Everyone Hates JD Vance’s New Book

The reviews are rolling in, and it’s clear that Vice President JD Vance’s new book Communion is not the next Hillbilly Elegy—not even close.

Ten years after Vance released his bestselling book that was made into a major motion picture, he has released Communion, a reflection on his late-in-life conversion to the Catholic faith that has already earned a meager 1.27 stars on Goodreads. Apparently reading it is painful.

“I got a colonoscopy on Friday,” Ginny Hogan wrote for The Cut. “If only that were the least pleasant experience of my last week. But no, that would be when I pulled an all-nighter on Monday reading Communion.”

“Vance’s hypocrisy alone makes Communion nearly unreadable,” Hogan wrote.

“You don’t need me to tell you this, but he is not a good Catholic,” she wrote. “A good Catholic would never support [Donald] Trump’s hateful immigration policies, cruel Medicaid cuts, hatred toward trans children, and unnecessary foreign wars.”

Hogan also criticized Vance for how he managed to say so much about Second Lady Usha Vance, “without saying anything at all.”

“Vance came to fame on his writing talent, and all he could muster to describe his wife of 12 years were ‘beauty’ and ‘intelligence.’ JD, ask ChatGPT for some synonyms! Be romantic,” Hogan wrote.

The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim wrote that the book suffered from “egregious sloppiness.”

Swaim found that Vance oversimplified complex issues and misunderstood research he cited. “Whether Mr. Vance’s error arose from laziness or dishonesty or something else, I don’t know, but alas it typifies the low regard he has for people who profess views he dislikes,” he wrote.

The Atlantic’s Alexandra Petri similarly called out Vance’s frothy phrasing that seemed to lack any understanding of his source material. “Here’s Vance’s gloss on the Book of Job and the problem of suffering: ‘We are like golden retrievers trying to understand how an iPhone functions.’ Well, the Book of Job left me troubled, but that golden-retriever analogy has fixed things!”

And Christopher Howse, for The Telegraph, wrote that Communion simply “lacks the raw impact of Hillbilly Elegy.”

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville may not be eligible to run for governor in his home state, according to a lawsuit filed in state court Wednesday.

Tuberville, a former college football coach, is being accused of failing to meet the eligibility standard for state residency as outlined in Alabama’s constitution. Candidates have to live in the state for at least seven years in order to be eligible to run. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit say that Tuberville has “usurp[ed], intrude[d], into or unlawfully holds or exercises a public office.”

Tuberville sold all of his property in Alabama as of 2023 but has since claimed that he lives in a 1,500-square-foot property, which originally listed only his son and wife on the deed. Meanwhile, Tuberville’s wife was working as a real estate agent in Florida. He also voted in Florida in 2018.

Earlier this month, Tuberville’s gubernatorial campaign released tax documents claiming to prove that he has lived in the state since 2018, but critics such as Ken McFeeters, another Republican candidate, say that they don’t prove anything, claiming they aren’t accurate.

“I want his wife to tell me, with a straight face, that she lives in a one-bathroom house with her husband and adults and guests,” McFeeters told AL.com. “A woman like that is not going to share a bathroom.”

Those documents were enough for Tuberville to fend off a residency challenge from McFeeters to the Alabama Republican Party. The party’s 21-member steering committee ruled in Tuberville’s favor Sunday, saying he met the state’s residency requirements.

“We looked at it with the facts. The contest was unsuccessful. And Coach Tuberville will be our nominee for governor,” said the chair of the state Republican Party, Scott Stadthagen.

But this new lawsuit, assuming it goes to trial, will open up Tuberville’s records even further, and could result in new information coming to light in the discovery process. The public will find out if Tuberville is actually a Florida man.

The right is seething over the details of President Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran, seeing the decision as a massive capitulation to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The full text of the 14-point agreement was released Wednesday, revealing the United States will end its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, work with other countries to give Iran access to $300 billion to rebuild its infrastructure, and cease sanctions, among other concessions.

“I’ve heard from the president. I have tremendous respect for him. I’d like to hear from Marco Rubio, and I’d really like to hear from John Lee Ratcliffe on the intelligence of whether or not Iran thinks they got the better of us. Because I guarantee, we got the best intelligence community in the world. I’d be really interested in what [Iran’s] reaction to this MOU is. It might be. ‘I can’t believe we got this, because we were losing,’” former Republican Representative Trey Gowdy said on Fox News after the MOU was released. “We had an economic stranglehold on that country. So, when you go back to the status quo ante before the blockade, how are we better off? What did we get?”

Gowdy then claimed the pressures of low approval ratings and incoming midterm elections may have gotten to the president.

“Don’t we have midterms coming up? Are gas prices high? I mean, I hate to be cynical, but I don’t think it’s a national security document,” he said.

“Make no mistake: This MOU is a capitulation to the Iranian terrorist regime, potentially more dangerous than Obama’s JCPOA,” wrote Joel Griffith, a senior fellow at the conservative American Advancing Freedom and co-chair of Young Jewish Conservatives. “This will rejuvenate a terrorist regime with nuclear ambitions committed to global ideological domination through terrorism.”

“This is an American surrender,” MAGA commentator Erick Erickson said.

“This MOU with Iran does smack of the kind of appeasement that our administration rejected in the Obama-Iran nuclear deal and also when Joe Biden attempted to return to the politics of appeasement during his administration,” Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, posited. “I would urge the President to take a step back, continue the blockade and pursue a negotiated settlement that commits Iran to dismantling their nuclear program, dismantling this missile program, ends support for terrorist proxies and opens the strait. Failing that, we should let our Armed Forces finish the job on our terms.”

“Reagan is rolling over in his grave,” Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy wrote. “Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future.… Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 service members were still alive. Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped. This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

“This MOU appears to be … a disaster that does not achieve any of the actual signal goals that were set by the administration at the beginning,” commentator Ben Shapiro said on Fox News. “There are effectively five goals that were set by the administration at the beginning. One was ending the nuclear program: not just nuclear weapons; no nuclear enrichment, zero enrichment, that is not in the deal. Ballistic missiles ended, that is not in the deal.… In my opinion, the vice president of the United States, the chief negotiator on this particular project, has not well served the president.”

President Donald Trump refused to mete out consequences for the horrific U.S. missile strike in Iran that killed more than 175 people, most of them children.

During a press conference Wednesday at the G7 summit, Trump was asked whether he planned to hold anyone accountable for the attack on a girls primary school in Minab that killed dozens of young girls between the ages of seven and 12.

“No, if it was a fault—and as you know that’s under investigation—it’s such a strange question to be asked at this state because we’re talking about a long time ago,” Trump said. “Nobody did that on purpose.”

A preliminary inquiry found that the strike was the result of using outdated intelligence. Trump seemed to suggest that because the strike had been made in error, there was no reason to punish anyone.

Clearly, a deadly mistake warrants a response, and failing to respond in a timely manner is not in itself an excuse for doing nothing. If Trump were a real leader who valued human life, this would be unacceptable.

Instead, Trump insisted that one would have to examine how many soldiers Iranians had killed and chalked it all up to the cost of doing business.

“No mistakes are made. Yeah, war is nasty. But I know it’s under investigation, I could have a report for you tomorrow,” Trump said, adding that the question would be better directed to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

More than 100 days after the strike in Minab, the DOD’s investigation is now complete and awaiting sign-off, military officials told The New York Times Tuesday. The report became delayed as a result of the slow-moving bureaucratic review process, the Pentagon’s efforts to save its own skin, and intelligence and targeting agencies that couldn’t believe their data could possibly be wrong.

President Trump said Wednesday that Iran could have its own nuclear program.

“It is a little hard that when you say that somebody wants it, other people have it, other adjoining states have it, and you’re not letting them have it for purposes of electricity and things like that. It’s always a little tough. You have to use a little common sense,” Trump said at the G7 summit in France, alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

It seems to be a sharp departure from Trump’s previous claims during the war. After months of insisting that the purpose of the war was to get rid of any nuclear capability, demanding “zero enrichment,” Trump is now saying that the country can use nuclear power for electricity.

One wonders what Republicans in Congress—let alone the international community—will think of Trump’s latest concession. If a final peace deal between Iran and the U.S. doesn’t have any restrictions on the country’s nuclear program, it will be effectively worse than the 2015 JCPOA agreement with Iran.

That agreement was drafted not only between the U.S. and Iran, but the other members of the U.N. Security Council, including China, Russia, the U.K., and the European Union. This deal was negotiated without Congress even being aware of the details. Iran will likely be receiving $300 billion in reconstruction funds, and now they might have a nuclear program too. What did the Trump administration accomplish?