Controversy surrounding corporate dialogue on the Israel-Hamas war
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The Memo: Democratic splits deepen over Israel as Palestinian death toll rises
Democratic divisions on Israel and the Palestinians are growing deeper and more bitter as the death toll rises in Gaza and the Biden administration rejects calls for a cease-fire.
The combustible mix is powered by fundamental differences in views of the conflict, growing personal tensions, and the threat of censure motions and primary challenges.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at a White House briefing Monday that a cease-fire would benefit only Hamas, which killed around 1,400 Israelis in a series of attacks on Oct. 7.
Israeli reprisals have killed around 8,300 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The United Nations secretary-general and the European Union’s top diplomat are among those who have called for a cessation of hostilities. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that calls for a cease-fire were tantamount to “calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas.”
The dire situation and the bloodshed of the past four weeks has caused far more internal strife for Democrats than among Republicans.
The GOP holds a more straightforwardly pro-Israel position, while Democrats split across ideological, generational and, to some degree, racial lines.
Now, the stakes are literally life and death.
“A child is being killed once every 10 minutes” in Gaza, Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for progressive group Justice Democrats, told this column. “If we let the White House continue to excuse that as Israeli ‘defense,’ then we are very actively choosing to let the White House value the lives of innocent Israelis over the lives of innocent Palestinians.”
But, whereas Andrabi contends that many Democratic voters see the issue this way, Mark Mellman argued that the dissenters were in a small minority.
Mellman, the president of Democratic Majority for Israel — a group he said was founded “to ensure that the Democratic Party remains true to its long and proud pro-Israel position” — contended that “basically over 90 percent of the Democratic caucus is strongly pro-Israel and a very small number are not.”
Mellman acknowledged some long-term “slippage” in the views of Democratic voters pertaining to Israel but contended that “today, the support for Israel among Democrats is extremely strong.”
President Biden journeyed to Israel soon after the attacks and expressed emphatic U.S. support. He has held to that position even as Israel has strafed Gaza with airstrikes and begun a ground invasion.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that Biden needed to be “careful.” The American people, Jayapal said, support Israel’s right to defend itself and to exist “but they do not support a war crime exchanged for another war crime.”
In a separate interview with CNN’s Manu Raju, Jayapal warned that the conflict was “hurting” both Biden and the Democratic Party, and she compared the divisions over the issue with those that roiled the party during the Iraq War.
The fault lines have taken on an angry and personal edge as well.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) last week called the nine House Democrats who voted against a resolution in support of Israel “despicable.” One of the nine, Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.), hit back that Gottheimer was a “coward.”
The general reasoning offered by the nine Democratic dissenters was that the resolution failed to either call for a cease-fire, suggest Israel bears responsibility for Palestinian deaths, or imply any limits to support for Israel’s actions.
A few days prior to that, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) had criticized Rep. Richie Torres (D-N.Y.) for his vigorous support for Israel, asking rhetorically, “How many more Palestinians would make you happy if they die?”
There is no end in sight to those fissures.
Republicans will seek to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) this week for alleged “antisemitic activity,” a charge that Tlaib vigorously denies.
“There should be a universal statement from Democratic leadership condemning that resolution and demanding every Democratic member of Congress oppose it,” Andrabi said.
House Republicans are also in the process of pushing an aid package for Israel alone — rather than for Israel, Ukraine and other causes, as Biden prefers — which could further fuel Democratic divisions.
Meanwhile, Democrats identified with a relatively pro-Palestinian stance, including Reps. Tlaib, Omar, Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), are either certain or likely to face primary challenges.
Mellman noted that his organization has a related political action committee with the purpose “to elect pro-Israel Democrats and defeat anti-Israel Democrats.”
Some of the divisions on Israel and the Palestinians are of long standing. Gallup polling, for example, shows a shift among Democratic voters toward greater sympathy with the Palestinian cause over two decades.
Earlier this year, Gallup found 49 percent of Democrats had more sympathy with the Palestinians than the Israelis, while 38 percent said they had more sympathy with the Israelis.
Back in 2001, Democrats were far more likely to say their sympathies lie with Israel, by 51 percent to 16 percent.
A generational change is at least part of that shift.
In broad strokes, older Democrats of Biden’s generation tend to see Israel as the underdog, encircled by hostile nations and under constant existential threat.
Younger, more left-wing Democrats tend, by contrast, to see Israel as the regional superpower, underwritten by the power of the United States. They focus their critiques on Israel’s long occupation of the West Bank and its expansions of settlements there, both in defiance of international law. The left also highlights condemnations from international human rights organizations of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
The generational split is on clear display even among the overall population. In an Economist/YouGov poll released last week, Americans under 30 were the only age group where a plurality expressed more sympathy for the Palestinians (28 percent) than for the Israelis (20 percent).
By contrast, Americans 65 and older were overwhelmingly more likely to sympathize with the Israelis (65 percent) than the Palestinians (6 percent).
The split seems only likely to get even more clear-cut. Many Democrats continue to stand foursquare behind Israel’s actions, a position that is anathema to many on the left — and to many Arab American voters.
“Arab American voters see President Biden views their lives as unequal to Israeli lives,” Andrabi warned.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
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Morning Joe pays tribute to artist Avis Collins Robinson
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‘It’s breathtaking’: Joe reacts to Speaker Johnson using Israel aid to pick fight with Biden
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Richard Engel: Anger building against Netanyahu
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Biden administration to propose rule to close retirement advice loopholes
The Biden administration on Tuesday is proposing a new rule aimed at closing loopholes that create added costs around retirement investment advice.
The announcement, which is part of a broader effort by the White House to address so-called “junk fees,” is focused on addressing potential conflicts of interest among financial advisers who provide retirement advice.
The new Labor Department proposal would require financial advisers to provide retirement advice in the best interest of savers rather than in the interest of a firm pushing a specific investment product, something that the White House said can cost retirees billions of dollars annually.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) said in a blog post published Tuesday that financial advisers must hew to a “fiduciary standard” to put their client’s interests above their own commissions when recommending investments.
But the CEA noted that “blind spots in the current rules can increase costs and fees for consumers, taking a toll on their retirement savings.”
The Labor Department proposal would “ensure that retirement advisers must provide advice in the saver’s best interest, regardless of whether they are recommending a security or insurance product and where they are giving advice,” the White House said in a fact sheet.
The proposal would also seek to address a loophole around advisers providing guidance on rolling over assets from a 401(k) plan into an Individual Retirement Plan (IRA), the White House said.
Tuesday’s announcement is the latest effort by President Biden and his aides to address what they describe as “junk fees,” which create additional, sometimes unseen costs for Americans.
As part of that effort, the administration has previously announced actions to eliminate banking fees and hidden charges on cable bills, airline tickets and hotel bookings.
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Biden’s war on oil drilling threatens to kill his own green energy goals: ‘A lot of uncertainty’
The Biden administration’s plan to hold a historically-low number of offshore oil and gas lease sales may indirectly threaten its offshore wind energy goals, thanks to a key provision in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
The Department of the Interior (DOI) issued a congressionally-mandated five-year offshore oil lease plan last month that included just three fossil fuel lease sales through 2029. However, the IRA, Democrats’ climate and tax bill passed in August 2022, prohibits the DOI from issuing an offshore wind development lease unless the agency has offered at least 60 million acres for offshore oil and gas leasing at some point in the previous 12 months.
“It’s constructively a time of moratorium on the issuance of offshore wind leases in those gap years. We recognized that as soon as they came out with the leasing program,” Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), told Fox News Digital in an interview. “We were a bit surprised that they wouldn’t do oil and gas lease sales annually because annual sales are needed if they want to have uninterrupted wind lease sales in the offshore.”
“Needless to say, there is a lot of uncertainty with regard to both offshore oil and gas lease sales and offshore wind lease sales over the next five to 10 years,” he continued. “If you have gaps in lease sales, then you have fewer opportunities for companies to bring forward projects and bring offshore wind power online, so it would be more likely to have a detrimental effect on the administration meeting its goals.”
OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS PERMITTING PLUMMETS TO 2-DECADE LOW UNDER BIDEN
Because of the IRA’s provision tethering future offshore fossil fuel leases to future offshore wind leases, the DOI’s five-year plan — which includes three fossil fuel lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico in November 2025, November 2027 and November 2029, respectively — indirectly creates three one-year periods in 2025, 2027 and 2029 where the federal government would be prohibited from holding wind lease sales.
The administration’s three one-year moratoria on offshore wind leasing could disrupt its aggressive goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, the most ambitious goal of its kind worldwide. To achieve the goal, the DOI will likely need to lease millions of additional acres in Maine, New York, the Central Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, the Carolinas, California and Oregon.
BIDEN ADMIN ABRUPTLY AXES ALASKA OIL AND GAS LEASES BACKED BY STATE LAWMAKERS, NATIVE AMERICANS
Just two tiny offshore wind farms are currently operational, while several large-scale projects along the East Coast are in various stages of development and permitting. Even if all the currently proposed projects under development were to be completed by 2030, the administration would remain far short of its 30-gigawatt goal.
And multiple in-development projects are facing rising costs that could lead to future cancelations. Earlier this month, the New York State Public Service Commission rejected requests from a group of offshore wind energy developers who asked to renegotiate existing contracts amid rising persistent inflationary pressures, a decision that could make the projects impracticable.
“In the IRA, we prohibited Interior from issuing wind and solar leases unless the Department also holds significant oil and gas lease sales, both on- and offshore,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said during a hearing last week. “As a result, Interior was forced to include oil and gas lease sales in their recently released 2024 to 2029 Leasing Program.”
BIDEN ADMIN UNVEILS SWEEPING NEW ACTIONS INCREASING COSTS FOR OIL, GAS LEASING
“To be clear, the new five-year leasing program falls well short of what we should be doing by including only three oil and gas sales. This is barely a quarter of what the Obama administration approved for the last five-year program,” Manchin added. “But it’s clear we would have gotten exactly zero without the IRA.”
After unveiling the 2024-2029 five-year oil and gas program in September, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland boasted that it “represents the smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history” and explained it would “support the growing offshore wind industry.”
In addition, NOIA’s Milito said the five-year plan reflected the administration’s overarching goal of shutting down domestic oil and gas production despite its potential impacts on green energy development.
“It’s just one in a long line of decisions that reflects the continued statements of the administration and the president that they want to end oil and gas drilling,” he told Fox News Digital. “They had the leasing pause on day one, and the president said it as recently as August.
“So, when they say it and then they back it up, it just reflects the agenda of the administration to end domestic energy production. But at the same time, it’s frustrating because demand is not going down — the energy has to come from somewhere.”
The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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With Iowa caucuses closing in, Trump remains 2024 GOP presidential dominating front-runner
Former President Trump isn’t joining his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination on the stage next week at the third GOP primary debate.
The former president – who skipped out on the first two debates and who’s holding a simultaneous rally just a few miles from the where the showdown’s being held in Miami, Florida – doesn’t have to.
With the clock ticking and just eleven weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses kick off the 2024 GOP presidential nominating calendar, Trump remains leagues ahead of his challengers in the latest national polling and crucial early state surveys, and enjoys a dominating advantage in the fundraising fight.
The latest evidence – a new and anticipated poll in Iowa this week that indicates the former president with a commanding 27-point lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who are tied for a very distant second place.
“The fundamentals of this race haven’t changed from the very beginning. We’ve been seeing people rise and fall in the second and third place positions, but they’re dozens of points behind,” seasoned Republican strategist and presidential campaign veteran Ryan Williams said.
Trump, who’s making his third straight White House run, saw his lead expand over the spring and summer as he made history as the first former or current president in American history to be indicted for a crime. Trump’s four indictments – including in federal court in Washington D.C. and in Fulton County court in Georgia on charges he tried to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss – have only fueled his support among Republican voters.
“Nothing Trump has said changed that. None of the indictments has changed that. There doesn’t appear to be anything between now and when the voting starts that could change the trajectory of the race,” Williams emphasized.
WHICH REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WILL FOLLOW PENCE IN DROPPING OUT OF THE RACE?
Need more proof?
Then check out this past weekend’s Republican Jewish Coalition leadership summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, which attracted Trump and all the other major GOP White House hopefuls. It was just the second time this cycle that the former president joined his 2024 rivals on the same stage at the same event.
It could have been a rough appearance for Trump, in the wake of his controversial comments earlier this month criticizing Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and describing Hezbollah as “very smart.” The former president’s remarks came just days after 1,400 Israelis were killed in sneak assault by Hamas, the deadliest attack on the Jewish State in a half century.
But his rivals mostly avoided taking shots at Trump, who appeared to be the biggest winner of the weekend, as he grabbed the most sustained applause from the large crowd of influential Republican leaders, donors, and activists.
WHAT THE MOST RECENT FOX NEWS NATIONAL POLL SHOWS IN THE 2024 GOP RACE
And minutes before Trump took to the stage, former Vice President Mike Pence – facing lackluster fundraising struggling to qualify for next week’s debate – suspended his Republican White House campaign.
As he bowed out, Pence made a final appeal for the GOP to return to its conservative roots and resist what he’s repeatedly called the “siren song of populism” – a message that doesn’t appear to be resonating in a Republican Party dramatically reshaped by his two-two running mate.
Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire tend to be late deciders.
Popular GOP Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a vocal Trump critic, told Fox News last week that “folks won’t make their decision who they’re voting for till maybe late December, early January. So still plenty of time to actually earn those votes.”
Longtime New Hampshire based Republican strategist Jim Merrill said “I’m not ready to say it’s a done deal yet.”
But he added “it’s getting close.”
Looking ahead, Merrill said “I think realistically the campaigns who are on the outside looking in right now have the next month to figure strategically whether they have a viable path forward. If they don’t, then the need to think long and hard about moving on.”
“The fat lady isn’t singing yet, but she’s clearing her throat,” emphasized Merrill, who’s a veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns.
Nicole Schlinger, a longtime Iowa based conservative strategist who’s well-connected with evangelical groups, pointed to the rise this autumn of Haley’s poll numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire, which holds the first primary and votes second in the Republican nominating calendar, as well as her home state, which holds the first southern contest. Haley has leapfrogged DeSantis for second place in many of the recent surveys.
“I think there are some things brewing under the surface, that if someone can break out with some momentum could be interesting,” she offered.
But Schlinger added “that being said, if the race stays as it is today, I think we know who our nominee going to be.”
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