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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'No more ridiculous mumbo jumbo': Vance celebrates Marine Corps' elimination of DEI, then fires some guns

Vice President JD Vance addressed his fellow Marines Wednesday during a visit to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. Vance, who served for four years and did a tour in Iraq, spoke of his experience in the Marines, the significance of the service branch now approaching its 250th birthday, and the Trump administration's re-prioritization of lethality over cosmetic diversity.

After delivering his remarks, Vance ate a meal at the mess hall, then hit the gun range, where he fired an M27 infantry rifle, an M107 sniper rifle, an M240B machine gun, and a Howitzer — all with ease and absent any blunders, prompting some supporters online to draw comparisons with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's humiliating hunting-themed photo op.

Vance quipped at the outset of his speech that he may have been motivated to run for vice president because of a desire for the "colonels and generals to listen to the corporals for a change."

— (@)

Despite this suggestion that he did not like being ordered around and his boast later that there was no one to chastise him for being two hours late, the vice president emphasized that he greatly benefited from Marine Corps discipline.

'We care about excellence, and we care about patriotism.'

"There are a lot of good things the Marine Corps did for me when I joined the Marines back in 2003," said Vance. "I was just a kind of directionless kid. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life — and as you all know, the Marine Corps is good at giving direction to 18-year-old kids."

After underscoring his pride in and appreciation for the Marines, Vance noted that the Corps is now "headed in the right direction."

"Under President Trump's leadership, we believe in a very simple principle. We don't care who you are, where you came from; we don't care what skin color you are. We care about excellence, and we care about patriotism," said Vance.

— (@)

"No more quotas. No more ridiculous mumbo jumbo. No more diversity trainings," continued the vice president. "We believe the real strength and the real diversity in the United States Marine Corps is that you all come from every walk of life, come from every corner of America, and you have got the strength and the purpose to win the nation's wars — and that is what the Marine Corps is going to do, just like it's done for damn near 250 years."

Although a woke Biden judge has blocked its ban on transvestites in the military, the Trump administration has enjoyed some success with its other efforts to ensure that capability is not sacrificed on the altar of diversity.

After taking office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order terminating "all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and requirements." Days later, he signed another order explicitly eliminating race- and sex-based discrimination in the military.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth subsequently made clear that where the Pentagon was concerned, DEI, gender ideology, critical race theory, and quotas were to be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Hegseth noted in a Jan. 29 memo titled "Restoring America's Fighting Force" that the military "will ensure all decisions related to hiring, promotion, and selection of personnel for assignments are based on merit, the needs of the Department, and lastly, the individual's desire."

'He's proud of you.'

In addition to highlighting the military's rejection of identity politics, Vance indicated in his speech Wednesday that the "new leadership" is going to "invest in the Marine Corps and the entire United States military like we never have before — over a trillion dollars. We're going to invest in building up the manufacturing base of this country so that you guys, when you do go to war, when you have to go to war, you've got the best weapons anywhere in the world."

Vance also passed on a message to the Marines from their commander in chief: "First of all that he loves you. And second of all that he's proud of you."

Kevin Brown, the mayor of Quantico, noted on Facebook, "It was a pleasure listening to a Marine Vice President talk to Marines. Once a Marine Always a Marine."

Brown told Potomac Local News, "It's encouraging to know we have someone in the White House with that pedigree, advising the president."

— (@)

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Vance: Trump’s growth plan ditches cheap labor for real jobs that will fuel American greatness

Vice President JD Vance outlined the Trump administration's plan for the nation's "great industrial comeback" Tuesday at the American Dynamism Summit hosted by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. In his speech, Vance identified precisely what must change in order to unbridle U.S. innovation without further dispossessing and deracinating American workers.

Vance, who spent years as a venture capitalist after distinguishing himself overseas in the Marines, acknowledged at the outset that the Trump administration's endeavor to lead the world in artificial intelligence and other potentially disruptive technologies has prompted concerns about the potential for tension between the "techno optimists and the populist right of President Trump's coalition."

"While this is a well-intentioned concern, I think it's based on a faulty premise," said Vance, identifying as a proponent of both tribes. "The reality is that in any dynamic society, technology is going to advance, of course. And speaking as a Catholic, I think back to Pope John Paul II's opening lines of the encyclical Laborem Exercens: 'Through work, man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives.'"

The vice president underscored that, to the late pope's point, technology should not be inimical to labor; instead, it "should be something that enhances rather than supplants the value of labor" — something that improves productivity, increases wages, and "dignifies our workers."

The problem, suggested Vance, is that American firms grew addicted to the drug of cheap labor over the past four decades.

'Even if you replaced the financial element of their jobs — you would destroy something that was dignified and purposeful about work itself.'

This addiction, coupled with innovation's geographical divorce from manufacturing — a consequence of globalization and liberal economic thinking — has prompted some Trump-supporting populists to doubt the promised good of innovation. After all, populists witnessed the de-industrialization of America, an exodus of jobs, the gutting of the middle class, and an unprecedented stratification of wealth.

While foreign nations that Western elites figured for indefinite sources of cheap labor climbed the "value chain" and effectively ate America's lunch, populists watched as American workers at home were further alienated "from their jobs, from their communities, from their sense of solidarity," and from a sense of purpose, said Vance.

Vance intimated that compounding populists' skepticism is the cavalier attitude taken by some technologists and the leadership class' apparent belief that "welfare can replace a job and an application on a phone can replace a sense of purpose."

The vice president recalled a meeting in his venture capitalist days where he told a number of American tech leaders that "even if you had enough economic dynamism to provide the wealth to ensure [middle class families] could afford to buy a house and afford their food and so forth — that even if you replaced the financial element of their jobs — you would destroy something that was dignified and purposeful about work itself."

'We don't want people seeking cheap labor. We want them investing and building right here in the United States of America.'

Vance said that the CEO of a multi-billion dollar tech company suggested in response that Americans' loss of purpose would be remedied by "fully immersive gaming."

While concerns about the potential incompatibility between techno-optimism and rightist populism may be historically justified, Vance indicated that the current administration's "America First" policies can protect citizen labor and thereby reconcile the two camps.

"I'd ask my friends, both on the tech-optimist side and on the populist side not to see the failure of the logic of globalization as a failure of innovation," said Vance. "Indeed, I'd say that globalization's hunger for cheap labor is a problem precisely because it's been bad for innovation. Both our working people — our populists — and our innovators gathered here today have the same enemy, and the solution, I believe, is American innovation, because in the long run, it's technology that increases the value of labor."

Vance further indicated that the Trump administration is going to help innovators wean off cheap foreign labor and begin on-shoring industry, in part by incentivizing manufacturing and investment inside the United States with tax cuts and other policy instruments; by reducing regulations and the cost of energy; by erecting tariff walls around critical industries; and also by enforcing immigration law and securing the border to drain the pool of cheap illegal alien labor.

"You're making interesting new things here in America? Great. Then we're going to cut your taxes. We're going to slash regulations. We're going to reduce the cost of energy so that you can build, build, build," said the vice president. "Our goal is to incentivize investment in our own borders, in our own businesses, our own workers, and our own innovation. We don't want people seeking cheap labor. We want them investing and building right here in the United States of America."

The vice president distilled the fundamental premise of President Donald Trump's economic policy down to undoing "40 years of failed economic policy in this country," which he characterized as an addiction to cheap labor, both overseas and illegally imported into the country; the over-regulation of industry; the over-taxation of innovators; and the setting of caltrops before individuals seeking to build in the United States.

Vance indicated that by undoing these ruinous trends and wedding techno-futurism to rightist populism, America is destined for an industrial renaissance.

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J.D. Vance: Unchecked Migration Is Killing The American Dream

'If you allow 20 million people to compete with American citizens for the cost of homes, you are going to have a ... spike in the demand for housing,' J.D. Vance said.

Vance returns to site of catastrophic East Palestine derailment, vows to complete cleanup

Vice President JD Vance visited East Palestine, Ohio, on the second anniversary of the Feb. 3, 2023, Norfolk Southern train derailment, which blackened the sky over the village with hazardous chemicals, threatened the health of nearby residents, and poisoned the surrounding environment.

Vance stressed that the people of East Palestine have not been forgotten, signaling a desire to ensure a proper cleanup of the area in his home state.

The derailment

A Norfolk Southern freight train with 141 packed cars, nine empty cars, and three locomotives derailed in East Palestine on Feb. 3, 2023. Thirty-eight cars, 11 containing hazardous materials — including vinyl chloride, benzene residue, hydrogen chloride, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, and isobutylene — ultimately went off the tracks as the result of a failed wheel bearing.

Fearing that the initial fires engulfing the wreckage might cause a "catastrophic tanker failure," emergency crews for the railroad — which spent over $1.5 million lobbying in Washington, D.C., just last year and hundreds of millions more going back to 1990 — conducted a vent and burn of five tanks of vinyl chloride, darkening the sky with what the National Transportation Safety Board called a toxic "mushroom cloud."

'This community will not be forgotten.'

Blaze News previously reported that burning vinyl chloride, as the accident-prone railroad did with some of the over 877,000 pounds contained in its derailed cars, produced hydrogen chloride and phosgene gas, the latter of which was used to massacre troops in World War I.

The NTSB revealed last June that the decision to execute the controlled burn, which forced 2,000 residents to flee their homes, killed thousands of local creatures, heavily contaminated nearby waters, and sent possibly cancer-causing airborne toxins into the air across multiple states well beyond the accident week, "was based on incomplete and misleading information provided by Norfolk Southern officials and contractors. The vent and burn was not necessary to prevent a tank car failure."

Vance on the ground

Two years after highlighting the environmental damage in East Palestine and demanding that its residents cannot be forgotten, Vance returned, underscoring that the village was not and would not be forgotten.

"I talked to the president about this visit a couple days ago. The president loves this community. Of course, he visited it personally," Vance told a crowd in the village's firehouse. "President Trump just wanted to deliver a message that this community will not be forgotten, will not be left behind, and we are in it for the long haul in East Palestine."

Vance indicated that the "environmental cleanup has to get done," calling it a "tragedy and a shame" that the Biden administration dropped the ball.

The vice president also signaled an interest in helping rejuvenate the local economy, stating, "We are committed not just to finishing the environmental side of the cleanup but hopefully seeing East Palestine built back better and stronger and more prosperous than it was before the disaster happened in the first place."

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin indicated that Vance's office told him immediately after his confirmation that his first order of business was East Palestine and that the cleanup effort is now the EPA's highest priority.

Litigation

In the meantime, locals are looking for accountability by way of litigation.

A new lawsuit involving 744 current and former residents of East Palestine that was recently filed against Norfolk Southern and agencies at all levels of government alleges that seven people including a 1-week-old baby died in the aftermath of the railroad wreck, reported KDKA-TV.

The lawsuit reportedly also claims that Norfolk Southern — already on the hook for a $600 million class-action settlement approved in September, an over $310 million settlement with the federal government, and a settlement with East Palestine that was announced on Jan. 27 — fumbled the cleanup efforts, while government agencies failed to properly warn residents about health risks.

The Associated Press indicated that at least another nine lawsuits have been filed in recent days by individuals and businesses, claiming that Norfolk Southern's greed was responsible for the derailment and suggesting that the $600 million settlement is insufficient to compensate the victims or to prompt the railroad to change its behavior.

While a railroad spokeswoman Heather Garcia declined to comment on the lawsuits, she told the Associated Press, "We've made significant progress, and we aren't done."

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Unshakable J.D. Vance Destroys Margaret Brennan On ‘Face The Nation’

'At what point will these leftwing media hacks figure out that they're no match for JD?' Donald Trump Jr. posted on X.

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

Alien Enemies Act

Democrats' favorite MS-13 associate

Success

'No more ridiculous mumbo jumbo': Vance celebrates Marine Corps' elimination of DEI, then fires some guns

Vance: Trump’s growth plan ditches cheap labor for real jobs that will fuel American greatness

J.D. Vance: Unchecked Migration Is Killing The American Dream

British PM Is Wrong, There Is No Free Speech In The UK

Vance returns to site of catastrophic East Palestine derailment, vows to complete cleanup

The derailment

Vance on the ground

Litigation

Unshakable J.D. Vance Destroys Margaret Brennan On ‘Face The Nation’

Sick of me yet? Pompous pest Pascal in desperate race to make America hate him

GOP senator in Trump’s crosshairs: President vows to back challenger over bill betrayal

How a viral video exposed the fall — and rise? — of California

Alien Enemies Act

Democrats' favorite MS-13 associate

Success

The derailment

Vance on the ground

Litigation

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