The decision by Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha to have a fourth child came in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination on September 10, 2025, according to revelations in Vance’s upcoming memoir.
In “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” Vance writes that Kirk’s killing at Utah Valley University profoundly affected his wife. “Something changed for Usha, and not long after we buried my friend, she became pregnant with our fourth child, a boy,” Vance states in the book.
Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was shot in the neck during a speaking and debate series called the American Comeback Tour at the Orem, Utah, campus. Police identified 22-year-old Tyler Robinson as the suspect and said he acted alone. Kirk, a devout Christian whose views on gender, race and abortion drew fierce backlash from liberals, died from the attack.
A Friendship Forged in Politics
The memoir frames the pregnancy as part of a spiritual reckoning that followed the death of a man Vance considered not just a political ally but an actual friend. Kirk was among the first people Vance called when weighing a Senate run in 2021, and he publicly and privately championed Vance’s selection as President Donald Trump’s running mate in 2024.
After the assassination, Vance canceled a planned trip to New York commemorating the 24th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks and flew instead to Utah to retrieve the body, which was transported on Air Force Two to Kirk’s home state of Arizona.
Five days after the shooting, Vance guest-hosted “The Charlie Kirk Show” from his office in the White House complex. Andrew Kolvet, the show’s executive producer, said Vance asked to do it. “Charlie and JD were friends. They were actual friends,” Kolvet said.
During the broadcast, the vice president called Kirk “the smartest political operative I ever met” and credited him with helping to build the second Trump administration. “The success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene,” he said, adding that Kirk “didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.” Trump announced he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.
Grief, Faith and a Memoir
Usha Vance, who has largely kept a low public profile, had three children with the vice president before the assassination. The fourth child—the couple’s first since Vance assumed office in January 2025—is disclosed in a memoir that explicitly ties personal renewal to mourning.
Vance has called Kirk a true friend and said he owed much to him. But his tributes have also been laced with sharper political rhetoric. On the broadcast, the vice president argued that left-wing extremism was part of the reason why Kirk was killed and joined White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in vowing to dismantle what Miller described as terrorist networks. Law enforcement officials said Robinson had an obsession with Kirk and had become more political before the shooting, though investigators have not established a motive.
The Wider Backlash
Republican officials launched a campaign to punish those celebrating Kirk’s death in the wake of the assassination. Vance urged listeners to call out those mocking Kirk and to contact their employers. Florida Rep. Randy Fine demanded the firing, defunding, and license revocation of those mocking Kirk. South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace called on the Department of Education to cut funding to schools that did not retaliate against employees making insensitive posts.
The consequences came swiftly. Anthony Pough, a U.S. Secret Service employee, had his security clearance revoked after Facebook posts about Kirk. Secret Service Director Sean Curran wrote in an internal memo that politically motivated attacks were on the rise. Office Depot fired employees at a Michigan branch after a viral video showed staff refusing to print posters for a Kirk vigil. Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah was dismissed over social media posts.
Democrats have rejected the framing that the political left bears unique responsibility. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said finger-pointing would not cool tensions. A YouGov poll found liberal Americans more likely than conservatives to defend feeling joy about the deaths of political opponents. But a 2023 Public Religion Research Institute survey found that one-third of Republicans agreed true patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country, compared with 13 percent of Democrats.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said that information about Robinson’s ideology had so far come from his acquaintances and family members. Robinson is registered to vote but is unaffiliated with any party and listed as an inactive voter.
For Vance, the disclosure threads a private family moment through one of the most polarizing political tragedies of the Trump era. “Communion” is, by his own telling, the story of a man finding his way back to faith. That return, the book makes clear, began with a funeral—and continued with the news that his family would grow by one.
