As an Indian-American, I swell with pride over Vice President Harris’s background, accomplishments, life and energy. She is super-cool to me and an icon for Indian-Americans and the children of immigrants. I am constantly deflated by the crop of Indian-American Republicans though. They’re doing too much to try to get acceptance from a party built on racism. While Nikki Haley’s stupidity ruined her national political ambitions, let’s not overlook the fact that her Indian heritage was a dealbreaker for millions of Republican voters. Same with Vivek Ramaswamy. Well, funny story? Donald Trump’s new running mate is JD Vance, a scamming white man. But Vance is married to an Indian-American woman.
J. D. Vance has the support of his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance as he becomes Donald Trump’s vice president candidate in the 2024 election. The couple first met at Yale Law School in the 2010s, during which they organized a discussion group on the subject of “social decline in white America,” per The New York Times. The two quickly bonded, with Vance referring to his then-classmate as his “Yale spirit guide.” The two tied the knot in 2014, a year after they graduated from Yale Law School.
Since then, they have welcomed three children together. Though the two are fairly private about their family life, Vance and his wife have stepped out together for a number of political events.
The couple reportedly met in 2013 when they were both students at Yale Law School. According to The New York Times, they worked together to organize a discussion group on the subject of “social decline in white America.” The publication notes that reading material for the group included scholarly papers such as “Urban Appalachian Children: An ‘Invisible’ Minority in City Schools,” and posits that the syllabus “become something like the theoretical spine” for Vance’s hit 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which documented his life growing up white working class in the postindustrial Rust Belt.
While studying at Yale, Usha was also the executive development editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology, per her bio on Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. She participated in the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic, the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project during her time at Yale.
Prior to Yale Law School, Usha received her BA in history from Yale University and her MPhil in early modern history from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar, per her LinkedIn.
Together, Vance and Usha have three children: two sons, Ewan and Vivek, and a daughter named Mirabel, per The Hill. Vance announced the birth of their third child on Instagram on Dec. 21, 2021.
Honestly, she sounds impressive, and she’s currently listed as working for an Ohio law firm as a “skilled litigator.” As in… Vance’s wife and mother to his three children works outside the home as a lawyer, all while he promotes some of the most regressive and misogynistic policies? But that’s neither here nor there. I wanted to talk about Usha Chilukuri Vance because now that JD Vance is riding with MAGA, his wife is getting a lot of hate from that very crowd. Guess why?? Yeah. They think it’s wrong that Donald Trump’s running mate is married to a brown woman.
The MAGA racism against Vance’s Indian American wife has already begun.
That’s the Republican Party for you. pic.twitter.com/7jpOKAxXjk
— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) July 16, 2024
Photos courtesy of Getty, Vance’s Instagram.