Net worth: Over $33 Billion (as of July 2026, per Forbes)
Who are Sheldon and Miriam Adelson?
- Sheldon and Mariam Adelson are the billionaire casino and resort moguls behind the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. Sheldon Adelson started the business in the 1990s by building a private expo center and the Venetian hotel-casino in Las Vegas. Yet much of his wealth was amassed in the 2000s, after the successful expansion of his business into Asia with the Sands Macao and Marina Bay Sands properties. The Adelsons eventually sold the Las Vegas Venetian in 2021 for $6.25 billion to further expand in Singapore and Macau.
- Sheldon Adelson pursued a stubbornly anti-union policy at the Venetian making it the only non-union casino on the Vegas Strip for decades.
- In 1999, during the construction of the Venetian, Sheldon Adelson demolished the Sands and refused to recognize existing worker unions at the hotel-casino. This move violated court-order National Labor Relations Board rules, sparked a 1,000 worker-strong protest movement, and kicked off the 25 year fight for the recognition of Unite Here Local 226. Union recognition was only achieved in 2021, after the Adelsons sold the Venetian to Apollo Global Management.
- In 2019, Sheldon Adelson handed his shares in the Las Vegas Sands Corporation to his wife Miriam, making her the one of the richest women in the world and the richest individual in Israel (where she also holds citizenship status). Sheldon Adelson died in January, 2021.
- The Adelson family are GOP megadonors, and some of Trump’s largest financial backers since 2016. They donated $133 million in 2016, $90 million in 2020, and $113 million in 2024.
- The Adelsons have spent colossal sums on Senate and House races, supplying “more than one-third of the funding for Congressional Leadership Fund and nearly one-quarter of Senate Leadership Fund’s” funding between 2016 and 2021.
- In total, the Adelsons gave about $280 million to groups fundraising for House and Senate races in that five-year period.
- As of April 2026, Senate Leadership Fund—the Mitch McConnell-affiliated super PAC—had already spent $342 million to support Republican campaigns across eight senate races.
- In 2019, the Adelsons funneled $250,000 to a secret nonprofit set up by Nikki Haley. They also donated to Haley’s Stand for America PAC in 2021.
- Miriam in particular donated $2 million to Ted Cruz’s 2024 re-election campaign and was an early backer of Ron DeSantis’ 2018 gubernatorial campaign in Florida.
What Does The Adelson Family Have To Gain From The Trump Administration?
- The Adelson family has a long history of financing the pro-Israel lobby in the United States and have sought to purchase influence over U.S.-Israel policy since the 1990s.
- Sheldon Adelson has advocated for the United States to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran, and was the main financial backer of Freedom Watch: an advocacy organization tasked with generating continued support for the Iraq War.
- Sheldon Adelson once described himself as a “one-issue person. That issue is Israel.” He was a long-time donor to the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC), the largest pro-Israel lobby in the United States, until 2007. That year, Sheldon switched his donations to the Israeli-American Council (IAC), which he characterized as more committed (read: less “partisan”) than AIPAC.
- 2007 was also the year Sheldon Adelson created Israel Hayom, Israel’s most widely disturbed newspaper. The Adelson-owned outlet has been influential in Benjamin Netanyahu’s rise to—and illegal consolidation of—political power in Israel.
- Israel Hayom has proven similarly supportive of Donald Trump’s terms in office.
- The Adelson family are especially active advocates for Israel’s illegal settlements policy. A 2020 piece in Israel Hayom, for example, criticized AIPAC for not sufficiently, “telling Congress that annexation is Israel’s right, and that it poses no threat to the interests of either the United States or the Jewish state.”
- Miriam Adelson’s $100 million donation toward Trump’s 2024 campaign was reportedly conditioned on his support for Israeli annexation efforts in the West Bank.
- Miriam Adelson is at the center of the Trump administration’s efforts to police public criticisms of Israeli policy. By bankingrolling social media campaigns against Mahmoud Khalil (and Columbia University more broadly), Mairam has enmeshed herself in Trump’s “unprecedented decision to seek the deportation of a U.S. permanent resident without bringing any criminal charges.”
How Is The Adelson Family Leading The Trump/Right-Wing Corporitist Agenda?
- Adelson family’s lobbying has been credited for a number of pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy outcomes. The couple successfully convinced Trump to flout decades of international law by both recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and building a new U.S. Embassy there (on land illegally confiscated from Palestinians). Sheldon also successfully pushed Trump to appoint war-hawk John Bolton as his first-term national security advisor.
- Sheldon Adelson was a staunch opponent of the Obama administration’s diplomatic nuclear deal with Iran. John Bolton was essential in convincing Trump to scrap the agreement.
For more information, see the Revolving Door Project’s Oligarchs in Trump World tracker.