Mike Pence town hall: Where he stands on 6 issues

(NewsNation) — Former vice president and current GOP presidential candidate Mike Pence is set to take questions in front of a live studio audience as part of a NewsNation town hall.

“On Balance” anchor Leland Vittert will moderate the event, which will include a remote audience in Des Moines, Iowa, of undecided, independent and Republican voters, at 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Sept. 13.

Ahead of Pence’s appearance, here’s a look at where the former vice president stands on the issues of the riot at the U.S. Capitol in 2021, abortion, the war in Ukraine, education, border security and immigration, and crime.

Jan. 6 and Trump’s Role

Following the Jan. 6, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Pence has frequently said that he did not have the authority to overturn the election results in favor of former President Donald Trump.

In March of 2023, Pence harshly criticized Trump for his role in the riot.

“President Trump was wrong,” Pence said during remarks at the annual white-tie Gridiron Dinner attended by politicians and journalists. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

In the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Trump pressured Pence to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory as he presided over the ceremonial certification of the results. Pence refused, and when rioters stormed the Capitol, some chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence.”

Abortion

Pence is a staunch opponent of abortion rights.

In June of 2023, he used a gathering of some of the nation’s leading Christian conservatives to urge his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination to support a 15-week federal abortion ban at minimum.

“We must not rest and we must not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in this country,” Pence said at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference. “Every Republican candidate for president should support a ban on abortion before 15 weeks as a minimum nationwide standard.”

Pence has called abortion the “winning issue” for Republicans in 2024, despite some political experts blaming the prevalence of the issue on underwhelming results for the GOP in the 2022 midterms.

War In Ukraine and American Support

Pence has supported Ukraine, and America’s support, since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

In late June of 2023, the former vice president made a surprise visit to Ukraine to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and tour the war-torn country.

He has called on the U.S. to deliver more military aid to the country and criticized GOP rivals who have questioned the ongoing U.S. involvement, saying there is no room in the party for “Putin apologists” and pushing back against those who want the U.S. to take on a more limited role on the world stage.

Education

Pence has called for limits to the federal government’s role in education.

In August, he said that if he were elected president, his administration would move to transfer power back to states and away from the federal government.

According to NBC News, the proposal also includes a plan to eliminate the Department of Education and return the department’s funds to states, under the stipulation that those states expand school choice.

“I know that states are not subsidiaries of Washington, DC. States are not subordinate departments of the federal government,” Pence said at the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Legislative Summit in Indianapolis.

During his time as governor of Indiana, Pence clashed with proponents of traditional public education and greatly expanded charter schools and the use of private school vouchers, according to a report from NPR.

Border and Immigration

Pence is an advocate for stricter security at the U.S.-Mexico border.

He has called on Central American leaders to “oppose all forms of amnesty,” typically defined as a path to citizenship for those who entered the country illegally, and seeks an end to what he calls “chain migration” by limiting family reunification to an immigrant’s close family. It also calls for promoting “the patriotic assimilation of immigrants” and finishing Trump’s border wall.

In June of 2022, he called for an enforcement-first strategy in confronting problems at the border and touted the Trump-Pence administration’s approach to immigration in a speech in Arizona on border security.

“To keep America safe, we must secure our southern border now and always,” Pence said.

As vice president, he told leaders of three Central American countries that the U.S. would be willing to do more to help their economies if they agreed to make a greater effort to fight illegal immigration into the U.S.

“If you do more, I’m here to say on behalf of the president of the United States and the American people, we’ll do more,” Pence told President Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras, President Jimmy Morales of Guatemala and Vice President Oscar Ortiz of El Salvador at a State Department conference in October of 2018.

Crime

Mike Pence said in June that there is a need to “rethink” the criminal justice reform legislation signed by then-President Trump while he was serving as vice president, calling for tougher penalties for serious offenders.

“I think we need to take a step back and rethink the First Step Act,” Pence said at a CNN town hall event in Iowa hours after declaring his candidacy for the White House.

The First Step Act, which was championed at the time by Trump and others, reduced mandatory minimum sentences, expanded credits for well-behaved prisoners looking for shorter sentences and aimed to reduce recidivism.

Pence has blamed a so-called “crime wave” in major U.S. cities on liberals who have called to “defund the police,” which was a common rallying cry in 2020 in response to multiple police killings of Black Americans.

In March of 2023, Pence called for individuals convicted in mass shootings to face the death penalty through an expedited process and argued the country should place more focus on institutionalizing the mentally ill as a potential way to address gun violence.

The Associated Press and NewsNation affiliate The Hill contributed to this report.