EXCLUSIVE — With the world watching a widening conflict in the Middle East, second lady Usha Vance is keeping an eye on the home front.
Vance, 40, spent time reading to the young patients of Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. on Monday, taking a couple of questions from the Washington Examiner and some in the “Dr. Bear’s Den” reading room.
Vance’s appearance at the hospital coincided with the start of National Reading Month, underscoring her top priority as second lady: improving childhood literacy. It also took place against the backdrop of ongoing military strikes against Iran that have preoccupied her husband, Vice President JD Vance.
When asked why childhood literacy is so important to her with so many competing priorities for the administration at home and abroad, Vance underscored how the issue is “something that’s top of mind in our own household right now, with three kids, all of whom are at different stages of learning to read and learning to kind of love books.”
“From a broader perspective, if you’re reading the news at all now, it’s pretty obvious that we’re at a crisis point in childhood literacy, and that the skill that’s foundational to everything else that they could possibly hope to do in their life, is something that we really need to be focusing on as a country,” Vance told the Washington Examiner.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, also called the nation’s report card, found in January last year that reading levels for fourth- and eighth-grade students had decreased by 2 percentage points in 2024 compared to 2022.
In that report card, one-third of eighth-grade students scored below “basic” in reading, the most in the report’s history, and 40% of fourth-graders recorded the same result, the most in two decades.
“Having children of my own, as a parent, there are all sorts of things that you can do, small things, to support the work that schools are doing that’s so important and hopefully try to reverse this trend,” Vance said. “So we’re experimenting with different ways of supporting the work that schools are doing and hopefully helping reverse this decline and giving kids the opportunities that they deserve.”
Although Vance did not answer questions regarding foreign policy or her pregnancy — she is expecting her fourth child, a boy, in late July — the Washington Examiner was in the room for her to read from Dr. Seuss’ The Sneetches and Other Stories.
March is also Dr. Seuss Month because his birthday would have been on Monday, March 2.
“My daughter picked it specially,” Vance said of her only daughter Mirabel, 4. “She couldn’t come and join me today, but she was asking me to read it just this morning, so we thought that maybe a lot of people here might like it too. And it’s by Dr. Seuss, who actually spent a lot of his life in my hometown in San Diego, where we also have a very good children’s hospital.”
Vance similarly praised Children’s National Hospital.
“This is the first place that my own first kid got his medical care for the first year of his life,” she said of Ewan, 8. “So it’s a very special place, and I’m really happy to be here with all of you.”
At the end of the reading, which was broadcast around the hospital, Vance left a gift for the children in the room: new plush toys of the second couple’s dog, Atlas.
USHA VANCE TO VISIT CHILDREN’S NATIONAL HOSPITAL TO MARK NATIONAL READING MONTH
Dr. Beth Wells, the chief clinical officer for Children’s National Hospital, welcomed Vance’s trip to the hospital, emphasizing “how important these stories are for children in a healthcare setting.”
“It brings comfort. It helps with their neurodevelopment,” Wells said.
Vance’s event provided a domestic policy reprieve to the foreign policy news of the day, with Trump addressing last Saturday’s strikes against Iran at the White House and first lady Melania Trump speaking at the United Nations in New York City.