Photo Credit: Joshua A. Bickel/Ohio Debate Commission.
Ohio U.S. Senate Republican candidate J.D. Vance during Ohio’s U.S. Senate Republican Primary Debate at Central State University.
This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.
In January, days after a Supreme Court decision authorized the U.S. Border Patrol to remove razor wire installed by the Texas National Guard along the U.S.-Mexico border, Sen. J.D. Vance, a Republican from Ohio, introduced legislation to block federal agents from even tampering with the fencing.
Since joining the Senate last year, none of Vance’s three dozen bills and resolutions, including his State Border Security Act, has received a full vote, let alone become law. But his legislative efforts to curtail immigration and police reform and criminalize gender-affirming health care and campus protests suggest his policy priorities as a 2024 vice presidential candidate running with former President Donald Trump.
In a third of the bills he’s introduced and about a dozen more he’s co-sponsored, Vance seeks tough criminal penalties for individuals and financial sanctions for communities that disagree with his positions on the border, policing, reproductive health care, or whether and where protesters can legally exercise their free speech.
A self-described “Never Trumper” when his hard-knock memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was published in 2016, Vance made an about-face in the run-up to his 2022 campaign for an open Senate seat in Ohio. Since winning Trump’s endorsement and that race, Vance has become a leading critic of federal and state officials who prosecute Trump for alleged criminal acts in office. On the floor of the Senate, Vance articulates Trump’s tough-on-crime-and-immigration position.
He’s a “loyal footsoldier” with a penchant for channeling national controversies into legislation at the heart of the Trump campaign platform, said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an Ohio State University law professor who specializes in criminal law, civil liberties, policing and immigration.
“Whether it’s the murder of Laken Riley,” an Augusta University student whose accused killer crossed the border illegally, “or if it’s the standoff between the Border Patrol and the Texas National Guard, he’s very good at taking some event and trying to excite the Republican Party’s base with it,” García Hernández said. And he’s proven that he’ll “embrace the Republican Party and the past Trump administration’s heavy-handed approach to immigration and to criminal justice more generally.”
Vance, a military veteran who turns 40 in August, has authored or supported legislation that would crack down on campus and climate change protests while relaxing restrictions on protesting abortion clinics.
His Encampments or Endowments Act would block federal funds for universities that fail to dismantle protest encampments. He signed on to Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s No Bailouts for Campus Criminals Act, which would bar college students from loan forgiveness if they are convicted of crimes while protesting on campus.
He’s co-sponsored Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s Restoring the First Amendment and Right to Peaceful Civil Disobedience Act of 2023, which would repeal a 1994 law that buffers patients from harassment by protesters outside clinics. He also co-sponsored South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune’s Senate Bill 204, which would imprison doctors for up to five years if medical treatment is not provided to children born following an attempted abortion. Vance’s Consequences for Climate Vandals Act would double the maximum penalty for property damage from protests at the National Gallery of Art from five to 10 years in prison.
In 2023, Vance and Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia introduced companion bills that punish anyone involved in the gender-affirming care of a minor.
Greene’s bill would permit people who receive gender-affirming care as minors to bring a lawsuit against anyone who performed hormone treatments or surgeries on them. Vance’s bill would go further, making the gender-affirming care of a minor a federal crime punishable by up to 12 years in prison.
In addition to the State Border Security Act, Vance’s No Community Development Block Grants for Sanctuary Cities Act would cut federal funds for local communities that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement officials. Senate Bill 3516, which Vance introduced in late 2023, would impose a 10% tax on money transfers to people outside the United States, with the proceeds deposited by the U.S. Treasury into a Border Enforcement Trust Fund.
He’s also signed onto Tennessee Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s PRINTS Act, calling for the fingerprinting and federal reporting of minors who cross the border in suspected acts of human trafficking. The law would criminalize, with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison, adults “who use unrelated minors to gain entry into the United States.”
Vance has co-sponsored Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn’s Back the Blue Act of 2023, which would increase minimum and maximum sentences, up to life imprisonment or death, for assaulting or killing law enforcement officers. Vance has also introduced resolutions expressing support for law enforcement and condemning the District of Columbia’s Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022.
While Vance’s Senate resolution condemning the D.C. Council’s legislation did not move out of committee, a companion piece in the House did pass both chambers. President Joe Biden vetoed the bill, and Congress did not override that veto.
“While I do not support every provision of the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022,” President Biden wrote in his veto message, “this resolution from congressional Republicans would overturn common sense police reforms such as: banning chokeholds; setting important restrictions on use of force and deadly force; improving access to body-worn camera recordings; and requiring officer training on de-escalation and use of force.”
In his remarks on the House resolution, which passed with six Senate Democrats, Vance blasted the D.C. policing reform for making officers less safe by restricting the use of riot gear and the ability to chase violent offenders, and for “these ridiculous exhaustion requirements before they can use lethal force to protect themselves and people around them.”
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