One of the Democrats’ rising stars roasted his fellow Yale Law graduate JD Vance as a “stain” on the Ivy League university Tuesday.
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna made the insult in a speech to current students, saying, “Let me say this as clearly as I can: JD Vance, your cold indifference to the lives of vulnerable immigrants betrays every principle that this law school was built to uphold,”
“Your affiliation with this law school is now a stain on the degree of every Yale graduate,” he added.
Khanna, who received his Juris Doctor about 10 years before Vance, snubbed the vice president’s Ivy League association as he finds himself on the Democratic Party’s shortlist for a potential 2028 presidential run.
“At the head of this gathering storm stands Vice President Vance, calling on the president of the United States to defy the Supreme Court, and casting universities like Yale … as the enemy,” Khanna said.
Vance, who was brought up in self-proclaimed “hillbilly” culture, has long told a personal narrative in which he pulled himself up by his bootstraps to escape his dysfunctional family and impoverished Appalachian community. Vance was largely raised by his grandparents in Ohio due to his mother’s severe drug addiction.
He wrote his memoir Hillbilly Elegy about growing up in Ohio with next-to-nothing while facing his family’s abuse and alcoholism.
After high school Vance joined the Marine Corps before eventually getting G.I. bill-sponsored education from Ohio State University, where he graduated in 2009. He then made his way to Yale, where he claimed he was largely an outsider among classmates that had gone to private colleges.
He graduated in 2013.
“Maybe, with my Southern drawl and lack of a family pedigree, I felt like I needed proof that I belonged at Yale,” he wrote in Hillbilly Elegy.
Khanna’s upbringing could not be more different. His grandfather played a central role in the Indian independence movement and his father is a prominent chemical engineer. After his parents immigrated to the U.S., they raised Khanna in Philadelphia. He attended the prestigious University of Chicago before getting his law degree from Yale in 2001.
Vance’s fellow Yale classmates have expressed shock at the VP’s conservative shift, claiming he started as a moderate and his “own thinker” before he hopped on board with Trump and the winning team.
In 2016 he even opposed Trump, calling him an “idiot” and comparing him to Hitler. But in years since Vance has begun to parrot MAGA talking points and distanced himself from his alma mater.
In 2021 Vance gave a speech titled “The Universities are the Enemy” at the National Conservatism Conference. He laughed and joined in with people booing Yale and said that the school had turn into a place that was “genuinely totalitarian” due to its “liberal bias.”
One of Vance’s former professors, George L. Priest, said last year the VP had “changed his views.”
“When he started running for senator, he wasn’t doing so well,” he said. “And then he became a Trumpist and adopted Trump’s policies, and he’s done a lot better.”
During Khanna’s speech to Yale he also compared Vance to dictator Joseph Stalin and said that Vance “has not only declared war on the courts, but on the universities. And it is no accident… strongmen do not fear recessions or even failed wars as much as they fear the university.”
Khanna’s speech came just hours after the federal government froze more than $2 billion in grants to Harvard University, part of a retribution campaign after the institution rebuked its demands.
It’s far from the first clash between Khanna and Vance as well. The California representative also compared the vice president to dictator Mao Zedong in a previous speech that kicked off his anti-Vance offensive.
Khanna has also taken aim at Vance’s parenting skills. Both foes are the fathers of Indian American children—Vance met his wife Usha Vance while at Yale. After Vance earlier this year defended a federal employee who had made racist comments online, Khanna called out Vance’s ability to raise his mixed race children.
“Are you going to tell him to apologize for saying ‘Normalize Indian hate’ before this rehire?’ Just asking for the sake of both our kids,” he wrote.
For the sake of both of our kids? Grow up. Racist trolls on the internet, while offensive, don’t threaten my kids. You know what does? A culture that denies grace to people who make mistakes. A culture that encourages congressmen to act like whiny children. https://t.co/xpLjhfk6Bz
— JD Vance (@JDVance) February 7, 2025
Vance fired back, calling Khanna a “whiny” child and adding, “you disgust me.”
“For the sake of both our kids? Grow up,” he said. “Racist trolls on the internet, while offensive, don’t threaten my kids.”
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