Biden’s Israel-waffling brings the Democrats’ civil war to Washington
Confusion reigns on Capitol Hill. What is the American policy on Israel, and what is the Democratic Party’s policy? Where did the money Congress sent for the war on Hamas go? Who placed a hold on what, and who’s in charge, anyway?
President Joe Biden — first elected to the Senate over half a century ago — is more than old enough to know that when you set out to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one, but his last week in office is a master class in tangling, confusing, and ticking off all manner of supporters and allies. While Democrats on the ground have been in open civil war for months, the politicians in D.C. have largely held it together. That fragile hold is coming apart, in no small part because of the president’s own decisions.
The week began with Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was marked with more national attention after Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage and amidst anti-Israel campus unrest. The president used the day to call America’s relationship with Israel “ironclad,” and the White House was eager to promote this. Congress had committed billions in both offensive and defensive aid to Israel as part of its massive foreign aid package (and to increase Republican support). In Washington by and large, things seemed normal.
By Wednesday night, it was all on its head. The president announced in an interview with CNN he’d be stopping certain weapons shipments to Israel in retaliation for its continued offensive operations. Congress went into a tizzy.
While Republican anger was predictable, the
more interesting pushback came from Senate Democrats — many of whom broke ranks to publicly criticize the White House.
Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) were quick to disagree with the hold. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), a frequently surprisingly astute and independent politician, attacked the White House’s decision in an
interview on Fox News (an interview that also showcased just how dramatically the Pennsylvania freshman has recovered from his campaign-trail stroke).
Meanwhile, the influential chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), declined to immediately contradict the president but promised he was “having conversations” to better understand the new policy. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) showed a particularly political stripe: After weeks of calling for conditions on American Israel aid, he tried to publicly
distance himself from the new policy.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said he didn’t even know what Biden was talking about. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said he needs more details. The former space man did not tease when he plans to catch up on the details of a war that’s been going for seven months now.
To top it off, support among the louder Senate voices against Israel was tepid. Most called it some iteration of “a step in the right direction.”
Further confusion stems from exactly what Biden did and whether anyone can do anything about it. Thus far, he hasn’t hit the funding Congress approved, though he’s certainly signaled his intent doesn’t align with lawmakers.
The hold on bombs, for example, appears to be a hold on Israel buying 2,000-pound, 1,700-pound, and 500-pound bombs from an American vendor — a transaction that predates Congress’ supplemental, and well within the State Department’s authority. And the delay of the $18 billion sale of F-15s and aerial bombs and missiles to Israel dates to early April, when the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee put an informal hold on the sale. Congress has oversight on foreign military sales of more than $25 million.
Republicans, for their part, pointed out that former President Donald Trump was impeached for holding up aid to Ukraine. The palace eunuchs of the D.C. press corps were quick to say there’s no comparison between the Israel and Ukraine hold-ups, but the allegation against Trump was that he was subverting American foreign policy to serve domestic political goals, so the comparison makes plenty of sense.
Biden’s domestic political calculations, however, have been a total disaster. Pro-Israel Democrats are angry at the holds, those Democrats who believe the president has supported a historic genocide won’t be so easily satisfied, and now, the top officers of the party are arguing in public. Confusion reigns, and prominent allies who aren’t openly criticizing the president are running for cover. All in all, a disastrous fix with no end in sight.
The Federalist: Mike Johnson gave Democrats everything they wanted and all he got was this stupid ‘Churchill’ T-shirt
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IN OTHER NEWS
The next witness disaster is on the books.
Monday is perhaps the most consequential day of the Trump trial so far, as Michael Cohen is set to take the witness stand in Manhattan.
Cohen is, inconveniently for prosecutors, a convicted liar, a vocal Trump critic, an aspiring TikTok star, and a disbarred former attorney.
That will not stop Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg from using Cohen as effectively the only link between Trump and the alleged wrongdoing at the heart of the case. It will be a tough sell, however, because Cohen has made something of a second career attempting to ruin Trump’s.
And on cross-examination later this week, we can expect to see defense lawyers tear Cohen’s credibility to shreds. They did so successfully with Stormy Daniels — who also monetized her hatred of Trump, including with
Catholic saint-themed candles so liberals can worship the indictments — and she hasn’t even been convicted of lying.
Blaze Opinion: My front-row seat to Stormy’s shakedown
The FBI wants to make sure its agents know they can spy on Americans again.
The same day Congress reauthorized the warrantless spying program used to persecute Trump, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate sent an email to agents reminding them to make sure they use the tool.
“I urge everyone,” he wrote in the email obtained
by Wired, “to continue to look for ways to appropriately use US person queries to advance the mission, with the added confidence that this new pre-approval requirement will help ensure that those queries are fully compliant with the law.”
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows for American intelligence services to spy on foreign contacts — and by extension, any Americans they speak to. It’s been continuously abused, but Congress reauthorized it anyway.
Johnson, who previously opposed reauthorization, notoriously flipped after he was frightened by super-secret intel briefings he’s not allowed to tell us about (and cannot verify, either).
On Wednesday night, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and his Democratic counterpart Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) hosted a “bipartisan celebration” of the two-year renewal called “FISA Fest.” What a hoot.
The fire rises: ‘The discovery of ‘mass graves’ of indigenous Canadian children was actually a massive hoax,’ the Federalist
When century-old “unmarked” “mass graves” of American Indian children were uncovered in Canada three years ago, there was
good reason to be skeptical. Wooden crosses rot, after all; you can generally find human remains in cemeteries; and Canadian authorities had finished a detail reconciliation report a decade prior. That didn’t stop a violent anti-Christian panic, however; dozens of historic churches were burned to the ground while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tut-tutted the Catholic Church and even the pope apologized (again).
Well, it turns out none of it was real. Those dead children were just tree roots. Whoopsies, you guys! Everyone move on. The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson, author of “Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come,” reports:
It turns out the whole thing was a hoax, a modern-day blood libel against Christians that ended with at least 85 Catholic churches across Canada destroyed by arson, vandalized, or desecrated. Canadian political and civil society leaders cheered on this destruction — and then doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to investigate the mass graves and create a “support fund” for indigenous people.
To this day, no human remains have been recovered at the site of the alleged mass grave, despite nearly $8 million spent looking for them.
You won’t hear the corporate press report on this story now, but in the summer of 2021, it was everywhere. And no wonder, it had all the elements of a just-so story. The mere historical existence of these former boarding schools, which operated from the 1860s to the 1990s, remains a source of outrage among liberal Canadians …
