Vice President JD Vance and wife welcome fourth child while in office

Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha announced on X that their son, Alec Neel Vance, was born on Sunday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The couple thanked the hospital staff for their care. The Vances, married since 2014, already have three children – sons Ewan, 9, and Vivek, 6, and daughter Mirabel, 4. This is the first instance in modern U.S. history of a vice president’s family having a child while in office; the previous occurrence was in 1870 when Vice President Schuyler Colfax and his wife Ellen welcomed a son.

In his memoir "Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith," Vance recounted that he had long hoped for another child, and that his wife’s perspective shifted after the death of political activist Charlie Kirk, whose body the Vances helped return to Arizona. Vance wrote that the tragedy influenced the timing of the pregnancy. In a recent interview, Usha Vance described comments from Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, as powerful and moving, noting they contributed to her openness to having another child.