Vice President J.D. Vance gave a 17-minute address to about 700 union firefighters March 9. They were in Washington, D.C., for a legislative conference of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF).
Vance kept the speech general for the most part, praising fire fighters for their work, asking them to pray for the six American soldiers killed in Iran, and thanking Ohio EMTs for responding when as a child he called 911 because his opioid-addicted mother was in crisis.
“This is an administration that is fighting first and foremost for working men and women,” Vance said. “We have been unique among Republicans in that we haven’t turned away organized labor. We have tried to find ways to work with organized labor, not that we’re always going to agree.”
Vance gave Trump credit for two pieces of legislation that were important to IAFF:
The Honoring Our Fallen Heroes Act — a 14-page bill that was tucked into a 1,260-page military spending package signed by Trump on Dec. 18 — provides benefits to firefighters and their families when firefighters are killed or disabled by cancers linked to workplace exposure to toxins.
The Social Security Fairness Act — which repealed rules that reduced Social Security benefits for some public employees — was actually signed by President Biden during his final month in office. But Vance said Trump had “made sure that congressional Republicans stayed on top of that legislation.” [It passed 327-75 in the House 76-20 in the Senate.]
This was Vance’s second time addressing a national meeting of the IAFF. In August 2024 as a candidate, Vance was booed by some when he spoke to delegates at an IAFF convention in Boston having taken the stage after Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. IAFF was the first union to endorse Biden’s 2020 race but declined to endorse any candidate in 2024.
