(NewsNation) — With former President Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election with Sen. JD Vance as his vice president, his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance will become the first second lady of South Asian descent.
Trump announced his pick for vice president on Truth Social as the Republican National Convention kicked off in Milwaukee.
However, the Ohio senator couldn’t have made it this far politically at just 39 years old without his wife and her guidance since their time together at Yale University.
Who is Usha Vance?
Born Usha Chilukuri to Indian immigrants, Usha Vance grew up in the suburbs of San Diego, California.
Known to family and friends as a “leader” and “bookworm,” the New York Times reported she was a star-studded student. She earned a four-year degree in history at Yale University and a master’s of philosophy at the University of Cambridge under a Gates Fellowship.
After receiving her master’s, Usha Vance returned to Yale for law school. It was at Yale Law School that she met JD Vance.
She also spent a year clerking for future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he served as an appeals court judge in Washington, followed by a year as a law clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts.
Relationship with JD Vance
In 2014, Usha and JD Vance were married in Kentucky. Since their union, they have had three kids together: Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel Vance.
JD Vance had previously said Usha Vance helped shape and actualize his career and ambitions, per the New York Times.
“Usha was like my Yale spirit guide,” JD Vance wrote in “Hillbilly Elegy.” “She instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know to ask, and she always encouraged me to seek opportunities that I didn’t know existed.”
Political beliefs
In school, Usha Vance surrounded herself with mostly liberal and left-wing groups, the New York Times reported. In 2014, she registered herself as a Democrat, the report said.
However, more recent records from 2022 showed her registered as a Republican, the Washington Post reported.
As a lawyer, she worked as a corporate litigator at Munger, Tolles, and Olson, a national law firm known to be “radically progressive.”
While Usha Vance mostly stays out of the spotlight, she has strategically been beside JD Vance throughout his political campaign.
Shortly after Trump announced JD Vance’s bid for vice president, Usha Vance left her position at the law firm.
“In light of today’s news, I have resigned from my position at Munger, Tolles & Olson to focus on caring for our family,” she said in a statement.
Views on Trump
In 2016, JD Vance was a “never Trump” Republican. He called Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” for office. Usha Vance joined in on her husband’s criticism of the former president, calling out Trump’s racist rhetoric. She said Trump could be “America’s Hitler.”
However, by the time JD Vance met Trump in 2021, he had reversed his opinion, citing Trump’s accomplishments as president. Both men downplayed JD Vance’s past scathing criticism.
During a June interview with “Fox & Friends,” Usha Vance pledged her full support to her husband.
“I’m not raring to change anything about our lives right now, but I believe in JD, and I really love him, and so we’ll just sort of see what happens with our life,” she said.
In mid-October, JD Vance revealed at a rally in Pennsylvania how his wife and Trump met. The senator said Trump greeted her with a “big hug” and called her “beautiful.”
“Those of us who know (Trump) know he’s a very engaging guy, despite what the media tells you about him—he’s actually just a very warm and normal person,” JD Vance said.
Trump then supposedly asked Usha Vance what she thought about her husband in politics.
Vance recounted the conversation at the rally saying, “If anybody knows my wife, it’s like the perfect Usha answer — it’s a very diplomatic answer … It’s like: ‘Well sir, my husband really loves public service, we love the state of Ohio and I’m just really thrilled to be able to help him out where I can.'”
JD Vance’s past comments
In a resurfaced 2021 interview, JD Vance made a comment about “childless cat ladies,” which went viral on social media.
In her first solo interview in August with Fox News, Usha Vance came to her husband’s defense.
“What he was really saying is that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country, and sometimes our policies are designed in a way that makes it even harder,” she said.
The original comment her husband made was this: “We’re effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. And it’s just a basic fact.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.