With snub of JD Vance’s family, Kamala Harris reveals her callous soul

A young California mom forced to evacuate her home to escape the Los Angeles wildfires this week posted one of the most moving tweets I saw as the disaster unfolded.

Her kids had just minutes to pack a single bag of anything they wanted to save before they fled, and she shared what her preschool-age daughter chose to salvage: her stuffies.

The entire backpack was filled with stuffed animals. 

The photo brought me to tears: I know that’s what most of my kids would do, too.

These tragic wildfires have impacted rich and poor, destroying powerful, influential communities and working-class neighborhoods alike.

Even Vice President Kamala Harris’ home was under an evacuation order. 

The heart-rending coverage is reminding millions of Americans of the importance of home, of our sense of belonging. Especially for kids.

This week Harris, more than almost anyone else in Washington, should understand that significance.

That’s what makes Monday’s CBS News report on Harris and her successor, Vice President-elect JD Vance, so troubling. 

Vance, his wife, Usha, and their three small children are set to move into the veep’s official residence at the US Naval Observatory on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20 — yet Harris, its current occupant, has refused to let them tour it.

Move-in day, Jennifer Jacobs reported, will be the Vance family’s “first time inside the white Queen Anne-style mansion that has been home to vice presidents since the 1970s.” 

JD and Usha Vance’s children are 7, 4 and 2. They’ve grown up down the block from extended family in Ohio and just endured an unsettling six months as their father shuttled around the country campaigning.

Before that, their dad had to split his time between their Ohio home and Washington while serving as a US senator. 

It has surely been a struggle for these young parents to maintain their children’s sense of stability amid so much uncertainty and stress. 

They’ve done so admirably. Throughout the campaign, Vance was often photographed with one or another of the kids as they shared activities like baking biscuits and playing outside Mar-a-Lago, the home of his running mate.

His commitment to his kids was visible and endearing.  

With the election finally over and a new chapter for the family beginning at the Naval Observatory (an 1893 Victorian complete with turret), it’s deeply unjust that the Vance children have no idea what the next four years of their lives will look like. 

Moving is traumatic for children. One of the ways my family has softened the blow of a move was by walking our kids through our new home, letting them choose their bedrooms and the layout of their spaces.

Imagining which decorations will go where, taking practice trips between the house and all of the places in their new lives — all of it helps smooth the transition. 

And in this case, visiting the home is not only a matter of the Vances’ emotional comfort.

Denied a chance to see it in person, Usha Vance reportedly sought to contact Harris staffers for “details including what they would need to childproof” the historic building, Jacobs reported.

It has been decades since a young family has lived in the residence, which was not built with the needs of small children in mind.

It’s Usha’s responsibility to make sure the home is safe for their kids — and she’s being denied the right to ensure that. 

Those close to Harris defended her choice to CBS, claiming that the veep herself was never given the opportunity to tour the home before moving in (a claim immediately contested by former VP Mike Pence). 

I can’t be the only parent who, upon reading that, heard echoes of my own children screeching, “He started it! He hit me first!” 

One would think that a woman who campaigned on decency under the self-appointed moniker “Momala” would behave like it.

This is the Vance children’s first introduction to life in Washington — and, unfortunately, it’s an entirely on-brand representation of the personal, partisan small-mindedness we often see in the nation’s capital. 

Harris’ pettiness with the Vance family is emblematic of a woman who prides herself on empathy but practices little of it when faced with her political opponents.

Even the small children of her political opponents.  

Her behavior in this instance is a microcosm of why she lost: The American people saw through her act.

Kamala was never going to bring a kinder, gentler, more caring shift to our political landscape.

She is a vindictive political operator, and we’re all better off with her moving truck headed back to California rather than down Massachusetts Avenue to the White House.

Bethany Mandel is co-author of “Stolen Youth” and a homeschooling mother of six in greater Washington, DC.