'Gross' Slate piece comes under fire for suggesting Usha Vance pregnancy is political strategy
Magazine writer implies timing was to appeal to MAGA base
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Slate Magazine is taking heat for an opinion piece suggesting that Vice President JD Vance and Usha Vance had a fourth child merely for optics.
Slate Magazine writer Heather Schwedel suggested that Usha Vance and her husband were "reckoning with contradictions" as the second lady, who is Indian-American, undermines the vice president's "MAGA credentials."
"As the highly educated daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha not only doesn’t burnish Vance’s MAGA credentials; she undermines them. When reports of a possible divorce on the horizon began to swirl in November, it wasn’t altogether surprising. Reckoning with all those contradictions was inevitable, right?" Schwedel wrote on Friday.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Vances announced this month they are expecting their fourth child in July, and Schwedel suggested the pregnancy was a way to appeal to the MAGA base.
VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE DECLARES MARRIAGE TO WIFE USHA 'IS AS STRONG AS IT'S EVER BEEN'
Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance announced they are expecting another child later this year. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
"In lieu of trading in his wife for a paler model, Vance has found another way to prove himself a good shepherd of the MAGA faithful: He and Usha are expecting a fourth child in July, they announced this week."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"For all we know, there was never any trouble in their marriage, and the cognitive dissonance is pure projection. But it does make a kind of sick sense that if Vance can’t have a white wife standing next to him as he clearly looks toward the 2028 presidential election, the next best thing is a pregnant one."
Schwedel noted that having four kids in 2026 is "a bit of a statement" as birth rates and average number of children per household has declined. On a similar note, a Vanity Fair article referred to the Vances as "pronatalism's poster couple" and noted they "announced the pregnancy on X—a social network owned by fertility-crazed Elon Musk."
"While that choice doesn’t have to be conservative-coded, it tends to skew that way," Schwedel wrote. "It’s also a statement in the sense that it follows more literal statements Vance has made about pronatalism and how women need to have more babies, and/or the evils of women who choose not to. In fact, the Vance baby is part of a mini–baby boom at the White House, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Katie Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, also expecting."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}She added Usha Vance was a "willing participant in all of this" and she "chose to have all those kids, and to leave her career to support her husband, and to stay with that husband, no matter how increasingly awful he seems both as a force in society and as an individual partner to her… [I]f she could ever claim any kind of ignorance, that time is over."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is expecting her second child later this year. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
Schwedel was slammed by a critic of the vice president, journalist Cathy Young, for suggesting that her pregnancy was a strategy of sorts.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I couldn't possibly loathe JD Vance more, but this piece explaining Usha's pregnancy as a political strategy is ... kinda gross?" Young wrote.
"People have kids for all sorts of reasons. A couple I know with 4 kids went off birth control because they figured they didn't have to worry about it anymore (I think the wife was 43), and that's how they ended up with Kid 5. We don't know that the Vances' pregnancy is planned," Young said.
Amy Curtis, a writer at Town Hall, wrote a piece blasting the Slate piece about Usha Vance, calling it the "nastiest attack" on the pregnant second lady.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"They cannot. Having a husband and children means putting someone before yourself, and that's anathema to the Left," Curtis wrote in her piece published by Town Hall.
JD VANCE DISCUSSES INTERFAITH MARRIAGE AND RAISING CHRISTIAN CHILDREN WITH HINDU WIFE
Rachel Bovard, VP of Programs at Conservative Partnership Institute, called the Slate piece "misogynist trash."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"This is - and I mean this with utter sincerity - the most gutter, vile, misogynist trash from @Slate. This level of bitter nastiness could only come from a woman author, which it obviously did."
"Look in the mirror, Heather Schwedel. There is something deeply twisted in your soul," she added.
Second lady Usha Vance is expecting her fourth child. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
"Why does she take Usha and JD having another baby so personally? Maybe because it shows optimism, bringing another baby into the world, and love," another account said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Usha is happy, but in Heather’s sad little mind that is unacceptable. Women aren’t allowed to be happy. They aren’t allowed to happily have more children, especially conservative women, especially women who have a law degree. Women can’t choose to have babies and quit work and support their families. To her, that’s the unforgivable sin. Well…that and being married to Trump’s VP."
Neither the White House, the Vances, nor Schwedel responded to requests for comment by Fox News Digital.
The last second lady to give birth was Ellen Colfax, wife of Vice President Schuyler Colfax, in 1870, during the Ulysses S. Grant administration.
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