Those keen to wrest control of the GOP from MAGA conservatives and to resume the course charted by the party prior to President Donald Trump's 2016 election have their work cut out for them.

A new poll conducted by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics revealed that Vice President JD Vance presently towers over his potential 2028 GOP primary opponents — including Calgary-born Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is poised to run as the kind of George W. Bush-era Republican that Trump crushed in the 2016 and 2024 primaries.

'Voters will sniff out anybody who has seemed to be sort of focused on themselves.'

When asked whom they would vote for if the election were held this month, 57% of respondents said that they would support Vance; 9% said Secretary of State Marco Rubio; 7% said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; 4% said Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy; 4% said former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nimarata "Nikki" Haley; 4% said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard; 1% said Ted Cruz; and 1% said Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Two percent of respondents signaled they would vote for someone else, and 10% said they were unsure.

Sources close to the Trump administration recently told Politico that Rubio has telegraphed that he would support Vance if he chooses to run.

One source close to the White House noted that the "expectation is JD as [nominee] and Rubio as VP."

DeSantis, who secured less than 2% of the votes cast in the 2024 Republican primary before dropping out, recently told CNN's Jake Tapper, "I'm not thinking about anything because I think we have a president now who’s not even been in for a year. We've got a lot that we've got to accomplish."

The Florida governor may have taken the advice that James Blair, a former DeSantis staffer who now serves as Trump's White House deputy chief of staff, recently shared via Politico: "If you're a Republican that wants to run in 2028 right now, you need to focus on keeping Republicans in power for 2026. I think the number one thing everybody can do is focus on the team and helping their team and not focus on themselves."

"Voters will sniff out anybody who has seemed to be sort of focused on themselves," added Blair.

Last month, the University of New Hampshire's Granite State Poll found that while DeSantis didn't place in the top five Republican presidential primary candidates for 2028, he managed the fourth-highest favorability rating.

Vance placed first with a favorability rating among likely Republican primary voters of 77%; Rubio placed second with a 58% rating; Gabbard placed third with a 57% rating; DeSantis came fourth with a 56% rating; and Ramaswamy came fifth with 46%.

Cruz and Haley, meanwhile, were much further down the list with favorability ratings of 38% and 25%, respectively.

Gabbard, polling ahead of Cruz in the Saint Anselm College poll, has not made explicit any intention to run but indicated earlier this year on "The Megyn Kelly Show" that she "will never rule out any opportunity" to serve her country.

On the prediction website Polymarket, Vance is given a 55% chance of winning the primary.

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'You know what really p**ses people off?' Vance identifies what's at heart of 'populist resentment' in Appalachia

Vice President JD Vance joined Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Make America Healthy Again summit on Wednesday in discussing the Trump administration's revolution against the unworkable state of affairs and orthodoxies that have left so many Americans sick, censored, poor, and behind.

After the duo discussed President Donald Trump's penchant for taking "a bulldozer to Overton windows," Kennedy raised the matter of the dire health and social conditions in Appalachia, noting that Vance's incredible success serves as a "tragic reminder of the lost potential of almost everybody else in Appalachia."

'Their loved ones are dying much sooner than everybody else.'

"It's got the worst health data of any region in the country — the highest cardiac disease, the highest obesity, the highest diabetes, the highest stroke rates — but also addiction, alcoholism, and suicide," said Kennedy.

Although dubbed a "golden child of Appalachia" by the HHS secretary, Vance emphasized his firsthand familiarity with the bleak conditions experienced by so many in the region, noting that he was hard-pressed to identify a single important male family figure who lived past the age of 70.

"You want to talk about, like, 'populism'? And you want to talk about people being pissed off? Well, yeah, people are pissed off when they don't have good jobs; and people are pissed off when things disappear and move overseas; and people are pissed off when they feel like, you know, other countries are being prioritized over the United States of America," said Vance. "All of that is part of the populist resentment of the past 20 or 30 years in American politics."

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

"But you know what really pisses people off?" continued the vice president. "When they realize that their loved ones are dying much sooner than everybody else."

Life expectancy has long been lower and infant mortality higher in Appalachia than in the rest of the country.

Vance noted that while on the one hand, he feels guilty that so many of his fellow Appalachians have not enjoyed the opportunities for economic and familial stability that he has enjoyed, he also feels "a great sense of anger because we never should have gotten to the point that we are today, and the reason that we have is because of failed leadership — and it's failed leadership over generations."

The vice president stressed that one of the reasons he strongly supports Kennedy's health initiatives is because therein lies a major opportunity to do right by Appalachian residents who have been "left behind by this country's leadership."

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Vance schools yappy student on problems with immigration: 'There's too many people who want to come'

Vice President JD Vance taught college students an important lesson on the problems associated with mass immigration at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi on Wednesday.

After delivering his prepared remarks with Charlie Kirk's widow, Erika Kirk — emphasizing the importance of avoiding pointless foreign entanglements, securing America's borders, and altogether prioritizing citizens — Vance respectfully gave a few students much-needed reality checks.

One of the questioners prefaced by noting that his girlfriend was studying in the country on a student visa, then asked Vance about his views on legal immigration.

'My job as vice president is not to look out for the interests of the whole world.'

"Thanks in part to the Biden border invasion but also thanks in part to a lot of bad immigration policy, right now, we have let in too many immigrants into the United States of America," Vance responded.

The Pew Research Center recently indicated that as of January 2025, there were 53.3 million immigrants living in the U.S. — the largest number ever recorded. Over 15% of all U.S. residents and 19% of the U.S. labor force were immigrants.

The vice president suggested that "the evidence is pretty clear" that a great many of the over 1 million migrants who legally enter the U.S. every year "are actually undercutting the wages of American workers," and suggested that such wage suppression is what prompted President Donald Trump and his administration to encourage H-1B reform.

Vance indicated further that while the intended function of the H-1B visa is to attract and retain top talent from around the world, "what it's actually used to do is hire an accountant at a 50% discount to an American citizen. I don't think that we should be hiring accountants from foreign countries when we've got accountants right here in the United States that would love to work for a good wage."

RELATED: Camp of the H-1B Saints

Photo by Brad Vest/Getty Images

"We have got to get our overall numbers way, way down," the vice president said, adding that the nation needs time to "build a sense of common identity" before admitting more people.

Vance's remarks evidently vexed a young female student of apparent Indian origin in the crowd who used her time at the microphone to complain both about the vice president's stated desire for his Hindu wife to one day join him in following Christ as well as his desire to taper the number of immigrants legally admitted into the United States.

"When you talk about too many immigrant [sic] here, what is — when did you guys decide that number? Why did you sell us a dream? You made us spend our youth, our wealth in this country and gave us a dream," the woman said.

"How can you as a vice president stand there and say that 'we have too many of them now, and we are going to take them out' to people who are here, rightfully so?" she asked.

After clarifying that he was proposing greatly reducing the number of foreigner admissions in the future while honoring past promises to previous entrants, Vance stressed between interruptions from the woman that immigration policy should be adapted to the circumstances of the day.

"We cannot have an immigration policy where what was good for the country 50 or 60 years ago binds the country inevitably for the future," the vice president said. "There's too many people who want to come to the United States of America, and my job as vice president is not to look out for the interests of the whole world. It's to look out for the people of the United States."

While the questioner did not appear all too pleased with Vance's America-first answer, the crowd burst into applause.

Before the conclusion of the event, the vice president told the crowd, "Despair is a sin. Do not give in to the sin of despair. Let's keep fighting to save the United States of America."

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'May the Prince of Peace have mercy on us': Vance prays at site of Christ's death and resurrection

Vice President JD Vance visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem with his wife, Usha, on Thursday, attending a private Mass and praying at the site of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and empty tomb.

Vance, a convert to Catholicism whose wife is a Hindu, visited all of the sites within the sprawling basilica, including Golgotha, the "place of the skull" where Jesus was crucified; the Stone of Anointing, which is believed to be the limestone slab where Jesus' body was prepared for burial; and the Holy Sepulchre, Joseph of Arimathea's monument where Christ's body was interred prior to his resurrection.

'I think we're on a very good pathway.'

In addition to thanking the Franciscan monks who celebrated a private Mass for his family and for those Americans working for peace, Vance expressed gratitude to the Catholic, Greek, and Armenian priests who have long cared for the holy place, stating, "What an amazing blessing to have visited the site of Christ's death and resurrection."

Following an 4th-century investigation into the whereabouts of the site where Christ was crucified and buried, the Roman emperor Constantine settled on the current location — which had long been venerated by the early Christians — to erect a basilica.

Since Hadrian previously had the location strategically covered with pagan temples, Constantine had the pagan shrines toppled to make room for a basilica where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — largely an 11th-century crusader reconstruction — now stands despite fires, Muslim attacks, and earthquakes.

Photo by NATHAN HOWARD/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

At the Stone of Anointing, a bishop provided Vance on Thursday with a red pillow on which to kneel, and so he did, making the sign of the cross, placing his hand on the limestone slab, and bowing his head in silent prayer, according to a White House press report.

After Vance and his wife headed to the empty tomb, a bishop told the White House press pool that he was lighting two candles from the flame at the Holy Sepulchre to send back to the White House.

At one point during the tour of the church, Vance joked to a bishop, "You guys have been protecting me from bumping my head. You could join the Secret Service."

Photo by NATHAN HOWARD/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Theophilos III, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, was among the Christian clergymen who greeted and accompanied the vice president.

According to the Jerusalem Patriarchate, Theophilos III "conveyed his respectful greetings to President Donald J. Trump and expressed his heartfelt appreciation for the efforts of the United States administration, under President Trump’s leadership, to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza and to alleviate the suffering of the innocent."

Days prior to his visit to the church, Vance told reporters, "I hope to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which Christians believe is the site that Jesus Christ was crucified in. And I know that Christians have many titles for Jesus Christ, and one of them is the Prince of Peace. ... I'd ask all people of faith, in particular my fellow Christians, to pray that the Prince of Peace can continue to work a miracle in this region in the world."

After his visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Vance stated, "May the Prince of Peace have mercy on us, and bless our efforts for peace."

Keen on maintaining the fragile peace brokered by President Donald Trump in Gaza, Vance said on Thursday before leaving Israel that he was "insulted" by the 25-24 vote in the Knesset to annex the West Bank, stressing it was a "political stunt with no practical significance."

Despite the provocative vote, Vance thanked the Israeli government for hosting him and underscored, "I think we're on a very good pathway."

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Alternate History: What if Kamala Had Picked the (Openly) Gay Guy?

Kamala Harris wanted to pick an openly gay man as her running mate in 2024 before settling for Minnesota governor Tim Walz (D.), who is "married" to a woman and pretends to know how to hunt. In her forthcoming book about the election, Harris reveals failed presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was her "first choice" to join the ticket. She ultimately decided it would be "too big of a risk" for a black woman to run alongside an openly gay white man.

The post Alternate History: What if Kamala Had Picked the (Openly) Gay Guy? appeared first on .

Vance unloads on safety-hating protesters in DC, punches through liberal media rhetoric

Vice President JD Vance spoke on Wednesday with National Guard soldiers stationed at D.C.'s Union Station, underscoring his gratitude and continued support for their efforts to tackle crime in the national capital.

While the troops and members of the federalized Metropolitan Police Department appeared happy to see Vance — who was accompanied by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — liberal protesters threw fits at the sight of the vice president, whining about his presence as well as about the efforts by the Trump administration to make D.C. safer.

Vance smiled as he passed a bespectacled radical in the station screaming, "F**king Nazi," an unhinged woman yelling, "Health care, housing, and climate justice! ... Military out of our streets," and a man in a cap shouting, "Get the f**k out of my city!"

Supporters reportedly countered with, "USA! USA! USA!"

— (@)

When met with booing outside the Shake Shack at Union Station, Vance directed Hegseth's attention to the radical responsible and said, "This is the guy who thinks people don't deserve law and order in their own community."

'This should be a monument to American greatness.'

The defense secretary laughed, pointed, and then resumed his tour of the relatively safer station.

— (@)

Vance noted in his remarks to the National Guard soldiers that Union Station, like much of the district, has long endured an unacceptable level of crime.

RELATED: Trump to DC: Crime is a choice

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

"You have vagrants, you have drug addicts, you have the chronically homeless, you have the mentally ill who harass, who threaten violence, who attack families, and they've done it for far too long," the vice president said.

It's not just addicts, hobos, and the insane who have made Union Station a dangerous place in recent months.

In February, six girls, ages 11 to 14, were reportedly arrested for allegedly assaulting a woman who was trying to leave the station. Police indicated that one of the girls filmed the savage attack. That same month, a man was gunned down inside the station's parking garage.

"This should be a monument to American greatness," Vance continued. "This should not be a place where parents of small children are afraid to bring them ... because we have empowered criminals over the people who actually need public safety in this city. So I think Union Station is a great example of what's possible when you have the political willpower to bring law and order and common decency back to the public spaces of the United States."

— (@)

After Vance stressed the importance of following through "until we make America and D.C. in particular a safe place again," a reporter asked him, "What evidence do you have or does the DOJ have — are you going to be releasing it?"

'Let's free DC from lawlessness.'

"Are you going to be releasing evidence of this?" the reporter continued.

Photo by Al Drago-Pool/Getty Images

"Of what?" Vance responded. "That D.C. has a terrible crime problem? You just gotta look around. Obviously D.C. has a terrible crime problem, and the Department of Justice statistics back it up, the FBI statistics back it up. Just talk to a resident of this city — this beautiful, great American city."

Adopting the "free D.C." slogan yelled by the leftist protesters outside, Vance said, "Let's free D.C. from lawlessness. Let's free Washington, D.C., from one of the highest murder rates in the entire world. Let's free Washington, D.C., so that young families can walk around and feel safe and secure."

Vance, once again referencing the noisy rabble outside, noted that it was "kind of bizarre that we have a bunch of old, primarily white, people who are out there protesting the policies that keep people safe when they've never felt danger in their entire lives."

Blaze News has reached out to Vance's office for further comment.

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'Pure fiction': CNN shamed for 'fake news' story about a Vance-hosted Epstein strategy session

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided damning insights last month into the apparent role that the liberal media played in perpetuating the Russian collusion hoax on the American people.

The revelations do not appear to have chastened the outlets that vigorously pushed the false narrative for years.

For example, when confronted with the newly declassified Durham annex — which detailed credible intelligence indicating that the Clinton campaign manufactured the Russian collusion hoax, seeded its talking points to the media, and ultimately furnished the FBI with a pretext to hound her opponent — the New York Times spun the declassified report as a distraction from the Epstein files; misled readers about its key findings; and downplayed its significance.

The article has neither aged well nor stood up to scrutiny.

Whereas the Times recently tried to gaslight about an old hoax, CNN — which has not covered the Durham annex — set to work this week on a new story that turned out to be a hoax.

On Tuesday, CNN published a piece titled "Top Trump officials will discuss Epstein strategy in Wednesday meeting at Vice President JD Vance's residence." The article has neither aged well nor stood up to scrutiny.

CNN claimed in the initial version that Vance, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were expected to meet at the vice president's residence to discuss "the administration's handling of the Epstein case, as well as the need to craft a unified response."

Kypros / Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

Citing two anonymous sources, the liberal publication further claimed that "the White House considers those officials the leaders of the Trump administration's ongoing strategy regarding the Epstein files."

CNN has since edited its article to note that Vance is not actually among those whom the White House supposedly considers leaders of the admin's ongoing Epstein strategy.

'Any reporting to the contrary is false.'

"The CNN story is pure fiction," William Martin, communications director to the vice president, said in a statement obtained by Blaze News. "There was never a supposed meeting scheduled at the vice president’s residence to discuss Epstein strategy."

When pressed for comment, the White House referred Blaze News to Martin's statement.

Alayna Treene, the CNN White House reporter on the apparently fake story, began to backpedal on Wednesday, noting first that "administration officials familiar with the meeting said the dinner was now in flux, given its intense coverage, & it was unclear whether it would ultimately be called off, moved to another location or rescheduled."

An hour later, Treene shared the following comment from Martin: "As we've said publicly, there was never a supposed meeting scheduled at the vice president’s residence to discuss Epstein strategy. Any reporting to the contrary is false."

Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The story continued to unravel, now at an accelerated pace.

Citing her anonymous sources once again, Treene indicated on X that the dinner might not be happening, but if it were, it might be happening elsewhere and would not actually be an Epstein strategy session.

"Despite talks of canceling the dinner, two officials said it could still take place, though the location may change," wrote Treene. "They argued the focus of the meeting would likely be broader than solely discussing the administration’s handling of the Epstein case."

'I saw that reported today, and it's completely fake news.'

CNN then rushed out a follow-up piece incorporating Treene's narrative revisions — an article the liberal network also ended up having to alter.

The follow-up article, first titled "Vance dinner seen as potential way to clear the air between Bondi and Patel on Epstein scandal" and now appearing on the CNN website as "Planned dinner for Trump officials to discuss Epstein appears to have been moved amid media scrutiny," states as a fact that the dinner was planned for Wednesday night at Vance's residence and "was seen as an opportunity for Trump administration officials to realign amid the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal."

Whereas previously CNN sold the supposed dinner as an Epstein strategy session, now the publication suggested it was an opportunity for Vance "to reprise his peacemaker role" and smooth things over between Bondi, Bongino, and Patel, who apparently had a falling out following the Justice Department's conclusion that child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein did not have a client list that could implicate deep-pocketed elites.

"It’s a way to get everyone together in an informal, low-stakes situation," an unnamed source told CNN.

Fielding a question about the supposed gathering posed to President Donald Trump on Wednesday, Vance said, "I saw that reported today, and it's completely fake news. We're not meeting to talk about the Epstein situation, and I think the reporter who reported it needs to get better sources."

— (@)

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JD Vance joined liberal Twitter knockoff Bluesky. Things went off the rails REALLY fast.

Vice President JD Vance is not exactly a shrinking violet. The Marine veteran who rose from relative poverty to become second in command of the world's greatest nation has a habit of seeking out fruitful confrontation.

At the Munich Security Conference in February, for instance, Vance told European officials to their faces that they were stepping toward tyranny and turning their backs on the values they once shared in common with the United States. Just weeks later, he bashed the U.K.'s censorship regime with leftist British Prime Minister Keir Starmer seated right next to him in the Oval Office.

While he has long participated in fiery exchanges with Democratic lawmakers and other antagonists, both in person and on Elon Musk's X, Vance evidently wanted to bring the conversation to leftists on their own turf.

The vice president created an account Wednesday on the liberal Twitter knockoff Bluesky. Things went off the rails pretty quickly.

Vance kicked off his Bluesky residency by writing, "Hello Bluesky, I've been told this app has become the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis. So I'm thrilled to be here to engage with all of you."

'I might add that many of those scientists are receiving substantial resources from big pharma to push these medicines on kids.'

Accompanying his initial post was a screenshot of the Supreme Court's majority decision in United States v. Skrmetti, in which the court upheld Tennessee's ban on sex-change genital mutilations and sterilizing puberty blockers for minors — clearly a touchy subject for the Bluesky crowd.

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Vance highlighted a portion of the decision in which Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "There are several problems with appealing and deferring to the authority of the expert class. First, so-called experts have no license to countermand the 'wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.'"

Roberts noted further in the excerpt, "Contrary to the representations of the United States and the private plaintiffs, there is no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children. Third, notwithstanding the alleged experts' view that young children can provide informed consent to irreversible sex-transition treatments, whether such consent is possible is a question of medical ethics that States must decide for themselves."

Vance added in a follow-up message, "To that end, I found Justice Thomas's concurrence on medical care for transgender youth quite illuminating. He argues that many of our so-called 'experts' have used bad arguments and substandard science to push experimental therapies on our youth."

"I might add that many of those scientists are receiving substantial resources from big pharma to push these medicines on kids," continued Vance. "What do you think?"

— (@)

Regardless of whether Vance's intention was to troll the netizens of Bluesky, the result was the same.

Apoplectic leftists immediately piled into the comments various smears and accusations. Many threatened to report Vance in hopes of getting him banned for some perceived offense or another.

The attacks were, however, interrupted roughly 12 minutes after Vance's first post when the platform suspended him, according to Axios reporter Marc Caputo.

Leftists looking to vent were confronted with a message that read, "Not found. Account has been suspended."

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Despite the appearance that Vance's account may have been suspended because of his politics or perhaps because he shared a court ruling that struck at the heart of the sex-change regime, Bluesky claimed in a statement obtained by Forbes, "Vice President Vance's account was briefly flagged by our automated systems that try to detect impersonation attempts, which have targeted public figures like him in the past."

"The account was quickly restored and verified so people can easily confirm its authenticity," continued the statement. "We welcome the Vice President to join the conversation on Bluesky."

As of Thursday morning, Vance's initial posts were buried in negative comments, although he had netted over 7,500 followers. According to the user tracker Clearsky, he had been blocked by over 81,000 users at the time of publication.

Blaze News reached out to the vice president's office for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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Vance defends use of Alien Enemies Act, calls out meddlesome judges

Vice President JD Vance spoke at length Monday with Ross Douthat of the New York Times about the successes and setbacks that the Trump administration has faced so far in its counteroffensive against the nation's longstanding "invasion" by foreign nationals.

Vance justified the use of the Alien Enemies Act, raised concerns about the judicial activism getting in the way of immigration enforcement, spoke to the ruinous impact of the "invasion" overseen by the previous administration, and detailed what success looks like on this issue.

The vice president underscored that the administration is not impelled to deport illegal aliens by hatred but rather by a commitment to the common good and an understanding that rapid immigration, particularly of the unlawful variety, strikes at national unity and "social solidarity."

He noted further that while the country has been confronted with an unsustainable "invasion," the administration has remedies available and the willpower to pursue them.

Alien Enemies Act

President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on March 15 invoking the Alien Enemies Act and declaring that Tren de Aragua is "a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization" aligned with the Venezuelan Maduro regime that "is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States."

"I proclaim that all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of TdA, are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies," added Trump.

The administration ousted 137 Venezuelan aliens under the law on the day of the proclamation but was promptly barred from executing additional removals under the AEA by a federal judge who deemed Trump's invocation of the AEA through the proclamation "unlawful."

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Numerous federal judges have issued additional prohibitions against removals under the AEA in the months since, including U.S. District Judge Clay Land, who ruled Wednesday that while the president "should be afforded substantial deference in the execution of his duties under Article II of the Constitution," the administration could not send a Venezuelan national packing.

When pressed about the AEA, Vance suggested Monday that the courts "should be extremely deferential to these questions of political judgment made by the people's elected president of the United States."

Seizing upon Douthat's remark that there aren't five million people waging war, Vance said, "OK, but are there thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people? And then when you take their extended family, their networks, is it much larger than that? Who are quite dangerous people who I think very intentionally came to the United States to cause violence, or to at least profit from violence, and they're fine if violence is an incidental effect of it? Yeah. I do, man."

The vice president added that "people under-appreciate the level of public safety threat that we're under."

— (@)

The vice president bemoaned the media's apparent lack of intellectual curiosity about the "level of chaos, the level of violence" in migrant communities with large populations of illegal aliens, where "truly premodern brutality" has apparently become the norm.

Finding the normalization of such brutality in the U.S. intolerable, Vance suggested that the AEA "vests us with the power to take very serious action against this" and indicated that the administration has a responsibility to do so, adding, "It's bad. It's worse than people appreciate."

Vance minced no words regarding the impact of the judicial activism that has so far stood in the way of taking such "serious action," stating, "You cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they're not allowed to have what they voted for."

The vice president appeared optimistic, however, stating that "we're very early innings here on what the court is going to interpret the law to mean."

Democrats' favorite MS-13 associate

Douthat likened the approach taken by the administration to the cartels and their foot soldiers to that taken by previous administrations to "anyone associated with Islamic terrorism and so on in the aftermath of September 11," suggesting that the legal process has, in some cases, been sidestepped, that the system in place is "ripe for war-on-terror-style abuses" and that injustices may be inevitable.

While Vance entertained Douthat's concerns — which were couched in a broader conversation about Vance's simultaneous fidelity to American law and to Catholic moral teaching — he intimated the parallel may be weaker than some in the media might want to admit, alluding to the case of MS-13 affiliate Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his portrayal as a man traduced whose civil rights were violated.

"I haven't asked every question about every case, but the ones where I have asked questions and I try to get to the bottom of what's going on, I feel quite comfortable with what's happened," said Vance. "And the one that I've spent the most time understanding is the one of the Maryland father."

Photographer: Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Democratic lawmakers and the liberal media did their apparent best to leave the American public with the impression that Abrego Garcia was an "innocent father" betrayed by his adoptive government.

It turns out that the Salvadoran national who was returned to his homeland by the Trump administration was an illegal alien linked to a terrorist gang, identified by two immigration courts as a danger to the community, and accused of both domestic abuse and human trafficking.

Vance discussed the controversy over Abrego Garcia's deportation — a decision that has been kicked all the way to the Supreme Court — and noted, "I understand there may be disagreements about the judgments that we made here, but there's just something that it's hard to take serious when so many of the people who are saying we made a terrible error here are the same people who made no protests about how this guy got into the country in the first place or what Joe Biden did for four years to the American southern border."

The vice president noted further that if the media alternatively framed the situation as the president "considering sending the very worst violent gang members in America to a foreign prison — so long as that is a legal thing to do" — then there would likely not be so much "passionate resistance."

Success

While the vice president indicated he would like to see "the gross majority" of illegal aliens who entered the country under the previous administration deported — he suggested the number was around 20 million — Vance said "that is actually a secondary metric of success."

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

"Success to me is not so much a number, "said Vance. "Success to me is that we have established a set of rules and principles that the courts are comfortable with and that we have the infrastructure that allows us to deport large numbers of illegal aliens when large numbers of illegal aliens come into the country."

The path to success so-defined, he continued, is reliant not only on the administration's efforts but on the courts as well.

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'May the Prince of Peace have mercy on us': Vance prays at site of Christ's death and resurrection

Alternate History: What if Kamala Had Picked the (Openly) Gay Guy?

Vance unloads on safety-hating protesters in DC, punches through liberal media rhetoric

'Pure fiction': CNN shamed for 'fake news' story about a Vance-hosted Epstein strategy session

Vance defends use of Alien Enemies Act, calls out meddlesome judges

Alien Enemies Act

Democrats' favorite MS-13 associate

Success

‘Conspiracy theory’ is just media code for ‘we hope this never comes out’

How a man hated for facts found the ultimate truth — and the godless can't deny it

Giant of the Senate

The Audacity of Clothes: How Michelle Obama's Fashion Choices Changed the World

A Kinder, Gentler Feminism

Alien Enemies Act

Democrats' favorite MS-13 associate

Success

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