JD Vance has another connection to Project 2025 – Mother Jones

It turns out that Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio) has another connection to the group behind Project 2025.Maxppp/ZUMA

Bad news for the Trump campaign team: Despite their candidate's desperate efforts to distance himself from Project 2025, connections between Trump, his allies and the authors of the right-wing script for a second Trump term continue to emerge.

And the latest? Trump's running mate JD Vance wrote the introduction to a 2017 report by the Heritage Foundation – the group behind the publication of Project 2025 – that advocated a nationwide abortion ban and criticized IVF. The news, first reported by the New York Timescomes at a particularly bad time for Trump's campaign. Both Trump and Vance have changed their stance on abortion in light of the fallout – and political unpopularity – of growing abortion bans. This includes Trump's statement that if he is re-elected, he wants the government or insurance companies to pay for IVF.

Compared to some of Vance's other actions and comments — including his attacks on childless “cat ladies,” journalists, and teachers, and his support for federal criminalization of mail-order abortion pills (which Vance has since backed away from) — his introduction to the Heritage Foundation report reads rather tamely. In it, he acknowledges that Trump has been criticized for “painting an overly pessimistic picture of his own country.” (See Trump's dystopian inaugural speech about “American carnage”). Later in the introduction, Vance wrote that people living in poverty — as Vance did during his childhood — should not necessarily be blamed for their circumstances:

We should not be quick to look at the poor and claim that their problems are entirely due to their own bad choices before moving on to other things. Instead, we should consider the very intuitive fact that the way we grow up shapes us. It shapes our attitudes, our habits, our choices. It sets limits on how we perceive possibilities in our own lives.

Other essays in the report presented by Vance, however, are far more dogmatic. An essay by Jeanne Mancini, president of the anti-abortion fund March for Life Education and Defense, states that her group's goal is “abortion [to] has become unthinkable in the United States.” In an essay, Jennifer Lahl, founder and president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, an organization that criticizes surrogacy and assisted reproductive technologies, condemns IVF and delaying childbirth in general: “The truth is that it is better for mother and child to get pregnant sooner rather than later. Assisted reproductive technologies and egg freezing are not magic pills that you take when you are ready to have a baby.” In another essay, the birth of children to unmarried parents is called a “tragedy.”

Republicans have been on the defensive since their supporters raised the alarm about the Dobbs A decision that threatens access to assisted reproduction has already been made in Alabama, where the state Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that embryos should be considered children. But as Senate Republicans subsequently blocked a vote on a bill to protect access to assisted reproduction nationwide, they have not inspired much confidence – something that Kamala Harris' presidential campaign is using to its advantage by highlighting the dangers that a second term in office could pose to access to assisted reproduction.

It is no surprise that Vance's team has tried to downplay his role in the Heritage report. Luke Schroeder, a spokesman for Vance, told the Just: “Senator Vance has long made it clear that he supports IVF and does not agree with every opinion in this seven-year-old report, which contains a number of unique views from dozens of conservative thinkers.” The spokesman also told the Just that Vance had “no influence on the commentary” in the report. Noah Weinrich, a spokesman for the Heritage Foundation, told the Just that Vance “was not involved in the creation or approval of the contents of the 2017 Index of Culture and Opportunity other than writing the introduction.”

But that doesn't change the fact that Vance's involvement is further proof that Trump and his team have many ties to the same people behind Project 2025. Vance also wrote the introduction to a forthcoming book by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and architect of Project 2025. The book is intended to serve as a roadmap for conservatives to “take back” the country and its various institutions.

“As it turns out, Donald Trump's running mate co-signed Project 2025's radical agenda to undermine IVF, ban abortion nationwide, and control women's most personal health decisions long before it even had a name.” Harris-Walz 2024 spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. Chitika added that the Just The report “confirms that Trump, Vance and their allies' plans under Project 2025 have been in the works for nearly a decade – if given the chance, they will strip women of their freedoms in every corner of this country.”