Vance

May 26 (UPI) — Vice President JD Vance hosted a meeting Tuesday afternoon with state attorneys general as part of his task force on fraud.

The event was largely attended by only Republican officials, however, because the task force invited attorneys general from the Democratic party with less notice than their Republican peers, Politico reported.

The Democratic attorneys general were invited to the meeting Friday, with a deadline to respond by Saturday. Republicans were invited about a week earlier. The 24 Democrats affected by this wrote Vance a letter declining the invite, CNBC reported.

“While we would appreciate the opportunity to engage in serious discussions, the invitation was provided with less than one business day’s notice with no agenda,” the letter said. “This short notice does not match the spirit of collaboration that has long defined our joint efforts with federal partners. Accordingly, we respectfully decline to attend at this time.”

When President Donald Trump announced Vance’s role as “fraud czar” in April, he said the investigations would center on Democrat-run states.

Vance on Tuesday said that in two months, the task force has “exposed billions of dollars in benefits that had been stolen from the American people.”

“We referred over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans back to the Treasury for collection,” he said. “We deferred more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements that were coming from various states, particularly California. We put a six-month hold on enrollments for new hospice and home health care providers, because so many of the newer hospice providers were not actually providing hospice services but were just focused on fraud.”

About 15 Republican attorneys general attended, as did Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson and White House adviser Stephen Miller.

In a press release, the White House said Trump and Vance are “unleashing an unrelenting, full-scale assault on the fraudsters, scammers and corrupt operators who have looted billions from American taxpayers.” The release included a list of alleged fraud cases and actions, including many instances focused on Minnesota and California. No Republican-led states were cited.

May 19 (UPI) — Vice President JD Vance took questions from reporters Tuesday at a White House press briefing

, reiterating President Donald Trump‘s repeated assertion that the conflict in Iran is meant to keep the country from developing a nuclear weapon but that it is “not a forever war.”

“We want to keep the number of countries that have nuclear weapons small, and that’s why Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he said during the briefing, “on top of all the other things that we might be worried about, that they themselves could use it, that they could use it in leverage and economic control or economic negotiations.”

Vance was the second person, following U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to stand in for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave.

Iran was a dominant topic of the briefing. Vance said the United States has made progress in negotiations despite Iran’s position being “fractured,” but that U.S. forces are ready to attack again if necessary.

“We’re going to take care of business and come home,” he said.

Rubio and Vance are both considered presidential candidate contenders for Republicans in 2028, but the vice president demurred at a question

suggesting the press briefing role could be a sort of audition for candidacy.

“I’m a vice president,” he said. “I really like my job, and I’m going to try to do as good a job as I can.”

Vance also dealt with questions about the Justice Department’s new $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund,” which was created to compensate those who say they were unfairly targeted by former presidential administrations.

Some officials have criticized the fund as a way for the government to pay Trump allies who say they were targeted during the Biden administration. Earlier Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said he could not rule out payments to convicted Jan. 6 rioters.

“We’re not trying to give money to anybody who attacked apolice officer,” Vance said at the briefing. “We’re trying to compensate people where the book was thrown at them, they were mistreated by the legal system.”

Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the Trump administration is deferring $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California over concerns the state is allowing “fraudsters” to drive up costs to taxpayers, including by pushing unnecessary medications on unsuspecting patients.

“There are California taxpayers and American taxpayers who are being defrauded because California isn’t taking its program seriously. But also, you have people who’ve been prescribed medications that they don’t even need,” Vance said. “Sometimes they’ve had drugs put into their bodies that they don’t need because fraudsters have actually encouraged false prescriptions and false administration and medications.”

Vance, standing alongside Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the administration is also sending letters to all 50 states informing them that if they do not “effectively and aggressively prosecute Medicaid fraud in their states,” they will see federal funding cut off as well.

“We want California to get serious about this fraud,” said Vance, who President Trump named his “fraud czar” last month.

Oz called out what he said was widespread fraud in hospice services and similar in-home care programs nationally — and particularly in the Los Angeles region — and announced a six-month moratorium on new Medicare enrollment for hospices and home health agencies.

“A third of all these programs in the entire country are in Los Angeles. Ask yourself, how is that possible? It’s not,” Oz said. “They’re not that many people dying in Los Angeles. We’re not talking about California, just Los Angeles.”

He said he and others in the administration determined that “at least half of the hospices, in the entire area around Los Angeles, are fraudulent,” and had shut down 800 of them that last year had “charged the federal taxpayer $1.4 billion,” which “will no longer be paid.” That is a major increase from the 450 providers the administration said it had suspended as of last month.

The announcement was the latest attempt by the Trump administration to highlight and rein in fraud in federal healthcare benefits programs, particularly in blue states. The actions were met with immediate push back from California officials.

“We hate fraud. But that’s NOT what this is,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office posted on the social media site X. “Vance and Oz are attacking programs that keep seniors and people with disabilities OUT of nursing homes. Pretty sick.”

Newsom’s office said that the growth of In-Home Supportive Services placements in California was “simple,” and due to California “keeping more people OUT of far more expensive nursing homes!”

Such services cover assistants who help people with daily tasks such as bathing, laundry or cooking; provide needed care such as injections under the direction of a medical professional; and accompany them to and from doctor’s appointments. A 2020 report by the California state auditor found that nearly three-quarters of IHSS caregivers assist a family member.

Newsom’s office wrote IHSS care costs $30,000 a year, while nursing home care costs $137,000 a year. “SAVING TAXPAYERS: $107K per person,” it wrote.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta also criticized the administration’s moves.

“Once again, California appears to be targeted solely for political reasons,” Bonta said. “The Trump administration is planning to defer over $1 billion in Medicaid funding for vital programs that helps seniors and people with disabilities remain safely in their homes.

“My team is carefully reviewing all available information. We have not hesitated to challenge unlawful actions by the Trump administration, and we will continue to act whenever Californians’ rights or access to critical services are threatened,” he said.

Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla also lashed out at the Trump administration.

“The Trump Administration is attacking California over claims that they can’t back up,” Padilla wrote on social media. “Let’s be real, this isn’t about fraud — it’s about punishing a state that didn’t vote for him. Political retribution plain and simple.”

Fraud in California’s hospice industry has been a problem for years.

Authorities in the state promised to crack down on the issue after a Times investigation in late 2020 revealed that unscrupulous providers were billing Medicare for hospice services and equipment for patients who were not actually dying — with the hospice industry in the state exploding in size.

California’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, is expected to cost about $222 billion for the budget year starting July 1, including both state and federal funding. Roughly 15 million Californians, more than a third of the state, are on Medi-Cal.

Vance, a potential 2028 presidential hopeful, has taken up his work as “fraud czar” with vigor, traveling around the country to drive home the idea that the Trump administration is working diligently to bring down healthcare costs by addressing waste, fraud and abuse that is rampant across the system.

He has said that waste and abuse is particularly prevalent in Democratic-led states such as California, New York and Minnesota.

“We have red states and blue states that go after fraud aggressively, but we also, unfortunately, have some states, mostly blue states, unfortunately, that do not take Medicaid fraud very seriously,” he said Wednesday.

Vance specifically threatened to cut off what he said is billions in federal funding for state-run fraud control units that are meant to prosecute people who abuse the system, but which he said aren’t doing the work. “This is a tool that we want the states to use, but unfortunately, a lot of states aren’t using these tools at all,” he said.

The focus on fraud comes against a backdrop of criticisms that other policy measures pushed by the administration have driven healthcare costs up or made it harder for people to access healthcare — including cuts to Obamacare subsidies and new work requirements in Medicaid, which are expected to strain hospitals around the country and led to millions of people losing healthcare coverage.

Democrats and Republicans have argued over who is to blame for rising healthcare costs, and Vance and Oz have clashed with California leaders before.

In January, Newsom filed a civil rights complaint against Oz after he posted a video accusing Armenian crime groups of carrying out widespread healthcare fraud in Los Angeles. In the video, Oz was shown driving around Van Nuys, saying about $3.5 billion worth of Medicare fraud had been perpetrated by hospice and home care businesses — and “run, quite a bit of it, by the Russian Armenian mafia.”

Newsom called Oz’s claims “baseless and racist.”

The administration previously launched investigations into potential healthcare fraud in at least five states — California, Florida, Maine, Minnesota and New York — and halted some $243 million in Medicaid payments to Minnesota over fraud concerns.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has also acknowledged using errant figures to justify a fraud probe in New York, deepening concerns in the administration’s methods for identifying problematic activity.

Vance said the deferral of funds to California and the letters warning other states to get serious is not about political retribution, but a wake up call. He said the Trump administration wants to help states root out fraud and abuse, including with new technologies — but can’t do so if they are not “willing to help themselves” first.

“We don’t want to turn off any money. What we want to do is ensure that people are taking fraud seriously. We want to protect Medicaid, we want to protect Medicare,” Vance said. “But we can’t do that if the states that are administering those programs are allowing those programs to be fleeced by fraudsters.”

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Addressing reporters on a recent flight to Algeria, Pope Leo XIV invoked the Gospel, called himself a peacemaker and pledged to keep speaking out on behalf of the downtrodden.

“Too many people are suffering in the world today,” he said. “Too many innocent people are being killed, and I think someone has to stand up.”

Pontiffs have a tradition of weighing in on global strife, and Leo’s words were in keeping with long-standing church teaching. Appearing in front of reporters in this fashion was also not new: Pope John Paul II began taking questions from journalists on the papal plane in the 1970s.

But the first American pope was in fact wading into an unprecedented political tempest — responding to a series of broadsides from President Trump that drew Leo into debates over the war with Iran, immigration policies and more, all while Catholics in the U.S. and around the world looked on.

Missionaries from Austin, Texas, gather for prayer in St. Peter’s Square on May 11, 2025.

(Marco Di Lauro / Getty Images)

With no permanent peace deal in sight to end the war, two of Trump’s top lieutenants — Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, both Catholics and potential 2028 presidential candidates — have also been pulled into the fray. On Thursday, Rubio met Pope Leo at the Vatican in what he said was a long-planned diplomatic visit. Next month, Vance will release a memoir, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” detailing his 2019 conversion to Catholicism.

Trump’s invective has not abated, even in the week his chief diplomat met the pontiff. Ahead of Rubio’s visit, Trump repeated his claim that Leo was “just fine” with Iran developing a nuclear weapon. In response, Leo said that his critics should go after him “truthfully,” noting that the Catholic Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons.

Against the backdrop of this sparring, Rubio sought to downplay the drama after his official visit to the Holy See, which lasted about two hours. On X, he said the meeting with Leo focused on their “shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity.”

The episode has revealed the unique power Leo holds on the U.S. stage, with his inherent understanding of the country’s politics and an ability to deliver his message in an accent that at times reveals his Chicago roots.

“He’s speaking in English and he’s American,” said Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, most recently of the memoir “Work in Progress.” “People can’t dismiss him as not understanding the United States.”

For weeks, Leo has been asked to respond to a cascade of insults from Trump, including accusations that he is “weak on crime,” that he was chosen as pope because of Trump, and that the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics should “get his act together.”

In measured tones, Leo has repeatedly said he does not want to fight with the president. He counters that he is merely preaching the Gospel. On that flight in April, the pope told journalists: “I do not look at my role as being political, a politician. I don’t want to get into a debate with him.”

He added: “I will continue to speak out loudly, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships.”

He may not be a politician, but Leo’s preaching, ranging from Iran to immigration and global warming, has touched a nerve with Trump. In the U.S., Catholics often serve as a powerful swing vote and hold a wide range of views on those issues. But even in a time of deep division and political malaise, enthusiasm for the pontiff, born and raised in the Chicago area, is hard to dismiss.

Leo’s ascendancy comes as engagement with the Catholic Church appears to be growing in the United States. Though comprehensive data are hard to come by, parishes are reporting renewed interest.

Mark Gray, a senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, said there was evidence of an increase in baptisms, a trend that appeared to predate Leo’s election as pope last May.

Some of the new American converts lean more conservative, experts said, part of a broader rise in traditionalism. Amid tensions over whether the church should focus more on traditional issues of morality, such as abortion and marriage, or global concerns like war and migration, Leo has stressed that all are welcome and that he wants the church to function as a big tent.

Making history

U.S. presidents have long sought to court the pope, mindful of the country’s sizable Catholic population and its potential as a swing vote in elections. Woodrow Wilson was the first president to meet with the pope, in 1919, during talks after the end of World War I. Since Dwight Eisenhower made a trip to Rome in 1959, every president has traveled to meet the pope, some more than once.

That includes Trump, who traveled to see Pope Francis in 2017, accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump. He also attended Francis’ funeral in 2025.

Asked if there was any precedent for Trump’s clash with the pope, Steven Millies, a professor of public theology at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, invoked an English king who changed the course of church history: “Henry VIII invites a comparison,” he said. Henry rejected Catholicism in the 1500s and founded a new church in order to ratify a divorce rejected by the pope.

Though Trump — who is not Catholic — has not suggested any such schism, he certainly appears to have discarded most niceties. The president has not apologized for any of his comments, though he did, after widespread backlash, take down a social media post that appeared to depict him as Christ.

Trump is constitutionally blocked from seeking another term, so picking a fight with Pope Leo may not have lasting political implications for him. But it’s a different story for Vance and Rubio, both of whom may need to appeal to the country’s Catholic voters to further their ambitions.

In the 2024 election, the Catholic vote tilted more decisively to the right, with 55% supporting Trump compared with 43% for Kamala Harris, according to the Pew Research Center. Four years earlier, Catholics were evenly divided, with 50% supporting Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic, and 49% backing Trump.

Rubio noted as he headed to Rome that “obviously we had some stuff that happened” between the White House and the Vatican. Vance, who has frequently expressed his support for the pope but is also known for his often-punchy defense of the president’s positions, drew some derision in April when he was asked at a conference about Trump’s comments and suggested that Leo should “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

Pope Leo XIV exchanges gifts with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the pope’s private library at the Vatican on Thursday.

(Vatican Media via Associated Press)

He later modified his tone, posting on X: “Pope Leo preaches the gospel, as he should, and that will inevitably mean he offers his opinions on the moral issues of the day. The President — and the entire administration — work to apply those moral principles in a messy world. He will be in our prayers, and I hope that we’ll be in his.”

Still, the rift could cloud the upcoming release of Vance’s memoir, overshadowing a book meant to burnish a potential 2028 bid with questions about Trump’s antagonism toward the pontiff.

Two Catholics have served as president — Biden and John F. Kennedy. During an era of stronger anti-Catholic sentiment, Kennedy famously gave a speech as a candidate emphasizing the separation of church and state. Biden was more openly devout, attending Mass every weekend and quoting Catholic hymns in his speeches. Vance is the second Catholic vice president, following Biden’s two terms as President Obama’s deputy.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Trump’s social policies were a boon for U.S. Catholics and alluded to electoral politics without mentioning the pope. “President Trump has great respect for the more than one billion Catholics around the world, especially the Catholic Americans who helped power his landslide election victory in 2024,” she said.

The Midwestern pontiff

It’s been a year since the man born Robert Prevost in 1955 stepped out onto the Vatican balcony as pope, a role that predates the United States by nearly 2,000 years. The first American pope’s compatriots quickly seized on his Midwestern upbringing (he’s a White Sox fan) and relatable family dynamics (one of his two brothers supports Trump). In a nod to his Chicago roots, an Iowa-based clothing store, Raygun, began selling a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Da Pope.”

Leo also served for years as Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru, building a global profile that helped propel him to the papacy. It hasn’t stopped Chicagoans from claiming him as one of their own — even showing up at the Vatican with Chicago-style deep-dish pizza.

Known as “Bob” before becoming Pope Leo, the new pontiff chose a name that clearly signaled his intentions as a leader, invoking memories of Leo XIII, an intellectual considered a pioneer of modern Catholic social teaching and an advocate for workers. Millies said the choice signaled that Leo wants to refocus on justice and care for others as well as the rising threats around the globe. Leo has cited artificial intelligence as one of those challenges.

With a more low-key presence than his predecessor, Pope Francis, some observers have labeled Leo as quiet. But as his tug of war with Trump shows, his messages are frequently not subtle. In fact, his reserved style may be a reflection of his Midwestern roots.

Pope Leo XIV presides over the Prayer Vigil for Peace at St. Peter’s Basilica, on April 11.

(Antonio Masiello / Getty Images)

This mild manner comes across in public statements that nonetheless make a lasting impact.

Last fall, Leo questioned Trump’s decision to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War. “Let us hope it is just a way of speaking,” he said. More recently, he took aim at the president’s preferred method of communication, his social media site Truth Social. Asked about Trump’s vitriol on the platform, Leo said: “It’s ironic — the name of the site itself. Say no more.”

Perhaps no message has been clearer than the pope’s decision on how to spend the Fourth of July this year. For the nation’s 250th birthday, as Trump hosts a giant celebration, the pope will be an ocean away. His plans? Visiting Lampedusa, an Italian island that serves as a stop for migrants traveling to Europe.

Lucey writes for Bloomberg.

With President Trump continuing to tank in the polls, the parlor game we know as “2028 Republican primary speculation” is back in full swing among the chattering classes.

Vice President JD Vance — who would normally be considered the heir apparent, and who just happened to make a campaign stop in Iowa recently — now finds his “America First” brand positioning complicated by Trump’s Iran misadventure. So much for an easy glide path to the nomination.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio would seem to benefit from Vance’s stumbles, but in a political moment that fetishizes “authenticity,” Rubio risks coming across like a man who irons his blue jeans. Add to that his reputation as a foreign policy hawk in a party that increasingly wants out of “forever wars,” and he’d be the ideal presidential candidate for … 2004.

All of which has opened the door to more imaginative speculation. “If Pat Buchanan and Roger Ailes had a baby,” former “Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd recently quipped, “it would be Tucker Carlson.”

Ailes, of course, was the media-savvy evil genius who took Fox News to No. 1. And while “Pitchfork Pat’s” populist presidential campaigns weren’t ultimately victorious, he is credited with paving the way for Trump’s eventual 2016 victory.

As this comparison suggests, Carlson could make a formidable Republican presidential candidate. The hitch? Carlson and Trump have recently been trading blows, which is not where any potential Republican candidate wants to be.

For all of his polling woes, Trump still enjoys an 85% approval rating among Republicans, according to the recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll. And his recent defeat of Indiana Republican legislators who dared defy him over gerrymandering only underscores the point: Trump’s grip on the Republican Party remains firm.

Even if you dismiss talk of a third Trump term as overwrought constitutional fan fiction, it’s hard to imagine a Republican nominee emerging without Trump’s blessing — let alone in defiance of it.

Which brings us to the latest theory making the rounds: Trump isn’t going to pass this torch to anyone lacking the proper surname.

In this telling, Vance is the loyal, if naive, assistant manager waiting for the boss to retire and hand him the keys to the office — only to discover it’s a family business and the ne’er-do-well son has just pulled into the parking lot in a Ferrari.

Enter Donald Trump Jr., whose chief qualification is name recognition so strong it could probably win a Republican primary on its own.

Add to that daddy’s endorsement, and as the Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last has noted about Vance and Rubio, “Challenging Don Jr. would turn them into enemies of the people.”

But that doesn’t mean this is a slam dunk for Junior.

As British-American journalist Sarah Baxter recently wrote, “like Logan Roy, the patriarch in the television drama Succession, Trump loves playing his children off against each other. He thinks it instills a healthy killer instinct in his privileged offspring.”

This is to say that Junior isn’t the only potential heir lurking in the wings.

Last year, for example, Eric Trump told a journalist: “I think I could do it. And by the way, I think other members of our family could do it too.”

Which brings us to the wildest speculation of all: Ivanka Trump.

Now, to be sure, Ivanka has kept a polite distance from politics (and her father) in recent years, and she doesn’t exactly electrify the MAGA faithful. But she was always her father’s favorite, and her aforementioned liabilities could be overcome with a sufficiently enthusiastic paternal endorsement.

And once she became the standard bearer, Ivanka could market herself as both continuity and “change” — a neat trick, if she can pull it off.

In that sense Republicans could keep the Trump brand while offering a kinder, gentler, fresher face — all while making GOP history with a female presidential nominee.

This, of course, raises the question: Why would Ivanka — or any of the Trumps — want to be part of a political dynasty?

Among the many reasons, the Trump family is raking in cash. Lots of it. And as long as the next president could conceivably be a family member — a possibility that remains operable even if a Trump family member were to lose the general election in 2028 — the spigot will remain on.

That’s one of the reasons that, although Vance would normally be Trump’s obvious successor, the smart money might actually be to bet on someone with the last name “Trump.”

Now, if this dynastic denouement sounds far-fetched, of course it is. But so was electing a thrice-married casino magnate to the presidency in 2016. And so reelecting him in 2024.

We’re living in an era when the seemingly improbable isn’t just possible — it might even be likely.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

WASHINGTON — Reporters assigned to travel aboard Air Force Two were told to prepare for an early morning departure on Tuesday for Islamabad until an unexplained delay — followed by a detour by Vice President JD Vance to the White House — revealed clues that something was wrong.

Iranian diplomats had not yet responded to U.S. proposals intended to form the basis of a new round of talks. Some were questioning whether they would attend at all. Had he departed as planned, Vance risked a humiliation, spending hours flying to Pakistan only to be stood up on arrival.

A crisis meeting at the White House led President Trump to announce an indefinite extension to a ceasefire deadline that had been set as a pressure tactic. Now, unable to bring the Iranians to heel, that pressure was suddenly off.

It was an early lesson for Vance in the many ways high-stakes diplomacy can veer off-course.

“There are obvious risks for Vance,” said Chester Crocker, who served as an assistant secretary of State in the Reagan administration, “being associated with failure or with a dubious deal.”

Trump’s aides are clear on the stakes in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and an end to the war. Control of the Strait of Hormuz could determine global oil prices for years. Any final deal will shape whether Americans ultimately conclude the fight was worth it — and could sway the outcome of the midterm elections.

But for America’s lead negotiator, the stakes are also personal.

Vance, a diplomatic novice, has found himself at the helm of an effort rife with political risk that has stymied seasoned diplomats ahead of an anticipated run for president.

The potential payoff is substantial, placing Vance at the center of an international stage with the power to end a historically unpopular war.

But he also may be forced to attach his name to a nuclear deal that provides Tehran access to billions of dollars in sanctions relief, in exchange for limits on its nuclear work that will ultimately expire over time, under conditional monitoring access for international inspectors — an agreement with striking echoes to a 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by a Democratic administration that was disparaged by his party for over a decade.

Vance is negotiating not on his own terms, but on behalf of a mercurial president whose decisions will ultimately determine whether an agreement can be reached. And the Iranians know that Trump’s days in office are numbered, with Vance, a war skeptic, possibly in line to succeed him.

One U.S. official familiar with the negotiations said the vice president is “a pragmatist,” realistic about the prospects of a deal.

“What he has to gain is an image that he can operate effectively on the world stage on a fraught issue. Even if he will give credit to the president, he will be seen as capable of resolving really hard, security-related problems,” said Dennis Ross, a veteran diplomat on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who served in the George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations. “What he has to lose is that he was given the role and did not succeed.”

Failure could raise doubts about his statecraft. But even success at the negotiating table could result in an agreement that turns off Republican voters he may need in a 2028 presidential bid.

“Vance is put in an impossible position,” said Arne Westad, a professor of history at Yale.

“Any deal with the current Iranian regime will be seen as problematic by many Republicans,” Westad said. “If he fails to secure a deal, he will be attacked by those who want an end to the U.S. war — and be seen as ineffective by the president.”

Reputation ‘on the line’

Trump has publicly acknowledged that Vance, a Marine Corps veteran who has consistently opposed U.S. military engagements in the Middle East, had reservations over launching the Iran war in the first place. “He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me,” the president told reporters in March. “I think he was maybe less enthusiastic.”

For that reason, according to Iranian state media reports, Vance was seen by Tehran as their preferred interlocutor in negotiations. Iranian officials expressed gratitude when, during fevered talks ahead of the initial announcement of a ceasefire, they learned that Steve Witkoff, the president’s roving negotiator, had recommended that the vice president be included in the delegation — an exceptional gesture that marked Washington’s highest-level engagement with the Islamic Republic in history.

Republican strategists said Vance’s participation is a demonstration that Trump trusts him, an essential trait for any future Republican presidential nominee and aspiring heir to the MAGA movement.

“It’s rare that a vice president has been put in the position of directly negotiating with a foreign adversary,” said Terry Nelson, a longtime Republican media strategist. “We are engaging a very senior political leader in negotiations with a country that has killed U.S. soldiers and sown chaos in the region. I do think it’s an indication of our resolution and seriousness.”

Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster who has consulted Republican senators and governors for more than three decades, said the vice president’s appointment as lead negotiator “elevates Vance as Trump’s heir-apparent even more than before.”

“Whether that becomes a plus or a minus depends on the outcome of the negotiations,” Ayres added, “and Trump’s ultimate standing with the Republican electorate, both of which are unknowns.”

Talks are currently deadlocked over long-standing demands from Tehran that its leadership has held since the early 2000s, when previously undisclosed nuclear activities first triggered international alarm over Iran’s expanding program.

Iran has periodically accepted temporary limits on its nuclear work — pausing uranium enrichment during talks and, under the 2015 deal, committing to a prolonged cap on enrichment at levels beyond any clear civilian need. But it has always insisted on a “right to enrich” on its own soil, rejecting U.S. attempts to permanently end the program as a foreign attempt to thwart Iran’s scientific progress.

Returning from the first round of ceasefire negotiations, Vance dismissed that position, articulated to him in Islamabad by the speaker of Iran’s Parliament.

“He said, ‘We refuse to give up the right to enrichment,’” Vance said. “And I thought to myself, you know what, my wife has the right to skydive, but she doesn’t jump out of an airplane, because she and I have an agreement that she’s not going to do that, because I don’t want my wife jumping out of an airplane.”

Echoes of a broken deal

The 2015 deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — negotiated by veteran, nonpolitical U.S. diplomats and nuclear scientists over two years of near-constant negotiations — removed roughly 98% of Iran’s nuclear stockpile from the country, while keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure largely in place, save for the decommissioning of a heavy-water plutonium reactor that could have provided Tehran with a second path to a nuclear bomb.

Under the agreement, Iran consented to limit its use of advanced centrifuges for 10 years, and to restrict uranium enrichment to below weapons-grade levels for 15 years. Inspectors from the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency were granted unprecedented access to monitor the program, though some of these enhanced inspection measures were set to expire after roughly two decades.

In exchange, Iran regained access to tens of billions of dollars of its frozen assets, and settled a long-standing legal dispute with Washington that led the Obama administration to transfer $400 million in cash to Tehran. The episode prompted scandal on the political right, which accused Democrats of fueling terrorism through the funding of Iran’s proxy militias.

Now, after just two weeks of negotiations, the Trump administration is already acknowledging that a final deal with Iran would rely on a familiar formula: temporary caps on Iran’s nuclear work in exchange for substantial sanctions relief. Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018.

Iran comes to the talks with added leverage today, able and willing to disrupt the flow of 20% of the world’s energy through the Strait of Hormuz. And the United States is negotiating alone, without its former partners in the “P5+1” — Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany — at its side.

Anna Kelly, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, told The Times that “after Democrats like Joe Biden and Barack Hussein Obama weakened our country on the world stage, President Trump has effectively restored American strength with the help of Vice President Vance, who is doing a great job leading the United States in negotiations with Iran.”

“The president and his entire national security team have an incredible track record in making good deals for our country, and the American people can rest assured that the United States will not enter any agreement that does not put our national security interests first,” Kelly said.

Matt Gorman, a longtime Republican strategist and chief communications officer at Targeted Victory, said the JCPOA was viewed particularly critically because it “was negotiated in peacetime.”

“Vance would essentially be ending a war, if successful, and that allows him to make a very different argument,” Gorman said.

The vice president is currently polling as the front-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, ahead of Marco Rubio, who — despite serving as Trump’s secretary of State and national security advisor — is not directly involved in the Iran talks.

Vance’s role at the negotiating table could help position him as a peacemaker, Crocker noted, distinguishing him from advocates of the war entering the presidential primaries.

But Vance “has been tasked by a president incapable of staying on message, with limited stores of credibility with adversaries as well as allies and a disregard for the complexities of the issues,” said Barbara Bodine, former U.S. ambassador to Yemen. “His task? A credible end to the war without clear objectives.”

“At best, this will be a faux-gilded JCPOA 2.0. Victory will be declared to no applause. On the line is not just Vance’s own reputation, but a demerit in his run for the 2028 presidency,” Bodine added. “The Iran portfolio was no gift.”

What else you should be reading

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The L.A. Times Special: The Flores twins built a drug empire with El Chapo — then betrayed him

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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ATHENS, Georgia — Fresh from a marathon trip to Pakistan that failed to reach a deal for ending the war with Iran, Vice President JD Vance jetted to this Georgia college town for a campus tour organized by the conservative powerhouse Turning Point USA.

But instead of showcasing the youthful energy that the organization harnessed to return President Trump to the White House less than two years ago, there was a mostly empty arena, awkward questions and unusually sharp criticism.

The event affirmed Trump’s difficulty selling the war and how much he’s complicated his own political fortunes by assailing Pope Leo XIV and posting a social media meme that depicted himself as Jesus.

“I did vote for Trump. I am not a Trump supporter anymore,” said Joseph Bercher, a Catholic who said he was glad that Leo has expressed opposition to the war with Iran.

Bercher said the Jesus meme, which the president took down Monday after a rare conservative backlash, was a “red flag” indicating Trump’s true character.

“He sees himself as like a demagogue or someone to be worshipped,” Bercher said.

C.J. Santini, a recent graduate of Liberty University, an evangelical school in Virginia, said he didn’t have an opinion on whether Iran was truly close to manufacturing a nuclear weapon and thus needed to be attacked. But he laughed and shook his head when asked about Trump attacking Leo.

“It’s just stupid. Stupid,” he said, calling it a “distraction” from Trump’s agenda in Iran and at home.

Mostly empty arena contrasts with 2024 rallies

Many of the college-age attendees donned Turning Point attire, Trump hats and red-white-and-blue paraphernalia for the event. Yet they were outnumbered more than 2-to-1 by empty seats in what is not even the largest arena on this sprawling campus that sits about a 90-minute drive from downtown Atlanta.

A Marine veteran who served in Iraq, Vance acknowledged that not all young conservatives are enamored with another U.S. war in the Middle East.

“I’m not saying you have to agree with me on every issue,” Vance told the young crowd. “What I’m saying,” he added, “is don’t get disengaged.”

The vice president took questions from Turning Point executive Andrew Kolvet instead of Erika Kirk, who began leading the organization after the assassination of her husband Charlie Kirk. Kolvet said Erika Kirk canceled her plans to be on stage because of unspecified threats she had received.

Vance, whose presence ensured significant Secret Service and other law enforcement protection around the venue, said he’d been worried that the event would be canceled altogether.

Kolvet asked Vance directly about the war and Trump’s back-and-forth with Leo. Audience questions were more aggressive. Vance jousted with at least one heckler over the war in Gaza, and he was pressed by another person over the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case files.

In the audience, even some of Vance’s sympathetic listeners offered caveats and critiques.

“The pope needs to stay out of politics,” said Jessie Williams, a Methodist. But he noted his mother is Catholic, and he said he understands why Catholics recoil at Trump calling the pope “weak” and suggesting that the first U.S.-born pontiff was chosen only as a counter to Trump.

Williams called Trump’s meme distasteful.

“I don’t like it, but it’s — what can we do?” Williams said. “He’s a grown man, he’s gonna do what he wants.”

Blake McCluggage, a Baptist, said he did not approve of the meme or Trump’s profane Easter Sunday message that threatened widespread destruction of Iran’s civilian infrastructure.

The threat, plus Trump’s follow up message that a “whole civilization” would die, prompted escalating criticism from Leo, with the pope calling the president’s comments “truly unacceptable.”

However, McCluggage said, “you can still be a Republican” despite disagreeing with Trump.

A day before coming to Georgia, Vance tried to laugh off the meme as a joke that “a lot of people weren’t understanding.” The vice president also seemed to echo Trump’s assertion that Leo should concentrate less on global affairs.

“It would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic church and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy,” Vance said in a Fox News interview.

On stage in Athens, he shifted his arguments, saying he welcomes Leo’s comments even if he disagrees with them.

“At the very least, it invites conversation,” said Vance, who converted to Catholicism as an adult.

Still, Vance questioned Leo anew, pushing back specifically at the pope’s Palm Sunday assertion that God does not hear the prayers of those who make war. Leo was quoting scripture from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. Vance asked whether God was on the side of Allied forces in World War II as they liberated Jewish survivors of Nazi extermination camps.

“I certainly think the answer is yes,” Vance said. When Leo mixes global affairs and complex theology, Vance said, “it’s very important for the pope to be careful.”

Barrow and Megnien write for the Associated Press.