JD and Usha Vance announce birth of fourth child in surprising 150-year first
'Usha and the baby are happy and healthy, and our kids are overjoyed to meet their little brother,' the Vice President said
Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha welcomed their fourth child on Sunday, marking a historic moment for the American vice presidency.
The baby boy, named Alec Neel Vance, is the first child born to a sitting Vice President in over 150 years.
"We are excited to announce that our baby boy, Alec Neel Vance, was born this morning. Usha and the baby are happy and healthy, and our kids are overjoyed to meet their little brother," the couple said in a statement.
The last vice presidential birth came in 1870, when Schuyler Colfax and his wife Ellen Wade had a son, according to the White House Historical Association.
Alec joins three older siblings: Ewan, aged nine, Vivek, six, and Mirabel, four.
The birth took place at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre, with the couple thanking medical staff and White House health team.
Usha Vance, 40, previously worked as an attorney, having clerked for US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Her pregnancy was first announced in January, drawing considerable public attention given how unusual it is for those in America's highest offices to have children while serving.
The Vice President, 41, is a former US Marine who frequently travels abroad with his family, with the children often boarding Air Force Two in pyjamas for overnight flights.
Mr Vance has long championed the idea of Americans having larger families, expressing concern about falling birth rates since launching his political career in 2021 with an Ohio Senate bid.
At the 2025 March for Life rally in Washington, he declared: "I want more babies in the United States of America."
The Vice President has indicated that the 2025 assassination of his friend Charlie Kirk influenced the couple's decision to have another child.
Mr Kirk's widow, Erika, told the Vances she wished she had more than two children with her husband before his killing in Utah last September.
"It was very powerful, what (Erika) said about her own family, and certainly very moving to both of us. I think I had already started to open my mind to the possibility," Usha Vance said in a CBS Sunday Morning interview in June.
"I wouldn't say that this was, for me in any way, the decisive factor. But it came in the middle of a conversation that we were already having."
The Vance baby arrived amid a mini baby boom in the White House.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and his wife Katie recently welcomed their fourth child, while Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had her second baby with husband Nicholas Riccio in May.
Mrs Vance faced criticism from The New York Times fashion critic over a coral maternity dress she wore for her video podcast, Storytime with the Second Lady.
She responded on social media: "Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can't wait to hear what the New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks!"
Her husband praised her thriftiness, writing: "She bought a $50 dress for $8.75. America: meet your next director of the federal budget!"