Politico

President Joe Biden reiterated his opposition to a cease-fire in Gaza in an op-ed published Saturday, in which he also lamented the high cost to Palestinians and laid out his vision for a two-state solution.

“As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace,” Biden wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece detailing the challenges presented by the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Even as many Democrats in Congress have called for a cease-fire and questioned the Israeli offensive, Biden has remained adamant that Israel is exercising its right to self-defense and has instead supported humanitarian pauses.

These pauses, which were implemented last week, are designed to allow Palestinians to flee the hostilities and seek out food and medical care.

Biden said he was “heartbroken” by the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza and blamed Hamas for using Palestinian civilians as human shields. The “road to peace,” the president wrote, must lead to a two-state solution.

“Our goal should not be simply to stop the war for today — it should be to end the war forever, break the cycle of unceasing violence, and build something stronger in Gaza and across the Middle East so that history does not keep repeating itself,” Biden said.

Democrats in the House and Senate are discussing how to create conditions for future military aid to Israel, according to two party members, one in each chamber.

The debate among mainstream Democrats is preliminary, and it’s unclear if the conversations will evolve into congressional action. But White House officials are aware of the discussions, the Senate Democrat said, and have been warned that administration allies could openly push for conditions in the near future.

The senator added that Capitol Hill discussions about restricting humanitarian aid going into Gaza have prompted Democrats to hold similar debates on conditioning military aid to Israel. “That’s a conversation I never heard significantly before — until now,” said the lawmaker. The House member, who like others was granted anonymity to detail sensitive discussions, said Democrats are “moving toward” pushing for those conditions on future support.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hosted a lunch on Wednesday for Senate Democrats about the Israel-Hamas war, four people knowledgeable of the gathering said. Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, spoke to the lawmakers on the issues and confirmed the meeting happened. Three other people said that Telhami was a guest alongside The New York Times’ Tom Friedman and former Middle East peace negotiator Dennis Ross, neither of whom immediately responded to requests for comment.

“Conditions on military aid were raised” by some of the senators, said one of the people.

The talks come as fighting in Gaza intensifies and the civilian death toll rises — an estimated 11,000 dead, according to Hamas-led Gaza health authorities — raising questions among Israel’s traditional allies about red lines for aid.

Democrats’ unequivocal support for Israel’s military has been eroding in recent weeks, going beyond the skepticism progressives have already shown for the administration’s rock-ribbed backing of Israel. If more moderate Democrats join calls for conditioning aid to Israel, it could complicate President Joe Biden’s policy of staunchly standing by the country as it retaliates against Hamas.

In the last week, humanitarian organizations say their offices have been bombarded and staff killed as a result of the clashes. Medical facilities are also under siege and are struggling with a lack of life-saving medical supplies.

Earlier this month, in a call for sending more humanitarian assistance into Gaza, 13 Senate Democrats in a joint statement said “we have been closely monitoring the war in Gaza and believe that much more must be done to protect civilian life … The failure to adequately protect non-combatant civilians risks dramatic escalation of the conflict in the region and imposes severe damage on prospects for peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.”

If the hallway conversations turn to legislative action, which would heap immense pressure on the White House, it could force Biden to loosen his hug of Israel as it retaliates against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people. That would please progressives in Congress who want the United States to demand a cease-fire.

The Pentagon declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Earlier this month, Vice President Kamala Harris said “we are not going to create any conditions on the support that we are giving Israel to defend itself.”

Democrats have not settled on how, or even if, to push for conditions on military aid to Israel. But both lawmakers said current conversations revolve around using existing authorities such as invoking the Leahy Law, which prohibits sending funds to countries where there’s credible information about human rights violations.

Israel receives about $3.8 billion annually from the U.S. for its military and missile defense systems. The Republican-led House earlier this month passed a $14.3 billion aid bill that Biden threatened to veto because it didn’t include funding for Ukraine, among other priorities.

One former senior defense official, also granted anonymity to detail sensitive discussions, said it is “unlikely” the administration will put conditions on its aid to Israel.

“It’s very difficult to condition military aid because how would you guarantee it and how would you construct it? Especially in this instance, we’re not in a position to really instruct a friend and an ally,” the former official said. “Suggest to them, yes. Urge them, yes, but not necessarily condition our aid. I think that would be a bridge too far.”

But the Biden administration has faced mounting pressure over the past week to respond to Israel’s actions — namely its operation at Gaza’s largest hospital, Shifa — as doctors claim their patients, including newborn babies, are at risk of dying.

Some of that pressure is coming from U.S. allies. Alicia Kearns, a conservative British member of parliament and chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said “it’s absolutely vital that there have to be restrictions” on future military aid to Israel, noting the high rate of civilian casualties when Israel strikes a Hamas target.

Israel has defended its operation at the hospital, claiming Hamas has built tunnels and a command control center underneath. U.S. officials said Washington possesses its own intelligence that supports Israel’s assertion. The operation appears to be ongoing at the hospital, though communications inside Gaza are limited.

The U.S. is in ongoing talks with the Israeli government about potentially establishing safe zones in southern Gaza that would allow humanitarian organizations to operate more freely and away from the crossfire. There are also ongoing talks between Israel and Hamas about a cease-fire, though those conversations appear to have stalled in recent days.

Lara Seligman and Paul McLeary contributed to this report.

A surge of lawmakers calling it quits the past three weeks is on the verge of putting Congress on pace to have more members retire before the next election than in any similar cycle over the past decade. And the implications are huge.

In most cases, retirements deprive their party of a proven fundraiser and vote-getter. And several recent retirements are injecting fresh uncertainty into the tight battles for control of each chamber in 2024. Over the past few weeks, Democrats have lost a three-time winner in ruby-red West Virginia and a handful of swing-district House members who had success in competitive territory.

This month alone, nine members of the House and Senate have said they won’t run for reelection next year. That’s the second-most in any single month going back at least as far as 2011 — and there’s still two weeks left in November. A total of 34 members of Congress have already announced they’re not running again, and that doesn’t count those who plan to quit early or have already resigned.

And there are still more retirements to come. Announcements tend to spike after the holidays, and Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), who entered Congress in the 2010 tea party wave election, said retirement chatter is more prevalent on Capitol Hill than at any point in his congressional career.

“People are talking about it — more openly than they ever talked about it,” he said. “Like wondering, ‘Is this really worth my time and effort?’”

For members who are on the fence about running again, there’s a lot of uncertainty about this political environment, and which party is more likely to hold majorities in the new Congress: Former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden in the polls, though Democrats have had more electoral success since the end of federal abortion rights.

Members retire for other reasons, too: age, other jobs, their perceived political prospects. Sometimes they’re a reflection of combative internal politics and a toxic work environment.

After all, it’s been a particularly tumultuous and dispiriting stretch on Capitol Hill. A small group of Republicans booted Kevin McCarthy from the speakership and ignited a three-week battle for a replacement — not to mention the struggles in advancing pretty much any spending legislation. House Republicans interviewed this week by POLITICO’s reporters in the Capitol sounded despondent notes about what it’s like to be serving in Congress right now.

“This place, right now, I think it’s childish. I mean, this isn’t a place where you attract the cream of the crop,” said GOP Rep. Garrett Graves, who, himself, had a public flirtation with a bid this year for Louisiana governor before deciding against it.

Retirements don’t just reflect the political environment — they influence it. Retirements can be damaging to the retiree’s party by removing the power of incumbency, including name identification and fundraising experience, from the ballot.

Open seats, recent history shows, are more likely to change hands between the parties. Over the four election cycles from 2014-2020, 34 percent of the seats that changed parties were in cases where the incumbent left office, according to “Vital Statistics on Congress,” which is compiled biennially by the Brookings Institution. But over the same stretch, incumbents declined to seek reelection only 11 percent of the time.

In the Senate, Democrats face a daunting map, needing to reelect incumbents in red and swing states to keep control of the chamber. And even then, they’ll likely need Biden to win the White House to break a 50-50 tie.

In the House, Republicans’ narrow majority is vulnerable — not quite as dire as Democrats’ chances in the upper chamber, but possible mid-decade redistricting in New York could make it even tougher for the GOP to maintain control.

And some of the retirement announcements this month have been particularly consequential.

Sen. Joe Manchin’s decision not to seek another term in West Virginia almost certainly dooms Democrats’ chances of retaining his seat — putting Republicans on the doorstep of reclaiming the Senate majority. Similarly, Democrats could struggle to hold competitive House seats being vacated by Reps. Dan Kildee of Michigan, whose district was essentially split between Biden and Trump in the 2020 presidential election, and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, who is running for governor in 2025.

Other retirements have come from safe-seat members, such as Reps. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) or Michael Burgess (R-Texas), who are either in the twilight of their careers or just sick of the dysfunction in Washington.

And, of course, there’s indicted Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who is on the brink of expulsion after the House Ethics Committee published a scathing account of his alleged criminal conduct during his campaign. He’s said he won’t run again as a concession to his many critics, and it’s possible he’ll announce a resignation later this month. (His seat was likely going back to Democrats either way.)

Still more departures could be on the horizon. Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) is considering an offer to be president of Youngstown State University. And Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah) met with the National Republican Senatorial Committee this week about a run for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Mitt Romney. (Both Johnson and Curtis represent safe House seats that Republicans have virtually no risk of losing next fall.)

Then there’s the curious case of Rep. Pat Fallon. The Texas Republican, who was first elected in 2020, agonized for weeks over whether to run for a third term — or instead for his old North Texas seat in the state Senate.

Fallon, who said the decision led to him losing weight, was facing Texas’ Dec. 11 candidate-filing deadline. But when he first announced Monday he was running for the state Senate, only to reverse course the next day and say he would seek reelection to the House after all, it left members of GOP leadership puzzled.

“Yeah, I don’t know what that was about,” Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), who chairs House Republicans’ campaign arm, admitted to POLITICO.

Hudson said he hoped Republican members would be more enthused about their congressional service when they return from a Thanksgiving recess that breaks up more than two straight months of time in Washington.

“We’ve been here 10 weeks — that’s too long,” he said. “I think it’d be good for people to go home and spend time with their families. Let’s come back and get to work.”

But that’s not how congressional retirements typically work. In fact, it’s the periods immediately following holiday breaks that have had the greatest number of retirement announcements, according to data covering the six previous election cycles compiled by the website Ballotpedia.

In a two-year election cycle, the most common month for House and Senate retirement announcements is January of the election year, when members have returned after the holidays. Since the 2012 election, an average of 6.5 members have announced their retirements that month. The only month with more retirement announcements than this one — so far — was January 2014, with 10.

The flood of congressional retirements can be an indicator of which party has the upper hand in the next election, though it turns out members of Congress aren’t necessarily savvier than the conventional wisdom. In the past 15 elections, dating back to the 1994 Republican-wave midterms, the party with the fewest House retirements has won control of the chamber 10 times.

But only in eight of the 15 elections has the party with the fewest retirements actually gained House seats, almost a 50-50 split. Take 2020, when House Republicans fretted that Trump would cost the GOP dearly down the ballot.

It didn’t happen. Republicans actually gained over a dozen seats as Trump lost by a smaller-than-expected margin. And that was despite a yawning gap in retirements: 27 House Republicans didn’t run again, compared with only 9 Democrats.

So far this cycle, it’s House Democrats who are leaving in greater numbers. Seventeen are headed for the exits, compared with 10 Republicans. The majority of those Democrats are seeking other offices in 2024: Nine are running for Senate, and one, Rep. Jeff Jackson, is running for North Carolina state attorney general after Republicans eviscerated his seat in redistricting.

Special thanks to Anthony Adragna, Olivia Beavers, Sarah Ferris and Ally Mutnick for their contributions to this column.

President Joe Biden is known for his loose, off-the-cuff comments. Many have been inconsequential gaffes — an awkward turn of phrase or a moment of embarrassing honesty about his personal life.

Then there are times when Biden has said the quiet part out loud, including on key foreign policy matters. His blunt remarks have prompted pushback from world leaders and attempts to correct the record from State Department and White House officials.

Since becoming president, Biden has repeatedly revealed his inner thinking on sensitive matters of diplomacy and national security, even on issues where his advisers and appointees attempt to maintain strict messaging discipline. He has seldom actually contradicted official policy, but his comments give observers insights into the worries latent in his administration’s relationships with Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Northern Ireland.

The White House and State Department did not return POLITICO’s requests for comment.

Here are a few of the times Biden has been bolder, and less diplomatic, than his aides may have liked:

Biden calls Chinese leader Xi a dictator

The U.S. has long been critical of China’s human rights record, condemning Beijing’s treatment of ethnic minority populations in Tibet and Xinjiang. It has also pushed for democracy in Hong Kong and condemned the violent suppression of peaceful protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 as well as China’s imprisonment of dissidents. The State Department identifies China as an authoritarian country.

But the U.S. has seldom, if ever, directly condemned individual Chinese leaders as autocrats, even as Chinese paramount leader Xi Jingping has consolidated power over the past few years.

That changed in June, when Biden unexpectedly called Xi a “dictator” at a fundraiser in California.

Biden told the crowd that “the reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there.”

“That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened,” Biden continued.

Beijing immediately pushed back, registering a formal protest and summoning the U.S. ambassador to Beijing for an official reprimand over the comment — further straining already-fractured relations between the nations.

Biden then attempted to downplay his comment, saying at a news conference with the Indian prime minister later that week that he expected to meet with Xi sometime in the near future and that he did not think the incident “had any real consequence.”

Again this week, after Biden and Xi met in San Francisco on Wednesday, Biden reiterated his earlier criticism of the Chinese leader: “Look, he is. He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country.” The comments prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to visibly wince.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs quickly condemned Biden’s remarks again. A spokesperson told reporters on Thursday that “this kind of speech is extremely wrong and is irresponsible political manipulation.”

Biden pledges to defend Taiwan

Officially, the Biden administration has continued the U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan, meaning the U.S. has not definitively stated whether it would intervene to defend the self-governing island in the event of an invasion by China.

But at various moments during his presidency, Biden has pledged to defend Taiwan if China were to invade and try to integrate it by force, prompting observers to say that strategic ambiguity is functionally dead.

At a CNN Town Hall in 2021, Biden said the U.S. has a “commitment” to Taiwan. In May and September 2022, Biden vowed that the U.S. would defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion — prompting Beijing to warn that Biden’s comments had sent a “seriously erroneous signal to Taiwanese separatist independence forces.”

While the U.S. has been taking an increasingly aggressive tone toward China, and supplies the island with defensive weaponry, it still officially recognizes the government in Beijing as the legitimate government over all of China, including Taiwan, as part of its “One China” policy.

The White House and State Department have repeatedly walked back Biden’s comments on coming to Taiwan’s defense. Then-State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a May 2022 briefing that “our One China Policy and our commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait of course remains,” while also reiterating the U.S. commitment to provide the island with “military needs to defend itself.”

The U.S. is legislatively bound by the Taiwan Relations Act to “consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.”

Biden says Putin ‘cannot remain in power’

As the U.S. has supported Ukraine in its war with Russia, the Biden administration has condemned Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his threats towards NATO and the West. Unlike with China, U.S. officials have singled out Putin and his web of oligarchs with harsh sanctions and voiced their support for Russian dissidents and opposition leaders.

Yet the U.S. has stopped short of calling for regime change or providing Russian activists with material support as they seek to restore democracy in the country, and is typically careful not to provoke outrage from the Kremlin.

A speech from Biden in March 2022 raised alarm bells that that approach was changing. A month after Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden visited Poland and delivered a forceful speech in front of the Royal Palace in Warsaw, pledging Western support behind Kyiv as it repelled the Russian military.

But that speech was overshadowed by an off-hand comment. Biden said the war would not result in a Russian victory, exclaiming “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” in reference to Putin.

The White House quickly clarified that Biden was not calling for regime change, but meant that Putin should not be allowed to exercise power over the region.

The reaction was swift from Moscow and other world leaders. A Kremlin spokesperson told Reuters “that’s not for Biden to decide” because “the president of Russia is elected by Russians,” and later told Russia’s RBC that Biden was “the victim of many misconceptions.”

Even U.S. allies distanced themselves. French President Emmanuel Macron said “I wouldn’t use this type of wording because I continue to hold discussions with President Putin,” in an interview with TV channel France 3.

Biden claims the British are ‘screwing around’ in Northern Ireland

The U.S. was one of the most important interlocutors between Ireland, the U.K. and Northern Irish groups as all sides sought to end the period of violence in Northern Ireland known as “The Troubles.” In 1998, U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell helped broker the Good Friday Agreement, which officially ended the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, and President Bill Clinton expended incredible political and diplomatic capital to reach the peace deal.

The U.S. still maintains a special envoy to handle issues related to Northern Ireland. And even as tensions have grown in the wake of Brexit, the U.S. has sought to keep the peace and backed efforts to negotiate a Brexit deal that does not re-inflame tensions in Ireland.

When Biden visited the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in April to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, it was touted as a homecoming for a president who celebrates his Irish heritage and as an affirmation of the U.S.’ commitment to maintaining peace. Biden told local leaders in Belfast that “the enemies of peace will not prevail” and “democracy needs champions,” urging them to revive power-sharing in the wake of political gridlock.

But a month later, Biden told supporters at a New York fundraiser that he also visited Belfast “to make sure they weren’t — the Brits didn’t screw around and Northern Ireland didn’t walk away from their commitments.”

The remarks surprised British and Northern Ireland’s Unionist lawmakers.

Shailesh Vara, a Conservative MP who served briefly as Northern Ireland secretary, called it “deeply regrettable that President Biden has to use such language to further his reelection chances in the U.S.”

“It’s unbelievable and frightening to think this man is the leader of the free world,” said Democratic Unionist Sammy Wilson, who criticized Biden’s remarks as both hostile to unionists and politically incoherent. “If you believe that there should be a special relationship between the U.S. and U.K., then at least show us some respect.”

Biden slams Saudi Crown Prince for murder of Jamal Khashoggi

Since 1933, Saudi Arabia has been a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, allowing the U.S. to build military bases on its territory, providing the U.S. with critical crude oil and fighting together to liberate Kuwait after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of the Persian Gulf country.

To maintain the relationship, however, the U.S. has had to look past Saudi Arabia’s abysmal human rights record, its treatment of women and its alleged support of terrorism. Israel, the War on Terror and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have also been flashpoints that have strained ties.

The U.S. has not been shy about criticizing its ally in the past, and politicians have regularly slammed the Saudi monarchy for its conduct. Yet Biden came into office with a particularly skeptical and harsh tone toward Riyadh than Biden.

In 2019 and 2020 of his presidential campaign, Biden condemned the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post and critic of the Saudi monarchy who was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

At a Democratic primary debate in November 2019, Biden said the Saudis would “pay the price” for Khashoggi’s death.

“I would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them,” Biden said. “We were going to in fact make them pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are.”

Biden also said there is “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia,” and, in reference to the ongoing Yemeni civil war, said he would “end the sale of material to the Saudis where they’re going in and murdering children.”

The comments contrasted with then-President Donald Trump’s embrace of authoritarian leaders, and underscored Biden’s desire to pursue a human rights-focused foreign policy in the Oval Office.

But as president, Biden and his aides have lessened their hostility toward Riyadh. The administration released a U.S. intelligence report that said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the operation to kill Khashoggi, who was a U.S. resident, but in February 2021, the administration said that it would not punish bin Salman for his role in the killing.

And in the summer of 2022, as oil prices soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, hurting consumers and the president’s poll numbers, Biden visited Saudi Arabia and met with the crown prince. Later that year, the Biden administration ruled that the crown prince was immune from a lawsuit filed against him and others for their roles in the killing.

In recent months, the U.S. has also pursued a normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, an effort that has required increased U.S. engagement with the Kingdom.

These moves prompted charges of hypocrisy by human rights groups and friends and relatives of Khashoggi, who say that Biden was prioritizing realpolitik over his promises.

“I always bring up human rights, but my position on Khashoggi has been so clear, if anyone doesn’t understand it in Saudi Arabia or otherwise they haven’t been around me for a while,” Biden told reporters in Israel during that trip. “The reason I’m going to Saudi Arabia is to promote U.S. interests in a way that I think we have an opportunity to reassert our influence in the Middle East.”

The White House on Friday condemned Elon Musk for endorsing an antisemitic post on social media.

Musk on Wednesday wrote that an X post “said the actual truth,” replying to a user who posted an antisemitic claim that Jewish communities have been “pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The post also referenced “hordes of minorities that support flooding their country.”

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, that the White House condemns “this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms.”

“It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of Antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Bates wrote.

American support for Ukraine is in peril in Congress. And the best hope is an underdog Senate gang negotiating over border security.

For the second time in two months, Congress funded the government and skipped town without addressing Ukraine’s war effort. Republicans are threatening to block aid unless it includes solutions to border security, meaning President Joe Biden’s request of $60 billion for the allied country is now anchored down by a complex and touchy fight on border politics that lawmakers routinely fail to solve.

And there’s a big sticking point. The six principal negotiators are arbitrating a dispute over raising the standard for claiming asylum in the United States, with the GOP saying it’s a must-have to move Ukraine aid and Democrats balking so far. Those border talks are ongoing and Wednesday’s discussions were positive, according to a person familiar with them. Senators plan to continue talking over the Thanksgiving recess.

But Senate leaders say they have a long way to go.

“I have a general feeling we are in a very preliminary stage,” said Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who is in touch with lawmakers negotiating on the border. “It’s critically important. The aid to Ukraine is time sensitive. People are fighting and dying every day. We need to move quickly to get this done.”

It’s a sign that aid for Ukraine and Israel is more at risk than ever. Lawmakers insist their effort is far from over, and they have powerful allies in congressional leadership and the White House. But the situation is becoming more complicated by the week.

The next must-pass legislation deadline isn’t until January, meaning supplemental spending can’t hitch a ride on a funding bill for the rest of the year. And while the annual defense bill could also spur some momentum for Ukraine in December, House conservatives are signaling even border concessions may not be enough for them to entertain a deal on Ukraine.

In a sensitive congressional negotiation, the fact that everyone is still speaking after a week of high-stakes discussions is a positive sign. But Republicans say many Democrats are still resisting their efforts to reform the asylum standard as the sole way to unlock help for Kyiv.

“There are Senate Democrats and the White House that agree this is a problem that needs to be solved,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), one of the negotiators. “We have some Democrats saying: ‘I don’t want to deal with this.’”

Further complicating matters, Democrats are continuing to push their own immigration ideas while Republicans want to keep the negotiations focused solely on border security policies and funding. Amid that backdrop, Lankford is now working to turn a one-page summary of the party’s border plan into legislation, said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). That could prompt even more haggling.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), another member of the negotiating group, said he sensed that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer may force a vote on a supplemental spending bill dealing with Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and the border sometime after Thanksgiving. Schumer said late Wednesday that he’d be fine passing the package without the border provisions and that Democrats are “making every effort to try and come up with a compromise on border, but it has to be bipartisan.”

Republicans say if Democrats try to make a move without a border deal, they will tank it.

“We’ve got to be prepared to say: ‘Before we get to Israel, before we get to Ukraine, we’re going to have a discussion about’” the border, Tillis said. “We can hold up that spending bill.”

Other portions of the negotiation, such as where to send new money for barriers and staffing, could fall into place once the group reaches a deal on asylum policy. But Republicans want such an agreement to include policies forcing migrants to make asylum claims in other countries, an idea Democrats have serious reservations about.

The marriage of money for Ukraine with new border policies is creating a negotiation that Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) called “one of the most challenging in the time that I’ve been here.” That comes from one of the principal authors of the sweeping Gang of Eight immigration deal that failed a decade ago.

Changes to border policies are hard enough on their own — there’s a reason it’s been decades since a president signed a new comprehensive immigration reform law. Adding the weight of the U.S. alliances with Israel and Ukraine to the mix doesn’t make it any easier.

“Our national security depends on Ukraine and Israel. And, in a sense, Republicans are asking us to cut off our nose to spite our face,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “To overhaul the asylum standards really may create insuperable barriers” to a deal.

Even if the border group — it includes Lankford, Tillis, Bennet, Murphy and Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — gets a deal that manages to pass the Senate, there’s another problem: the GOP House. Republicans in that chamber already passed border legislation packed with conservative priorities and may balk at a more bipartisan deal that’s linked to Ukraine.

Speaker Mike Johnson reiterated to lawmakers as recently as this week that he supports linking Ukraine funding with border security, according to Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). But conservatives are doubtful that would be enough to overcome widespread opposition to spending more money on Ukraine among House Republicans.

“Someone explain to me how you’re going to get the votes,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). “We have a bunch of ‘Never Ukrainers,’ right?”

Uncertainty about how the House would address a Senate breakthrough is driving further malaise. Aides in both parties have privately surmised that the whole negotiation could collapse under its own weight and leave Ukraine with no path through both chambers of Congress before the election.

Some lawmakers are dubious that an agreement will come out of the border talks.

“I’m skeptical because the substance that they have discussed so far is not reasonable,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Still, some negotiators aren’t envisioning a deal they expect would appeal to progressive Democrats or conservatives who oppose funding Ukraine at all. An ideal Senate bill, in their view, would pass the chamber via the center-left and the center-right.

That would make it more palatable to the GOP House, according to people familiar with the talks. Even then, though, it might take a deadline to drive action.

“We seem to function best under deadlines,” said Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio). “And obviously [January’s] the next deadline, unless there’s some overwhelming Christmas spirit that takes over this institution and creates some spirit of giving.”

Ursula Perano, Jordain Carney and Jennifer Haberkorn contributed to this report.

China’s foreign ministry denounced President Joe Biden’s comment Thursday calling Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator” for the second time this year.

“This statement is extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters on Thursday, according to Reuters.

China’s foreign ministry said it “strongly opposes” Biden’s remarks, without mentioning him by name. “It should be pointed out that there will always be some people with ulterior motives who attempt to incite and damage U.S.-China relations, they are doomed to fail,” she said.

When asked by a reporter on Wednesday if Biden still believed Xi was a dictator, Biden stood by the assessment that he made earlier this year.

“Look, he is. He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country,” Biden said during a news conference, just after he announced agreements on a number of confidence-building measures with his Chinese counterpart.

Biden’s remarks came after a four-hour session with Xi — the first meeting between the two in a year.

Biden made similar comments in June, referring to Xi as a dictator when speaking about a spy balloon that the U.S. shot down in February. China responded to Biden’s first dictator comment by calling it “blatant political provocation.”

President Joe Biden, beset by conflicts around the world, is seeking to steady his fraught relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping so the White House can instead focus its energy on Israel, Ukraine and the upcoming reelection campaign, according to three senior administration officials.

The two will hold their high-stakes meeting Wednesday — their first face-to-face meeting in a year, and likely their last before the U.S. presidential election — amid a growing threat of military conflict between the world’s two largest economies and a deepening mistrust that has pushed relations to their lowest point in a half century.

Adding to the tension: Biden is expected to press Xi on China’s ties with Iran, including how the Chinese leader can use his influence with Tehran to prevent Iran and its proxies from turning the Israel-Hamas war into a wider regional conflict, according to the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss international deliberation and strategy.

“Both sides need to avoid blowing each other up,” former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Rick Waters, the inaugural coordinator of the State Department’s China House, said about the rising risk of conflict between the two countries. “That’s the type of signal you need from a meeting like this.”

The meeting — on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in San Francisco — comes as the U.S. seeks to avoid a potential government shutdown. China, meanwhile, is struggling to emerge from a severe economic downturn following countrywide shutdowns during the pandemic and shrinking foreign investment.

China’s ties to Iran have become a more urgent priority given what the Pentagon calls near-daily attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East by Iran-backed militants. The U.S. has responded with three separate airstrikes on those groups’ Syrian-based facilities.

Biden also plans to focus on climate cooperation, China’s role in the U.S. opioid overdose epidemic and Beijing’s alignment with Russia’s war on Ukraine, according to the officials.

During Monday’s White House briefing, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden “sees this not just as a one-off meeting but as an important moment to be able to establish the kind of basis upon which we can proceed out into the future.”

Xi will urge Biden to “respect China’s concerns and legitimate right to development, rather than emphasizing its own concerns at the expense of China’s,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Monday.

The two leaders have had no direct contact since they last met a year ago at the G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia, and pledged to cool tensions. But the presence of an alleged Chinese spy balloonover the continental U.S. in February, Beijing’s increasing saber rattling toward Taiwan, and new U.S. high-tech export restrictions targeting China have further soured the relationship.

The pair need to show a “clear ability to manage tension in a way that doesn’t spill over into crises that neither country wants to get into,” said Nirav Patel, former deputy assistant secretary of State in the Obama administration and now the CEO of the U.S.-based Asia Group consultancy.

Biden had hoped to come to the summit from a point of strength, presenting the U.S. as the reliable leader of a regional alliance of democracies – all aligned against Beijing. But domestic politics are threatening that narrative. Biden is scheduled to arrive late Tuesday night in San Francisco as congressional lawmakers struggle to pass a government funding bill, and disputes between the White House and senior Senate Democrats are threatening to derail Biden’s signature trade agreement that was slated to be unveiled at the APEC summit. That opens up an opportunity for Xi.

“Xi can use APEC as a forum to present China as a compelling alternative” to U.S. global leadership, said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit research institute. “And this message occurring at the same time as the U.S. is grappling with government funding negotiations, it feeds the narrative that the U.S. is unreliable and China represents an alternative.”

Biden will need to convince Xi that the U.S. and China still have wiggle room to cooperate. That’s a hard sell considering Biden calls Beijing a threat to the “rules based international order,” accuses it of committing genocide in Xinjiang against predominantly-Muslim Uyghurs, and has waged a three-year campaign to rally partners into coalitions that counter China’s growing diplomatic, economic and military muscle.

The U.S. is pursuing “comprehensive containment, encirclement and suppression against us,” Xi declared in a March speech to Communist Party officials.

The biggest accomplishment may be that the two men are talking at all, according to two of the officials. In many ways, the U.S. hopes are modest: restore the bilateral relationship to where it was in Bali, before tensions escalated.

“It’s not an auspicious time for American compromises toward China,” said Susan Shirk, former deputy assistant secretary of state and current chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California San Diego. The Chinese are also “not really energized to produce major deliverables.”

But there will likely be some successes. The White House plans to announce a new commitment by Beijing to stem the flow of chemicals to Mexico that cartels process into fentanyl. One of the officials said that communication between the two nations – including working toward setting up the San Francisco meeting – had grown easier in recent weeks. One highlight could involve the resumption of high-level military-to-military ties, an administration official told reporters last week. Beijing suspended those links as a reprisal for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit in 2022 to Taiwan.

There are few unifying issues in a divided Washington, but being hawkish on Beijing has created some bipartisanship. And lawmakers in both parties agree that the state of U.S.-China ties demands more from the meeting than just vague rhetoric.

“We have to see action that matches the words,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China, specifically referring to China’s “incessant hacking, the incessant theft of intellectual property, the dumping of economic goods” in the U.S.

Biden will likely also face pressure from others at the forum. “U.S. allies are telling Biden ‘You’ve got to put a floor under this — you cannot allow your relationship with China to deteriorate,’” said David Rank, former chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Beijing during the Obama administration.

In just the past two weeks, U.S. and Chinese officials have met in locales including Beijing, San Francisco and Washington to discuss matters including climate cooperation, rights of people with disabilities,nuclear nonproliferation,maritime issues and economic ties. Beijing is “ready to strengthen communication and dialogue with the United States at all levels,” Chinese Vice President Han Zheng said last week.

Their leaders will test that rhetoric on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden’s granddaughter opened fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle in the nation’s capital, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

The agents, assigned to protect Naomi Biden, were out with her in the Georgetown neighborhood late Sunday night when they saw the three people breaking a window of the parked and unoccupied SUV, the official said. The official could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on Monday on the condition of anonymity.

One of the agents opened fire, but no one was struck by the gunfire, the Secret Service said in a statement. The three people were seen fleeing in a red car, and the Secret Service said it put out a regional bulletin to Metropolitan Police to be on the lookout for it.

Washington has seen a significant rise in the number of carjackings and car thefts this year. Police have reported more than 750 carjackings this year and more than 6,000 reports of stolen vehicles in the district. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas was carjacked near the Capitol last month by three armed assailants, who stole his car but didn’t physically harm him.

Violent crime in Washington has also been on the rise this year, up more than 40% compared with last year. In February, U.S. Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota was assaulted in her apartment building, suffering bruises while escaping serious injury.