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With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine
DRIVING THE DAY
It’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving. You’ve been unplugged (we hope), dealing with family foibles, working your way through leftovers, blissfully tuned out from the daily deluge.
Unfortunately, it’s time to start tuning back in. We’re getting right back to it tomorrow at the White House, on Capitol Hill, on the campaign trail and in conflicts across the globe, and we’ll ease y’all in with updates on the latest in the Middle East and a preview of the final weeks before the first presidential primaries.
TRUCE, DAY 3 — As President JOE BIDEN heads back to the Oval Office from his Nantucket sojourn, he’ll have to tackle major international questions in the coming weeks — whether he can finally deliver billions of dollars of new aid to Ukraine and whether he can continue to defuse the devastating conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The fragile pause in fighting appears to be holding today, with the release of hostages continuing this morning, per Reuters. Those freed by Hamas include 13 Israelis, three Thai nationals and a Russian citizen whom “Hamas said it freed … in appreciation of Moscow’s stance on its war with Israel”; Israel is in turn set to free 39 Palestinians today as part of the agreement.
The Israels released included a U.S. dual citizen, 4-year-old ABIGAIL EDAN, Biden just announced in Nantucket.
The truce deal reached last week is set to expire tomorrow with the release of a fourth tranche of hostages unless Hamas and Israel can agree to extend the pause in return for freeing more of those in captivity.
But Israeli PM BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, visiting troops inside Gaza Sunday for the first time since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, indicated he was not about to let up: “We will continue until the end, until victory,” he said, per the Times of Israel. “Nothing will stop us, and we are convinced that we have the power, the strength, the will and the determination to achieve all the war’s goals, and we will.”
The Biden administration, meanwhile, is faced with not only brokering a deal between the warring parties but with bridging divides inside its own staff ranks over their handling of the conflict as civilian casualties in Gaza skyrocket.
WaPo’s Yasmeen Abutaleb and John Hudson have a scoopy account this morning of a meeting called earlier this month by “20 distressed White House staffers” who wanted to press three of Biden’s top advisers — chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS, senior adviser ANITA DUNN and deputy national security adviser JON FINER — on “the administration’s strategy for curbing the number of civilian deaths, the message it plans to send on the conflict and its postwar vision for the region.”
“Zients, Dunn and Finer listened respectfully, but some participants felt they fell back on familiar talking points, said a White House official familiar with the meeting,” Abutaleb and Hudson write. “The administration had to be careful not to criticize Israel in public so it could influence its leaders in private, the advisers said. U.S. officials were pushing Israel to minimize civilian casualties. And the president and his top aides were advocating for a two-state solution once the conflict was over.”
The meeting confirms that the divides over the conflict seen elsewhere in the Democratic political ecosystem — at the DNC, inside congressional offices and within campaign organs — have extended inside the White House itself. And it suggests that those divides are at risk of flaring up again if the current pause gives way to a renewed bombing campaign in Gaza.
Said White House spokesman ANDREW BATES to WaPo: “The president, his senior staff and his entire team are committed to supporting and listening to the communities who are experiencing pain because of the events since October 7, both inside the administration and throughout the country.”
Related reads … “For released Palestinian prisoners, a complicated homecoming,” by WaPo’s Louisa Loveluck and Sufian Taha in the West Bank … “Freed Israeli Hostages Share Details of Their Time in Captivity, Relatives Say,” by NYT’s Isabel Kershner in Jerusalem … “Netanyahu and Hamas depended on each other. Both may be on the way out,” by WaPo’s Steve Hendrix and Hazem Balousha in Jerusalem … “Israel’s appetite for high-tech weapons highlights a Biden policy gap,” by Mohar Chatterjee
TRUMP VS. HALEY — With just seven weeks until the Iowa caucuses, it’s officially “primary crunchtime,” as the NYT’s Michelle Cottle memorably put it yesterday, and former president DONALD TRUMP moved to squeeze a surging rival this weekend, making an appearance at the annual grudge match between Clemson University and the University of South Carolina.
The third-voting state is likely to serve as a determinative clash between Trump and former South Carolina Gov. NIKKI HALEY, who will be looking for a major boost out of her home state in the Feb. 24 primary.
Trump has held a persistent lead in polls of South Carolina voters, and he entered the Gamecocks’ stadium in Columbia to chants of “We want Trump! We want Trump!” per the AP’s Bill Barrow and Meg Kinnard.
Appearing as a guest of Gov. HENRY McMASTER and Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.), Trump announced hours before arriving that he had been endorsed by “more South Carolina legislators than all opposing candidates combined,” including new backing from six state lawmakers who had previously supported Sen. TIM SCOTT (R-S.C.)’s recently deceased presidential bid.
It wasn’t all Trump love, though: A “smattering of boos” rang out when the former president came down to the field at halftime, Barrow and Kinnard write. And “electronic billboards around the capital city of Columbia boasted a message noting Trump’s 2020 election loss and his pending legal cases: ‘You lost. You’re guilty. Welcome to Columbia, Donald.’”
Haley, meanwhile, remains focused on a dual challenge: Both consolidating the anti-Trump vote she is splitting with Florida Gov. RON DeSANTIS and other candidates and, as the WSJ’s John McCormick writes from Iowa, figuring “out how to peel off at least some Trump support.”
It’s a tough balance to strike, and she “declined to say whether she identifies more with the Trump wing of the party or traditional Republicans” in her interview with McCormick in Marshalltown.
“‘I came into the governor’s office as a Tea Party candidate,’ she said, seated at the counter of a loose-meat sandwich shop here. ‘I’m fiscally conservative. I’m a mom. I’m a military spouse. You look at all of these things, I think I’m a conservative Republican.’”
Good Sunday morning. Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza.
SUNDAY BEST …
— Sen. CHRIS MURPHY (D-Conn.) on conditioning aid to Israel, on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “We regularly condition our aid to allies based upon compliance with U.S. law and international law. And so I think it’s very consistent with the ways in which we have dispensed aid, especially during wartime, to allies, for us to talk about making sure that the aid we give Ukraine or the aid we give Israel … is used in accordance with human rights laws. And that will be a conversation we will all be engaged in when we get back to Washington on Monday.”
— Rep. MIKE TURNER (R-Ohio) on the White House’s proposed national security aid package, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I think it would be very difficult to get it done by the end of the year and the impediment, currently, is the White House policy on the southern border.”
— Sen. TOM COTTON (R-Ark.) on the spending fight, on “Fox News Sunday”: “In return for providing additional funding for Ukraine, we have to have significant and substantial reforms to our border policies, specifically, asylum and parole, the processes that are being abused at our border for millions of illegal migrants to come in this country over the last three years.”
— CHRIS CHRISTIE on potentially consolidating voters with Nikki Haley in New Hampshire, on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “This idea of people just doing math and adding up numbers, that’s not the way voters vote. And so I would say to everybody out there, let’s let the campaign move forward. This is the smallest Republican field at this stage in this century that did not include an incumbent.”
TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY
At the White House
Biden will leave Nantucket to return to the White House by 3:20 p.m.
VP KAMALA HARRIS is in LA and has nothing on her public schedule.
PLAYBOOK READS
9 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR
1. BORDER LINE: WSJ’s Michelle Hackman and Lindsay Wise have the latest on the congressional negotiations over the border: “Tightening the initial standard immigrants must meet when applying for asylum could form the basis of a bipartisan border agreement in the Senate, where a group of lawmakers is racing to strike a deal before the end of this year that could unlock billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine,” they write. A group of bipartisan senators have recently been working toward a solution, and “unlike in previous efforts to reach a bipartisan immigration compromise, Democrats in the group haven’t conditioned their support for a deal on legalization for the population of immigrants living in the country illegally.”
More deets: “Other ideas under consideration, according to people familiar with the talks, include expanding mandatory detention for single adults for the duration of their immigration cases and reintroducing a form of Remain in Mexico. The administration has also asked for $14 billion in funding to process migrants at the border, and it is likely that at least some of that money, to pay for additional Border Patrol agents and immigration judges, would be included.”
2. THE TRUMP EFFECT: JORGE RAMOS, a top journalist for Univision, delivered a sharp rebuke to his home network in a post yesterday, saying that a recent chummy interview with Trump “put in doubt the independence of our news department.” The interview, which aired on Nov. 9 after a sitdown with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, was sharply criticized for its lack of teeth in pushing back on Trump’s lies and even resulted in the resignation of an anchor at the network. “We cannot normalize behavior that threatens democracy and the Hispanic community, or offer Trump an open microphone to broadcast his falsehoods and conspiracy theories. We must question and fact-check everything he says,” Ramos writes in his post. More from WaPo’s Joseph Menn
3. PARDON ME: Trump’s last-minute pardon of Jonathan Braun on his final day in office goes under the microscope of the NYT’s Michael Schmidt, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Alan Feuer, who write that the commutation is now “raising new questions about how Mr. Trump intervened in criminal justice decisions and what he could do in a second term.”
Braun, who was serving time for running an illegal drug ring, was due to cooperate with a larger DOJ investigation that is now stalled without the aid. Braun also turned to predatory lending just before he went to prison and has since returned to it after his release, “still engaging in deceptive business tactics.” And Braun’s family “used a connection to CHARLES KUSHNER, the father of JARED KUSHNER, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, to try to get the matter before Mr. Trump,” they write.
4. DOWN FOR THE COUNT: Top election officials across the country are doing all they can to avoid long delays in counting up votes, hoping to avoid a repeat of 2020, which saw days drag on without an official declared winner in the presidential race. “Several battleground states have passed new laws to facilitate quicker counting and implemented more efficient processing procedures,” our colleague Zach Montellaro writes. “The faster races are tabulated, the faster they’re called — and the shorter the period of uncertainty in which misinformation can spread, as when Trump escalated conspiracy theories about the vote count in 2020 and falsely declared himself the victor.”
5. HEADS IN THE GAME: “U.S. Troops Still Train on Weapons With Known Risk of Brain Injury,” by NYT’s Dave Philipps: “Troops say they see little being done to limit or track blast exposure. And weapons like shoulder-fired rockets that are known to deliver a shock wave well above the safety threshold are still in wide use. The disconnect fits a pattern that has repeated for more than a decade: Top leaders talk of the importance of protecting troops’ brains, but the military fails to take practical steps to ensure safety.”
6. WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT: “A doctor tried to renew his passport. Now he’s no longer a citizen,” by WaPo’s Theresa Vargas: “As he tells it, when he sent in an application for a new passport in February, he had no reason to expect he’d face any difficulties. He had renewed his passport several times previously without problems. This time, it was set to expire in June, and he wanted to make sure he had a valid one in hand before his family took a trip in July. But he did not receive a new passport. Instead, at the age of 61, he lost what he had held since he was an infant: U.S. citizenship.”
7. WHAT DICK DURBIN IS READING: “Stabbing of Derek Chauvin Raises Questions About Inmate Safety,” by NYT’s Glenn Thrush and Serge F. Kovaleski: “The assault comes less than five months after LARRY NASSAR, the doctor convicted of sexually abusing young female gymnasts, was stabbed multiple times at the federal prison in Florida. It also follows the release of Justice Department reports detailing incompetence and mismanagement at federal detention centers that led to the deaths in recent years of JAMES BULGER, the Boston gangster known as Whitey, and JEFFREY EPSTEIN, who had been charged with sex trafficking.”
8. FUTURE OF MEDICINE: “No one’s promising you can keep your doctor anymore,” by Daniel Payne and Erin Schumaker: “The math is simple: Medical schools just aren’t churning out doctors fast enough to keep pace with the population. Affluent people will be able to retain a personal physician through exclusive ‘concierge medicine’ services. But here’s what others can expect: routine visits with a rotating cast of nurses and physician assistants with increasingly spare and online checkups with doctors. That changing calculus has Congress and the Biden administration busy trying to devise a primary care system that can serve the average person before it becomes impossible to get an appointment.”
9. MAD LIBS HEADLINE OF THE DAY: “Washington’s secret weapon is a beloved Gen Z energy drink with more caffeine than God,” by Insider’s Lauren Vespoli: “Celsius — the suddenly-ubiquitous energy drink that comes in flavors like ‘Kiwi Guava’ and ‘Arctic Vibe’ and is fervently beloved by Gen Z — is fueling Capitol Hill lobbyists, staffers, the press corps, and even some members of Congress. ‘It’s everywhere,’ said BRENT ROBERTSON, chief-of-staff for Republican Kansas Senator ROGER MARSHALL and self-identified ‘afternoon Celli man.’”
PLAYBOOKERS
HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) (7-0) … Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) … Chris Hughes of the Economic Security Project … Marcia Coyle … Dannia Hakki of MoKi Media … U.S. Ambassador to Italy and San Marino Jack Markell … Lisa Vedernikova Khanna of Instacart … Webber Steinhoff of Prospect Strategic Communications … CBS’ Jenna Gibson … Sasha Borowsky of the Aspen Institute … Tyler Threadgill … Katie Gommel of Sunshine Sachs … Vicente Garcia … CNN’s Alicia Jennings … Valerie Holford … Ray Glendening of Scarlet Oak Strategies … Gabe Brotman … former CIA Director Porter Goss … Stuart Jolly … Dennis Ross … Liz Lawrence … former Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) … Ethan Bronner … Marianna Pecora of Voters of Tomorrow … Dana Best-Mizsak of Main Street Consultants
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