We need to talk about JD Vance

Transcript Transcribed by Hannah E.

Courtney: Hello, everyone, and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here with my spouse, Royce. And together, we are The Ace Couple. And today, we are back to talking politics.

Courtney: Boy, this last couple months has been a lot, huh? [laughs] I was actually completely unplugged during, like, the thick of it, like that first debate between Biden and Trump. That was an utter disaster. I was unplugged for that week. I am, like, on digital vacation, and yet I still heard little tiny whispers about what was going on and I was like, this is officially not my problem until next week. And by the time I got back, oh my goodness, everything had happened, so.

Courtney: But we’re not going to talk about that. We’re not even going to talk about Kamala Harris and her recently announced running mate. Today, I want to talk about JD Vance. I know it’s not a fun conversation.

Royce: I hear he’s kind of weird.

Courtney: I do hear he’s kind of weird. Although, [laughs] speaking of weird, first of all, I think it is baffling how up in arms everyone is getting about just the word “weird.” That is, like, the most innocuous thing you could say [laughing] about a political opponent, I think. Not to mention the fact that, like, I literally have “professional weirdo” on my business card. Like, I use “weirdo” as a badge of honor. Back years ago, when I was doing a bunch of business networking, someone came to me once and was like, “Hey, did you know that if you Google ‘Kansas City weirdo,’ your website is the first thing that comes up?” And I was so happy about that. I double-checked it at the time. That was true. Probably not anymore, because I haven’t been nearly as online for that SEO. But the thing that’s so funny — and you might not even know this, Royce — do you know where JD Vance is from?

Royce: No, I do not.

Courtney: He’s from Cincinnati.

Royce: Okay. Checks out.

Courtney: Which, I’m not going to share this whole story right now, because this episode is meant to be miserable. We’re talking about JD Vance. We can’t have whimsy. [laughs] But I’ve been a lot of weird places. I’ve been on a lot of strange trips for unusual reasons, in my peculiar line of work, and somehow, for some reason, the strangest trip I have ever taken was to Cincinnati. I did not expect Cincinnati to be as weird as it was.

Royce: I had to pause and go check for a moment to see if we had a running tally of how many times you have said Cincinnati is weird. But we’re not going to talk about that story right now. Because I felt like it —

Courtney: Have I said that before? [laughs]

Royce: I felt like it was numerous times. But this is actually only the second time.

Courtney: Okay, so —

Royce: I feel like my memory is clouded with other, like, social friend group situations where it’s been like, “Cincinnati is really weird. That’s a story for another time.”

Courtney: Well, there’s either two things that are going to happen when Cincinnati comes up. Either, “This is now the night, this is the event, I’m telling you the tale of Cincinnati,” or “We’re going to put a pin in that, because I should tell you about Cincinnati someday.” But, I mean, I’ve had friends from Cincinnati who have heard this story and been like, “You saw a completely different Cincinnati than I’ve ever known. It must have been a parallel universe.” But now that I know that JD Vance is from Cincinnati…

Royce: JD Vance is from the parallel universe Cincinnati.

Courtney: That’s why it’s so weird! I went to the JD Vance Cincinnati. [laughs] I don’t know what the other Cincinnati is called. Ohioans, please chime in. Let me know.

Royce: Cincinnati multiverse confirmed.

Courtney: [laughs] This is definitively how Ohio works, yes.

Courtney: So, we’re not going to have fun today. We’re going to be miserable. Cincinnati story to be told at a later date.

Courtney: So, why do I want to talk about JD Vance? Because I do sincerely hope that the Trump/Vance ticket does not win. I think we have been very clear about that, even before JD Vance signed on to the ticket. But he has become such a rising star — not only in, like, Republican conventional politics, but in extreme conservative think tank bubbles. So, I think it is very important to know what he’s saying, what his track record has been, who he’s working with, who he’s friends with, and how that differs a little bit from what he’s saying publicly on the campaign trail. Because I fully believe that JD Vance and the organizations he works with are very dangerous. And I suspect, even if the Trump/Vance ticket loses this year, I believe we’ll still be seeing more of JD Vance in the future, whether that’s future very public campaigns or in the more secretive, deep, dark shadows of the think tanks that are heavily organized.

Courtney: So, let’s talk about him. I want to start by going back to 2020. Because he made a tweet that… like, the thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him specifically identify with the word “pronatalism,” but a lot of the things he said and a lot of the policies he espouses are pronatalist in nature. We’ve talked about pronatalism on the podcast before, and you better believe we will talk about it even more in the future. I’ve been down so many rabbit holes, I can’t find my way out at this point. But this is such a goofy one, because… I think I’m generally in favor of abolishing Daylight Savings Time. [laughs]

Royce: Yeah, that’s an easy one.

Courtney: And JD Vance is also, but for bad reasons. It’s like, can I agree with your conclusion but not your method of getting there? [laughs] He made a tweet back in 2020 that says, “As a parent of young children and a nationalist who worries about America’s low fertility, I can say with confidence that Daylight Savings Time reduces fertility by at least 10%.”

Royce: He made that number up.

Courtney: That came from nowhere except right off of the top of JD Vance’s own dome. Is he saying that, as a parent of young children, losing an hour of sleep is the reason why they’re not having more sex to produce more children? It kind of sounds like that’s what he’s saying. And, like, that’s your big concern? That’s the… You know, maybe he meant this as a joke. [laughing] I could kind of see it being a joke.

Royce: I doubt it.

Courtney: But the thing is, low fertility has become such a fixation of, like, the tech elites [laughing] of this country and the world. And please know that I say the word “elite” facetiously when I use it. But we’ve talked about Elon Musk. We’ve talked about the Collinses, Simone and Malcolm. They’re very prominent, very wealthy people, many of whom have enormous platforms that have made “We aren’t procreating enough” their main issue. So that is sort of the lens with which I want to look at JD Vance and his track record for things he said.

Courtney: And so, this next one is one that’s been talked about quite a lot recently as it pertains to this election specifically, since Kamala Harris’s name came up, but I want to give an overview of it, because it really fits into our conversation here, and that is the “childless cat ladies” comment. This was 2021 on an interview with Fox News, where he called the Democrats “A bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too,” which he then followed up with, “It’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC. The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Royce: So, there’s a whole lot wrong with all of that.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: First of all, the idea that the only motivating factor you can have is through biological legacy. Like, if that’s the only way you see the world, is that —

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: — the only reason you would do anything is because you have a biological child that is going to be a part of it, there’s a lot in that statement that I struggle to understand. And I’m relating it back to just some other views that I’ve heard in general that show a complete misunderstanding of people who live different lives — like, a complete lack of empathy of anyone who hasn’t grown up in your very specific situation.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: Because you’ve occasionally put on sort of deep religious deconstruction type of videos. And these are people who, you know, grew up very close to the church in a very religious family, and then, later in life, are kind of coming out of that and talking through some of their experiences. And one thing that I’ve heard come up more than once is, like, people at a religious high school, for example, talking about, “Well, what would you do if you weren’t religious?” And some of them mentioning, like, “Oh, I’d be doing all of these sins all the time.” And it’s like, first of all, no, you wouldn’t, Jacob, stop being edgy.

Courtney: [laughs] “If you weren’t Christian, what is to stop you from murdering everyone?”

Royce: Yeah! It’s like this idea that the very specific way that you live your life and the very specific values that you hold are the only thing keeping you as a good person, and that everyone else in existence must just be this horrible monster that is out to destroy everything, which is probably why far right fearmongering works so well.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: But I see, you know, evidence of that here — this idea that… Well, one, I’d be curious to say, “What exactly are left-leaning or even moderate people — like, moderate Democrats — planning to do that is going to destroy the country?” Because all of that is imaginary. [laughing] That is a big fearmongering statement. But if he does honestly believe that, it shows, again, a complete lack of understanding of anyone who isn’t living his life.

Courtney: Yes. Well, and the thing with that, also, I do reject that you have to have biological children in order to care about future generations.

Royce: Yeah. There’s a lot of reasons to not be shitty, to do good things. And it could be… It could just be because you see something as a net positive, that you see something as better than an alternative. You could also care about other people around you who aren’t directly related to you. You could care about your culture or your city or your country. You could care about the future of the world or humanity as a whole or the planet. There are so many reasons to do things that are good that isn’t just, “I am going to live forever through my genealogy.”

Courtney: Yeah. And I take even more issue with what he says, because — let’s actually look at the three people he named specifically. Kamala Harris has stepkids who love her. They call her “Momala.” That’s cute. [laughs] I don’t care if you like Kamala Harris’s politics or not. Having stepchildren that call you “Momala” is great. That is objectively adorable. And to say that she has no stake in the future — like, she can’t possibly actually care about those children because she didn’t birth them herself, is vile. That’s absolutely terrible.

Courtney: Pete Buttigieg: he and his husband welcomed their twins into the world one month after this interview. And the thing is, even before that, I believe Pete had been talking for years about wanting to have kids, so it was not like… Granted, he probably didn’t know they were literally [laughing] about to have kids of their own. But if you know the guy at all, if you’ve heard the guy talk, you know he and his husband really wanted to be parents. So whether or not the children were imminent, like they were a month before, there are just so many things that could be really hurtful, and there can be really emotional setbacks for people who do want kids but don’t have them yet.

Courtney: But the thing is, I suspect JD Vance doesn’t care about that in the case of Pete Buttigieg, because he is a gay man, so he is also not a biological mother. And if I had to guess, if Pete Buttigieg was a straight man who was single, he probably wouldn’t have made this particular list, right? Like, I feel like there have been single male politicians that haven’t been attacked as heavily for not having children as the women do, and so they’re also throwing the gay man in as, like, an attack on who he is. Because, theoretically, if your concern is, “We need more children,” and you have a gay married couple who want children, you should celebrate that, right? “Parents are good. Children are good. We need more children brought into this world. We need more parents to care for them.”

Courtney: But that’s not actually how most of these conservatives think. We’ve talked about Project 2025 on this. We’ve talked about how so many conservative organizations were condemning the Respect for Marriage Act. We reviewed that extensively, because they were not only trying to prevent further protections for same-sex marriage, but they were using Asexual marriage as the end of the slippery slope. “This is what will become of this if we solidify their rights further!” It’s all just so vile and so baffling. So I am confident that that name did not sneak in there because, well, he doesn’t have kids. It’s because he’s gay. It’s because, if he has kids, he didn’t have them the old-fashioned way, because that’s really what they’re concerned about.

Courtney: Now, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: she’s 34 years old right now. This was in 2021 that he said this. JD Vance is 40 years old, and his oldest kid is 6. So he’s literally attacking someone who is younger than he was when he had his first kid for not having kids. But no one’s going to care about that, no one’s going to fact check that, no one’s going to call him on it, because his audience is all like, “Yeah, women need to get married and they need to have children, and they need to have a lot of them, and they need to start young. And they need to stay out of politics, for that matter.”

Courtney: So I just think it’s wild how he’s taking these three names, lumping them all into the same box as, like, “Well, none of them have kids,” when they all have very different life experiences, actually. And isn’t that what’s supposed to make this country great, is that we can all live our own unique lives, because freedom?!

Royce: I mean, according to the far right, absolutely not. The far right believes there is exactly one human experience and the rest don’t matter.

Courtney: Bingo. So, we’ve discussed at length not only a few of the points — and genuinely only a few of the points — covered in Project 2025. But in years past, we’ve talked about these very religious political conservative organizations and what their policy proposals are and what they ultimately want — including, but not limited to, some things that might seem counterintuitive if what they want is more children. Like, a lot of these organizations want to ban IVF because, again, it’s not having kids the old-fashioned way. That’s where you get into when you go to the websites of these organizations. I’m going to use the Heritage Foundation, because that’s the one we’re going to talk about today and we have talked about in the past, but we’ve also covered lots of other organizations saying the same things, where they say, “Marriage, sex and procreation are a package deal, and getting married is the only way to prevent the collapse of civilization.” And even things like no-fault divorce. They’re like, “Well, it’s too easy for people to get divorced now, and if people get divorced, they aren’t staying together and continuing to have kids, and that’s a problem,” so.

Courtney: But before we get more into the organizations, let’s take a couple of examples of what JD Vance has actually advocated for in the past. He has stated, for instance, “We should worry that in America, family formation, our birth rates, a ton of indicators of family health have collapsed.” And he goes on to cite a policy in Hungary. Vance said, quote, “They offer loans to newly married couples that are forgiven at some point later if those couples have actually stayed together and had kids. Why can’t we do that here? Why can’t we actually promote family formation?” Again, a lot of issues with all of that.

Courtney: First of all, there are already so many, quote, “family formation” policies in the US. There already are a lot. And there are so many organizations advocating for more of them, but a lot of them come in the form of tax credits, which is what they want. And it’s what a lot of not only these organizations, but prominent pronatalist thinkers often cite, “Well, we need to add financial incentives for people to make these choices.” And I don’t have it right in front of me, so I don’t want to quote it too specifically — I’ll try to find it when we come back to this topic in more detail in the future — but I have not seen any indication that tax benefits like this actually cause people to have children or have more children. Like, someone who is not going to have a kid is not going to look at the tax benefits they might get for having a kid and then change their mind to do it.

Royce: Very few, at least. There are cases that crop up every now and then of someone, like, exploiting a tax incentive, and you find that someone has basically… Like, there are cases that come out every now and then of, like, a large family that is habitually mistreating their children because they basically ran it as like a tax fraud scheme sort of a thing.

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: But those are, like, incredibly, incredibly small percentages there. They’re not representative of the whole. They’re, like, bad actors here and there.

Courtney: Right, and you hear that in some like fraudulent adoption and foster care systems.

Royce: Right.

Courtney: But I’ve even — and I’ve said this before, and I just want to make sure I have all of the correct sources in front of me when we do talk about this, but even even just marriage, right? We talk about all of the tax benefits and all of the social benefits of getting married in this country. I personally do think that there are too many. We have benefited from some of them because they are there, and yet I’ve also seen studies that suggest that tax benefits for marriage don’t tend to increase marriage numbers.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: But the entire ideology behind putting these marriage benefits in place come from a standpoint of… It’s like a funnel to get people into the American nuclear family. They’re like, “Marriage is the first step. Once you’re married, you have to stay married, and that’s when you have kids. And then you have a family. And then you’re set for life! You don’t need social programs because now you have a family.”

Royce: Yeah. And that is used to justify not funding a lot of wider, more broadly beneficial things.

Courtney: Right.

Royce: Like, that is used as the justification — to bring up another, I guess, just parallel train of thought: A lot of financial power, autonomy, choices over homeownership is taken away by the existence of things like homeowners associations, under the justification of, “As long as you go along with the way that things are, it will increase property values.”

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: And everyone wants increased property values, but that is a lie that is used to get people on board —

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: — and waive away some of their individual autonomy.

Courtney: You are absolutely right about that, Royce. And as the President of our HOA, [laughs] I have 1000% brought up studies during meetings where someone tries to cite a property value and I’d be like, “Mmm, nope. Don’t just parrot the old points to me. You need to come at me with studies, numbers, facts, not just your feelings.”

Courtney: But to the very specific… So Vance is saying, “It would be a great idea if America offered loans to newly married couples that they get to keep — they don’t have to pay back — if they don’t get divorced and they have kids.” So, I have some notes. Let’s make some light edits to that. I don’t think anything that incentivizes marriages to stay together financially and legally is good.

Royce: Yeah. That’s just another thing to pile on all of the other existing things that already pressure people to stay in unhealthy or abusive relationships.

Courtney: Exactly. There is a major concern about abuse here. And again, like, freedom. If the marriage is strong and healthy and happy, it’ll stay together. People aren’t just getting divorced on whims; there are reasons behind it. So this is one of those fundamental worldview differences between… I mean, it’s really reductive to say the red and the blue [laughs]. But in this religious conservative — and there there is a major concern about the rise in Christian nationalism, in particular in this country, in particular in our politics, where their fundamental worldview is, “Cis man, cis woman, gets married, has kids the good old-fashioned way, stays married forever, has at least two but hopefully more children, and that is the pinnacle. That is a successful life. Not only a successful life, but that’s a successful country. That’s a successful society if everyone is doing that.”

Courtney: And they’re willing to pressure people into that lifestyle, even if it’s not a good fit for them. Because in this, you know, theoretical scenario — let’s say you do have a cis man and a cis woman who get married and have kids. Let’s say it is an abusive relationship. And let’s say it’s even a very traditional married — this is like a trad wife kind of situation. The woman in this relationship is the homemaker, does not make her own stream of income, but fears for her safety, if not the safety of her own children as well. How does this loan even function? Are they both equally liable for returning the funds? So if she gets a divorce but doesn’t have her own income coming in, now, she is just all of a sudden in debt for half of that? I suspect, the way a lot of these conservative think tanks try to incentivize marriage and penalize all divorce, I would think whoever’s initiating the divorce is probably going to be the one on the hook for that, if they had their druthers.

Royce: That’s something I’ve never really thought of. And I haven’t looked into this, but the way the loan is issued — is it co-signed? Is it paid into a financial account that has to be shared?

Courtney: I don’t know. I haven’t looked into the details or particulars of the actual law in Hungary he’s referring to. I’m just taking what he said about it as, “This is the good idea,” and trying to think about how that would actually function, while also knowing full well why they write the policies that they do, and how they write them, and how that might work in the context of American politics, if they were to try to implement something like this.

Courtney: So, you could make it completely impossible, in a citation like that, for a woman to leave an abusive marriage. Because if it was already difficult, now adding potential life ruining debt onto that. And then let’s talk about the kids, too. You’re going to now penalize those kids, also. You say you care about kids and you want more kids. But if you’re going to give money to parents to take care of kids, that should be to take care of the kids. That should not be to keep the marriage together. The kids are more important than the institution of marriage. Maybe that’s a hot take! But I’m sure they’d also argue that, you know, those kids will be harmed by the divorce. “Kids need a mother and a father.” We saw that repeatedly in Project 2025. So in their worldview, I’m sure they’re thinking that this is the best interest of the kids, but that is just not going to be the case.

Courtney: But that said, I do think the idea of loans being given out to people to incentivize things is interesting. I just don’t think marriage is the important thing we need to be incentivizing. Why don’t we give loans to everybody when they turn 18? “You are an adult now. You’re going out into the world. Here’s money.” I don’t even like having a one-shoe-fits-all. Like, you could say, “This will be forgiven if you get a degree, if you go to college.” That’s better than our current system. We could just try to make it free. But that’s progress. That’s better than what we’ve got now. So, I’m not even opposed to, you know, a forgivable loan being for people who do want to be a homemaker or start having children. Like, “Here is a loan. Go buy a house. Start your family.” I feel like any system for that should have, like, I don’t know, “Here are a few things you could use this money for that will help you get a start in whatever sort of life you have chosen for yourself.”

Courtney: But tying it to another person I do not think is good. If you did take the money because you did want to buy a house and get settled with the intention of having children, why isn’t having the children enough to prompt for giving that loan? Kids cost money. But instead they’re so… I almost said “married.” They’re so married to the idea of marriage [laughs] being the end-all be-all. But it also does just completely ignore the things that we do actually do in this country.

Courtney: During the pandemic, for instance, they expanded the child tax credit, and, rather than just having a tax credit once you file, they actually sent money to parents, and that was, like, over three grand, depending on how old the kid was, I think. What was it? It was, like, under six, it was a little bit more than that, but that’s great. I got no issues with that. I know it is hard to be a parent. I know that kids are expensive. As someone who does not have kids of my own, I am very happy to just blanketly give people money who have kids to take care of. I’m not butthurt about that at all.

Courtney: But the thing is, the way the child tax credit usually works, it still isn’t even accessible to all parents, so you are not incentivizing all people equally to have children. Because in order to obtain this child tax credit, you have to have taxable income. So that means that disabled people who are on Social Security Disability don’t get that tax credit. It’s yet another — just like our insurance policy, like our medical care, everything is tied to working, everything is tied to our jobs, everything is tied to our income. So, even though they’re saying, “Yes, we know children cost money. We want to incentivize people to have kids. We want to help ease the financial burden of having kids for you. But not if you’re disabled, not if —” There are other instances. Maybe you just don’t make enough money. Maybe you are unemployed or underemployed. There are lots of situations where a parent will already be struggling to make ends meet by not having enough taxable income, and they’re the people who would need additional funds to help raise their kids the most, and they are denied that benefit. So they really don’t want disabled people, poor people to have kids of their own. There’s no other way around this, so.

Courtney: And it might not even be the parents who are disabled. It might be parents of disabled children, too, because, with how difficult it is to access childcare in this country — even for able-bodied children, it’s extraordinarily expensive — there are so many parents of disabled children who need to stop working to become their child’s caretaker full time. And on top of that, medical debt is a thing. Medical expenses are astronomical. So that’s, again, another situation of someone who needs these social benefits the most who can’t access them. Because it’s really not that they just blanketly want more children. They want more of the right kind of children.

Courtney: So — and here’s another policy where JD Vance once said that children should get votes, but, like, by proxy of their parents. So if you have kids, you get to vote twice. [laughs] You get to vote on behalf of your kids.

Royce: Well, more than twice. Wasn’t it once per child?

Courtney: Let me see if I can find the specifics, or if there even were that many specifics, or if he was just talking out his ass.

Royce: Yeah. While you’re looking that up, that’s just such a frustrating take because there’s so many kids who disagree with their parents’ politics, or so many adults now that refuse to talk to their parents about politics because of how backwards they are.

Courtney: Mhm. Mhm.

Royce: But there’s also just the thing — I mean, there were some situations during the pandemic where someone, an older child, someone who was not an adult, someone who was under 18 but was upper teenage/mid-teenage years, was, you know, trying to make the case that they should be in charge of their own medical stuff at this point in their life, that they should be able to get vaccinated even if their parents are conspiracy theorists or things like that. And it — I don’t want to say surprises me because of our political landscape. But I find it frustrating, in a country that was founded upon the idea of “No taxation without representation,” that children from the ages of 15 to 16 to 18 can work and be taxed on their income but aren’t able to vote.

Courtney: Yeah! I think that’s one of my more radical policy ideas that I’ve sometimes said to people, and they’d be like, “Whoa, now. Let’s not get carried away.”

Royce: Where did the age of 18 come from?

Courtney: That’s a good question, and that’s one that has come up a lot. And there are even some jurisdictions that have lowered the voting age. Like, individual cities have lowered it to 16, for example. Which, I also — I’d be curious to see what cities those are, because in a lot of places in the US, you can work starting at 14. And there are a handful of states that are trying to get kids to work increasingly more dangerous jobs at younger ages.

Royce: Going back to those robber baron days, trying to get to the income inequality records of old.

Courtney: So here’s the quote I found from JD Vance and what he actually said: quote, “When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power. You should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality. If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same vote.”

Royce: So that, again, goes back to the earlier statement of the idea that the only reason you can care about the future of your country or your world or whatever is through your own genealogical line.

Courtney: Well, this particular brand of conservative worldview that is incorrect as it is — that is the logic behind why, for decades, we’ve heard that it is selfish to be childless, it is selfish to be single. That’s why that word gets thrown around, because they think, by the inherent nature of you not getting married and having kids, you don’t actually care about the future, you don’t actually care about kids — which is just not the truth. That is not the only means of caring about other people.

Courtney: But, yeah, the idea of, you know, minors voting is such a scary thing to so many people. But I’ve been so salty about that for so long, because — just the hypocrisy of the logic. People think children don’t have an understanding of politics or the economy or the way things work. They don’t think they know enough to be able to make a decision, which is very often not true. I think younger generations are increasingly taking an interest in politics. But also, if you’re saying they don’t understand enough to vote in an election, to try to vote in their best interests, why are you allowing them to work? Why are you allowing them to get exploited by corporations? And why are you taking their money if they don’t have a say, in the form of a vote, in what gets done with it? Either let them work and don’t tax them — and I would think the conservatives would actually really like that, because they try to incentivize work, right? And when they’re trying —

Royce: It’s yet another benefit to tie to employment.

Courtney: It’s another one to tie to employment. And since they’re trying to say, in so many of these very conservative states, “Well, we do want kids to work dangerous jobs at younger ages. We want to repeal protections for minors working,” like, I can’t think of a better incentive than, “Start working early because that’s tax-free, baby! The earlier you start working” — hopefully not earlier than 14; I’m not talking, like, eight-year-olds working — “That’s just money that goes in your pocket. Save that for college. Save that for your future wedding and kids or whatever.” But no, they take that and they’re like, “Conservative parents of probably less conservative kids. Let’s give them extra votes.”

Royce: I mean, that’s the reason. I think that’s also the reason for the shifting goalposts of adulthood, because there are a lot of inconsistencies there. Some states, you can legally get married and, you know, start a family before 18, but you can’t vote until after 18. You can join the military at 18, but you can fight in a war but not have a beer for a few years.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: And just a lot of arbitrary inconsistencies like that. I think that —

Courtney: Well, haven’t a lot of places even increased the smoking age recently? I haven’t kept up on that too much, but —

Royce: That would make sense, but I haven’t paid attention.

Courtney: I think at least somewhere recently increased it to, like, 21, and I was like, “Wow, really? Instead of decreasing the drinking age, we’re increasing the smoking age. Fascinating.”

Royce: Again, I haven’t kept up with this, but I’ve seen more and more indications of moving those goalposts or considering pushing those back beyond 18 years. I don’t know if that’s trying to be matched towards a longer education period, because our society is sort of pressuring more and more school. I don’t think it makes sense —

Courtney: Without paying for it.

Royce: Yeah. I don’t think it makes sense. I also think that the entire right-wing playbook right now is, “How do we get the people who will vote for us to the polls, and how do we keep the people who won’t vote for us away from the polls?” And that is heavily leaned towards younger demographics and people who are currently in the education system.

Courtney: So, since we have a few very solid examples of JD Vance talking about concerns and policy ideas that definitely seem to parrot some pronatalist ideology, some religious conservative ideology — which don’t always overlap perfectly. Sometimes they do, but there’s sort of a… There’s a branch of pronatalism that’s very technology- and future-forward, in a way that the religious conservative organizations are not. So, even though they’re both panicking and think that more children is the answer to most of society’s ills, there’s one branch that’s like, “Yeah, not only should we incentivize in vitro fertilization, but we should also do embryo selection. And we should, you know, do all the genetic things we can possibly do to make sure that not only are we having a lot of kids, but they’re the, like, quote, ‘best’ ones, they’re the smartest ones, they’re the most fit ones, they’re the least likely to be…” It’s eugenics. But then there’s the religious conservative ideology that’s like, “But there was no [intentionally mispronouncing] penis in vagina? How kids? That’s the only right way to have kids, though.” So, [laughing] they don’t always agree on that front.

Royce: Do large-scale social ideologies have, like, vintage cycles? Or, like, every now and then, the eugenics discussions of old just become popular again?

Courtney: I mean, yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of this repeats itself. This wasn’t a politics-heavy episode, but when we talked about The Eighth Year, and that was branching off of The Seven-Year Itch — and please, if you haven’t listened to those, listen to our seven-year itch episode and listen to the eighth year episode. They aren’t hot, buzzy topics, but they were fun, and I think they help contribute to the broader conversation we’re trying to have here on this podcast. But when we were talking about The Eighth Year — this very silly, silly book that was talking about how, like, [laughing] “Oh, these women are going to become suffragettes,” as if that’s a horrible, horrible thing that will happen — do you know what one of the biggest things was that they attacked the suffragettes for in comics and political satirical artwork? Being fucking cat ladies! That was a thing they attacked the suffragettes for, was being cat ladies! They actually used cats in the imagery of those things. And now we have JD Vance here being like, “Oh, the Democrats are all cat ladies!”

Royce: I think every cat owner should get one vote on behalf of their cat.

Courtney: As the President of the HOA, I agree. [laughs]

Royce: I feel like there’s a whole subsection of internet — possibly troll — of the, like, “can has cheezburger” variety of internet people, that era, who’d be like, “Hell yeah, votes for cats.”

Courtney: Hell yeah, votes for cats! Well, the thing is, some of the suffragettes, like, owned that. Like, they were getting attacked for the cats because the cats are too feminine and it represents the home and all that. Which is a far cry from even earlier iterations of, you know, cats being associated with witches and familiars and witchcraft. So, like, yeah, it’s the same song and dance with a fresh coat of paint.

Courtney: And so, to round this out, I want to talk about JD Vance’s ties to the Heritage Foundation in particular. Because if you just watch the news clips, read the quotes from press conferences, Trump and Vance have been trying to separate themselves from Project 2025. And JD Vance, even specifically, when he gets asked about Project 2025, he’ll just say, like, “Well, Project 2025 doesn’t talk for Trump. Only Trump talks for Trump.” And they’re like, “Don’t hold us… Don’t hold that against us. We didn’t write that,” and even will say some flippant comments that make it seem like he has no idea what is in there. He’s like, “Oh, I heard it’s, like, a thousand pages? But we didn’t write that!”

Courtney: The thing is, you can lie to the cameras all you want. JD Vance was the guy that the Heritage Foundation wanted to be Trump’s Vice President. When Trump, like, tweeted his announcement of who his VP pick was, the Heritage Foundation was like, “We’re ecstatic! This is a very good friend of ours! This is the guy we were really rooting for!” And he even spoke at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary celebration last year. He knows these guys very well.

Courtney: And, having now read about Project 2025, having read about the “Conservative LinkedIn” where they’re finding and recruiting all the people for filling these positions, and overturning every single branch of the government to the conservative agenda, last year, at his 50th anniversary speech at the Heritage Foundation, JD Vance said, and I quote, “This organization is going to play a major role in helping us figure out how to govern at the White House, at the Senate, at the House and all across our great country.” And with him saying that on their own turf at their 50th anniversary conference, a year before he even came the VP pick, for him to now have the audacity to get in front of the camera and be like, “Oh, we don’t have anything to do with Project 2025.”

Courtney: And in fact, he is so buddy-buddy with the president and founder of the Heritage Foundation that JD Vance has actually written the foreword to an upcoming book written by Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, which was set to be published before the election, but now, apparently, they’ve pushed it back, and they’re not going to be publishing it until after the election. I wonder why! I bet there’s something in there that they think maybe isn’t very popular! Maybe they don’t want their real thoughts getting out right before the big election.

Courtney: And so, with JD Vance having these kinds of ties to this organization, we have to keep tabs on that. We have to know about this. And this is why I think, even if they do not win the election, I think we’re still going to see JD Vance around. He’s still very buddy-buddy with the Heritage Foundation. I think he is still going to be working with them, advising them, trying to push their agenda, even if it isn’t from the Vice President’s office.

Courtney: And in this foreword, JD Vance calls the Heritage Foundation “The most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.” And he admits outright that this book and the Heritage Foundation as a conservative think tank deal with a lot of the same themes that he, JD Vance, works with in his own life, in his own political career. But there’s also something that’s just so incendiary about the language. And, obviously, I have not read the entire book. You can find the forward available online. I’ll have some links, as usual, in the show notes so you can do some further reading on some of the things we’re talking about here. But I think it’s so interesting because you always hear that conservatives are the party of small government, and…

Royce: It’s not true.

Courtney: It’s never been true. They kind of admit it. JD Vance kind of admits it in the foreword of this book, which is kind of refreshing to hear them actually admit it, because… we know. [laughs] We’ve seen the way you operate. But it’s so inflammatory the way he says this: “The old conservative movement argued, if you just got government out of the way, natural forces would resolve problems. We are no longer in this situation and must take a different approach. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets. We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fight that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.” Which, yeah, okay, that’s, like, a metaphor man. But the original title of this book — it’s now titled Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America. Its original title was supposed to be Burning Down Washington to Save America. So, apparently, they just… Their biggest gripe with January 6th was that it was ultimately unsuccessful, I guess?

Royce: Oh yeah, that is not a very well-kept secret.

Courtney: Well, the thing is, why are we talking about JD Vance as Vice President anyway? It’s because Trump’s first President had a full coup staged against him! [laughs] He, like, literally could have been killed by Trump’s own supporters for trying to peacefully pass power. My God.

Royce: Yeah, Mike Pence has just kind of disappeared at this point.

Courtney: Oh, not totally. He’s just been unsuccessful. I mean, he’s also working for the Heritage Foundation. Of course.

Royce: That’s unsurprising, yeah.

Courtney: Unsurprising. But he wanted to run for president this cycle. He tried. Failed real bad. Didn’t last long. And in fact, this Kevin Roberts, who is apparently very good friends with JD Vance, uses such insightful rhetoric. He stated that “The country’s in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” [laughing] What? What does that mean? That is a threat. It’s not even thinly veiled. That is just a threat. Which is also just… I’m so fascinated by their rhetoric being framed around, like, “We’re taking our country back.” Because have they not seen the Supreme Court right now? They control that unprecedentedly, the ramifications for which we will be feeling for decades.

Courtney: And to further add to how big of a star JD Vance is in this particular political arena right now, he’s not only writing the foreword of books for the founder of the Heritage Foundation, he’s also giving blurbs to other very hateful books. For example — and I have not read this book, full disclosure. I have read some reviews and opinion pieces about it. But just the name alone is Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions and How to Crush Them, written by one of the most prominent promoters of the Pizzagate conspiracy, who has links to neo-Nazis, wildly antisemitic. And in a blurb for his book, the current Vice President nominee said, “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving flags. Today, they march through HR, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people.”

Courtney: And the thing is, dehumanization is the most powerful tool of genocide. And the very nature of calling this book Unhuman — to which they’re referring to leftists, progressives. One quote that I pulled from a review here is, “As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision: the unhuman.” Hmm. “Misery.” “Opposed to humanity.” That sounds really similar to some of the things JD Vance himself has said. I wonder why he blurbed this book? Which is also really interesting, because I’m not going to get into Spanish history right now, but in this opinion piece I pulled up, published on The New York Times by Michelle Goldberg, apparently, one of the heroes of the books is Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, and the authors call him “a great man of history” and compare him to George Washington. So that means they think George Washington is a great man of history. George Washington didn’t have any kids! George Washington didn’t have any kids! Do you know what he did have? Stepchildren. [groans in anger] [laughs] I am losing my mind at their hypocrisy.

Courtney: But I am also… Because, for some reason, I still hear people — even who are ostensibly opposed to Trump and Vance — give them kind of the benefit of the doubt. I have heard people who claim to be leftists or progressives who say, like, “Yeah, well, Project 2025 is just the Heritage Foundation. They don’t have to do anything with it. We’re not electing the Heritage Foundation. So if Trump and Vance are saying that they don’t have anything to do with the Heritage Foundation and they aren’t going to implement Project 2025, then we should listen to them and we shouldn’t be inciting more fear amongst our own people by talking about how scary Project 2025 is.”

Royce: That is a fully head-buried-in-sand outlook.

Courtney: I think so, too. Because, also, even if we take a half a step back and say, like, alright, so, let’s not talk about the Heritage Foundation. Let’s not talk about Project 2025. Let’s just draw the parallels in Vance’s own blurb from this book and compare it to what we actually are seeing on Trump’s website right now. So that blurb again, that first sentence or two, to remind you, it says, “Communists today march through human resources and college campuses.” Hmm, what’s been the biggest political outcry on college campuses this past year? Well, let’s see if we can get some more clues from Agenda 47, which is what is on DonaldJTrump.com. That’s what they claim to stand behind, and anything outside of this isn’t even them. Item number 18 is, “Deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.” And by “pro-Hamas radicals,” they mean…

Royce: They mean anyone who’s critical of Israel and the IDF.

Courtney: Yeah, and pro-Palestinian protesters. They’re not even saying “immigrants” anymore. They’re just like, “Deport them.” Deport them where? So many of these protesters are born and raised American. They’re just college students trying to do the right thing, so much of the time. And again, with all of these mass deportation — like, that’s number 2 on the list, is “Carry out the largest deportation operation in American history,” because he knows his supporters actually like that and want that. And that’s just something we’re never going to agree on. Because the fascinating thing is, being so concerned about population levels and we need more kids and we need more people to run the country’s economy, because what about the economy, they’re also very anti-immigration. So they don’t want new people moving into the country; they want new people born into the country. But not if they’re born into the country from immigrants, either. They’re also trying to take away DACA. They’re trying to do all kinds of vile things.

Courtney: So, even in trying to distance from Project 2025, Agenda 47 is also terrible. They also, of course, have several transphobic policy priorities on there, because erasing trans people from public existence has become the new “Build the wall” this election cycle. But this is a tool in their toolbox. They try to take fellow humans and make them so monstrous and evil in the eyes of their political opponents that nobody’s going to bat an eye if you violate their human rights.

Courtney: And, yeah, I’m fully aware of how absurd it is that they’re saying, “Oh, these inhuman monsters don’t even care about humans!” when they’re literally talking about humans. Sounds like you’re the one who doesn’t respect your fellow humans! So, yeah, this book looks really horrifying. The authors of this book have also spoken at events put on by the Heritage Foundation. It all seems to come back to them. One author, Nathan J. Robinson, wrote that “This book is perhaps the most paranoid, hateful, and terrifying book I have ever picked up. I say this as someone who has read Mein Kampf.” And JD Vance endorsed it, blurbed it. Donald Trump, Jr. has also publicly praised this book.

Royce: That comparison to Mein Kampf is not surprising, considering you read a quote praising…

Courtney: A fascist.

Royce: Francisco Franco, yes, who was basically pushed into power by Nazi Germany and led a decades-long crusade against leftists in his country.

Courtney: Yeah, but he’s basically George Washington, though. Did he have kids? No, don’t actually look that up, I don’t care. [laughs] No, it’s terrifying. It is really, really extreme. And the thing is, I’m sure there are some people out there that’ll just be like, “Oh, well, this is just one goofy, extreme book. It’s written by two authors, and they’re very fringe.” They are not very fringe if they’re getting the VP candidate blurbing it, if they’re getting the son of former President, current convicted felon, somehow still able to run for office again presidential candidate, and if they also work with the Heritage Foundation, who underpins so much of modern conservative theory. This is not fringe. This is what they believe. And everything they say for the cameras, just like JD Vance saying, “Well, we don’t have anything to do with Project 2025. We didn’t read that. Just listen to what Donald Trump says. What he says is what we actually believe.” This is why it’s so important to actually take a closer look and dig deeper and see who their friends are. Who are they working with? What do they believe?

Courtney: But I think that’s enough for today. So I would like to transition us into today’s featured MarketplACE vendor of the week. We are giving a shout out to Maya’s Divine Designs. Maya is a disabled, Demisexual, neurodivergent multiracial two spirit nonbinary reconnecting Indigenous Mexican artist and designer who creates original artwork, jewelry, accessories, and printed merchandise. We discovered and patronized Maya’s shop, I think, long before we even started the MarketplACE on our website. I think I first learned of Maya’s Divine Designs during — if not the first, maybe the second — possibly the first Disabled Ace Day, though. And you can get a wide variety of things here. There are paintings, photography, some beadwork jewelry, like earrings. And some of it’s even pride-related. There are, for example, some flower headbands that are in various pride flag colors, like you can get an Asexual pride flag headband.

Courtney: So, as always, links to Maya’s Divine Designs will be in the show notes. And remember, if you yourself are an Aromantic and/or Asexual spectrum small business owner, feel free to head over to TheAceCouple.com/MarketplACE. Right at the top of the page, there is a shop entry form where you can submit your shop to us, and you just might get featured on a future episode of this podcast.

Courtney: So that’s all we have for today, and we will talk to you all next time.