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President Joe Biden confirmed Sunday that the 4-year old American Abigail Mor Edan who was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza is now free.

“She’s free and she’s in Israel now,” Biden told reporters Sunday from Nantucket, where he was spending Thanksgiving weekend with his family.

“Abigail was among 13 hostages released today from Gaza under the brokered and sustained though intensive U.S. diplomacy. She is now safely in Israel. And we continue to press and expect for additional Americans will be released as well,” Biden said.

According to Israel, 17 hostages were released Sunday including 14 Israelis and three foreign nationals, the young American girl among them.

Edan, whose name has also been rendered as Avigail Idan in some reports, is the first American hostage who was been released as part of the deal brokered between Israel and Hamas that would allow for the freeing of at least 50 of the more than 200 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a 4-day pause in the fighting and the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. Some foreign nationals have also been released by Hamas, including a Russian national.

Edan’s parents were killed by Hamas attackers Oct. 7. On Sunday, Biden spoke of the events the young girl experienced during the attack, acknowledging that she had been through “a terrible trauma,” as, according to Biden, she witnessed her mother die in front of her before her father was shot and killed while shielding her from attackers.

According to the Associated Press, Israel’s army said one hostage released Sunday was airlifted directly to a hospital. Though the plan was for Edan and others to cross the border into Egypt and then be transported to Israel, an elderly woman was “very sick and was in need of immediate medical help,” Biden said, leading Edan to cross directly into Israel.

Ahead of the latest release, Netanyahu visited the Gaza Strip, where he spoke with Israeli troops. “We are making every effort to return our hostages, and at the end of the day we will return every one,” he said, adding that “we are continuing until the end, until victory. Nothing will stop us.” It was not immediately clear where he went inside Gaza.

Israel is expected to free 39 Palestinian prisoners on Sunday as part of the deal, and a fourth hostage exchange is expected on Monday, currently the last day of the cease-fire. Israel has pledged to extend the pause, however, for every 10 additional hostages Hamas is willing to release — a compromise Biden took the opportunity to push for Sunday.

“I’ll be speaking again shortly with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and we will continue to remain personally engaged — personally engaged to see that this deal is fully implemented, and work to extend the deal as well,” Biden said.

Nothing is guaranteed Biden cautioned, but he struck an optimistic note about the results of the short-term ceasefire.

“[The] proof that this is working and worth pursuing further is in every smile and every grateful tear we see on the faces of those families that are finally getting back together. … The proof is little Abigail,” Biden said.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

President Joe Biden on Friday framed Hamas’ initial release of two dozen women and children as a sign of progress but emphasized that the deal was just the beginning of a challenging road ahead as the U.S. works to free the remaining hostages, including American citizens.

“Today has been a product of a lot of hard work and weeks of personal engagement,” Biden said, speaking from Nantucket, Massachusetts, where he’s spending the Thanksgiving holiday with his family. “From the moment Hamas kidnapped these people, I, along with my team, have worked around the clock to secure their release.”

Hamas released the first hostages Friday — 13 Israelis, 10 Thai citizens and one Filipino. Their release marked the first wave in a deal to trade several hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israel under a four-day cease-fire. Biden said more details will be unveiled about the next round of hostages in the coming hours, but it’s not yet clear if that list will include Americans.

“We don’t know when that will occur, but we expect it to occur. And we don’t know what the list of all the hostages are or when they’ll be released, but we know the numbers when they’re going to be released. So my hope and expectation is that it will be soon,” Biden said, responding to a question from a reporter about when Americans will be released.

Under the agreement announced earlier this week, Hamas is expected to release a total of 50 hostages for 150 Palestinian prisoners, all women and teenagers. The deal, which emerged from talks involving Israel, Hamas, Qatar, the U.S. and several outside groups, could be seen as a rare bright spot amid several weeks of death and devastation. More than two hundred trucks also arrived in Gaza on Friday, carrying fuel, food, medicine and cooking gas, Biden said, and hundreds more are expected to arrive in the coming days.

“I don’t trust Hamas to do anything right,” Biden said of the ongoing negotiations. “I only trust Hamas to respond to pressure.”

While several administration officials say the deal is evidence that their strategy toward the Israel-Hamas war is working, the president didn’t take a victory lap on Friday, as roughly 200 hostages will remain in captivity.

The hostages suffered immeasurable trauma, Biden said.

“All of these hostages have been through a terrible ordeal. And this is the beginning of a long journey of healing for them,” Biden said. “The teddy bears waiting to greet those children at the hospital are a stark reminder of the trauma these children have been through at such a very young age.”

Hamas killed 1,200 people Oct. 7, and Israel’s response has killed more than 13,000 people.

The political challenge facing the president is far from fading as progressive-minded Democrats ramp up calls for a cease-fire. Biden said Friday that he’s encouraged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “focus on trying to reduce the number of casualties,” while trying to eliminate Hamas, which he called a legitimate objective.

Biden also faces an uphill climb in securing aid for Israel, as some members of his party call for conditions attached to aid for Israel, such as a reduction in bombing.

“I think that’s a worthwhile thought,” Biden said. “But I don’t think if I started off with that that we would’ve ever gotten to where we got today. We have to take this a piece at a time.”

President Joe Biden has just under a year to convince skeptical U.S. voters they’re better off financially thanks to him. Widening holes in the country’s social safety net could make his task even harder.

A string of popular pandemic-era support programs have expired this fall, creating so-called benefit cliffs affecting millions of Americans. That coincides with policy changes to traditional welfare programs that are now kicking in, creating potential new hurdles for hundreds of thousands of participants.

The Biden administration and Democratic allies in Congress are fighting to restore some of the lapsed benefits when lawmakers take up the 2024 spending bills early next year. But at best it will be a partial reprieve — the student loan payment moratorium, for example, is gone for good.

The collective impact: a cascading set of new financial burdens that are disproportionately affecting women, young people and people of color — a core part of the Democratic electorate. Coming on top of stubbornly high inflation, they risk further undermining the president’s pitch that he’s rebuilding the economy “from the middle up and the bottom out,” particularly among voters he needs to turn out in November.

That includes millions of student loan borrowers, who faced the resumption of loan payments on Oct. 1, after a 3½-year moratorium. A $24 billion emergency support fund for day cares across the country also ended the same day, bringing warnings of rising day cares costs and reduced access.

In addition, new restrictions on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which feeds more than 40 million low-income Americans, started phasing in this fall, putting hundreds of thousands at risk of losing SNAP benefits, previously known as food stamps. And anti-hunger advocates are warning that if Congress doesn’t include another $1 billion for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known commonly as WIC, in its next funding bill, the program may have to startturning away hundreds of thousands of eligible mothers and babies.

The Biden administration has pushed to boost funding for these traditional parts of the safety net, as well as secure money to extend some of the temporary social programs created in response to the Covid emergency. In many cases, Biden has been stymied by Republicans and some Democrats in Congress, who argue the programs are too expensive and no longer necessary as the pandemic has eased. Republicans, for example, negotiated the end of the payment moratorium as part of the debt ceiling deal. It was the Supreme Court, however, that killed Biden’s broader effort to cancel student debt outright

As a result, the social safety net, which witnessed a historic expansion between 2020 and 2022, is shrinking again. The poverty rate in the U.S. is already rising, according to Census Bureau data — up to 12.4 percent in 2022 from 7.8 percent in 2021. And that was before the latest round of pandemic assistance expired.

“Expanding these policies really did have a big impact on economic hardship,” said Chloe East, an economist and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute’s Hamilton Project, in an interview. Rolling them back, she said, “has caused a big increase in hardship among American families.”

The White House points out that even though the Biden administration didn’t succeed in its attempts to make many of the Covid emergency programs permanent, the current status quo is still far better than it was pre-pandemic.

“The right comparisons to think about are really, how does the social safety net compare to before the president took office, and how do people’s economic experience and level of economic security compare to what they were experiencing pre-pandemic,” said a White House official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the administration’s internal thinking. “The president has made the social safety net stronger than he found it, and he believes it should be stronger.”

The Biden administration did succeed, for example, in permanently changing the way SNAP benefits are calculated, increasing the value of the food benefits between $12 to $16 per month, in most cases. The president also secured new exemptions from SNAP’s work requirements for the homeless, veterans and youth aging out of foster care as part of the spring debt deal. And he used existing student loan forgiveness programs to cancel more than $127 billion in debt for more than 3.6 million student loan borrowers.

Biden isn’t getting much credit from voters for those and other moves that have permanently expanded social programs, however.

In a New York Times and Siena College poll conducted last month, 57 percent of registered swing state voters said economic issues were the most important factor determining who they will vote for in 2024, but just 19 percent ranked the current state of the economy as excellent or good.

Fifty-nine percent said they trusted former President Donald Trump to do a better job managing the economy, including 53 percent of people making less than $50,000 — a group far more likely to use the social safety net. Sixty-two percent of voters in that financial bracket said the economy was the most important factor in deciding their vote.

Political analysts caution that traditional safety net programs are not, on their own, top of mind for many voters in an election year. But the loss of benefits — and any added financial strain it causes — is likely to feed into voters’ generally gloomy view of the economy.

“The main effect would come from a generalization of the specific patterns to a general perception that the economy is not doing well,” said Matt Grossman, director of the Michigan State University Institute for Public Policy and Social Research.

For student loan borrowers, families with children in day care and low-income Americans who rely on SNAP or WIC, those effects are just starting to sink in:

SNAP

On Oct. 1, SNAP, the nation’s leading anti-hunger program, began again purging people from its rolls for not meeting work requirements, after a pause during the pandemic.

At the same time, the number of adults required to meet the work requirements started expanding this fall thanks to language House Republicans pushed to include in the debt limit deal Congress passed at the end of May. Under the debt limit law, the age limit for adults subject to the work requirement rose to 50 on Sept. 1, and to 52 on Oct. 1. The age limit will eventually increase to include adults as old as 54.

Child care

Biden administration data shows roughly 8 in 10 licensed U.S. child care providers tapped the Covid-era stabilization funding during the pandemic. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Beccera has warned that the $24 billion program’s termination at the end of September will result in rising child care costs and cause some providers to close their doors, potentially leaving tens of thousands of children without access to care.

“It’s going to feel more like a slow roll, but then when the cumulative effect is in place, we’ll see that more women dropped out of the labor force; more businesses struggle to find people to hire; more children and families cannot find a slot,” said Melissa Boteach, vice president for child care at the left-leaning National Women’s Law Center.

The White House has asked Congress for $16 billion to extend the program for another year. But Republicans have expressed doubt that more federal funding, particularly for traditional day care, is the best way to address child care needs.

One potential compromise: a tax package that could incentivize employers to help fill the gap, something groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce favor over additional spending. But many on the left are skeptical that those provisions could fill the gap as well as additional funds.

Student loans

About 28 million Americans began receiving student loan bills over the past few months, an unprecedented number of borrowers who are beginning to repay their debts at the same time.

The Biden administration has taken some steps to soften the blow. The Education Department is offering an “on-ramp” forbearance period in which borrowers won’t be reported as delinquent to credit bureaus if they fail to make payments over the next year. The administration is also promoting its new loan repayment program — dubbed the “SAVE” plan — which lowers monthly payments for many borrowers, based on their income.

It’s too early to know yet the extent to which student loan borrowers are actually meeting their monthly payments or how many are falling behind. But many borrowers have indicated that they expect to struggle with payments. Research from the Philadelphia Fed found that lower-income borrowers, borrowers with less than a bachelor’s degree, and Black borrowers were among the most likely to anticipate not being able to make a payment in October.

As with student loan repayments, Americans are likely to feel the impact of these other benefit cliffs gradually, over the course of the coming months. For the White House, which is banking on better economic trends in the new year to help its “Bidenomics” message finally cut through, the timing couldn’t be worse.

Still, the White House official POLITICO spoke to argued the shrinking social safety net is not the answer to “the mystery” of why Biden isn’t polling better on the economy. “Poverty rose relative to last year, but it’s not up relative to pre-pandemic,” the official pointed out. “Wages and incomes are up in real terms, and especially so at the bottom.”

Eleanor Mueller contributed to this report.

Ukraine’s strongest supporters in Washington are looking at the three-week sprint after Thanksgiving as their best remaining hope of getting aid to the country.

But as Democrats continue to publicly express hope for the Biden administration’s nearly $106 billion funding request for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, they also remain vexed about how to move a bill through the Republican-run House.

The dynamics of the GOP House have alarmed the West Wing. Speaker Mike Johnson has indicated that he’ll at some point bring a vote on Ukraine, but those in the White House do not yet have a clear read on the new Republican leader or his negotiating style, according to two senior aides not authorized to speak publicly about private deliberations.

Few in Biden’s orbit have ever met Johnson, a religious conservative who was largely unknown until his stunning ascent to the speakership. And while the West Wing didn’t appreciate former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s grandstanding, they did feel like he eventually wanted to deal — and they are less sure about Johnson, according to the officials. Moreover, the same fringe group of Republicans who ousted McCarthy wield that same power over Johnson — and they are largely opposed to helping Ukraine, making a path to deal that much more difficult.

“People are well aware that if a vote were put up in the House of Representatives today, it would pass with an overwhelming majority of members — that the issue is not the level of support as it is getting to that vote,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.). “Because of the political conditions and the change in leadership, getting the vote has been the hard part.”

On two occasions already, Democrats tried but failed to get aid to Ukraine in a must-pass funding bill. With another deadline to spark action not coming until the latest stopgap funding bills expire in late January and early February, many of Congress’ strongest Ukraine backers fear the country can’t wait that long.

“I don’t know that Ukraine can survive until February of 2024,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. “My sense is they start to run short on ammunition in the next several weeks.”

Believing there is an immediate need, Ukraine advocates are gearing up for a standalone Senate vote on funding when they return from break. Should that vote happen, it would provide a massive test both for the administration’s ability to work Capitol Hill and one of the bedrock elements of the president’s foreign policy agenda.

But the main obstacle still remains: what to do about Republican opposition.

Since passage of the last Ukraine supplemental, Kyiv’s counteroffensive has stalled and conservative support in Washington has crumbled with the GOP’s leader, Donald Trump, opposing it. The outbreak of war in the Middle East has led to the addition of aid to Israel — and growing demands by progressive Democrats for a cease-fire and conditions on aid to Israel.

While support for Israel has strong support in both chambers, senators and administration officials insist that Israel and Ukraine funding remain together.

The thornier challenge is meeting the Republican demand that the package address border policy. The administration’s request includes funding for border security, but the GOP insists it include policy changes to stem the number of people crossing the border, too.

“If Republicans want to have a serious conversation about reforms that will improve our immigration system, we are open to a discussion,” a White House spokesperson said. “We disagree with many of the policies contained in the Senate Republican border proposal. Further, we do not see anything in their proposal about creating an earned path to citizenship for Dreamers and others.”

The bipartisan group of lawmakers who are trying to negotiate a border compromise have continued to talk over the Thanksgiving break, according to a Senate aide. But for many lawmakers, the initial meetings before the holiday only brought the challenge into clearer view.

“They’ve been frustrating,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the lead Republicans in the group, said of the discussions. “We’ll see what happens. I’m not going to support an appropriation supplemental that doesn’t have real border security.”

Democratic Ukraine supporters have embraced the idea that they must include border policy reforms. And while they don’t like marrying the two unrelated issues, they do see an upside if they’re able to address the political thorny issue of the border.

“This is really important funding. I think it’s important for the civilized world to take a stand against dictators like Vladimir Putin and terrorist groups like Hamas,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said. “And I also think we have a failed policy at the southern border, and we need to look at ways to fix it.”

The White House is not directly involved in the border conversations, but officials have expressed support for them publicly and privately, according to several people involved in the discussions.

“President Biden and the leaders in the Senate, both Republican and Democrat, are rock solid in their support of Ukraine,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who is close with Biden, said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“We have to bear down, get this done and get this supplemental passed soon because the brave Ukrainians who are fighting as winter is coming are looking at losing the supplies they’ve needed for ammunition, for missiles, for drones, for defense, for armor, and we cannot possibly afford to abandon Ukraine,” he added. “If our Republican colleagues demand too much in this negotiation, we won’t be able to get it passed in the Senate and then in the House.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said border policy must be included in the deal in order to get Ukraine funding through Congress. Inside the White House, McConnell has emerged as an unlikely hero for his steadfast support of Ukraine, which has helped, to a large degree, keep his party in line. But the West Wing has growing fears that the Kentucky senator’s grip on his party has slipped, according to the two senior aides granted anonymity to speak about private discussions.

And a border deal carries risk for Democrats. A chief Republican policy proposal would increase the standard migrants must clear to gain asylum into the United States, an idea strongly opposed by progressives.

“We’ve been the beacon of light around this world for many, many generations, when it comes to people who are fleeing violence and fleeing for the sake of their life,” said Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.). “For us to actually weaken that process would be shameful on America. It would be a shame to any member of the House or the Senate that would ever put that on this president’s desk, and I don’t see this president signing a bill with that in it.”

Members of several House caucuses — the Congressional Asian Pacific American, Congressional Black, Congressional Hispanic and Congressional Progressive caucuses — said in a statement earlier this month that they deeply oppose attaching new policy to a funding bill.

It’s a story Joe Biden loves to tell: Midway through his State of the Union address, as the president accused Republicans of trying to cut entitlements like Social Security, loud objections from the House chamber suddenly turned his speech into a negotiation.

Pausing to spar with GOP lawmakers, Biden extracted a promise to take entitlement cuts off the table in the upcoming debt ceiling showdown, securing a major victory before talks even began.

“I never thought my third State of the Union address would be negotiated on the floor of the United States Congress,” Biden mused afterward. “But it worked.”

That unscripted moment has taken on outsized political significance in the months since, held up as an example of Biden’s negotiating prowess and his commitment to the social safety net.

But among Democrats bracing for a tight 2024 contest, some now want him to go further.

Progressives have pitched Biden officials and Democratic leaders in recent months on endorsing a plan to expand Americans’ Social Security benefits, according to several people involved in the informal discussions.

The proposal, they argue, would be broadly popular with an electorate that ranks Social Security among the top issues they care deeply about, especially among seniors more likely to vote. And after Republicans swore off cuts — for the time being — it would allow Biden to stake out a new contrast with the GOP, one painting him as more supportive of the cherished social insurance program.

“The only weakness that Democrats have on their Social Security policies is not enough people know that it’s them,” said Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, one of the groups advocating for the idea. “The way to get Republicans even more on the back foot about their plans to cut Social Security is to draw that incredibly clear distinction that Democrats want to expand, Republicans want to cut.”

Biden embraced Social Security expansion during the 2020 Democratic primary, proposing to boost benefits for the lowest-income retirees and shore up Social Security’s main trust fund by raising taxes on those making $400,000 or more a year. But faced with slim congressional majorities once he took office, Biden largely dropped the idea.

Three years later, progressive groups want him to revisit it, in part because the candidate he’s likely to face, Donald Trump, has publicly insisted he doesn’t want to cut entitlement programs (even though he previously backed such policies).

Polling presented this fall to top White House officials and other leading Democrats by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Data for Progress found just 41 percent trusted Biden more than Trump to safeguard Social Security benefits. More than 4 in 10 were also skeptical that Republican candidates who had called for cutting benefits or raising the retirement age would follow through on it if elected.

Biden officials have expressed openness to the case for benefit expansions, Lawson and others who talked with them said, though the campaign is still early in the process of building out a 2024 policy platform and remains noncommittal on the idea.

“Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and the rest of the MAGA Republicans have repeatedly campaigned on gutting Social Security and Medicare and have the records to back it up,” campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “Joe Biden will not let that happen, and we’ll make certain the millions of Americans who have paid for Social Security their entire lives now that when they head to vote next November.”

There’s skepticism among some in the president’s orbit who say Biden’s message on protecting benefits versus Republicans seeking cuts is already well established. They question whether adding a brand new idea to the mix would confuse matters. The president is also already planning to run on a slew of concrete accomplishments that may mean more to voters than aspirational ideas like Social Security expansion.

And as Democrats are wont to do, some have gotten caught up in the underlying policy specifics. They warn the party would need to settle debates over which retirees would benefit, and ultimately how the entire thing would be paid for. In addition to Biden’s 2020 proposal, several lawmakers — including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) — had longstanding expansion plans of their own.

“They probably don’t want to open that can of worms,” said Dean Baker, a progressive economist who has long supported expanding Social Security.

The progressive groups pushing for Social Security expansion aren’t lobbying for a specific proposal. But they do have an answer for how to pay for the benefits: Taxing the wealthy.

“It just really puts all of the pieces in place, and you can’t muddy it up,” said Lawson. “Tax the wealthy more in order to increase Social Security benefits. Electorally, this is a Democratic wedge issue.”

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Joe Biden spent his 81st birthday the only way a president would want to, really: pardoning turkeys and telling jokes.

“By the way, it’s my birthday today. I just want you to know, it’s difficult turning 60,” Biden said Monday at the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardon.

He chuckled at his own joke. The crowd gobbled it up. But the turkeys didn’t laugh.

Which is odd, because they should have been in a good mood. After all, they were the lucky ones this year, spared from a fate that involved basting and roasting, or a deep fryer, or being lined with smaller birds and consumed alongside a heap of stuffing.

This year’s presidentially spared birds hail from Minnesota — a perhaps telling biographical tidbit, as it’s not quite a swing state but could be one if Biden truly plummets in the polls. In classic Biden fashion, however, there was a Pennsylvania connection, too. This year’s flock of turkeys were named Liberty and Bell. Get it?

“These birds have a new appreciation of the words, let freedom ring,” Biden said, speaking from the White House Rose Garden.

Monday’s annual event marked the 76th anniversary of the White House turkey pardon, which dates back to 1947, when the National Turkey Federation first presented the national Thanksgiving Turkey to President Harry Truman. Biden, in another age reference, quipped that he was not present at Truman’s event. But he was alive; he was a mere 5 years old at the time — old enough, for certain, to eat turkey.

While the Thanksgiving bird used to be for the first family’s consumption, that is no longer the case. Beginning in the late 1980s, the event evolved into an oftentimes funny ceremony (minus the occasional snap at the pardoner’s hand) in which the turkeys are given a second chance at life. Liberty and Bell will make the trek back to live out their lives at the University of Minnesota.

There were a few jokes throughout Biden’s short ceremony on Monday. But let’s just say it was, like the cooked variety, relatively dry.

But like all Thanksgiving festivities, there was also some awkwardness around the table. Biden bungled one joke referencing the challenging nature of getting a ticket to Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour or Taylor Swift’s Eras concert — appearing to confuse Swift with Britney Spears.

“Just to get here, Liberty and Bell had to beat some tough odds and competition. They had to work hard to show patience and be willing to travel over 1,000 miles,” Biden said. “You could say even it’s harder than getting a ticket to the Renaissance tour or, or, for Brittney’s tour. She’s down in — it’s kind of warm in Brazil right now.”

Oops, he did it again. Gobble gobble.

At the Democratic National Committee’s September fundraiser retreat, a donor pressed Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, about one of the more oft-discussed topics in party circles: the president’s age.

How, the person asked during a question-and-answer session on the 2024 campaign, should donors handle the stream of concerns they’ve heard about it?

Fulks acknowledged the obvious: You can’t change the age of the president, who will turn 81 on Monday. Instead, he advised the donor to focus on Biden’s historic accomplishments.

Fulks’ response, which was described by four people who attended the session, was well-received by those who see his age as a mark of his deep experience — and met with disagreement by others, who fear not enough is being done to remind voters that former President Donald Trump is just three-and-a-half years younger. All told, it highlighted a larger dynamic currently facing the party: Not everyone is sure what the right playbook is for handling the president’s most sensitive vulnerability.

Interviews with more than a dozen Biden donors and fundraisers, Democratic strategists and party officials, many of whom were granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly, revealed deep concerns that the campaign’s approach to his age isn’t enough to quell voters’ fears about it. Many donors are directly urging top campaign aides to go on offense, leaning even harder into Biden’s age as proof of his wisdom in turbulent times. They are pushing for more humor about “Grandpa Joe.”

“I think everyone knows it’s an issue, and we have to address it,” said Ron Klain, who served as Biden’s chief of staff for his first two years in the White House. He added that it’s important to “emphasize [that] it gives him more wisdom and experience, how he’s navigated this difficult problem in Ukraine.”

“He’ll keep on doing the job, campaigning with vigor and demonstrating to the American people his energy level, which is quite robust,” Klain said.

But others fret that not enough has been done to place a similarly harsh spotlight on the fact that Trump himself is 77.

“Neither are going to get any younger on their next birthdays, but yet Biden seems to get, on a continuing basis, knocked for his age while Trump does not,” said Alan Kessler, a Democratic donor and Biden bundler. “No one brings up the age thing with [Trump]. That double standard is troubling.”

Biden and his team have deployed a number of responses. The president has been making light of his age for months, particularly at fundraisers, and his campaign has increasingly blasted out Trump’s own mental lapses on social media. In recent days, his campaign aides and surrogates have stressed that this “is not a time for rookies,” as Fulks said in a CNN interview earlier this month.

But nothing has seemed to move the president’s numbers. Seventy percent of likely voters in six battleground states said Biden is “too old to be an effective president,” according to The New York Times-Siena College poll released earlier this month. Only 39 percent of those battleground voters said Trump was too old. That’s virtually unchanged from April, when a Reuters/Ipsos poll found 73 percent of adults believed Biden is too old to be in office.

Even those in Biden’s inner circle, including family members, worry about the optics of age. Those close allies believe that Biden is mentally up for the job, but some acknowledge that the president can at times appear frail, according to two people involved in the conversations but not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations.

One example: As noted on his recent physical, Biden’s gait has stiffened following foot fractures he suffered playing with his dog in late 2020. People close to the president have discussed having him walk shorter distances while on camera. They’ve also advocated, at times, trading in formal shoes for more comfortable ones — both to make his stride seem less stiff, but also to reduce the risk of falls.

Some Democrats argue that Biden’s team has been too dismissive of the idea that the president’s age could hurt him in the election. They have pushed for a more offensive strategy, nudging Biden aides to showcase his younger, diverse cabinet.

Another Biden donor said they recently raised concerns about the president’s age with DNC officials, but “they just refused to even acknowledge it was a problem.”

“I think the strategy is not to even address it, to consider questions like that stupid or silly,” said the donor. “Literally everyone is talking about it, even amongst donors. But the response is always: ‘What are you going to do?’”

Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that Biden “has used his deep experience to deliver unprecedented benefits.” He noted legislation to lower drug prices, invest in infrastructure and change gun laws, along with the president’s foreign policy portfolio, among the achievements.

“President Biden is fighting every day to add to those results for families, while Republican officials fight with each other and quadruple down on criticisms of him that failed in 2020, 2022 and 2023,” Bates added. For good measure, he shared a May 2023 story headlined: “After Calling Joe Biden Senile, Republicans Complain He Outsmarted Them.”

Biden is America’s oldest president ever, a distinction that even some in his own party are using against him. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) launched his longshot presidential primary bid calling for a generational change and urging in one of his campaign ads that Biden should “hand the torch” to the next generation.

Those concerns — which are voiced privately by others in the party — have made Biden’s team particularly sensitive, even defensive, to the issue, some Democratic strategists and insiders said.

“They bristle in ways that aren’t helpful,” said one Democratic operative close to Biden’s team.

Current and former White House aides and campaign staffers insist that Biden is as sharp as ever, drilling staffers on the finer points of policy issues and maintaining a busy travel schedule, including visits to two active war zones in the last year. Former National Economic Council deputy director Bharat Ramamurti posted on X that reporters questioning Biden’s acuity “couldn’t survive a ten minute policy briefing with the President.”

John Morgan, a Biden bundler and Florida attorney, said he has urged the president’s team to further lean into the argument that he is wise. He believes that his campaign will.

“You cannot roll back time. There’s nothing that can be done to make him younger,” Morgan said. “I believe that what’s going to carry the day for Joe Biden is the word ‘wisdom.’ We want wise men. And what I would say to everybody who has a problem with his age, I would just tell them that if you had stopped investing with Warren Buffett when he was 80, you would have missed out on 12 years of record returns.”

Biden advisers feel there’s a double standard and that Biden’s age has been covered much more than Trump’s. They are fond of noting that if Trump were to win next year, he would become the oldest person ever elected president, moving past Biden from 2020.

At the same time, they insist they know that it is an issue that they have to confront, but they believe they can neutralize it. They argue that voters don’t make their decisions about who to support based on age, and are instead more concerned about a candidate’s values and accomplishments.

Biden’s advisers also make the case that he was slammed by Trump and his GOP allies over his age and mental fitness during the 2020 campaign, and that they overcame those attacks in part by pointing to his experience. Now, they said, they can note point to major legislative victories as part of an updated plan.

“When I look at his age, I see wisdom and experience,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board who his team suggested for an interview. “I think most voters are going to see the same.”

Ultimately, Biden’s aides believe age will not be a major factor next November precisely because the election will likely come down to a binary choice between the president and Trump, said a Democratic donor who has spoken with Biden campaign officials. Should that be the case, not all Biden donors think the campaign even needs to take a different approach on age — or any approach at all. Philadelphia attorney Stephen Cozen, a Biden bundler, said he has advised some on the reelection team to not worry about the issue.

“What I told campaign officials is forget about the goddamn age question. Go after Trump,” he said. “Most of them agree with me.”

President Joe Biden directed top officials to prepare visa bans and sanctions for extremist Israeli settlers attacking and displacing Palestinians in the West Bank, according to an internal document read to POLITICO.

The Cabinet memo, sent to senior aides like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday, orders their agencies “to develop policy options for expeditious action against those responsible for the conduct of violence in the West Bank.”

A senior U.S. official read sections of the memo to POLITICO on Saturday evening shortly after Biden published an op-ed in The Washington Post revealing his intentions for such a move. “The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank,” he wrote in the op-ed.

The directive comes as the Biden administration aims to show that it’s supporting Palestinian civilians in need, even as it staunchly defends Israel’s retaliation against Hamas, and while members of the president’s party seek conditions on military aid to Washington’s ally.

The targets for reprimands are broadly defined in the memo. They include people or entities that “have directly or indirectly engaged in actions or policies that threaten the security or stability of the West Bank,” take “actions that intimidate civilians in the West Bank with the purpose or effect of forcing displacement actions in the West Bank,” or make moves “that constitute human rights abuses or violations and actions that significantly obstruct, disrupt or prevent efforts to achieve a two-state solution.”

The memo notes that Biden sees the settler-violence issue as a “serious threat” to peace among Israelis and Palestinians and destabilizing throughout the Middle East.

The decision to issue the directive came after intense debate on the topic, with national security adviser Jake Sullivan and deputy Jon Finer offering their direct input during a dedicated internal process, the official said.

POLITICO has not seen the memo, and the official was granted anonymity to read from a sensitive internal document. The White House declined to comment.

Israeli settlers have been moving into the West Bank for years, and incidents of violence were already growing after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power nearly a year ago. But the intensity of the long-running issue has grown since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people.

Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group, reports that 197 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by settlers or Israeli forces since Oct. 7. The United Nations reports that, in the same time frame, at least 121 Palestinian households — about 1,150 people, including 452 children — have been displaced by settler violence and access restrictions.

Daily incidents of settler violence rose from three a day earlier this year to seven since the attacks, per the United Nations. About 11 Palestinian communities have been completely abandoned in 2023 alone, according to the West Bank Protection Consortium, six of them since Hamas’ assault.

Biden has often condemned the rise in violence. “I continue to be alarmed about extremist settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank,” he said in October, equating the attacks to “pouring gasoline on fire.”

“They’re attacking Palestinians in places that they’re entitled to be, and it has to stop. They have to be held accountable,” Biden added.

On Friday, Blinken urged the Israeli government to confront “rising levels of settler extremist violence” during a call with Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz.

The president initially stood firmly behind Israel, saying it needed to strike back at the militant group in Gaza. Later, the administration faced pressure to alleviate the growing humanitarian crisis, eventually working with regional partners to get aid into Gaza for its 2.3 million residents starved of food, water, fuel and medical attention.

That was too little too late for some Biden voters who say they won’t pull the lever for him in 2024 over this Israel-Hamas policy.

Pressure from within Biden’s party is also mounting in Congress. Two Democrats on Thursday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), sent a letter urging him to do more to curb settler violence.

Progressives want the administration to call for a cease-fire in the war that has killed more than 11,000 people in Gaza, according to Hamas-led Gaza health authorities. Mainstream Democrats in the Senate and House are quietly discussing how to impose conditions on future military aid to Israel.

On Saturday evening, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who this week held a lunch for Senate Democrats to discuss the war, said he supported certain conditions like Israel halting settler violence and “an end to the indiscriminate bombing.”