Usha Vance is A-OK.
The progressives who can’t stop obsessing over her? Not so much.
The left and their media allies simply can’t believe that a woman with her résumé could love a man like Vice President JD Vance, let alone marry him and raise four children with him. That Usha Vance, 40, is Yale educated, Indian American and a former Democrat seems to drive them all the more crazy.
The second lady is often treated as a hostage in a marriage and a political life she secretly detests, despite all evidence to the contrary. Vanity Fair recently ran a piece headlined “What Is Usha Vance Thinking?” Divorce rumors circulate constantly.
This is a pattern for how conservative women like Vance and first lady Melania Trump are treated. And it involves a very
double standard when compared with how prominent women on the left are portrayed. No one wrote, "What Is Jill Biden Thinking?" No one speculated that former second gentleman Douglas Emhoff's smiles at then-Vice President Kamala Harris was really a cry for help. Democrats who are loyal to their spouses aren’t interrogated for their support anywhere near the way Republican partners are.
As a conservative woman, I find it all very tiresome.
Abdul El-Sayed is just the latest to call out Usha Vance
The latest flare-up came in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed – a progressive, democratic socialist-adjacent U.S. Senate candidate – took an uncalled-for shot at the second lady.
The trigger: At a rally in Ohio, the vice president had needled El-Sayed over his past comments on sharia law, joking about how his late grandfather ("Papaw") would have reacted. El-Sayed shot back on X on Aug. 22: "So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no …"
El-Sayed is clearly referring to Usha Vance's Indian heritage and Hindu upbringing, assuming "Papaw" wouldn't have approved of the match because of her race.
The implication doesn't stop there: that the second lady is trapped in a racist family she has no power to leave – and, worse, that she chose to marry into it in the first place.
Sounds both racist and sexist to me, and El-Sayed is getting hammered online for it, as he should be.
Usha Vance's record speaks for itself. But the left won't take her seriously.
Similarly egregious was a June comment from Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist and former top adviser to Harris who cofounded the "White Dudes for Harris" fundraising call in 2024.
The comment came after the vice president appeared on his wife's childhood-literacy podcast, "Storytime with the Second Lady." As she introduces him, he reaches over and pats her knee. She smiles in what appears to be a loving gesture.
Not to Nellis, though.
“The face Usha Vance makes when JD touches her knee is a cry for help if I’ve ever seen one,” he wrote, in a post that has garnered more than a million views on X.
(Apparently, in Nellis’ view, “White dudes” can only support women of South Asian descent if they’re Democrats like Harris.)
I doubt Nellis actually believes that the second lady was issuing an SOS. But if he's concerned, he can rest easy: Vance can handle herself.
The Yale Law grad also holds a master's from Cambridge. She clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts and is a working litigator.
Usha Vance is a smart woman and mother standing by her husband because that's exactly where she wants to be.
In a March interview, NBC News' Kate Snow asked if she feels "fully comfortable" in the political world she's now part of. Vance answered: “I do feel very comfortable in that no one has ever asked me to engage in any kind of litmus test on anything. And what I’ve found is that I was myself in 2014. I can be myself today. And I feel very comfortable in that world.”
Take her word for it.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Usha Vance isn't a victim or a hostage. She's doing just fine. | Opinion
