Vice President JD Vance says the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk convinced him and his wife to try for a fourth child, after Kirk’s widow told them in her grief that she regretted having only two children.
In a guest op-ed in the Wall Street Journal excerpted from his book, Vance recalled the shocking news that Kirk — the founder of the conservative student organization Turning Point USA, who had come to be Vance’s “best friend and closest confidant in the world of politics” — had been fatally shot at a Utah college campus last year.
Vance and his wife, Usha, flew to Utah the day after the shooting to help a grieving Erika Kirk escort her husband’s body back to Arizona.
“As my wife held Charlie Kirk’s widow on the first day of her terrible sorrow, Erika told Usha between sobs that she regretted having only two kids with Charlie,” JD Vance wrote.
The Vances have three children, ages 4, 6 and 9. JD Vance wrote that, for years, he had tried to convince his wife to have another baby, but Usha Vance had told him she was “done — especially now that public service had elevated us into the national spotlight.”
“But something changed for Usha” after Charlie Kirk’s death, Vance said, “and not long after we buried my friend, she became pregnant with our fourth child, a boy.”
The Vances announced the pregnancy in January. Usha Vance is due in July.
Only three other vice presidents have had spouses who had babies while in office. In his first public address as vice president, JD Vance said he wanted “more babies in the United States of America.
“I want more happy children in our country and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them,” Vance said at the 2025 National March for Life rally in Washington.
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