JD Vance’s Past Links to Project 2025 Architects Exposed
The vice-presidential candidate previously endorsed a collection of almost 30 essays by ultra-conservative thinkers on restricting reproductive rights and other freedoms.
Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s running mate promoted a radical anti-abortion report from the same conservative think-tank behind Project 2025.
The controversial Project 2025 report has been otherwise disavowed by the Republican campaign and Trump personally after its sweeping proposals for reforms should the GOP secure victory in the November polls came to the public’s attention.
Back in 2017, when J.D. Vance was only just getting into politics, the New York Times reports the Ohio senator “championed” a collection of 29 essays compiled by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative organization behind the highly controversial Project 2025 initiative.
Described as a “wish list” of changes to be enacted by the next conservative U.S. president, Project 2025 contains a number of extreme policies, ranging from massive curtailment of reproductive rights and bans on ‘woke propaganda’ in schools to placing the entirety of the federal bureaucracy under direct presidential control.
Though the Trump campaign has denied any ties to the initiative, with the Republican candidate himself saying “I have no idea who is behind it,” reports have since revealed how at least 140 former Trump employees were involved in drafting the 900-page document.
Much of Project 2025’s vision for a second Trump presidency is keenly reflected in the 2017 collection of essays previously endorsed by Vance. These included an article suggesting that ideally, abortion would eventually become “unthinkable” in the U.S. amid growing restrictions on access to the procedure, as well as a piece slamming fertility treatments for “luring” women into thinking it was acceptable to have children later in life—a sentiment that particularly resonates with Vance’s much-derided recent characterization of Democrat supporters as “childless cat ladies.”
The collection is even prefaced with an introduction from Vance himself, in which he described it as an “admirable” volume, representing “an important effort in advancing [a] conversation” about “our country’s most difficult and intractable problems.”
Vance’s spokesperson, Luke Schroeder, told the Daily Beast in a statement: “Senator Vance has long made clear that he supports I.V.F. and does not agree with every opinion in this seven-year-old report, which features a range of unique views from dozens of conservative thinkers. It’s bizarre that The New York Times is writing an entire piece attacking Senator Vance for the views of other individuals.” Noah Weinrich, a Heritage spokesperson, added that Vance “had no role in editing the report and outside of his own contribution, did not have any input on the commentary throughout.”
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The New York Times piece nevertheless follows after Vance announced in June he had penned the foreword to a forthcoming book by Kevin D. Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and one of the driving figures behind Project 2025.
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