J.D. Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, right, points toward Trump at a campaign rally on March 16 in Vandalia, Ohio. Trump named Vance as his pick for vice president this week.
Vice president nominee J.D. Vance opposes LGBTQ equality and reproductive rights
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com
In 2016, JD Vance said Donald Trump “might be America’s Hitler.” He called Trump “noxious,” “arrogant,” “divisive” and “reprehensible.” He said, “I can’t stomach Trump,” adding he’s “leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
He even called himself a “never Trumper,” declaring, “I never liked him.”
But sometime between Trump’s first election campaign in 2016 and Vance’s own election campaign in 2022, Vance flipped, became an ardent Trump supporter and won his Senate seat with Trump’s endorsement.
Now he’s Trump’s running mate.
Jeff Strater, former Stonewall Texas president and a Democratic national committeeman-elect, said, “J.D. Vance is a significant danger to the LGBTQ community.” He added that Vance is controlled by Trump and poses “a grave threat to LGBTQ right.”
“His history is rife with anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, smear campaigns and efforts to roll back federal protections,” Strater said, pointing out that it was Vance who proposed the Protect Children’s Innocence Act that would have limited transgender access to healthcare and turned some trans healthcare into a felony. He also noted that Vance opposed the Respect for Marriage Act and verbally attacked Supreme Court justices for supporting LGBTQ employment protection in the Bostock v. Clayton County decision.
Vance has also voiced his support for “Don’t Say Gay” laws claiming censoring classroom discussion was about parental rights, Strater said.
Stonewall Democrats of Dallas President Susie Hess commented on Vance’s change of position on Trump: “Sen. J.D. Vance’s very public, politically expedient 180 degree pivot of Olympic proportions would be laughable if it weren’t so damnably threatening to 50 percent of the population (those with ovaries) and to our wider LGBTQ+ community, who must now wonder what protection to simply exist would erode if a Trump-Vance election were to prevail.”
Hess was referring to is Vance’s stance on reproductive rights. According to the Washington Post, “Vance argues against the need for rape and incest exceptions in abortion laws.”
On the Texas abortion law that bans all procedures at six weeks, Vance said, “I think in Texas they’re trying to make it easier for unborn babies to be born.”
Although he previously has said he supported a national abortion ban, he said this week his views on abortion are in complete alignment with Trump’s.
Hess also compared Vance to Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, saying, “In going from Pence to Vance, Trump selected a running mate who seems not to perceive the nagging conscience that prevented former Vice President Pence from overturning the will of the people (voters) on Jan. 6, 2021.”
Hess was equally dismissive regarding the Protect Children’s Innocence Act and Vance’s anti-trans stance. “Have a transgender family member?” she asked. “They’re an instant target of suspicion, mockery and unfair state legislation. Support a gay niece or nephew? Be accused of ‘grooming.’ Want to host LGBTQ+ weddings? The conservative Supreme Court has hinted at their plans, and we should believe them, based on past similar leaks. Desire simple affirmation as a service organization? The bigots in Texas State Legislature wouldn’t even sign a resolution recognizing contributions by the LGBT Chamber of Commerce.”
On his Senate website, Vance describes his own bill, saying it “would ban the genital mutilation, chemical castration and sterilization of innocent children by classifying the performance of so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ on a minor as a Class C felony.”
But none of what he describes as the purpose of his bill is part of standard care for trans children.
A companion bill, which has also gone nowhere, was filed in the House of Representatives by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
In a press release, Human Rights Campaign said, “Vance has a history of spewing anti-LGBTQ+ vitriol and opposes reproductive freedoms nationwide.” The organization criticized Vance for defending “the dangerous ‘groomer’ smear campaign against Democratic politicians for their support of LGBTQ+ people,” and said he “strongly disagreed” that LGBTQ people should be protected from discrimination.
On the Equality Act, HRC spokesman Brandon Wolf said Vance called the nondiscrimination provisions “an assault.”
“Donald Trump has been a bully for years — and his pick of MAGA clone J.D. Vance is a reminder that nothing has changed,” said HRC President Kelley Robinson. “This is anything but a unity ticket.”
Hess also discussed calls for unity from both sides after the assassination attempt last weekend.
“I, for one, am very wary of calls for ‘unity’ following years of seeing Republican candidates pose in holiday card photos with a rifle or other potential weapon of murder slung over every family member’s shoulder, even held in tiny hands of their pre-teen children,” she said. “Who’s inciting violence? Who is stopping the bullies? Who is ‘grooming?’ Who laughs at another’s injury? Who actually calls the grieving widows and orphans?”
Yet, Hess did hold out some hope for the vice presidential candidate: “My hope is that J.D. Vance may still have time to activate that core of decency that I am certain exists within each human being alive, if they allow it to emerge, [that he will] remember his past opinions about Donald Trump and his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and stop working for fascism and the theocracy that is rooting all around us.”
………………..
Who is J.D. Vance?
Things to know about Donald Trump’s pick for vice president
JULIE CARR SMYTH | Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Former President Donald Trump on Monday, July 15, chose U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio to be his running mate as he looks to return to the White House. Here are some things to know about Vance, a 39-year-old Republican now in his first term in the Senate:
• Vance rose to prominence with the memoir Hillbilly Elegy
Vance was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio. He joined the Marines and served in Iraq and later earned degrees from Ohio State University and Yale Law School. He also worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.
Vance made a name for himself with his memoir, the 2016 bestseller Hillbilly Elegy, which earned Vance a reputation as someone who could help explain Trump’s appeal in middle America, especially among the working class, rural white voters who helped Trump win the presidency. Donald Trump Jr. loved the book; the two hit it off and have remained friends.
• He was first elected to public office in 2022
After Donald Trump won the 2016 election, Vance returned to his native Ohio and set up an anti-opioid charity. He also took to the lecture circuit and was a favored guest at Republican Lincoln Day dinners where his personal story — including the hardship Vance endured because of his mother’s drug addiction — resonated.
Vance’s appearances helped lay the groundwork for entering politics in 2021, when he sought the Senate seat vacated by Republican Rob Portman, who retired. Trump endorsed Vance. Vance went on to win a crowded Republican primary and the general election.
• Vance went from never-Trumper to fierce ally
Vance was a “never Trump” Republican in 2016. He called Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” for office. Vance, whose wife, lawyer Usha Chilukuri Vance, is Indian-American and the mother of their three children, also criticized Trump’s racist rhetoric, saying he could be “America’s Hitler.” But by the time Vance met Trump in 2021, he had reversed his opinion, citing Trump’s accomplishments as president. Both men downplayed Vance’s past scathing criticism. In the Senate, Vance has unceasingly defended Trump’s policies and behavior.
• He is a leading conservative voice
Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, called Vance a leading voice for the conservative movement, on key issues including a shift away from interventionist foreign policy, free market economics and “American culture writ large.”
• He is married to a lawyer who was a Supreme Court clerk
Vance met his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, at Yale, where she received both her undergraduate and law degrees. She spent a year clerking for future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he served as an appeals court judge in Washington, followed by a year as a law clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts. She had been a trial lawyer for the Munger, Tolles and Olson law firm. Her law firm announced Monday that she had left the firm.
• Vance has adopted Trump’s rhetoric about Jan. 6
On the 2020 election, he said he wouldn’t have certified the results immediately if he had been vice president and said Trump had “a very legitimate grievance.” He has put conditions on honoring the results of the 2024 election that echo Trump’s, even though no viable evidence of election fraud in the 2020 election has ever been found.
• Vance can articulate Trump’s vision
People familiar with the vice presidential vetting process said Vance would bring to the GOP ticket debating skills and the ability to articulate Trump’s vision. Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, said Vance compellingly articulates the America First world view and could help Trump in states he closely lost in 2020, such as Michigan and Wisconsin, that share Ohio’s values, demographics and economy.
Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Milwaukee and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.