LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Inside a white-walled conference room, a speaker surveyed hundreds of state lawmakers and policy influencers, asking whether artificial intelligence poses a threat to the elections in their states.
The results were unambiguous: 80% of those who answered a live poll said yes. In a follow-up question, nearly 90% said their state laws weren’t adequate to deter those threats.
It was among the many exchanges on artificial intelligence that dominated sessions at this month’s meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, the largest annual gathering of lawmakers, in Louisville.
“It’s the topic du jour,” Kentucky state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, a Republican, told lawmakers as he kicked off one of many panels centering on AI. “There are a lot of discussions happening in all of our state legislatures across the country.”
While some experts and lawmakers celebrated the promise of AI to advance services in health care and education, others lamented its potential to disrupt the democratic process with just months to go before November’s elections. And lawmakers compared the many types of legislation they’re proposing to tackle the issue.
This presidential election cycle is the first since generative AI — a form of artificial intelligence that can create new images, audio and video — became widely available. That’s raised alarms over deepfakes, remarkably convincing but fake videos or images that can portray anyone, including candidates, in situations that didn’t occur or saying things they didn’t.
“We need to do something to make sure the voters understand what they’re doing,” said Kentucky state Sen. Amanda Mays Bledsoe.
The Republican lawmaker, who chairs a special legislative task force on AI, co-sponsored a bipartisan bill this year aimed at limiting the use of deepfakes to influence elections. The bill would have allowed candidates whose appearance, action or speech was altered through “synthetic media” in an election communication to take its sponsor to court. The state Senate unanimously approved the proposal but it stalled in the House.
While Bledsoe expects to bring the bill up again next session, she acknowledged how complex the issue is: Lawmakers are trying to balance the risks of the evolving technology against their desire to promote innovation and protect free speech.
“You don’t want to go too fast,” she said in an interview, “but you also don’t want to be too behind.”
Rhode Island state Sen. Dawn Euer, a Democrat, told Stateline she’s concerned about AI’s potential to amplify disinformation, particularly across social media.
“Election propaganda and disinformation has been part of the zeitgeist for the existence of humanity,” said Euer, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Now, we have high-tech tools to do it.”
Connecticut state Sen. James Maroney, a Democrat, agreed that concerns about AI’s effects on elections are legitimate. But he emphasized that most deepfakes target women with digitally generated nonconsensual intimate images or revenge porn. Research firm Sensity AI has tracked online deepfake videos for years, finding 90% of them are nonconsensual porn, mostly targeting women.
Maroney sponsored legislation this year that would have regulated artificial intelligence and criminalized deepfake porn and false political messaging. That bill passed the state Senate, but not the House. Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont opposed the measure, saying it was premature and potentially harmful to the state’s technology industry.
While Maroney has concerns about AI, he said the upsides far outweigh the risks. For example, AI can help lawmakers communicate with constituents through chatbots or translate messaging into other languages.
Top election officials on AI
During one session in Louisville, New Hampshire Republican Secretary of State David Scanlan said AI could improve election administration by making it easier to organize election statistics or get official messaging out to the public.
Still, New Hampshire experienced firsthand some of the downside of the new technology earlier this year when voters received robocalls that used artificial intelligence to imitate President Joe Biden’s voice to discourage participation in a January primary.
Prosecutors charged the political operative who allegedly organized the fake calls with more than a dozen crimes, including voter suppression, and the Federal Communications Commission proposed a $6 million fine against him.
While the technology may be new, Scanlan said election officials have always had to keep a close eye on misinformation about elections and extreme tactics by candidates or their supporters and opponents.
“You might call them dirty tricks, but it has always been in candidates’ arsenals, and this really was a form of that as well,” he said. “It’s just more complex.”
Judge knocks down Hunter Biden’s bid to use Trump ruling to get his federal tax case dismissed
The way state officials responded, by quickly identifying the calls as fake and investigating their origins, serves as a playbook for other states ahead of November’s elections, said Cait Conley, a senior adviser at the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency focused on election security.
“What we saw New Hampshire do is best practice,” she said during the presentation. “They came out quickly and clearly and provided guidance, and they really just checked the disinformation that was out there.”
Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams told Stateline that AI could prove challenging for swing states in the presidential election. But he said it may still be too new of a technology to cause widespread problems for most states.
“Of the 99 things that we chew our nails over, it’s not in the top 10 or 20,” he said in an interview. “I don’t know that it’s at a maturity level that it’ll be utilized everywhere.”
Adams this year received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for championing the integrity of elections despite pushback from fellow Republicans. He said AI is yet another obstacle facing election officials who already must combat challenges including disinformation and foreign influence.
NCSL this year tracked AI bills in at least 40 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C.
As states examine the issue, many are looking at Colorado, which this year became the first state to create a sweeping regulatory framework for artificial intelligence. Technology companies opposed the measure, worried it will stifle innovation in a new industry.
Colorado Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, said lawmakers modeled much of their language on European Union regulations to avoid creating mismatched rules for companies using AI. Still, the law will be examined by a legislative task force before going into effect in 2026.
“It’s a first-in-the nation bill, and I’m under no illusion that it’s perfect and ready to go,” he said. “We’ve got two years.”
When Texas lawmakers reconvene next January, state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione expects to see many AI bills flying.
A Republican and co-chair of a state artificial intelligence advisory council, Capriglione said he’s worried about how generative AI may influence how people vote — or even if they vote — in both local and national elections.
“Without a doubt, artificial intelligence is being used to sow disinformation and misinformation,” he said, “and I think as we get closer to the election, we’ll see a lot more cases of it being used.”
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.
Barack Obama was days shy of his 43rd birthday and months from being elected to the U.S. Senate when he stepped onto a Boston stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
A state lawmaker from Illinois, he had an unusual profile to be a headline speaker at a presidential convention. But the self-declared “skinny kid with a funny name” captivated Democrats that night, going beyond a requisite pitch for nominee John Kerry instead to introduce the nation to his “politics of hope” and vision of “one United States of America” not defined or defeated by its differences.
Democratic National Convention keynote speaker Barack Obama, US Senate candidate for Illinois, speaks 27 July 2004, in Boston, Massachusetts. The US Democratic Party opened the second day of their national convention that will culminate with the formal nomination of John Kerry as their White House candidate on 29 July. (Photo by PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images)
Kerry lost that November to Republican President George W. Bush. But Obama etched himself into the national consciousness, beginning a remarkable rise that put him in the Oval Office barely four years later. And now, eight years removed from the presidency, Obama returns Tuesday night to the Democratic convention as the elder statesman with a different task.
Speaking in his political hometown of Chicago, the nation’s first Black president will honor President Joe Biden’s legacy after his exit from the campaign while making the case for another historic figure, Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s poised to be a significant moment as she takes on former President Donald Trump in a matchup that features the same cultural and ideological fissures Obama warned against two decades ago.
“President Obama is still a north star in the party,” said Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who credits the 44th president with helping her become her state’s first Black woman lieutenant governor.
Besides Harris herself on Thursday, Stratton said, no voice this week is more integral to stirring Democrats, reaching independents and cajoling moderate Republicans than Obama.
“He knows how to get across the finish line,” she said.
Laying the groundwork
Obama’s two decades in public life have been defined by seminal speeches. His body of work features a range of tone and purpose — an array of choices as he seeks to strike the right balance for Harris as she tries to become the first woman, second Black person and first person of South Asian descent to reach the presidency.
In 2004, Obama used his invitation from Kerry and then-Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe to mix lofty themes with storytelling, humor and his biography as the son of a Black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.
The Latest: Day 2 of the DNC will feature the Obamas and second gentleman Doug Emhoff
“Let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely,” Obama told delegates and a national television audience.
McAuliffe, however, remembered Obama as an obvious rising star. “I’d known him … done events for him” as he ran for U.S. Senate, McAuliffe said in an interview. Still, no one could have foreseen Obama’s performance and the reaction — because he’d never been on such a stage.
“It was an electrifying moment,” McAuliffe recalled. “It obviously laid the groundwork for him to be successful, the nominee and candidate in 2008.”
In 16 minutes — shorter than a typical nomination acceptance, inaugural address or State of the Union — Obama told his origin story, framed the 2004 election and talked up Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards. Obama was short on policy, but his sweeping indictment of divisive politics struck a chord.
“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America,” he said in perhaps the most well-remembered passage. “Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?”
Two-and-a-half-years later, Obama reprised that theme when he launched his presidential campaign before thousands of supporters gathered outside the Illinois capital of Springfield. His campaign motto: Hope and Change.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, the first Black person to occupy his office in the commonwealth, recalled watching that winter scene as a high school student. “That was the moment that clicked with me,” Davis said and, later on, “helped me to believe that I could achieve these things that I’ve achieved.”
A different tone
If idealistic, even nebulous themes brought Obama to the White House door, it was bare-knuckled politics and ice-water realism that got him through it.
In March 2008, then-candidate Obama was being pilloried for his friendship with his Black pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had a record of critiquing the nation’s history of white supremacy. At issue, in part, was a video clip of Wright declaring “God, Damn America” from the pulpit of Obama’s home church.
This time, soaring rhetoric wouldn’t do. Obama hand wrote a nearly 38-minute address explaining his relationship with Wright, with the context of U.S. history and race relations in the early 21st century.
“I can no more disown him than I can disown the Black community,” Obama said, while rejecting Wright’s “view that sees white racism as endemic and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America.”
The speech, titled “A More Perfect Union,” was rife with nuance — a risk in presidential politics. But it worked.
Obama’s convention address that August certainly featured his characteristic promises of hope and change. The venue and crowd — 84,000 people in the Denver Broncos’ football stadium — affirmed his celebrity status. Another takeaway, though, was Obama’s blitz on Republican nominee John McCain. Having spent weeks resisting calls from Democrats to go after the Vietnam war hero, Obama hammered the Arizona senator as a rubber-stamp for the outgoing Bush administration, out-of-step with most Americans and weak on the world stage.
“You know, John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow (9/11 mastermind Osama) bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives,” Obama said at one point.
It would preview Obama’s most unsparing speech, his 2020 appearance at Democrats’ virtual convention. Speaking on behalf of Biden, his onetime vice president, Obama framed Trump as fundamentally unfit for office. It was the most scathing indictment of a sitting president by one of his predecessors in modern U.S. history.
“This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that’s what it takes to win,” Obama said, almost five months before Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to prevent Biden’s certification as the 2020 election winner.
Weight of history
McAuliffe said Obama’s role Tuesday, in part, is to reinforce the message of multiple presidents: Biden spoke Monday and President Bill Clinton speaks Wednesday.
“They’re going to talk about what happens when you get a Democratic president,” McAuliffe said, especially on the economy. It’s Obama’s turn, McAuliffe said, to join Clinton as “explainer in chief” — a nod to Clinton’s 2012 convention speech when Obama was seeking reelection. The idea, McAuliffe said, is to set up Harris as the natural Democratic successor.
For her part, Stratton said she expects to see the man she has seen connect with voters individually and en masse. A volunteer on Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, she remembers the then-president visiting his campaign’s Hyde Park office in Chicago on Election Day.
“He was funny and down to earth” as he shook hands with volunteers and then began calling voters himself, she recalled.
Four years earlier, Stratton and her four daughters were among the throngs in Chicago’s Grant Park for Obama’s first presidential victory speech. “Strangers were hugging and crying,” she said. “We saw this Black family come out, knowing they were headed to the White House. It was a remarkable moment.”
On Tuesday, she said, there is space for Obama to bring heat on Trump, talk directly to American voters and honor the magnitude of Harris’ moment.
“He was a historic candidate and president. He knows what this is like,” Stratton said. “There will be this sweet moment of the first Black president passing the baton.”
The Harris campaign said it would spotlight “trusted messengers” from battleground states over the convention’s three remaining days. They include Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada; Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Gary Peters and Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan; Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. From Arizona, Sen. Mark Kelly will speak along with John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa.
Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina — a state that voted for Trump in 2020 but is now a major pickup opportunity for Harris — will be among the final speakers before Harris accepts the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday.
He said there’s more optimism about Democrats’ chances with Harris as the candidate.
Before President Joe Biden dropped out, “Democrats were not united,” Cooper said. “I’m grateful for his decision to do that because it brought everybody together.”
After Monday’s schedule ran late, causing some speakers to be canceled, convention organizers planned to start the evening program earlier on Tuesday.
Offering the prime spots to local elected leaders — many of whom poll better than the top of the ticket in their home states — is a move to reach undecided voters and maximize Harris’ pathways to 270 electoral votes, her campaign said.
Harris also announced Tuesday an array of prominent Republicans set to speak at the convention, including former U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, former Georgia Lieutenant Gov. Geoff Duncan and former Trump White House staffers Olivia Troye and Stephanie Grisham. All are now critics of Trump.
Harris was traveling Tuesday to Milwaukee for a rally in the swing state of Wisconsin before returning to Chicago late in the evening.
Joe Biden’s exit, talk of the glass ceiling, a civil rights hero: Takeaways from Day 1 of the DNC
Trump is visiting battleground states during the convention. On Monday, he was in York, Pa., and he’s scheduled to be in Asheboro, N.C., on Wednesday and Glendale, Ariz., on Friday.
The Democrats’ pivot toward the campaign’s final 76 days follows a convention opening night that was designed to give a graceful exit to the incumbent president, who was greeted with a hero’s welcome for stepping aside for Harris.
Speaking clearly and energetically, Biden appeared to relish the chance to defend his record, advocate for his vice president and assail Trump. His delivery was more reminiscent of the Biden who won in 2020 than the mumbling and sometimes incoherent one-time candidate whose debate performance against Trump in June sparked the downfall of his reelection campaign.
Biden, in his remarks, repeated his 2020 theme that “we’re in a battle for the very soul of America,” and pressed the case for why Harris and her running mate Tim Walz were best prepared to wage it.
“Because of you, we’ve had the most extraordinary four years of progress ever, period,” Biden declared. And then he interjected, “I say ‘we,’ I mean ‘me and Kamala,’” sharing the credit for his most popular successes with the vice president to whom he handed over his political operation.
Harris made a brief, unannounced appearance at the convention on Monday to thank Biden for his leadership. She later joined him on stage, where the two spoke and hugged.
“Joe, thank you for your historic leadership, for your lifetime of service to our nation, and for all you’ll continue to do,” she said. “We are forever grateful to you.”
Biden didn’t take the stage until around 11:30 p.m. on the East Coast on Monday night because the speaking schedule ran late. The program didn’t wrap up until well after midnight ET, even after some speakers were canceled. James Taylor, the acclaimed singer-songwriter, was bumped from the schedule.
Democratic National Convention director Alex Hornbrook said Tuesday morning that “we made some real-time adjustments last night” and “we’re working with our speakers and making some other adjustments this evening” including starting at 5.30 p.m. local time in Chicago “to make sure that we stay on track.”
He didn’t answer a question about whether anyone who was canceled on Monday would be added at a different point, saying only that “our program team is working very hard right now to ensure that we can be on schedule.”
By Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley and D’Angelo Gore, CQ-Roll Call
CHICAGO — In a torch-passing speech, President Joe Biden vowed that he would be “the best volunteer” to help the campaign of his vice president, Kamala Harris. Biden also touted his accomplishments and took shots at the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Several claims by Biden, and some from other Democrats at the Chicago convention, missed the mark.
Biden misleadingly cited “historic joblessness” in talking about his Inauguration Day in 2021. The economy was still struggling then, but many of the jobs lost in the early months of the pandemic had been regained.
Sen. Dick Durbin claimed that former President Trump “lost millions of jobs in America.” But that ignores the reason for the job losses: a global pandemic.
Biden said he created “a record 16 million new jobs.” That’s a record number increase for any president in their first 43 months. But on a percentage basis, which accounts for population growth, there was a slightly larger increase in employment under President Jimmy Carter.
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez said Trump is “threatening to slash Medicare,” while Biden claimed that Trump wants to cut Medicare and Social Security. But Trump has consistently said he will not cut either program.
Biden claimed that Trump “will do everything to ban abortion nationwide,” even though Trump said in April that he would not sign a national abortion ban if Congress passed one.
Durbin suggested that in “Trump’s America,” in vitro fertilization treatment would be “shut down.” But Trump has said that he “strongly” supports “the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby.”
Biden misleadingly suggested his administration had prompted a drop in the murder rate. Experts say presidents have little to do with the changes in murder or violent crime while they are in office.
Biden boasted that “inflation [is] down, way down, and continuing to go down.” Growth in inflation has been steadily declining from its peak of 9.1 percent for the 12 months ending in June 2022, but overall, it is still up 19.4 percent since the start of Biden’s presidency.
The president claimed that his administration is “removing every lead pipe in schools and homes.” That’s a goal of the administration, and it has made progress — but it doesn’t have the funding to complete the job.
Biden claimed that Trump “created the largest debt any president had in four years with his $2 trillion tax cut for the wealthy.” But Trump alone was not responsible for all the debt added during his presidency.
The president misleadingly claimed that investments in semiconductor manufacturing in the United States will create factory jobs that pay $100,000 a year for those without a college degree.
Raising the specter of Jan. 6, Biden said Trump is “promising a bloodbath if he loses” the upcoming election. But in context, Trump seemed to be talking about the possibility of an economic bloodbath if he is not elected.
Biden claimed that Trump said he wants to be a dictator on “Day 1.” Trump said he wouldn’t be a dictator — “except for Day 1,” when he would close the southern border and drill for oil. Trump later said he was joking.
Biden boasted that “border encounters have dropped over 50 percent” and that “there are fewer border crossings today than when Donald Trump left office.” Apprehensions of those trying to cross the southern border illegally plummeted in July, but illegal border crossings skyrocketed for most of Biden’s presidency.
The president repeated his misleading claim that billionaires pay an average federal tax rate of 8.2 percent, which is a White House calculations that factors in earnings on unsold stock as income.
Rep. Robert Garcia wrongly claimed that Trump “told us to inject bleach into our bodies.” Trump suggested having scientists test whether using “very powerful light” and “disinfectant” in the body could kill the virus.
The Democratic National Convention kicked off on Aug. 19 and lasts until Aug. 22. Just as FactCheck.org did for the Republican National Convention, it will fact-check the speeches on each night.
Pandemic joblessness
In speaking about his Inauguration Day in 2021, Biden described the challenges then facing the country and mentioned “historic joblessness.” The economy was still struggling at that time, but many of the jobs lost in the early months of the pandemic had been regained.
“It was, as I told you then, a winter of peril and possibility, of peril and possibility,” Biden said. “We were in the grip of a once in a century pandemic, historic joblessness, a call for racial justice long overdue, clear and present threats to our very democracy.”
US President Joe Biden speaks on the first day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, on August 19, 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris will formally accept the party’s nomination for president at the DNC which runs from August 19-22 in Chicago. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
The economy lost 21.9 million jobs in March and April 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic forced widespread business closures and layoffs, but it regained 12.3 million from May through November. That job growth stalled in December, when the economy lost 243,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So there was still plenty of ground to make up from those pandemic-fueled job losses — but the “historic joblessness” had occurred several months before Biden was sworn in.
The unemployment rate was 6.4 percent the month of Biden’s inauguration, above the historical norm of 5.6 percent, which is the median rate for all months since 1948.
As FactCheck noted before, that rate would have been higher if millions of people hadn’t stopped looking for work and therefore were no longer counted as part of the labor force. There were 4.4 million fewer people in the labor force in January 2021, compared with February 2020. The unemployment rate is the percentage of adults in the labor force who have looked for work in the previous four weeks.
The pandemic peak for the unemployment rate was 14.8 percent in April 2020.
Job losses under Trump
Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic whip, claimed that Trump “lost millions of jobs in America,” adding that Trump was one of the few presidents to leave office with fewer Americans working than when he took office. But that ignores the reason for the job losses: a global pandemic.
In Trump’s first 37 months as president, the U.S. economy added nearly 6.7 million jobs, or 180,000 jobs a month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of February 2020. But over the next two months, as FactCheck.org said, the U.S. lost a staggering 21.9 million jobs in March and April, as restaurants, stores, schools and manufacturing plants worldwide shut down in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris makes an appearance on the first night of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center, Chicago, Aug. 19, 2024. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris takes the stage on Aug. 19, 2024, during the Democratic National Convention at the United Center. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Singer Mickey Guyton performs at the Democratic National Convention at the United Center, Chicago, Aug. 19, 2024. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Singer-songwriter Jason Isbell performs at the Democratic National Convention at the United Center, Chicago, Aug. 19, 2024. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Delegates cheer on Aug. 19, 2024, during the Democratic National Convention at the United Center. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson takes the stage on Aug. 19, 2024, during the Democratic National Convention at the United Center. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow speaks Aug. 19, 2024, during the Democratic National Convention at the United Center. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
North Carolina delegates cheer on Aug. 19, 2024, during the Democratic National Convention at the United Center. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Activists jump through a fence in Park 578 near the United Center during the first day of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024 in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Pro-Palestinian protesters pass through a barricade in Park 578 on the Near West Side of Chicago with the Democratic National Convention underway nearby at the United Center, Aug. 19, 2024. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
A person is detained while police clear out park #578 after protesters jumped a fence near the United Center during the first day of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 19, 2024 in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Activists clash with police at Park 578 near the United Center during the first day of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 19, 2024. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Activists bang on a fence in park #578 near the United Center after marching during the first day of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Activists stand by a fence in park #578 near the United Center after marching during the first day of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 19, 2024. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Activists gather in park #578 near the United Center after marching during the first day of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Activists try to climb a fence in park #578 near the United Center after marching during the first day of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 19, 2024. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling, center, is seen as pro-Palestinian protesters rally in Union Park on the Near West Side of Chicago before the start of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
The image of Vice President Kamala Harris is seen as Pro-Palestinian protesters gather in Union Park on the Near West Side of Chicago before the start of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024. Many called for the end of U.S. military aid to Israel. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at the Illinois state delegation breakfast held inside Hotel 71 on Aug. 19, 2024. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
California delegates cheer on Monday, Aug. 19, 2024, during the Democratic National Convention at the United Center. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
1 of 20
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris makes an appearance on the first night of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center, Chicago, Aug. 19, 2024. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
“In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered job loss in the labor market on a scale not seen since the Great Depression,” BLS economists said in a report. “A year later, the economic situation had improved. Approximately 60 percent of jobs lost had returned, but employment was still down compared to pre pandemic levels.”
When Trump left office in January 2021, the U.S. had 2.7 million fewer jobs than it did in January 2017, when Trump was sworn in.
“Presidents deserve very little credit, and presidents typically deserve very little blame” for the employment figures on their watch, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist, president of the “center-right” American Action Forum and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, told FactCheck.org for an article in February.
Job gains under Biden
Biden said he created “a record 16 million new jobs.”
As of July, total nonfarm employment in the U.S. was up by almost 15.8 million since he was inaugurated in January 2021, according to BLS data. In raw numbers, that is a record increase for any president in their first 43 months in office, based on BLS data that go back to January 1939. But on a percentage basis, which accounts for population growth, there was a slightly larger increase in employment under Jimmy Carter (11.3 percent) than Biden (11.1 percent).
Also, the employment gains under Biden are skewed by the loss of 21.9 million jobs at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. When Biden took office, about 57 percent of those jobs had come back amid the ongoing economic recovery, but there was still room for a lot of job growth. As of July, total nonfarm employment had gone up about 6.4 million from the pre-pandemic peak in February 2020.
Social Security and Medicare
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez said Trump is “threatening to slash Medicare,” while Biden claimed that “Trump wants to cut Social Security and Medicare.” But Trump has consistently said he will not cut either program, and he has advised Republicans not to cut those programs as well.
Earlier this year, Biden and his campaign based the claim on Trump saying in a March 11 CNBC interview that “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.” As FactCheck said, in context, instead of reducing benefits, Trump was talking about cutting waste and fraud in those programs.
“I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,” Trump later said in a March 13 Breitbart interview. “We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”
During the GOP presidential primary, Trump also criticized some of his Republican opponents for proposing to raise the retirement age for Social Security, which budget experts have said would reduce scheduled benefits for those affected.
Some critics of Trump have argued that he cannot be expected to keep his promise because of his past budget proposals. As FactCheck has written, Trump proposed cuts to the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs, but not to Social Security retirement benefits. And his budgets included only bipartisan ideas to reduce the growth of Medicare spending.
Trump has proposed one policy that could reduce benefits in the future. He has said he would repeal the income tax on Social Security benefits. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that would cost the government $1.6 trillion to $1.8 trillion in revenues over 10 years and could result in both Social Security and Medicare becoming insolvent sooner than scheduled. Future benefits would be reduced unless Trump provides a plan to replace the lost revenues or a future Congress and president act to replace the lost funds.
Trump on abortion bans
Biden claimed that “Trump will do everything to ban abortion nationwide,” which contradicts what Trump has said in recent months.
In a video posted on April 8, Trump said that abortion laws should be left up 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 in the video. “In this case, the law of the state. Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be.”
And when asked on April 10 if he would sign a national abortion ban if Congress passed one, Trump answered “no.”
As FactCheck wrote, Trump has changed course since his days as president and as a presidential candidate in 2016, when hesaid that he would support a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Trump supports IVF
Durbin gave the false impression that Trump does not support in vitro fertilization treatments.
“Want to have a child but need IVF? Too bad, that’s shut down, too,” in “Trump’s America,” Durbin said.
Joe Biden’s exit, talk of the glass ceiling, a civil rights hero: Takeaways from Day 1 of the DNC
However, Trump has said that he favors access to in vitro fertilization treatments to help families conceive. “I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby,” Trump said in a video he posted to social media on April.
That was also after he spoke out in February against a ruling by the all Republican Alabama Supreme Court, which said that frozen embryos used in IVF are children, and that couples could sue for the wrongful death of a minor when test tubes with frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed. In response to the ruling, some clinics said they would stop providing IVF services rather than risk facing criminal or civil charges.
After the ruling, Trump said in a Feb. 23 social media post: “Under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families. We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder! That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every State in America.”
In that post, Trump called on the Alabama Legislature “to act quickly to find an immediate solution to preserve the availability of IVF in Alabama.” In March, Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill that the Legislature passed protecting IVF in the state.
Crime
In pushing back against Trump’s false claims about crime during the Biden administration, the president misleadingly took credit for a drop in the number and rate of murders under his term.
Biden said that under Trump, “the murder rate went up 30 percent, the biggest increase in history. Meanwhile, we made the largest investment, Kamala and I, in public safety ever. Now, the murder rate is falling faster than any time in history.”
As of 2019, the number and rate of murders had gone down under Trump’s administration, but 2020 changed that.
The murder rate went up 30.8 percent in a single year — from 5.2 murders per 100,000 population in 2019 to 6.8 in 2020, according to the latest nationwide figures available from the FBI. The number of murders went up 32.2 percent. News articles from 2021 reported that the increase in the number was the largest for a single year.
Experts have told FactCheck.org before that several factors were likely behind the increase in murders in 2020 and a smaller increase in 2021, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a loss of jobs and disproportionately affected vulnerable populations.
Now, under Biden, the number and rate have gone down. The rate was down to 6.3 in 2022, the latest year for the final FBI annual reports. Preliminary FBI data for 2023 and for the first quarter of this year show continued declines. The Justice Department called a 26.4 percent drop in the number of murders in the first quarter of this year, compared with the first quarter of 2023, “historic.”
Crime analyst Jeff Asher, co-founder of the New Orleans firm AH Datalytics, echoed that assessment, telling FactCheck.org last week that the trend in murders is “a historic decline in 2023 and 2024.”
But Biden suggests that an investment in “public safety” led to the declines. Experts say presidents have little to do with the changes in murder or violent crime while they are in office.
The late criminologist Richard Rosenfeld, who wrote about crime trends for the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice, told FactCheck.org 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 FactCheck.
Inflation
Ticking off a series of accomplishments since he took office, Biden boasted that “inflation [is] down, way down, and continuing to go down.” Biden is right about the year-over-year increase in inflation, but that’s not the whole story.
Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, rose by 2.9 percent for the 12 months ending in July, the most recent figure available. That’s the smallest 12-month increase since March 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. And it is markedly lower than the 9.1 percent increase for 12 months ending in June 2022, which the BLS said was the biggest such increase since the 12 months ending in November 1981.
But looking at the entirety of Biden’s time in office, the CPI has risen by 19.4 percent. By comparison, the CPI rose by a total of 7.8 percent in the four years under Trump.
As FactCheck.org has written, there were a number of factors driving higher inflation early in Biden’s presidency, including global supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic, as well as post-pandemic consumer spending. Economists told FactCheck.org federal stimulus spending in response to the pandemic — both by Trump and Biden — also contributed, in part, to inflation. But regardless of the causes, high inflation has been a problem during most of the Biden presidency.
Lead pipe removal
When talking about the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Biden claimed that his administration is “removing every lead pipe in schools and homes, so every child can drink clean water.”
“We’re modernizing our roads, our bridges, our ports, our airports, our trains, our buses,” Biden said. “Removing every lead pipe from schools and homes, so every child can drink clean water.”
As FactCheck.org has written before, it is a goal of the administration to remove all lead pipes in the U.S., but the infrastructure law didn’t include the money to finish the job.
The legislation includes $15 billion in direct funding for lead pipe replacement. So far, the $9 billion in funding announced to date is “expected to replace up to 1.7 million lead pipes nationwide,” the Environmental Protection Agency said in a June 20 press release.
However, the EPA estimates that there are 9 million lead service lines in the United States, according to the agency’s Updated 7th Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey & Assessment issued in May. As FactCheck wrote before, the EPA estimated the average cost for full lead service line replacement at $4,700 per line. Using that estimate, it would cost more than $42 billion to replace 9 million lead pipes.
Debt under Trump
Biden claimed that Trump wants to give more tax cuts to corporations, adding to what Biden said was already a record increase in debt during Trump’s presidency.
“He created the largest debt any president had in four years with his $2 trillion tax cut for the wealthy,” Biden said of Trump. “Well, Trump has a new plan. He wants to provide a $5 billion tax cut for corporations that are very wealthy … put us further in debt.” (He apparently meant to say $5 trillion.)
When Trump was president, the total national debt increased by $7.8 trillion, and the debt held by the public, which excludes money the federal government owes to itself, increased by about $7.2 trillion. Both are records for any four-year presidential term.
But Trump alone was not responsible for all that debt. As FactCheck noted before, the debt added during a president’s term includes the fiscal impact of actions that predate the administration. Just days after Trump took office in January 2017, the Congressional Budget Office was already estimating that the publicly held debt would rise from almost $14.2 trillion to more than $16.8 trillion in fiscal year 2020 and to more than $20.8 trillion in fiscal year 2024.
Trump did sign laws that helped increase the public debt, which was $21.6 trillion when he left office. But he could not have done it without Congress. Republicans passed that 2017 tax cuts legislation that reduced federal revenue and grew the deficit. Also, budget experts previously told FactCheck.org that Democrats helped pass bipartisan budget bills and authorize COVID-19 spending that tacked on more debt.
For comparison, under Biden, the public debt has increased by about $6.4 trillion, and the total debt is up by more than $7.4 trillion. But Biden is not responsible for all that debt, either.
As for Biden’s claim that Trump plans to add $5 trillion more to the debt with tax cuts for corporations, that is a 10-year cost estimate and much of it would be tax cuts for people earning less than $400,000 — a policy that Biden himself has proposed, as FactCheck as written.
Semiconductor factory jobs
In August 2022, Biden signed the CHIPS Act, which includes $39 billion in financial incentives to encourage semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. and $11 billion for semiconductor research and development.
Once again, Biden misleadingly claimed that investments in semiconductor manufacturing in the United States will create jobs at semiconductor factories, known as “fabs,” that pay $100,000 a year for those without a college degree.
“And guess what?” he said. “The average salary of those fabs — the size of a football field — will be over $100,000 a year, and you don’t need a college degree.”
The Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade group, and Oxford Economics published a report on the U.S. industry in 2021. The report said that industry “workers consistently earn more than the U.S. average at all education attainment levels” and included a chart showing the “wage premium” workers could expect based on their level of education. Those with a high school education or less could expect to earn a little more than $40,000. Those with some college attendance could earn $60,000, while an associate’s degree could increase that to $70,000.
The wages only topped six figures for those with a bachelor’s degree ($120,000) or a graduate degree (a little more than $160,000).
Trump’s ‘bloodbath’ comment in context
“This will be the first presidential election since Jan. 6,” Biden said. “On that day, we almost lost everything about who we are as a country. And that threat — this is not hyperbole — that threat is still very much alive. Donald Trump says he will refuse to accept the election result if he loses again. Think about that. He means it. Think about that. He’s promising a bloodbath if he loses, in his words.”
Biden has frequentlycited Trump’s “bloodbath” quote as evidence that Trump would incite violence if the 2024 election results don’t go his way. But Trump’s comments came during a March 16 rally in Ohio as he was talking about the potential loss of U.S. auto manufacturing jobs to foreign countries.
Ashley Biden welcomes her father, US President Joe Biden, to the stage on the first day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, on August 19, 2024. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump said that over the last three decades, Mexico has siphoned off U.S. auto manufacturing jobs, and he accused China of building car manufacturing plants in Mexico that will cost U.S. autoworkers their jobs. “We’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars. If I get elected,” Trump said. “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath, for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars.”
On Truth Social on March 18, Trump wrote that Biden and others were purposely misconstruing his words.
“The Fake News Media, and their Democrat Partners in the destruction of our Nation, pretended to be shocked at my use of the word BLOODBATH, even though they fully understood that I was simply referring to imports allowed by Crooked Joe Biden, which are killing the automobile industry,” Trump wrote.
The Trump campaign also noted — rightly — that one of the definitions of “bloodbath,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “a major economic disaster.”
Given Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, it is fair game for Biden to speculate about Trump’s potential actions should he lose the election. But as FactCheck.org has written, the explanation Trump provided for his use of the term bloodbath seems the most plausible, given the context of his comments.
Trump’s ‘dictator’ remark
Biden claimed that Trump said he wants to be a dictator on “Day 1.”
The president is referring to comments that Trump made in a December town hall hosted by Fox News. Sean Hannity, who was interviewing Trump, gave the former president the opportunity to promise Americans that, if elected, he would “never abuse power as retribution against anybody.” Trump’s response was, “Except for Day 1.”
He then explained what he planned to do as a “dictator” on the first day of a potential second term as president. “We’re closing the border. And we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator,” he said.
About two months later, when Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo was interviewing Trump and asked about his remarks, Trump claimed that he had been kidding.
He said: “It was with Sean Hannity, and we were having fun, and I said ‘I’m going to be a dictator,’ because he asked me, ‘Are you really going to be a dictator?’ I said ‘Absolutely, I’m going to be a dictator for one day.’ I didn’t say from Day 1.”
After Bartiromo prompted him to be more specific, Trump again said that he only intended to close the border and drill. “That’s all. And then after that, I’m not going to be a dictator,’ Trump said, adding that his original comments were “said in jest.”
Illegal border crossings
Biden said that as a “result of the executive action I took, border encounters have dropped over 50 percent. In fact, there are fewer border crossings today than when Donald Trump left office.”
It’s true that apprehensions of those trying to cross the southern border illegally plummeted to 56,408 in July, the lowest number of the Biden presidency, according to datareleased by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Aug. 16. That figure is also, as Biden noted, lower than Trump’s last month in office, December 2020, when there were just over 71,000 such apprehensions. But Biden’s comment glosses over the fact that prior to July, illegal border crossings had skyrocketed for most of his presidency.
Not only was July’s number the lowest monthly total along the southwest border since September 2020, CBP reported, but the number of apprehensions of people trying to cross the border illegally between ports of entry in July was “lower than the monthly average for all of 2019, the last comparable year prior to the pandemic,” CBP said.
July was the first full month of data since Biden imposed a new set of policies aimed at dramatically reducing illegal immigration.
On June 4, Biden announced a series of executive actions designed to address “substantial levels of migration” due to “global conditions” including “failing regimes and dire economic conditions,” “violence linked to transnational criminal organizations” and “natural disasters” in some countries in Central and South America. Specifically, the proclamation directed border officials to temporarily restrict asylum eligibility and promptly remove many who cross the border illegally between ports of entry when the daily average of encounters reaches 2,500 or more for seven straight days. The policy was immediately implemented on June 5 because levels were already well above that. (For more on the policy, see “Q&A on Biden’s Border Order.”)
But FactCheck.org notes that July’s apprehension figure is just one month of data in three and a half years of the Biden administration. And as FactCheck.org has written, the number of apprehensions at the border with Mexico soared after Biden took office. Experts at the Migration Policy Institute said there were a number of factors driving the surge in illegal immigration to the U.S. — including a worldwide increase in migration as a result of political turmoil and pandemic upheaval — but that part was also due to “the perception that President Biden would treat immigrants more leniently,” which in turn encouraged more people to attempt to come to the U.S.
In FactCheck.org’s quarterly reports on Biden’s Numbers, we compare the most recent 12 months on record with the year before Biden took office. And for the past 12 months ending in June — the latest data available for the July update and one month before the July drop — apprehensions totaled 1,894,715, according to CBP. That was 273 percent higher than during Trump’s last year in office.
Billionaires’ tax rate
Biden repeated his misleading claim that billionaires pay an average federal tax rate of 8.2 percent.
That’s not the average rate in the current tax system. It’s a figure calculated by the White House, and it factors in earnings on unsold stock as income. When only considering income, the top-earning taxpayers, on average, pay higher tax rates than those in lower income groups, as FactCheck.org has written before.
Biden is referring to earnings on assets, such as stocks, not being taxed until that asset is sold, which is when the earnings become subject to capital gains taxes. Until stocks and assets are sold, the earnings are referred to as “unrealized” gains. Unrealized gains, the White House has argued, could go untaxed forever if wealthy people hold on to them and transfer them on to heirs when they die.
Trump’s ‘disinfectant’ comments
Rep. Robert Garcia claimed that Trump “told us to inject bleach into our bodies,” which is a distortion of comments the former president made early in the pandemic.
In April 2020, Trump suggested that scientists test the use of “very powerful light” and “disinfectant” in the body to kill the virus. He did not mention bleach, or say that people should put disinfectants into their bodies, which is dangerous.
During that press briefing, an official discussed Department of Homeland Security research on the ways heat, humidity, sunlight and disinfectant affected the coronavirus on nonporous surfaces. Then Trump, talking to the DHS official, said: “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that.”
