Politics
How Usha Vance has played a quietly supportive role in her husband’s political career
Usha Vance, the wife of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vancehas played the role of supportive spouse on the campaign trail. Yet the lawyer has been subject to intense scrutiny: Her professional career has been dissected, her image has been contrasted with those of other women in Donald Trump’s orbitand, most of all, her politics have been widely speculated upon.
Usha Vance, who comes from a family of academicshas had a wildly successful career in law. She studied at the prestigious Yale Law School, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge and then was a clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts. She went on to work as a trial lawyer at Munger, Tolles & Olson, a position she left when her husband became Trump’s running mate.
A child of Indian immigrants who grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in San Diego, she met her future husband at Yale.
A child of Indian immigrants who grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in San Diego, she met her future husband at Yale. The couple married in 2014 and have three children.
Follow live updates covering the 2024 vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz.
JD Vance has spoken highly of his wife. In a 2020 interview on Megyn Kelly’s podcast, he said, “I’m one of those guys who really benefits from having sort of a powerful female voice over his left shoulder saying, ‘Don’t do that; do that.’” He added that she now serves as that guiding figure for him.
Her husband’s extreme views have become well known, but Usha Vance’s politics have largely remained a question mark. Reporting has indicated that she has historically leaned liberal or centrist. According to The New York Timesshe was a registered Democrat as recently as 2014. In July, The Washington Post reported that some of her friends and associates watched in “disbelief” as she spoke at the Republican National Convention, where her husband was officially nominated as Trump’s running mate.
Usha Vance has accompanied her husband on the campaign trail, but she has largely avoided carving out a public persona of her own. She has sat down for only one media interview — with Fox News — since her husband’s nomination, during which she found herself defending her husband’s denigrating comments about “childless cat ladies” as just a “quip.”
Her husband’s extreme views have become well known, but Usha Vance’s politics have largely remained a question mark.
She has been the target of racist attacks from the right — including from white nationalist Nick Fuenteswho has socialized with Trump. Yet she has given no public indication that she does not support her husband’s political shift from conservative Never Trumper to the torchbearer of the next generation of the MAGA movement.
In her interview with Fox News in August, Usha Vance said she and her husband disagree on politics sometimes, but that she has faith in his “intention.”
“We’re two different people — we have lots of different backgrounds and interests and things like that,” she said. “So we come to different conclusions all the time. But that’s part of the fun of being married. And what I never doubt about JD, even when I disagree about this or that, is his intention, what it is that he really wants to do.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
Around a hundred Samurai Blue superfans crowded the Old Ambassador’s Residence at the Japanese embassy in Washington, on Sunday for a watch party marking its World Cup opener against the Netherlands.
The supporters — a motley group including erstwhile English teachers in Japan, state department workers and embassy staffers — lounged around a projector set in the building’s front room, plates piled high with nigiri. Drinking Kirin Ichiban lager and Asahi Super Dry, they winced when the Dutch team had the ball in the opposing third and burst into cheers and sang “Vamos Nippon” when Daichi Kamada’s header tied the game in the 89th minute.
“The World Cup itself is a competition,” said Masatsugu Odaira, the embassy’s minister of public affairs, at the watch party. “But from the perspective of policy and diplomacy, it’s a very good chance to connect people across borders.”
At the event, Blue Light News spoke to soccer fans who are already excited about Japan’s growing diplomatic footprint and soft power projection. And they hope the World Cup will buoy that cultural momentum, stimulating tourism — one of the nation’s most lucrative sectors — and drawing eyes to Japan.
The World Cup is “just a visceral way to connect people who have not yet had the opportunity to travel to Japan to be swept up in the enthusiasm of an international competition,” said Andrew Wylegala, president of the National Association of Japan-America Societies.
Japan is already “at the top of its game” in terms of soft power projection, Wylegala added — and “soccer now fits in with that.”
Embassy staff wore pink shirts with the American and Japanese flags on the back. “Together We Bloom,” they read.
The end result, a 2-2 draw against the Dutch, the world’s eighth ranked international side, only added to their enthusiasm.
The women’s team has a far more prolific record. Fans still hark back to their 2011 World Cup final victory over the U.S., months after a massive earthquake and tsunami slammed the country.
But the men’s team has won just seven World Cup games in its history. Japan’s best-ever finish: The round of 16, where they’ve fallen four separate times.
But there’s hope that, this year, the underdogs could pull off an upset. From Ajax’s Takehiro Tomiyasu to Kamada, a Crystal Palace midfielder, the Samurai Blue have more than enough talent to compete with the sport’s upper crust.
Odaira’s hope for this year? “Oh, becoming a champion,” he said.
No European country has infuriated Donald Trump more than Spain. Now it’s desperate to win his World Cup.
Teenage superstar Lamine Yamal, Rodri and co. enter the tournament as joint favorites alongside France. With the U.S. president apparently intent on making this a World Cup that projects his personal influence and America’s soft power, victory would be sweet for Spanish soccer fans — but especially so for their prime minister.
Outspoken socialist leader Pedro Sánchez, a supporter of Atlético Madrid, has clashed spectacularly with Trump over the Iran war, but also regarding NATO spending and Israel’s assault in Gaza. Meanwhile their policies on issues from energy to immigration could hardly be further apart.
Read the full story about the failing Washington-Madrid relationship here.
LOS ANGELES — In many World Cup host cities, competing teams also find themselves jostling for soft-power supremacy around their matches. But before its first match tomorrow in Los Angeles, New Zealand has had the diplomatic landscape all to itself.
New Zealand is scheduled to face Iran, which has not had formal diplomatic relations with the United States since 1980. Even as President Donald Trump claims an end to the countries’ monthslong war is at hand, Iran will be competing in the World Cup under severe travel restrictions. The team has been forced from its original Tucson training camp to Tijuana, and is being forced to effectively commute to its matches in the U.S. without a full government delegation.
That has left New Zealand alone in pressing its off-field agenda in Los Angeles. On Sunday evening, New Zealand consul-general Katja Ackerley opened her Brentwood mansion to a “New Zealand on the World Stage” networking reception sponsored by the government agencies overseeing the country’s trade, sport and foreign-investment portfolios.
“It’s all about soft power, it’s all about person-to-person,” said Peter Miskimmin, the government’s head of sports diplomacy. “We are building relations through sport rather than bringing up arms against one another.”
The country’s Los Angeles diplomatic outpost typically focuses on promoting exports of wine and lamb, expediting visas for Hollywood personnel traveling for location shoots and addressing the perpetual crisis of “Kiwis losing their passports in Las Vegas,” as one previous inhabitant of the office put it.
A delegation of New Zealand officials was preparing for their first World Cup appearance since 2010 uncertain whether any of their opposite numbers from Iran would attend, and how that might affect the standard match-day pageantry.
“This is our first World Cup in 16 years so we can’t tell what’s different,” said James Wear, a general manager of the New Zealand Football Association. “We don’t have anything to compare.”
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