Fact-checking Kamala Harris’ first campaign interview

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has given her first interview since entering the race — a joint conversation with running mate Tim Walz.

BBC Verify looked into her statements in an interview with CNN about shale gas drilling, the Biden administration’s record on child tax poverty and investing in clean energy jobs.

CONFIRM: In an interview on Thursday, Ms Harris said she would not ban shale gas drilling and insisted she “hasn’t changed that position”.

DECISION: This requires context and can be misleading because Ms Harris has changed her public stance on fracking. In 2019, she said she “supports banning fracking”.

Next year, in the 2020 vice presidential debate When Ms. Harris was Biden’s running mate, she said that “Joe Biden will not end shale gas” and: “I repeat, and the American people know, Joe Biden will not ban shale gas.”

In a CNN interview on Thursday, she was pressed about her 2019 statement, and Harris responded: “I made it clear on the 2020 debate stage that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.”

During the debate, Ms. Harris referred to President Joe Biden’s policy plans. She did not clarify whether her own views at the time differed from those.

CONFIRM: “When we did what we did in our first year in office to expand the child tax credit, we cut child poverty in America by more than 50 percent.”

DECISION: This is somewhat of an exaggeration and needs context. Child poverty rates have fallen, but not “above 50%” and they rose again the following year, so the impact is temporary.

The Complementary Poverty Measures (SPM) is a measure of poverty in the United States, and it shows that the child poverty rate decreased by 46% from 2020 to 2021.

However, after the Covid-era child tax credit boost ended, the record child poverty rate of 5.2% in 2021 rose to 12.4% the following year, according to 2022 Census Bureau data.

Under the current child tax credit program, Americans earning less than $200,000 per year (or $400,000 for joint filers) can receive $2,000 per year for each child under age 17.

The amount was increased to a maximum of $3,600 by President Biden during the Covid pandemic but returned to $2,000 at the end of 2021.

Kamala Harris has said that if she becomes president, she will restore the child tax credit and provide $6,000 to each family with a child in the first year of a child’s life.

CONFIRM: “What we have done is created over 300,000 new jobs in clean energy.”

DECISION: It is true that a large number of clean energy jobs have been created under the Biden administration, but the exact numbers remain uncertain.

Kamala Harris is referring to the jobs created by Inflationary Reduction Act – law signed by Joe Biden in August 2022, making major investments in clean energy and climate-related projects.

The claim of “more than 300,000 new clean energy jobs” comes from a recent report by Climate Powera climate media organization.

Since August 2022, companies have “announced and advanced 646 new clean energy projects, creating a total of 334,565 new jobs,” the report said.

However, not all of these new jobs have started yet, and it is difficult to attribute the entire increase in climate-related employment to the Degrowth Act at a time when clean energy is growing worldwide.

Other groups offer different numbers. E2, an economic and environmental group, estimates about 109,000 clean energy jobs created or published since the Inflation Reduction Act.

According to the US Department of EnergyBy 2023, clean energy jobs will grow at twice the rate of the overall US economy and the rest of the energy sector.