Midwest
Trump running mate Vance aims to turn Blue Wall states red
BYRON CENTER, Mich. — When it comes to the crucial battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, long known as the Democrats’ ‘blue wall’ states, Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance is optimistic they’re “going to be the red wall in November.”
“We’re going to make sure that Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan go red,” former President Trump’s 2024 running mate emphasized in an exclusive national interview with Fox News Digital on the campaign trail in southwestern Michigan this past week.
Democrats reliably won all three working-class states in presidential elections for nearly a quarter-century before Trump narrowly carried them in capturing the White House eight years ago.
HARRIS AND TRUMP TRADE FIRE IN BATTLE FOR THE BLUE WALL STATES
Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee, headlines a Trump campaign event in Byron Center, Michigan, on August 14, 2024. (Fox News — Paul Steinhauser)
But in 2020, President Biden won back all three states with razor-thin margins as he defeated Trump.
The states remain extremely competitive as Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump face off in the 2024 presidential election.
Last month’s Republican National Convention was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city. And Trump and Vance held their first join-campaign rally after the convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan, just a few miles north of where Vance was interviewed by Fox News on Wednesday.
WHAT VANCE SAID IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH FOX NEWS DIGITAL
Vance, a first-term populist senator and a leading Trump ally in the Senate, has made stops in all three blue wall states in the past two weeks, and told Fox News that he would be spending plenty of time in the states the rest of the summer and autumn spreading the GOP ticket’s working-class message.
“We’re going to make sure that Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan go red. People are sick of green energy scams that ship our manufacturing jobs to China instead of keeping them right here at home in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I think we have a great pro-manufacturing, pro-American worker message,” he emphasized.
Republican presidential nominee former President Trump and GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio appear on the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Vance said that his pitch to working-class voters is a “core message that Donald Trump and I have in this campaign and this is a good place for people to hear it.”
Vance hails from Ohio, which neighbors both Pennsylvania and Michigan, and his Midwestern and working-class roots in a region long known as the ‘Rust Belt’ were likely key factors in Trump’s decision to name the senator as his running mate.
TRUMP CAMPAIGN PLANS COUNTER-PROGRAMMING DURING DEMOCRATS’ CONVENTION
Before running for Senate, Vance grabbed national attention after his book “Hillbilly Elegy” – which tells his story of growing up in a struggling steel mill city and his roots in Appalachian Kentucky – became a New York Times bestseller and was then made into a Netflix film. The story spotlighted the values of many working-class Americans who became supporters of Trump’s policies.
Fox News observed as Vance spread his Midwestern folksiness with the owners and family of the trucking company that hosted last week’s rally in Michigan.
Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and his wife Usha meet with supporters ahead of a campaign event in Byron Center, Michigan on August 14, 2024. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Holding the baby of one of the family members, the senator — who was accompanied by his wife — said that he wanted a fourth child.
And later, in his speech at the rally, he spotlighted the instrumental role his grandmother “Mamaw” in his life. The comments have become a key ingredient in his stump speech.
“I was one of the lucky ones – I managed to achieve the American Dream. I managed to build a life because I had a Mamaw that was tough as nails,” Vance told the crowd.
Democrats have repeatedly taken aim at Vance, and have argued that he’s anything but a working-class hero, as they point to his years in San Francisco as a top hedge fund executive when he worked as a principal in a venture capital firm owned by billionaire Peter Thiel.
Harris — who replaced Biden last month atop the Democrats’ 2024 ticket and who named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, another Midwesterner, as her running mate — charges that Vance is a “rubber stamp” for Trump’s “extreme agenda”
“Make no mistake, JD Vance will be loyal only to Trump, not to our country,” Harris has said.
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
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Illinois
Illinois State Police investigating fatal shooting of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez by ICE agents in Franklin Park
Illinois State Police are now investigating federal agents on the front lines of last year’s immigration sweep around Chicago known as “Operation Midway Blitz.”
ISP confirmed they’re investigating the death of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, who was shot “at close range” by a federal agent in Franklin Park last September.
ICE agents said Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, originally from Mexico, was trying to flee when they attempted to stop his vehicle, and he tried to ram agents with his car.
Franklin Park police asked the state police to open the investigation shortly after receiving new information from the Illinois Accountability Commission last week.
The Cook County State’s Attorney says it will play a supportive role in the ISP investigation.
Noah Bontrager is Indiana’s first sub-4-minute high school miler
Noah Bontrager is Indiana’s first sub-4-minute high school miler
Special to IndyStar
TOPEKA, Ind. – Indiana’s first high school boy to run a sub-4-minute mile is not from Indianapolis or its collar counties. Nor from the population centers outside Chicago, Cincinnati or Louisville, Ky.
Noah Bontrager has instead been influenced by the Amish culture of the state’s northeast corner. The 18-year-old lives in Shipshewana and is a senior at Westview High School, enrollment of 343, almost small enough to be in the smallest of Indiana’s four basketball classes.
The LaGrange County school is 15 miles south of the Michigan border, located on County Road 600 W., where horse-drawn buggies clip clop along the pavement. The track is fenced off from farmland. Horses graze nearby, and a cow once delivered a calf in an adjacent pasture, right in the middle of practice.
Running has evolved since 1954, when Roger Bannister first broke the 4-minute barrier at Oxford, England. Now it is a sport of high tech, featuring propulsive supershoes, biomechanic analysis, wavelights for record attempts, and the Strava app tracking workouts,
Yet tech doesn’t break records. Runners do.
This sport rewards simplicity and industriousness, two characteristics of the Amish lifestyle. Bontrager said he marvels at junior high runners who do chores before school, attend classes and track practice, then do more chores after school.
“I like to say they work all day. I think I got that from them,” he said. “And from my mom and dad.”
Bontrager is a Swiss-German Mennonite/Amish family name, originating from the German Bornträger, meaning transporter of liquids.
Noah’s paternal grandmother, Judy Bontrager, died in 2020 after a seven-year fight against pancreatic cancer. She once set trusses on a barn while a softball-sized tumor grew inside her.
Noah’s grandfather, Josey Bontrager, had dyslexia and never learned to read. He started a small-scale manufacturing business, Shipshewana Hardwoods, in the early 1970s. He built it into a company that became PalletOne, which was acquired for $232 million in 2020. Noah’s father, Lyle, still speaks Dutch to the grandfather.
“How do you build a multimillion-dollar business when you can’t read. How do you do that?” said Lyle, who is Westview’s cross-country coach.
“Stuff like that is ingrained inside of him somewhere. Just determination and grit.”
How Noah Bontrager became Indiana’s first high school boy to run a sub-4-minute
During the 2000s, other Indiana boys had ambitions to run a sub-4-minute mile: Austin Mudd, Cole Hocker, Lucas Guerra, Kole Mathison, Martin Barco. None made it, with Mudd’s outdoor 4:01.83 standing as a state record since 2011.
Bontrager had thought about it for a couple of years. At state last year, he set a 1,600-meter meet record of 4:02.60, equivalent to a 4:04.02 mile. Yet it was startling when he actually broke through.
For one thing, he was ill at the end of cross-country season, finishing second at state, behind Springs Valley’s Calvin Seitz. Bontrager was 43rd in the Brooks nationals Dec. 13 at San Diego – close to last place – and was 78 seconds behind winner Jackson Spencer of Herriman, Utah. It was such a pitiable run that Spencer consoled Bontrager afterward.
For another, Bontrager said skeptics didn’t think he should run the mile March 15 at the New Balance indoor nationals.
“Really, the mile? You should do the two-mile,” they told him.
Bontrager, a drummer, had a concert on Friday of the two-mile and declined to abandon Westview’s band. He would chase the dream on Sunday. Except when he arrived in Boston, meet officials told him he might not be racing the top milers. Maybe the second-to-last heat, they said.
One runner dropped out, and Bontrager was in the fast heat. He was all-in.
He was in third with 400 meters left, then seized the lead by running the last two laps in 58.57 seconds. Usually undemonstrative, Bontrager thrust his right index finger in the air as he broke the tape. His time – 3 minutes, 59.48 seconds – was a meet record and made him No. 7 on the all-time high school indoor list.
Sitting with his father in a restaurant afterward, enjoying a “juicy hamburger,” he was still processing it all.
“I was kind of in shock, even three hours after,” he said.
Perhaps more shocking?
In three subsequent meets, all in the Indianapolis area, Bontrager has sent vibes that sub-4:00 is just one step on a long journey. He could be on a world stage as soon as August.
Multi-sport athlete
Growing up, Bontrager was immersed in running culture but wasn’t confined to that. He played youth basketball and baseball, including a travel team with the latter. His peers went on to reach the Class 2A state basketball title game this year and baseball semistate last year.
“I do actually have hand/eye coordination, unlike the stereotypical runner,” he said.
His parents, Lyle and Erin, are former runners who were track coaches at the junior high. Noah discovered he was better at running than at other sports. Running was “the norm,” he reasoned. At Westview, it was.
Westview’s track coach, Matt Jones, and Lyle Bontrager are cousins.
Jones was seventh in the 1988 state cross-country meet, leading the Warriors to fifth as a team. Besides coaching, he is an electrician in the recreational vehicle industry and farms 350 acres.
Another Westview runner, Andrew Begley, was a four-time state champion in the mid-1990s before joining NCAA championship teams at Arkansas. Westview was third in the state in cross-country in 2017, behind champion Carmel, whose enrollment was 13 times greater.
And when Bontrager was an eighth-grader, he helped Westview win a state title in middle-school cross-country.
“Jumping the fence” is a phrase used to describe an Amish person, often a teenager, leaving the lifestyle to live in the modern world. Following the 1972 Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin v. Yoder, Amish children are exempt from compulsory high school attendance.
Noah and three siblings were not raised Amish. Their Christian faith remains foundational, even though the parents attend one church and Noah another.
“He will give glory to God for the gift he’s been given,” his mother said.
No one in the family has graduated from college. Noah is committed to Notre Dame. His brother, Cole, 19, who ran 1,600 meters in 4:32 in high school, is a freshman at Rose-Hulman Institute.
Outsprinting the treadmill
Determination and grit – and talent – aren’t solely responsible for Noah Bontrager’s rise. Although his father and Jones are eager for him to join a sophisticated regimen at Notre Dame, it would be hard to identify better high school coaching.
No wonder Bontrager said he trusts in the training.
He runs perhaps 55 miles a week in the fall, 45 in the spring. He doesn’t do junk miles – i.e. slow runs for volume. Weight training is reflected in the pecs on his 5-8, 130-pound frame.
One workout is two sets of three-mile tempo runs at a 5:05-mile pace, with two minutes of rest between sets. For context, that is fast enough to be all-state in cross-country once, then twice, all in less than 33 minutes.
He did such a workout on a treadmill on a recent rainy day, then finished with 300-meter sprints. The machine maxes out at 16 mph. He was outsprinting the treadmill.
“His workouts are unreal,” Jones said. “Whatever I throw at him, he just does.”
Similarly unreal has been Bontrager’s assault on records:
>> March 28, Fall Creek Pavilion. He set a small-school meet record of 9:08.35 in the 3,200 at the Hoosier State Relays, running the last 800 in 1:59.33. Eighty minutes later, he ran a 1:50.88 anchor to bring Westview from ninth to fourth in the 4×800 relay.
Remember his devotion to band? He played drums until the third quarter of Westview’s 2A basketball title game against Parke Heritage at Bankers Life Fieldhouse that day, then hustled to the track.
>> April 17, Franklin Central. He set a Flashes Showcase record of 4:02.48, winning by six seconds. It was fastest mile ever run by a high schooler on Indiana soil.
>> April 24, Carmel. He ran the 3,200 in 8:42.18, just a tenth off the state record, closing in 57.89 – or eight seconds faster than Seitz’s last lap.
Bontrager could repeat his double win in the June 5 state meet at North Central. But he might skip the 1,600, focusing on a fast time in the 3,200. (Fastest in the nation is 8:31.80 by Spencer.)
Beyond that, there is the 3,000 in the under-20 nationals June 18-19 at Eugene, Ore. That selects a team for the U20 World Championships, set for Aug. 5-9, also at Eugene.
“That’s the goal,” Bontrager said.
He once thought he was no sprinter, but that was dispelled when he ran 400 meters in 49.78 two days after the Hoosier State Relays.
International racing requires closing speed. He has that now. He already had the worth ethic.
That’s a way of life around here.
Contact David Woods at dwoods1411@gmail.com.
IOWA (KWQC) – Iowa Democrats responded to Vice President JD Vance’s visit and endorsement of Rep. Zach Nunn in a press release.
The statement addressed Vance’s comments on tax cuts for American manufacturers. Democrats said corporate greed and policies pushed by Republicans including Vance and Nunn have led to the ongoing closure of Burlington’s CNH plant.
The release stated that from 2015 to 2024, CNH made $11.6 billion in profit and the CEO made $113 million during that time period. The statement said the money could have provided as much as $5 per hour per employee and could have been used to keep plants open in the U.S. and Iowa.
Vance discussed opening regulation for E15 fuel so Iowa farmers can have another revenue source, along with recent progress made for the Farm Bill.
A farmer from central Iowa remarked on the recent Farm Bill, saying a new Farm Bill has just passed the House, but it is not future-looking and continues to support big operations. The farmer said the bill gives money for precision agriculture development and purchases for farmers.
The statement referenced the president’s February executive order to purchase metric tons of beef from Argentina instead of supporting Iowa’s beef production.
Copyright 2026 KWQC. All rights reserved.
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