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  • ‘Do Palestinians have a right to survive?’ AOC makes impassioned speech against Biden policy on Israel crisis

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  • Lightning kills 18 elephants in India's Assam - media reports

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  • Before Any Diplomacy Begins, Israel Attacks Gaza With Ground Forces

    BRUSSELS — American and Egyptian mediators are heading to Israel to begin de-escalation talks, but the antagonists face critical political decisions before they will agree to begin discussions on ending the violence. Both Israel and Hamas first have to find ways to spin a narrative of victory for their publics, analysts say, but the task will be easier for Hamas than for Israel. Israel’s caretaker prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has to calculate the impact of the fighting on his own political fortunes, made more complicated by the internal unrest between Jews and Israeli Arabs in numerous cities inside Israel. The crucial decision for Israel is whether “victory” requires sending ground troops into Gaza, which would extend the conflict and significantly increase the number of dead and wounded on both sides. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times For the Palestinians, the indefinite postponement of elections last month by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, created a vacuum that Hamas is more than willing to fill. Hamas argues that it is the only Palestinian faction that, with its large stockpile of improved missiles, is defending the holy places of Jerusalem, turning Abbas into a spectator. President Joe Biden has spoken to Netanyahu and repeated the usual formula about Israel’s right to self-defense, and he has dispatched an experienced diplomat, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Hady Amr, to urge de-escalation on both sides. But the United States does not talk to Hamas, regarding it as a terrorist organization, and Abbas has no real control over Gaza or Hamas. So in all likelihood, Amr will be talking to Egyptian security officials, given that Egypt has been the usual interlocutor in concluding rounds of warfare between Israel and Hamas. That includes the last two big blowups, in 2008 and 2014, when the fighting lasted more than 50 days. On Thursday, Egypt dispatched security officials to Tel Aviv, Israel, and to Gaza to begin discussions, according to the state-controlled newspaper Al-Ahram and the broadcaster Al-Arabiya. Officially, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry, which does not deal with Hamas, had no comment. On Tuesday, Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, told a meeting of the Arab League that Egypt had reached out to Israel and other “concerned countries” to try to calm the violence but that Israel had not been responsive. Abdel Monem Said Aly, a long-standing analyst of Egyptian and regional relations in Cairo, said that “Egypt will do its best” in the interests of regional stability. But he warned that Netanyahu’s decision about whether to use ground troops would determine how long this round of violence lasted. “The issue is much more complicated than previously,” he said, citing internal Israeli and Palestinian politics and Egypt’s efforts “to steer the whole region to a different more stabilized future.” Egypt has leverage over Hamas because of its land border with Gaza, which Cairo can shut or relax at will. “And, of course, Egypt will talk to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, those with money, about rebuilding in Gaza,” Said Aly said. “But the problem in Israel is not about talking to Mr. Netanyahu — that’s easy — but the winds inside Israel itself and the big competition between different brands of conservatism.” On the Palestinian side, he said, “There is a similar vacuum of political legitimacy, and Hamas will score by raising up Palestinian public opinion and increasing guilt in Islamic countries about the Palestinians and getting more legitimacy for future elections.” Said Aly fears the events will increase Islamic radicalism both in Gaza and in Israel, among its young Arab population. “Of course, Egypt will talk to everyone,” he said. “We will talk of the problems of the whole region, and we won’t exclude the Palestinian issue. But how much anyone can help now is not clear.” Hamas also has reason to mistrust Egypt and its leader, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, according to Michele Dunne, a former American official and director of the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment. El-Sissi sees Hamas as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which remains powerful in Egypt, and in 2014 he did little to discourage Israel from invading Gaza in hopes of destroying Hamas. The violence can take a long time to subside, said Mark Heller of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “At some point Israel reminds itself that there is no way it can bring about a decisive outcome at a tolerable cost to itself,” he said, “and Hamas realizes that the costs and risks to its own political viability and control over Gaza become too much.” At that point, Heller said, Hamas agrees to “what they say is always a temporary cease-fire, not a peace, and usually gets some sort of payoff, I suspect this time from the Qataris.” Egypt is usually the interlocutor “and the fig leaf” for negotiations between Hamas and Israel, which both sides deny but that are going on almost continuously over many smaller issues, he said. Egypt is mindful that it needs to patch fences with Biden after the departure of former President Donald Trump, said Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project. “I think Cairo wants to demonstrate its importance to Biden,” he said, noting the beginning of reconciliation talks with Qatar and Turkey. Qatar, a rich emirate, bankrolls both Hamas and the Arab news operation Al-Jazeera, and Turkey has been a strident supporter of Hamas. That had put them at odds with Egypt. But with the election of Biden, Egypt has gingerly followed Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in trying to calm relations with Qatar and Turkey. Muslim countries have criticized Israel’s actions, but in largely perfunctory fashion so far, given that many of their leaders distrust Islamist radicalism. Many Arab countries have sidelined the Palestinian issue and are looking past Abbas to see, and try to manipulate, who will succeed him as head of Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization. But for now, with so much Israeli attention on the internal strife between young Jewish and Arab citizens, Levy said, many things are up in the air, and the struggle over Gaza can seem less important. It may also divert the Israeli security forces, making a ground incursion less likely. “This strife is an extremely disorienting and worrisome development and a matter of far greater concern, frankly, than Hamas,” said Heller. “The army can take care of Hamas, but we need something to take care of Israeli society, and right now we don’t have that.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

  • Congress strikes surprise deal to move ahead with special commission on Capitol riot

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  • How Dems Can Salvage Their Doomed Voting Rights Legislation

    REUTERSOn Tuesday, the For the People Act, democracy-reform legislation Democrats believe would expand voting access, saw a preview of its fate. The 900-page bill, dealing with everything from election administration to congressional ethics, was the subject of a full day of debate in a Senate committee with nearly 100 proposed amendments. A total of 10 passed, while the rest went down in flames on largely party-line votes. Its future on the Senate floor looks no better: It will be forced for consideration, debated for hours, and will still fail.Rather than squabbling over next steps or surrendering, however, the Democrats have a more realistic option that would solve election administrators’ need for funding and would boost the health of elections in a way that is truly for the people.How? By putting election funding into their infrastructure package.How This Voting Rights Bill Could Turn the Next Election Into a Clusterf*ckThe need for this alternative strategy is obvious. S1, the Senate’s version of HR1, faces a bleak path: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) can now force the bill to the floor as part of his power-sharing agreement with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Once there, they will have an easier time amending the bill in ways that failed in committee, because Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties. But, there’s no guarantee Harris will be able to serve that role. There aren’t 50 Democrats on board with this bill, and Joe Manchin (D-W.V) — the most powerful man in the senate — is, I’m told by staffers, carrying water for a small handful of other Democrats who do not want this bill to pass but are keeping quiet for fear of being punished by leadership. While the Democratic Party is attempting to sell this bill as supported by a unified front, it is very clearly not. And even if it were, they will still need 10 Republicans or filibuster reform, both of which appear unlikely.The For the People Act may be dead on arrival, but election funding does not have to be. While Republicans assail the infrastructure package, niggling with what “infrastructure” really means anyway, no one could feasibly argue that elections are not infrastructure — federal policy designates it, along with power and water, as “critical infrastructure.”This idea was initially pitched by the Center for Tech and Civic Life — which in 2020 carried out the largest private grant program to elections officials in U.S. history. Unlike the For the People Act, this plan was written in direct coordination with hundreds of bipartisan elections officials, who have, for years, been begging for consistent federal funding. Routing funds through the infrastructure plan provides Congress a real ability to equip local officials to give voters the elections they deserve.“We’ve heard that robust, consistent funding is the most critical need election departments have today, and the lack of adequate, predictable funding is perhaps the greatest barrier election officials face in doing their best work,” they wrote in a statement announcing the initiative. This is because Congress has funded elections as a secondary thought for years, infusing millions of dollars in reaction to crises: after the hanging chad debacle in 2000, after the cybersecurity failures of 2016, and during the pandemic of 2020. There has never been an effort to consistently fund elections offices such that they can plan ahead for necessary improvements.A predictable disbursement of cash to local officials — even with clear parameters for policy priorities — would allow states like Louisiana, which needs machines right now, to buy them. But it would also allow states like Georgia, which just invested millions into new machines, to bank money away for when they will need to upgrade their machines in eight to 10 years. Democrats are serious about their desire for automatic voter registration, updating machines and upgrading physical and digital security. All of these things can be provided for in the infrastructure bill, by offering specific funding for specific plans. This process will not allow Democrats to be as prescriptive in their policymaking, that’s true, but it will become much easier to get Republicans on board — many of whom already live in and represent states with existing automatic voter registration procedures or more stringent security protocols. The money could be specifically allocated to additional polling locations, or to incentivize states to adopt paper-backed machines and begin to do rigorous auditing — all things with at least some bipartisan consensus.That elections were left out of the infrastructure package to begin with, for many local election officials, is a head scratcher.“Elections are clearly infrastructure,” Tiana Epps-Johnson, who heads CTCL, told me. “In order for our elections to improve, they need the funding to plan into the future. This would allow for that.”In contrast, the For the People Act, as evidenced by the debacle of a committee markup, will not.Even internally, Democratic staffers on the various committees responsible for the drafting of the bill acknowledged that it began as a messaging bill while they were in the minority. It was introduced in 2019 as a priority, but because Democrats did not yet hold the majority in the Senate, it was meant to send a signal only. It was introduced again in the House as HR 1 in 2021 to demonstrate their emphasis on voting rights. The bill was then introduced in the newly Democratic-controlled Senate, with almost none of the changes demanded by elections officials, who, as I previously reported, harbored deep reservations about how they could realistically carry out these reforms. Never fear, Democrats said, they would work out the changes in committee.In the committee markup session, Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced a manager's amendment addressing the feasibility of the massive election policy changes in the bill. These tweaks to loosen deadlines and add waivers to the mandates were welcomed by election administrators, who saw them as the first step of a good-faith effort to make the bill workable.“They really did listen to election officials’ concerns,” said one former local official, now active in these negotiations. “I don’t believe they wanted to pass a bill that has unintended consequences, but one that ensures all eligible voters have the same opportunities to successfully participate.”But Klobuchar’s amendment failed, dashing their hopes again. Both Schumer and McConnell showed up to this markup session, a rare event for Senate leadership, demonstrating how important both parties believe the issue to be. But while Republicans present as a solid bulwark against the bill, Democrats are arguing amongst themselves as to strategy and the contents of the bill.If Democrats cannot get a basic amendment addressing basic feasibility concerns passed through a committee they control, it seems their success on the floor isn’t as high as they might claim in public statements. It’s a strategy that’s difficult for local elections officials to digest: Democrats have strapped all of their hopes on voting rights to a single bill that their own party cannot come to a consensus on, and what little funding is made available to elections officials will go down with that ship. Meanwhile, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act — which Manchin has signaled he supports and may well get a small amount of Republican buy in — has been left ignored.Including elections — an obviously critical piece of American infrastructure — in the infrastructure package gives Democrats and interested Republicans a clear opportunity to at least begin to fix the problems that plague our system, even if they cannot fix all of them at once.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Elise Stefanik gushes about Trump as she is elected GOP conference chair

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