Within half an hour of announcing he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential campaign, President Joe Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“My very first decision as the party’s nominee in 2020 was to choose Kamala Harris as my vice president. And it’s the best decision I’ve ever made,” Biden said in a July 21 message. “Today, I want to give my full support and endorsement to Kamala to be our party’s nominee this year.”
Harris said she felt honored and that she planned to “earn and win this nomination.”
It remains to be seen whether she will take up the position of party candidate.
PolitiFact has fact-checked Harris 46 times since 2012 in her roles as California attorney general, U.S. senator, Democratic presidential nominee, and vice president. Hers was one of the first times she has served as vice president: she is the first woman and the first Black and Asian person to hold the position.
Below, read Harris’ fact-checked comments on topics like abortion and the economy, as well as her potential 2024 opponents, Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance.
Abortion
Harris has become a leading Democratic voice on reproductive rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
She often talks about the interests that American women have.
After launching a national tour from Wisconsin in January to promote the Biden administration’s commitment to abortion rights, Harris correctly noted that “1 in 3 women of childbearing age lives in a state with an abortion ban.” Our reporting found that about 21.5 million women of childbearing age — ages 15 to 49 — live in states that ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. That’s about 29% of American women in that age range; the percentage rises when more states with later abortion limits are included.
But Harris has misrepresented Republican positions on abortion.
In January, Harris falsely claimed that Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin had reinstated an 1849 law to “stop abortion.” An 1849 ban did indeed go into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, but Wisconsin Republican lawmakers played no role in reinstating that ban.
Attacks on Trump/Vance
In May, Harris said former President Donald Trump told Time magazine that “states have the right to police pregnant women” to enforce abortion bans, and that “states have the right to punish pregnant women for seeking abortion care.”
We rated that Mostly True. In a Time interview, Trump acknowledged that states have the right to do this, but he wouldn’t share his opinion on whether they should.
Harris has also attacked Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee. In a July 17 campaign video, Harris claimed, “Unlike Mike Pence, Vance said he would have carried out Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 election.” We rated that Mostly True.
In media interviews, Vance has not directly said he would have overturned the election. But he has said the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump and said he supported Trump’s plan to present Congress with alternate slates of electors on January 6, 2021, showing Trump winning states he had lost.
Now that President Joe Biden has dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, the entire country is waiting to see what happens next.
Economy
In an October 2023 interview, Harris claimed that “because of our economic policies, we are now reducing inflation.” We rated that Mostly False. Economists said some of the Biden administration’s policies may have helped marginally, but attributed the lower inflation largely to the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes, which the government has no control over.
We rated Harris’s claim that “small Latino businesses are 1 in 4 new companies, but only 1% of venture capital funding goes to Latino companies” as Mostly True. A 2021 report from a consulting firm found that between 2007 and 2017, Latino-owned companies received about 1% of the funding from the top 25 venture capitalists and private equity firms.
At a 2021 conference, Harris exaggerated the cost of corruption, saying, “The global cost of corruption is as much as 5% of global GDP.” Some anecdotal evidence supported a 5% estimate, but we rated that claim False after discovering that no one could tell us where that oft-quoted statistic came from or what data or research was used to derive it.
Gun Violence and Criminal Law
In April, when Harris praised the Biden administration’s efforts to curb gun violence, he said data showed that “a whopping 75% of school shootings were the result of a gun that wasn’t safe.”
We rated that statement Mostly False. Harris cited a 2019 study that found some school shooters — about 48% — had acquired firearms that were considered unsecured or easily accessible in family homes. Experts said more robust data is needed to better understand the connection between gun stockpiling and school shootings.
In April 2023, Harris said that “a heartbreaking 1 in 5 Americans have lost a family member to gun violence.” That’s largely true; a March 2023 survey by KFF, a health policy research, polling and news organization, found that 19% of American adults have had a family member killed by a gun, including suicide.
When Harris ran for president in the 2020 primaries, we looked at her record as California’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney. She won some notable victories on criminal justice reform, including efforts to reduce recidivism and eliminate bias in law enforcement. At other times, Harris’s positions disappointed criminal justice reform advocates; she had a reputation for being “cautious” on some issues.
We also found that she was a complete flop on whether police shootings should be independently investigated, saying in May 2019 that she supported such investigations.
Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday slammed Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, comparing her record as a prosecutor to his recent lawsuits.
Education
A year ago, Harris visited Florida and criticized efforts by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials to influence the curriculum. She said that Florida “has decided that high school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery.” We rated that statement as Mostly True: At the time, the Florida State Board of Education approved high school standards that said students should learn “skills” learned by enslaved people that “could be applied to their personal benefit.” Historians who have studied slavery have said such language is actually misleading and offensive.
Around the same time, Harris also falsely claimed that some states were trying to “ban the teaching of Latino and Spanish-language history.” She cited flawed examples to support her claim, such as a 2010 Arizona law that banned ethnic studies in public schools. A federal court struck down the law in 2017. While some states have laws banning the teaching of critical race theory — a broad set of ideas, rooted in legal academia, about racism woven into American systems — those laws do not explicitly ban the teaching of Latino or Spanish-language studies. We rated her claim Mostly False.
Misleading Republican Attack on Harris’ Border Responsibility
In March 2021, Biden tasked Harris with working with Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — to address the root causes that drive people to migrate to the United States.
Republicans quickly began calling Harris the “border czar.” The nickname flourished during the Republican National Convention in July, when Trump and several speakers blamed Harris for the record number of arrivals at the southwest border.
That was not the task Biden assigned to Harris. Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas highlighted the differences in their roles on immigration in June 2021 when they visited the border in El Paso, Texas. In remarks to reporters, Harris said she was addressing “the root causes of migration, primarily from Central America.” Mayorkas said, “It is my responsibility as secretary of Homeland Security to address the security and management of our border.”
