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Mike Pence and the Jews: What to know as he begins a presidential campaign
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Until the Jan. 6 insurrection, Mike Pence made sure to stay on the same page as Donald Trump — except, sometimes, when it came to the Jews.
Both men delighted the pro-Israel establishment — Trump by fulfilling a long wishlist of Israel’s right-wing government, Pence by proving himself as a stalwart Christian Zionist through years in elected office. But just weeks after Trump assumed office, the difference in how each man approached Jewish anxieties was already stark.
Jewish community centers and other Jewish institutions were getting bomb threats, and a Jewish journalist asked the president what he planned to do about antisemitism. Trump lashed out, accusing the reporter of lying and quipping, “Welcome to the world of the media.”
A week later, Jews in St. Louis were reeling after a vandal knocked over over 150 tombstones in a Jewish cemetery. Pence was in town and took the opportunity to condemn the bomb threats and the vandalism as “a sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.” Then, he headed over to the cemetery, picked up a rake and helped clean up the mess.
Pence’s bid is the longest of shots. He polls in the low single digits, while Trump leads in the polls. The former president routinely depicts Pence as a traitor for not trying to hand him the election when Pence presided over the certification of the electoral vote on Jan. 6, 2021. Pence, meanwhile, has said Trump’s behavior that day endangered his family. If Pence does succeed in unseating his old boss, it will be because he’s tapped into a deep thirst among some Republicans for a more conventional candidate to wean the party off Trump.
No matter how he does in the race, here’s what you need to know about Mike Pence and the Jews.
He has been pro-Israel from the get-go
First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as an Indiana Republican in 2000, Pence made clear from the outset that defending Israel was among his priorities.
“My support for Israel stems largely from my personal faith,” he told Congressional Quarterly in 2002. “God promises Abraham, ‘those who bless you, I will bless, and those who curse you, I will curse.’”
In his autobiography published last year, “So Help me God,” he credits his interest in Israel and in Jewish issues to his late sister-in-law, Judy, “an elegant, sophisticated young woman from a prominent Jewish family in Milwaukee” who married his brother, Thomas, “a pickup-driving, dirt bike-riding, banjo-playing country boy from southern Indiana.” Pence wrote, “She made him a better man.”
For years, he has placed a quote from the Biblical book of Jeremiah above the fireplace in his personal and then his official residences — in the governor’s mansion in Indiana and then in the vice president’s residence in Washington, D.C: “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope, and a future.”
“They’re words to which my family has repaired to as generations of Americans have done so throughout our history, and the people of Israel through all their storied history have clung,” Pence told a conference of Christians United for Israel in 2017.
In Congress, Pence took the lead in advancing pro-Israel legislation, especially in defending the barrier Israel built cutting through portions of the West Bank to shield Israel and some of its settlements from terrorist attacks. Together with Rep. Ron Klein, a Florida Democrat, and the late Tom Lantos, a California Democrat who was the only Holocaust survivor elected to Congress, he co-founded the House’s antisemitism task force.
Lantos, Pence said in his autobiography, had a profound influence on him. “He and I almost always disagreed on politics, but I was always inspired by his moral clarity and courage,” he wrote. Klein now chairs the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
As Indiana governor in 2016, Pence enacted the first state law banning state business with firms that support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement targeting Israel, known as BDS. The bill also applied to businesses that boycott Israel’s settlements — one of the first pieces of legislation to erase the line between Israel and the West Bank.
Later that year, the Republican Jewish Coalition effusively praised Pence’s selection as Trump’s running mate, calling him “a critical leader and important voice regarding Israel during his time in the House and as governor.”
He attended every policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee during the Trump administration; Trump avoided all of them.
His evangelical beliefs shape his domestic policy
One of the most prominent issues of the 2024 election will be abortion, following the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade last year. The decision gave states the authority to determine reproductive rights and led to the swift narrowing of abortion access in many states. On abortion and other issues including LGBTQ rights, Pence departs from most of the Jewish community, where support for abortion access and LGBTQ issues are high.
A number of Republicans — chief among them Trump — believe that the party should take the win and not pursue further abortion restrictions, arguing that the decision last year contributed to Republican losses in the midterm elections.
Not Pence: he wants to ban abortion nationwide. “Having been given this second chance for life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land,” he said after the court’s decision.
Pence also has a long career of opposing LGBTQ rights. When he was governor, he sought to exempt Indiana from a Supreme Court ruling recognizing same-sex marriages. As a congressman, he opposed funding for outreach to HIV patients that he said promoted gay lifestyles. (His handling of an HIV outbreak in Indiana is understood to have worsened it.)
As Indiana governor in 2015, Pence signed one of the most far-reaching state laws allowing businesses to decline to serve LGBTQ customers. Businesses threatened to boycott the state, and he soon signed modified legislation that increased protections for LGBTQ people.
Months later, Pence was facing questions about why he pushed through the law from the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group that trends moderate on social issues and whose director said members had “a lot of questions” about the legislation. His tone was apologetic. “Ultimately we adopted a few reforms and made it clear this was a shield, not a sword,” he said of the bill.
He was the Trump administration’s top trauma whisperer for the Jews
During his time as vice president, Pence was often the favored spokesman when tragedy befell the Jews.
In 2018, at a Trump administration religious freedom event, Pence singled out the threats of violence faced by Jews in Europe, including in countries seen as allies by Trump.
“While religious freedom is always in danger in authoritarian regimes, threats to religious minorities are not confined to autocracies or dictatorships,” he said “They can, and do, arise in free societies, as well — not from government persecution but from prejudice and hatred.”
The same year, he said he was “sickened and appalled” at Nazi graffiti on an Indiana synagogue he knew well.
In 2019, he and his wife visited the Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, after a deadly attack by a white supremacist. “We had to come,” he told the rabbi.
The same year, he toured Auschwitz and the next year, he attended the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.
Some efforts to mark Jewish tragedy went awry. In 2018, when Pence marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jewish figures chided him for imbuing Christian imagery in his celebration of Israel’s founding in the wake of the Holocaust. “A few days ago, Karen & I paid our respects at Yad Vashem to honor the 6 million Jewish martyrs of the Holocaust who 3 years after walking beneath the shadow of death, rose up from the ashes to resurrect themselves to reclaim a Jewish future,” he said on Twitter.
It was not the last time a Pence event would bring Christian themes into Jewish mourning. Pence was scheduled on Oct. 29, 2018, to campaign in Michigan for a Jewish Republican running for Congress, Leah Epstein.
Two days earlier, a gunman massacred 11 Jewish worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the worst-ever attack on Jews in U.S. history. Epstein invited a Messianic Jewish leader to deliver a prayer. Messianic Jews, who call their spiritual leaders rabbis, believe in the divinity of Jesus, and Jewish groups took offense. That led Pence’s folks to scramble to tell reporters that he was unaware that the rabbi was not, in fact, Jewish.
Pence was not among the many Trump administration figures and supporters who urged the president to walk back his “very fine people on both sides” equivocation after a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 in which a counter-protester was killed. The vice president defended his boss: “I stand with the president,” he said when asked about Trump’s statements.
Trump-Pence vs. Trump
Pence, increasingly at odds with his former boss since their Jan. 6, 2021, falling-out, has a unique way of distinguishing Good Trump from Bad Trump: He portrays the administration’s wins as “Trump-Pence” policies, while the not-so-salutary stuff is Trump’s alone.
That dynamic was in evidence last November at the annual conference of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, when Pence was among an array of presidential prospective candidates to speak, including DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Trump himself.
Moving the embassy to Jerusalem? “Trump-Pence.” “It was the Trump-Pence administration that kept our word to the American people and our most cherished ally, when we moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the state of Israel,” Pence said.
As for Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election? Pence didn’t directly name the former president, but differentiated himself from him.
“The American people must know that our party keeps our oath to the Constitution even when political expediency may suggest that we do otherwise,” Pence said then. “We must be the leaders to keep our oath even when it hurts.”
Will he get Jewish funding?
Until filing papers on Monday, Pence’s main vehicle for fundraising has been a 501(c)4, a political advocacy group that is not required to reveal donors or extensive financial information. Advancing American Freedom has said its aim is to raise tens of millions of dollars to promote Pence’s favored conservative causes.
Now that he’s in the race, it will be interesting to watch where Pence draws Jewish support. One clue may be in a plane ride: Last year, Pence went on a campaign style tour of Israel and Ukraine. Loaning him the plane was Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate and Republican kingmaker Sheldon Adelson.
Adelson has since said she’s not planning to get involved in the GOP primaries.
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The post Mike Pence and the Jews: What to know as he begins a presidential campaign appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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US Officials Tell i24NEWS Israeli Concerns About Gaza Board of Peace Are ‘Unfounded’
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump is interviewed by Reuters White House correspondent Steve Holland (not pictured) during an exclusive interview in the Oval Office in the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 14, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo
i24 News – Amid the criticism in Israel over the composition of the “Board of Peace” and the bodies set to govern the Gaza Strip, as well as concerns that Hamas could continue to threaten Israel under the new plan, officials in Washington suggest these concerns are unfounded, i24NEWS understands.
A Senior US official tells i24NEWS: “Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt were instrumental in achieving the ceasefire, securing the return of the living hostages, and bringing back the deceased. They have co-signed commitments that Hamas will follow through on its part of the plan, and the Board of Peace will work with them to ensure compliance.”
The underlying message is clear: President Trump will make the calls, and the US will ensure full implementation of all objectives of the plan, first and foremost the demilitarization of Gaza, regardless of the positions or hostile statements towards Israel coming from Turkey and Qatar.
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One Person Killed, 14 Hurt in Blast in Iranian Port of Bandar Abbas, Iranian Media Reports
FILE PHOTO: An aerial view of the Iranian shores and Port of Bandar Abbas in the strait of Hormuz, December 10, 2023. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
At least one person was killed and 14 injured in an explosion in the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, a local official told Iranian news agencies, but the cause of the blast was not known.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said that social media reports alleging that a Revolutionary Guard navy commander had been targeted in the explosion were “completely false.”
Iranian media said the blast was under investigation but provided no further information. Iranian authorities could not immediately be contacted for comment.
Separately, four people were killed after a gas explosion in the city of Ahvaz near the Iraqi border, according to state-run Tehran Times. No further information was immediately available.
Two Israeli officials told Reuters that Israel was not involved in Saturday’s blasts, which come amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington over Iran’s crackdown on nationwide protests and over the country’s nuclear program.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
US President Donald Trump said on January 22 an “armada” was heading toward Iran. Multiple sources said on Friday that Trump was weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces.
Earlier on Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused US, Israeli and European leaders of exploiting Iran’s economic problems, inciting unrest and providing people with the means to “tear the nation apart.”
Bandar Abbas, home to Iran’s most important container port, lies on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway between Iran and Oman which handles about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil.
The port suffered a major explosion last April that killed dozens and injured over 1,000 people. An investigative committee at the time blamed the blast on shortcomings in adherence to principles of civil defense and security.
Iran has been rocked by nationwide protests that erupted in December over economic hardship and have posed one of the toughest challenges to the country’s clerical rulers.
At least 5,000 people were killed in the protests, including 500 members of the security forces, an Iranian official told Reuters.
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How a law used to protect synagogues is now being deployed against ICE protesters and journalists
After a pro-Palestinian protest at a New Jersey synagogue turned violent in October, the Trump administration took an unusual step — using a federal law typically aimed at protecting abortion clinics to sue the demonstrators.
Now, federal authorities are attempting to deploy the same law against journalists as well as protesters against Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the agency’s at times violent crackdown in Minneapolis.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon, a local journalist, and two protesters were arrested after attending a Jan. 18 anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, Justice Department officials said Friday. Protesters alleged the pastor at Cities Church worked for ICE.
The federal law they are accused of violating, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE, prohibits the use of force or intimidation to interfere with reproductive health care clinics and houses of worship.
But in the three decades since its passage in 1994, the law had almost entirely been deployed against anti-abortion protesters causing disruptions at clinics.
That changed in September of last year, when the Trump administration cited the FACE Act to sue pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Congregation Ohr Torah in West Orange, New Jersey.
It was the first time the Department of Justice had used the law against demonstrators outside a house of worship, Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division, said at the time.
The novel legal strategy — initially advanced by Jewish advocacy groups to fight antisemitism — is now front and center in what First Amendment advocates are describing as an attack on freedom of the press.
“I intend to identify and find every single person in that mob that interrupted that church service in that house of God and bring them to justice,” Dhillon told Newsmax last week. “And that includes so-called ‘journalists.’”
How the law has been used
The FACE Act has traditionally been used to prosecute protesters who interfere with patients entering abortion clinics. Conservative activists have long criticized the law as violating demonstrators’ First Amendment rights, and the Trump administration even issued a memo earlier this month saying the Justice Department should limit enforcement of the law.
But in September, the Trump administration applied the FACE Act in a new way: suing the New Jersey protesters at Congregation Ohr Torah.
They had disrupted an event at the Orthodox shul that promoted real estate sales in Israel and the West Bank, blowing plastic horns in people’s ears and chanting “globalize the intifada,” a complaint alleges.
Two pro-Israel demonstrators were charged by local law enforcement with aggravated assault, including a local dentist, Moshe Glick, who police said bashed a protester in the head with a metal flashlight, sending him to the hospital. Glick said he had acted in self defense, protecting a fellow congregant who had been tackled by a protester.
The event soon became a national flashpoint, with Glick’s lawyer alleging the prosecution had been “an attempt to criminalize Jewish self-defense.” Former New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy pardoned Glick earlier this month.
The Trump administration sued the pro-Palestinian protesters under the FACE Act, seeking to ban them from protesting outside houses of worship and asking that they each pay thousands of dollars in fines.
At the time, Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told JNS he applauded the Trump administration “for bringing this suit to protect the Jewish community and all people of faith, who have the constitutional right to worship without fear of harassment.”
Diament did not respond to the Forward’s email asking whether he supported the use of the FACE Act against the Minneapolis journalists and protesters.
Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, a pro-Israel group that says it uses legal tools to counter antisemitism, did not express concern over the use of the FACE Act in the Minnesota arrests — and emphasized the necessity of protecting religious spaces from interference.
“The idea that ‘you can worship’ means nothing if a mob can make it unsafe or impossible,” Goldfeder wrote in a statement to the Forward. “So if you apply it consistently: to protect a church in Minnesota, a synagogue in New Jersey, a mosque in Detroit, what you are actually protecting is pluralism itself.”
Goldfeder has also attempted to use the FACE Act against protesters at a synagogue, citing the law in a July 2024 complaint against demonstrators who had converged on an event promoting Israel real estate at Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. That clash descended into violence.
The Trump administration Justice Department subsequently filed a statement of interest supporting that case, arguing that what constituted “physical obstruction” at a house of worship under the FACE Act could be interpreted broadly.
Now, similar legal reasoning may apply to journalists covering the Sunday church protest in Minneapolis. Press freedom groups have expressed deep alarm over the arrests, arguing that the journalists were there to document, not disrupt.
The arrests are “the latest example of the administration coming up with far-fetched ‘gotcha’ legal theories to send a message to journalists to tread cautiously,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Because the government is looking for any way to target them.”
The post How a law used to protect synagogues is now being deployed against ICE protesters and journalists appeared first on The Forward.