Biden butts heads with Bibi

The US-Israeli alliance grows more awkward by the day, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeming poised to defy President Joe Biden, meeting Republicans as he refuses to bow to growing pressure over a possible Rafah assault.

After Mr Biden and “Bibi” spoke by phone for the first time in a month, the Israeli Prime Minister told the Knesset he had made it as “clear as possible to him that we are determined” to eliminate Hamas in Rafah.

The Biden administration has said repeatedly that Israel should not go into the city without a clear plan for getting civilians to safety.

And as the far-right Israeli leader argued with the Democratic Biden administration over the military operation in Rafah, he met by video link with Senate Republicans.

The closed-door meeting with the conservative party is more fuel on the fire of recent partisan disputes over Washington's support for Israel.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren told me on Capitol Hill yesterday: “Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided he wants to politicise his meetings.”

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken touched down in the Middle East yesterday on his sixth trip to the region since the Israel-Gaza war started in October.

And there is some cautious optimism for consumers on the economy this week: the Federal Reserve projected it will cut interest rates more than once this year, chairman Jerome Powell announced, despite holding rates steady at its March meeting.

“If the economy evolves broadly as expected, it will be appropriate to begin dialling back … at some point this year,” he told reporters.

But some bad financial news for Mr Biden's presumed election opponent Donald Trump: his efforts to secure a bond to cover a $454 million judgment in a New York civil fraud case has been rejected by 30 surety companies, his lawyers said on Monday, bringing him closer to the possibility of having his properties seized.

Ellie Sennett

US Correspondent

EYE ON 2024

Illinois primary vote sees Arab Americans turn their backs on Biden

The state of Illinois this week became the latest checkpoint for the protest vote against President Joe Biden over his record on the Israel-Gaza war.

Hundreds of thousands of Arab and Muslim Americans were among those voting in the state's primary.

In a protest against Mr Biden's resolute backing of Israel over the past five months as it has flattened Gaza in response to the October 7 attacks, many Democrats say they can no longer back him.

“We have a unified message that we will not support President Biden as long as he does not support a ceasefire and, more importantly, enact it,” Rush Darwish, a Palestinian-American community activist, told The National.

To make their anger known, anti-Biden Democrats planned to cast blank ballots or write in “Gaza” as a way of protesting.

The idea was similar to protest campaigns in primaries in Michigan and Minnesota, where about 145,000 people in the two states voted “uncommitted”, which was an option on the ballot, instead of putting a tick next to Mr Biden's name.

Read more

What's Washington talking about?

EVs The Biden administration again built on an ambitious climate agenda this week, announcing new car-emission standards that officials have called the most consequential yet in the bid to cut planet-warming gases. The new rules relax initial tailpipe limits proposed last year but eventually get close to the same strict standards set out by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA said that under this rule, the industry could meet the limits if 56 per cent of new vehicle sales are electric by 2032, along with at least 13 per cent plug-in hybrids or other “partially electric” cars.

Syria As the world marked the 13th anniversary of the uprising that sparked Syria's civil war, the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington this week launched its “Syria Strategy Project”. Top US, French and German diplomats spoke at the Monday project launch, which combines the forces of several US and European think tanks to serve as a “soundboard for policymakers and practitioners … that would ultimately help resolve the Syrian crisis and its spillover effects”, said project director Qutaiba Idlbi. Barbara Leaf, the State Department's assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, celebrated the launch in a virtual address at the Atlantic Council.

Cherry blossoms It's not all doom and gloom in Washington, especially this week – it's peak bloom. You could argue there's a second spring-like season that accompanies the transition out of winter, and that is cherry blossom season, also known as peak bloom, when the famed pink flowers burst from the trees lining the Tidal Basin. This week, we here in the nation's capital are enjoying their early arrival, thanks to an alarmingly warm winter. They are expected to remain in this scenically “peak” condition for the next few days, depending on the weather.

QUOTED

“Nobody expects Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the things that must be done to break the cycle of violence, to preserve Israel's credibility on the world stage and to work towards a two-state solution”

– Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in US history, calls on Israel to hold new elections

Spotlight: Doctors warn an Israeli invasion of Rafah would be 'apocalyptic'

A British surgeon who volunteered in a Gaza hospital earlier this year expressed serious concerns on Tuesday about the catastrophic impact of an Israeli military offensive in Rafah.

“If there's an invasion of Rafah, it'll be apocalyptic, the number of deaths we’re going to see,” Prof Nick Maynard, a cancer surgeon at Oxford University Hospitals who also teaches at the university, told reporters in New York after high-level meetings at the UN.

Prof Maynard said the situation in Gaza “fulfils every single definition” he has read of the word genocide.

“The endgame of the Israeli government is to force them out completely from Gaza, to eradicate them from that land,” he said.

Read more

ONLY IN AMERICA

Opinion: Why is the US Congress trying to ban TikTok? It’s complicated

Could the US Congress really ban TikTok? Yes, but that’s not the right question.

Unfortunately, the better question – why are US officials pushing for a TikTok ban? – doesn’t have a simple explanation, but it’s important to look at the nuance and various motives, some legitimate and others based in jealousy, to truly see what’s going on.

The most important factor in the rare, bipartisan push from both Republican and Democratic officials trying to rein in TikTok is data privacy, and the lack of transparency from ByteDance, parent company of TikTok, as to how user data is stored, used and subject to secretive policies from the Chinese government.

Make no mistake, TikTok consumes a lot of user data, and it knows a lot about what you’re watching, what you’re rewinding, what you’re sharing and what you’re stitching (to borrow a TikTok phrase).

Read Future Editor Cody Comb's take