Sen. JD Vance took the RNC stage Wednesday night. Here's where Trump's VP pick stands on issues such as abortion, climate change, immigration and election integrity

Kate Murphy

Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance from Ohio, delivered the closing speech on the third night of the Republican National Convention Wednesday.

For many Americans, it was the first time hearing directly from Vance. The Middletown, Ohio, native was once a harsh critic of the former president’s, but has become a loyalist who supports Trump on issues like abortion, immigration and election integrity.

If Trump is reelected, Vance, like most vice presidents, would likely take a backseat when it comes to shaping policy decisions. But he would be set up to run for president himself in 2028.

As Vance joins the Republican ticket, here’s where he stands on key policy issues:

Vance has described himself as pro-life, telling CBS News’s “Face the Nation” in May, “I want to save as many babies as possible.”

At the same time, he also indicated in that interview that his position on abortion matched that of Trump’s — that it’s best for states to decide their own policies on the matter. “What I’ve said consistently is the gross majority of policy here is going to be set by the states,” Vance told CBS News.

However, Vance also previously indicated that he would welcome a national law limiting abortions.

“I want Ohio to be able to make its own decisions, and I want Ohio's elected legislators to make those decisions. But I think it's fine to sort of set some minimum national standard,” Vance told the Cincinnati Enquirer in October 2022, when he was running for Senate.

In November, Ohioans voted to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution known as Issue 1. Vance described the decision as a “gut punch” in a post on X. Ohio currently bans abortions at 22 weeks and later.

Vance also echoes Trump’s support for access to abortion pill mifepristone. Earlier this month, Vance said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “The Supreme Court made a decision in saying that the American people should have access to that medication, Donald Trump has supported that opinion, I support that opinion.”

Vance shares Trump’s view that the 2020 election results were marred by fraud, despite a lack of evidence to support the claim. (Election security officials declared 2020 "the most secure in American history.")

“I think the election was stolen from Trump,” Vance said during an April 2022 Senate debate.

He also downplayed the events of Jan. 6, 2021, in which a mob attacked the Capitol at Trump's urging in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election. Vance dismissed the notion that Trump played a role in the incitement of rioters who stormed the Capitol that day and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!”

“I’m truly skeptical that Mike Pence’s life was ever in danger,” Vance told CNN in May. “I think, look, January 6th was a bad day. It was a riot. But the idea that Donald Trump endangered anyone’s lives, when he told them to protest peacefully, it’s just absurd.”

Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance
Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance. (Carolyn Kaster/AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

In February of this year, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Vance what he would have done regarding the certification of votes if he had been in Vice President Pence’s position on Jan. 6. “If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020,” Vance replied.

Vance has also called the rioters who have been criminally charged in the Jan. 6 attack “political prisoners.”

Vance is a big supporter of the oil and gas industry, which has a large presence in his home state of Ohio.

He has criticized renewable energy sources like wind and solar power and opposes the government encouraging the transition to electric vehicles.

“The Biden administration is doing everything it can to subsidize alternative energy sources and demonize our nation’s most reliable sources of power,” Vance wrote in an op-ed in the Marietta [Ohio] Times last year.

While Vance acknowledges that the climate is changing, he told the American Leadership Forum in 2021 that he remains skeptical that it’s “caused purely by man” because “it’s been changing for millennia.”

Like Trump, Vance supports hard-line immigration policies and has urged the federal government to provide more resources to curb the number of immigrants entering illegally.

Vance supports congressional funding that would finish construction of the border wall along the southern U.S. border; he said on Fox News in June that the U.S. should conduct large-scale deportations of undocumented immigrants.

“You start with the most violent people, the people who have criminal records and you’ve got to be willing to deport them, ” Vance said.

Vance also supports making it harder for undocumented immigrants to work in the U.S. because he says that “undercuts the wages of American workers.”

Vance has been a staunch supporter of Israel throughout its war in Gaza and has repeated Trump’s calls for the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job.”

“Our goal in the Middle East should be to allow the Israelis to get to some good place with the Saudi Arabians and other Gulf Arab states. There is no way that we can do that unless the Israelis finish the job with Hamas,” Vance told CNN in May.

Vance has also acknowledged the mounting Palestinian death toll in Gaza saying, “our heart certainly goes out to them,” but maintained that the blame is with Hamas, and not Israel.

Vance proposed a bill last year called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act that would have charged health care providers who provided gender affirming care on minors a Class C felony, which is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The bill was never taken up in committee.

In April 2022, the State Department rolled out an option for people to indicate “X” for gender on U.S. passports. Vance introduced legislation last October, called the Passport Sanity Act, to ban that option.

“The last thing the State Department should be doing is wasting its time and your tax dollars pushing far-left gender ideology,” Vance had said in a statement. “There are only two genders — passports issued by the United States government should recognize that simple fact. I am proud to introduce this bill to restore some sanity in our federal bureaucracy.”

This bill was also not taken up in committee.

Vance has been a leading opponent of continuing U.S. military aid to Ukraine as it continues to to defend itself in a war started by Russia.

“I think that it is absurd for us to devote so many resources, so much attention and so much time to a border conflict 6,000 miles away when our own U.S. southern border is wide open,” Vance said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.

Earlier this year, he led an unsuccessful attempt to block a $60 billion aid package for Ukraine in the Senate.

In an interview with former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon in February 2022, Vance said, “I think it’s ridiculous that we’re focused on this border in Ukraine. I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”

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