Usha Vance, a quiet confidante, becomes celebrity on India trip
The second lady has kept a low profile in Washington, but is planning new projects.
Vice President JD Vance was less than two minutes into a speech in Jaipur, India this week, when he had a question for one of his most trusted advisers.
He had just visited the Akshardham Temple, he said, turning to his wife, second lady Usha Vance, seated in the front row. “Did I pronounce that right, honey? I did OK?” he asked.
The 39-year-old lawyer has long been her husband’s sounding board on questions of policy and politics, in addition to pronunciation, a quiet role more apparent this week as the family of five toured India on an official visit.
She sat for an Indian television interview, met with India’s prime minister and received widespread attention as she travelled through her parents’ homeland.
“It is, in many ways, a trip of a lifetime,” she told NDTV, a popular Indian news channel. It is the first time the vice president and their three children had visited the country, she said.
The family met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his official residence and visited a string of historical landmarks, including the Taj Mahal. The Vance children wore traditional Indian clothing that Usha Vance said she ordered for them online.
“Their children embraced India’s vibrant culture,” MyGovIndia, a public platform of the Indian government, noted on social media, and Indian news outlets recorded in headlines.
“She’s a bit of a celebrity, it turns out, in India. I think more so than her husband,” the vice president noted in Jaipur, an echo of former President John F. Kennedy’s remark that he was “the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.”
A former registered Democrat who eschews the flashy makeup and fashion of many in the MAGA world, Usha Vance now backs the controversy-courting Trump administration, people close to her said. The couple began to sour on the political left in 2018 when Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexual misconduct in his confirmation hearings, sparking a fraught national debate, according to a person familiar with the couple.
Friends have described Usha Vance as private and her trajectory surprising for someone who never appeared overtly political. Other children of immigrants have wondered how she can square her life experience with her husband’s politics.
Vance herself clerked for Kavanaugh from 2014 to 2015 after graduating from Yale Law School, where she met her husband. Some of the clerks from her year defended Kavanaugh when he faced accusations of sexual assault during his confirmation hearing.
“It was really, really challenging to see, not a different side of him, but a different way of people engaging with him,” Usha Vance said on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” last year.
She has kept grey streaks in her hair and regularly wears flats. For Tuesday’s television interview, where she described Indian heritage influencing the second family, she wore the same outfit she had on while sightseeing that day.
“My parents brought with them many traditions of scholarship, of a respect for knowledge, of the primacy of books and learning in life — and that translated to the way that they built their household, and that, in turn, has translated to the way that we’ve built ours,” she said.
Those close to the couple say Usha Vance is her husband’s most trusted adviser, and committed to his future political aspirations that could land her in the White House alongside him. The two talk frequently throughout the day. She gives feedback on his speeches before he delivers them. JD Vance recently acknowledged his wife’s advice, saying she encouraged him to be kinder on social media.
“JD really listens to Usha,” said Charlie Kirk, a friend of the vice president and the co-founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative-advocacy organisation.
The second lady has yet to unveil a portfolio of issues she wants to highlight from her position, though it is in the works, a person familiar with her plans said. She is most likely to take on projects that draw from her experience as a mother, the person said.
Usha Vance has hired aides, including a chief of staff, a policy expert and a communications director, but she has largely focused on getting her three young children settled into their new home and navigating the end-of-school-year activities and sports, according to several people.
The California native has been spotted occasionally around Washington — working out at a high-intensity cardio and weight exercise class at Orangetheory Fitness, and on the sidelines, with her husband, at one of their son’s weekend soccer games.
The vice president wrote in his best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” in 2016 that he was captivated by a young Usha when the two met, calling her a “genetic anomaly, a combination of every positive quality a human being should have.”
Her husband’s political career has moved her into the public spotlight, first when he was elected to the Senate from Ohio in 2022, then through the bruising 2024 campaign for the White House. She introduced him at the Republican National Convention, noting that he learned how to cook Indian food from her mother.
When the couple began dating, “he started eating all sorts of vegetables he’d never thought of or encountered or thought he’d want to try,” Vance told The Wall Street Journal in an interview during the campaign, though she noted steak remained his favourite food. In India, Vance said the vice president has recently been “making a specialty of desserts” and trying various lamb recipes.
Until last year, she was an attorney for Munger, Tolles & Olson, a law firm she worked at for more than six years. The firm has since taken on the Trump administration by representing Perkins Coie, a law firm that President Trump accused of weaponizing the American legal system.
Vance has at times seemed caught off-guard by the attention. Trump named her as a trustee of the Kennedy Center, and the couple was booed in March when they attended a performance there. Usha Vance told the Free Press in her first interview as second lady that they didn’t anticipate anyone would notice them in their balcony seats.
Her husband has nodded at the reality of what his victory has meant for her. In March, at an event at a plastics company in Michigan, Vance joked that “because the cameras are all on, anything I say, no matter how crazy, Usha has to smile and laugh and celebrate it.”
She laughed.
Wall Street Journal
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