Editors’ Blog

What was first communicated by reports of a slowdown in weapons transfers and then confirmed in leaks has now been brought into the open: Joe Biden is saying he will cut off the supply of heavy munitions (big bombs from the sky) if Israel goes ahead with a major ground incursion into Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, which is both the last refuge of Hamas’ intact battalions and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians who have fled other parts of the strip over the last six months. This is in addition to the city’s normal civilian population.

I have seen some commentators who have absolutely no love for Netanyahu saying this undercuts whatever leverage Israel has in the hostage negotiations by depriving them of the threat to go into Rafah in force. There’s likely something to that. But it is basically a certainty that this move was absolutely the final straw for the U.S. It had been insisting and insisting and insisting not to do this without a plan to evacuate the city, and the Israeli government is saying too bad. We’re doing it. Biden had the choice to make his words meaningless or put down his foot. When you’re supplying the weapons, your foot comes down very hard.

One person I didn’t mention yesterday in the Trump VP veepstakes was Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. There are various boxes Sanders doesn’t check. But the thing with Sanders is that she’s a bully, and a good bully, by which I mean she’s an effective bully. She’s nasty. She’s not nice. These are all major pluses for a Trump VP.

Very weird story here to keep an eye on. Last week either 15 or 17 police cars at a Portland Police Bureau lot were torched in what was treated as a suspected case of arson. Yesterday local news reported that a group calling itself the “Rachel Corrie Ghost Brigade” claimed responsibility for the incident. (Corrie was a pro-Palestinian activist who was run over by an IDF bulldozer in 2003). The group said that they cut through a fence at the Bureau’s training facility and lit the fires to strike a blow before police could respond to a pro-Palestine occupation at Portland State’s Millar Library — “raid them before they raid you.”

It’s important to note that people can claim responsibility for something they didn’t do in order to gain publicity for a cause. So we shouldn’t assume the claim is necessarily legitimate. But someone did apparently light the vehicles on fire. Portland police say they’re aware of the claim of responsibility but won’t comment beyond that.

A TPM Reader passed on to us this post from David Pozen writing at Balkinization on the recent events at Columbia University. But Pozen sets aside the specific controversy — Gaza, antisemitism, the use of the NYPD — to look at what is shows about university governance more generally. As he writes, “For all the talk of how the modern university has been corporatized, neoliberalized, and so on, there hasn’t been as much attention paid to the ways in which it has been presidentialized.” I don’t know enough about the history of the internal governance of universities over the last century to have a good feel for how much has changed on this front. My general sense is that boards of trustees, acting through university presidents, have always called the shots, at least in the final analysis. But there’s where ultimate power lies and there’s how government actually functions — how much university administration seeks to create consensus among major stakeholders versus acting in a more unilateral way. I’m still digesting what I think of the post but I wanted to flag it to your attention.

One thing that bedevils current polling on the 2024 presidential race are basic questions about just who will show up and what the electorate will look like. That’s always central to polling and it becomes much more central when the race is tight. (If it’s a 45-55 race the precise composition of the electorate becomes less important.) But take the new Ipsos/ABC News poll out today. The headlines that are running focus on the number for Adults — which are Trump +2. Go to registered voters and it’s Biden +2. Go to likely voters and it’s Biden +4.

It’s possible there have been other polls. But this one released by YouGov is the first I’ve seen since recent events at Columbia, UCLA and other colleges and universities around the country. It shows a very interesting picture — both that the protests are not very popular with the American public but also that — which of course we know — they’re highly complicated for Democratic candidates.

Kate is joined by HuffPost reporter Matt Shuham to talk about how the war in Gaza is refracting domestically, from college protests to presidential politics.

Belaboring The Point is now on YouTube! Check out the latest video episode of the podcast here.