Donald Trump announces JD Vance as his running mate

Former President Donald Trump announced that J.D. Vance will be his running mate in this year's presidential election. 

The announcement was made on Truth Social. The decision was made public moments before the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the largest city in the state of Wisconsin.

Vance was born on Aug. 2, 1984, just two months before Ronald Reagan's reelection, in a small town called Middletown, in southwestern Ohio. His family is of Scots-Irish descent, a group he defines as "rural people who came from the United Kingdom between the 17th and 18th centuries."

As he describes in his aforementioned book, which was published in 2016 was names the "most important" release at the time, he had a very difficult childhood, one that possibly would have ended in tragedy had it not been for his grandmother, "Mamaw," who, he confesses, knew how to get him on the right track in time. Just when he was starting to do poorly in school, hanging out with the wrong crowd and "experimenting with drugs and alcohol," everything suddenly changed, and for the better.

He finished high school and rightfully enlisted in the military, where he served in the Marine Corps and was sent to the Iraq War.

Back home, he majored in political science and philosophy at Ohio State University, then made the leap to Yale University, where he graduated with a law degree, which quickly placed him in the corporate world, a very different one from the one he was accustomed to in Kentucky as a young man.

After denying time and again his intention to run for the Senate from Ohio, which he effectively declined in 2018, he decided to jump into the political arena in 2022 after Sen. Rob Portman's retirement.

With a platform aligned with Trump's rhetoric, (the former president gave him his official endorsement during his Senate campaign), he achieved first place in a close Republican primary, beating Josh Mandel and Matt Dolan.

Despite facing a tough opponent in Tim Ryan in the general election, he managed to win with 53% and reach the Senate  as one of its youngest members, second only to Jon Ossoff of Georgia.

As for his voting record, he was noted for being somewhat skeptical of the effectiveness of sending funds to Ukraine, supporting a 15-week national limit on abortion, as well as collaborating with Democratic senators on various bills.

For example, he worked with Sherrod Brown and Bob Casey to craft a plan to prevent another train derailment like the one that occurred in East Palestine, Ohio, as well as with Elizabeth Warren to target bailouts of big banks.