Donald Trump has chosen J.D. Vance as his running mate, the former president announced on Monday.
Vance, a first-term Republican senator from Ohio, was widely expected to be Trump’s vice presidential pick as the pool of potential hopefuls narrowed earlier in the day. Just hours before the announcement, several outlets reported that Gov. Doug Burgum (R-N.D.) and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) were informed by the Trump campaign that they would not be on the 2024 ticket. Others previously thought to be on Trump’s short list included Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), U.S. House Rep. Elise Stefanink (R-N.Y.), and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
In a post on his own tech platform, Truth Social, Trump lauded Vance as the “person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States.”
“J.D. honorably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was Editor of The Yale Law Journal, and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association,” he said, adding that he “will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond.”
The choice of Vance, who rose to fame as the author of the controversial memoir Hillbilly Elegy, was likely intended to help Trump shore up support among white, lower-income voters in the Midwest, where President Joe Biden is considered vulnerable in the 2024 race. According to poll averages from FiveThirtyEight, Trump leads Biden by more than nine points in Vance’s home state of Ohio, and Biden also trails in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Biden would likely need to win all three of the latter states to stave off a second Trump term, with swing states like Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada also looking vulnerable in 2024.
A former critic of Trump who recast himself as a politician in the MAGA model, Vance’s LGBTQ+ record differs very little from the man at the top of his ticket. During his two years in the U.S. Senate, Vance opposed the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified federal same-sex marriage rights in the event that Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2004 ruling legalizing marriage equality, is repealed by the Supreme Court. He also authored the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which would make it a class C felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, to provide gender-affirming surgery to trans minors. (This despite the fact that transition surgeries are rarely offered to patients under the age of 18 and only in cases of extreme medical need.)
Additionally, Vance is a supporter of the so-called “parent’s rights” movement, which advocates that LGBTQ+ students be outed to their parents and seeks to remove queer-affirming resources from classrooms. He has repeatedly referred to opponents of those actions as “groomers,” such as in an April 2022 post on X. “I’ll stop calling people ‘groomers’ when they stop freaking out about bills that prevent the sexualization of my children,” he wrote at the time.
The 39-year-old politician has also opposed diversity and inclusion in the U.S. armed forces, suggesting that he is likely to support re-banning trans servicemembers from the military should Trump be elected. “American political leaders should stop using America’s military as a social justice side project,” his 2022 campaign site reads. “Troops don’t need to focus on diversity or equity or any other progressive buzzword; they need to focus on fighting and winning America’s wars.” The removal of trans troops from the military is a major component of Project 2025, a set of far-right policy proposals shaped and promoted by the anti-LGBTQ+ Heritage Foundation, which Trump has sought to distance himself from in recent days.
Vance’s anti-LGBTQ+ background also includes claiming that Biden supports Ukraine because Russian President Vladimir Putin is anti-trans and blaming the “childless left” for America’s decline, specifically citing U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Furthermore, he once accused U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) of making up the term “Two-Spirit,” which is broadly embraced by LGBTQ+ Native Americans to describe their identities. “Would love if progressives just stopped inventing words,” Vance posted on X in February 2021.
In repeatedly opposing LGBTQ+ equality, Vance has found a perfect match in Trump, whose administration was responsible for more than 200 attacks on queer rights in four years, according to GLAAD. These assaults included repealing protections for trans students, removing resources for LGBTQ+ Americans from federal websites, decimating funding for global HIV/AIDS prevention, and appointing a record-number of judges opposed to LGBTQ+ equality. His administration also made it harder for marginally housed people to find safe shelter and opposed workplace protections for LGBTQ+ employees.
Trump, whose own supporters threatened to kill his last vice president for refusing to support Trump’s 2020 bid to remain in office, is likely to resume many of those policies if reelected in November.
While a lot of the people that follow Mock Paper Sissors follow me, I still loved this post so much and the way TG wrote it, I am reposting it here. Hugs. Scottie
A tRump appointed judge in a case filed by maga republicans and anti-LGBTQ+ bigots / haters to try to strip the gay and trans kids of rights and protections. Notice some places I highlighted, these groups and the Judge used misinformation and republican talking points to make their case. It comes down to hate and bigotry, also the unwillingness to allow society to progress adding more equality. There are no proven cases of any trans person assaulting a straight person in a bathroom, in fact there are many cases that are just the opposite, where trans kids / people have been attacked and even died from assaults by cis people. These people claim that boys will just claim to be trans, that is not how it works. No boy is going to with stand the harassment to change his name, his hair, his mode of dress just to peek in the girl’s locker room or bathroom. What they hell would they see in a girl’s bathroom people, there are no urinals just stalls. Unless the girls like to undress in the sink area, WTF is the boys to see? Again simply hate and bigotry wanting to stop society from change, they want their 1950s society back, not the 2010s. Hugs. Scottie
Republicans have argued that the rule is a ruse by the Biden administration to allow transgender females to play on girls’ and women’s sports teams.
Kansas high school students, family members and advocates rally for transgender rights in Topeka on Jan. 31.John Hanna / AP file
TOPEKA, Kan. — Enforcement of a federal rule expanding anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ students has been blocked in four states and a patchwork of places elsewhere by a federal judge in Kansas.
U.S. District Judge John Broomes suggested in his ruling Tuesday that the Biden administration must now consider whether forcing compliance remains “worth the effort.”
Broomes’ decision was the third against the rule from a federal judge in less than three weeks but more sweeping than the others. It applies in Alaska, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming, which sued over the new rule. It also applies to a Stillwater, Oklahoma, middle school that has a student suing over the rule and to members of three groups backing Republican efforts nationwide to roll back LGBTQ rights. All of them are involved in one lawsuit.
Broomes, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, directed the three groups — Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United — to file a list of schools in which their members’ children are students so that their schools also do not comply with the rule. Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican who argued the states’ case before Broomes last month, said that could be thousands of schools.
The Biden administration rule is set to take effect in August under the Title IX civil rights law passed in 1972, barring sex discrimination in education. Broomes’ order is to remain in effect through a trial of the lawsuit in Kansas, though the judge concluded that the states and three groups are likely to win.
Republicans have argued that the rule represents a ruse by the Biden administration to allow transgender females to play on girls’ and women’s sports teams, something banned or restricted in Kansas and at least 24 other states. The administration has said it does not apply to athletics. Opponents of the rule have also framed the issue as protecting women and girls’ privacy and safety in bathrooms and locker rooms.
“Gender ideology does not belong in public schools and we are glad the courts made the correct call to support parental rights,” Moms for Liberty co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice said in a statement.
LGBTQ youth, their parents, health care providers and others say restrictions on transgender youth harms their mental health and makes an often marginalized group even more vulnerable. The Department of Education has previously stood by its rule and President Joe Biden has promised to protect LGBTQ rights.
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.
Besides Broomes, two other federal judges issued rulings in mid-June blocking the new rule in 10 other states. The rule would protect LGBTQ students by expanding the definition of sexual harassment at schools and colleges and adding safeguards for victims.
Like the other judges, Broomes called the rule arbitrary and concluded that the Department of Education and its secretary, Miguel Cardona, exceeded the authority granted by Title IX. He also concluded that the rule violated the free speech and religious freedom rights of parents and students who reject transgender students’ gender identities and want to espouse those views at school or elsewhere in public.
Broomes said his 47-page order leaves it to the Biden administration “to determine in the first instance whether continued enforcement in compliance with this decision is worth the effort.”
Broomes also said nontransgender students’ privacy and safety could be harmed by the rule. He cited the statement of the Oklahoma middle school student that “on some occasions” cisgender boys used a girls’ bathroom “because they knew they could get away with it.”
“It is not hard to imagine that, under the Final Rule, an industrious older teenage boy may simply claim to identify as female to gain access to the girls’ showers, dressing rooms, or locker rooms, so that he can observe female peers disrobe and shower,” Broomes wrote, echoing a common but largely false narrative from anti-trans activists about gender identity and how schools accommodate transgender students.
U.S. District Judge John Broomes’ decision was the third against the rule from a federal judge in less than three weeks but more sweeping than the others.James L. Greenlee2 days ago
They really seem to believe that LGBTQ kids don’t exist, unless they’ve been convinced by someone to “turn.” It’s so ludicrous.
WTF is wrong with these people? Nobody, never in the history of everything, never has someone decided to be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Trans. It’s how a person is born. Not protecting the rights of LGBT human beings is like denying rights to a person because of the color of their eyes, or their skin. Yeah, we used to do the skin thing and that was a gigantic mistake that these motherfuckers want to make a reality again.
Also, why do this? How someone lives their life has exactly zero impact on your life. You’re just being a dick.
Like I keep saying, I am dead. This is purgatory. I need to find the light to pass on.
They continue to believe the lie that sexual orientation is freely chosen and that if you choose to be gay you’re sinning, because Jesus said so – only he didn’t.
Christians think people “choosing” to be gay presents an existential threat to humanity that must be eradicated, as though LGBT people haven’t existed throughout time.
Well, they lost all the arguments to that effect so they’re legislating and ruling as if the arguments never took place and as if their lies are facts.
There is too much on the line in our next election to let the main stream media dictate the terms of who should be POTUS. All of us with skin in the game should put our nose to the grindstone and reelect Biden/Harris 2024!
John Oliver discusses Donald Trump’s plans for a second term, why it could be much worse than his first term, and what Trump has in common with a hamster.
Talk of self entitled importance. By my dogs that love gravy you have to watch the videos. This woman is so over the top that if she was doing this to any other group it would have been thought an SNL skit. If she had been acting like this to black people, Hindus, or Muslims, no one would have accepted it. Sh was screaming in peoples faces and demanding their names. She is a total stranger acting as if she has some type of authority over other paying guests. If she had done that to me she sure wouldn’t have liked my reaction. Scottie wouldn’t have been so nice as the drag queens. The drag queens were guests of the hotel filming there and they got treated horribly by this woman. Yet she claims to be the victim. She went after them, she got in their faces not once but several times filming them, insulting them, accusing them of wanting to chop her son’s penis off. The hotel staff did try to stop her but acted like they were afraid of her or to get too forceful with her and she just went around them or ignored them. Then she continued her lecture and screed to the police when they were escorting her off the hotel grounds. She continued her triad and even accused one of the police officers of being a trans woman, she called the woman a man. She was an attention seeker and did not care who she hurt to get her fix of attention. And her X posts are full of lies and myths about trans people, including something she claimed at the hotel. She said that after sexual reassignment and I think she meant transitioning also, that suicides go way up. In fact studies have proven they decrease greatly after transitioning or having gender affirming medical care. But again facts mean nothing to these haters. Hugs. Scottie
UC Davis published a statement Tuesday about “offensive comments” made by employee Beth Bourne while she was on a family vacation in Hawaii.
Bourne, the local chapter president for parents rights group Moms for Liberty, posted a video of herself confronting a group of drag queens who were filming a video at the hotel Bourne was staying in, the Alohilani Resort in Waikiki, on Sunday.
“We reject all manifestations of discrimination, including those based on gender and gender expression,” the university’s statement said. The video shows Bourne verbally accosting the people dressed in drag, including drag queen Marina Del Rey.
In the video, Bourne took aim at the drag queens as she accused the hotel of failing to provide a safe environment for her son.
“I’m sorry, but this is—I paid to be a customer at a hotel where I thought you believed that women were real. That because you put on makeup, because you’re wearing high heels, because you have a Barbie outfit on, that you don’t think this is degrading? This is misogyny,” Bourne said addressing the drag queens.
She added, addressing a hotel representative: “If you give me back my money right now, I will leave the hotel, but I’m not going to have my children come down from the 30th floor and see what’s happening here.” According to Bourne’s X bio, she claims without evidence that “1/22 kids is trans” at UC Davis, adding that her views are “mine, not my employer.”
“This type of behavior is unacceptable,” Hawaii Democratic Governor Josh Green said in a statement Monday. “It is not aloha and we will not tolerate it from anyone.”
As the videos continued to garner views, social media users began tagging UC Davis, Bourne’s employer, demanding she be fired. Bourne works at the university’s Institute for Transportation Studies.
“I’m used to my colleagues thinking I’m a terrible person,” Bourne told The Bee in an April story about Bourne and her estranged trans child. The university said that Bourne’s comments “are protected by the First Amendment,” but that the school condemns them nonetheless.
Videos of the incident together have nearly ten million views at this writing. I encourage you to watch both of activist Tizzy Ent’s clips in full.
Moms for Liberty chair & UCDavis employee Beth Bourne decides to harass drag queens at a Honolulu resort. I'm sure she will play the victims after the backlash begins. pic.twitter.com/kne5Put4Pf
Wanna see a whole lot of words that say nothing? She has a first amendment right to say things and not face government oppression for that; that DOES NOT grant her the right to employment if her beliefs are in direct opposition to her employer & their customers, in this case the… https://t.co/hSsPR6x43y
Me: How would a child know if they were transgender?
Cop: They just know. They just know.
While being detained by the @honolulupolice, I had a chance to talk to the officers about my concerns around drag, children, and the tran$ medical industry.
Hey @ucdavis this hateful harpy Beth Bourne says "views are my own" yet lists you in her profile & tweets. So is this something you condone, especially as Moms for Liberty is identified as an antigovernment extremist group?https://t.co/gaYwjPq8RH
I am not okay with children being exposed to drag queens. Several other Alohilani hotel guests told me they also found it offensive so I spoke up to the manager yesterday.
I think I’ll call it the JK syndrome: If people call you out on awful behaviour towards others, don’t reflect, double-down and make it your entire personality.
She was engaged in full-on, me me me, selfish Karening.
The world is full of people who are different from each other. It really says something about this women that she basically threw a tantrum because some drag queens were busy just existing in the same space.
This is another example of Christian love. Seriously this is what the LGBTQ+ face in the attempt to turn the US into a Christian theocracy. How is he different from the Taliban? How does he differ from the Iranian moral vice police? Is this really the world you want to live under? Where your friends, maybe your child is being singled out for death because they were born gay and don’t fit the leader’s idea of what is good for god? My god this is what passes for statesmanship, for leadership, for civil discourse in the republican party. Think how far we have fallen to even think this rhetoric is acceptable in public. I don’t like what you are doing so I think it is OK to kill you. One last thought, why is a pride flag or rainbow sticker on the door or wall of a classroom indoctrination but the Christian religious symbols / ten commandments are not? WTF. Hugs. Scottie
“Our nation is at a crossroads. Our enemies are operating in plain sight. Evil is on the march and they’re not even trying to hide it. Satanic forces are taking over our schools, preying on our children with transgender surgeries and Drag Queen Story Hours.
“South Carolina is being invaded by terrorists and drug cartels. Our enemies in China are waging economic warfare against every American, making it impossible to afford to live here, to buy groceries, gas, or even pay the light bill.
“And traitor Joe Biden’s far-left Department of Defense is working to destroy our military from within.
“D.C. is taking our tax dollars and using it to fund the takeover. Let me say that again: American taxpayers are paying for the destruction of their own nation.
“Look at Iran and Afghanistan. We must hold responsible those elected officials who take our hard-earned dollars to use them to do battle against us.
“It is treason, plain and simple.” – South Carolina pastor Mark Burns, in a final ad before tomorrow’s GOP primary runoff, the winner of which will surely become a US House member.
In 2022, Burns, who has been endorsed by Trump, laid out his plan for executing LGBTQs for “grooming” during an appearance on the show hosted by Holocaust denier Stew Peters.
MAGA pastor Mark Burns released an ad before his GOP runoff election in S.C. tomorrow and it's predictably bonkers: "Any country that would spy on Christian church attendance is just one step away from all-out gun confiscation and totalitarian communism." https://t.co/ngj36AMc0Apic.twitter.com/JAe5q9qVtt
“D.C. is taking our tax dollars and using it to fund the takeover. ….”
Sure Jan.
South Carolina receives $4.51 back from the government for every $1 residents pay in federal tax, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Census Bureau, USAspending.gov and Bureau of Labor Statistics
Scottie's Playtime 