James David (J.D.) Vance

James David (J.D.) Vance was born on August 2, 1984, in Middletown, Ohio. His mother battled substance abuse issues for many years, so Vance was mainly brought up by his maternal grandparents, who had relocated to Middletown from the Appalachian area of eastern Kentucky.

After graduating from Middletown High School in 2003, Vance joined the U.S. Marine Corps. He served from 2003 to 2007 as a combat correspondent, including a six-month deployment in the public affairs department in Iraq.

Vance later attended Ohio State University, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy in 2009. Vance then studied at Yale Law School, where he was an editor for The Yale Law Journal. He obtained his law degree in 2013. After graduation, he worked at the multinational law firm Sidley Austin LLP and held positions at various investment firms.

In 2016, Vance published the memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which detailed his experiences growing up in Middletown and his summers visiting family in Kentucky. In the book, Vance depicts a grim reality of poverty, substance abuse, and domestic violence in his community, with little hope for economic improvement. Despite this, he fondly recalls his grandmother, “Mamaw,” for providing stability and encouraging him to overcome his challenging circumstances. Vance’s memoir became a bestseller, leading to his demand as a lecturer and political commentator. In 2020, a Netflix movie adaptation was released.

In 2016, Vance returned to Ohio to start the nonprofit Our Ohio Renewal. This organization aimed to help disadvantaged children and tackle drug addiction, but it folded within a few years. Vance also founded an investment firm in Cincinnati.

In 2021, Republican Rob Portman announced that he would not seek reelection to the U.S. Senate, and Vance entered the race to replace him. During the 2016 election, Vance criticized Donald Trump, calling him “America’s Hitler,” a “moral disaster,” and a “total fraud” who is “reprehensible.” However, he underwent a conversion when running for Congress. He publicly apologized for his disapproving comments and aligned himself with the MAGA movement, winning Trump’s endorsement and the election.

When he ran for Senate, he did an interview with Jewish Insider and was asked about Jews and Israel. He said a Jewish thinker he admired was Yoram Hazony. On anti-Semitism, Vance noted the surge in violence abroad and said, “You have to prosecute people when they commit heinous acts of violence against people because they’re Jewish.” In another interview, Vance elaborated, “America remains one of the great places to live if you are Jewish. The question now is how to reverse the negative trend of the last years.” He argued, “If you beat up a Jew and don’t face consequences, the attacks will continue and get worse.”

He also saw an opportunity to attract Jewish voters. “I think the Jewish community is an important part of our coalition on the right,” he said. “I hope it becomes a more important part of our coalition because I think that, frankly, the left has gone pretty crazy on a lot of issues that Jews care about.”

In my experience, Jews, whatever their political affiliation, are pretty patriotic. They care a lot about living in a country that’s prosperous and free, and they don’t see Western civilization, which obviously has deep roots in the State of Israel and in the Jewish tradition, as something that’s evil and needs to be rejected but as something that needs to be built upon. When the left talks about Israel as sort of an evil colonizer apartheid state, I think that’s a pretty radical departure from how politicians have talked about the State of Israel. Even in the last decade, it’s changed pretty dramatically, and I think most Jews probably recognize what I’ve seen.

Vance, a Catholic convert, said, “There is this kind of historical continuity between Judaism and Catholicism that I always found pretty interesting and that I’ve noticed a lot as I’ve actually spent some time within the faith.”

Howie Beigelman, the CEO of Ohio Jewish Communities, said Vance always met with Ohio’s Jewish community, always taken meetings with pro-Israel advocates & given us probably the most unvarnished legislative truths.”

Vance visited Israel in 2022 and observed, “Culturally, morally, politically, it is a real ally in the sense that we’re not just sort of sharing interests, we’re actually sharing common values.”

In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Vance said, “I will be as strong an advocate for the U.S.-Israel relationship as anyone.” 

After touring Jerusalem, he said, “Jerusalem is the most important cultural heritage site in the world. If Israel didn’t control this land, I would never understand this experience.” Vance also complimented Trump for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

Vance also commented that “the Iran deal was a disaster.” 

Vance was sworn in as a senator on January 3, 2023, and echoed MAGA talking points while cosponsoring bipartisan bills in his first year. He also clashed with Republicans like Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell over issues such as U.S. aid to Ukraine, which he opposes. As a senator, Vance became a staunch defender of Trump and a key figure in the New Right, advocating for a more isolationist and culturally conservative Republican Party.

Urooba Jamal described Vance’s foreign policy in Al Jazeera as “America first with an Israel exception.”

On the day of the  October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of Israelis, Vance issued a statement: 

The horrible terrorist attacks launched by Hamas are an act of war. We must unequivocally condemn these heinous acts of violence against innocent civilians and the Iranian regime for funding the terrorists who carried them out...Israel has a right to self-defense – that includes striking back with overwhelming force against their enemies. Now, as ever, we must support our allies in their fight for freedom and security.

Initially, Vance blamed President Joe Biden for the attack. “Americans must face a stark truth: our tax dollars funded this,” he said. 

Vance supported the government’s conduct throughout the conflict in Gaza. He said that Israel should “finish the job” to end the war and ally with the Sunni countries against Iran. “You’ve… got to enable the Israelis and the Sunni Arab states to work together and actually provide a counterbalance to Iran,” he said.

He also criticized Biden for withholding weapons from Israel: “It’s a fundamentally incoherent policy. On the one hand, they’re saying too many Palestinian civilians have been killed. With the other hand, they’re depriving the Israelis of the precision guided weapons that actually cut down on civilian casualties.”

“What Biden has done is the worst of all possible worlds,” said Vance. “He has prolonged the war...but in the process, he’s made it harder for us to really move towards a sustainable peace.”

You want two things to happen,” Vance told Fox News. “Number one is, you want to get this war over and as quickly as possible, because the longer it goes on the harder [Israel’s] situation becomes. But second, after the war, you want to reinvigorate that peace process between Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Jordanians, and so forth.”

Further attacking the president for micromanaging Israel’s conduct of the war, Vance said, “The Israelis are our allies, let them prosecute this war the way they see fit.” After Hamas was 80% defeated, he added, the administration is “throwing up their hands and saying ‘uncle.’”

As for the Palestinians in Gaza, Vance said, “our heart certainly goes out to them,” but blamed their plight on Hamas. “We have to ask ourselves: ‘why are Palestinian civilian casualties so high?’ It’s because Hamas started the war and now, they hide behind Palestinian civilians,” he said. “So if you want to learn the lessons of the last 40 years, the most important thing is we have to defeat Hamas as a viable military organization. You’re never going to defeat the ideology of Hamas, but you can root out those commanders, those final military-trained battalions, and I think you should empower the Israelis to do it.”

“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,” Vance wrote on his Senate website. “There is no way that we can do that unless the Israelis finish the job with Hamas. If they can’t even do that, the attitude in the Middle East will be: ‘you can’t trust these guys, they’re not pursuing their own national security.’ So we’ve got to let them finish this job, and I think hopefully, on the other end of it, get to a new era in the Middle East.”

Vance acknowledged, “You’re never going to defeat the ideology of Hamas, but you can root out those commanders, those final military-trained battalions, and I think you should empower the Israelis to do it,” Vance said. Together, the U.S. and Israel can eliminate terror groups “as a functioning military apparatus.”

He said he was afraid Israel would repeat America’s mistakes in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I’m very worried about Israel – very worried about it as a country [because] I think what’s happened the last couple months has revealed deep fissures in Israel’s support around the world.”

Unlike Biden, Vance did not say a two-state solution was the answer to the Palestinian issue. He said he would defer to Israel and that the Abraham Accords were “the perfect way of building a counterpoint to the Iranians in the Middle East.”

Vance also sent a letter to Biden urging him not to provide special immigration protections for Palestinians, who he called “a population of potentially radicalized individuals.”

He also introduced bills to withhold federal funds for colleges where there have been encampments or protests against Jews and the war in Gaza. “My view on the campus protests is very simple: I don’t care what your cause is, whether you’re pro- or anti-Israel or anything else. You don’t get to turn our public places into a garbage dump. No civilization should tolerate these encampments. Get rid of them,” Vance tweeted.

Before October 7, Vance opposed military action against Iran unless U.S. troops were attacked. But he said, “If you’re going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard,” as Trump did when he ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Rather than provoke a broader war, as critics predicted, “it actually brought peace, it actually checked the Iranians and slowed them down a little bit.” Biden, meanwhile, has “done nothing.”

Explaining why he favored the U.S. backing Israel and not Ukraine, he said, “A majority of citizens of this country think that their savior, and I count myself a Christian, was born, died, and resurrected in that narrow little strip of territory off the Mediterranean.” He added, “The idea that there is ever going to be an American foreign policy that doesn’t care a lot about that slice of the world is preposterous.”

Still, he said, “We want the Israelis and the Sunnis to police their own region of the world. We want the Europeans to police their own region of the world, and we want to be able to focus more on East Asia.”

In July 2024, former President Donald Trump chose Vance as his running mate for the 2024 Presidential Election.

In February 2025, Vice President Vance visited the Dachau concentration camp memorial, reflecting on its history with Holocaust survivor Abba Naor and laying a wreath in remembrance.

A leaked Signal group chat revealed that Vance privately opposed U.S. strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen in March 2025, citing concerns over economic fallout and inconsistency with U.S. messaging in Europe. While Vance’s spokesperson later affirmed his support for the administration’s policy, the incident highlighted internal divisions.

Vance and his wife, Usha Chilukuri, have three children.

Sources: “JD Vance,” Wikipedia.
“Senator Vance Issues Statement On The War In Israel,” JD Vance United States Senator for Ohio, (October 7, 2023).
“Senator Vance Blasts President Biden’s “Incoherent” Handling Of Israel-Hamas War,” JD Vance United States Senator for Ohio, (May 12, 2024).
Emily Jacobs, “Vance puts pro-Israel spin on America First worldview in Quincy Institute speech,” Jewish Insider, (May 23, 2024).
Ian Ward, “55 Things to Know About JD Vance, Trump’s VP Pick,” Politico, (July 15, 2024).
Laura Kelly, “Where JD Vance stands on Ukraine, Israel and China,” The Hill, (July 15, 2024).
Jacob Kornbluh, “What a JD Vance vice presidency would mean for American Jews and Israel,” Forward, (July 15, 2024).
“Trump’s VP pick J. D. Vance: ‘I’ll be as strong an advocate for US-Israel relationship as anyone,’” Jerusalem Post, (July 15, 2024).
Jill Colvin, et. al., “Trump picks Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, a once-fierce critic turned loyal ally, as his GOP running mate,” AP, (July 15, 2024).
Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, “JD Vance, Trump’s VP pick, once called him a ‘moral disaster,’ and possibly ‘America’s Hitler,’” CNN, (July 16, 2024).
“Vance: Israel should finish war as quickly as possible, partner Sunni states against Iran,” Times of Israel, (July 16, 2024).
Urooba Jamal, “JD Vance’s world: Where does Trump VP pick stand on Israel, Ukraine, China?” Al Jazeera, (July 16, 2024).
Jacob Magid, “Trump VP pick JD Vance aims to balance Israel support with ‘America First’ mantra,” Times of Israel, (July 16, 2024).
Adam Nagourney, “J.D. Vance on the Issues, From Abortion to the Middle East” New York Times, (July 17, 2024).
“J.D. Vance,” Britannica, (July 25, 2024).
Haley Cohen, “Vance visits Dachau concentration camp, lays wreath saying: ‘We remember,’” Jewish Insider, (February 13, 2025).
Emily Jacobs, Marc Rod, “Vance voiced doubt about Houthi strikes in private messages with Cabinet officials,” Jewish Insider, (March 24, 2025).

Photo: Senator Vance official portrait, 118th Congress via Wikimedia Commons.