Usha Vance Appears Without Wedding Ring at North Carolina Military Visit, Sparking Online Speculation

Second Lady Usha Vance appeared without her wedding ring during a November 19 visit to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina alongside First Lady Melania Trump, sparking immediate speculation on social media about the state of her marriage to Vice President JD Vance.

Photos from Getty Images showed Vance’s left hand bare as she disembarked from the plane and throughout the day’s events at both military installations, according to fact-checking website Snopes. The images circulated widely on platforms including X and Reddit, with Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko writing: “Interesting. Usha Vance minus a wedding ring yesterday at Camp Lejeune.”

A spokesperson for the Second Lady quickly dismissed the speculation. Raw Story reported receiving a text statement on Friday in which the spokesperson said Usha “is a mother of three young children, who does a lot of dishes, gives lots of baths, and forgets her ring sometimes.” USA Today and other outlets received the same statement.

Snopes confirmed the authenticity of the photos showing Vance without her ring, noting they were “available on the reputable news photograph database Getty Images.” However, the fact-checking site emphasized that “online detractors assigned unproven meaning to the second lady’s missing ring” and that “rumors regarding the state of the Vances’ marriage” remain “purely speculative.”

RedState reported that “there are actually a number of photos of Usha Vance not wearing her wedding ring, including during her visit with the VP to PA earlier this year/last week when she visited wounded veterans at Walter Reed” on November 10. WION News confirmed she was also photographed without her ring at the Walter Reed visit.

The speculation intensified following recent public attention to the Vances’ marriage. In October, Vice President Vance stated at a Turning Point USA event, “I believe in the Christian gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way”—publicly acknowledging for the first time his hope that his Hindu wife would convert to Christianity, according to Snopes.

Around the same time, photos of JD Vance sharing what observers described as a prolonged embrace with Erika Kirk, widow of deceased conservative activist Charlie Kirk, also circulated widely online, according to multiple outlets.

However, Snopes noted that “even after these rumors about JD and Usha Vance took off in late October and early November 2025, other publicly available Getty Images showed Usha Vance wearing her wedding ring.”

During the November 19 North Carolina visit, AP News reported that the First Lady and Second Lady “spent the day meeting with students, educators, military families and Service members from both installations” and “expressed their gratitude to the military and their family for their strength and resilience.”

The Vice President was photographed wearing his wedding ring at a speaking event in Washington the day after his wife’s North Carolina visit, according to Internewscast Journal.

The couple has been married since 2014 and has three young children.

This story was aggregated by AI from several news reports and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk.