JD Vance

JD Vance is carrying the heaviest vice-presidential portfolio in the administration right now, and doing it with a willingness to break publicly with both his own president and America's closest Middle East ally. On Joe Rogan, Vance ruled out 150,000 ground troops for Iranian regime change and said bombing alone cannot secure Strait of Hormuz shipping, putting him squarely at odds with Trump, who dismissed diplomacy as a waste of time. Vance is nonetheless executing Trump's 60-day oil memorandum of understanding with Iran, describing it as a way to refill global crude stocks and domestic reserves before testing Tehran's willingness on a permanent deal. He claims senior Iranian officials, including IRGC figures, privately concede their 47-year anti-US posture was a mistake, a far more optimistic read than Trump's characterization of Iranian leaders as "cuckoo" and "scum." Vance also laid out the US demand for full, verified, inspection-backed Iranian denuclearization within a multilateral regional security framework spanning Israel, Lebanon, and the GCC, framing the coming weeks as a turning point dependent on Tehran's response.

The Iran split runs alongside an extraordinary public fight with Israel. Vance warned the Israeli government it is "attacking the only powerful ally" it has left and cast Trump as the only head of state sympathetic to Israel, a direct rebuke of Netanyahu amid the push for Israeli withdrawal from Syria and Lebanon. Netanyahu defied the framing, publicly citing India as an alternative partnership and rejecting the idea that the US is Israel's only friend. Vance is also reviewing options on Turkey's F-35 acquisition, caught between Netanyahu's push to block the sale and Erdogan's demand for readmission to the program.

Domestically, Vance is leading a broad anti-fraud campaign. The Department of Labor launched dozens of subpoenas and investigations into H-1B and PERM visa fraud, which Vance framed as "American jobs ought to go to American workers and not foreign fraudsters," timed amid Microsoft's 4,800 layoffs and scrutiny of its 2,273 H-1B approvals. He is working with CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz on a Medicaid fraud crackdown where transplant claims surged from $200 million to $14.4 billion over six years, and the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud is expanding into H-1B visa fraud. Vance tied the effort to a political deal, offering to stop talking about election fraud if Democrats pass the Save America Act for voter ID. He also admitted on Joe Rogan the administration "absolutely screwed up the comms" on the Epstein files release, calling himself "guilty" of the mishandling while alleging Epstein had intelligence connections without offering evidence.

Vance publicly sparred with Pope Leo X on Fox News, calling some Vatican immigration positions "troubling" and arguing mass migration "has victims," part of a broader rift as the pope called the administration's migrant treatment "extremely disrespectful." He is executing Trump's March 2025 executive order to remove "improper ideology" from the Smithsonian, with a White House report accusing the museum of "institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology," drawing a sharp rebuttal from Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch. Trump named Vance his preferred 2028 successor on July 6, citing the Iran MOU, $70 million RNC fundraising, and 62 percent GOP favorability, though pro-Israel conservatives and the Club for Growth resist. A federal judge in Ohio separately cited Vance and Trump's "outright hostility" toward non-white immigrants in blocking three USCIS policies, the 11th ruling against the administration's immigration crackdown.