“If JD Vance truly wanted to support Minnesotans affected by gun violence, he would work to pass the commonsense gun safety legislation he spent his entire career opposing,” Carlbom said. “We are past the point of showing up with hollow words and empty hands.”
12:20 p.m. – Air Force Two touched down at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport just after 11:30 a.m., according to pool reports. Vance and his wife, Usha, were greeted on the tarmac by Col. Samuel Kraemer, commander of the 934th Airlift Wing, and Chief Master Sgt. Jennifer Murphy, also of the 934th, according to the vice president’s office.
The motorcade for Vice President JD Vance travels west on Hwy. 62 after Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, arrived at MSP on Wednesday. (Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
12:05 p.m. – Vice President JD Vance was raised as an evangelical Christian and once called himself an atheist, but converted to Catholicism in 2019. “He was drawn not just to the church’s theological ideas, but also to its teachings on family and social order and its desire to instill virtue in modern society,” the New York Times reported in a piece on Vance’s conversion last year. In the wake of last week’s shooting, Vance has also defended the role of prayer and recited one in honor of the victims while speaking in Wisconsin last week.