Playbook PM: Blinken tries to land a cease-fire

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THE CATCH-UP

MIDDLE EAST LATEST — Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN is on a difficult mission to the Middle East this week, as he tries to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a cease-fire and hostage release deal that would end the devastation in Gaza, at least for a while.

The Biden administration’s immediate goal is to stave off an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah, to which a large percentage of Palestinians have been displaced, WSJ’s Michael Gordon and Stephen Kalin report from Riyadh. U.S. officials hope a pause in the war could pave the way for talks to create a more durable peace.

Negotiations could restart as soon as tomorrow — and they’re largely seen as an uphill battle for the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and others to get the two sides to agree to a deal. But Israel has reduced its demands from 40 hostages released to 33, NYT’s Patrick Kingsley and Adam Rasgon report. Though that partially reflects the recognition that some hostages may have died, the shift amounts to “a hint of hope,” and “has raised expectations that Hamas and Israel might be edging closer” to a pause.

Blinken called Israel’s proposal “extraordinarily, extraordinarily generous” and implored Hamas to accept it. “They have to decide, and they have to decide quickly,” he said, per Reuters’ Humeyra Pamuk, Alexander Cornwell and Pesha Magid. The U.K. echoed Blinken’s urging. He also expressed confidence that a Saudi-Israeli normalization of ties is close to reality (though it’s not clear if Riyadh shares that perspective). At the same time, Blinken warned again that the U.S. wouldn’t support an Israeli operation in Rafah unless it took serious steps to keep civilians safe, with more than 34,000 Palestinians already killed in the war.

Could the International Criminal Court throw a wrench in the works? The U.S. and other supporters of Israel worry that potential ICC arrest warrants against Israeli officials could derail the delicate negotiations, Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs, Alberto Nardelli and Alex Wickham scooped. The U.S., which is no longer a party to the ICC, opposes this probe, and other countries are privately warning the court that its actions could repel Israel from a deal.

Meanwhile, U.S. efforts to get aid into Gaza continue. The Pentagon said today that the U.S. will spend about $320 million on the floating pier the military is building, per CNN’s Natasha Bertrand.

And stateside tensions over the war aren’t abating. Even as the likes of Rep. RO KHANNA (D-Calif.) try to convince young progressives to vote for President JOE BIDEN, as WaPo’s Theo Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell capture in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, major pro-Palestinian protests continue on college campuses.

At Columbia, the most prominent site, university president MINOUCHE SHAFIK announced today that the school had failed to reach an agreement with student demonstrators and would not “divest from Israel,” the Columbia Daily Spectator’s Noah Bernstein and Sarah Huddleston report. Instead, administrators are warning that students in the encampment need to disperse by 2 p.m. today or face suspension. And though most of the protests around the country are peaceful, Republicans spy an opening to criticize campus chaos under Biden, WaPo’s Yasmeen Abutaleb, Patrick Svitek and Maegan Vazquez report.

FUN A-HED — “House Republicans’ Bench Thins — Yet Daredevils Can’t Quit Skydiving,” by WSJ’s Katy Stech Ferek, who features Rep. RUDY YAKYM (R-Ind.) skydiving, Rep. MICHAEL WALTZ (R-Fla.) scuba diving in the “shark bite capital of the world,” Rep. RICH McCORMICK (R-Ga.) parachuting onto the beaches of Normandy and … Rep. BOB LATTA (R-Ohio) playing pickleball.

Good Monday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at [email protected].

DIAMONDS AND COLE — Jonathan Martin writes in: Leave it to Rep. TOM COLE (R-Okla.) to unite the clans. For at least one night, the old guard and today’s GOP are coming together to raise money for the new House Appropriations chair.

Nearly every RNC chair for the last 30 years is co-hosting a dinner fundraiser at Charlie Palmer’s. It’s a list that includes HALEY BARBOUR and JIM NICHOLSON as well as Trump devotees like REINCE PRIEBUS and Trump skeptics like KEN MEHLMAN.

The dinner was to be tonight, but had to be postponed because of the Oklahoma storms.

Longtime lobbyist RICK HOHLT spearheaded planning for the $1,500 per-person dinner, which also features former senator and appropriator ROY BLUNT, lobbyists ROBBIE AIKEN, JEFF MILLER, DEBBIE HOHLT and, of course, NEWT GINGRICH. The invite

FOR YOUR RADAR — One America News announced that it has fully retracted an article it published last month that falsely claimed MICHAEL AVENATTI had accused MICHAEL COHEN of having an affair with STORMY DANIELS, none of which was true.

9 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

1. KARI THAT WEIGHT: Despite their tightly aligned politics, DONALD TRUMP is starting to keep his distance from Arizona GOP Senate contender KARI LAKE, worried that she could be a drag on his election prospects in the state, WaPo’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Josh Dawsey and Liz Goodwin report. Behind the scenes, he fears that she may not be able to win this year after she narrowly lost the gubernatorial race in 2022 and has been embroiled in other intraparty spats. She’s all but off the list of VP contenders. And he’s become annoyed at how often she’s at Mar-a-Lago instead of campaigning.

The stakes are high in Arizona, a state that seems to combine almost all the big issues of the election, NYT’s Jack Healy, Kellen Browning and Michael Wines report: a pitched fight over abortion, crisis at the border, charges over 2020 election subversion, massive semiconductor investments, inflation and high housing costs, major population growth and demographic change. “Everything is up for grabs.”

2. KNOWING THE INTERIOR SECRETARY: “Deb Haaland Confronts the History of the Federal Agency She Leads,” by The New Yorker’s Casey Cep: “In the long, tragic saga of this country’s relations with its first peoples, almost no federal entity has been more culpable than Interior. … In taking over the department, [DEB] HAALAND, like all her predecessors, was tasked with overseeing one of the most diverse and unruly agencies in the federal government, so sprawling that it is sometimes called the Department of Everything Else. She has also embraced a possibly impossible challenge: not only running the Department of the Interior but redeeming it. … ‘[I]t’s like I’m here because the ancestors felt it was necessary.’”

3. WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE: A big new investigation from WaPo’s Greg Miller, Gerry Shih and Ellen Nakashima pries open the Indian assassination plot that targeted a critic of PM NARENDRA MODI in the U.S. last year. They reveal the identity of Indian spy officer VIKRAM YADAV, who sent a hit team instructions to kill GURPATWANT SINGH PANNUN. Those details “provide the most explicit evidence to date that the assassination plan — ultimately thwarted by U.S. authorities — was directed from within the Indian spy service.” The U.S. believes that the agency’s leader signed off on the scheme and that Modi’s inner circle was aware, though there’s no smoking gun for the latter.

Though the West was shocked by the brazenness of trying to execute an assassination on U.S. soil, a brash India sees itself as a force on the world stage that Washington can’t boss around, the Post writes. Says one Western security official: “They knew they could get away with it.” But the U.S. is still trying to keep New Delhi close: The Biden administration forewarned Modi’s government that the Post would publish this story without telling the newspaper.

4. AD IT UP: “Koch Group Attacks Biden on the Economy, Hoping to Engage Latino Voters,” by NYT’s Jazmine Ulloa: “Libre, part of the political network created by the billionaire industrialist KOCH brothers, on Monday will unveil a seven-figure voter engagement effort and ad campaign targeting members of Congress who have supported what it calls President Biden’s ‘punitive economic policies.’ The campaign, one of the most expansive undertaken by the group, will include digital ads, public events at Hispanic grocery stores and restaurants and a new Spanish language website criticizing ‘Bidenomics.’”

5. THE NEW SECTARIANISM: As Americans grow increasingly divided by not just their opinions but their perceptions of reality, NBC’s Ben Kamisar has illuminating details from a new poll on where voters get their news. Biden has a notable advantage among registered voters who still rely on traditional news sources (newspapers, TV), while Trump has a massive lead — 53 percent to 27 percent — among the uninformed, who don’t follow political news at all. The tossup category is people who get their news mainly from digital and social media: Trump has a narrow 3-point edge among this group.

6. MUSK READ: “Supreme Court Rejects Musk’s ‘Twitter Sitter’ Appeal in SEC Win,” by Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr: “The US Supreme Court rejected an appeal from ELON MUSK in his ‘Twitter sitter’ case, leaving intact his agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to have an in-house lawyer pre-approve his social media posts about Tesla Inc.”

7. SPY GAMES: Republican privacy hawks may have lost the vote on reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but many of them are eyeing 2026 as an opportunity for a big win, Jordain Carney and John Sakellariadis report. They forced Speaker MIKE JOHNSON to compromise and slash the reauthorization from five years to two. And especially if Trump is president again, Hill leaders like Rep. JIM JORDAN (R-Ohio) want to achieve major reforms to restrict government wiretapping — including reviving their near-miss effort to force intelligence officials to get a warrant if their surveillance of foreign people sweeps up Americans’ communications.

8. JURISPRUDENCE MEGATREND: “How ‘History and Tradition’ Rulings Are Changing American Law,” by the NYT Magazine’s Emily Bazelon: “Known as the ‘history and tradition’ test, the legal standard has been recently adopted by the court’s conservative majority to allow judges to set aside modern developments in the law to restore the precedents of the distant past. … [Liberal critics say the] open-ended nature of the terms seemed to invite a freewheeling survey of the 18th and 19th centuries. … Conservatives, meanwhile, had their own furious debate. For them, a central question was whether the Supreme Court’s conservative majority was deviating from originalism.”

PLAYBOOKERS

Jon Stewart is going to the conventions.

Gianni Infantino is coming to the Hill for the first time.

George Santos is dipping back into drag.

Pete Buttigieg took the bus.

Drew Barrymore told Kamala Harris that “we need a Mamala for the country.”

BOOK CLUB — Former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is penning a new book, “Risks and Returns: Creating Success in Business and Life,” due to come out Sept. 10 from Regnery.

OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at the Mosaic brunch reception yesterday morning, hosted by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Stefanie Brown James at the Patterson: Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), Michael Ealy, April Ryan, Jessica Mackler, Michael Reed and Keenan Austin Reed, Chanelle Hardy, Judith Browne Dianis, Maya Wiley, Jess O’Connell, A’shanti Gholar, Joshua and Michelle Dubois, Erica Loewe, Alix Dejean, Ashley Allison, Karen Finney, Alencia Johnson, Ben Branch, Jotaka Eaddy, Trisch Smith, Daria Dawson, Heather Foster and Hope Goins.

MEDIA MOVES — The CBS Evening News is adding Carolyn Cremen as a senior broadcast producer in New York and Avery Miller as a senior producer in D.C. Cremen previously was at CNN. Miller previously was a senior editorial producer for “Face the Nation.” … Tim Marchman is now director of science, politics and security at Wired. He most recently was at Front Office Sports, and is a Vice and Gizmodo Media alum.

TRANSITIONS — Anne Rancourt is the new director of the Office of Health Communication and Education at the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. She previously was comms director at the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse. … Weadé James is joining the Center for American Progress as senior director of K-12 policy, supporting the Education Department. She most recently was VP of organizational advancement for the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

WEEKEND WEDDING — Russ Read, air programs manager at the National Guard Association of the United States and a Scott Franklin alum, and Hannah Flanders, a clinical program coordinator at Inova Fairfax hospital, got married in Alexandria over the weekend. Pic … Another pic

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