Vice President JD Vance will appear at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, to deliver the keynote address at Monday night’s closed-door gala dinner for VIP attendees.

Vance’s address comes as Jewish and pro-Israel Republicans have expressed concern over his  critical tone toward Israel and his association with far-right commentator Tucker Carlson, who has hosted numerous antisemitic guests on his podcast over the last two years. 

The appearance will be Vance’s first at the RJC’s annual summit since entering public office. Vance attended the three-day confab as a guest in 2021 while running in the GOP primary for his former Senate seat, though he did not deliver remarks at that year’s gathering. 

President Donald Trump will be delivering videotaped remarks at the gala dinner on Monday night. Several of the GOP’s top Senate recruits will also be in attendance, including former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, who’s running against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in the pivotal Michigan Senate contest. Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), who’s running against Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), will also be speaking. 

The summit has evolved somewhat in recent years as rising antisemitism within the GOP caused intra-party fissures. Carlson’s decision to host neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes for a friendly interview on his podcast in the days leading up to last year’s confab prompted the RJC to make fighting right-wing antisemitism a key focus of the summit, which has historically been centered around celebrating broad GOP support for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and connecting Republican politicians and candidates with potential donors.

Signs saying “Tucker is not MAGA” were featured at last year’s 2025 summit. 

While Vance has condemned antisemitism and argued that it has no place in the GOP, he has said he rejects the notion that Jew hatred is spreading in the conservative movement. He also dismissed the suggestion that the rise in anti-Israel sentiment in the Republican Party was the result of antisemitism.

He said after being heckled over Israel’s war in Gaza at a Turning Point USA event in April that “the humanitarian situation in Gaza was an absolute catastrophe” when Trump began his second term and defended the ceasefire brokered by the president. In a pivot from his tone two years prior, Vance instead criticized the Biden administration for failing to reach a deal to stop the fighting and declined to defend Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Since the Iran war was launched six months ago, the vice president has led several rounds of direct peace talks with Iran while emphasizing publicly that the administration was looking for a peaceful end to the conflict. He has also largely defended the war in public by noting the efforts to end the conflict.

In June, he issued a scathing public rebuke of Israeli officials who have criticized Trump for approving the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran, during which he cautioned Israeli skeptics of the deal against “attacking the only powerful ally” it has left and urged them to “wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”