With Donald Trump's 2024 election win, James David Vance becomes vice president-elect [Post Updated #83]

JD Vance 'Absolutely' Commits to Trump Not Imposing Federal Abortion Ban​


Ohio Senator JD Vance, Donald Trump's running mate, said on Sunday that he "absolutely" commits to the former president not imposing a federal abortion ban despite his previous stance on the issue.

Abortion is just one issue that has been significant for voters since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, as many Republican-controlled states have put abortion restrictions into effect with 21 states banning or restricting the medical procedure at every stage of pregnancy.

Following months of speculation on Trump's abortion stance amid the 2024 election, Trump, the GOP's presidential nominee, has said that he thinks abortion limits should be left to the states and declined to endorse a federal abortion ban.

"My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both," he said in a video posted to his Truth Social account. in April. "And whatever they decide must be the law of the land—in this case, the law of the state."

Trump has previously labeled himself the "most pro-life president in American history" during the campaign trail and spoke about appointing the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe.

Vance, meanwhile, has cast himself as a staunch social conservative and close ally to the former president since his 2022 election to the U.S. Senate. However, his stances on issues like abortion have sparked fierce backlash from Democrats after Trump picked him as his running mate in July.

While Vance has previously said he would want a nationwide ban on the medical procedure, he has since towed Trump's line on the issue, leaving it up to states to decide their own laws on it.

Appearing on NBC News' Meet The Press on Sunday morning for an interview, Vance was asked by host Kristen Welker that if he and Trump are elected if he can commit to Trump not imposing a federal ban on abortion.

Vance responded: "I can absolutely commit that. Donald Trump has been as clear about that as possible...Donald Trump wants to end this culture war over this particular topic...So I think Donald Trump is right. We want the federal government to focus on these big economic and immigration questions. Let the states figure out their own abortion policy."

 

Vance refuses to answer whether Trump lost 2020 election​


JD Vance has refused to say whether he thinks Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and whether he would contest the 2024 vote if Democrats win next month.

The Republican vice-presidential candidate - who has previously said he would have challenged the 2020 result if given the chance - avoided giving answers on both issues during Tuesday night's debate.

In a head-to-head that was largely civilised in tone, he was accused by his Democratic opponent Tim Walz of "a damning non-answer" after sidestepping a question about that result and the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.

Trump was seeking a second term then and has spent years making false claims about voter fraud during that poll.

The exchange unfolded after the CBS News moderators asked Vance if he would try to challenge the results of November's election, even if every US state governor certified them - as was the case in 2020.

Vance did not directly answer, instead saying he was "focused on the future".

He sought to defend Trump over the riot during which President Trump's supporters attacked the US Capitol building in an effort to stop Joe Biden becoming president.

Vance said Trump had simply spoken of "problems" in 2020, and insisted that Trump had only said that "protesters ought to protest peacefully".

Turning to the outcome of the 2024 vote, he said: "If Tim Walz is the next vice-president, he'll have my prayers, he'll have my best wishes, and he'll have my help whenever he wants it."

But Walz persisted with the events of 2020 - challenging Vance to answer whether Trump had lost the poll. When Vance again sought to change the topic, Walz said: "That is a damning non-answer."

Walz added that they were "miles apart" on the issue, despite agreeing on other things during their 90-minute debate.

Other than one or two other tussles - including an exchange on immigration that led to the two men's microphones being muted - the debate was polite in tone.

Walz found himself under pressure from the moderators over past comments of his own - marking the latest occasion in which he has fallen foul of fact-checkers.

He admitted that he "misspoke" when he claimed he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. News reports from the time show that he was actually in the US when the events took place in China.

Tuesday's event in New York marked the first and only scheduled head-to-head between the pair.

Polling by CBS News immediately afterwards suggested that 42% of viewers felt Vance won the debate, compared to 41% who thought Walz came out on top. Some 17% called the debate a tie.

 

Vance: Trump's MAGA heir apparent and, now, VP-elect​


After Donald Trump's victory in US elections, JD Vance is officially Trump's heir apparent as vice president-elect.

When he was picked as Donald Trump's running mate in July, JD Vance's rise through the Republican ranks was confirmed. Many pundits see him as heir apparent to Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement and the favorite to be the Republican presidential candidate in 2028.

While Trump's brash brand of politicking is a natural extension of the larger-than-life persona he carved out over four decades in the public eye, Vance, a 40-year-old father of three, is from another side of America, and his rise to the vice presidency has been unconventional by Republican standards.

Vance was born James David Bowman and raised primarily by his maternal grandparents — whose surname he later adopted — in a steel manufacturing town in Ohio while his mother struggled with drug and alcohol use.

After graduating from high school, Vance joined the US Marines and served for four years, including a six-month deployment to Iraq in a noncombat role as a military journalist in 2005. After leaving the Marines, he graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School. He later switched from law to tech investing in California, where he started his own venture capital firm.

In Yale he also met his wife Usha Chilukuri. The couple got married in 2014 and has two sons and a daughter.

It was in May 2016 that Vance entered the public eye with the publication of his acclaimed "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis." The bestseller reflected on Vance's upbringing in Appalachia and was considered a window into the lives of people in the declining manufacturing region known as the Rust Belt just months before slim-margin wins in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania swept Trump to power in 2016.

In a 2016 interview on NPR, Vance said he couldn't "stomach Trump" and would consider voting for Hillary Clinton, but also, somewhat prophetically, suggested that the Trump phenomenon was buoyed by the support of white working-class voters who "aren't necessarily economically destitute but in some ways feel very culturally isolated and very pessimistic about the future. That's one of the biggest predictors of whether someone will support Donald Trump. It may be the biggest predictor."

Among those heaping praise on the book was PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. The New York Times reported in July that Thiel — a long-standing mentor of Vance's and one of the first high-profile Silicon Valley figures to support Trump in 2016 — brokered an initial meeting between the former president and his future VP in 2021.

Vance would recant his position as "a Never Trump guy" when he successfully ran in the 2022 Republican primary to represent Ohio in the US Senate.

Shortly after his selection as running mate, a 2021 interview resurfaced in which Vance described the United States as a country run by "childless cat ladies" — a comment rebuked by Democrats, as well as Taylor Swift and other celebrities.

Vance later raised the ire of communities in his home state of Ohio after he shared false claims made on social media that Haitian immigrants were eating pet dogs in Springfield. Trump amplified those false claims in his debate against Kamala Harris.

Vance's own debate performance against Tim Walz saw him come away with a narrow win in the eyes of critics. His disciplined effort was summarized by the press as "polished" (Politico), "crisp" and "dominant" (The New York Times) and "slick" (CNN). But the elephant in the room was his inability to concede that Trump had lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, something his opponent made sure to seize on.

While Trump will dominate the headlines as president, a close eye will be kept on Vance's approach to key policy issues such as abortion, immigration and foreign policy — and how his stances could shape the Republican Party's post-Trump era.

Though the vice president's job is seldom in the spotlight, with Trump reentering office at 78, there is a higher than usual chance Vance could end up sitting in the Oval Office at some point in the next four years.

 

1st Indian-Origin Woman Set To Become Second Lady Of US​


At the Palm Beach County Convention Center in Florida, it was midnight when Donald Trump and his entourage appeared on stage to a resounding applause from a crowd eagerly waiting to catch a glimpse of their President-elect. Moments into his victory speech on Tuesday, Trump lauded his running mate JD Vance and his Indian-American wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance.

Trump defeated Democratic rival Kamala Harris by a margin of 53 electoral votes. “I want to be the first to congratulate - now I can say Vice President-elect JD Vance. And his remarkable and beautiful wife, Usha Vance,” Trump said, drawing loud cheers from the audience.

Who is Usha Vance?


Born to Indian parents who emigrated from Andhra Pradesh to the US in 1986, Usha Chilukuri Vance was raised in a suburb of San Diego, California.

She earned a bachelor's degree in History from Yale University and went on to complete a Master of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar.

The would-be Second Lady of the United States also held editorial roles at the Yale Journal of Law & Technology and The Yale Law Journal, where she served as Managing Editor and Executive Development Editor, respectively.

Usha met JD Vance at Yale Law School and got married in 2014 in a ceremony that included a Hindu ritual. Together, they have three children. Throughout JD Vance's political career, Usha has been a supportive partner, often appearing alongside him during his Ohio Senate campaign. Her insights also contributed to JD Vance's well-known memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which sheds light on the struggles of rural America and was later adapted into a movie directed by Ron Howard.

She works as a corporate litigator at a firm in San Francisco. Her legal career also includes clerking for US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

 
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