J.D. Vance, The Project 2025 VP Pick
Trump's running mate is who the Heritage Foundation says they were "rooting for." J.D. Vance is in alignment with Project 2025's authoritarian blueprint and would help Trump implement its key goals.
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Last week, I wrote an article outlining the ways Donald Trump is tied to Project 2025 and how his agenda directly aligns with it, in spite of his denials. This week, Trump added another undeniable tie to Project 2025 by selecting Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate.
Rather than trying to pick a running mate that would broaden his appeal to swing voters, Donald Trump has built a full MAGA ticket. Vance reinforces Trump’s commitment to the extremist far-right agenda that has defined his 2024 campaign.
If Donald Trump is the leader of the MAGA movement, then J.D. Vance will be its enforcer and operator in a potential second term.
J.D. Vance, author of the acclaimed memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” went from calling Trump a “reprehensible” “idiot” who “might be America’s Hitler” in 2016 to being his VP pick in 2024. There is no consistent guiding principle here other than the pursuit of power. Vance is the personification of the Republican Party’s descent into Trumpism.
But aside from the blatant hypocrisy, Vance’s extremism and increasingly authoritarian worldview is the bigger worry.
Vance has now re-created himself as a far-right “populist,” articulating an intellectual argument for the extremist MAGA agenda. In February of this year, Vance said he would not have certified the 2020 election if he was Vice President and would have allowed states to submit fake Trump electors.
Vance opposes abortion, called for the replacement of all civil servants with MAGA loyalists, said Trump should ignore Supreme Court rulings, wants to end aid to Ukraine in a move that empowers Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has openly praised far-right authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán.
As Zack Beauchamp noted in his recent profile of J.D. Vance in Vox, “his worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of American democracy.”
Trump chose Vance after urging from Tucker Carlson, right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk. Vance also became close friends with Donald Trump Jr. during his years-long effort to cozy up to Trumpworld. According to an article from The New York Times detailing how Trump came to his decision, “he told people that he liked the idea of someone who could carry on his MAGA legacy.”
When Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, lead architect of Project 2025, heard the news of J.D. Vance’s selection, he reacted with joy: “We have confirmed news that Senator Vance is the Vice Presidential running mate. You’ll see a broad smile on my face because you may know that we’re good friends… Privately we were really rooting for [Vance].”
In more official remarks moments later, Roberts expanded on those comments at a Heritage Foundation gathering: “Right in the middle of this program, we learned that our great friend Senator J.D. Vance is President Trump’s running mate. So, just when you think it can't get any better, it can.”
This came after Kevin Roberts told Politico earlier this year that “[Vance] is absolutely going to be one of the leaders — if not the leader — of our movement.”
Project 2025’s core goal is to reshape the federal government into an unchecked tool of the far-right. There’s a reason the Heritage Foundation is happy about Trump’s choice for Vice President: J.D. Vance has openly advocated Project 2025’s key plans, ideas, and authoritarian worldview.
J.D. Vance has said that he’s reviewed a lot of Project 2025, and “there are some good ideas in there.”
Let’s take a look at some of the key Project 2025 agenda items and ideas J.D. Vance embraces.
J.D. Vance Wants To Replace Civil Servants With Loyalists
In September 2021, well before Project 2025 released its 922-page playbook, J.D. Vance said that Trump should fire "every single” civil servant, replace them with loyalists, and refuse to obey a Supreme Court ruling if they try and stop them:
“I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people… and when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say ‘the Chief Justice has made his ruling now let him enforce it.’”
The incident Vance cited was a ruling meant to protect native rights to their land. President Jackson ignored it and unleashed the Trail of Tears.
This expansive view of executive power, otherwise known as the unitary executive theory, is what provides the foundation for Trump and Project 2025’s authoritarian agenda - a theory the Supreme Court just further empowered in their immunity ruling.
It’s a chilling notion that a man with this view of presidential authority could be the next Vice President of the United States, along with a President who shares the same worldview and agenda.
Vance’s call to fire “every single” civil servant, which would be over 2 million federal employees, goes beyond even the 50,000 civil servants Project 2025 has suggested, although the estimates have been increasing in recent months.
Project 2025, as well as Trump’s Agenda 47, explicitly outlines a plan to re-implement his previously attempted Schedule F executive order, which will purge tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with trained GOP loyalists. After installing loyalists in key agencies, they plan to consolidate power in the executive branch by dismantling multiple departments and bringing independent agencies like the FCC and FTC under direct White House control, which is also on both agendas.
The goal is to eliminate all the guardrails that restrained Donald Trump’s worst impulses in his first term, as I told MSNBC in April. Without civil servants in place to uphold norms and push back on Trump’s depraved, and at times unlawful, plans, the executive branch can be weaponized into a tool of the far-right.
In a recent conversation I had with Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), the lead Democrat of the “Stop Project 2025 Task Force,” we broke down this planned purge and what it would mean in more detail. Here’s a clip of that part of our discussion:
J.D. Vance Wants To End Abortion
On J.D. Vance’s website, which now redirects directly to the Trump Campaign website, there was a section entitled “End Abortion.”
Whatever view he may try and embody now, this was his stated position mere days ago.
This is consistent with Project 2025, which seeks to rename the Department of Health and Human Services to the “Department of Life” and target abortion by enforcing the Comstock Act’s ban on mailing abortion-related materials.
J.D. Vance Wants Mass Deportations
Donald Trump has promised to detain millions of immigrants in camps using local police and the National Guard, implement ideological screenings, end birthright citizenship, end student visas for people who participated in pro-Palestine protests, and expand on his previous administration’s Mulsim ban.
J.D. Vance was asked about Trump’s plan for the largest deportation operation in history and the building of detention camps earlier this year. Vance agreed with Trump’s plans.
J.D. Vance Is Down To Overturn Elections
As I said at the top of this piece, in February of this year, J.D. Vance said he would not have certified the 2020 election if he had been Vice President and would have allowed states to submit fake Trump electors.
This is likely a key reason Donald Trump selected him. Trump remains disappointed in former Vice President Mike Pence for not aiding his plot to overturn the 2020 election on January 6.
There’s a scenario where the Republican candidate in 2028, whether J.D. Vance himself or another Republican, loses the election, and a potential Vice President J.D. Vance could attempt to do what Mike Pence refused to do, in spite of a new law that seeks to prevent this scenario. Would the Supreme Court prevent Vance from doing that? It’s unclear.
In the shorter term, there is already an effort on the part of the Republican Party, the Heritage Foundation, and a network of right-wing groups preparing to contest the 2024 election. Needless to say, J.D. Vance will be on board with those efforts.
J.D. Vance’s Praise Of Viktor Orbán
Donald Trump, GOP lawmakers, Tucker Carlson, and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts have all praised Hungary’s far-right authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán as a model to emulate in the US. Some of Project 2025’s plans were directly modeled on Orbán’s approach to authoritarianism.
J.D. Vance shares this love of Orbán.
In an interview with The European Conservative in February of this year, Vance outright praised Orbán’s authoritarian approach to education as a “model for us”:
“The closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with left-wing domination of universities is Viktor Orbán’s approach in Hungary. I think his way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give the a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching.”
In an interview on CBS News in May, host Margaret Brennan challenged Vance on his praise of Orbán: "He seized control of state universities and put them in foundations that were run by his allies. Is that what you're advocating in the US?"
"I do think he's made some smart decisions there," Vance replied.
This approach to education can be seen in Trump’s Agenda 47, which calls for a new “American Academy” that will be funded with billions of dollars collected by taking large endowments from private universities.
Vance’s praise of Orbán is coupled with calls to end aid to Ukraine, which aligns with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
An Alliance Of Extremism
The Donald Trump and J.D. Vance presidential ticket is straight out of a far-right fever dream. It’s everything the far-right movement could’ve hoped for. Vance is in total alignment with Project 2025 and Trump’s Agenda 47.
Both Project 2025 and Trump’s official agenda also list plans to roll back environmental regulations, weaponize the DOJ, use the military against civilians, end federal protections for LGBTQ+ people, push “Christian Nationalist” ideals, and undo all progress made in diversity, equity, and inclusion within the federal government under the guise of religious freedom.
There is no indication that Vance wouldn’t go along with any of that.
Trump just chose the most radical choice among his list of VP contenders. Americans should be informed of what they’ll get if the Trump/Vance ticket is given power and vote accordingly.