A woman who has frequently trolled Vice President JD Vance using a satirical cat lady Instagram account filed a lawsuit against him after he blocked her from attending a public event, The Daily Beast reported Tuesday.
Political influencer Amanda McGonigle, 37, said that the Secret Service blocked her from a taxpayer-funded "official work visit" in May in Bangor, Maine.
Five agents apparently approached her and said, "We know where you stand," The Beast reported. After the incident, she decided to sue the Executive Office of the President and the Secret Service for violating her First Amendment rights.
In 2024, McGonigle launched the CatsonaCouch Instagram account with a specific goal: “to troll the current administration and have more followers than JD Vance.”
"The username was inspired by Vance’s 2021 comment deriding 'childless cat ladies' in the Democratic Party, which he described in his new book as 'one of the dumbest things' he has ever said," according to The Beast.
"The entire point of this Instagram account is to troll JD Vance every single day because he is the human equivalent of a soggy saltine cracker," McGonigle said in an Instagram video.
"Apparently, my daily roasting of JD Vance has hurt his feelings so badly that I've now made it onto some sort of government watch list," she said.
McGonigle described how she registered for the event and received email confirmation on White House letterhead that she was slated to attend.
Her attorney, Anahita Sotoohi with the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Beast that McGonigle's "case strikes at the heart of the First Amendment, which protects the freedom to express political views without fear of retribution—even when done with flair and levity."
"The freedom to mock has been a central tenet of American political discourse since the founding," Sotoohi said. "The First Amendment cannot be revoked just because one of the country’s most powerful people can’t take a joke."
