Politico

President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday for the first time in nearly a month about the ongoing war in Gaza and the potential for a postwar Palestinian state.

The conversation came on the cusp of Netanyahu’s rejection of creating an independent Palestinian nation once the fighting in the Gaza Strip concludes, though the White House contends the timing of the call was coincidental.

“The president still believes in the promise and the possibility of a two-state solution. He recognizes that it’s going to take a lot of hard work. It’s going to take a lot of leadership there in the region, particularly, on both sides of the issue and the United States stands firmly committed to eventually seeing that outcome,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said at the White House briefing.

“Obviously, we’re talking to them actively about post-conflict Gaza, and what governance there needs to look like and the importance of an independent Palestinian state for long-term security, not just for the Palestinian people but for the Israeli people as well.”

The Biden administration has forcefully pushed for a two-state solution in the region, but Netanyahu’s latest remarks signal that he won’t adhere to Washington’s appeals. It’s put the two leaders on a collision course about the breadth of Israel’s war and the future of Gaza, further complicating Biden’s efforts to manage the delicate foreign policy crisis.

Netanyahu on Thursday said during a news conference that postwar, Israel “needs security control over all territory” west of Jordan. “This collides with the idea of sovereignty,” he added.

Democratic lawmakers have also condemned the Israeli prime minister’s comments, encouraging Biden to abandon “quiet diplomacy” with Netanyahu. It comes as Democrats, spearheaded by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, are pushing an amendment to the president’s multibillion national security supplemental. The amendment, which now has 18 co-sponsors, would seek to ensure that countries that receive U.S. military aid — including Israel — use weapons in accordance with U.S. law, international humanitarian law and the laws of armed conflict.

Kirby said Biden and Netanyahu also discussed ongoing efforts to secure the release of the remaining hostages being held by Hamas following it’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, as well as operations to increase humanitarian assistance to Gaza, “while keeping the military pressure on Hamas and its leaders significantly.”

The Senate passed a stopgap spending bill Thursday afternoon with relatively low drama, sending the shutdown-averting measure across the Capitol.

House lawmakers are expected to clear the bill for President Joe Biden’s signature Thursday evening, after Speaker Mike Johnson batted down last-minute demands from members of the House Freedom Caucus. Lawmakers have sailed through the passage process this week pretty quickly, with two motivating factors in mind: Avoiding the travel complications of a snowstorm forecast to hit Washington, D.C. on Friday and heading off a partial government shutdown set to hit just after midnight that night.

Raj Shah, a spokesperson for the speaker, said Thursday afternoon that “the plan has not changed” and that the “House is voting on the stop gap measure tonight to keep the government open.” That statement follows House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Bob Good‘s (R-Va.) request that Johnson tee up votes on amendments that would change border security policy.

Good indicated in a brief interview that Johnson had informed him of his decision to forgo amendments, quipping: “Shocker.”

“Our greatest leverage point is funding the government, and unfortunately we’re giving that away.” Asked if House conservatives can gain leverage in funding talks before the new March deadlines, Good replied: “We’ll see.”

In the Senate: The Senate rejected two proposals to tweak the continuing resolution. With a simple-majority bar, the chamber voted 13-82 on Sen. Roger Marshall‘s (R-Kan.) plan to resort to a so-called “full-year” stopgap that would extend government funding through September and trigger cuts to non-defense programs.

With a 60-vote threshold, the Senate voted 44-50 on an amendment from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that would end humanitarian aid to Gaza unless leaders there recognize Israel’s right to exist, release all hostages taken during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and renounce terrorism. The amendment would also force the State Department to report on compliance with U.S. foreign assistance laws.

What’s next: House Republicans plan to fast-track debate on the measure, forgoing the kind of procedural vote that a dozen conservatives used last week to halt floor action. That speedier alternative will also cut debate time to 40 minutes and raise the bar for passage to a two-thirds majority — a threshold House leaders expect to easily meet, with overwhelming support from Democrats.

“I don’t think the battle lines have changed very much. But it’s clear that a very substantial majority does not want to shut down the government,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chair of the Rules Committee and also vice chair of the Appropriations Committee.

Congressional leaders face weeks of onerous negotiations to pass final spending bills. Speaker Mike Johnson continues to manage the demands of his chamber’s conservatives, who are opposed to the nearly $1.7 trillion funding framework he worked out with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer earlier this month. They repeatedly blocked spending bills for months, demanding that House Republicans undercut the earlier topline agreement struck during debt limit negotiations last spring.

In context: The continuing resolution will be the third funding patch Congress has cleared since the current fiscal year kicked off on Oct. 1. Each of those stopgaps has riled drama among House Republicans, eight of whom voted with Democrats to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy after he agreed to pass the first patch in late September.

Johnson then put his own spin on the funding punt just before Thanksgiving, proposing the “laddered” continuing resolution that set two different shutdown deadlines. The latest patch takes the same approach, extending funding through March 1 for several departments, while cash will continue through March 8 for others, including the Pentagon and the largest non-defense agencies.

Joe Gould and Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.

Former President Donald Trump pummeled his Republican opponents in Iowa’s caucuses Monday, but President Joe Biden isn’t worried.

“Well, I don’t think Iowa means anything,” Biden told reporters Thursday, when asked about the implications of Trump’s victory for his own reelection efforts.

“The president got 50-some-thousand votes, the lowest number of votes anybody who’s won got. You know, this idea that he’s going to run away, he can think anyway he wants, let him make that judgment,” Biden said.

The former president won less than 57,000 votes on Monday, during a caucus in which turnout was hampered by record-breaking low temperatures, days of blizzard conditions and a generally uncompetitive race in the state.

While other Iowa winners have gotten far less numerical votes than Trump in contests with more competitive fields — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) won the 2016 caucuses with 52,000 votes, which accounted for roughly 28 percent of the vote, for example — turnout was very low earlier this week.

According to The Des Moines Register, the 110,000 voters who came out to caucus represented just 15 percent of Iowa’s registered Republicans. Turnout was the lowest it’s been in a GOP presidential primary in 24 years, according to Business Insider.

Trump, however, handily defeated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who won just over 21 percent of the vote, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who came in with slightly over 19 percent.

With Trump still crushing his Republican opponents in national polls and Biden dominating a Democratic field that includes Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips and self-help guru Marianne Williamson, the pair appear to be headed for a rematch in November.

Trump, Haley and DeSantis will all appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot on Tuesday. Biden will not be on the ballot in the Granite State next week — although his allies have launched a write-in effort to hand him a win there anyway.

White House chief of staff Jeff Zients called former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Wednesday morning to apologize after the Democratic National Committee released a snarky statement to mark the end of the Republican’s presidential bid.

Hutchinson, who ran a campaign designed to take on and criticize Donald Trump, dropped out of the race after a sixth-place in the Iowa caucuses this week.

“This news comes as a shock to those of us who could’ve sworn he had already dropped out,” DNC spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said after Hutchinson announced his exit Tuesday.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre, when asked about the exchange during Wednesday’s press briefing, said President Joe Biden has a “deep respect” for the governor and “admires the race he ran.”

“The president knows him to be a man of principle who cares about our country and has a strong record of public service,” Jean-Pierre said. “This morning, the chief of staff here, Jeff Zients, called the governor to convey this and apologized for the statement that did not represent the president’s views.”

Trump saw a decisive win in Iowa earlier this week, as Hutchinson and other anti-Trump Republicans have struggled to break through in a Republican Party that remains under the former president’s strong hold.

WASHINGTON — Thousands of demonstrators converged opposite the White House on Saturday to call for an end to Israeli military action in Gaza, while children joined a pro-Palestinian march through central London as part of a global day of action against the longest and deadliest war between Israel and Palestinians in 75 years.

People in the U.S. capital held aloft signs questioning President Joe Biden’s viability as a presidential candidate because of his staunch support for Israel in the nearly 100-day war against Hamas. Some of the signs read: “No votes for Genocide Joe,” “Biden has blood on his hands” and “Let Gaza live.”

Vendors were also selling South African flags as protesters chanted slogans in support of the country whose accusations of genocide against Israel prompted the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, to take up the case.

Dan Devries, a New York resident said he attended the protest because he wants to see a free Gaza, but that he wouldn’t vote for either Biden or possible Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“I see this war as part of the U.S.’s drive to offset its economic decline by engaging in continual war,” said Devries.

Washington resident Phil Kline held up a sign calling for Pope Francis to excommunicate Biden.

“I know he’s a devout Catholic. Maybe he will take this issue seriously when the pope removes him from the church. There’s no justification for bombing civilians,” Kline said, though he added he still intends to vote for Biden in the November elections.

Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of anti-war group CodePink, told The Associated Press that the moniker “Genocide Joe” will stick with Biden for a certain segment of the community because of his handling of the war in Gaza.

“I think the Democrats are playing with fire in many ways — playing with fire in that they’re supporting a genocide in Gaza but also playing with fire in terms of their own future,” Benjamin said.

Jake and Ida Braford, a young couple from Richmond, Virginia, who brought their two small children to the protest, said they were unsure of whether to vote for Biden in November.

“We’re pretty disheartened,” Ida Braford said. “Seeing what is happening in Gaza, and the government’s actions makes me wonder what is our vote worth?”

The plight of children in the Gaza Strip was the focus of the latest London march, symbolized by the appearance of Little Amal, a 3.5-meter (11.5-foot) puppet originally meant to highlight the suffering of Syrian refugees.

The puppet had become a human rights emblem during an 8,000-kilometer (4,970-mile) journey from the Turkish-Syrian border to Manchester in July 2001.

Nearly two-thirds of the 23,843 people killed during Israel’s campaign in Gaza have been women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Israel declared war in response to Hamas’ unprecedented cross-border attack on Oct. 7 in which the Islamic militant group killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 250 others hostage. It was the deadliest attack in Israel’s history and the deadliest for Jews since the Holocaust.

March organizers had said the Palestinian children would accompany Little Amal through the streets of central London.

“On Saturday Amal walks for those most vulnerable and for their bravery and resilience,“ said Amir Nizar Zuabi, artistic director of The Walk Productions. “Amal is a child and a refugee and today in Gaza childhood is under attack, with an unfathomable number of children killed. Childhood itself is being targeted. That’s why we walk.”

London’s Metropolitan Police force said some 1,700 officers would be on duty for the march, including many from outside the capital.

Home Secretary James Cleverly said he had been briefed by police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley on plans to “ensure order and safety” during the protest.

“I back them to use their powers to manage the protest and crack down on any criminality,” Cleverly said.

A number of conditions were placed for the march, including a directive that no participant in the protest shall venture near the Israeli Embassy.

A pro-Israel rally was set to take place in London on Sunday.

The London march was one of several others being held in European cities including Paris, Rome, Milan and Dublin, where thousands also marched along the Irish capital’s main thoroughfare to protest Israel’s military operations in the Palestinian enclave.

Protesters waved Palestinian flags, held placards critical of the Irish, U.S. and Israeli governments and chanted, “Free, free Palestine.″

In Rome, hundreds of demonstrators descended on a boulevard near the famous Colosseum, with some carrying signs reading, “Stop Genocide.”

At one point during the protest, amid the din of sound effects mimicking exploding bombs, a number of demonstrators lied down in the street and pulled white sheets over themselves as if they were corpses, while others knelt beside them, their palms daubed in red paint.

Many hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Paris’ Republic square to set off on a march calling for an immediate cease-fire, an end to the war, a lifting of the blockade on Gaza and to impose sanctions on Israel. Marching protesters waved the Palestinian flag and held aloft placards and banners reading, “From Gaza to Paris. Resistance.”

The White House is warning that the Chinese government is trying to influence the result of Taiwan’s presidential election on Saturday through disinformation and misinformation operations.

“It is no secret that Beijing has views on the outcome of the election and is trying to shape and coerce in various different ways,” a senior administration official granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record told reporters in a virtual press briefing on Wednesday.

That’s an implicit reference to the electoral race between Taiwan’s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Lai Ching-te and Hou Yu-ih of the opposition Kuomintang Party which is anti-independence and favors closer ties with Beijing. The most recent polls showed Lai leading Hou by between 3 and 11 percentage points, but there’s still the possibility of an upset by Hou. A third-party candidate, Ko Wen-je, who trails both Lai and Hou, also supports cozier relations with Beijing.

China’s threats to Taiwan have overshadowed pocketbook issues — including housing prices and inflation — in the election, which also includes races for the island’s 113 legislative seats. U.S. assessments of a possible Chinese invasion attempt by as early as 2027 have fanned those fears.

Beijing’s efforts to sway the vote include “attempts to try to shape the information environment or to put economic pressure on the island through announcements of tariff changes that we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks,” the official said. The administration sees a familiar pattern in the influence campaign. “This has been a longstanding practice of Beijing … what we’re seeing is consistent with what we have seen in the past,” the official said.

The White House is confident that those efforts won’t affect poll results and warned China against intimidation tactics targeting the island after the election. “Beijing will be the provocateur should it choose to respond with additional military pressure or coercion,” the official said.

Neither the Chinese embassy nor Taiwan’s diplomatic outpost in Washington responded to requests for comment.

CONCORD, N.H. — The New Hampshire attorney general’s office is accusing the Democratic National Committee of engaging in unlawful voter suppression after the national party dismissed the state’s upcoming primary as “meaningless.”

Assistant Attorney General Brendan O’Donnell on Monday fired off a cease-and-desist order to the DNC, saying that instructing state Democrats to “educate the public” that the primary is “meaningless” violates the state’s voter suppression laws.

The state’s warning comes after the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws committee scolded New Hampshire Democrats for selecting delegates for the national convention this past weekend. The national party is not counting the Democratic primary on Jan. 23 as part of the official nominating process, after clashing with state Democrats about the order of this year’s primary calendar.

The original letter from the DNC committee to New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley, obtained first by POLITICO, accused state Democrats of disenfranchising voters by selecting delegates who won’t be seated at the convention and called the Jan. 23 primary “detrimental” and “meaningless.”

On Monday, O’Donnell told national Democrats to cut it out. “Regardless of whether the DNC refuses to award delegates to the party’s national convention” based on the primary results, “that election is not ‘meaningless,’” he wrote in the cease-and-desist letter.

Buckley responded to Monday’s demand letter by saying New Hampshire is just following state law — and that he expects “great Democratic voter turnout” on Jan. 23.

“Well, it’s safe to say in New Hampshire, the DNC is less popular than the [New York] Yankees,” Buckley said in a statement.

The DNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Joe Biden and the DNC wanted South Carolina, a more diverse state that propelled Biden to the nomination in 2020, for the lead-off spot for this year’s presidential primary. But Republicans who control New Hampshire’s government refused to change the law that says the state must hold its primary a week before any similar contest, and scheduled it ahead of South Carolina’s Feb. 3 Democratic contest.

Biden skipped putting his name on the ballot for New Hampshire’s primary as a result. His allies in the state are now waging a write-in campaign on his behalf.

The DNC’s missive has reverberated across New Hampshire, angering both Republicans and Biden’s rivals for the Democratic nomination.

Rep. Dean Phillips blasted the DNC’s letter as “one of the most egregious affronts to democracy that I’ve ever seen in my entire lifetime as an American, period,” while debating Marianne Williamson in downtown Manchester on Monday, as part of a convention hosted by New England College. He brandished a copy of the letter to help make his point.

Asked about the letter after the debate, Williamson accused the party of “gaslighting” and “hypocrisy.”

Minutes later, at a press conference in Concord in support of the write-in Biden effort, visiting Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said he would “take exception to that characterization” that the primary is meaningless even though his party won’t count it.

Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) argued that voters aren’t “focused at all about some committee in Washington” and that the results in two weeks “will demonstrate why the New Hampshire primary is so important” despite Biden’s attempts to demote it.