Social media website Bluesky issued a statement Wednesday explaining why Vice President JD Vance was briefly suspended from the platform earlier in the day.
The Context
Bluesky was launched in February 2023, months after Elon Musk bought X, formerly Twitter, and has a layout similar to Twitter’s. The social media website is widely popular among liberals and has more than 36 million users as of this month.
Vance sent out his first post on Bluesky at 4:50 p.m. ET Wednesday, writing: “Hello Bluesky, I’ve been told this app has become the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis. So I’m thrilled to be here to engage with all of you.”
Less than half an hour later, Vance’s account was suspended from the platform.
What To Know
In a statement to Newsweek Wednesday evening, a spokesperson for the platform said Vance’s account was removed because Bluesky’s system flagged it as a potential impostor.
“Vice President Vance’s account was briefly flagged by our automated systems that try to detect impersonation attempts which have targeted public figures like him in the past,” Bluesky said in its statement. “The account was quickly restored and verified so people can easily confirm its authenticity.”
“We welcome the Vice President to join the conversation on Bluesky,” the company said.
Bluesky told Fox News that Vance’s account was reinstated within 20 minutes of its suspension and that a verified badge has been added to it to “help users confirm the authenticity of the profile.”
Vance’s first posts on Bluesky referenced Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
The vice president, who has long held anti-abortion views, pointed specifically to Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion, in which Thomas argued against deferring to experts on medical care for transgender youth, writing that they have “no license to countermand the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.”
Thomas, arguably the most conservative justice on the High Court, went on to say there’s no “medical consensus” on “how best to treat gender dysphoria in children.”
“This case carries a simple lesson: In politically contentious debates over matters shrouded in scientific uncertainty, courts should not assume that self-described experts are correct,” Thomas wrote in his solo concurring opinion.
Vance posted a highlighted excerpt from Thomas’ opinion, writing on Bluesky, “To that end, I found Justice Thomas’s concurrence on medical care for transgender youth quite illuminating. He argues that many of our so-called ‘experts’ have used bad arguments and substandard science to push experimental therapies on our youth.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing dissent, saying that the majority “contorts logic and precedent to say otherwise,” retreated from “meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most” and “[abandoned] transgender children and their families to political whims.”
Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench, a rare move that justices make to signal their vehement opposition to the majority opinion.
What People Are Saying
The far-right anti-LGBTQ+ Libs of TikTok account posted on X: “Bluesky banned VP JD Vance 20 minutes after he joined the platform … The libs at Bluesky are so triggered.”
Conservative political commentator Eric Daugherty wrote: “OMG they banned him already.”
What Happens Next
Vance’s Bluesky account has been reinstated.
Update 6/18/25, 11:20 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information and context.
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