America's vice-president under Donald Trump, and a rival to Marco Rubio to succeed Trump in 2028. He served in Iraq. Author of "Hillbilly Elegy", a memoir about his rural Appalachian upbringing and how his small town was destroyed by deindustrialisation. A vocal convert to Roman Catholicism. His wife is of Indian origin. A former colleague of Peter Thiel, whose funding helped bankroll his early political career. A self-described "big Lord of the Rings guy".
On July 1st 2025 Vance cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to approve the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Republican tax-and-spending omnibus. He was the last distinguished visitor to speak to Pope Francis before the pontiff's death on April 21st 2025.
Vance has made pro-natalism an explicitly MAGA issue, criticising prominent Democrats without biological children as "childless cat ladies" and declaring in his first public address as vice-president: "I want more babies in the United States of America." He has proposed boosting the child tax credit from $2,000 to $5,000 per child and suggested that parents should get more votes in elections than non-parents.
Before becoming vice-president, Vance told a conference of national conservatives: "The universities are the enemy." He has favoured deporting foreign students for their views and making new student applications subject to social-media vetting.
He described the development of artificial intelligence as an "arms race" with China, warning that if America paused over safety concerns it might find itself "enslaved to PRC-mediated AI".
Vance aligns himself with the "post-liberal right" and serves as the chief emissary between the Trump White House and the intellectual "New Right"—an agglomeration of thinkers, Silicon Valley potentates and podcasters. He describes his mission, apocalyptically, as saving Western civilisation. His theories of governance have repeatedly clashed with Trump's practice: Vance advocated isolationism but was left to argue that war in the Middle East made sense "because America has a smart president, whereas in the past we've had dumb presidents."
Vance is part of a "restrainer" faction in Trump's inner circle that seeks to avoid foreign entanglements. At the Munich Security Conference in 2024, while still a senator, he declared: "We live in a world of scarcity. We don't make enough munitions to support a war in eastern Europe, a war in the Middle East and potentially a contingency in East Asia." He and others in Trump's orbit came to office arguing that America had wasted blood and treasure in the post-2001 wars, that the armed forces were woefully over-extended and that America ought to husband its resources for any future conflict with China. The war in Iran that Trump launched in 2026 contradicted that position, cannibalising forces in Asia—a marine expeditionary unit was diverted from Japan and parts of a THAAD system from South Korea. Vance was a weaker backer of the Iran war than Rubio: in January 2026, when Trump sent commandos to snatch Venezuela's leader, and in February, when he ordered the bombing of Iran, Rubio was at Trump's side watching live feeds from Mar-a-Lago while Vance followed events from elsewhere.
Iran has told intermediaries it hopes to negotiate with Vance rather than Steve Witkoff, Trump's Middle East envoy, viewing him as more amenable to a deal because of his closeness to the isolationist wing of MAGA world. In April 2026, after Pakistan brokered a two-week ceasefire, Vance was designated to lead the American delegation to face-to-face talks in Islamabad.
In March 2025 Vance visited Greenland, criticised Denmark for supposedly failing Greenlanders, and appeared to back Greenlandic independence.
At the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, Vance questioned heavy-handed European controls on free speech. He called the "threat from within" more dangerous than Russia. According to well-connected Washington conservatives, Vance, as a "culture-war Catholic", felt personally offended when secular-minded European commentators scolded America's Supreme Court for its abortion ruling.
He flew to Budapest in April 2026 to hail Viktor Orbán as a defender of "Christian civilisation" before Hungary's election.
Vance chairs a White House anti-fraud task force charged with finding ways to withhold state funding, flagging high-risk transactions and setting up anti-fraud requirements across federal agencies.
Charity, n.: A thing that begins at home and usually stays there.