WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance is a few weeks into his new job after he won the November election to replace former Sen. Rob Portman.

Vance said having his new position is an honor, and he keeps pinching himself that he’s on Capitol Hill. He’s become fast friends with Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.

Tuesday, he introduced his first piece of legislation called the PARTS Act, a bipartisan bill that aims to stop the theft of catalytic converters, a car part that has recently been targeted because they are made of precious metals.

“People don’t assume that you’re going to cut a catalytic converter out of the engine, and so they don’t typically stamp traceable information on that part,” said Vance. “This legislation would ensure that the auto manufacturers do that, so to your point, they’re traceable. It’s actually a crazy problem. It’s something that’s relatively new, like you said a lot of people haven’t heard about. But just to give you one statistic, in Columbus recently they caught a major catalytic converter theft ring. They had 13,000 catalytic converters totaling $19 million in value.”

Vance said he’s hoping this first bill sets the tone for the type of legislation he’s interested in pursuing. He’s also calling for an audit report of how much money in aid the U.S. has actually sent to Ukraine.

The policing reform debate is back on Capitol Hill after the release of a video showing Memphis, Tennessee police officers beating Tyre Nichols, who later died. Vance campaigned heavily on support from law enforcement in the Senate race and said he thinks there’s something the federal government can do to help.

“Well look, it’s a very, very hard thing to watch. A terrible thing that happened to that young man. He certainly didn’t deserve it, and I think the criminal justice system is going to do its job in that case, in fact it’s already starting to do its job in that case,” said Vance. “I think absolutely something can be done at the federal level to make sure we’re getting the best cops possible. Because when you have high-quality cops, which 99% of our cops are, you don’t have the things that we saw happen in Memphis.”

Vance said some officers have told him they’re angry about this case because they hold themselves to a higher standard, and he said the issues of recruitment and retention in police departments is a growing problem.