Politico

The university presidents who traveled to Washington to limit the reverberations they’ve been facing over campus protests of the Israel-Hamas war may have made things only worse.

In the hours and days after a marathon grilling session at a House hearing on Tuesday, Harvard University President Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth are dealing with backlash from lawmakers, donors and, in Harvard’s case, members of one of its own boards for their defense of the demonstrations that have taken place on their campuses.

The criticism is coming from all sides. And on Thursday, it reached all the way to the White House. Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, one of the most prominent Jews in the Biden administration, slammed the “presidents of some of our most elite universities” for failing to denounce calls for genocide as antisemitic, an oblique reference to an exchange Gay had with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) during the hearing.

During the exchange, Stefanik pressed Gay on whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violates Harvard’s code of conduct. Gay replied that “it depends on the context.” Clips of the exchange have since gone viral, spurring outrage online. Gay clarified her remarks on X on Wednesday.

“Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account,” Gay said in the statement posted on Harvard’s X account.

The statement has done little to satisfy those who viewed Gay’s remarks as dangerous and antisemitic.

“The lack of moral clarity is unacceptable,” Emhoff said of the testimony during his remarks on Thursday at the annual lighting ceremony of the National Menorah in Washington. “We’ve seen a restaurant owner accused of genocide because he’s Jewish. Students afraid to go to class. We’ve seen it in our markets, synagogues and in our streets.”

Emhoff isn’t alone. Democratic lawmakers piled on the three presidents following the hearing. And more than 1,500 Penn alumni, donors and students are calling on Magill to resign. While Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro didn’t join that call, he said the university’s board of directors had a “serious decision” to make in response to Magill’s comments and needed to “meet soon, to make that determination.” On Thursday, Axios reported that Ross Stevens, founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, was withdrawing a gift to the school worth around $100 million.

College campuses have been roiled by conflict as the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas has escalated, and college presidents have struggled with messaging since protests began shortly after Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7. The testimony on Tuesday ended up sending the three presidents into an even deeper quandary: The House Education and the Workforce Committee announced that it would investigate the universities, saying the institutions’ leaders failed to sufficiently condemn student protests calling for “Jewish genocide.”

Talks to release the remaining hostages in Gaza have hit a stalemate in recent days, dashing hopes of U.S. officials that they might reach a deal by the end of the year, according to two senior U.S. officials.

More than 130 hostages are still being held inside Gaza. There are several factors complicating negotiations, the officials said.

Hamas’s leaders, many of whom live in Doha, are increasingly unable to communicate with and control the actions of their fighters in Gaza. And recent allegations that Hamas has sexually abused the hostages has added to the tensions around the negotiations. In addition, the U.S. and Israel are still unable to locate all of the hostages and determine whether they are still alive, the officials said. All were granted anonymity to discuss ongoing, sensitive negotiations.

Combined, the obstacles have stalled the negotiations, meaning the release of the hostages will likely happen much more slowly than the U.S. originally anticipated.

The original hostage deal lasted eight days and led to the release of 110 hostages and 250 Palestinian prisoners. But U.S. and Israeli officials have said that the deal broke down when Hamas refused to provide a list of women and children that were set to be released.

Despite that setback, the Biden administration had hoped to reach another agreement for the release of the remaining hostages and another pause in fighting before Israel began its offensive in southern Gaza. Even if the fighting resumed, Washington hoped it could help broker a deal before Jan. 1, the officials said.

That is looking less and less likely. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters in a briefing Thursday that the administration is “not close to inking a deal” for a pause in fighting and release of hostages.

The officials stressed that conversations are still ongoing and that the situation could improve in the coming days, especially if Hamas agrees to release the female hostages.

Officials from the U.S. intelligence community, the White House and the State Department have spent the past week pushing for a new deal with leaders in Qatar, Egypt and Israel without making much headway.

CIA Director Bill Burns had traveled to Doha to meet with intelligence officials from Israel and Egypt as well as the Qatari prime minister. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also spoke with the prime minister.

The refusal to provide the list of women and children was the first roadblock, one of the officials said, leading to a breakdown in communications with Hamas.

Renewed fighting in southern Gaza and accusations by the U.S. and Israel that Hamas leaders are abusing the female hostages sexually are further straining talks, the officials said.

“It is a sick truth of this particular group that they use sexual violence as a weapon and a tool,” Kirby said in another briefing Wednesday. “Sadly, I think it’s safe to assume that they’re still using sexual violence as a weapon, but I can’t speak to specific cases.”

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters Monday that Hamas does not “want these women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody.”

The IDF appears to be distancing itself from such statements. “Following some comments aired in the last day on the topic of the hostages in Gaza, the discourse on the topic is irresponsible, inaccurate and it should be avoided,” the IDF said in a statement released Wednesday.

U.S. officials have said that they are still working on gathering additional information about the remaining hostages, including whether they need medical attention.

“The truth is we don’t know a lot,” Kirby said. “If we could get Red Cross access to them … it would help give us some information.”

Meanwhile, Hamas leaders in Doha and the fighters in Gaza aren’t always in agreement about the hostages.

“The Gaza military guys are calling their own shots,” a third senior administration official said. “They don’t always listen to the political leadership elsewhere.”

The Biden administration plans to continue talking with Israel, Qatar and Egypt, including at the Doha Forum next week. Roger Carstens, the administration’s hostage envoy, will be at the Doha gathering, but his trip had been planned before the Gaza war, a State Department spokesperson said, declining to offer further detail.

Nahal Toosi and Alex Ward contributed to this report.

Donald Trump keeps returning the 2024 presidential race to the ground where Joe Biden wants to fight it.

After Trump told a Fox News town hall he would not be a dictator upon returning to office “other than Day One,” the Biden campaign pounced. It highlighted Trump’s remarks as another moment in which the GOP frontrunner showcased his undemocratic and dangerous plans for a possible second term.

Biden has expressed his fear to confidants that Trump would have unchecked power if he were to return to office. He’d likely have at least one Republican-controlled chamber in Congress, a conservative Supreme Court, the allegiance of true-believer staff members and GOP state officials — and the knowledge he could be impeached twice and charged criminally in four jurisdictions and still claim power. He’d view that as a mandate, Biden has said privately, and abuse power at home and change how America is viewed abroad.

All three people said the stakes have escalated in the president’s mind as he’s watched the Republican Party remain in Trump’s thrall despite Jan. 6 and the revelations about what his predecessor has in store for the future.

“It’s coming back full circle — that in the president’s mind, this is the moral authority for the race. This is an existential threat. This is the reason he ran initially, and the reason — with Donald Trump running — he’s running again,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster for Biden’s campaign in 2020.

“The president has always believed that it was his duty to get the nation beyond Trump,” said one of the three people close to him, who spoke with Biden about his views on Trump and was granted anonymity to speak about private discussions. “He had hoped 2020 would have done it but it didn’t. So he has to do it again.”

Some Democrats have urged the reelection team to highlight other issues. This past weekend, a group of the party’s governors used its annual retreat to urge Biden to focus on issues like abortion, not Trump.

But while the Biden camp will continue to draw issue-specific contrasts, the president himself has made clear he wants to frame the election ahead as a battle for democracy itself. The GOP frontrunner continues to provide ample opportunity for Biden to return to this familiar theme.

This issue fueled Biden’s successful 2020 run, which he deemed “a battle for the soul of the nation.” And despite pushback from some Democrats, Biden leaned in hard again on that argument during last year’s midterms, warning that the extremist “MAGA Republicans” posed a threat to the republic’s foundation and rights.

Biden’s candid remarks Tuesday at a string of Boston fundraisers both reflected another example of the president saying something unscripted that surprised staff but also a window into his true thinking, according to the three people close to him.

“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” Biden said. “But we cannot let him win.”

Biden then struck a grave tone, warning that he’s “running against an election-denier-in-chief,” who is “determined to destroy American democracy.”

“Trump’s not even hiding the ball anymore,” Biden told the crowd. “He’s telling us exactly what he wants to do. He’s making no bones about it.”

As early as 2021, Biden began having repeated conversations with allies that he would need to run again to prevent Trump from reclaiming the Oval Office. And like he did in 2020, Biden has steadfastly believed that he was the only Democrat who could beat him — though on Wednesday, he noted “probably 50” others in the party could beat Trump next year.

“Folks have forgotten a lot of anxiety that they had about a second Trump term in 2020,” said Brandon Weathersby, the presidential communications director at American Bridge 21st Century, a top Dem super PAC. “And I believe as he continues to talk about his plans — and again, be very explicit about his plans to install an authoritarian regime — that does make it that much more salient for voters as we talk about it, and as we try to lay out the choice for voters in November.”

Since declaring his candidacy in 2019, Biden has repeatedly touched on the idea that the nation’s democracy was under attack — and believed that voters would respond. His triumph in 2020 and the Democrats’ strong 2022 showing has validated that approach, his campaign believes. And Biden believes that he is the best candidate to deliver that message again next year.

Trump’s latest remarks, Lake said, once again raised “the salience [of the issue], and whether [Trump] realizes it or not: America doesn’t want a dictator.”

During the 2020 campaign, there was some idle chatter in Biden’s campaign of making a one-term pledge, becoming a “transitional” president who would rid the nation of Trump and then usher in a new era of Democratic leaders. But those ideas were dismissed even before Biden took the oath of office. And while Biden has never said so explicitly, many people around him believe he might have not sought reelection had Trump been off the playing field. But at this point on the calendar, Biden would almost certainly still run even if Trump suddenly bowed out, according to those close to him.

After Trump’s town hall comment, the Biden campaign flooded social media with warnings and organized an event to bracket the GOP primary debate in Alabama that would include denouncements of the former president.

“Democrats are gonna seize on this … the campaign immediately condemned the comments. The other groups that are working in concert to elect Democrats around the country have amplified this rhetoric as well,” said Weathersby. “These are Trump’s own words. I think you will continue to see more elevation of those words, and making clear that this is the choice — unless something drastic happens in the Republican primary — this person is going to be the Republican nominee.”

The Biden administration has determined that it has the authority to seize the patents of certain high-priced medicines, a move that could open the door to a more aggressive federal campaign to slash drug prices.

The determination, which was described by three people familiar with the matter, represents the culmination of a nearly nine-month review of the government’s so-called march-in rights. Progressives have long insisted that those rights empower the administration to break the patents of pricey drugs that were developed with public funds, in an effort to create more competition and lower prices.

The administration will not endorse the widespread use of march-in rights, and is not expected to take action against any individual medicines, said the people familiar with the matter, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal decision making.

Instead, the Commerce Department on Thursday plans to issue a new framework spelling out factors that federal agencies should weigh in determining whether to take march-in action against expensive drugs or other individual products that were created with federal help. The price and availability of that product to the public are among the factors the department will recommend that agencies consider.

The department will seek public feedback on the framework, which is likely to face sharp opposition from pharmaceutical companies that argue it’s illegal for the government to seize its patents and would disincentivize the development of new drugs.

The White House declined to comment.

The administration’s decision comes as Biden officials seek fresh opportunities to lower drug prices and boost competition within the industry, and amid renewed attention on President Joe Biden’s health agenda.

The White House has scrambled to highlight Biden’s health accomplishments in recent days, after former President Donald Trump suggested he would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act if elected in 2024.

Biden officials now plan to make a fresh push to put health care at the center of Biden’s reelection platform, rolling out proposals in the coming days that would expand on Democrats’ passage of laws capping insulin prices for Medicare recipients and allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of certain drugs. Biden has also portrayed himself as a chief antagonist of the pharmaceutical industry, casting his drug price policies as central to his administration’s battle against “Big Pharma.”

The Commerce Department and Department of Health and Human Services were already expected to issue their determination on the government’s march-in authority in the coming weeks, the people familiar with the matter said. But the announcement was accelerated in the wake of Trump’s comments, and officials are expected to cite it as evidence that Biden continues to search for new ways to lower prices.

The departments launched their review in March, after the administration rejected petitions to use march-in authorities to seize the patent for a prostate cancer drug called Xtandi.

The Xtandi decision prompted criticism from prominent progressives at the time, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who later stalled Biden’s nominee for the National Institutes of Health partly over the administration’s reluctance to use its march-in rights.

President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he is not the only Democrat who can defeat former President Donald Trump.

“I’m not the only one,” Biden said at the White House in response to a question from a reporter. “But I will defeat him.”

The case that Biden was uniquely positioned to defeat Trump was central to his campaign four years ago.

Biden told supporters at a fundraising event on Tuesday that “If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running.”

He has framed Trump running again to be commander in chief as an existential threat to the country, adding at the fundraiser that “we cannot let him win.” He later told reporters following that Tuesday fundraiser that he wouldn’t end his bid. “Look, he is running, and I have to run.”

This comes after there has been a new focus on Trump’s authoritarian tendencies in the campaign. In a town hall with Fox News’ Sean Hannity earlier this week, Trump again indicated that he would use the levers of power to take revenge on his enemies if he is reelected.

“He says ‘you’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’” Trump said. “I said ‘no no no, other than day one.’”

The White House delivered a dire warning to congressional leaders Monday that time is running out for lawmakers to approve more assistance to Ukraine — sounding the alarm that Kyiv’s battlefield gains against Russia are at risk without more money.

In letters Monday to party leaders in the House and Senate, White House budget chief Shalanda Young warned that inaction before the end of the year on a new round of funding threatens to “kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield.”

“I want to be clear: Without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from U.S. military stocks,” wrote Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget. “There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment. We are out of money — and nearly out of time.”

Identical letters were sent to Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

It’s the latest warning from top officials as the administration presses to get President Joe Biden’s $61.4 billion emergency funding request for Ukraine across the finish line. The proposal is part of a $106 billion supplemental package Biden sent lawmakers in October for additional funding for Ukraine, Israel, the Pacific and the U.S.-Mexico border.

The White House push also comes as the Senate nears a major vote on the aid package. Schumer plans to hold a vote on Biden’s proposal this week in the Senate.

But Republicans in the House and Senate have insisted that further Ukraine money be paired with border security policy changes. A failure to coalesce around border provisions could quickly stall the funding.

Opposition to further funding for Kyiv has grown among House Republicans, another factor Johnson must navigate. The Louisiana Republican has also advocated splitting up aid to Ukraine and Israel, while Schumer and McConnell are aiming to approve a single comprehensive funding package.

Lawmakers have just a few weeks to forge a deal and get it to Biden’s desk before the end of the year. If congressional leaders shelve Ukraine aid until January, a new aid package could become wrapped up in a government funding fight that is set to kick off in the new year. But Young argued Congress can’t wait that long to turn the spigot back on.

“This isn’t a next year problem,” she argued. “The time to help a democratic Ukraine fight against Russian aggression is right now. It is time for Congress to act.”

As new funding has stalled on Capitol Hill, Young said that assistance to Ukraine has been depleted and weapons packages have been squeezed. Of previous tranches of Ukraine related funding lawmakers have approved, Young said that the Pentagon has used 97 percent of the $62.3 billion it had received as of mid-November, while the State Department has exhausted all of the $4.7 billion in security assistance money it was allocated.

“Already, our packages of security assistance have become smaller and the deliveries of aid have become more limited,” Young wrote. “If our assistance stops, it will cause significant issues for Ukraine.”

Young reiterated the administration’s argument that assisting Ukraine’s military prevents a broader war that could draw the U.S. into direct conflict with Russia if Vladimir Putin succeeds and then attacks a NATO country.

The letter also hammers an argument Biden and senior leaders have increasingly made to sell the tens of billions of dollars in Ukraine and Israel funding: It bolsters the U.S. economy and creates jobs.

Much of the money Congress has approved for Ukraine has never left the U.S., instead going to replenish the military’s inventories of weapons and equipment that were sent to Kyiv. Biden touted the funding to buy American-made hardware in an Oval Office address in October making the case for Ukraine and Israel aid

Biden’s latest security funding request would direct more than $50 billion into the defense industry, Young said, name-checking several states where air defense systems, missiles and artillery rounds are built.

“While we cannot predict exactly which U.S companies will be awarded new contracts, we do know the funding will be used to acquire advanced capabilities to defend against attacks on civilians in Israel and Ukraine — for example, air defense systems built in Alabama, Texas, and Georgia and vital subcomponents sourced from nearly all 50 states,” Young said.

The majority of funding already approved by Congress, she said, has gone to bolster the American defense industrial base or to support military and intelligence operations.

“That has improved our own military readiness since DOD is buying new equipment to replace what we are sending Ukraine, jumpstarting and expanding production lines, and is supporting good-paying jobs in dozens of states across the country,” Young wrote.

President Joe Biden on Saturday paid tribute to the late former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as “an American icon.”

“She spent her career committed to the stable center, pragmatic and in search of common ground. I did not agree with all of her opinions, but I admired her decency and unwavering devotion to the facts, to our country, to active citizenship and the common good,” Biden said.

O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the nation’s highest court, died Friday morning in Phoenix, Arizona. She was 93.

“As a U.S. Senator on the Judiciary Committee, I remember the hope surrounding her historic nomination to the Supreme Court. The Senate voted 99-0 in her favor, proof that our nation can come together to move history forward,” Biden said.

Biden also praised O’Connor’s dedication to public service and the “bedrock American principle of an independent judiciary,” and cited her institute’s work to promote civics education and civil discourse.

“She knew that for democracy to work, we have to listen to each other, and remember how much more we all have in common as Americans than what keeps us apart,” he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Saturday that he plans to tee up a formal vote on the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, calling it a “necessary step.”

“We’re being stonewalled by the White House, because they’re preventing at least two to three DOJ witnesses from coming forward, a former White House counsel, the national archives … the White House has withheld thousands of pages of evidence,” Johnson said in an interview on Fox News.

“I think it’s something we have to do at this juncture,” Johnson added.

The speaker’s comments came after several Republicans predicted Friday that a vote to formalize the impeachment inquiry would come before the House breaks for December recess.

The Biden administration has argued that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate since it has not yet been formalized by a House vote. Such a vote is not technically required, but has been used in the past to legitimize the process.

NEW YORK — An Indian government official directed a plot to assassinate a prominent Sikh separatist leader living in New York City, U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday as they announced charges against a man they said was part of the thwarted murder conspiracy.

U.S. officials became aware last spring of the plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who advocated for the creation of a sovereign Sikh state and is considered a terrorist by the Indian government.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration interceded and set up a sting, with an undercover agent posing as a hitman, after the conspirators recruited an international narcotics trafficker in the plot to murder the activist for $100,000.

The Indian government official was not charged or identified by name in an indictment unsealed Wednesday but was described as a “senior field officer” with responsibilities in “security management” and “intelligence” said to have previously served in India’s Central Reserve Police Force.

The charges were aimed at a different person, Nikhil Gupta, 52, a citizen of India who was accused of murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire. The charges carry a potential penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

“The defendant conspired from India to assassinate, right here in New York City, a U.S. citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated for the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs, an ethnoreligious minority group in India,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, the chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said in a news release.

“We will not tolerate efforts to assassinate U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, and stand ready to investigate, thwart, and prosecute anyone who seeks to harm and silence Americans here or abroad,” he added.

The charges were the second major recent accusation of complicity of Indian government officials in attempts to kill Sikh separatist figures living in North America.

In September, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were credible allegations that the Indian government had links to the assassination in that country of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. India rejected the accusation as absurd, but Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat and India responded with the same measure.

Before the U.S. indictment was unsealed Wednesday, India announced it had set up a high-level inquiry after U.S. authorities raised concerns with New Delhi that its government may have had knowledge of the plot to kill Pannun.

The U.S. side shared some information and India “takes such inputs seriously since they impinge on our national security interests as well, and relevant departments were already examining the issue,” a statement by External Affairs Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said.

Gupta was arrested June 30 in the Czech Republic through a bilateral extradition treaty between the U.S. and the Czech Republic, prosecutors said. It was not immediately clear when he might be brought to the United States and whether he has secured legal representation in the United States.

The case is particularly sensitive given the high priority President Joe Biden has placed on improving ties with India and courting it to be a major partner in the push to counter China’s increasing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

The White House declined to comment directly on the charges against Gupta, but said administration officials acted quickly.

“When we were made aware of the fact that the defendant in this case had credibly indicated that he was directed to arrange the murder by an individual who is assessed to be an employee of the Indian Government, we took this information very seriously and engaged in direct conversations with the Indian government at the highest levels to express our concern,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

Trudeau said in a statement that Canadian authorities had been working closely with American officials since August.

“The news coming out of the United States further underscores what we’ve been talking about since the very beginning which is that India needs to take this seriously, the Indian government needs to work with us,” he said.

Pannun has been a leading organizer of the so-called Khalistan referendum, inviting Sikhs worldwide to vote on whether India’s Punjab state should become an independent nation based on religion. Organizers of the nonbinding referendum hope to present the results to the U.N. General Assembly in about two years. He is also general counsel with the Sikhs for Justice organization, which was banned by India in 2019.

“I’m not afraid of the physical death,” Pannun said in a telephone interview Wednesday with The Associated Press.

If his death is the cost of running a campaign to organize the voting in Khalistan on whether Indian governed Punjab should be an independent country, “I’m willing to pay that price,” he said.

“We have never incited, provoked or promoted violence as a means to achieve any political goal,” Pannun said.

“India has proved they believe in violence and bullets to stop” the campaign, he said, referring also to the assassination of Nijjar in Canada.

The indictment said Gupta was recruited last May by the unidentified Indian government employee to orchestrate the assassination of Pannun, who was only identified in court papers as the “Victim.”

Gupta contacted a criminal associate to help find a hitman to carry out the killing, but that person happened to be a confidential source working with the DEA. The confidential source then introduced Gupta to a purported hitman, who was actually a DEA agent, the indictment said.

In June, the Indian government employee gave Gupta the home address of Pannun, his phone numbers and details about his daily conduct, including surveillance photographs, which Gupta then passed along to the undercover DEA agent, the indictment said.

It said Gupta directed the undercover agent to carry out the murder as soon as possible, but also warned the agent not to commit the killing around the time of anticipated engagements between high-level U.S. and Indian officials.

According to the indictment, Gupta told the undercover DEA agent the day after Nijjar’s murder in Canada that Nijjar “was also the target” and “we have so many targets.”

He added that in light of Nijjar’s murder, there was “now no need to wait” in carrying out the New York assassination, the indictment said. Later, the Indian government official behind the New York assassination plot sent Gupta a news article about the New York assassination target and messaged Gupta saying his killed was a “priority now,” the indictment said.

The White House first became aware of the plot in late July, according to a senior administration official.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive exchanges with Indian government, said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval, and underscored that India needed to investigate and hold those responsible accountable.

Sullivan also made clear that U.S. needed an assurance that this would not happen again and warned that another episode could permanently damage the trust established between our two countries, the official said.

Biden then asked CIA Director William Burns to contact his counterpart and travel to India to make it clear that the United States would not tolerate such activities and that his administration expected accountability.

Biden also raised the matter directly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi when they met at the Group of 20 Summit in September in New Delhi.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sullivan raised the issue with Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar when he visited Washington in September around the time of the annual U.N. General Assembly.

In October, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines travelled to India to share information with Indian government officials to aid their internal investigation.

President Joe Biden suggested that conditioning future military aid to Israel was a “worthwhile thought.” But days later, administration officials are shutting down any talk of that happening.

Senior U.S. officials hit the Sunday shows to rule out the proposal, hinting — but not outright saying — there wouldn’t be a shift in the administration’s Israel policy. Now three U.S. officials say Biden won’t restrict support for Israel any time soon.

“It’s not something we’re currently pursuing,” said one of the officials, like others granted anonymity to reveal sensitive internal thinking.

Another official suggested that Biden’s aside, made in response to a reporter’s question, was less about siding with progressive sentiment and more a window into his private frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden has long been privately critical of “Bibi,” and he groused to confidants over Thanksgiving that the prime minister could be a challenging partner, according to another of the officials. Biden believed that Netanyahu hasn’t always focused on the hostages and his quip about the aid likely reflected concerns about Netanyahu’s leadership going forward. The remark leaves some strategic ambiguity that the administration might shift on aid down the line — serving as a way for Biden to keep Netanyahu in check.

Still, the White House’s current stance could put the president on a collision course with members of his own party. Senate Democrats on Tuesday met to discuss pressuring the White House on conditionality, with some of Biden’s staunchest allies noting he could use current regulations to restrict aid.

“There are conditions that are already attached to our aid to a wide range of countries,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), one of the president’s closest friends in Congress, said Tuesday on Fox News. “The conditions that already apply under law are sufficient for this circumstance.”

The headwinds from Biden’s party have only grown in recent weeks.

This month, congressional Democrats first quietly, then publicly came out in support of imposing conditions. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was first out of the gate, proposing that Israel not get any more weapons until it stops “the indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza and commits to serious peace talks, among other stipulations.

Biden’s comment appears to have made other lawmakers more comfortable to advocate for the once-toxic idea, though many Republicans and Democrats remain opposed to it. “We regularly condition our aid to allies based upon compliance with U.S. law and international law,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Middle East panel, told CNN on Sunday. “It’s very consistent with the ways in which we have dispensed aid, especially during wartime, to allies.”

The call for conditions on military support followed an intense push by progressive Democrats to have the administration support a full cease-fire between Israel and Gaza, rather than the temporary pause now in effect to secure the release of Hamas-held hostages.

The administration is using the nearly week-long pause to urge the Israeli government to be more targeted and deliberate when it resumes its ground operations, particularly as it moves into the country’s south, where thousands of civilians have taken shelter, said the first U.S. official.

Biden administration officials have advised Israel from the beginning to moderate its initial invasion plans, with limited success. Israel “adapted their battle plan” significantly to reduce the number of ground troops sent into Gaza in the invasion’s initial stages, the official said.

But Biden’s continued strong support for Israel’s offensive has incensed his left flank, leaving him vulnerable in a tight race against Donald Trump, his expected 2024 Republican rival. Some Democrats in swing states like Michigan say they won’t pull the lever for the president’s reelection because he lost their vote for supporting Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack — during which the militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took around 240 hostages.

Indeed, progressives and some mainstream Democrats note there are already arms-transfer regulations requiring the U.S. to curb weapons sales to countries that violate human rights. Some proponents of imposing conditions say that Israel, which has killed more than 14,000 people in Gaza since the war started, has met that threshold.

“If anyone in Washington has broken the taboo of placing conditions on aid to Israel, it has been some of the leading progressives in Congress, not President Biden,” said Guy Ziv, an expert on U.S.-Israel policy at American University.

But even the president’s fleeting openness to aid restrictions highlights the death throes of a Washington taboo, one that leaders from both parties have been loath to break for years. The irony is that Biden, one of the most pro-Israel presidents of the modern era, welcomed a discussion that could eventually rupture the U.S.-Israel relationship if progressives urging conditions get their way.

“Failing to rule [conditions] out is very different than endorsing it, but perhaps it’s a sign of what we may see in the future in a post-Biden era,” Ziv said.

Previous presidents often criticized Israel. George W. Bush called for “an end to the occupation” of Palestinian lands. Barack Obama, with Biden as his No. 2, opposed Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank. Even Trump, who was closely allied with Netanyahu, considered leveraging the annual $3.8 billion in military aid the U.S. sends to Israel to broker a peace deal — until he was convinced there was “no connection” between the two.

No other commander in chief welcomed, albeit briefly, the idea of putting restrictions on support for Israel like Biden. It’s certainly a change from 2019, when then-candidate Biden called the idea of putting conditions on aid to Israel “absolutely outrageous.”

“It’s a significant and welcome shift,” said Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former Sanders foreign policy adviser. “Hopefully we can get to a point where he acknowledges it’s actually required by law.”

Biden, however, maintains that eschewing the conditions proposal is what has led to dozens of hostages released from Hamas’ clutches and more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza while standing side by side with Israel.

“I don’t think if I started off with that we’d ever gotten to where we are today,” he said Friday in the same address. The U.S. is already sending military supplies to Israel for the war, and the president isn’t looking to insert conditions as a multi-billion Israel, Ukraine, border and Indo-Pacific aid bill winds its way through Congress. CIA Director Bill Burns traveled to Qatar this week to converse with his Israeli and Egyptian counterparts on the hostage issue.

Biden is known for off-the-cuff remarks requiring his staff to clarify his comments, but none of his officials have said that his comments misstated the administration’s Israel policy.

Biden’s team is waiting for this media cycle to pass and go back to what it was already doing: supporting Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas. “He is going to continue to focus on what is going to generate results,” Sullivan, the national security adviser, said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday program. “That’s the course that he’s on.”

Lara Seligman contributed to this report.