A Democrat in the middle of the Israel firestorm
The third-term member of Congress from San Diego is Jewish. She has family in Israel. So the country's security is not an abstract notion. As a millennial, and the youngest member of Democratic leadership in the House, she doesn't view criticism of Israel as off the table. But she also sits on the Armed Services Committee and represents one of the nation's most military-centric districts, so she is acutely aware of Israel's security needs and its role as a key U.S. ally in the Middle East.
All of those roiling elements were on full display last night, in Washington and at a town hall meeting in her district. The Senate voted down a resolution from Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) to block the sale of U.S. weapons to Israel. The measure failed, but 27 Democratic senators, more than half the caucus, voted in favor — a sign that the horrific images of starvation coming out of Gaza in recent months are starting to erode the largely unconditional support that Israel has long enjoyed among many Democrats.
Jacobs says she would have voted in favor of the resolution, though she wants the U.S. to continue supporting Israel's defense, including by helping to pay for the Iron Dome missile defense system.
She tried to lay out her nuanced position at the town hall, where pro-Palestinian protesters gathered noisily outside the high school auditorium in a suburban section of San Diego where the event was held. Inside, one of the first questions was what is she doing to ensure the people of Gaza are receiving humanitarian aid and whether Israel has committed genocide.
Jacobs, who worked for the United Nations and State Department before she was elected to Congress in 2020, tried to thread the needle — saying that Israel 'might' have committed genocide.
'But I am not a lawyer, and that is a legal determination,' she told the restive audience. 'I think we've clearly seen serious atrocities. I think we've likely seen war crimes, and we've definitely seen forced displacement that could amount to ethnic cleansing.'
Soon, members of the audience were yelling at her — and each other. Her efforts to explain her support for a ban on offensive weapons, but not for defense, were drowned out. 'Weapons are weapons,' a woman shouted. A man stood and chanted 'free free Palestine' while waving a black-and-white keffiyeh. Members of the crowd shouted back at him.
After about 20 minutes, police escorted the man with the keffiyeh out of the auditorium and the town hall turned to other topics — mostly expressions of anger about various actions by President Donald Trump wrapped into a question.
Jacobs said the next day that she welcomed the protests and is less worried about the politics of the issue within the Democratic Party than she is about addressing the larger issues. 'The thing that needs to be worked out is how we get unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza, and then how we get back on a path to a situation where you have two states where Israelis can live safely and securely and where Palestinians can live with dignity and autonomy and self determination,' she told POLITICO today.
The bitter politics of the conflict aside, Jacobs contends there's a middle position in which people can condemn both the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the Israeli response that authorities say has led to about 60,000 deaths, mostly civilians in Gaza.
'I truly believe both that Oct. 7 was horrible and we should be calling for the release of the remaining hostages, and that what's going on in Gaza right now is horrible, and those don't have to be mutually exclusive,' she said. 'Civilians shouldn't be blamed for their government actions, and that's true of Israeli civilians, and it's true of Palestinian civilians, and it's true of American civilians.'
Despite what happened at her town hall, the protests over the war in Gaza around the U.S. have, for now at least, ebbed since last year and many Democratic voters in general have turned their attention to other issues. But it's not clear how long politicians like Jacobs, or her party, will be able to walk this precarious middle ground.
Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight's author at bfox@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ben_foxed.
What'd I Miss?
— Witkoff and Huckabee to visit Gaza, inspect food distribution centers: Special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee will visit Gaza on Friday to inspect aid distribution sites and meet with Gazans, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced today, amid intensifying global criticism of the humanitarian crisis in the region. The administration officials' planned trip into the besieged Gaza Strip comes amid escalating pressure both globally and from within MAGA circles to intervene, as well as a string of declarations from U.S. allies who plan to support Palestinian statehood ahead of a United Nations General Assembly meeting in September.
— State Department sanctions Palestinian leadership organizations amid global statehood push: The State Department announced sanctions against the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority today, denying organization members visas for the United States, citing claims that the groups are 'continuing to support terrorism.' The move comes as Canada and a growing number of European countries have vowed to recognize Palestinian statehood ahead of September's United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, amid warnings from global leaders that Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip face mass starvation due to Israeli aid blockages.
— Kamala Harris to release book focused on presidential campaign: Kamala Harris announced today that she will release a book recounting her 2024 campaign for the presidency. 'I believe there is value in sharing what I saw, what I learned, and what I know it will take to move forward,' the former vice president said in the announcement, posted to X. 'In writing this book, one truth kept coming back to me: sometimes, the fight takes a while.' The announcement comes just one day after Harris announced she would not run for governor in California next year, while still not closing the door on a 2028 run.
— White House raising the pressure ahead of Friday tariff deadline: President Donald Trump has settled on tariff rates for most of the country's largest trading partners. The rest of the world stands in limbo. A White House official confirmed that Trump plans to sign new executive orders today imposing higher tariff rates on several countries that have been unable to reach negotiated trade agreements by his self-imposed Friday deadline. It could include a number of America's biggest trading partners, including Canada, Mexico and Taiwan. That's sent their leaders, as well as officials from other sizable economies scrambling to try and secure a last-minute deal or extension — although most are downbeat about that prospect.
— Trump's tariffs get frosty reception at federal appeals court: Federal appeals court judges sharply questioned President Donald Trump's authority to impose sweeping tariffs on foreign trading partners today under an unprecedented use of emergency powers. Several judges of the Washington, D.C.-based Federal Circuit Court of Appeals repeatedly wondered how Trump could justify the broad tariffs using a 1977 law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, that presidents have used to set economic sanctions and other penalties on foreign countries — but never previously tariffs.
FLIPPING THE SCRIPT — Past German governments sought to temper Europe's most hardline impulses on migration. Now, under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Berlin is vying to lead Europe's anti-immigration charge.
The stark shift in Germany's migration stance under its new government promises to accelerate the EU's hard-right turn on migration as the bloc prepares to implement a series of new measures aimed at drastically reducing the number of asylum seekers entering Europe — and deporting more of those who do make it. As European leaders negotiate on how to put these measures into place, those from some of the EU's most hardline countries are welcoming Germany's new role.
TRADE TALKS STALL — President Donald Trump said late Wednesday that Canada's move to recognize Palestinian statehood threatened to jeopardize trade deal talks between the two countries.
On Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his country intends to recognize a Palestinian state ahead of September's United Nations General Assembly, joining France and the U.K. on that path.
With a Friday deadline looming to strike a deal or face steep U.S. tariffs, negotiations between Canada and the U.S. have stalled, and no deal framework has been set.
Nightly Number
RADAR SWEEP
THE WORLD'S HARDEST EXAM — Are you smart enough to get a public sector job? In India, college graduates spend years studying for job entrance exams to learn general knowledge like the pH of the human body and the largest Bauxite producing state in the country. Even though these general knowledge exams have no set schedule, lifetime public sector jobs are coveted and respected for their pension and benefits. But as the number of public sector jobs shrink and private sector roles aren't growing to meet graduation numbers, the competition for jobs has reached new levels. In the most recent round of exams for the Ministry of Railways, about 30 million people applied for 90,000 spots. Harriet Shawcross and Dipanjan Sinha report on the world of Indian job entrance exams for The Economist.
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