CLAIM: “Trump is trying to create this new government entity that will monitor all pregnancies to enforce their abortion bans.”
VERDICT: FALSE. This is a lie that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz repeat despite numerous fact checks.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, speaking at a rally in Asheville, North Carolina, on Tuesday, repeated a claim that Vice President Kamala Harris made at the Democratic National Convention and again at the presidential debate that former President Donald Trump wants to create a “monitor” or “coordinator” for pregnancies to enforce abortion bans.
The claim is apparently part of Walz’s stump speech, repeated at every opportunity across the nation.
Trump has never said anything like that, and the claim has been fact-checked as false by Breitbart and even USA Today.
Breitbart News speculated that the source for the claim is a misreading of Project 2025, which is not Trump’s policy, and which never even calls for an abortion “monitor” or “coordinator,” but for collecting more data on pregnancies.
USA Today, covering similar claims on social media in May, identified the source of the hoax as a social media post by the left-wing group Occupy Democrats, which often circulates fake news with virtual impunity. Occupy Democrats cited Time magazine, but USA Today observed:
Trump told Time magazine that potential abortion policies, including monitoring women’s pregnancies, should be left up to states to decide. He didn’t push for monitoring or even say whether he was for or against the concept.
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The Time article reflects the interview transcript in saying Trump “would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans,” but it does not say the former president advocated for a federal pregnancy monitoring program.
USA Today also noted that Occupy Democrats cited Laurence Tribe, a radical Harvard Law School emeritus professor who has been a close advisor to Democrats.
Tribe claimed that his description of Trump’s policy was a “fair characterization of what he has told women to expect of him on this issue.” He did not cite any evidence that Trump has actually embraced such a policy. USA Today disagreed with Tribe, and rated his claim, and that of Occupy Democrats, as false.
Snopes.com, the left-leaning fact-checking website, also fact-checked the “monitor” claim, citing Tribe and debunked it (original emphasis):
This purported paraphrase of a section of a lengthy feature in the May 2024 issue of Time misrepresented the former president’s actual statements. In reality, Trump said he would leave abortion issues up to states. Tribe did not immediately respond to Snopes’ request for comment.
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More accurately stated, Trump told Time that, as president, he would not prevent states from passing and enforcing laws that establish systems for monitoring people’s pregnancies.
Because Trump did not say he would actively impose such a law, the claim that Trump stated he intended to pass federal legislation that would require pregnant people “to submit to constant government monitoring” to prevent abortions was “False.”
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz continue to repeat the lie that Trump wants to create a federal abortion “monitor” or “coordinator” despite numerous fact checks as “false” — not only by Breitbart News, but also by USA Today, and Snopes.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
