Fact-Checking Claims Made in Vance-Walz Debate

With only 34 days until the 2024 presidential election, vice presidential candidates Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrat, and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican, squared off Tuesday night on the debate stage. 

CBS News hosted the vice presidential debate in New York City, with “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan moderating. 

Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate, and Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, are both relatively new to the political limelight.

Walz was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006. After serving half a dozen terms in the House, Walz was elected Minnesota governor in 2018. Vance won his Senate election in 2022 after his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became a New York Times bestseller. 

The microphones will be live during the entirety of the debate, but moderators reserve the right to mute the microphones at their discretion. 

Tuesday’s debate is expected to be the last major debate of the 2024 election.

Vance Says Solar Panels Made in China

JD Vance criticized the Harris-Walz plan for remedying climate change with solar panels.

“Issue is that if you’re spending hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of American taxpayer money on solar panels that are made in China,” Vance said. “Number one, you’re going to make the economy dirtier.”

Vance said we should be making more solar panels in the United States, as their components are made overseas in China.

Vance is correct, according to Erin Walsh, senior research fellow for international affairs at The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.

The development of solar energy began in America, and then the Chinese developed it further, and now China controls the “entire supply chain, so you can’t be involved unless you’re purchasing some goods from China to make your solar panels,” Walsh said. 

China has “taken advantage of the United States, because we’ve had this very driven climate agenda,” Walsh said. 

The more the U.S. and other nations move toward use of wind and solar energy, and electric vehicles, the further China’s economy benefits and the more America’s economy and national security are put at risk, according to Walsh.

Vance’s statement came after Walz bragged that the largest solar manufacturing plant in North America is in Minnesota. Last month, the Biden-Harris administration announced $40 million in investments across the solar energy supply chain.

‘Scientists Say Climate Change Makes These Hurricanes Larger’ 

O’Donnell used the devastation from Hurricane Helene to ask the candidates about climate change. 

“More than 160 people are dead, and hundreds more are missing,” O’Donnell said. “Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger, and more deadly because of the historic rainfall.”

Although climate change theoretically may affect hurricanes, the concrete claim that burning fossil fuels has made hurricanes worse doesn’t measure up. In fact, hurricanes should get worse if the climate grows colder, not warmer.

“[If] we have colder periods, we will get more hurricane activity,” climatologist David Legates told “The Daily Signal Podcast” in June. “If we have warmer periods, the hurricane activity tends to drop off.”

Legates, a visiting fellow for the Science Advisory Committee in the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation, is a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware. He cowrote the book “Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism.”

Legates pointed to a graph showing that global hurricanes have remained within the same general range for the past 50 years, without a clear trend of higher or lower power.

320,000 Missing Migrant Children

“We have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost,” Vance said, adding that “some of them have been sex trafficked.”

In August, the Inspector General’s Office of the Department of Homeland Security announced that 320,000 migrant children could not be located within the U.S. 

“[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] must take immediate action to ensure the safety of [unaccompanied children] residing in the United States,” stated the Homeland Security report.

“Based on our audit work and according to ICE officials, [unaccompanied children] who do not appear for court are considered at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” the inspector general’s office wrote in the report. 

When minor children cross the border alone, they remain in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement until they are placed with a parent or sponsor, but the agency does not track the location of each child after they are released to their sponsor. 

In February 2023, The New York Times reported that even though the Department of Health and Human Services “checks on all minors by calling them a month after they begin living with their sponsors,” data obtained by the newspaper “showed that over the last two years, the agency could not reach more than 85,000 children.”

This article will be updated throughout the night.

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