KEY PLAYER PROFILE

JD Vance

Vice President of the United States

JD Vance became a public figure in 2016 with the publication of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. The story of his disaffected family living in Appalachia was fortuitously timed to match up well with Donald Trump’s political rise. Many commentators turned to the book to understand the perspective of white, working-class voters who surprised the political punditry by sending Trump to the White House. The book was a New York Times bestseller and adapted into a high-profile 2020 feature film directed by Oscar-winner Ron Howard.

While the foundation for Vance’s politics was laid in rural Ohio with a clear-eyed understanding of how deindustrialization has affected so many American workers, his professional life has been defined, in large part, by the elite connections he made at Yale Law School. Between 2016 and 2017, he was a principal at Peter Theil’s investment firm, Mithril Capital, and in 2018, he moved to Revolution, LLC, a firm run by AOL founder Steve Case, where he led the “Rise of the Rest” initiative to bring more investment dollars to underserved regions like the southwestern part of Ohio where Vance grew up.

In 2017, Vance moved back to his home state and started a politically-active non-profit, Our Ohio Renewal, with the stated hope that it would address many of the social challenges he wrote about in his memoir. The organization was shuttered in 2021 with few noted accomplishments but Vance continued his work in the private sector. In 2021 he founded Narya Capital with funding from well known Silicon Valley names such as Theil, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen.

In 2019, as he considered a career in politics, Vance co-founded a conservative political advocacy group called Rockbridge Network, along with Chris Buskirk. The group describes itself as a “political venture capital firm” and soon became an engine for much of Donald Trump’s nationalist agenda. In 2022, Vance and Buskirk began holding meetings at Mar-a-Lago to build a stronger alliance with the president.

The collaboration marked a significant shift for Vance who had previously been a vociferous critic of Trump, calling him “reprehensible” and “America’s Hitler,” describing himself as a “never Trump guy.” But by the time he announced his candidacy for the Ohio senate seat vacated by Rob Portman in 2021, Vance had reversed course on Trump. The turnabout served him well, as he eventually beat out a wide field of Republican candidates to gain the coveted Trump endorsement. He won the 2022 race, becoming the junior senator from Ohio in the 118th Congress.

Since then, Vance has aligned himself with many Trump policies, describing himself as a member of the “postliberal right.” He is a Republican conservative in nearly every way, voicing opposition to abortion rights, same sex marriage and gun control. He is critical of universities writ large, which he refers to as “the enemy,” and has called for a “de-woke-ification program” across the country. Vance often calls upon his service in the Marine Corps and his faith to connect with voters. A devout Catholic, he emphasizes what he sees as the essential importance of procreation in hetero-normative families, repeatedly expressing the view that childlessness is linked to sociopathy.

In 2024, when Trump selected Vance as his vice presidential running mate, the senator joined the former president in putting immigration front and center on the campaign trail. In September 2024, he drew widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum for spreading false rumors about the immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio. He falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants in that town were in the country illegally and that they were eating pets stolen from homes throughout the community. City officials confirmed that the rumors were false, that the immigrants were in Springfield with legal status, and that the false accusations were leading to bomb threats. But Vance did not back down from the claims. With a bravado that echoed that of his running mate, Vance continued to spread the false rumors, stating he had to “create stories” to get voters’ attention. That bravado played well as part of the campaign’s push to reachyoung male voters who had been previously disengaged from politics.

SOURCES:

Vance’S IDEAS

  • Border Security

    Vance supports reinstating the “Remain in Mexico” policy from the first Trump administration, emphasizing that he believes the president has the right to “close” the border. He has said he supports more funding for additional border patrol agents and more resources for crime interdiction at ports of entry, despite helping to kill the 2024 bipartisan border bill which provided such assistance. He supports extending the power of the executive branch to shape border policy, stating that “the courts have made it pretty clear that the president has complete control over border policy.”

  • Border Wall

    Vance supports completion of the border wall that Donald Trump repeatedly envisioned during his first presidency. As a senator, he sponsored legislation to permit state governments to erect their own temporary protective fencing against migrants.

  • Detention

    Vance supports completion of the border wall that Donald Trump repeatedly envisioned during his first presidency. As a senator, he sponsored legislation to permit state governments to erect their own temporary protective fencing against migrants.

  • Immigration Courts

    Vance rejected the 2024 bipartisan border bill, which included a proposal to shift the adjudication of asylum claims from the immigration courts to specialized U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum officers, and sought to have those claims assessed within six months. The bill provided $3.99 billion to USCIS to fund the effort. He has suggested that the Trump administration should treat asylum seekers as “illegal aliens.”

  • Undocumented Population

    Vance is supportive of the mass deportations promised by President Trump. “If people can come into this country and they know they’re never going to be deported, you effectively have an open border,” he said during a visit to the southern border in Arizona during the 2024 campaign. “That’s what Kamala Harris promised. That’s what Kamala Harris did, and Donald Trump and I promise to do exactly the opposite.” In July 2024, he wrote on X that the government should “deport every single person who invaded our country illegally.”

  • ICE

    Vance was a big booster for Tom Homan’s nomination to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the second Trump administration. He supports giving the agency all the resources it needs to carry out mass deportations.

  • DACA

    In 2023, Vance sponsored a bill to strip DACA recipients of their access to coverage under the Affordable Care Act, arguing that taxpayers “should never be forced to cover the cost of healthcare for illegal immigrants.”

  • Asylum & Refugees

    As a member of the Senate, Vance sponsored legislation that would effectively close the border to asylum seekers. He has opposed the U.S. accepting “tens of thousands of poorly vetted Afghan refugees” (despite a stringent vetting procedure conducted by the U.S. Refugee Admissions program for all refugees, including those from Afghanistan.) He also co-sponsored legislation aimed at restricting the executive branch’s authority to use Parole and Temporary Protected Status as mechanisms for allowing entry into the country for certain groups of refugees.

  • Central America Policies

    Vance has expressed frustration that so many U.S. jobs have been moved to different regions of the world but he has not yet expressed any clear policy positions vis-a-vis Central America.

  • Visas

    While Vance has repeatedly emphasized that immigrants should come through the “right channels,” as a senator he did not support any legislation to strengthen legal immigration pathways.

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