JD Vance Working to ‘Hijack’ MAGA to Push Theocracy, Ex-Friend Warns

Sofia Nelson, a lawyer and former Yale Law School classmate of Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, warned on Saturday that the Ohio senator is working to “hijack” former President Donald Trump‘s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement in favor of a far more rigid and orthodox theocracy called post-liberalism.

In an op-ed for MSNBC published Saturday morning, Nelson said that the post-liberal movement, unlike MAGA, seeks to replace existing social and political power structures with orders rooted in conservative Catholic social teachings.

Nelson contends that post-liberalists, like Vance, seek to position themselves within the MAGA movement with the aim of inheriting Trump’s political base once he leaves politics. Their goal is to turn the GOP into a pro-theocracy party, Nelson said. The op-ed warns about the danger of a post-liberal rise and the need to counteract it, not just for the sake of defeating Trump, but to maintain the democratic values underpinning U.S. society.

“There is some policy overlap between MAGA and post-liberalism in their shared opposition, for example, to immigration and transgender rights. But the ideological overlap between the groups is a shared affinity for authoritarianism,” Nelson wrote. “The post-liberal right, which has goals that even MAGA Republicans would find extreme, is attempting to hijack the MAGA movement to push its own agenda.”

Nelson befriended Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, while they were attending Yale Law School. Nelson, who is transgender and uses they/them pronouns, had a falling out with JD Vance when he launched his political career and backed bans on transgender minors receiving gender-affirming care. They told CNN‘s Erin Burnett in July that the senator’s shift in opinions were motivated by his ambition for “political power and wealth.”

In the op-ed, Nelson pointed to Vance’s alleged influences within the post-liberal movement.

“Despite the time we spent as friends, I have no real insights (other than political expediency) into what drew him to post-liberal men like the academic Patrick Deneen, columnist Sohrab Ahmari, legal scholar Adrian Vermeule and expat journalist and author Rod Dreher, who was present for Vance’s baptism into the Catholic Church in 2019,” Nelson wrote. “What I do know is that Vance used to condemn Trump’s racism and be empathetic to how such rhetoric made Americans feel unwelcome in their own country. But these men have had an obvious and heartbreaking effect on Vance’s worldview.”

Nelson said Vance’s “obsession” with birth rates and his remarks about childless women reflect his post-liberal belief structure. They also point out that Vance’s comments in favor of eliminating “no-fault divorce” drifts further to the right on marriage issues than what is contained in The Heritage Foundation‘s Project 2025 initiative, a political movement led by conservative think tanks that aim to shape the next Republican administration’s policies.

Trump has repeatedly denied having any relation to Project 2025, but many of its contributors are former members of his administration, and his own platform, called Agenda 47, shares broad policy similarities on several issues.

Trump again stated during Tuesday’s presidential debate that he has “nothing to do with Project 2025,” adding, “I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it.”

“Post-liberalism, unlike MAGA, has no grassroots following. Most Americans aren’t Catholic, and most Catholics support the separation of church and state. But post-liberalism, despite its ideological and moral disdain for Trump, needs MAGA, Nelson wrote. “To accomplish any of its goals, it must leech off of a populist movement. The movement needs to exploit Trump’s popularity for its own unpopular aims. This may explain why Vance, who had more integrity when I knew him, abruptly flipped from calling Trump “cultural heroin” to the greatest president of his lifetime.”

Newsweek has emailed Vance’s office, along with the Trump-Vance campaign, Saturday morning for comment.

In July, The New York Times published an article on 90 emails and text messages from Vance to Nelson from 2014 to 2017. The then-future senator expressed opinions in the messages that differ greatly from his more recent public remarks, including telling Nelson: “I hate the police.”

Luke Schroeder, a Vance spokesperson, said in a statement issued after the article was published that it was “unfortunate this individual chose to leak decade-old private conversations between friends to The New York Times,”while insisting that “despite their disagreements, Senator Vance cares for Sofia and wishes Sofia the very best.”

Vance’s opinions on Trump have shifted considerably over the years, with the Hillbilly Elegy author previously declaring himself a “never Trumper” and questioning whether the then-future president was “America’s Hitler” in 2016.

In June, Vance told the Times that he “first met Trump in 2021” and changed his opinions on the former president soon after.