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      Who is JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential pick?

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      Donald Trump has selected JD Vance, the junior senator of Ohio and author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, as his running mate in the presidential race.The announcement, made on Monday during the first day of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, marked the culmination of Vance’s stunning political evolution over the past several years.Vance was once an outspoken critic of Trump, mocking him as “America’s Hitler” and “a total fraud”. But Vance came to embrace Trump as he sought a Senate seat in 2022, and he eventually won the former president’s endorsement in a crowded Republican primary.“He’s the guy that said some bad shit about me,” Trump said at a rally in 2022. “If I went by that standard, I don’t think I would have ever endorsed anybody in the country.”Vance echoed that assessment, telling rally-goers, “The president is right. I wasn’t always nice, but the simple fact is, he’s the best president of my lifetime, and he revealed the corruption in this country like nobody else.”Vance first rose to fame in 2016 following the publication of Hillbilly Elegy, which detailed his upbringing in south-western Ohio and his later ascension to Yale law school. The book was later adapted into a 2020 film starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.In the months following Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, Vance’s account of his family’s experiences with poverty and drug addiction came to be viewed by some critics as a revealing portrait into the lives of Americans who helped determine the outcome of the election.“It dropped into a national shouting match that has pitted a hazily defined entity called ‘the white working class’ against an equally hazy ‘coastal elite’ as the Sunni and Shia of the American political scene,” the author Hari Kunzru wrote for the Guardian in 2016. “Readers looking to understand the class fault lines within white America will be enlightened by Vance’s narrative of class mobility, but as a guide to the new political terrain Hillbilly Elegy is uneven, and frustratingly silent about the writer’s real commitments.”View image in fullscreenOnce Trump took office, Vance became an oft-cited conservative voice frequently called upon to explain the president’s political brand to baffled cable news viewers. Vance was initially viewed as an anti-Trump Republican, as a CNN analysis found that he liked many tweets that were harshly critical of the then president in 2016 and 2017.But that tone sharply shifted once Vance entered the 2022 Senate race, as he shaped his campaign around hard-right proposals like finishing the wall along the US-Mexico border. During the election, Democrats accused Vance of endorsing the racist conspiracy theory known as “Great Replacement” after he suggested the opposing party was attempting to “transform the electorate” amid an immigrant “invasion”.“You’re talking about a shift in the democratic makeup of this country that would mean we never win, meaning Republicans would never win a national election in this country ever again,” Vance told voters in 2022.Vance’s hard-right tactics were ultimately successful, as he defeated Democrat representative Tim Ryan by six points in the election. In the year and a half since he joined Congress, Vance has served as one of Trump’s most vocal and aggressive supporters on Capitol Hill. After the assassination attempt against Trump on Saturday, Vance accused Joe Biden of inciting the attack.“Today is not just some isolated incident,” Vance posted on X. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”As Trump’s running mate, Vance will now have a much larger platform to spread that message. More

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      in Elections

      Ohio Mother Killed Trying to Stop a Carjacking With Her Son Inside

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      The woman, 29, was struck by her own vehicle after the suspects began driving away, the police said.Detectives in Columbus, Ohio, this weekend were searching for two men as they investigated the death of a woman who was fatally struck by her own vehicle while trying to stop a carjacking that occurred with her 6-year-old son in the car. Alexa Stakley, 29, was carjacked shortly before 1:30 a.m. on Thursday while picking up her son at the home of a babysitter after wrapping up a shift waiting tables, according to the police. After putting the sleeping 6-year-old inside her 2022 silver Honda SUV, Ms. Stakley walked back toward the babysitter’s house to retrieve an item, according to a police report. As she turned back, Ms. Stakley saw her moving. She was seen “running toward her Honda and was heard screaming for her child,” the police report said. Moments later, Ms. Stakley was struck by the vehicle, suffering a fatal wound to the head. Shortly afterward, two men were seen running away from the area, abandoning the vehicle nearby, the police said. Police officers found the child inside the car unharmed. Carjackings have been called “an important public safety threat” by the Department of Justice, which earlier this year announced it had established 11 task forces to combat the crime in areas of particular concern, like Philadelphia, Chicago and Tampa, Fla. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Sykes Faces Challenge in Ohio as Black Democrats Push to Hold White Districts

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      Representative Emilia Sykes is one of only a few Black Democrats in Congress who don’t resemble most of their constituents, and whose political survival this year will help determine which party controls the House.When Representative Emilia Sykes arrived at the regional airport in Akron on a recent Thursday morning to meet with dozens of local elected officials, she was the only Black person in the room.It wouldn’t be long before two others took seats in the audience, but it soon became clear that they were both related to her. Ms. Sykes briefly interrupted her remarks to welcome her parents: Vernon Sykes, a state senator, and Barbara Sykes, who sits on the Akron School Board.It is the kind of room that Ms. Sykes, 38, a first-term Democrat, is familiar with as one of only about a dozen Black members of Congress representing a majority-white district. And as she fights to defend her seat in a year when control of the House of Representatives is up for grabs, it represents a critical piece of the coalition that Ms. Sykes is toiling to keep together — one that includes a strong Democratic base but also a sizable portion of independents and moderate Republicans who crossed over to help her win the seat in 2022.Republicans, who hold a razor-thin majority and are toiling to keep their grasp on the House, have identified her as a top target for defeat in a district rated as a “tossup” by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Her G.O.P. challenger, Kevin Coughlin, who is white, is a former state lawmaker who is well known in Akron politics.For Ms. Sykes, beating back the challenge means reminding voters as clearly and as often as possible what she has done to benefit them directly during her time in Congress. It also means steering clear of the bitter partisanship that is defining the presidential race and toiling to keep the focus off President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, both of whom were viewed unfavorably by a majority of respondents in the latest New York Times/Siena poll.“What my focus is, is making sure that my constituents understand what I’ve been doing,” Ms. Sykes said in an interview. “And we can translate that work into votes.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tim Ryan Says Kamala Harris Should Replace Biden as Democratic Nominee

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      Tim Ryan, a former Ohio congressman, called on Democrats to replace President Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the party’s ticket in the November election against former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Ryan, in a Newsweek opinion column, wrote that he had lost confidence in Mr. Biden’s ability to defeat his rival after watching the president struggle in Thursday’s head-to-head debate with Mr. Trump. He noted that Mr. Biden had said he would be a bridge to a new generation of Democratic leaders, an idea he said he liked. “Regrettably, that bridge collapsed last week,” he wrote.“Witnessing Joe Biden struggle was heartbreaking,” Mr. Ryan wrote of the debate. “And we must forge a new path forward.”In 2020, Mr. Ryan endorsed Biden after his own bid for the party’s nomination failed. During the midterm elections in 2022, he lost his bid for Senate in Ohio to J.D. Vance, a Republican who is said to be on Mr. Trump’s shortlist of running mates.Since Mr. Biden’s poor debate performance last week, the noise has intensified about whether Democrats should replace him as the party’s nominee. He is scheduled to accept the Democratic nomination at the party’s convention in August in Chicago.While figures such as Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom, the governors of Michigan and California, have drawn attention as potential replacements, Mr. Ryan wrote that Ms. Harris gives Democrats their best shot at holding the presidency. “Those who say that a Harris candidacy is a greater risk than the Joe Biden we saw the other night and will continue to see are not living in reality,” he wrote. “It is not just utterly preposterous for the haters to say that, it is insulting.” More

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      in US Politics

      US farmers turn towards Biden over Trump’s past agricultural policies

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      For two decades, Christopher Gibbs, a row crop and cattle farmer in Shelby county, Ohio, was an ardent Republican party member.He served as chair of his county’s Republican party branch for seven years and when Donald Trump became the party’s presidential candidate in 2016, Gibbs, like more than 80% of Shelby county voters, fell in line.But in 2018, everything changed.Watching Trump stand alongside Vladimir Putin at a summit in Helsinki, in which the president sided with his Russian counterpart against US law enforcement agencies that had indicted Russian intelligence officers for interfering in the US election in 2016, Gibbs was aghast.Then, not long after, Trump began trade tariffs against many of the US’s international allies.“Our allies retaliated by going after our soft underbelly: our agriculture,” Gibbs says. “When China retaliated by no longer taking our soybeans, I lost 20% of the value of my crop overnight.”Gibbs is among a small but perhaps growing group of US farmers who fear that Trump’s threats of renewed trade wars and immigrant deportations could ruin their businesses should he prevail in the November presidential election.Today, Gibbs is a fervent member of the Democratic party and last year went as far as becoming the chair of his county’s branch.“In the Democratic party, not everybody gets their way, but everybody gets a voice,” says Gibbs. “In the Republican party, there’s just one voice.”In important farming states such as Iowa, debates have raged over how another Trump presidency could cost farmers dearly. During Trump’s previous tariff campaign that began in 2018, many farmers in Michigan, an election swing state, railed against the former president’s actions.View image in fullscreenBack then, the Trump administration attempted to ease the financial pain it inflicted upon the agriculture community and ensure farmers continue to vote for him by paying out $52bn in subsidies in 2020 alone.On the campaign trail this year, Trump falsely claimed $28bn was extracted from China, when, in fact, the direct payments to farmers came from the US government via taxpayer money.While Joe Biden remains unpopular with farmers – Gibbs is among only 12% of US farmers who typically vote for candidates of the Democratic party – results from a host of 2022 midterm races suggest that at the state and local level, support for Democratic party candidates in rural America may be rebounding.Moderate Democrats in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona, as well as Gibbs’ Ohio outperformed Biden’s 2020 presidential election figures by as much as 15%, according to analysis by Third Way, a pro-Democratic party thinktank.Research shows that under the Biden administration, farming incomes have increased significantly, in large part due to government assistance and a post-pandemic bump in demand for agricultural products. What’s more, polls suggest a large number of rural Americans may vote for third-party or write-in candidates in November, a prospect that would hurt Trump more than Biden.Gibbs isn’t alone.Steve Held, whose family has ranched in eastern Montana since the 1800s, says he’s always considered himself an independent, voting for Republican and Democrat candidates in state and presidential elections all his life.In recent years, however, his worldview has changed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“There was only one tornado [in Montana] that I was ever aware of growing up. Recently there was several in one day,” he says. “[Climate change] is real, and people see it, but the propaganda has them not wanting to admit the truth.”This year, Held ran as a Democrat for a seat in eastern Montana, finishing second in a primary held on 4 June.“The dysfunction in the Republican party now has gone beyond the pale. Our current representative [Republican Matt Rosendale] wouldn’t sign the proposed farm bill, which … supports programs so that families can make a living on the farms and ranches in Montana.”A former actor, Held entered politics in large part because of the climate crisis. “I sat in roomfuls of people who said they voted Republican their whole lives but that they were going to vote for me,” says Held.Still, Trump and other Republican candidates are expected to win rural counties handily across a slate of elections in November, and the challenges facing Democrats in rural America remain large.View image in fullscreen“Farmers and rural Americans are values voters,” says Gibbs, who recalls losing around 80% of his friends and colleagues after he spoke out against Trump. “They will continue to vote against their own interests, particularly in agriculture, because it’s the Republicans who speak to their value systems.”He says that Democrats have let themselves be reframed as something that doesn’t match the midwestern value set, such as universally supporting abortion, when “that’s never what they are for”.For Gibbs, the Democratic party could forge inroads with farmers and rural Americans, but to do so would require a recalculation. “The progressive left has had the microphone for too long,” he says.He says he doesn’t expect to see much change in terms of who farmers and rural Americans vote for in November’s election, but that’s not his main focus. He sees a chance of change further in the future.“What we’re doing here now,” he adds, “is building for [elections in] 2028, 2032.” More

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      in Elections

      Killer of 2 Women in National Park in 1996 Has Been Identified, F.B.I. Says

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      A convicted serial rapist who died in an Ohio prison in 2018 was responsible for the murder of a couple at Shenandoah National Park in a case that initially was believed to be a hate crime.It took the authorities one week to find the bodies of Julianne Williams and Laura Winans near their campsite at a national park in Virginia in 1996 after their family reported them missing. But it would take nearly three decades for the authorities to identify the person they believe killed them.The F.B.I. office in Richmond on Thursday announced that new DNA evidence showed that Walter Leo Jackson Sr., a convicted serial rapist from Ohio who died in prison six years ago, had killed the couple in what initially was believed to have been an anti-gay hate crime and led to charges against another man that were eventually dropped by prosecutors in 2004.“After 28 years, we are now able to say who committed the brutal murders of Lollie Winans and Julie Williams in Shenandoah National Park,” Christopher R. Kavanaugh, the U.S. attorney for the western district of Virginia, said in a news release. “I want to again extend my condolences to the Winans and Williams families and hope today’s announcement provides some small measure of solace.”An F.B.I. investigative team revisited the case in 2021, the agency said. It re-examined previous leads and interviews and evidence recovered from the site of the killings. Investigators submitted some of the evidence for DNA testing and found a match to Mr. Jackson’s DNA, the agency said.“Even though we had this DNA match, we took additional steps and compared evidence from Lollie and Julie’s murders directly to a buccal swab containing Jackson’s DNA,” Stanley M. Meador, the F.B.I. special agent in charge in Richmond, said in a news release.Mr. Jackson, who painted homes for a living, died in an Ohio prison in March 2018, officials said. He had an extensive criminal history, including convictions for rape, kidnapping and assault.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Unrelenting Heat Stifles Millions of Americans for 3rd Consecutive Day

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      As the heat wave moved east, the Northeast felt the brunt of the conditions. But forecasters provided a glimmer of relief, saying “conditions should improve over New England” this weekend.From the Midwest to the northern tip of Maine, millions of Americans sweltered under a springtime heat wave on Wednesday that stifled the Eastern portion of the United States for a third consecutive day.As the heat wave moved east, the Northeast felt the brunt of the conditions, stemming from a high-pressure system called a heat dome that scorched the Great Lakes region earlier this week.Conditions in a swath of central Maine were particularly brutal, largely because the area was farther from ocean winds, according to Jay Engle, a forecaster at the National Weather Service. The heat index — a measure that includes temperature and humidity to showcase how hot it actually feels — topped 100 degrees in some areas, and temperatures reached as high as 95 degrees in cities like Bangor, Houlton and Millinocket, according to the National Weather Service. In Caribou, in the northeastern tip of the state, it was 96 degrees, tying the highest temperature ever recorded there.More than 78 million people were under heat warnings, watches and advisories on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. Heat waves are not uncommon in mid-June, but the Weather Service warned that this one could last longer than some places have experienced in decades. Heat waves are also hotter, more frequent and longer lasting now because of global warming.But forecasters provided a glimmer of relief: Meteorologists at the Weather Prediction Center said in a post on its website that “conditions should improve over New England” this weekend.Still, in many areas, Wednesday felt more like the height of summer than the last full day of spring. Cities and states helped residents deal with the stifling temperatures by opening more cooling centers, moving some Juneteenth celebrations indoors and pushing up opening hours of pools and beaches.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      One Week That Revealed the Struggles of the Anti-Abortion Movement

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      The movement looks for a path forward: “Is the goal the absolute abolition of abortion in our nation?”The Southern Baptist Convention voted to condemn in vitro fertilization at its annual meeting in Indianapolis this week, over the objections of some members.Conservative lawyers pushing to sharply restrict medication abortion lost a major case at the Supreme Court, after pursuing a strategy that many of their allies thought was an overreach.Former president Donald J. Trump told Republicans in a closed-door meeting to stop talking about abortion bans limiting the procedure at certain numbers of weeks. In one chaotic week, the anti-abortion movement showed how major players are pulling in various directions and struggling to find a clear path forward two years after their victory of overturning Roe v. Wade.The divisions start at the most fundamental level of whether to even keep pushing to end abortion or to move on to other areas of reproductive health, like fertility treatments. A movement that once marched nearly in lock step finds itself mired in infighting and unable to settle on a basic agenda.In some cases, hard-liners are seizing the reins, rejecting the incremental strategy that made their movement successful in overturning Roe. Other abortion opponents are backing away, sensing the political volatility of the moment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More