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The rumors about J.D. Vance leaving his wife for Erika Kirk, which have persisted since the two shared a much-discussed hug in October, were always more darkly entertaining than plausible. But observers have surmised that they took off because they reflected a certain air of uneasiness that has surrounded the Vances’ marriage the whole time it’s been on the national stage. As the highly educated daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha not only doesn’t burnish Vance’s MAGA credentials; she undermines them. When reports of a possible divorce on the horizon began to swirl in November, it wasn’t altogether surprising. Reckoning with all those contradictions was inevitable, right?
I guess not. No reckoning is imminent. In lieu of trading in his wife for a paler model, Vance has found another way to prove himself a good shepherd of the MAGA faithful: He and Usha are expecting a fourth child in July, they announced this week. (Their other children, two sons and a daughter, range in ages from 4 to 8. He is 41, and she is 40.) For all we know, there was never any trouble in their marriage, and the cognitive dissonance is pure projection. But it does make a kind of sick sense that if Vance can’t have a white wife standing next to him as he clearly looks toward the 2028 presidential election, the next best thing is a pregnant one.
If you’re wondering what’s so MAGA about having a kid, it’s not just that they’re having a kid but that they’re having a fourth kid. The average number of children per American household has been declining for decades, so having four kids in the year 2026 is a bit of a statement. While that choice doesn’t have to be conservative-coded, it tends to skew that way. It’s also a statement in the sense that it follows more literal statements Vance has made about pronatalism and how women need to have more babies, and/or the evils of women who choose not to. In fact, the Vance baby is part of a mini–baby boom at the White House, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Katie Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, also expecting.
This pregnancy puts a spotlight on Usha, who so far in her tenure as second lady has seemed intent on keeping a low profile. News outlets were quick to note the historical nature of this bun in the oven, which should make Usha “the first sitting Second Lady in modern history to bear a child in over 150 years,” per Time. I confess to feeling the tiniest twinge of sympathy for her about the timing of the announcement—January is early to announce a baby due in late July. Did she feel pushed to say something before people started to notice her body changing? The reports from a few months ago of her not wearing her wedding ring could be viewed in a different light now, as she easily could have stopped wearing it because her fingers were swollen.
But that’s all the “Poor Usha” we should be indulging in, because it’s important to remember that she is a willing participant in all of this. While it’s tempting to wonder if anyone else in her law-school class has put their career on hold to have four kids, she chose to have all those kids, and to leave her career to support her husband, and to stay with that husband, no matter how increasingly awful he seems both as a force in society and as an individual partner to her. Usha is free to slap “I Had This Before J.D. Went Crazy” stickers on her other kids. But if she could ever claim any kind of ignorance, that time is over. She has now seen exactly who her husband has become as vice president. And knowing everything she knows, she concluded that, yes, she wanted to have another one of J.D. Vance’s babies.
