USA
Biden, Trump poised for a potential rematch that could shake American politics
U.S. presidential elections have been rocked in recent years by economic disaster, stunning gaffes, secret video and a pandemic. But for all the tumult that defined those campaigns, the volatility surrounding this year’s presidential contest has few modern parallels, posing profound challenges to the future of American democracy.
Not since the Supreme Court effectively decided the 2000 campaign in favor of Republican George W. Bush has the judiciary been so intertwined with presidential politics.
In the coming weeks, the high court is expected to weigh whether states can ban former President Donald Trump from the ballot for his role in leading the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Meanwhile, a federal appeals court is weighing Trump’s argument that he’s immune from prosecution.
The maneuvers are unfolding as prosecutors from New York to Washington and Atlanta move forward with 91 indictments across four criminal cases involving everything from Trump’s part in the insurrection to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his hush money paid to a porn actress.
Depending on how Trump’s appeals play out, he could be due in court as early as March 4, the day before Super Tuesday, raising the unprecedented prospect that he could close in on the GOP nomination from a courtroom.
On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden is seeking reelection as the high inflation that defined much of his first term appears to be easing. But that has done little to assuage restless voters or ease widespread concerns in both parties that, at 81, he’s simply too old for the job.
And at least three serious candidates who have launched outsider presidential bids threaten to scramble the campaign and eat into the support from independent voters who were critical to Biden’s success in 2020.
Facing such uncertainty, few expect the traditional rules of politics to apply in 2024. Jim Messina, who managed former President Barack Obama’s reelection, said Trump could very well defeat Biden in the fall, even if the former president is in prison.
“We just don’t know,” Messina said. “Everyone in the world knows, especially me, that this election is going to be really, really close.”
Implications for abortion, immigration and U.S. role in the world
The results will have long-term implications on everything from the future of abortion rights and immigration policy to the role of the U.S. in the world. A Trump victory would raise the possibility of the U.S. largely abandoning Ukraine as it seeks to repel Russia’s invasion. Domestic politics could also test Biden’s commitment to Israel, a policy that threatens to erode his standing with young voters and people of color who are critical elements of his coalition.
One of the few certainties at this point is that Biden is a virtual lock to be the Democratic nominee again, facing only token opposition in this year’s primary despite overwhelming concerns within his own party about his physical and mental fitness. And though a few rivals are fighting furiously to stop Trump, he is well positioned to win the GOP nomination for the third consecutive election.
The strength of the GOP opposition to Trump will become more clear on Jan. 15 when the Iowa caucuses launch the nomination process. Trump holds a commanding lead in most national polls, although former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are fighting to stop him.
That hasn’t been easy, however, as DeSantis has struggled to connect with voters and has embraced culture war topics that often left him competing for the same base of support as Trump. And Haley’s pitch as a more sensible, moderate candidate was threatened last week when she was pressed on the cause of the Civil War and didn’t mention slavery.
Allies of DeSantis and Haley privately concede that their best chance to wrestle the nomination away from Trump would come in a long-shot push for a contested convention in Wisconsin in July.
Many leaders in both parties are already convinced that Trump will be the GOP nominee. More than 90 House Republicans, 18 senators and seven governors have endorsed Trump. Haley and DeSantis have secured the endorsements of just six House Republicans, no senators and two governors combined.
“This will be one of the earliest primaries wrapped up in my lifetime,” Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who endorsed Trump back in November 2022, said in an interview. “I’m already focused on the general election. ... There is going to be a political earthquake next November.”
Biden vs. Trump
Public polling strongly suggests that voters do not want a rematch between Trump and Biden.
Most U.S. adults overall (56%) would be “very” or “somewhat” dissatisfied with Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024, according to a poll conducted last month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. A similar majority (58%) said they would be very or somewhat dissatisfied with Trump as the GOP’s pick.
Perhaps because of such apathy, some voters simply don’t believe Biden and Trump will end up on the general election ballot, despite strong evidence to the contrary. That’s an idea that conservative strategist Sarah Longwell, who founded the Republican Accountability Project, says she hears regularly during weekly focus groups with voters across the political spectrum.
“Voters really aren’t thinking about it, so they don’t see the thing that’s coming right at us — the most likely scenario, which is Trump vs. Biden,” Longwell said. “But Trump is so dangerous. ... I wish the level of urgency from everybody matched the reality of where we are headed.”
Threats to democracy
While concerns about Biden are centered on his age, Trump has increasingly embraced authoritarian messages that serve as clear warnings of his plans to dismantle democratic norms if he returns to the White House.
Echoing strongmen leaders throughout history, Trump has framed his campaign as one of retribution and has spoken openly about using the power of government to pursue his political enemies. He has repeatedly harnessed rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He said on Fox News last month that he would not be a dictator “ except for day one. ” And he shared a word cloud last week to his social media account highlighting words like, “revenge,” “power” and “dictatorship.”
Biden, like his party more broadly, has leaned into concerns about the future of democracy should Trump return to the White House, but that has done little to improve his standing. Early polls reveal weakness among core segments of his coalition, including voters of color and young people.
People on Biden’s team do not fear that his base will defect to Trump in the general election, but they privately worry some of the Democratic president’s supporters may not vote at all. They’re betting that Biden’s achievements, which include landmark legislation on gun control, climate change and infrastructure, will eventually help overcome pervasive concerns about his age.
Ultimately, however, Biden’s campaign believes that voters will rally behind the president once they fully understand that Trump could realistically return to the White House.
‘This election will be a choice’
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, who sits on Biden’s advisory council, said the president’s reelection campaign “knows it can’t take any vote for granted,” which is why the campaign has already invested heavily in efforts to mobilize Biden’s diverse coalition.
“This election will be a choice — a choice between a president who has delivered historic results for the American people and someone who poses an existential threat to our democracy and freedoms,” Dickens said. “We will win in November once we fully make the case, explain the stakes and make the choice clear.”
Meanwhile, there is a sense of deep uncertainty on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire, where Republican presidential candidates in particular have been showering primary voters with attention for much of the last year.
Rodney Martell, a 65-year-old Republican from Loudon, New Hampshire, said he’s ready for the voting to begin. He’s supporting Haley’s primary bid, but said he’d support Trump in the general election if he had no other choice — even if Trump is a convicted felon.
Martell said he doubts the 2024 election will ultimately be a rematch of Trump and Biden, however: “Honestly, if it comes to that kind of race again, I think it could get pretty ugly.”
More than 1,000 miles to the west, Susie Fortuna offered a similar assessment during a recent Haley campaign event in Coralville, Iowa. Fortuna lives in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, but she was in Iowa to visit family.
She isn’t convinced that Biden and Trump will emerge as their party’s nominees, either. The political year ahead, she said, feels “unsettling.”
“I feel like there are things out there that we don’t know yet, to be honest,” Fortuna said.
3 killed and several wounded in separate shootings early New Year's Day in Los Angeles area
Two people were killed and eight others were wounded in a shooting early New Year's Day at a party in a commercial neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, authorities said.
Officers responding to reports of a shooting around 1 a.m. Monday heard gunfire and found a crowd fleeing the area and several wounded people lying on the street and sidewalk, police said in a news release.
A man and woman died at the scene, police said. Officials initially said three people had been hospitalized but an afternoon update reported eight wounded. Their conditions weren't known Monday evening.
Investigators believe the shooting stemmed from a dispute at the party, held in an industrial area with warehouses and commercial buildings. No information on any suspects was immediately available.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was investigating a separate shooting that killed a woman and wounded four other people early Monday in the city of Hawthorne.
One of the victims was hospitalized in critical condition and the three others were listed as stable, KABC-TV reported.
There were no arrests and no information about suspects.
World Insights: After 45 years, closer China-U.S. ties still depend on people
As the world counts down to a new year, the China-U.S. diplomatic relationship is set to welcome its 45th anniversary.
Back in November, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden, held a historic meeting in San Francisco. Many, not just Chinese and Americans, are now hoping that the summit is a new starting point for bilateral relations."It is the convergence of many streams of goodwill and friendship that has created a strong current surging across the vast Pacific Ocean; it is the reaching out to each other by our peoples that has time and again brought China-U.S. relations from a low ebb back onto the right track," Xi said at the welcome dinner during his visit to California in November for the China-U.S. summit meeting and the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting.
FROM BUDDING TO BLOOMINGFifty-two years ago, a tiny ping-pong ball played a vital part in the budding rapprochement between China and America after more than two decades of estrangement.The real breakthrough in ties came with a public encounter between a pair of ping-pong players during the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Japan. Footage caught their friendly exchange, and the unexpected goodwill between the American and Chinese teams soon became the talk of the tournament and preluded a milestone visit leading to the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations."That seemingly small gesture had a huge symbolic significance," Gene Sykes, chairman of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, told Xinhua, adding, "The impact of this event went far beyond the realm of sports. It was the opening for a wide range of collaborations which spanned the scientific, cultural, artistic and educational domains."Today, this chapter in China-U.S. relations, known as "Ping-Pong Diplomacy," still resonates over half a century later. The goodwill, which thawed relations between the two countries, dispelled the specter of the Cold War and brought the two countries together, serving as a vivid example of cooperation trumping estrangement."History has demonstrated that building bridges is a much better strategy than building walls or digging moats" between the United States and China, said Tom Watkins, a former advisor to the Michigan-China Innovation Center."I still remember what 'Ping-Pong Diplomacy' was like between the United States and China in the early 1970s and I think we should try it again," said Stephen Mull, former U.S. acting undersecretary of state for political affairs.
STORYTELLERS, BRIDGE BUILDERSFriendship between people holds the key to sound relations between states, and people from both sides as storytellers and bridge builders can play their part.Their bond has laid the groundwork for bilateral ties, helped navigate the relationship through choppy waters, and will continue to work wonders in the years to come.Despite the tumultuous years in their relations, the Chinese and American peoples at the grassroots level are telling their own stories about each other and emphasize how critical it is to deepen their exchanges, no matter from the business, academic or cultural communities.U.S. opinion polls have shown that the younger generation has a different attitude towards China compared to the older generation, said Warwick Powell, adjunct professor at the Queensland University of Technology."The youths experienced the benefits of exchanges with people from all walks of life and understand that there is no reason why people from different parts of the world cannot find common ground and achieve things together in the interests of everybody," he said.Brooke Leonard, a 32-year-old ping-pong aficionado from Los Angeles, said he has gained so much fun from learning, playing and appreciating the sport. Besides making friends with many Chinese through this sport, he is now recommending it to his American friends and family.In southwest China's megacity Chongqing, a museum dedicated to the Flying Tigers stands to tell a touching tale of Americans and Chinese fighting side by side during wartime and of how grateful the Chinese people are for their bravery and sacrifice.In November, an over 30-member delegation of the Flying Tigers veterans and their descendants visited Kunming, the starting point of "the Hump," a vital airlift route over the Himalayas and the primary way the Allies supplied China between 1942 and 1945 in World War II.Today, memorials, exhibitions and events to honor that chapter in history epitomize the deep friendship between the two peoples that withstood the test of blood and fire. And more than 1,000 Flying Tigers veterans and their families have been invited to visit China.Americans, for their part, always remember the Chinese who risked their lives to save American pilots. Offspring of those American pilots often visit the Doolittle Raid Memorial Hall in east China's Zhejiang Province to pay tribute to the Chinese for their heroic efforts.From U.S. entrepreneurs visiting China, to "Bond with Kuliang: 2023 China-U.S. People-to-People Friendship Forum," and from the delegation of U.S. Flying Tigers visiting China, to the fifth China-U.S. Sister Cities Conference, the Chinese and American peoples have demonstrated good will and a firm friendship, injecting impetus into bilateral ties and cooperation.These heartening stories can help improve the ailing China-U.S. relationship. That is probably the best way to carry on the legacy in the new era.
"THE TIME IS ALWAYS RIGHT TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT"Martin Luther King, a leading figure of the American civil rights movement in the 1950s, once said, "The time is always right to do what is right."The whole world is watching the two major countries, hoping they will continue the positive momentum in their relations from the San Francisco summit and engage in more "maintenance work" regarding their relationship.There are numerous reasons to make the China-U.S. relationship work. Ordinary people on both sides want this. The world also wants this."As a planet, we are facing multiple challenges -- the need to nourish the hungry, manage climate change, sustain economic growth and job creation, and maintain global stability. We hope there will be a positive reset and improved relations between the two major countries," said Grant Kimberley, a sixth-generation soybean farmer and marketing director of the Iowa Soybean Association.The future depends on joint efforts from both peoples, particularly from the younger generation. For China-U.S. relations, the hope lies in the people, the foundation rests on the people, and the future lies with the youth.To increase bilateral exchanges, particularly between the youth, China has announced a plan to invite 50,000 young Americans to China on exchange and study programs in the next five years. Meanwhile, a growing number of young Americans have joined the Flying Tigers Friendship Schools and Youth Leadership Program, launched by the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation in 2022.These tangible efforts, step by step, have helped nurture the seeds of friendship, mutual understanding, and cooperation on both sides."The more exchanges, whether they're educational, sports or music, or any kind of exchange between our two countries ... if we can learn to do that, I think we can break down barriers and open up communication that is just phenomenal," said Connie Sweeris, the American table tennis champion who took part in the ice-breaking trip to China in 1971."We have been partners in war, now let us always be partners in peace," said Mel McMullen, a Flying Tigers veteran.
Airstrikes hit camps in central Gaza as Biden administration approves new weapons sales to Israel
Israeli warplanes struck two urban refugee camps in central Gaza on Saturday, as the Biden administration approved a new emergency weapons sale to Israel despite persistent international cease-fire calls over mounting civilian deaths, hunger and mass displacement in the enclave.
Israel says it is determined to pursue its unprecedented air and ground offensive until it has dismantled Hamas, a goal viewed by some as unattainable because of the militant group's deep roots in Palestinian society. The United States has shielded Israel diplomatically and has continued to supply weapons.
Israel argues that ending the war now would mean victory for Hamas, a stance shared by the Biden administration which at the same time urged Israel to do more to avoid harm to Palestinian civilians.
The war, triggered by the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, has displaced some 85% of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents, sending swells of people seeking shelter in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless also bombed. That has left Palestinians with a harrowing sense that nowhere is safe in the tiny enclave.
Residents in the urban refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij, two recent hot spots of combat, reported Israeli airstrikes overnight and into Saturday.
Nuseirat resident Mustafa Abu Wawee said a strike hit the home of one of his relatives, killing two people.
“The (Israeli) occupation is doing everything to force people to leave,” he said over the phone while searching along with others for four people missing under the rubble. “They want to break our spirit and will but they will fail. We are here to stay.”
A second strike late Friday in Nuseirat targeted the home of a journalist for Al-Quds TV, a channel linked to the group Islamic Jihad whose militants also participated in the Oct. 7 attack. The channel said the journalist, Jaber Abu Hadros and six members of his family were killed.
Bureij resident Rami Abu Mosab said sounds of gunfire echoed across the camp overnight, followed by heavy airstrikes Saturday.
With Israeli forces pushing deeper into Khan Younis and the camps of central Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed into the already crowded city of Rafah at the southernmost end of Gaza in recent days.
Drone footage showed a vast camp of thousands of tents and makeshift shacks set up on what had been empty land on Rafah’s western outskirts next to U.N. warehouses. People arrived in Rafah in trucks, in carts and on foot. Those who did not find space in the already overwhelmed shelters put up tents on roadsides slick with mud from winter rains.
MORE U.S. WEAPONS FOR ISRAEL
The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress he approved a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed for 155 mm shells Israel bought previously.
It marked the second time this month that the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel.
The department cited the “urgency of Israel's defensive needs” as a reason for the approval, and argued that “it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces.”
The emergency determination means the purchase will bypass the congressional review requirement for foreign military sales. Such determinations are rare, but not unprecedented, when administrations see an urgent need for weapons to be delivered without waiting for lawmakers’ approval.
Blinken made a similar decision on Dec. 9 to approve the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million.
Both moves have come as President Joe Biden’s request for a nearly $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other national security needs remains stalled in Congress, caught up in a debate over U.S. immigration policy and border security. Some Democratic lawmakers have spoken of making the proposed $14.3 billion in American assistance to its Mideast ally contingent on concrete steps by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza during the war with Hamas.
DISEASE AND HUNGER ARE SPREADING
More than a week after a U.N. Security Council resolution called for the unhindered delivery of aid at scale across besieged Gaza, conditions have only worsened, U.N. agencies warned.
Aid officials said the aid entering Gaza remains woefully inadequate. Distributing goods is hampered by long delays at two border crossings, ongoing fighting, Israeli airstrikes, repeated cuts in internet and phone services and a breakdown of law and order that makes it difficult to secure aid convoys, they said.
Nearly the entire population is fully dependent on outside humanitarian aid, said Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. A quarter of the population is starving because too few trucks enter with food, medicine, fuel and other supplies — sometimes fewer than 100 trucks a day, according to U.N. daily reports.
U.N. monitors said operations at the Israeli-run Kerem Shalom crossing halted for four days this week because of security incidents, such as a drone strike and the seizing of aid by desperate Gaza residents.
They said the crossing reopened Friday, and that a total of 81 aid trucks entered Gaza through Kerem Shalom and the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border — a fraction of the typical prewar volume of 500 trucks a day.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization warned that the spread of disease is accelerating, particularly in southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands have crammed into an ever-shrinking area to flee airstrikes and advancing Israeli ground forces. The agency reported more cases of upper respiratory infections, diarrhea, lice, scabies, chickenpox, skin rashes and meningitis.
RISING DEATH TOLL
The war has already killed over 21,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Its count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian deaths and injuries, saying the militants embed themselves within civilian infrastructure.
Israeli officials, meanwhile, have vowed to bring back more than 100 hostages still held by the militants after their Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war. The assault killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
The military says 168 of its soldiers have been killed since the ground offensive began.
Trump is blocked from the GOP primary ballot in two states. Can he still run for president?
First, Colorado's Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump wasn't eligible to run for his old job in that state. Then, Maine's Democratic secretary of state ruled the same for her state. Who's next?
Both decisions are historic. The Colorado court was the first court to apply to a presidential candidate a rarely used constitutional ban against those who "engaged in insurrection." Maine's secretary of state was the first top election official to unilaterally strike a presidential candidate from the ballot under that provision.
But both decisions are on hold while the legal process plays out.
Also read: Maine bars Trump from ballot as US Supreme Court weighs states' authority to block former president
That means that Trump remains on the ballot in Colorado and Maine and that his political fate is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Maine ruling will likely never take effect on its own. Its central impact is increasing pressure on the nation's highest court to say clearly: Can Trump still run for president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol?
WHAT'S THE LEGAL ISSUE?
After the Civil War, the U.S. ratified the 14th Amendment to guarantee rights to former slaves and more. It also included a two-sentence clause called Section 3, designed to keep former Confederates from regaining government power after the war.
The measure reads:
"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."
Congress did remove that disability from most Confederates in 1872, and the provision fell into disuse. But it was rediscovered after Jan. 6.
HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO TRUMP?
Trump is already being prosecuted for the attempt to overturn his 2020 loss that culminated with Jan. 6, but Section 3 doesn't require a criminal conviction to take effect. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed to disqualify Trump, claiming he engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6 and is no longer qualified to run for office.
Also read: Donald Trump banned from Colorado ballot in historic ruling by state's Supreme Court
All the suits failed until the Colorado ruling. And dozens of secretaries of state have been asked to remove him from the ballot. All said they didn't have the authority to do so without a court order — until Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows' decision.
The Supreme Court has never ruled on Section 3. It's likely to do so in considering appeals of the Colorado decision — the state Republican Party has already appealed, and Trump is expected to file his own shortly. Bellows' ruling cannot be appealed straight to the U.S. Supreme Court — it has to be appealed up the judicial chain first, starting with a trial court in Maine.
The Maine decision does force the high court's hand, though. It was already highly likely the justices would hear the Colorado case, but Maine removes any doubt.
Trump lost Colorado in 2020, and he doesn't need to win it again to garner an Electoral College majority next year. But he won one of Maine's four Electoral College votes in 2020 by winning the state's 2nd Congressional District, so Bellows' decision would have a direct impact on his odds next November.
Until the high court rules, any state could adopt its own standard on whether Trump, or anyone else, can be on the ballot. That's the sort of legal chaos the court is supposed to prevent.
WHAT ARE THE ARGUMENTS IN THE CASE?
Trump's lawyers have several arguments against the push to disqualify him. First, it's not clear Section 3 applies to the president — an early draft mentioned the office, but it was taken out, and the language "an officer of the United States" elsewhere in the Constitution doesn't mean the president, they contend.
Also read: Trump calls Biden the ‘destroyer’ of democracy
Second, even if it does apply to the presidency, they say, this is a "political" question best decided by voters, not unelected judges. Third, if judges do want to get involved, the lawyers assert, they're violating Trump's rights to a fair legal procedure by flatly ruling he's ineligible without some sort of fact-finding process like a lengthy criminal trial. Fourth, they argue, Jan. 6 wasn't an insurrection under the meaning of Section 3 — it was more like a riot. Finally, even if it was an insurrection, they say, Trump wasn't involved in it — he was merely using his free speech rights.
Of course, the lawyers who want to disqualify Trump have arguments, too. The main one is that the case is actually very simple: Jan. 6 was an insurrection, Trump incited it, and he's disqualified.
WHAT'S TAKEN SO LONG?
The attack was three years ago, but the challenges weren't "ripe," to use the legal term, until Trump petitioned to get onto state ballots this fall.
But the length of time also gets at another issue — no one has really wanted to rule on the merits of the case. Most judges have dismissed the lawsuits because of technical issues, including that courts don't have the authority to tell parties whom to put on their primary ballots. Secretaries of state have dodged, too, usually telling those who ask them to ban Trump that they don't have the authority to do so unless ordered by a court.
No one can dodge anymore. Legal experts have cautioned that, if the Supreme Court doesn't clearly resolve the issue, it could lead to chaos in November — or in January 2025, if Trump wins the election. Imagine, they say, if the high court ducks the issue or says it's not a decision for the courts to make, and Democrats win a narrow majority in Congress. Would they seat Trump or declare he's ineligible under Section 3?
WHY DID MAINE DO THIS?
Maine has an unusual process in which a secretary of state is required to hold a public hearing on challenges to politicians' spots on the ballot and then issue a ruling. Multiple groups of Maine voters, including a bipartisan clutch of former state lawmakers, filed such a challenge, triggering Bellows' decision.
Bellows is a Democrat, the former head of the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and has a long trail of criticism of Trump on social media. Trump's attorneys asked her to recuse herself from the case, citing posts calling Jan. 6 an "insurrection" and bemoaning Trump's acquittal in his impeachment trial over the attack.
She refused, saying she wasn't ruling based on personal opinions. But the precedent she sets is notable, critics say. In theory, election officials in every state could decide a candidate is ineligible based on a novel legal theory about Section 3 and end their candidacies.
Conservatives argue that Section 3 could apply to Vice President Kamala Harris, for example — it was used to block from office even those who donated small sums to individual Confederates. Couldn't it be used against Harris, they say, because she raised money for those arrested in the unrest after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020?
IS THIS A PARTISAN ISSUE?
Well, of course it is. Bellows is a Democrat, and all the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court were appointed by Democrats. Six of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republicans, three by Trump himself.
But courts don't always split on predictable partisan lines. The Colorado ruling was 4-3 — so three Democratic appointees disagreed with barring Trump. Several prominent legal conservatives have championed the use of Section 3 against the former president.
Now we'll see how the high court handles it.
Israeli strikes across Gaza kill dozens of Palestinians, even in largely emptied north
Israeli forces bombarded cities, towns and refugee camps across Gaza on Thursday, killing dozens of people in a widening air and ground offensive against Hamas that has forced thousands more to flee from homes and shelters in recent days.
The war has already killed over 20,000 Palestinians and driven around 85% of the population of 2.3 million from their homes. Much of northern Gaza has been leveled, and it has been largely depopulated and isolated from the rest of the territory for weeks. Many fear a similar fate awaits the south as Israel expands its offensive to most of the tiny enclave.
Israel has vowed to dismantle Hamas — which is still putting up stiff resistance, even in the north — and bring back more than 100 hostages still held by the militants after their Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel. The assault killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
Also read: Israel launches heavy strikes across central and southern Gaza after widening its offensive
Israeli officials have brushed off international calls for a cease-fire, saying it would amount to a victory for Hamas.
The United States — while providing crucial support for the offensive — has urged Israel to take greater measures to spare civilians and allow in more aid. But humanitarian workers say the amount of food, fuel and medical supplies entering is still far below what is needed, and 1 in 4 Palestinians in Gaza is starving, according to U.N. officials.
STRIKES FROM NORTH TO SOUTH
An Israeli airstrike on a home in the northern town of Beit Lahiyeh — one of the first targets of the ground invasion that began in October — buried at least 21 people, including women and children, according to a family member.
Bassel Kheir al-Din, a journalist with a local TV station, said the strike flattened his family house and severely damaged three neighboring homes. He said 12 members of his family — including three children ages 2, 7 and 8 — were buried and presumed dead, and that nine neighbors were missing.
In central Gaza, Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded the built-up Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps, leveling buildings, residents said. Israel said this week it would expand its ground offensive into central Gaza. The Israeli military typically launches waves of airstrikes and shelling before troops and tanks move in.
Also read: Lose a limb or risk death? Growing numbers among Gaza's thousands of war-wounded face hard decisions
A hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah received the bodies of 25 people killed overnight, including five children and seven women, hospital records showed Thursday. Nonstop explosions could be heard throughout the night in the town where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter, with many spending cold nights sleeping on sidewalks.
“It was another night of killing and massacres,” said Saeed Moustafa, a resident of the Nuseirat camp. He said people were still crying out from the rubble of a house hit Wednesday by an airstrike.
“We are unable to get them out. We hear their screams, but we don’t have equipment," he said.
Farther south, in Khan Younis, the Palestinian Red Crescent said a strike near its Al-Amal Hospital killed at least 10 people and wounded another 12. Much of the city’s population has left, but many are sheltering near Al-Amal and another hospital, hoping they will be spared from the bombardment.
A strike Thursday evening destroyed a residential building in the town of Rafah, at the southernmost end of Gaza, killing at least 23 people, according to the media office of the nearby Al-Kuwaiti Hospital said.
Outside of Gaza, Israeli security forces shot and killed a Palestinian man who they say got out of his car and stabbed two security workers at a checkpoint between the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
The security workers were in moderate condition, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service.
The occupied West Bank has experienced a surge in violence since Oct. 7, with more than 300 Palestinians killed in unrest and clashes with Israeli forces.
ANOTHER WAVE OF DISPLACEMENT
Rami Abu Mosab, who lives in the Bureij refugee camp, said thousands of people have fled their homes in recent days because of the intense bombardment. He plans to remain there because nowhere in Gaza is safe.
“Here is death and there is death,” he said, “To die in your home is better.”
Bureij and Nuseirat are among several camps across the region that were built to house hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation. They have since grown into crowded residential neighborhoods.
Some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes during that conflict, an exodus the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Some 1.9 million have been displaced within Gaza since Oct. 7.
As Israel has broadened its offensive, fleeing Palestinians have packed into areas along the Egyptian border and the southern Mediterranean coastline, where shelters and tent camps are overflowing. Even in those areas, Israel continues to strike what it says are militant targets.
Also read: Egypt floats ambitious plan to end Israel-Hamas war and create transitional Palestinian government
The U.N. humanitarian office said the scale and intensity of the fighting impedes its aid deliveries. The office, known as OCHA, cited blocked roads, a scarcity of fuel and telecommunications blackouts as some of the obstacles hampering the humanitarian response.
Still, it said the U.N. World Food Program provided food parcels to about a half-million people in U.N. shelters in southern and central Gaza since Saturday.
The Israeli military blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas, which positions fighters, tunnels and rocket launchers in dense residential areas. But the military rarely comments on individual strikes.
Israel's offensive in Gaza has already been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than 21,300 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza. Another 55,600 have been wounded, it says. Those counts do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The military says it has killed thousands of militants, without presenting evidence, and that 167 of its soldiers have been killed and hundreds wounded in the ground offensive.
Maine bars Trump from ballot as US Supreme Court weighs states' authority to block former president
Maine's Democratic secretary of state on Thursday removed former President Donald Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot under the Constitution's insurrection clause, becoming the first election official to take action unilaterally as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide whether Trump remains eligible to return to the White House.
The decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows follows a ruling earlier this month by the Colorado Supreme Court that booted Trump from the ballot there under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That decision has been stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump is barred by the Civil War-era provision, which prohibits those who "engaged in insurrection" from holding office.
The Trump campaign said it would appeal Bellows' decision to Maine's state courts, and Bellows suspended her ruling until that court system rules on the case. In the end, it is likely that the nation's highest court will have the final say on whether Trump appears on the ballot in Maine and in the other states.
Bellows found that Trump could no longer run for his prior job because his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol violated Section 3, which bans from office those who "engaged in insurrection." Bellows made the ruling after some state residents, including a bipartisan group of former lawmakers, challenged Trump's position on the ballot.
"I do not reach this conclusion lightly," Bellows wrote in her 34-page decision. "I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection."
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The Trump campaign immediately slammed the ruling. "We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter," campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
Legal experts said that Thursday's ruling demonstrates the need for the nation's highest court, which has never ruled on Section 3, to clarify what states can do.
"It is clear that these decisions are going to keep popping up, and inconsistent decisions reached (like the many states keeping Trump on the ballot over challenges) until there is final and decisive guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court," Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, wrote in response to the Maine decision. "It seems a certainty that SCOTUS will have to address the merits sooner or later."
While Maine has just four electoral votes, it's one of two states to split them. Trump won one of Maine's electors in 2020, so having him off the ballot there, should he emerge as the Republican general election candidate, could have outsized implications in a race that is expected to be narrowly decided.
That's in contrast to Colorado, which Trump lost by 13 percentage points in 2020 and where he wasn't expected to compete in November if he wins the Republican presidential nomination.
In her decision, Bellows acknowledged that the U.S. Supreme Court will probably have the final word but said it was important she did her official duty.
That won her praise from the former state lawmakers who filed one of the petitions forcing her to consider the case.
"Secretary Bellows showed great courage in her ruling, and we look forward to helping her defend her judicious and correct decision in court. No elected official is above the law or our constitution, and today's ruling reaffirms this most important of American principles," Republican Kimberly Rosen, independent Thomas Saviello and Democrat Ethan Strimling said in a statement.
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But other Republicans in the state were outraged.
"This is a sham decision that mimics Third World dictatorships," Maine's House Republican leader, Billy Bob Faulkingham, said in a statement. "It will not stand legal scrutiny. People have a right to choose their leaders devoid of mindless decisions by partisan hacks."
The Trump campaign on Tuesday requested that Bellows disqualify herself from the case because she'd previously tweeted that Jan. 6 was an "insurrection" and bemoaned that Trump was acquitted in his impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate after the capitol attack. She refused to step aside.
"My decision was based exclusively on the record presented to me at the hearing and was in no way influenced by my political affiliation or personal views about the events of Jan. 6, 2021," Bellows told the Associated Press Thursday night.
Bellows is a former head of the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. All seven of the justices of the Colorado Supreme Court, which split 4-3 on whether to become the first court in history to declare a presidential candidate ineligible under Section 3, were appointed by Democrats. Two Washington, D.C.-based liberal groups have launched the most serious prior challenges to Trump, in Colorado and a handful of other states.
That's led Trump to contend the dozens of lawsuits nationwide seeking to remove him from the ballot under Section 3 are a Democratic plot to end his campaign. But some of the most prominent advocates have been conservative legal theorists who argue that the text of the Constitution makes the former president ineligible to run again, just as if he failed to clear the document's age threshold — 35 years old — for the office.
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Likewise, until Bellows' decision, every top state election official, whether Democrat or Republican, had rejected requests to bar Trump from the ballot, saying they didn't have the power to remove him unless ordered to do so by a court.
The timing on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision is unclear, but both sides want it fast. Colorado's Republican Party appealed the Colorado high court decision on Wednesday, urging an expedited schedule, and Trump is also expected to file an appeal within the week. The petitioners in the Colorado case on Thursday urged the nation's highest court to adopt an even faster schedule so it could rule before March 5, known as Super Tuesday, when 16 states, including Colorado and Maine, are scheduled to vote in the Republican presidential nominating process.
The high court needs to formally accept the case first, but legal experts consider that a certainty. The Section 3 cases seem tailor-made for the Supreme Court, addressing an area of U.S. governance where there's scant judicial guidance.
The clause was added in 1868 to keep defeated Confederates from returning to their former positions of power in local and federal government. It prohibits anyone who broke an oath to "support" the Constitution from holding office. The provision was used to bar a wide range of ex-Confederates from positions ranging from local sheriff to Congress, but fell into disuse after an 1872 congressional amnesty for most former Confederates.
Legal historians believe the only time the provision was used in the 20th Century was in 1919, when it was cited to deny a House seat to a socialist who had opposed U.S. involvement in World War I. But since the Jan. 6 attack, it has been revived.
Last year, it was cited by a court to remove a rural New Mexico County Commissioner who had entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. One liberal group tried to remove Republican Reps. Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene from the 2022 ballot under the provision, but Cawthorn lost his primary so his case was thrown out, and a judge ruled for Greene.
Some critics of the movement to bar Trump warn that the provision could be weaponized in unexpected ways.
They note that conservatives could argue, for example, that Vice President Kamala Harris is likewise barred from office because she raised bail funds for people arrested during the unrest following George Floyd's 2020 murder at the hands of Minneapolis police.
The plaintiffs in Colorado presented historical evidence that even the donation of small sums to money to those seeking to join the Confederacy was grounds for being barred by Section 3. Why, critics have asked, wouldn't that apply to Democrats like Harris today?
US tensions with China are fraying long-cultivated academic ties. Will the chill hurt US interests?
In the 1980s, Fu Xiangdong was a young Chinese virology student who came to the United States to study biochemistry. More than three decades later, he had a prestigious professorship in California and was conducting promising research on Parkinson’s disease.
But now Fu is doing his research at a Chinese university. His American career was derailed as U.S.-China relations unraveled, putting his collaborations with a Chinese university under scrutiny. He ended up resigning.
Fu’s story mirrors the rise and fall of U.S.-China academic engagement.
Beginning in 1978, such cooperation expanded for decades, largely insulated from the fluctuations in relations between the two countries. Today, it's in decline, with Washington viewing Beijing as a strategic rival and there are growing fears about Chinese spying. The number of Chinese students in the United States is down, and U.S.-Chinese research collaboration is shrinking. Academics are shying away from potential China projects over fears that seemingly minor missteps could end their careers.
This decline isn’t hurting just students and researchers. Analysts say it will undercut American competitiveness and weaken global efforts to address health issues. Previous collaborations have led to significant advances, including in influenza surveillance and vaccine development.
“That’s been really harmful to U.S. science," said Deborah Seligsohn, a former U.S. diplomat in Beijing and now a political scientist at Villanova University. “We are producing less science because of this falloff."
For some, given the heightened U.S.-China tensions, the prospect for scientific advances needs to take a back seat to security concerns. In their view, such cooperation aids China by giving it access to sensitive commercial, defense and technological information. They also fear the Chinese government is using its presence in American universities to monitor and harass dissidents.
Those concerns were at the core of the China Initiative, a program begun in 2018 by the Justice Department under the Trump administration to uncover acts of economic espionage. While it failed to catch any spies, the effort did have an impact on researchers in American schools.
Under the initiative, Gang Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was charged in 2021 with hiding links with the Chinese government. Prosecutors eventually dropped all charges, but Chen lost his research group. He said his family went through a hard time and has yet to recover.
Chen said investigations and wrongful prosecutions like his “are pushing out talents.”
“That’s going to hurt U.S. scientific enterprise, hurt U.S. competitiveness,” he said.
The Biden administration ended the China Initiative in 2022, but there are other efforts targeting scholars with Chinese connections.
In Florida, a state law aimed at curbing influences from foreign countries has raised concerns that students from China could effectively be banned from labs at the state’s public universities.
This month, a group of Republican senators expressed concerns about Beijing’s influence on American campuses through student groups and urged the Justice Department to determine whether such groups should be registered as foreign agents.
Miles Yu, director of the China Center at Hudson Institute, said Beijing has exploited U.S. higher education and research institutes to modernize its economy and military.
“For some time, out of cultural, self-interest reasons, many people have double loyalty, erroneously thinking it’s OK to serve the interests of both the U.S. and China,” Yu said.
The U.S.-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement — the first major pact between the two countries, signed in 1979 — was set to lapse this year. In August, Congress extended the agreement by six months, but its future also hangs in the balance.
If there is a new agreement, it should take into account new advances in science and technology, Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, said recently.
There were only 700 American students studying in China, Burns said, compared with nearly 300,000 Chinese students in the U.S., which is down from a peak of about 372,000 in 2019-2020.
By October, nearly all Confucius Institutes, a Beijing-backed Chinese language and culture program, had closed on American university campuses. Their number fell from about 100 in 2019 to fewer than five now, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The National Institute of Health in 2018 began an investigation into foreign ties by asking dozens of American institutions to look into whether their faculty members might have violated policies regarding use of federal money, usually in cases involving partnerships with Chinese institutions.
In the case of Fu, then a professor at the University of California, San Diego, his links with Wuhan University were the focus of the NIH investigation. Fu insisted that federal money was never used toward work there, according to the local news outlet La Jolla Light, but the university ruled against him.
In a China Initiative case, Charles Lieber, a former chair of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University, was found guilty in December 2021 of lying to the federal government about his affiliations with a Chinese university and a Chinese government talent-recruitment program.
Chen, the MIT professor, said once-encouraged collaborations suddenly became problematic. Disclosure rules had been unclear, and in many cases such collaborations had been commended, he said.
“Very few people in the general public understand that most U.S. universities, including MIT, don't take on any secret research projects on campus,” Chen said. “We aim to publish our research findings.”
The investigations have had negative effects on university campuses. “People are so fearful that, if you check the wrong box, you could be accused of lying to the government,” Chen said.
In June, an academic study published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal said the China Initiative likely has caused widespread fear and anxiety among scientists of Chinese descent.
The study, which surveyed 1,304 scientists of Chinese descent employed by American universities, showed many considered leaving the U.S. or no longer applying for federal grants, the researchers wrote.
An analysis of research papers in the PubMed database showed that, as of 2021, U.S. scientists still co-wrote more papers with scientists from China than from any other country, but those with a history of collaborating with China experienced a decline in research productivity after 2019, soon after the NIH investigation started.
The study, to be published in the PNAS journal by the year’s end, found the impact of U.S.-based scholars in collaboration with China, as measured by citations, fell by 10%.
“It has a chilling effect on science” said Ruixue Jia, the study’s leading researcher, of the NIH investigation. “While researchers tried to finish existing cooperative projects, they were unwilling to start new ones, and the results could become worse. Both countries have been hurt.”
Three months after Fu resigned from the California school, his name appeared on the website of Westlake University, a private research university in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. At Westlake, Fu leads a lab to tackle issues in RNA biology and regenerative medicine.
In August, Fu was joined by Guan Kunliang, a fellow scientist in San Diego, who also was investigated. Guan was banned from applying for NIH grants for two years. Guan didn’t lose his job, but his lab had shrunk. Now, he’s rebuilding a molecular cell biology lab at Westlake.
Li Chenjian, a former vice provost of Peking University, said the talent loss to China is a complicated question and the worry might be overblown because the U.S. remains the go-to place for the world’s best brains and has an excess of talent.
More than 87% of Chinese students who received their doctorates in the U.S. had planned to stay in the U.S. from 2005 to 2015, according to the National Science Foundation. The percentage fell to 73.9 in 2021 but rose to 76.7 in 2022, above the average of 74.3% for all foreign students who had earned research doctorate degrees in the U.S.
Rao Yi, a prominent neurobiologist who returned to China from the U.S. in 2007, said American policies related to the China Initiative were “morally wrong.”
“We will see how long it will take for the U.S. government and its morally upright scientists to correct such mistakes and come around to see the bigger picture of human development, beyond petty-mindedness and shortsightedness,” he said. “Throughout history, it is always the morally corrupt governments which advocate the blocking of scientific communication and persecution of scientists."
Hunter Biden defies congressional subpoena, says will only testify in public
Hunter Biden on Wednesday defied a congressional subpoena to appear privately for a deposition before Republican investigators who have been digging into his business dealings, insisting outside the U.S. Capitol that he will only testify in public.
In a rare public statement, the Democratic president’s son slammed a GOP subpoena requesting closed-door testimony, saying it could be manipulated.
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“Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say,” Biden said outside the Capitol. “What are they afraid of? I am here.”
Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has said Republicans expect “full cooperation” with the private deposition. Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, told reporters later Wednesday that they will begin looking at contempt of Congress proceedings in response to Hunter Biden's lack of cooperation.
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"He just got into more trouble today,” Comer said.
For months, Republicans have been pursuing an impeachment inquiry seeking to tie President Joe Biden to his son Hunter's business dealings. So far, they have failed to uncover evidence directly implicating President Biden in any wrongdoing.
Democrats have been united against the Republican impeachment push, saying it's “an illegitimate exercise” merely meant to distract from GOP chaos and dysfunction.
“We are at a remarkable juncture for the U.S. House of Representatives,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee. “Because this is an impeachment inquiry where no one has been able to define what criminal or constitutional offense they’re looking for.”
But questions have arisen about the ethics surrounding the Biden family’s international business, and lawmakers insist their evidence paints a troubling picture of “influence peddling” in their business dealings, particularly with clients overseas.
“There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen," Hunter Biden said.
Separately, Hunter Biden is facing criminal charges in two states from a special counsel overseeing a long-running investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss also filed new charges and nine new tax counts last week, alleging he schemed to avoid paying about $1.4 million in taxes over a three-year period.
Later Wednesday, the House is expected to authorize the impeachment inquiry into the president. House Republicans are hoping a vote to formalize their investigation will help their legal standing when enforcing subpoenas to Hunter Biden and other Biden family members.
“Mr. Biden’s counsel and the White House have both argued that the reason he couldn’t come for a deposition was because there wasn’t a formal vote for an impeachment inquiry,” Jordan told reporters. “Well, that’s going to happen in a few hours.”
He added, “And when that happens, we’ll see what their excuse is then.”
The White House has chalked the whole process up as a “partisan smear campaign” that Republicans are pushing ahead with “despite the fact that members of their own party have admitted there is no evidence to support impeaching President Biden.”
“If they press onwards with this baseless fishing expedition, it only proves how divorced from reality this sham investigation is, and will come at the expense of meaningful work to actually address the issues the American people care about, like lowering costs, creating jobs, and strengthening our health care,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a recent statement.
Biden calls 'surge' in antisemitism 'sickening' during White House Hanukkah reception
President Joe Biden hosted a Hanukkah reception at the White House on Monday night, vowing to continue to stand with Israel in its war with Hamas while saying that a “surge of antisemitism" around the globe "is sickening.”
Nearly 800 guests filled the East Room to almost overflowing. The crowd included Holocaust survivors, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and around two dozen members of Congress. Also present were Jewish community leaders and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who was among those who lit a menorah partially made from the original timbers of the White House.
The husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, Emhoff is the first Jewish person to be the spouse of one of the country’s nationally elected leaders. Last week he presided over the lighting ceremony of a massive menorah in front of the White House.
A menorah is lit nightly during the eight-day Jewish festival, which this year is being celebrated from Dec. 7 until Friday. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue in New York City led Monday's ceremony, telling the president: “You've been a steadfast supporter of Israel's right to defend itself. A trusted and true friend to the Jewish people.”
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Buchdahl talked about the darkness of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which triggered war with Israel. But she said that since, “Its only gotten darker, with many around the world justifying terrorism, normalizing antisemitism, with the pain of so many lives lost — Israeli and Palestinian — in this just but tragic war.”
She also drew sustained applause when she called Biden “a beacon of strength.”
The president told the crowd, “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.” He said that while he doesn't always agree with Israel's leaders and governmental policies, “Were there no Israel, there would not be a Jew in the world who is safe.”
“We continue to provide military assistance until they get rid of Hamas but we have to be careful," Biden said of U.S. support for the war. He added: "The whole world, public opinion can shift overnight. We can't let that happen."
The Biden administration in May announced what it called the first-ever national strategy to counter antisemitism. Still, antisemitism has only intensified in some quarters as criticism rises over the mounting Palestinian death toll. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of an impending “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.
Biden said of hostages being held by Hamas, which U.S. authorities have been working for months to help free, “We’re not going to stop until we get every one of them home.” The crowd also cheered when he talked of his administration’s efforts to increase humanitarian aid flowing to civilians in Gaza caught in the fighting.
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Others, though, have decried Biden's stance on the war. Earlier Monday, protesters gathered outside the White House as nearly 20 women describing themselves as “Jewish elders” chained themselves to the fence around the grounds. Wearing black T-shirts reading “Not In Our Name,” they chanted: “Biden, Biden, pick a side! Cease-fire not genocide!” while reading the names of those killed in Gaza.
Authorities took the women away after using a bolt cutter to cut the chains that had encircled the protesters' waists. Organizers said they deliberately picked the day of the White House's Hanukkah celebration to protest.
“We, as elder Jews, we know what genocide looks like. We know what genocide feels like. It’s in our bodies, in our bones,” said Esther Farmer of Jewish Voice for Peace, which organized the demonstration. “It's horrifying, it's devastating. Sometimes, it's hard to get up in the morning to see this, and it's being done in the name of Jews. So we are here — as elderly Jews — to say, not in our name.”
The U.S. Park Police said they issued 18 citations to the protesters and released them from custody.
Biden at the reception said he recognized American Jews “hurt” and “fear for your safety” because “the surge of antisemitism in the United States and around the world is sickening.”
“We see it in our communities and in schools and colleges and social media,” the president said, adding that such instances “surface painful scars.”
On Saturday, Liz Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned following pressure from donors and criticism over testimony at a congressional hearing where she was unable to say under repeated questioning that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s conduct policy. Universities across the U.S. have been accused of failing to protect Jewish students amid the fallout from the war in Gaza.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates declined to comment Monday on Magill’s decision to resign. Presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who appeared alongside Magill, have also faced criticism. Gay has apologized for her remarks.
Bates noted that Magill issued a statement withdrawing her remarks.
“That was the right thing to do,” he said.