The war in Gaza is reshaping the 2024 political landscape – POLITICO

WEDGE ISSUE — Israeli forces advanced in tanks and other armored vehicles towards Gaza City today, pressing deeper into the Gaza Strip while continuing to blanket the region with bombs.

And as the death toll rises, the conflict is beginning to cast an ever-growing shadow over American politics and elections. The debate over funding the war is sharpening divisions between the GOP-held House and Democratic-controlled Senate, exposing fissures within the Democratic Party and occupying center stage in the Republican presidential primary, where candidates have sought to establish their bona fides as resolute supporters of Israel.

New House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a $14.3 billion measure today that would pay for aid to Israel by cutting the budget of the IRS by the same amount of money that was allocated to the agency during the Inflation Reduction Act. Two House Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene — have already come out against the bill, and House Democrats have warned that the offsets could imperil its passage. In the Senate, both Majority Leader Charles Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called for a bill that funds aid to Ukraine and Israel together; Schumer called the House Republicans’ plan “woefully inadequate” and a “grave mistake.”

Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken it upon himself to send drones, weapons and ammunition to Israel, all the while he’s called out Donald Trump for critiquing Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Some of the sharpest clashes, though, have taken place between Democratic politicians, as well as among progressive supporters on whom they rely.

The question of whether to call for a ceasefire has become a contentious point, with the White House and many congressional Democrats sidestepping ceasefire calls while many progressive voters and a small cadre of lawmakers pressure Biden and Congressional leaders to change their mind.

Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that the UN Security Council consider “humanitarian pauses” in the war in order to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and allow civilians to find safe harbor from Israel’s bombing campaign and imminent ground invasion. Such a pause might also help Israel secure the release of hostages held by Hamas. But neither Blinken nor Biden has been willing to use the word “ceasefire,” in contrast to a group of about 20 Democratic lawmakers who have called for one. Some leading progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have also yet to use that term.

Many of the progressive lawmakers who support a ceasefire face the prospect of primary challenges from the political center. Their calls for a ceasefire have ignited pro-Israel groups who argue that requests for Israel to stop their offensive are equivocations after the Oct. 7 attack from Hamas.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), for example, already had a potential challenger in Westchester County Executive George Latimer. But now, two dozen local rabbis called his ceasefire advocacy “a position of appeasement toward Hamas’s terror regime.” Pro-Israel groups in Westchester have spent millions targeting Bowman in previous cycles as well; he first won his seat by unseating Rep. Eliot Engel, one of the staunchest supporters of Israel in Congress. Bowman’s case stands to mirror primary challenges to other progressives who have supported a ceasefire in the region.

Meanwhile, Biden’s support of Israel has left young progressives and some Arab American voters who previously supported him at a loss. A coalition of Muslim voters in Minnesota gave Biden an ultimatum on Friday in advance of his trip to this state this Wednesday, telling him to call for a ceasefire or lose the support of Muslims in the state. Polling released today by the Arab American Institute suggests the president has lost considerable support among Arab Americans for his position.

The roiling politics take place against the backdrop of the IDF confirming today that they’d bombed Gaza’s largest refugee camp in an attempt to kill a Hamas target. Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an IDF spokesperson, said that “this is the tragedy of war… we’ve been saying for days, ‘move South, civilians who are not involved with Hamas, move South.’”

As the IDF moves closer to Gaza City, the issue of unflinching U.S. support for Israel looks increasingly like a political wedge that will shape the contours of the 2024 election cycle and continue to be a divisive issue.

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— Senate confirms Jack Lew as ambassador to Israel, over Republican pushback: The Senate confirmed Jack Lew as the U.S. ambassador to Israel in a largely party line vote today, installing a permanent envoy to the country as its war against Hamas rages on in Gaza. Lew was approved 53-43 — a tight tally reminiscent of the Senate’s narrow vote in 2017 to confirm then-President Donald Trump’s pick, David Friedman. U.S. ambassadors to Israel, a country that has long enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Congress, have traditionally been approved by voice vote or through unanimous consent. Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina were the only Republicans to break ranks and support Lew.

— Biden will meet Xi Jinping in coming weeks, White House says: President Joe Biden will meet with President Xi Jinping of China next month during an economic summit in San Francisco, the White House said this afternoon, marking a significant diplomatic moment between two great world powers whose relationship has grown increasingly hostile. The meeting of the two countries’ leaders comes after a flurry of diplomatic visits in recent months aimed at breaking the ice in the U.S.-China relationship. The trip also comes on the heels of a promising week in U.S.-China relations, after Gov. Gavin Newsom of California was well received in China during a visit centered on climate cooperation and as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the diplomatic rounds in Washington.

— Jewish leaders to Biden officials: ‘We’ve never seen anything like this ever’: Several prominent Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, gave Biden administration officials recommendations for increasing safety at schools after a spike in antisemitism on college campuses. During a closed-press meeting on Monday, a dozen Jewish leaders met in Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s Washington office to discuss steps the Biden administration is taking to counter antisemitism within K-12 and higher education communities. Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, Deputy Education Secretary Cindy Marten and Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, were also in attendance.

MONEY TO BURN — Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota knows that many people, including powerful voices in his own party, think he should quit the Republican presidential primary, abandoning his quixotic bid so that momentum can gather behind a challenger to Donald J. Trump, and ultimately President Biden, reports the New York Times.

He can afford to be quixotic. As of the end of September, his campaign had spent $12.9 million — more than the campaigns of Nikki Haley, Chris Christie and Mike Pence combined. About a third of that was spent on television advertising time. He is a testament to the power of private wealth to sustain a campaign, and to elevate a largely unknown, business-minded conservative from a largely rural U.S. state to the national stage — or, at least, the edge of the stage.

SELECTIVE MESSAGING — When it comes to the Israel-Hamas war, there are three Vivek Ramaswamy messages, writes NBC News.

There’s the one he gives to predominantly Jewish audiences, as he did Saturday in Las Vegas at the Republican Jewish Coalition Summit: that the nation of Israel is strong and doesn’t need the U.S. to defend itself. There’s the one he delivers on the campaign trail, where he reminds Americans that Israel “isn’t our 51st state” and stresses that an attack on Israel isn’t the same as an attack on the U.S. And then there’s the message he uses more sparingly, as he did in an interview in which he argues that clamping down on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses is a First Amendment violation and that hate speech is also free speech.

TRUMP V. MICHIGAN — Former President Donald Trump sued Michigan’s top elections official, seeking to ensure he would be on the ballot for the 2024 presidential election, reports the New York Times.

In a 64-page filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers said that Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, had created “uncertainty” by failing to respond to communications from the Trump campaign about his ballot eligibility. His lawyers added that other parties had sued Benson to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024, arguing that he was ineligible to hold office again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — a section that disqualifies anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after having taken an oath to support it.

CHARM OFFENSIVE — European politicians aim to tour the U.S. to shore up support for Ukraine — a response to calls by some Republican Party lawmakers for Washington to cut the flow of aid, military hardware and funds to Kyiv, write Gabriel Gavin, Jacopo Barigazzi and Eric Bazail-Eimil.

“We need to find ways to reach out to [the public] on both sides of the Atlantic — not to forget that there are actual electorates that see their problems in a certain way,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told POLITICO. “We have a plan to travel … to separate states, meeting — for example — the companies that sell equipment that actually create jobs in the U.S. Most of the money that has been spent on Ukraine was actually spent in the U.S.”

A roadshow where Baltic nations and others with close ties to Ukraine speak out in favor of providing continuing support, Landsbergis went on, “might work quite well if they are laid out not just by American politicians, but those who depend on that assistance and on that foreign policy track.”

EMPTY FRONTIER — Slovakia today canceled border controls on its frontier with Hungary just a day after enacting them — following a failure to catch any undocumented migrants, writes Ketrin Jochecova.

The country’s new government sent hundreds of police officers, troops and dogs to its border with Hungary on Monday afternoon, ostensibly to prevent undocumented migrants from entering the country. The forces were deployed on routes believed to be used most frequently by migrants, not on the entire 677-kilometer length of the border. The display lasted about 12 hours — from 7 p.m. on Monday until 5 a.m. today.

FERAL HOGS — Between 100 to 150 javelina, or wild skunk pigs, have recently been terrorizing the Seven Canyons Golf Club in Arizona — and their actions have gone viral. Some Arizona residents who have long complained about the water guzzling nature of the courses — which use on average about 450,000 gallons of water per day according to a 2021 investigation from the Arizona Republic — are cheering on the pigs. And the fun has expanded far beyond Arizona as well. Seven Canyons general manager David Bisbee promises that he can co-exist with the pigs, as Rae Hodge reports for Salon.

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