JD Vance, Usha’s family travel requests left US Secret Service ‘fed up’, claims report

7 min readUpdated: Jul 16, 2026 07:17 PM IST

Vice President JD Vance, center, and second lady Usha Vance, left, walk from Marine Two as they arrive at Joint Base Andrews, en route to Switzerland. (AP file)

Secret Service agents assigned to protect US Vice President JD Vance and his family have grown frustrated over what current and former officials described as frequent last-minute and “inappropriate” travel requests, including a cancelled plan to fly Vance’s young son on Marine Two for a golf lesson, reported MS Now.

At the centre of the complaints was a recent request to fly Vance and his young son aboard Marine Two, the US Marine Corps helicopter that carries the vice president, to Joint Base Andrews for a golf lesson, the report claimed. The planned trip was cancelled at the last minute due to severe thunderstorms and high winds in the Washington, DC, area, according to people familiar with the flight plans, as cited by MS Now.

Such a request had no precedent

There is no formal Secret Service policy prohibiting the use of a government helicopter to transport a vice president’s child to a local event, but former and current Secret Service supervisors told MS Now that such a request had no precedent. They noted that previous vice presidents avoided using expensive government resources for their children’s convenience, with agents typically driving children around locally in sport-utility vehicles.

The White House Military Office would have had to authorise the helicopter’s use. Operating the aircraft costs taxpayers between $16,000 and $24,600 per hour, according to 2022 Defence Department budget estimates.

“That is ridiculous,” one person familiar with the planned golf trip told the news outlet. “Pence and Harris never pulled anything like that.”

Agents raise concerns about Vance, office requesting trips

According to the report, the complaints extend beyond the golf lesson. Agents have shared concerns internally about Vance and his office requesting trips and assignments that some consider inappropriate or unprecedented compared with prior vice presidents. The agents assigned to protect Vance and his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, have also reportedly grown frustrated with frequent last-minute travel demands placed on the security team.

The Vances are the first family with young children to reside at the Naval Observatory since former Vice President Al Gore and his family more than 25 years ago.

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The vice president’s office, responding to questions from MS Now, said, “The Vances are grateful to the men and women of the U.S. Secret Service who serve our country with distinction. While protecting a Vice President with a large policy portfolio and a young and growing family presents a unique challenge, agents of the Secret Service do so with excellence every day.”

Several last-minute helicopter trips

The report said that the Vances have also made several last-minute helicopter trips to the Middleburg, Virginia, area while searching for a home for their expanding family. The couple have three children, aged nine, six and four, and are expecting their fourth child later this month.

Former officials told MS Now that previous vice presidents and other protected administration officials traditionally informed the Secret Service of family travel plans well in advance and generally gave several hours’ notice before making changes.

“They change everything,” one person told MS Now. “They don’t stick to their schedules, and that costs shit-tons of taxpayer money.”

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Such hastily arranged trips, known within the Secret Service as “off the record” (OTR) movements, require agents to cancel days off, abandon existing plans and quickly prepare new security arrangements. According to the report, the repeated travel movements have left the security team increasingly frustrated.

“The detail is tired of them not giving notice on things and making everything an OTR,” one person familiar with the detail’s frustration said. “He thinks he can still move around like a U.S. Senator.”

In a July interview on Mike Rowe’s podcast The Way I Heard It, Vance remarked that becoming vice president had transformed his life, joking that he no longer had to shop for groceries, cook or wait in TSA lines. He also said the position carries the risk of becoming “an entitled asshole” if one is not careful.

Separately, in a June interview with CBS, Second Lady Usha Vance said the family tries to minimise disruption during public outings, including church visits, by adjusting timings and locations to reduce inconvenience for others.

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What Vance’s office said

“The Vances are grateful to the men and women of the U.S. Secret Service who serve our country with distinction,” the vice president’s office said in a statement in response to MS NOW’s questions.

“While protecting a Vice President with a large policy portfolio and a young and growing family presents a unique challenge, agents of the Secret Service do so with excellence every day,” it added.

Secret Service officer defends the agency’s work

Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn defended the agency’s work, saying agents who join a protective detail understand the commitment required, including long hours, frequent travel and constant flexibility. He added that the agency remains committed to supporting its personnel while ensuring the safety of those under its protection.

The report added that chronic understaffing has long affected the Secret Service, forcing agents to work excessive overtime and, at times, leaving inexperienced personnel responsible for high-profile assignments, including the 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where an assassin came close to killing then-candidate Donald Trump.

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Another person familiar with the complaints said that the underlying issue was that the Vance family was trying to live a normal, “organic” life despite the demands of vice-presidential security.

Agents create custom coins, stickers to mock frequency of schedule changes

The report said some agents have even created unofficial “Bobcat OTR Survivors Club” coins and stickers to joke about the repeated last-minute schedule changes—an unusual sign of frustration within the vice president’s security detail.

According to the report, “Bobcat” was chosen as Vance’s Secret Service code name because the bobcat is the mascot of both Ohio University and Breathitt County High School in Kentucky, where Vance spent time growing up and which he references in his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy”.

Within the Secret Service, custom pins, challenge coins and stickers are a long-standing tradition used to commemorate difficult assignments, share inside jokes and build camaraderie among agents and officers.

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An administration official familiar with Vance’s travel acknowledged that last-minute schedule changes do occur but said they are often unavoidable because of the nature of the vice president’s job. The official also said protecting a vice president with young children presents challenges that many previous administrations did not face.

“The vice president is a father who dedicates as much time as possible to his young and growing family,” the official said, adding that most past presidents and vice presidents did not have young children while in office.

(This article was curated by Aditi Anand, who is an intern with The Indian Express)

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