Miriam Adelson
Based on Wikipedia: Miriam Adelson
The Physician Who Became America's Most Consequential Political Donor
In American politics, money talks. But few people's money has spoken quite as loudly as Miriam Adelson's. With a net worth hovering around forty billion dollars, she has emerged as one of the most powerful political donors in United States history—a distinction that might surprise anyone who knew her earlier in life, when she was a young doctor studying the biochemistry of addiction in a laboratory.
Her story spans continents, marriages, medical breakthroughs, and the highest corridors of political power. It's also a story about how one person's deeply held convictions—about Israel, about America, about the relationship between the two—can reshape the political landscape when backed by virtually unlimited resources.
From Tel Aviv to the Cutting Edge of Addiction Medicine
Miriam Farbstein was born in Tel Aviv in 1945, just three years before Israel would declare independence. Her parents were refugees who had fled Poland before the Holocaust consumed European Jewry. Her father, interestingly, was a prominent member of Mapam—a left-wing Israeli political party that advocated for socialist policies and, initially, closer ties with the Soviet Union. The family eventually settled in Haifa, where her father ran several movie theaters.
The young Miriam proved academically gifted. She attended the Hebrew Reali School, one of Israel's most prestigious educational institutions, for twelve years. Then came university, where she pursued microbiology and genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before earning her medical degree magna cum laude—Latin for "with great honor"—from Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Medicine.
Like all Israeli citizens, she performed mandatory military service, working as a medical officer at Ness Ziona. She rose to become the chief internist in the emergency room at Tel Aviv's Rokach Hospital, also known as Hadassah Hospital. By her early forties, she was a respected physician with a first marriage, two daughters, and a growing interest in a particular medical challenge: drug addiction.
In 1986, she made a pivotal decision. She left Israel for New York City's Rockefeller University, one of the world's leading biomedical research institutions, to specialize in addiction medicine. There she found a mentor who would shape her career: Mary Jeanne Kreek.
The Science of Breaking Free
Kreek was a giant in addiction medicine, best known for developing methadone maintenance therapy for heroin addiction. Methadone is what's called an opioid agonist—it activates the same brain receptors as heroin but does so more slowly and steadily, eliminating the devastating highs and lows that trap addicts in cycles of use. Patients on methadone maintenance can function normally, hold jobs, and rebuild their lives without experiencing withdrawal or cravings.
When Kreek developed this approach in the 1960s, it was revolutionary. The prevailing view held that addiction was primarily a moral failing rather than a medical condition. Kreek's work helped establish the scientific understanding that addiction fundamentally alters brain chemistry—and that medical intervention could help restore normal function.
Adelson collaborated with Kreek for two decades, publishing numerous scientific papers on addiction. This wasn't a hobby or a vanity project. She was doing real science, contributing to humanity's understanding of why some people become addicted and how medicine might help them recover.
This background matters for understanding who Miriam Adelson is. Before she became a billionaire megadonor, she was a physician-scientist who dedicated years to understanding one of humanity's most heartbreaking afflictions. The addiction clinics she would later open weren't abstract philanthropy—they grew from hands-on expertise.
A Blind Date That Changed Everything
In 1989, Miriam went on a blind date with a businessman named Sheldon Adelson. He was fifty-six years old, twice divorced, and had built and lost several fortunes. His latest venture involved a computer trade show called COMDEX, which was generating enormous profits. They married in 1991 and had two sons together.
What happened next transformed both their lives. Sheldon pivoted from trade shows to casinos, eventually building the Las Vegas Sands Corporation into a gambling empire spanning Las Vegas, Macau, and Singapore. The Venetian, the Palazzo, Marina Bay Sands—these became monuments to his ambition and, increasingly, funding sources for the causes both Adelsons cared about.
In 1993, just two years after their wedding, the couple opened the first Adelson Clinic in Israel—a substance abuse treatment center that put Miriam's medical expertise into practice. A second location followed in Las Vegas in 2000. The clinics specialized in medically assisted detoxification, including methadone therapy—the very treatment Miriam had studied under Mary Jeanne Kreek.
A Media Empire Takes Shape
The Adelsons didn't stop at casinos and clinics. In 2007, Sheldon launched Israel Hayom, a free daily newspaper that would become Israel's most widely read publication. The paper's editorial stance was unabashedly supportive of Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party. Critics called it "Bibiton"—a portmanteau of Netanyahu's nickname "Bibi" and the Hebrew word for newspaper.
Miriam became the paper's publisher in 2018. Back in America, the family also acquired the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada's largest newspaper. These weren't just business investments. They were platforms for advancing a worldview.
The Rise of a Political Powerhouse
Money and politics have always been intertwined in America, but a 2010 Supreme Court decision called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the floodgates. The ruling held that the government couldn't restrict independent political expenditures by corporations, associations, or labor unions. In practical terms, this meant wealthy individuals could pour virtually unlimited sums into political action committees—known as PACs and super PACs—that supported their preferred candidates.
The Adelsons seized this opportunity. In the 2012 election cycle, Miriam became the top female political donor in America, contributing forty-six million dollars—as much as the next fifteen female donors combined. This wasn't supporting a candidate here and there. This was operating at a scale that could shift the trajectory of American politics.
A fascinating detail emerged years later, in 2024, when New York magazine investigated the Adelsons' donation patterns. The press, it turned out, had consistently misattributed many of Miriam's donations to Sheldon. During their marriage, Sheldon made 848 campaign donations totaling 273 million dollars. Miriam made 717 donations totaling 284 million dollars. She had actually given more than her famously generous husband—but he received most of the credit and scrutiny.
All In on Trump
The Adelsons' most consequential political bet came in 2016, when they threw their support behind Donald Trump's presidential campaign. They provided the largest donation to his campaign, the largest donation to his inauguration, and later, the largest donation to his legal defense fund when special counsel Robert Mueller investigated Russian interference in the election.
Miriam's support went beyond checks. She wrote publicly that Trump "should enjoy sweeping support" among American Jews and Israelis. In one particularly striking passage, she argued that Trump deserved a "Book of Trump" in the Bible due to his support for Israel. She described him as representing "kinship, friendship, courage, the triumph of truth."
Trump reciprocated in 2018 by awarding her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. The medal is typically given for "meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors." Previous recipients include Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, and Neil Armstrong.
The Israel Question
To understand Miriam Adelson's political donations, you must understand her views on Israel. She has said publicly that her heart is in Israel and that she got "stuck" in America after meeting Sheldon. By multiple accounts, she was the one who inspired her husband's transformation into a passionate Zionist donor.
The causes she supports paint a clear picture. She's a major backer of the Zionist Organization of America, one of the oldest pro-Israel advocacy groups in the United States. She supports Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial and museum. She has given more than 250 million dollars to Birthright Israel, a program that provides free trips to Israel for young Jews worldwide.
But some of her donations have proven more controversial. In 2019, she gave twenty-five million dollars to establish a medical school at Ariel University—located in the West Bank, in territory that Israel has occupied since the 1967 war. She stated explicitly that the gift would help "strengthen the settlers in Judea and Samaria." Those terms—Judea and Samaria—are the biblical names for the West Bank, and using them implies a belief that the land was promised to the Jewish people by God.
She also donated six million dollars between 2019 and 2022 to HaShomer HaChadash, an organization that places volunteer security guards and agricultural workers on settler farms in the West Bank. And she and Sheldon were early and major funders of the Maccabee Task Force, an organization dedicated to combating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement—known as BDS—on American college campuses.
The Netanyahu Paradox
Given all this, you might expect Miriam Adelson to be close with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister and the standard-bearer for the Israeli right. And for years, she was. The Adelsons were notably early donors to his 1996 campaign for prime minister. Israel Hayom served, in many ways, as his unofficial mouthpiece.
But around 2019, something broke. The Adelsons cut off contact with Netanyahu and his wife Sara. The falling out, it emerged during Netanyahu's 2024 corruption trial, stemmed partly from interpersonal conflict with Sara Netanyahu. Miriam testified that Sara had pressured her for gifts and favorable media coverage. She described Sara as having undue influence over Benjamin's political decisions and characterized her as psychologically unwell.
Politics, even among allies, can be messy.
After Sheldon: The Wealthiest Israeli
Sheldon Adelson died in January 2021, at age eighty-seven. His death left Miriam as the majority owner of Las Vegas Sands and one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Forbes estimated her net worth at 38.2 billion dollars in 2021, though it has fluctuated since—dropping to 27.5 billion in 2022 before rebounding to around 35 billion in 2023 and forty billion by 2025.
These numbers make her the richest Israeli citizen, the richest person in Nevada, and consistently one of the ten wealthiest women in America. They also give her political influence that, if anything, has grown since her husband's death.
In the 2024 presidential election, she initially held back during the Republican primary, courted by candidates like Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. Ultimately, she returned to Trump, contributing 106 million dollars to his campaign—making her its third-largest donor.
But the relationship hit turbulence. According to Michael Wolff's 2025 book, Trump privately described Adelson as "boring" and long-winded after their initial meetings, expressing reluctance to continue courting her. Later, when Trump learned she had hired staff who had been critical of him to run the super PAC she'd created to support him, he reportedly sent her a text message calling her his "enemy."
The White House denied these accounts. But they hint at a reality of big-money politics: even hundred-million-dollar donors don't always get smooth relationships with the politicians they support.
The Dallas Mavericks Saga
In December 2023, Adelson expanded her empire in an unexpected direction: professional basketball. She and her son-in-law Patrick Dumont purchased a controlling interest in the Dallas Mavericks, with their families taking sixty-nine percent ownership while previous owner Mark Cuban retained twenty-seven percent.
There was reportedly one wrinkle. The National Basketball Association wouldn't allow Adelson herself to serve as the team's governor—the league's term for the owner who represents a franchise at league meetings—apparently due to concerns about her political reputation. Dumont took that role instead.
The purchase wasn't purely about basketball. Since acquiring the team, Adelson has been advocating for expanded gambling legalization in Texas, where sports betting remains illegal. A casino in the Lone Star State would be enormously valuable, and owning a major professional sports team provides both a platform for advocacy and a potential customer base.
Then came the Luka Doncic trade.
Doncic, a Slovenian guard, was widely considered one of the best players in the NBA—a five-time All-Star who had led the Mavericks to the 2024 NBA Finals. In early 2025, the team traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers. The official explanation was that Doncic wasn't "taking care of his body well enough."
Fans were furious. At one game, a fan was ejected for wearing a t-shirt depicting Adelson with a red clown nose. Others were removed for chanting demands that the general manager be fired. Conspiracy theories spread that Adelson was deliberately sabotaging the franchise to justify moving it to Las Vegas, where she lives and where the Sands Corporation has major operations.
There's no evidence for this theory. But it reflects how thoroughly Adelson has become a lightning rod—someone whose every decision invites scrutiny and suspicion.
The Weight of Influence
What do you do with forty billion dollars and deeply held convictions? Miriam Adelson's answer has been: everything possible.
Through the Adelson Foundation—which gives roughly two hundred million dollars annually to Jewish and Israeli causes—she shapes institutions, funds research, and advances her vision of a strong Israel supported by a strong America. Through her political donations, she has helped elect presidents and defended them from investigation. Through her media holdings, she influences public opinion in both countries.
After the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, she published an op-ed taking an uncompromising stance. She called for "radical Muslim and Black Lives Matter activists, ultra-progressives and career agitators" to be "dead to us." At the same time, she has been an influential voice pushing for hostage deals with Hamas—advocating for whatever agreements might bring captured Israelis home.
In 2020, she was named as a defendant in a lawsuit alleging "the denationalization and dehumanization of the Palestinian people" and "the installation of an apartheid regime" in the occupied territories. Other defendants included Netanyahu, Trump, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, commonly known as AIPAC. The case was dismissed in 2021.
She backed Trump's January 2021 pardon of Aviem Sella, an Israeli intelligence officer who had fled the United States in 1987 after being indicted for espionage. Sella had been the initial handler for Jonathan Pollard, the American naval intelligence analyst who provided classified information to Israel—one of the most damaging spy cases in American history.
A Life in Full
Miriam Adelson has been many things: a refugee's daughter, a star student, a physician, an addiction researcher, a philanthropist, a media mogul, a political kingmaker, and now a sports team owner. She holds an honorary doctorate from Tel Aviv University, received honorary citizenship of Jerusalem in 2013, and was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship.
At nearly eighty years old, she shows no signs of retreating from public life. The donations continue. The newspaper still publishes. The foundation still gives. The political influence remains vast.
Whether you view her as a patriot, a plutocrat, or something more complicated, her impact is undeniable. In an era when political money flows like water, Miriam Adelson has been a river unto herself—carving new channels in American and Israeli politics, reshaping the landscape through sheer force of resources and will.
Her heart, she says, is in Israel. But her money talks in America. And in both countries, people listen.