UPDATE (Sept. 4, 2024, 10:44 a.m. ET): The Trump campaign issued a statement on Tuesday night addressing Vance’s involvement in the 2017 Heritage report. “Senator Vance has long made clear that he supports IVF and does not agree with every opinion in this seven-year-old report, which features a range of unique views from dozens of conservative thinkers,” said Luke Schroeder, Vance’s spokesperson. “He had no role in editing the report and outside of his own contribution, did not have any input on the commentary throughout.”
Since he became Donald Trump‘s running mate, Sen. JD Vance has had to defend multiple comments from his past about women and families that have resurfaced. And new reporting on Vance’s stamp of approval for a 2017 document from the Heritage Foundation could lead to more backlash.
The document in question is the “Index of Culture and Opportunity” put together by the Heritage Foundation to analyze cultural and economic trends from a conservative perspective. Vance, who had not yet entered politics and was chiefly known as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” wrote an introduction for the report, praising it for “shed[ding] needed light on our country’s most difficult and intractable problems.” And as The New York Times has pointed out, he was also the keynote speaker at the release of the report.
The document includes essays that espouse right-wing talking points, targeting single-parent households, divorce rates, welfare programs and housing assistance. In one article, author Jennifer Lahl, the president of an anti-abortion organization, writes that women should have children at a younger age and decries the use of fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization to delay pregnancy until women are older.
The resurfacing on Tuesday of Vance’s involvement in the 2017 document comes as Trump continues to attempt to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025 as a blueprint for his second term. Trump has also tried to moderate his party’s radical stance on reproductive rights, claiming just last week that he would make his administration or insurance companies cover the cost of IVF if he is re-elected (he did not explain how he would accomplish this). Vance’s involvement with the 2017 report is not the same as a full-throated endorsement of every position in the document. But throughout his political career, he has sided with some of his party’s most extreme factions on abortion, even likening the procedure at one point to slavery. Vance has called for a federal abortion ban in the past, though he recently insisted that Trump would veto such legislation if he’s re-elected. Vance also voted this year against a bill in the Senate to codify protections for IVF. With Vance’s radical positions on women and children already under a microscope, reports of further associations with the Heritage Foundation may threaten another scandal for the Trump campaign, even as they underscore Vance’s deep ties with the leaders of the organization.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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