You don’t have to look far for evidence that JD Vance would embolden Donald Trump’s most extreme impulses – just ask Ohioans. As their senator, Vance betrayed Ohioans’ economic interests and attacked their personal freedoms. Now, he wants to use Trump’s Project 2025 agenda to move America backwards. 

To remind voters of JD Vance’s failed record in Ohio ahead of tonight’s vice presidential debate, DNC Spokesperson Stephanie Justice released the following statement:

“JD Vance has had no problems selling out Ohio. In the Senate, Vance has carried water for billionaires while attacking Ohioans’ fundamental freedoms and buddying up to the chief architects of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda. Now, as Trump’s running mate, Vance is taking his extremism nationwide – trying to sell the American people on Trump’s cost-raising, anti-freedom agenda. Tonight on the debate stage, Governor Tim Walz will make clear that he and Vice President Harris are the only candidates in this race fighting for working families.”

JD Vance has been the long-time poster boy for Project 2o25. Before his Ohio Senate run, Vance championed a report from the architects of Project 2025 and “bonded” with Project 2025’s chief architect after becoming Ohio’s senator. 

New York Times: “Vance Championed 2017 Report on Families From Architects of Project 2025”

“Years before he became the Republican vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance endorsed a little-noticed 2017 report by the Heritage Foundation that proposed a sweeping conservative agenda to restrict sexual and reproductive freedoms and remake American families.”

New York Times: “Vance’s Links to the Project 2025 Leader Complicate Trump’s Attempts at Distance”

“Mr. Vance wrote a preface to a Heritage report in 2017, several years before Mr. Roberts took the helm at the organization. The two met and bonded over the course of a two-hour conversation shortly after Mr. Vance was elected to the Senate in 2022, Ms. Bonham said, comparing notes on their similar upbringings and policy views.

“Mr. Roberts happened to be holding a news conference on July 15, at Heritage’s Republican convention event, when Mr. Trump announced that Mr. Vance would be his running mate.

“‘You will see a broad smile on my face,’ he told reporters. ‘As you may know, we are good friends.’ Vance, he said, was ‘someone that privately we were really rooting for.’”

After Ohioans beat back the state’s extreme abortion ban made possible by Donald Trump, Vance called the victory for reproductive freedom a “gut punch.” Ohioans have called Vance out for his dangerous positions on reproductive health care. 

The Hill: “JD Vance: Ohio’s abortion vote ‘was a gut punch’”

“Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) says his state’s vote Tuesday to enshrine abortion rights ‘was a gut punch’ for anti-abortion officials such as himself.”

Mother Jones: “More Than 260 Ohio Doctors Join the List of People Who Denounce JD Vance”

“more than 260 doctors from the Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights—a nonpartisan group whose members initiated and helped draft the state’s ballot measure securing the constitutional right to abortion in Ohio last year—condemned Trump’s selection of Vance as his running mate, citing Vance’s lengthy anti-abortion record. A letter from the group—signed by physicians who practice a variety of specialties, not just OB/GYNs who perform abortions, including pediatrics, family and internal medicine, and child and adolescent psychology—outlined the dangers of what it calls ‘the Trump-Vance anti-reproductive freedom agenda.’”

JD Vance and Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda is a threat to IVF access. In the Senate, Vance had multiple opportunities to protect IVF access for Ohioans and all Americans. Instead he voted against the measure in June and didn’t even bother to show up for a second vote in September. 

Newsweek: “JD Vance Skips IVF Vote as Republicans Block Bill”

“Ohio Senator and GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance missed a Tuesday vote in the Senate to advance a bill that would federally protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF).”

The Hill: “Senate Republicans block legislation to codify IVF access”

Republicans who voted against include: JD Vance.

Vanity Fair: “On Wednesday, Senate Republicans are expected to object to Tammy Duckworth’s Right to Build Families Act, because, surprise: They don’t actually care about families and aren’t ‘pro-life.’

“‘It’s idiotic for us to take the bait,’ Senator JD Vance told Politico, as though the measure were some kind of political trap. (He also noted that he had not actually read the bill yet.)”

Before becoming the Republican vice presidential nominee, JD Vance became a darling of Silicon Valley billionaires. Tech billionaires bankrolled Vance’s campaign for Senate and Vance is now paying them back by peddling Donald Trump’s tax scam to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy while hiking costs on working families.

New York Times: “How a Network of Tech Billionaires Helped J.D. Vance Leap Into Power”

“Mr. Vance’s stint in tech was crucial for forging connections with billionaire executives and investors, including Mr. Thiel, Mr. Sacks and Elon Musk, who owns X. Over and over, those men have funded Mr. Vance’s political ambitions, raised his profile among other wealthy donors and on social media, and lobbied Mr. Trump to choose him as his running mate.

“Before the 2022 midterm elections, Mr. Thiel gave $15 million to support Mr. Vance’s campaign for the Senate. Mr. Sacks donated $1 million to a political action committee backing Mr. Vance’s run.”

Ohio Capital Journal: Opinion: “J.D. Vance can’t hide his radical, extremist agenda with Hallmark-style ads”

“The baby-faced bestseller grew a beard to morph from Silicon Valley elite to Midwestern mint when he moved from California to Ohio to run for the Senate seat. To compete with primary rivals jostling for a coveted (?) endorsement from the most corrupt president in American history, Vance did a 180-degree transition from Never-Trumper to Uber-Trumper.”

Vance on Trump’s tax scam that rigged the economy for the ultra-wealthy: “I think we have a pretty common sense regulatory and tax agenda.”

Vance has shown Ohioans he can’t be trusted. As a candidate, he slammed the Biden-Harris administration’s infrastructure investments for Ohio. Now as Ohio’s senator, he’s embracing the funds he publicly attacked. 

Associated Press: “Vance criticized an infrastructure law as a candidate then embraced it as a senator”

“As he campaigned for the Senate two years ago, JD Vance harshly criticized a bipartisan 2021 law to invest more than $1 trillion in America’s crumbling infrastructure, calling it a “huge mistake” shaped by Democrats who want to spend big taxpayer dollars on ‘really crazy stuff.’

“That hasn’t stopped the first-term Ohio senator and Republican vice-presidential nominee from seeking more than $200 million in federal money made available through the law for projects across his state, according to records reviewed by The Associated Press.” […]

“To the man Vance defeated in the general election, former Democratic congressman Tim Ryan, Vance’s pivot ‘fits the general pattern of him being two-faced on just about everything.’”