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      If ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Is a Cautionary Tale, It Was Lost on JD Vance

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      It is just my luck that the week I was on vacation also happened to be one of the most consequential weeks in recent American political history. In addition to the attempt on Donald Trump’s life and the subsequent Republican National Convention, there was also President Biden’s decision to stand down from the presidential race and hand the baton to his vice president, Kamala Harris.I have a lot of thoughts about all this, but for now I want to talk about one of the minor characters in this saga — JD Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president.That Vance, more than two weeks after the convention, is still in the public eye as a subject of controversy over his remarks condemning childless women is evidence enough that he is, so far, a burden to the Trump campaign and not an asset. But at the moment I am less interested in the ways that Vance has adopted the tropes of online “manosphere” influencers than I am in the stories he tells about himself and his ideology.A few days after he received the nomination, Politico published a story on his deep affinity for “The Lord of the Rings,” the series of fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien that were adapted, about 20 years ago, into blockbuster fantasy epics. Vance has, according to Politico, “pointed to Tolkien’s high fantasy epics as a window into understanding his worldview.”Although Vance does not seem to specify the precise manner in which “The Lord of the Rings” has influenced his conservatism, his allies have taken it upon themselves to offer some explanation. “Vance’s appreciation of Tolkien is not unrelated to his conversion to Catholicism in 2019,” Luke Burgis, a professor at the Catholic University of America, said to Politico. “Of the many ways that Tolkien’s work exemplifies the Catholic imagination, one is the relationship between the visible and the invisible. I think it’s fair to say that Vance believes there is real spiritual evil in this world, and it can become embodied in rites and rituals.”Vance, he continued, very likely took away from Tolkien “an apocalyptic frame of mind” reflecting the story’s concern with the battle between good and evil.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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      How JD Vance Thinks About Power

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      Follow live updates on the 2024 election here.In September 2021, JD Vance offered two predictions about former President Donald J. Trump and one piece of advice.Mr. Trump would run again in 2024, Mr. Vance said. He would win.And when he did, Mr. Vance counseled, he needed the right people around him this time.“Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,” Mr. Vance said on a podcast.He continued.“Then when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did,” Mr. Vance said, citing a (possibly apocryphal) quotation long attributed to America’s seventh president, “and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”In his U-turning path from anti-Trump author to MAGA-approved Ohio senator and running mate, Mr. Vance has developed a reputation for being ideologically pliable — open-minded, supporters say; core-less, critics counter.But he has been unswerving in recent years in his assessment of how Republicans should carry themselves when they win: Use every available lever of state, even if that means testing the bounds of the constitutional system.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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      JD Vance queda bajo el foco por críticas a los ‘momentos más débiles’ de Simone Biles

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      Mientras muchos aplaudían a la campeona olímpica por haber priorizado su salud mental en 2021, el hoy candidato republicano a la vicepresidencia dijo en ese momento que los medios celebraban la debilidad.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]El senador JD Vance, de Ohio, candidato republicano a la vicepresidencia, está siendo objeto de un nuevo escrutinio debido a declaraciones que hizo en el pasado, afirmando que la gimnasta estadounidense Simone Biles, quien el jueves ganó otra medalla de oro en los Juegos Olímpicos, había mostrado debilidad al retirarse de la edición anterior del evento por un problema de salud mental.Durante una aparición en Fox News en 2021, Vance cuestionó que Biles estuviera recibiendo elogios por haber salido de la competición en los Juegos de Tokio.“Creo que el hecho de que intentemos alabar a las personas, no por sus momentos de fortaleza, no por sus momentos de heroísmo, sino por sus momentos más débiles, hace que nuestra sociedad, digamos, terapéutica, se vea muy mal”, dijo Vance, quien en ese momento se postulaba para el Senado.Ahora que tanto Vance como Biles se encuentran de nuevo bajo los reflectores, los demócratas estaban ansiosos por destacar estos comentarios. Aida Ross, vocera del Comité Nacional Demócrata, afirmó el jueves que Vance no estaba “en posición de hablar de los ‘momentos más débiles’ de nadie”.“Mientras el resto del país celebra la actuación del equipo femenino de gimnasia de EE. UU. en los Juegos Olímpicos, JD Vance se enfrenta a su momento más débil en medio de un lanzamiento lleno de tropiezos que lo ha hecho el candidato a vicepresidente más impopular en décadas”, dijo.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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      Vance’s Links to the Project 2025 Leader Complicate Trump’s Attempts at Distance

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      Donald Trump disavowed the set of conservative plans after it became a popular target for Democrats, but his running mate, JD Vance, wrote a foreword for a forthcoming book by its principal architect.Even as Donald J. Trump is trying to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, his running mate’s contribution to a new book by the project’s principal architect is complicating his efforts.“Dawn’s Early Light,” a forthcoming book by the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin D. Roberts, calling for a “second American Revolution,” features a foreword by Senator JD Vance, the Ohio Republican whom Mr. Trump tapped as his running mate in July.“In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon,” Mr. Vance writes in his introduction, which was obtained and published online by The New Republic on Tuesday. The book is set for publication in September.Mr. Vance announced in June that he had written the foreword for Mr. Roberts, whose think tank became an influential bastion of conservative policymaking during Ronald Reagan’s presidency and enjoyed exceptional influence during Mr. Trump’s time in office, providing a staffing pipeline for his administration.But Mr. Vance’s endorsement of the book became more politically fraught after Mr. Trump publicly disavowed Project 2025, a set of sweeping policy proposals for a hoped-for Republican presidency that the think tank began preparing more than two years ago under Mr. Roberts’s direction. The project, which has been billed by Heritage as an attack on the “deep state” and proposes disbanding multiple federal agencies, excluding abortion from health care and ending an array of climate change programs, has become a popular target for Democrats.Will Martin, a spokesman for Mr. Vance, wrote in an email Wednesday that “the foreword has nothing to do with Project 2025.” Mr. Vance “has plenty of disagreements with what they’re calling for,” Mr. Martin wrote, adding: “Only President Trump will set the policy agenda for the next administration.”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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      Vance Knocks Harris as a ‘Wacky San Francisco Liberal’ in Nevada

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      Senator JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, began a swing of campaign stops in crucial battleground states in the Southwest — his first visit to the region since joining the ticket — with a pair of rallies on Tuesday in Nevada.Mr. Vance used those appearances to hone his attack lines against Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the de facto Democratic presidential nominee last week, denouncing her as a failed “border czar” and a “wacky San Francisco liberal.”Mr. Vance, a political acolyte of the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, accused the vice president of “allowing” migrants to murder Americans and of “inviting” drug cartels to deal fentanyl to children in playgrounds. He also repeated unfounded claims about undocumented migrants’ “bankrupting” Medicare and other government services.“She has the nerve to question our loyalty to this country,” Mr. Vance said in Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas. He added that “loyalty to this country is closing the border, not opening it up,” and that “if Kamala Harris wants to see the face of disloyalty she might as well look in the damn mirror.”Before Mr. Vance took the stage at his second rally, in Reno, former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado of California said that Ms. Harris should be prosecuted because of the Biden administration’s policies at the border. Mr. Vance took the stage and thanked Mr. Maldonado “for such a great introduction,” adding: “I think he’s handled Kamala Harris. I don’t know if I have to say anything about Kamala now.”In both stops, he also blamed Ms. Harris for the offshoring of American manufacturing jobs through her support of trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Mr. Trump significantly revised but left mostly intact during his term as president.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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      ‘I Was a Childless Cat Lady’: Women Respond to JD Vance

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      More from our inbox:Clearing Homeless EncampmentsFood and Gas PricesThe Roger Maris FireThe selection of Senator JD Vance of Ohio as former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate was supposed to appeal to women, voters of color and blue-collar voters, but a stream of years-old comments has threatened to undermine that.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Past Comments Fluster Vance as Democrats Go on Offense” (front page, July 29):JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said in 2021, “We’re effectively run, in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”I would say this to Mr. Vance:I was a childless cat lady: three cats, no kids.I thought fertility was a given. There was no medical reason I couldn’t have children. Yet it did not happen. Three cats. A great career. No kids.I was, in effect at 38, a “childless cat lady.”I pursued fertility treatments. Treatments that many Republicans want to ban.I had painful tests, surgeries, running to the lab — five vials of blood drawn every day at 6 a.m. — then rushing to work for a minimum 12-hour day.Childless cat lady lawyer. Meow.I had one fabulous child at 38 with I.V.F. She was a triplet, but I lost my daughter’s siblings.I was pregnant three other times. I lost two other babies at four months. I needed a D and C: same procedure as an abortion. If I didn’t have the surgery, I would have died.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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      Hulk Hogan Is Not the Only Way to Be a Man

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      The Democratic Party must join the battle for the hearts and minds of young men. It matters not just for this election, though the vast and growing gender gap means that disaffected men could hand Donald Trump the presidency. It matters for how we mentor young men, and it matters for how we view masculinity itself.And yes, the Democrats can do it. Within the Kamala Harris coalition, there are men who can show a better way.If you ever wondered whether the Republican Party sees itself as the party of men, I’d invite you to rewatch the last night of the Republican National Convention. Prime time featured a rousing speech by the wrestling legend Hulk Hogan, a song by Kid Rock and a speech by Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship — all as warm-up acts before Trump delivered his acceptance speech. Republican manliness was the capstone of the convention.But what kind of men were featured? They’re all rich and powerful, and as a longtime fan of professional wrestling, I loved watching Hogan as a kid, but none of them are the kind of man I’d want my son to be. White was caught on video slapping his wife. Kid Rock has his own checkered past, including a sex tape and an assault charge related to a fight in a Nashville strip club. Hogan faced his own sex scandal after he had a bizarre sexual relationship with a woman who was married to one of his close friends, a radio host who goes by “Bubba the Love Sponge.”We know all about Trump, but it’s worth remembering some of his worst moments — including a jury finding that he was liable for sexual abuse, his defamation of his sex-abuse victim, the “Access Hollywood” tape and the countless examples of his cruelly insulting the women he so plainly hates.JD Vance is different. No one should denigrate his personal story. He has overcome great adversity, served his country honorably as a Marine and, by all accounts, is a good husband and father. But he now wears Trumpist masculinity like an ill-fitting suit. Last week, he was justifiably attacked for a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson in which he declared that the country is run, “via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies.” He identified Harris (who has two stepchildren) as just the kind of person he was talking about.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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      JD Vance Stumbles in His Debut as Democrats Go on Offense

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      In the 12 days since Ohio’s junior senator was tapped as the future of Donald J. Trump’s movement, old comments and a chorus of derision have blunted any sense of invulnerability.The choice of Senator JD Vance as former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate reflected the confidence of a campaign so sure of victory in November that it could look beyond a second Trump term to the legacy of his movement.But in less than two weeks, Mr. Vance has found himself on the defensive, and his struggles have dented the sense of invulnerability that only a week ago seemed to be the overriding image of the Trump campaign.A stream of years-old quotes, videos and audio comments unearthed by Democrats and the news media in recent days has threatened to undermine the Trump campaign’s outreach to women, voters of color and the very blue-collar voters to whom Mr. Vance, a first-term Ohio senator, was supposed to appeal.His past comments deriding “childless cat ladies,” supporting a “federal response” to stop abortion in Democratic states and promoting a higher tax burden for childless Americans have yielded a chorus of criticism from Democrats. Mr. Vance’s fresh efforts to explain them have provided Democrats more material, with the Harris campaign promoting one short clip in which he seems to suggest that when he spoke of childless cat ladies, he meant no insult to cats — “I’ve got nothing against cats,” he said.And his first handful of appearances on the stump have drawn unflattering attention. During an appearance in his hometown, Middletown, Ohio, he tried to explain how his critics would call his drinking Diet Mountain Dew racist, with an awkward aside assuring the audience that Diet Mountain Dew was good.Mr. Vance’s stumbles have come after a remarkable two weeks when Mr. Trump survived an assassination attempt, and then rallied the party — and even some skeptics — behind him. The Republican National Convention began with calls for national unity, and though those calls were at times undercut by the Republican presidential nominee, the ticket vaulted out of Milwaukee with a head of steam and an expanded lead in the polls.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