Fact check: 15 things Trump says Biden would ban, abolish or destroy
President Trump says at rallies and on Twitter that Joe Biden wants to ban or destroy various things important to Americans, such as protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, police funding and suburbs. Here's
Posted — UpdatedAccording to President Donald Trump’s storyline, Joe Biden and his allies want to ban or destroy many things that matter to Americans, like health care protections, the Second Amendment and churches.
"The radical left is hell bent on destroying everything we love and cherish," Trump said at a campaign rally in Sanford, Fla., Oct 12, with no shortage of hyperbole.
Three days later, Trump pressed this theme, tweeting that Biden and Democrats "will kill your jobs, dismantle your police departments, dissolve your borders, release criminal aliens, raise your taxes, confiscate your guns, end fracking, destroy your suburbs, and drive God from the public square."
Here’s a rundown of more than a dozen things Trump commonly — and falsely — says Biden wants to ban, abolish or destroy, along with the facts.
Biden does not want to end these protections. Biden says he supports and wants to defend the Affordable Care Act, the health care law signed by President Barack Obama that established strict protections for people with pre-existing conditions. It’s Trump who wants to overturn the law, and while he has issued a largely toothless executive order affirming support for those protections, Trump has not offered a replacement that would keep them intact.
Biden does not want to cut or eliminate Medicare. Biden wants to allow Americans to buy into a public option for government-backed health insurance, but plans to also keep Medicare. He says he wants to lower the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60 and to protect the Medicare trust fund.
Under a buyback program, Biden says he will give people who now have assault weapons or high-capacity magazines two options: sell the weapons to the government, or register them under the National Firearms Act. "It’s within our grasp to end our gun violence epidemic and respect the Second Amendment, which is limited," Biden’s campaign website says.
Biden has repeatedly said he does not want to defund the police or abolish police departments. Biden says police departments should be given resources "to implement meaningful reforms" and that federal dollars should be contingent on completion of those reforms. His campaign platform includes hiring more officers, focused on community policing.
Biden does not want to abolish prisons. A task force made up of representatives from Biden’s team and allies of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., met to hammer out Biden’s general-election platform. The resulting document recommended changing some aspects of jails and prisons, saying too many of them subject people to inhumane treatment. Democrats support ending the use of private prisons. But that’s not the same as getting rid of all jails and prisons.
The Biden-Sanders task force recommended ending for-profit detention centers, but not an abolition of all immigration detention centers. The task force said the government should prioritize the use of Department of Homeland Security facilities, and that detention should be "a last resort, not the default."
Biden has not said he would take down barriers built at the border. What he has said is that he wouldn’t build more of them. Biden says he would "direct federal resources to smart border enforcement efforts," such as cameras, sensors, large-scale X-ray machines, and fixed towers at and between ports of entry.
Biden would block the federal government from issuing new permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands, but wants to allow existing fracking operations to continue. Fracking, formally known as hydraulic fracturing, is an oil and gas extraction technique that has helped boost domestic production over the past decade, but has also raised concerns about environmental and health impacts. About 10% of all fracking happens on federal lands.
Biden is not seeking to abolish the suburbs, force rezoning or end single-family zoning. The Trump claim is an extreme interpretation of Biden’s proposal to reinstate an Obama administration requirement related to addressing discrimination in housing.
Democrats are not calling for churches to be closed. Many states — including those governed by Republicans — have required people to wear face coverings in public, banned large gatherings and ordered nonessential businesses to close to control the spread of the coronavirus. Some states exempt churches from their restrictions.
Biden, a Catholic who routinely invokes his faith, has not proposed this. His campaign website says he would "empower religious organizations to provide safe places of worship and community for their members, while also reaffirming our national commitment to freedom, tolerance, and inclusivity." To address anti-Semitism and violent attacks in places of worship, Biden’s plan includes increasing security grants to religious communities, setting up a faith-based law enforcement program, and strengthening the prosecution of hate crimes.
Biden’s education policies include support for charter schools and public school choice. For many Republican leaders, school choice is synonymous with providing vouchers to help families pay for tuition at private schools. Biden opposes using public dollars to pay for private school tuition. The Biden-Sanders task force recommended opposing for-profit and low-performing charter schools, and giving local school districts a powerful say over the use of federal funds to open new charter schools or expand existing ones.
The task force recommended setting a goal that all new buildings achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. But the recommendation said nothing about a mandate — or windows. Also, the presence of windows in a building does not mean it can’t achieve net-zero carbon emissions.
Biden doesn’t want to get rid of cows, whose, ahem, gas emissions contribute to climate change. Trump has said that Biden would try to jam through the Green New Deal and that under the proposal, "cows are out."
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