Running Mate for Trump is JD Vance – Mrs. Vance is Usha Chilukuri Vance

After months of speculation and just days after surviving an assassination attempt, Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump proudly stood next to the man who eventually won his blessing for the vice presidency: JD Vance.  All this in front of an exultant crowd that saw them as the stars of the first night of the Republican National Convention, which will run until Thursday, July 18 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Coming from a working-class family, JD Vance is in some ways representative of the population that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and lives in states considered part of the blue belt, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where the rural Democratic vote used to predominate.  This group of states is also considered pivotal for winning the race for the White House, and now Trump has youth on his team. 

One of the keys to understanding the reality of the inhabitants of these blue belt states can be found in Vance’s memoir ‘Hillbily Elegy’.  In that book, the Ohio senator describes a childhood and adolescence filled with social and financial obstacles in the rural environment where he lived with his grandparents and his sister Lindsay. His mother struggled with substance abuse and his father gave him up for adoption when he was six years old.  All these experiences left their mark on him, as did his time as a marine in the Iraq War in 2003 as a member of the US Infantry Corps and his subsequent entry and graduation with a doctorate in Law from Yale University, where he would later meet his wife Usha Chilukuri, with whom he would later marry and have three children.  More about Usha in a moment.  This was quite an achievement for someone who, in principle, did not have a promising future due to his social background.  In 2021, he decided to take a step forward and run for the Senate to take the seat left vacant by his predecessor Rob Portman.  JD Vance won the seat during the election held in November 2022 with a campaign in which he defined himself as an outsider of the political class. Another key boost for his campaign was the support that Trump conveyed to him. 

Let’s talk about J.D. Vance’s wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, who has left her law firm following her husband being formally announced as former President Donald Trump’s running mate at the Republican National Convention on Monday.  “Usha has informed us she has decided to leave the firm,” a spokesperson for Munger, Tolles & Olsen told reporters. “Usha has been an excellent lawyer and colleague, and we thank her for her years of work and wish her the best in her future career.”  Usha previously served as a law clerk for Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, then of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Amul Thapar, then of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, according to the firm.  Born Usha Chilukuri, the wife of the newly announced VP pick, grew up in San Diego, California, and is the daughter of Indian immigrants. She received her law degree from Yale Law School and, during her time at the institution, served as executive development editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology, according to her biography page.  J.D. and Usha met during their time at Yale Law School and got married in Kentucky in 2014.