US Vice President J.D. Vance seized on his wife’s cheap maternity dress to score political points at federal expense, after US Second Lady Usha Vance mocked a New York Times column analyzing the “political symbolism” of her pregnancy dress.In a post onThe comment followed Usha Vance’s scathing commentary in critic Vanessa Friedman’s NYT fashion column titled “The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image,” which examined how three prominent women of the Trump administration, the second lady, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt, and Katie Miller, wife of Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, had publicly displayed their pregnancies around the same time.Friedman argued that the pattern was intentional, writing that the women “have created a remarkably consistent, and somewhat paradigm-shifting, picture of the White House family and reproductive platform.” He said that Usha Vance is working to humanize the Vice President by shedding light on her pregnancy.Usha Vance responded sharply to Friedman’s article: “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 says about my elastic-waisted pants and compression socks,” she wrote on the X, attaching the receipt.J.D. Vance’s federal budget pinch framed the exchange as a broad statement on fiscal restraint that fits perfectly into the administration’s working-class economic message. As housing affordability remains a top concern for American voters, the prospect of a vice president’s wife buying an $8 dress instead of designer maternity wear reinforces the everyman image the administration is trying to cultivate.Ironically, J.D. Vance has been one of the Trump administration’s most vocal champions of American manufacturing, accusing the previous administration of deciding that “America will no longer be a manufacturing power” and “let the rest of the world make the essential things we need for our homes and our families.” Old Navy, owned by Gap Inc., makes most of its clothing overseas, particularly in Vietnam, China, Bangladesh and India.