said that the TCJA “would reduce taxes on average for all income groups in both 2018 and 2025” — contradicting Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s claim that “the only economic promise that [Trump] actually kept was to cut taxes for the rich.”

Higher-income groups would see larger tax cuts, on average, but other income groups also would benefit from Trump’s tax cuts, the nonpartisan tax analysts said.

Trump’s ‘Won’t Have to Vote Anymore’ Comments
Both former President Bill Clinton and talk show host/author Oprah Winfrey referenced a somewhat cryptic comment Trump made last 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 beautiful people voted one more time, they’d be able to rig it. From now on, they wouldn’t have to vote again.” Trump didn’t promise to “rig” anything. Rather, he made a vague comment about voting and hasn’t done much to clarify it.

Winfrey made a general reference to Trump’s comment, saying, “Now, there’s a certain candidate that says, if we just go to the polls this one time, that we’ll never have to do it again.”

At the end of his roughly hourlong speech on July 26, Trump said:

“If you want to save America — get your friends, get your family, get everyone you know and vote. Vote early, vote absentee, vote on Election Day — I don’t care how, but you have to get out and vote. And, Christians, get out and vote — just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore — four more years, you know what, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you. Get out, you’ve got to get out and vote. In four years you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

That comment generated press coverage, including the Trump campaign’s response to a request to clarify the remarks. Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung didn’t directly answer, but said Trump “was talking about uniting this country,” when asked about it by Reuters.

Some Democratic politicians took to social media to suggest that Trump was hinting at authoritarianism.

Three days after Trump made his remarks, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham pressed him to clarify, although he largely reiterated his initial comments, saying that if Christians vote for him in this election, “We won’t even need your vote anymore because, frankly, we will have such love, if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s OK.”

Ingraham then asked if he would leave office after a four-year term.

“Of course and, by the way, I did last time,” said Trump, who did leave office in 2020, while falsely claiming that the election had been stolen from him after he lost to President Joe Biden.

Update, Sept. 3: In an Aug. 27 interview, Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil, also asked Trump to clarify his statement. “You didn’t mean vote me in once because I ain’t ever leaving, you’re meaning this is an important one. Vote this time,” McGraw said. To which Trump responded, “Of course that’s what I meant.”

Crime
Buttigieg said that “crime was higher on his watch,” referring to Trump’s presidency. Murders and aggravated assaults went up, though the increase all came in 2020. The overall violent crime rate, however, declined slightly.

The nationwide murder rate increased from 5.4 per 100,000 population in 2016, the year before Trump took office, to 6.8 in 2020, according to the FBI’s 2022 Crime in the United States report, the most recent report available. (See Table 1 after downloading the CIUS Estimations file.) The aggravated assault rate went from 250.4 to 277.2. The overall violent crime rate, however, which also includes rape and robbery, dropped from 389.9 in 2016 to 385.2 in 2020. The property crime rate was down, too, from 2,467.5 in 2016 to 1,963.9 in 2020, a 20.4% decline.

The big increase in murders came in 2020, when the number of murders rose 32.2%. Experts have told us that several factors were likely behind the increase, most notably the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a loss of jobs and disproportionately affected vulnerable populations.

Under the Biden/Harris administration, the rate and number of murders have gone down, after a small uptick in the number of murders in 2021. Preliminary FBI figures for 2023 and the first quarter of 2024 — as well as data collected by other groups, such as the Major Cities Chiefs Association — indicate that downward trend has continued, as we’ve written.

Despite the ongoing disagreement between the Harris and Trump campaigns over violent crime, experts say that presidents, regardless of party, have little to do with noticeable changes in crime.

The late criminologist Richard Rosenfeld, who wrote about crime trends for the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice at the end of his long career in this field, told us in 2021 that presidents “can facilitate a response,” citing an initiative by Biden at the time to work with cities to reduce gun violence. “But no president, in my memory, has ever single-handedly been responsible for a sharp crime increase or for that matter a sharp crime decline. Crime is driven by other factors and the president has little control over those factors.”

“Who is in the White House has little to no direct connection to what is inherently a state/local crime problem,” John L. Worrall, a criminal justice professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, also told us.

Clinton’s Triple-Checked Jobs Stat
Former President Bill Clinton cited a statistic about jobs created under Democratic presidents versus Republican ones since 1989, and he said he triple-checked it.

“You’re going to have a hard time believing this, but so help me, I triple-checked it,” Clinton said. “Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, America has created about 51 million new jobs. I swear I checked this three times, even I couldn’t believe it. What’s the score? Democrats 50, Republicans 1.”

Despite Clinton’s assurances, and his history of giving fact-checkers little fodder, we decided we better check it a fourth time. And we found that, under the framing Clinton provided, he’s right.

Since 1989, there was a net of 1.3 million jobs added under Republican presidents (George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump) and 50.3 million under Democratic presidents (Clinton, Barack Obama and Biden), according to employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Technical note: The BLS on Aug. 21 announced that its preliminary estimate for the annual benchmark revisions to employment data indicates that 818,000 fewer jobs were created in the last 12 months, which would drop the total for Democratic presidents to about 49.5 million. The BLS said the final revision will be issued next year.)

But some caveats are in order. Democrats were in office longer — 16 years under Republicans to 19.5 years under Democrats. (Had Clinton included statistics from President Ronald Reagan, say, that would’ve added 16 million jobs to the Republican ledger.)

More importantly, factors largely outside a president’s control often shape the job market. For example, there were 6.4 million jobs added in Trump’s first three years in office, according to the BLS. And then the pandemic hit. Between February and April 2020, 21.9 million jobs were lost. Nearly 12.5 million of those jobs had returned by the time Trump left office, but the entirety of Trump’s presidency shows a net loss of 2.7 million jobs.

Conversely, there have been 15.8 million jobs created during Biden’s presidency as of July, pending the final benchmark revision to be issued in February 2025. But many of those were jobs recovered after the pandemic subsided. There are now 6.4 million more people employed than before the pandemic hit.

FactCheck.org Undergraduate Fellow Logan Chapman contributed to this story.

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Walz Twists Some Labor Claims
By Robert Farley, Eugene Kiely and D'Angelo Gore

Posted on August 19, 2024

Delivering remarks at a labor union conference in California, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz stretched the facts with several labor-related claims.

Walz said Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance “has never cast a vote on a pro-worker bill in his life.” Walz was referring to the AFL-CIO scorecard, which lists legislation supported by the union. Vance, who has been in the Senate for less than two years, cast five votes opposed by the union.
Walz said that former President Donald Trump “cut overtime benefits for millions of workers.” The Trump administration actually extended the number of salaried employees eligible for overtime pay, but not to nearly as many workers as his predecessor, President Barack Obama, had sought. No one had their existing overtime benefits cut.
Walz falsely claimed to be “the first union member on a presidential ticket since Ronald Reagan.” Trump, a three-time GOP presidential nominee, was a member of a labor union that represents tens of thousands of media professionals.
Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president and a former member of a teachers’ union, spoke to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union at its convention in Los Angeles on Aug. 13.

‘Pro-Worker’ Votes
Walz said Vance is “one of four senators – four – that has never cast a vote on a pro-worker bill in his life. Not once.”

That’s a bit of an overstatement that requires some context.

For starters, Vance never held public office until his election to the U.S. Senate in November 2022. Vance took office on Jan. 3, 2023.

So, Walz was talking about less than two years when he said “his life.”

As for Vance’s voting record, the Harris campaign told Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler that Walz was referring to Vance’s AFL-CIO scorecard, which lists just seven “key votes” on legislation supported by the union. Vance didn’t cast a vote in two of the seven instances. Of Vance’s five votes, four of them were against President Joe Biden’s nominees, and one was in support of a House resolution that sought to overturn Biden’s student debt relief program.

So, Walz was referring to a few votes in less than two years.

We also note that Vance, who represents Ohio, has taken some actions that some might consider “pro-worker.”

In October, Vance visited striking members of the United Auto Workers in Toledo, Ohio.

“Today, I will join striking UAW workers on the picket line in Toledo and stand with them in their fight for higher wages and long-term survival,” Vance wrote in an opinion piece for Newsweek.

Vance, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, also issued a press release last spring in support of a bipartisan bill – the Failed Bank Executives Clawback Act. The bill, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, would have required “federal regulators to claw back up to three years of compensation received by big bank executives, board members, controlling shareholders, and other key decision-makers in the event of a failure or resolution,” according to a press release issued by Warren.

Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, supported the bill, writing on X that “[t]axpayers and working people should not foot the bill for mismanagement.”

In March 2023, Vance also joined as an original co-sponsor of the Railway Safety Act of 2023 – a bipartisan bill that was introduced by Ohio’s senior senator, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, after the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

That legislation was designed to improve “safety requirements for rail carriers and trains transporting hazardous materials,” according to a legislative summary of the bill.

The bill, which included a requirement that each train have at least two crew members, had the support of the Transportation Workers Union.

“The whole industry is a disastrous, dangerous mess with derailments every day, staff shortages and many other problems caused by terrible management and greedy owners,” John Feltz, TWU’s railroad director, said at the time. “Congress must pass the Railway Safety Act as quickly as possible.”

Trump’s Overtime Pay Rule
Walz said, “As president, he [Trump] cut overtime benefits for millions of workers.” That’s not quite right. More accurately, Trump did not extend overtime benefits to as many workers as his predecessor, President Barack Obama, had sought. No one had their existing overtime benefits cut.

Although federal law generally guarantees hourly workers overtime pay — time-and-a-half for any hours worked over 40 hours in a week — there is a so-called “white-collar exemption” for salaried workers who earn more than a certain threshold. In May 2016, the Obama administration issued a rule that sought to double that salary threshold from $23,660 to $47,476 per year (and automatically update it every three years to keep pace with rising salaries). That would have made an additional 4.2 million salaried U.S. employees eligible for overtime pay, according to Labor Department estimates at the time.

The rule was scheduled to become effective on Dec. 1 of that year, but it never went into effect due to lawsuits filed by 21 states against the Labor Department that claimed the rule was unconstitutional. A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found the rule was unlawful and granted a nationwide preliminary injunction.

The Trump administration delayed the case before finally squashing the Obama administration rule and finalized its own rule in September 2019, increasing the salary threshold for guaranteed overtime pay to $35,568 per year.

Then-acting Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella boasted that, “For the first time in over 15 years, America’s workers will have an update to overtime regulations that will put overtime pay into the pockets of more than a million working Americans.”

As Vox wrote on Sept. 24, 2019, “It’s a win for the estimated 1.3 million workers who will now be compensated for putting in long hours — but it’s a bitter defeat for the 2.8 million others who would’ve also gotten overtime under the original rule proposed by the Obama administration.”

“While the administration may be trumpeting this rule as a good thing for workers, that is a ruse,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank partly funded by labor unions, wrote in a statement issued the same day. “In reality, the rule leaves behind millions of workers who would have received overtime protections under the much stronger rule, published in 2016, that Trump administration abandoned.”

“It’s worth noting that if the rule had simply been adjusted for inflation since 1975, today it would be roughly $56,500,” Shierholz wrote. “This is more than $20,000 higher than the Trump administration’s level! I estimate that roughly 8.2 million workers who would have benefited from the 2016 rule will be left behind by the Trump administration’s rule.”

The Biden administration subsequently issued a rule, to raise the salary threshold for overtime pay to those earning up to $43,888 per year, effective July 1, and to $58,656 per year on July 1, 2025. The rule faces legal challenge from employer groups.

There is certainly room for political disagreement about whether the Trump rule went far enough in raising the salary threshold for overtime pay guarantees. But it is misleading for Walz to say that Trump “cut overtime benefits for millions of workers.” Workers who were guaranteed overtime pay under existing law did not have their overtime benefits cut. The Trump administration rule extended overtime pay to more workers, just not to nearly as many workers as Obama had proposed.

Candidates Who Were Union Members
Walz, a former teacher who was once a member of the National Education Association, wrongly claimed to be the only presidential or vice presidential nominee for a political party to be a member of a labor union since the 1980s.

“[H]ere’s a fact they shared with me as I came here to make this opportunity to say thank you,” Walz said. “I happen to be the first union member on a presidential ticket since Ronald Reagan.”

ABC News reported that Walz repeated the claim at a fundraiser later that day, “apparently unaware it was false.”

Until February 2021, Trump, who has been the GOP presidential nominee three times, was a member of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, a union that represents about 160,000 media professionals, including actors, recording artists and broadcast journalists.

Trump quit the union when faced with potential expulsion for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Your organization has done little for its members, and nothing for me – besides collecting
dues and promoting dangerous un-American policies and ideas,” Trump wrote in his resignation letter.

After his resignation, he was barred from being able to rejoin the union in the future.

Trump, who has appeared in dozens of TV shows and movies, first joined the SAG in 1989, before SAG and AFTRA merged in 2012. Former President Ronald Reagan, who was an actor before going into politics, served seven terms SAG president.

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How Walz Responded to Riots in Minnesota After the Death of George Floyd
By D'Angelo Gore

Posted on August 16, 2024

For years, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has been criticized by some for his response to riots in his state after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020. That criticism picked up again this month when Vice President Kamala Harris chose Walz to be her running mate on the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket.

“Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020,” Sen. JD Vance, Walz’s vice presidential opponent, told reporters on Aug. 6.

Three days later, former President Donald Trump, the head of the Republican presidential slate, made the same claim about Walz at a rally in Montana. Trump, on multiple occasions, has even falsely claimed that he, not Walz, called in the Minnesota National Guard after rioters in Minneapolis and St. Paul began looting stores and committing arson.

It was Walz who issued the executive order activating the guard — although he didn’t do so as quickly as some thought he should have. According to local reporting, the approval came about 20 hours after Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey first phoned Walz on the evening of May 27, 2020, to ask that members of the state-based military force be sent to help local law enforcement. Some protests had turned violent on May 26, the day after Floyd’s death, and the civil unrest continued the next day.

“He did not say yes,” Frey told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in an Aug. 3, 2020, interview, about his May 27 conversation with Walz. “He said he would consider it.”

The governor later said that Frey, in his initial call, did not provide the specifics necessary for deployment at the time — so he did not activate the guard until the following day, when city officials submitted a formal written request and provided a more detailed plan.

“I don’t think the mayor knew what he was asking for,” Walz said about Frey, in an Aug. 4, 2020, press briefing, according to press accounts. “I think the mayor said, ‘I request the National Guard, whew, this is great. We’re going to have massively trained troops.’ No. You’re going to have 19 year olds who are cooks.”

Walz, who served 24 years in the National Guard, added: “I asked, what do you want out of the guard? It’s not like pulling a can out. What units do you want? What do their capabilities need to be? How are you going to deploy them.”

A group of protesters surround National Guard vehicles that were driving on Lake Street in Minneapolis on May 29, 2020. Photo by Renee Jones Schneider/Star Tribune via Getty Images.
An October 2020 report issued by Minnesota state Senate committees controlled by Republicans argued that if Walz “had acted in a decisive manner by activating the Minnesota National Guard when requested, the riots would have been brought under control much faster.”

The report said that, throughout Minnesota, there was an estimated $500 million in property damage, including more than 1,500 businesses and buildings that were burned. There also were more than 160 fires, some which were investigated as arson, according to news reports.

Meanwhile, an independent “after-action review” commissioned by Minneapolis concluded that the delayed deployment of the state National Guard was at least partly the result of inexperienced city officials not following the proper protocols when Walz was first contacted about providing military assistance.

Notably, while Trump has often publicly criticized Walz’s response, an audio recording obtained by ABC News this month documents Trump telling Walz in a June 1, 2020, call with governors that he was “very happy” with how Walz responded in the days after protests turned violent.

“You called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast it was like bowling pins,” Trump said on the call, according to ABC News.

Below, we provide a brief timeline of events in May 2020 as a guide for readers:

May 25
Floyd, a Black man, is arrested in the evening on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill to make a purchase at a Minneapolis convenience store. He dies after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on his neck during the arrest for more than nine minutes, ignoring Floyd’s pleas that he could not breathe while being pinned to the ground.

May 26
The Minneapolis Police Department releases a statement saying that Floyd “resisted arrest” and died following a “medical incident during police interaction.” The statement is countered by video of the arrest, which was recorded by a bystander and posted on social media.

The MPD later updates its statement to add that the incident, because “additional information has been made available,” is under investigation with FBI assistance.

Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, announces that four officers who were involved in Floyd’s arrest and subsequent death were terminated.

People start protesting in response to Floyd’s death. Some demonstrations turn violent, with participants damaging property, including a police station that was vandalized.

May 27
Protests and riots continue throughout the day, with some individuals looting stores, including a Target near Minneapolis’ Third Precinct police station.

Medaria Arradondo, then the chief of the Minneapolis Police Department, determines that officers are overwhelmed and, according to the Star Tribune, calls the mayor at 6:23 p.m. to ask for assistance from the Minnesota National Guard. Minutes later, Frey calls to relay that information to Walz, who, according to Frey, was noncommittal about sending in guard soldiers.

Frey later told the newspaper that the phone conversation with Walz was a formal request for National Guard support. Walz and his office countered that it wasn’t.

At 9:11 p.m., Arradondo also forwards an email, from then-MPD Commander Scott Gerlicher, to John Harrington, then the state’s public safety commissioner. The message reportedly includes a document with the outline of a plan asking for 600 National Guard troops.

Also that night, rioters in Minneapolis set fire to an AutoZone and other businesses.

May 28
Frey submits a written request for the National Guard at about 10:55 a.m. He also issues a local emergency declaration.

In the afternoon, at about 2:30 p.m., Walz issues an executive order activating his state’s National Guard, which, according to reports, had been notified earlier of a possible deployment. The executive order says that Frey and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter both requested assistance “to help provide security and restore safety.”

At 11:41 p.m., the guard tweets that it has “activated more than 500 soldiers to St. Paul, Minneapolis and surrounding communities.”

But that was after rioters took over the MPD’s Third Precinct station, which officers were ordered to evacuate earlier that night. Rioters went on to set fire to the police station and nearby buildings.

May 29
At 12:53 a.m., more than an hour after the state guard posted about the deployment, Trump tweets: “I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right.”

By that point, Walz had already activated the guard.

About seven hours later, Trump’s then-White House Twitter account quotes him saying: “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

In the afternoon, Chauvin is arrested and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

An 8 p.m. curfew ordered by Walz goes into effect, but rioting in Minneapolis and St. Paul continues.

May 30
Walz orders a full mobilization of the guard.

In a post at 10:33 p.m., the guard writes, “We now have more than 4,100 — quickly moving toward 10,800 — Minnesota Citizen-Soldiers and Airmen supporting our friends and neighbors in the Twin Cities.” That was up from about 700 on duty, as of May 29.

June 1
The violent protests begin to ease. By this point, about 7,000 guard members had been deployed, a guard spokesperson told us for a June 2020 story.

In a phone call with Walz and other governors, Trump compliments Walz for bringing in military support.

“I know Gov. Walz is on the phone, and we spoke, and I fully agree with the way he handled it the last couple of days,” Trump said, according to audio obtained by ABC News.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.

Attacks on Walz’s Military Record
By Robert Farley, D'Angelo Gore and Eugene Kiely

Posted on August 8, 2024 | Updated on August 12, 2024 | Corrected on August 9, 2024

In introducing her pick for vice presidential running mate, Kamala Harris has prominently touted Tim Walz’s 24 years of service in the Army National Guard. Now, however, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance and the Trump campaign are attacking Walz on his military record, accusing the Minnesota governor of “stolen valor.”

We’ll sort through the facts surrounding the three main attacks on Walz’s military record and let readers decide their merit. The claims include:

Vance claimed that Walz “dropped out” of the National Guard when he learned his battalion was slated to be deployed to Iraq. Walz retired to focus on a run for Congress two months before his unit got official word of impending deployment, though the possibility had been rumored for months.
Vance also accused Walz of having once claimed to have served in combat, when he did not. While advocating a ban on assault-style weapons, Walz said, “We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.” Update, Aug. 12: The Harris campaign says that Walz “misspoke.”
The Republican National Committee has criticized Walz for misrepresenting his military rank in campaign materials. The Harris campaign website salutes Walz for “rising to the rank of Command Sergeant Major.” Walz did rise to that rank, but he retired as a master sergeant because he had not completed the requirements of a command sergeant major.
A native of West Point, Nebraska, Walz joined the Nebraska Army National Guard in April 1981, two days after his 17th birthday. When Walz and his wife moved to Minnesota in 1996, he transferred to the Minnesota National Guard, where he served in 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery.

“While serving in Minnesota, his military occupational specialties were 13B – a cannon crewmember who operates and maintains cannons and 13Z -field artillery senior sergeant,” according to a statement released by Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, the Minnesota National Guard’s state public affairs officer.

According to MPR News, Walz suffered some hearing impairment related to exposure to cannon booms during training over the years, and he underwent some corrective surgery to address it.

On Aug. 3, 2003, “Walz mobilized with the Minnesota National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery … to support Operation Enduring Freedom. The battalion supported security missions at various locations in Europe and Turkey. Governor Walz was stationed at Vicenza, Italy, during his deployment,” Augé stated. The deployment lasted about eight months.

“For 24 years I proudly wore the uniform of this nation,” Walz said at a rally in Philadelphia where he was announced as Harris’ running mate on Aug. 6. “The National Guard gave me purpose. It gave me the strength of a shared commitment to something greater than ourselves.”

Walz’s Retirement from the National Guard
In recent years, however, several of his fellow guard members have taken issue with the timing of Walz’s retirement from the National Guard in May 2005, claiming he left to avoid a deployment to Iraq.

Vance, who served a four-year active duty enlistment in the Marine Corps as a combat correspondent, serving in Iraq for six months in 2005, advanced that argument at a campaign event on Aug. 7.

“When the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it,” Vance said. “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him, a fact that he’s been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with. I think it’s shameful to prepare your unit to go to Iraq, to make a promise that you’re going to follow through and then to drop out right before you actually have to go.”

In early 2005, Walz, then a high school geography teacher and football coach at Mankato West High School, decided to run for public office. In a 2009 interview Walz provided as part of the Library of Congress’ veterans oral history project, Walz said he made the decision to retire from the National Guard to “focus full time” on a run for the U.S. House of Representatives for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District (which he ultimately won in 2006). Walz said he was “really concerned” about trying to seek public office and serve in the National Guard at the same time without running afoul of the Hatch Act, which limits political speech by federal employees, including members of the National Guard.

Federal Election Commission records show that Walz filed to run for Congress on Feb. 10, 2005.

On March 20, 2005, Walz’s campaign put out a press release titled “Walz Still Planning to Run for Congress Despite Possible Call to Duty in Iraq.”

Three days prior, the release said, “the National Guard Public Affairs Office announced a possible partial mobilization of roughly 2,000 troops from the Minnesota National Guard. … The announcement from the National Guard PAO specified that all or a portion of Walz’s battalion could be mobilized to serve in Iraq within the next two years.”

According to the release, “When asked about his possible deployment to Iraq Walz said, ‘I do not yet know if my artillery unit will be part of this mobilization and I am unable to comment further on specifics of the deployment.’ Although his tour of duty in Iraq might coincide with his campaign for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional seat, Walz is determined to stay in the race. ‘As Command Sergeant Major I have a responsibility not only to ready my battalion for Iraq, but also to serve if called on. I am dedicated to serving my country to the best of my ability, whether that is in Washington DC or in Iraq.' ”

On March 23, 2005, the Pipestone County Star reported, “Detachments of the Minnesota National Guard have been ‘alerted’ of possible deployment to Iraq in mid-to-late 2006.”

“Major Kevin Olson of the Minnesota National Guard said a brigade-sized contingent of soldiers could be expected to be called to Iraq, but he was not, at this time, aware of which batteries would be called,” the story said. “All soldiers in the First Brigade combat team of the 34th Division, Minnesota National Guard, could be eligible for call-up. ‘We don’t know yet what the force is like’ he said. ‘It’s too early to speculate, if the (soldiers) do go.’

“He added: ‘We will have a major announcement if and when the alert order moves ahead.’”

ABC News spoke to Joseph Eustice, a retired command sergeant major who served with Walz, and he told the news organization this week that “he remembers Walz struggling with the timing of wanting to serve as a lawmaker but also avoiding asking for a deferment so he could do so.”

“He had a window of time,” Eustice told ABC News. “He had to decide. And in his deciding, we were not on notice to be deployed. There were rumors. There were lots of rumors, and we didn’t know where we were going until it was later that, early summer, I believe.”

Al Bonnifield, who served under Walz, also recalled Walz agonizing over the decision.

“It was a very long conversation behind closed doors,” Bonnifield told the Washington Post this week. “He was trying to decide where he could do better for soldiers, for veterans, for the country. He weighed that for a long time.”

In 2018, Bonnifield told MPR News that Walz worried in early 2005, “Would the soldier look down on him because he didn’t go with us? Would the common soldier say, ‘Hey, he didn’t go with us, he’s trying to skip out on a deployment?’ And he wasn’t. He talked with us for quite a while on that subject. He weighed that decision to run for Congress very heavy. He loved the military, he loved the guard, he loved the soldiers he worked with.”

But not all of Walz’s fellow Guard members felt that way.

In a paid letter to the West Central Tribune in Minnesota in November 2018, Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr — both retired command sergeants major in the Minnesota National Guard — wrote, “On May 16th, 2005 he [Walz] quit, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war. His excuse to other leaders was that he needed to retire in order to run for congress. Which is false, according to a Department of Defense Directive, he could have run and requested permission from the Secretary of Defense before entering active duty; as many reservists have.”

“For Tim Walz to abandon his fellow soldiers and quit when they needed experienced leadership most is disheartening,” they wrote. “When the nation called, he quit.”

Walz retired on May 16, 2005. Walz’s brigade received alert orders for mobilization on July 14, 2005, according to the National Guard and MPR News. The official mobilization report came the following month, and the unit mobilized and trained through the fall. It was finally deployed to Iraq in the spring of 2006.

The unit was originally scheduled to return in February 2007, but its tour was extended four months as part of President George W. Bush’s “surge” strategy, the National Guard reported. In all, the soldiers were mobilized for 22 months.

Responding to Vance’s claim that Walz retired to avoid deploying to Iraq, the Harris-Walz campaign released a statement saying, “After 24 years of military service, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and ran for Congress, where he was a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform – and as Vice President of the United States he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families.”

Walz on Carrying a Weapon ‘in War’
Vance also called Walz “dishonest” for a claim that Walz made in 2018 while speaking to a group about gun control.

“He made this interesting comment that the Kamala Harris campaign put out there,” Vance said, referring to a video of Walz that the Harris campaign posted to X on Aug. 6. “He said, ‘We shouldn’t allow weapons that I used in war to be on America’s streets.’ Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? What was this weapon that you carried into war given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq and he has not spent a day in a combat zone.”

In the video, Walz, who was campaigning for governor at the time, talked about pushing back on the National Rifle Association and said: “I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt. … I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can do [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] research. We can make sure we don’t have reciprocal carry among states. And we can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.”

But, as Vance indicated, there is no evidence that Walz carried a weapon “in war.”

Update, Aug. 12: In an Aug. 10 statement to CNN, the Harris campaign told CNN that Walz “misspoke.”

“In making the case for why weapons of war should never be on our streets or in our classrooms, the Governor misspoke,” campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said in the statement. “He did handle weapons of war and believes strongly that only military members trained to carry those deadly weapons should have access to them.”

As we said, Augé, in her statement, said Walz’s battalion deployed “to support Operation Enduring Freedom” on Aug. 3, 2003, and “supported security missions at various locations in Europe and Turkey.” During his deployment, Walz was stationed in Vicenza, Italy, and he returned to Minnesota in April 2004, Augé said. There was no mention of Walz serving in Afghanistan, Iraq or another combat zone.

In the 2009 interview for the veterans history project, Walz said he and members of his battalion initially thought they would “shoot artillery in Afghanistan,” as they had trained to do. That didn’t happen, he said, explaining that his group ended up helping with security and training while stationed at an Army base in Vicenza.

“I think in the beginning, many of my troops were disappointed,” Walz said in the interview. “I think they felt a little guilty, many of them, that they weren’t in the fight up front as this was happening.”

In an Aug. 8 statement addressing his claim about carrying weapons “in war,” the Harris campaign noted that Walz, whose military occupational specialties included field artillery senior sergeant, “fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times” in his 24 years of service.

Walz’s National Guard Rank
The Republican National Committee has criticized Walz for saying “in campaign materials that he is a former ‘Command Sergeant Major’ in the Army National Guard despite not completing the requirements to hold the rank into retirement.”

Walz’s biography on the Harris campaign website correctly says that the governor “served for 24 years” in the National Guard, “rising to the rank of Command Sergeant Major.”

Walz’s official biography on the Minnesota state website goes further, referring to the governor as “Command Sergeant Major Walz.”

“After 24 years in the Army National Guard, Command Sergeant Major Walz retired from the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in 2005,” the state website says.

Walz did serve as command sergeant major, but Walz did not complete the requirements to retire with the rank of command sergeant, Augé told us in an email.

“He held multiple positions within field artillery such as firing battery chief, operations sergeant, first sergeant, and culminated his career serving as the command sergeant major for the battalion,” Augé said. “He retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit purposes because he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy.”

This isn’t the first time that Walz’s National Guard rank has come up in a campaign.

In their 2018 paid letter to the West Central Tribune, when Walz was running for governor, the two Minnesota National Guard retired command sergeants major who criticized Walz for retiring before the Iraq deployment also wrote: “Yes, he served at that rank, but was never qualified at that rank, and will receive retirement benefits at one rank below. You be the judge.”

Correction, Aug. 9: We mistakenly said a 2007 “surge” strategy in Iraq occurred under President Barack Obama. It was President George W. Bush.

Editor’s note: In the interest of full disclosure, Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt was an undergraduate intern at FactCheck.org from 2010 to 2011.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.

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