Editor’s note: This article was updated on January 30.
(LifeSiteNews) — President Donald Trump can ensure that his second term in the White House advances a pro-life, pro-family, and pro-medical freedom agenda, but it will help to have a solid conservative alongside him.
Unfortunately, some rumored picks, including Ambassador Nikki Haley, Congresswoman Nancy Mace, and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik would be a detriment to the conservative agenda, to judge by their history.
Other good options exist, such as Governor Ron DeSantis, a sharp critic of Dr. Anthony Fauci and medical totalitarianism and an opponent of gender ideology. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt may not attract the same attention as DeSantis, but he has a track record of signing pro-life, pro-family bills into law.
Because Trump could serve only one more term, his choice of vice president could be a potential front-runner in the 2028 presidential election, although Vice President Mike Pence’s dismal performance in 2024 shows that is not a given.
(Some of this analysis is taken from a prior piece on where the 2024 candidates stood on important issues.)
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
Though rivals in the 2024 GOP primary, the two men quickly mended their rift after Gov. DeSantis dropped out and endorsed President Trump.
As governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis signed legislation outlawing most abortions when a baby’s heartbeat can be detected (around six weeks) and opposed funding for abortions in the Sunshine State. He said he was “proud to have signed the heartbeat bill” into law. However, he made comments during a December CNN town hall about allowing for “exceptions” in the law for fetal anomalies and rape.
He also said he would sign a federal law banning most abortions at 15 weeks; in fact, that would reportedly protect only 3 percent of babies from being killed in the womb.
On the issue of transgenderism, Florida has placed some limits on the chemical and surgical mutilation of adults and essentially banned the procedures for kids, though there are legal challenges.
DeSantis also implemented laws that ensured students would not be given inappropriate sexual content in the schools, signed into law the most generous school choice program in the country, re-opened schools during COVID hysteria, effectively banned private businesses from forcing experimental mRNA injections on employees, and banned the vaccine passports that were a fixture of life in most left-wing urban areas in the U.S. in mid- to late 2021 and even 2022.
DeSantis has emerged as a favorite amongst many in the anti-lockdown, anti-medical mandate crowd, and has also vowed to ban central bank digital currencies.
As governor, DeSantis also opposed the sexualization of kids in schools and protected the rights of parents. He also used his power to appoint trustees to universities to select conservatives for the New College of Florida, including social conservative academic Ryan T. Anderson and critical race theory and gender ideology opponent Christopher Rufo.
There may be, however, a constitutional wrinkle. Some believe the 12th Amendment to the Constitution forbids the POTUS and VP from being from the same state, and it is true that Trump’s selection of DeSantis could cause problems. If the election between the Democratic presidential candidate and Trump were close, Florida electors would not be able to vote for both DeSantis and Trump, which would leave DeSantis short of enough votes to become Vice President. This would give Democrat activists a chance to exploit the situation to try to get a liberal VP in the White House to thwart Trump’s agenda. That said, Trump could theoretically change his primary residency back to New York if he wanted to pick DeSantis as his running mate.
Read more on DeSantis’ record below:
DeSantis administration warns against new COVID boosters for people under 65
Florida Supreme Court approves DeSantis request for grand jury to investigate COVID shots
Florida governor calls for special session to fight federal vaccine mandates
DeSantis slams Biden’s vaccine orders, will fine cities that mandate the shot
DeSantis was right: Definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ is rapidly changing to include booster shots
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt
Governor Kevin Stitt has signed legislation similar to Florida’s, though he has signed stronger pro-life protections than even DeSantis.
He signed an almost complete ban on all abortions into law, with only an exception for a “medical emergency.”
Gov. Stitt has also signed legislation to protect gender-confused kids from permanent, life-altering surgical and chemical mutilations. Stitt has also signed multiple pieces of legislation to prohibit men from entering female-only spaces, such as bathrooms and prisons.
He also signed a bill to prevent men from competing in women’s sports.
He also opposed vaccine mandates for military members and kids. “Regardless of what the CDC in Washington says, nothing changes in Oklahoma and kids are not required to get a COVID vaccine to attend school,” he said in 2022. “It’s up to parents to decide how to protect their child from viruses and as long as I am governor, we will never force kids to get a COVID vaccine to go to school.”
Read more on Stitt’s record below:
Stitt signs order banning gender-confused men from women’s prisons
Stitt and DeSantis vow legal action against Biden business vax mandate
Stitt signs law requiring birth certificates with only male and female options
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is another potential pick for President Donald Trump. A Trump ally, she initially supported his lockdowns during the outbreak of COVID, as detailed by Jon Schweppe. In March 2020, for example, she ordered restrictions on gatherings of more than 10 people and asked localities to enforce her limits.
Schweppe wrote further:
Ultimately, Gov. Noem did shut down her state for a time. She did ban gatherings over ten people. She did effectively mandate masks by requiring businesses and local governments to adhere to CDC guidance. She did issue a shelter-in-place order. She did shut down schools. She did urge South Dakotans to download an app that tracked their movements and handed that data off to third parties.
She has also faced criticism for letting the state’s business lobby stop pro-family legislation on issues such as gender. She vetoed legislation to keep men from competing in women’s sports, for example. “We don’t need leaders who lack the courage to stand up to the corporate bullies who want to turn our country into an amoral wasteland filled with compliant consumers,” Michael Farris of the Alliance Defending Freedom said at the time, according to the Associated Press.
However, she also signed legislation in 2023 that prohibits minors from accessing transgender drugs and surgeries and made clear chemical abortion drugs were still illegal in the state, despite attempts by the Biden administration to allow easy distribution of the dangerous pills. She has also signed legislation, prior to Dobbs, that required women have a chance of seeing a sonogram and listen to the heartbeat of their preborn baby. She has urged other governors to pass strong pro-life protections.
Read more on Noem’s record below:
Noem signs ban on transgender drugs and surgeries for minors
Noem caves to pressure, proposes gutting bill that defends girls’ sports
Noem vetoes central bank digital currency bill
Ambassador Nikki Haley
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley supported pro-life initiatives, despite pushback from staff, while representing the United States at the United Nations and as governor of South Carolina. For example, the U.S. stopped funding the pro-contraception, pro-abortion United Nations Population Fund during Haley’s tenure.
Under Gov. Haley, South Carolina suspended abortion facility licenses and signed a 20-week abortion ban (reportedly protecting only around 1 percent of babies, however) in 2016. As a state legislator, she also supported measures against abortion, including prohibiting state health insurance plans from covering the killing of preborn babies, though that proposal did not pass.
However, while those actions may have been understandable at the time due to the limited ability of states to restrict abortion due to Roe v. Wade, Haley has not shifted her stance to support a national federal abortion ban. She has said as governor that she would have supported a six-week ban on abortion.
But as a presidential candidate, Haley has sought to promote abortifacient birth control as part of her strategy, arguing that a federal ban could never pass Congress. While touting her pro-life views, she has emphasized the need to find “consensus” on the issue and said that abortion “is personal for every woman and every man. So, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice any more than I want you to judge me for being pro-life.”
On the issue of transgenderism, Haley has said she does not believe there should be laws that prevent gender-confused kids from undergoing surgical and chemical mutilation. She said schools should not push “gender pronouns” but otherwise took the position that “the law should stay out of it and I think parents should handle it. This is a job for the parents to handle.” She added the contradictory statement that “when a child becomes 18, they can do that [mutilate their bodies]. But I think up until then – we see with our teenage kids, they go through a lot in puberty. They go through a lot of confusion, they go through a lot of anxiety, they go through a lot of pressures. We should support them, the whole way through, but we don’t need to go in and force something in schools.”
Haley has also come under fire from conservative commentators for her neocon foreign policy views, particularly as related to the Ukraine war, and calling anonymous social media accounts a “national security threat.” She was a World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader Honoree in 2011 and in 2021 named Hilary Clinton as a role model.
Read more on Haley’s record below:
Nikki Haley again criticizes Republican senator’s effort to stop Biden military abortion policy
Nikki Haley slammed for calling anonymous social media accounts ‘national security threat’
Democrat mega donor gives $250k to boost Nikki Haley’s campaign and ‘defeat Trump’
Nikki Haley sides with Disney in dispute with DeSantis, invites company to move to South Carolina
World Economic Forum-linked Nikki Haley announces 2024 presidential run
Congresswoman Nancy Mace
The South Carolina Republican has been floated as potential vice presidential pick for Trump. However, she has a bad record on the promotion of abortion and LGBT issues.
Mace’s selection would be a victory for the pro-abortion, pro-LGBT wing of the Republican establishment. “Mace is a regular on liberal news stations, talking about how the Republican Party needs to moderate on abortion and pursue limits closer to 15 or 20 weeks,” LifeSiteNews previously reported. “She, like Trump, explicitly opposed Florida’s new law to protect preborn babies from abortion once a heartbeat is detected, which is usually around six weeks.” Mace called the Florida bill “not compassionate.”
Mace also supports making dangerous chemical abortion drugs more widely available, and urged the Biden administration to ignore court rulings that stopped the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drugs.
Mace also supports same-sex “marriage” and a pro-LGBT bill, “Fairness for All Act,” that would let men into women’s locker rooms, with minimal protections for religious liberty. She also lacks an understanding of how to connect to conservative Christians, joking about her two divorces to explain why she supported a federal law on same-sex “marriage.” She also joked about fornicating with her then-cohabitating fiance at a prayer breakfast. The pair have since split.
Grassroots pro-life and pro-family groups, who will play a significant role in the 2024 presidential election, also take issue with Mace. “Consistently the people who are bad on the life issue are wrong on issues across the board,” Students for Life Action President Kristan Hawkins wrote in The Federalist.
Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project, criticized Mace’s support of the “Fairness for All Act,” saying, the congresswoman “has truly bought into leftist gender ideology.”
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America stated this about Mace:
Congresswoman Mace has used local and national media platforms to denounce protections for unborn children and undermine thoughtful pro-life strategy. Instead of constructively participating in the much-needed conversation to save babies and serve women, she puts forth hostile arguments that bolster the baseless claims of pro-abortion politicians while failing to acknowledge or endorse the numerous GOP legislative proposals at both the state and federal level that provide resources and help to women and children. Her duplicitous voting record and rhetoric emboldens the abortion lobby and undercuts pro-life legislative initiatives.
She has a “D” rating from the group, giving her the lowest rating of any Republican.
Read more on Mace’s record below:
Mace calls Florida heartbeat ban ‘not compassionate’
Pro-family lobby groups slams GOP congresswoman for supporting LGBT bill
Republicans can’t let Nancy Mace influence abortion strategy in a post-Roe America
Ohio Senator J.D. Vance
The first-term senator first came to prominence with his book, and subsequent Netflix movie, Hillbilly Elegy. It tells the story of how Vance overcame a broken home and poverty in Ohio to obtain a Yale law degree and serve his country in the Marines.
Vance is aligned closer to Trump’s foreign policy views, including criticizing endless foreign wars and intervention in Ukraine.
The Catholic convert also told Crisis he supports a complete ban on pornography. “I think the combination of porn, abortion have basically created a lonely, isolated generation that isn’t getting married, they’re not having families, and they’re actually not even totally sure how to interact with each other,” LifeSiteNews previously reported.
However, Vance is also closely tied to Peter Thiel, a libertarian Republican donor who is “married” to a man.
Vance entered the Senate in January 2023, so he did not have a chance to vote on the misnamed “Respect for Marriage Act,” which codified Obergefell and requires all 50 states to recognize same-sex “marriages.” However, he said he would have voted against the law but does not want to try to reverse the Supreme Court decision. “I’ve come out against this bill, and I don’t think it’s actually about gay marriage or same-sex marriage or same-sex equality,” Vance said. “Look, gay marriage is the law of the land of this country and I’m not trying to do anything to change that.”
The Ohio senator says he opposes abortion but wants some exceptions. He said he supports a 15-week federal abortion ban. He also introduced legislation to ban the surgical and chemical mutilation of gender-confused children.
Following the November 2023 vote in Ohio to enshrine abortion into the state’s constitution, Vance stated: “Giving up on the unborn is not an option. It’s politically dumb and morally repugnant. Instead, we need to understand why we lost this battle so we can win the war.”
He stated he is open for “exceptions” in abortion law:
[A]s Donald Trump has said, ‘you’ve got to have the exceptions.’ I am as pro life as anyone, and I want to save as many babies as possible. This is not about moral legitimacy but political reality. I’ve seen dozens of good polls on the abortion question in the last few months, many of them done in Ohio. Give people a choice between abortion restrictions very early in pregnancy with exceptions, or the pro choice position, and the pro life view has a fighting chance. Give people a heartbeat bill with no exceptions and it loses 65-35. (The reason we didn’t lose 65-35 last night is that some people who hate ‘no exceptions’ restrictions will still refuse to vote for things like Issue 1).
His full statement can be read here. He does have an A+ rating from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America based on five votes so far.
Read more on Vance’s record below:
Vance says we must wield political power to protect kids from porn
Vance pushes measure to ban new mask mandates on public transportation
Vance calls for porn ban to save culture
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik
The New York Congresswoman has been suggested as another potential running mate for the president from Manhattan. Stefanik raised her profile after she took over the House Republican Conference following the ouster of Congresswoman Liz Cheney, an outspoken opponent of Trump. However, an analysis by statistical analysis news site FiveThirtyEight found Cheney actually voted with Trump more often than Stefanik did during the 115th and 116th Congress.
She also attracted further media attention this last December for questioning the presidents of several elite universities about what they were doing to address antisemitism on campus.
However, Stefanik has aligned herself with the LGBT agenda, voting in support of the “Respect for Marriage Act” and thus taking the position that all 50 states should be forced to recognize the relationship between two men or two women as “marriage.” She also supports allowing women to get abortifacient birth control over the counter as a response to the Democrats’ position on abortion. She has supported some limited measures to support human life, such as protections for pregnant students and banning infanticide. Stefanik also is supportive of a 15-week federal abortion ban, though such a measure would prohibit only six percent or so of abortions, according to Centers for Disease Control data.
Stefanik withdrew her support in 2022 for the “Fairness for All Act,” a slightly worse version of the Democrats’ “Equality Act” which would eliminate virtually all protections for women and inject gender ideology into federal law. She voted in 2017 to support military funding of surgeries for gender-confused service members.
Read more on Stefanik’s record below:
Stefanik votes to support LGBT ‘Respect for Marriage Act’
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul
The libertarian-leaning senator from Kentucky has non-interventionist foreign policy views similar to President Trump’s. Paul also has emerged as a critic of Fauci, which could be a way for Trump to assuage concerns about the trust the former president placed in him. He has suggested Fauci is a “traitor to his country” who “belongs in jail” and previously made a criminal referral of Fauci. He also used his position as a senator to question Big Pharma about the COVID jabs.
Sen. Paul has said he opposes a federal abortion ban and wants the issue to remain at the state level, according to an interview he gave in July 2022. That is a change in position from his previous sponsorship of the “Life at Conception Act” in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2021, which would extend 14th amendment protections to the unborn, making it illegal to deprive them of life.
He has regularly opposed federal funding for abortion. However, he, at least in 2014, appeared not to understand how Plan B, sometimes called the “morning after pill,” can act as an abortifacient.
Paul has also opposed federal protections for Biblical marriage, saying in 2013 he does not believe it is a federal issue. He opposed the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which enshrined same-sex “marriage” into federal law.
He also grilled Richard “Rachel” Levine, a gender-confused man serving as assistant Health and Human Services secretary, for his support of the surgical and chemical mutilation of children.
Read more on Paul’s record below:
Paul refers Fauci for prosecution after emails show he lied to Congress about COVID origins
Mask mandates are ‘all about submission’ Paul says
South Carolina Senator Tim Scott
Senator Scott ran against Trump in 2024 before dropping out, endorsing him, and campaigning with him. He opposed the federal redefinition of marriage in 2022, voting against the “Respect for Marriage Act.”
He said he supports a 15-week federal ban on abortions, though that would reportedly protect only six percent of babies. His position on abortion also reportedly attracted some socially liberal donors who thought DeSantis went too far in protecting human life.
He has introduced legislation to “restrict federal funding for any elementary or middle school that allows students to change their pronouns, gender markers, or sex-based accommodations (including locker rooms and bathrooms) without the consent of their parents,” according to a news release from the senator.
He has previously co-sponsored Sen. Paul’s “Life at Conception Act.”
Read more on Scott’s record below:
Sen. Scott introduces bill to ban schools from changing student pronouns without parental permission
Scott schools Biden treasury secretary on abortion and poverty
Tucker Carlson
The former Fox News host has been suggested as a potential running mate for Trump, including by the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and, reportedly, by Melania Trump. The president has said he would consider him.
Carlson has a significant platform and popularity among grassroots conservatives and shares the president’s foreign policy views.
The conservative commentator supports bans on the chemical and surgical mutilation of kids, as evidenced by his grilling of former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson on his opposition to banning them.
Carlson has often used his platform to criticize mass migration, globalism, and the ruling elites.
He supports same-sex “marriage.” In a Fox News segment, he criticized Biden for signing the “Respect for Marriage Act,” but not because he opposed the contents of the bill, but because he thought it was political theater. “Should people be able to get married if they love each other? Yeah, that’s fine,” Carlson said.
He has been outspoken against abortion, but it is not clear where he stands on federal efforts to protect preborn life.