JD Vance’s Secret Service Is Fed Up With His Absurd Requests

Vice President JD Vance is frustrating the Secret Service with his personal and family travel. 

MS NOW reports that last week, agents complained about a request to fly Vance’s son to a golf lesson across town on a helicopter. The trip to Joint Base Andrews, which has a secure, world-class golf center, would have involved a military helicopter crew on Marine Two, the helicopter that carries the vice president,  but was canceled at the last minute due to severe thunderstorms and high winds in and around Washington, D.C. 

It’s not the first time that Secret Service agents have been frustrated with last-minute travel demands from Vance and his family. Some of that has to do with Vance having young children, as the first vice president with such a family since Al Gore in the 1990s. Vance and his family, with three children aged nine, six, and four, have used the helicopter at the last minute to look at houses to rent or buy in Middleburg, Virginia. Vance’s wife, Usha, is expecting a fourth child later this month. 

Previous vice presidents and senior administration officials traditionally told the Secret Service of travel plans days in advance, especially regarding their families. But one unnamed agent told MS NOW that the Vances “change everything.” 

“They don’t stick to their schedules, and that costs shit tons of taxpayer money,” the agent said. 

Last minute, quickly arranged trips require agents to hastily change their schedules, often canceling planned days off and altering other plans for what agents call “off the record,” or OTR, movements. They have to rush to their new location and come up with new security plans on the fly, and repeatedly putting the Secret Service through this is bad for morale, agents told MS NOW. 

“The detail is tired of them not giving notice on things and making everything an OTR,” an unnamed source told MS NOW. “He [Vance] thinks he can still move around like a U.S. senator.”

The use of a military helicopter for a child’s schedule is unprecedented, with agents usually using SUVs to ferry children around, current and former Secret Service supervisors told MS NOW. Using the helicopter for the golf lesson would have required approval from the White House Military Office, which reports to President Trump. The helicopter costs $16,000 to $24,600 in taxpayer funds for every hour of use, according to estimates from the 2022 Department of Defense budget.

“That is RIDICULOUS,” an anonymous source said in a message to MS NOW. “Pence and Harris never pulled anything like that.”

Agents have made coins and badges mocking Vance’s last-minute travel demands, incorporating the vice president’s secret service name, Bobcat. The coins and stickers have a picture of a Bobcat’s head with the words “Bobcat OTR Survivors Club.” The logo includes the motto, “Advance. OTR. Repeat.”

In a statement, the vice president’s office told MS NOW that “The Vances are grateful to the men and women of the U.S. Secret Service who serve our country with distinction. While protecting a Vice President with a large policy portfolio and a young and growing family presents a unique challenge, agents of the Secret Service do so with excellence every day.”

The White House is planning to strip commercial driver’s licenses from undocumented immigrants and effectively automatically transfer them to military veterans.

“My administration will soon take historic action to get illegal alien truck drivers who are just killing a lot of people—they can’t read signs, a lot of them are on drugs or alcohol, and they shouldn’t be driving these things. They came in totally illegally and they—we don’t want ’em,” Trump said Wednesday at a defense and innovation summit in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

“But they are driving all over American roadways and we’re going to replace them with proud American veterans,” Trump continued. “We’re going to take veterans, and we’re going to teach them a lot about driving trucks.”

“And in many cases they know we’re going to say any American who has driven a truck for our military will automatically be eligible for a commercial driver’s license,” he said, noting that while left-wing politicians are opposed to the idea, it doesn’t matter because “we’re the ones who are running it.”

The announcement comes two weeks after Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael Pahira Jr. was struck and killed by an undocumented immigrant driving a semi truck. The driver, Michael Bon, has since been charged with vehicular homicide and involuntary manslaughter. ICE filed a detainer for Bon the day after his arrest, according to a Homeland Security press release.

The initiative to strip noncitizens of commercial driver’s licenses has already begun. Roughly 200,000 immigrants had their commercial licenses revoked in March, preventing them from driving semi trucks, buses, and tractor trailers despite the fact that they had already passed the tests and met the requirements to drive such vehicles.

Beyond that, it’s not clear what type of vehicle handling in the military would provide adequate experience or training for a commercial license stateside. Granting such licenses to untested drivers could make the roads less safe.

During negotiations with the U.S. in Switzerland last month, the Iranian government reportedly warned Vice President JD Vance that President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were undermining the chances of a peace deal.

Drop Site News reports, citing an unnamed Iranian official, that Iranian negotiators believed Witkoff and Kushner were more interested in trying to profit off the talks in financial markets than reaching a lasting agreement. The Iranians were also worried about Kushner and Witkoff leaking information to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Drop Site.

The Iranians sent a private message to Vance through an intermediary following earlier communication through Pakistani mediators. Those earlier communications reportedly included written documentation that “individuals close to President Trump” were using the war and diplomatic talks to manipulate markets.

“Even before the Islamabad talks kicked off [in April], we had already sent multiple messages to Trump through the Pakistanis, warning them about [Witkoff’s] overall destructive role in the previous negotiation,” the Iranian official told Drop Site. When the U.S. didn’t address the Iranians’ concerns, they sought to communicate with Vance “through an exclusive channel.”

Drop Site said it couldn’t confirm whether the intermediary delivered the message, although the Iranian official said his government was confident Vance got it. The Trump administration denied everything.

“A message of this nature was never conveyed to the Vice President or his team,” an unnamed U.S. government official told Drop Site. “Additionally, any insinuation that the other members of the president’s trusted negotiating team are operating under motives other than serving the president and delivering on his mission is false.”

Additionally, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly further denied the report and attacked Drop Site.

“No such message was ever transmitted to the United States. It’s sad that Drop Site News ‘reporters’ are so filled with hate for America and devoid of respect for themselves that they have become full-throated propagandists for the Iranian regime,” Kelly said.

With negotiations breaking down and hostilities resuming between the U.S. and Iran, the Iranian government does have an incentive to make the Trump administration look worse than usual. Unfortunately, even if this report is false, the White House’s track record makes it seem all too plausible.

Market manipulation has become all too common in Trump’s second term, particularly during the Iran war, with Trump making carefully timed statements that seem designed to create short-term stock gains. Suspiciously timed bets on prediction markets during the war also raised suspicions that insider trading was taking place within the White House, with the Trump administration even warning staff not to bet on world events.

It’s not the first time the business activities of Kushner, a real estate developer, seem to have overlapped with his work for the Trump administration, either. He and Witkoff reportedly pitched real estate projects and an investment fund to sweeten a deal with Iran. Kushner is also involved in the administration’s plans for Gaza reconstruction, where he has floated real estate projects too.

Bedrock civil rights milestones are at risk of withering away under the Trump administration—including in the physical sense. Hot conditions in a new National Park Service exhibit under the Lincoln Memorial are imperiling rare 1860s copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment, Emma Uber of City Cast DC reported Wednesday.

Uber cites unnamed NPS staff members who are concerned that “screens designed to shield the records from harsh light have been defective and temperatures inside the display case have repeatedly reached more than 80 degrees.”

For reference, the National Archives advises families to store their archives below 75 degrees, and it keeps its own display featuring the Constitution and Emancipation Proclamation at 67. A preservation specialist told Uber that historic documents should not be stored in environments exceeding 75 degrees, “and even then … that level of heat is only safe if humidity and light are carefully controlled.”

The documents at the Lincoln Memorial Undercroft carry Abraham Lincoln’s original signature, and—a detail perhaps more likely to move the Trump administration’s top brass—they’re worth millions of dollars.

An NPS spokesperson assured Uber in somewhat vague terms that the documents are “cared for.” But while on the scene at the undercroft, the reporter spied unsubtle evidence of the heat problem: a fan conspicuously directed toward the display case. “The Park Service did not respond to questions about why the fan was there,” Uber reports.

President Donald Trump’s protracted Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool saga may not be ending anytime soon. Records first reported Wednesday by The Independent offer a clue as to how long the public’s view of the monument may remain obstructed by fencing that currently surrounds the pool’s perimeter.

Trump’s renovations to the Reflecting Pool, including installing an “American flag blue” lining, have been dogged by algal blooms and peeling paint, requiring repeated drainings and refillings. Further, at least according to the president, progress has been stymied by left-wing vandals.

Meanwhile, the project’s price tag has rocketed from an initial estimate of $1.8 million to more than $16 million, and its deadline has been pushed from July 4 to who knows when.

Purportedly to fend off those alleged saboteurs, fencing now surrounds the pool. Workers have also added opaque mesh screens to the barrier. Chain-link fencing was first installed on June 23—more than three weeks ago as of Wednesday—by the Department of the Interior.

Records show that the federal government awarded an in-progress $37,000 contract to a construction company, National Construction Rentals, for “REFLECTING POOL TEMPORARY FENCE” that started last week. According to the contract summary, the contract is not set to end until January 8, 2027.

The revelation raises questions: Is the renovation going to take that long? Is the possibly illusory specter of left-wing defacement really expected to persist for almost half a year longer? If the administration’s past handling of the Reflecting Pool renovation is any indication, we’re not likely to get clear or sensible answers anytime soon.