After watching Israel flatten much of Gaza, President Joe Biden decided to draw the line at the city of Rafah. Now, he has to decide what to do if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu crosses it.

The president quietly directed his team last week to halt shipments of massive bombs to Israel to “deliver a message” to Netanyahu that no operation should move forward without a civilian protection plan in place, a U.S. official said.

Then, after Netanyahu moved forward with a push into Rafah, Biden gave a primetime interview Wednesday in which he vowed not to send Israel more of the large bombs and artillery shells it would likely use for a major assault on a city with more than a million Palestinians.

The administration is hoping that the threat is enough to stop a large-scale invasion of Rafah from happening, even as it continues to struggle to explain what, exactly, crosses their red line. Officials say they don't want Israel to launch an operation that could further destroy infrastructure and send more civilians fleeing for safety, but they’ve consistently referenced being open to smaller, more-targeted missions in the southern Gaza city.

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A federal judge in Delaware denied Hunter Biden’s bid to throw out his felony gun charges on Thursday, rejecting arguments from the president’s son that the federal prohibition on owning guns while using illegal drugs is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

Separately, a federal appeals court panel ruled against Biden earlier Thursday in another bid to have the charges against him tossed. The two decisions appear to clear the way for his case to head to trial on June 3, though his defense team can still pursue further appeals.

Last year, Biden was charged with illegally buying a gun while using illegal drugs and with lying on a government form about his drug use when he made the purchase –– two separate criminal charges. Special counsel David Weiss alleges that Biden bought a gun in October 2018, a time when he was frequently using crack cocaine. Biden has spoken publicly about his struggles with drug addiction.

Federal law bars people who use illegal drugs from buying guns. Biden’s team, however, argued in court that this ban violates the Second Amendment. They pointed to a recent Supreme Court decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which constrained the government’s power to regulate gun ownership.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson said he hoped President Joe Biden was having a "senior moment" when he declared he would withhold weapons from Israel if it proceeded with a planned invasion of Rafah.

On Thursday, administration officials made clear the president meant every word.

The White House said Biden could finally threaten Israel ahead of the possible invasion because Hamas has been significantly degraded over seven months of fighting. Biden’s announcement was the clearest conditioning of aid since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza and it immediately sparked outrage from some Republicans who accused the president of going back on his word and suddenly abandoning a long-held ally.

But Biden administration officials said Biden’s antipathy toward a large-scale Rafah invasion has been consistent for months, and he now has the space to withhold bombs and artillery because Hamas doesn’t pose as big a threat.

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Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday he felt betrayed by President Joe Biden after learning that he is willing to withhold offensive weapons to Israel and accused the president of reneging on the deal they made to pass aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan last month.

Johnson also said he hoped that Biden’s threat to cut off American weapons, made in a CNN interview, was “a senior moment.” And he revealed that even before that, he had privately reached out to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fact-check reports that weapons were being delayed to send a political message, contrary to what Biden administration officials had told him.

The speaker reacted just moments after he learned about Biden’s comments during an exclusive hour-plus interview with POLITICO Wednesday night. The sitdown also came just hours after Johnson survived an attempt at a parliamentary coup by a far-right faction of House Republicans who said Johnson “aided and abetted the Democrats and the Biden administration in destroying our country.”

The speaker was in a buoyant mood after defeating the attempted putsch as he sat in his Capitol office suite beneath an enormous painting of Ronald Reagan. In a wide-ranging conversation for a forthcoming episode of the Playbook Deep Dive podcast, he touched on topics that included his relationships with Biden and former President Donald Trump, the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and the future of democracy.

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President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he would halt shipments of bombs and other munitions to Israel if it launched a major military invasion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The warning comes as Israeli forces appeared poised to conduct more operations in the densely packed city of 1.7 million despite repeated warnings not to do so by the U.S. government.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone in Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities — that deal with that problem,” Biden said in an interview on CNN.

The statement was the clearest conditioning of aid that the administration has made since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza. And it sent immediate ripples through national politics, with conservatives accusing the president of abandoning a long-held ally and some liberals hailing the pronouncement.

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The U.S. oil industry is drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term, according to energy executives with direct knowledge of the work.

The effort stems from the industry’s skepticism that the Trump campaign will be able to focus on energy issues as Election Day draws closer — and worries that the former president is too distracted to prepare a quick reversal of the Biden administration’s green policies. Oil executives also worry that a second Trump administration won’t attract staff skillful enough to roll back President Joe Biden’s regulations or craft new ones favoring the industry, these people added.

Six energy industry lawyers and lobbyists interviewed by POLITICO described the effort to craft executive orders and other policy paperwork that they see as more effective than anything a second Trump administration could devise on its own. Those include a quick reversal of Biden’s pause on new natural gas export permits and preparations for wider and cheaper access to federal lands and waters for drilling.

The initiative is just one example of the efforts underway from multiple advocacy groups with strong policy agendas — including abortion-rights opponents — to fill in the gaps for Trump’s potential return to the White House. The presumptive Republican nominee has been a vocal supporter of the oil and gas industry, but the companies often chafed at the effects of his policies as president, including his trade wars and the legal challenges that thwarted some of his pro-fossil-fuel actions.

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Israel’s ambassador to the United States sent a stinging letter to nearly 90 lawmakers Wednesday, blasting them for accusing Israel of purposefully withholding humanitarian aid from Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians.

Eighty-eight House Democrats wrote to President Joe Biden last week, arguing that Israel had kept food, water, medicine and other provisions from reaching Palestinians in need. That would violate a law prohibiting the delivery of security assistance to a country that restricts humanitarian aid, calling into question commitments Israel gave the U.S. that it would not violate human rights with U.S.-provided weapons. As a result, the Biden administration should at least think twice before delivering more offensive arms to Israel, the lawmakers recommended.

Michael Herzog, Israel’s envoy in Washington, sent an identical letter to all 88 representatives to convey his disappointment in their position.

“At no point during the war has Israel had a policy of deliberately withholding humanitarian aid from entering Gaza,” he wrote in the message to lawmakers that POLITICO obtained. “There are no arbitrary restrictions on the flow of humanitarian goods into Gaza.”

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President Joe Biden on Wednesday cast a major new investment in battleground Wisconsin as emblematic of the nation's economic comeback. But the main thrust of his address wasn’t so much to boast about the current climate as it was an attempt to contrast it with his predecessor’s record.

Time and again, Biden took aim at former President Donald Trump, casting him as someone who talked but didn’t deliver. Even the setting of the speech itself was meant to deliver the point: Biden was highlighting a new Microsoft data center that would be built on grounds where then-President Trump announced that Foxconn would build a $10 billion factory for making LCD panels. That plant was never built, even after the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer received millions in subsidies and bulldozed homes and farms to build the factory.

“He promised a $10 billion investment by Foxconn. He came with your senator, Ron Johnson, with a golden shovel and didn’t build a damn thing,” Biden said. “They dug a hole with those golden shovels and then they fell into it.”

In turning the spotlight on to Trump’s shortcomings, Biden was trying to close a persistent polling disconnect that has harmed his reelection campaign: Many voters perceive that his predecessor’s record was more robust than his. A new Politico-Morning Consult poll showed that 37 percent of voters believe Trump “has done more to promote infrastructure improvements and job creation,” compared to 40 percent who said the same for Biden. Trump never passed infrastructure legislation, while Biden did.

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Joe Biden’s campaign is dropping another multi-million dollar ad campaign this month and building out its infrastructure in battleground states in hopes of taking advantage of a period of the campaign with Donald Trump largely stuck off the trail.

The president’s team announced on Wednesday that it would be making an additional $14 million in ad spending for May. It will also be hiring more staff — bringing its total to 500 — and open its 200th office by the end of the month. The steady drumbeat of campaign activity will continue as well. Biden heads to Wisconsin this week, followed by stops in Atlanta for a commencement address at Morehouse College and in Detroit to headline the NAACP dinner next week.

All told, the announcements, coming six months out from Election Day, signal that the Biden team is still banking on a traditional campaign strategy of trying to reach voters through a physical footprint and television ads. It is a stark contrast to his opponent, former President Trump, who has spent much of the past few weeks in a New York City courthouse and has attempted to use his ongoing criminal hush money trial to keep his base ginned up.

On a call with reporters, Biden principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks compared the campaign’s efforts with Trump’s campaign, whose “battleground presence is as non-existent as his paid media effort,” he said.

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President Joe Biden’s $1.6 trillion effort to green the economy, rebuild infrastructure and return manufacturing to the U.S. is facing a potentially devastating threat in the 2024 election.

POLITICO’s monthslong examination of Biden's four biggest legislative achievements found that they have spurred action across the government, including a stream of announcements by federal agencies and private companies about plans to deploy billions of dollars.

But the actual federal spending to date is considerably smaller than the amounts Biden and his agency heads have announced. Much of the country has yet to feel the full impact of this money, in part because of the time it takes to move so much spending through the machinery of government.

Looming over the initiatives is the possibility that November’s election could bring a second term for former President Donald Trump, who could try to undo much of Biden’s legacy.

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Voters say they don’t know very much about President Joe Biden’s major domestic spending initiatives. They don’t think they’re working. And they don’t give him credit for their benefits, anyway.

Those are among the key takeaways from a new POLITICO-Morning Consult poll about four major laws passed in the first two years of Biden’s administration — and the impact that spending has had on voters and the communities around them.

Of the four laws passed in 2021 or 2022, only Biden’s climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, garnered a majority of poll respondents who said they’d heard “a lot” or even “some” about it. Few voters said the clean energy and infrastructure projects that Biden is championing have had a major impact in their communities or increased jobs.

Voters even give former President Donald Trump almost as much credit as Biden for advancing infrastructure spending — even though Trump’s succession of accomplishment-free “Infrastructure Weeks” became a running joke during his administration.

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The Biden administration says it has been “clear” on what kind of Rafah invasion is acceptable. Israel’s counterterrorism mission into the southern Gaza city has blurred those lines.

Three administration officials said Israel’s Monday night campaign into eastern Rafah, which came hours after an evacuation order for 100,000 people, has the United States “concerned.” But they then stress the operation has fallen short of the major ground invasion the White House has warned against, one that would put the 1.4 million Palestinians in the line of fire.

“This is not what we’ve been worried about,” said one of the officials, like others granted anonymity to detail sensitive internal thinking. All three said that no review of U.S. Israel policy is happening now.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby later told reporters “this is an operation of limited scope, scale and duration,” noting the U.S. would “be watching this one very, very closely.”

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A U.S. soldier who is detained in Russia on charges of theft had traveled there through China, and did not get U.S. government approval for his travel plans, according to an Army spokesperson.

Staff Sgt. Gordon Black was most recently stationed at Camp Humphreys, South Korea. He processed out of Eighth Army on April 10, and told his superiors he was heading to Fort Cavazos, Texas, Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith said in a statement.

But instead of returning immediately to the U.S., Black flew from Incheon, South Korea, through China to Vladivostok, Russia, for “personal reasons,” Smith said.

“Black did not request official clearance and [the Defense Department] did not authorize his travel to China and Russia. Official and leave travel is currently restricted pursuant to the DoD Foreign Clearance Guide,” Smith said.

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President Joe Biden on Tuesday warned of a “ferocious” surge of antisemitism in America and around the world, in comments that both called out the violent excesses of pro-Palestinian campus protest and reaffirmed the U.S. alliance with Israel.

“On college campuses, Jewish students [have been] blocked, harassed, attacked, while walking to class,” Biden declared. “Antisemitism, antisemitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and Oct. 7... It is absolutely despicable, and it must stop.”

The address by Biden, delivered in the U.S. Capitol in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, comes as he is managing a series of crises, with protests rattling college campuses and Israel appearing ready to forge ahead with a planned Rafah invasion.

Biden’s remarks were delivered in the form of a clarion call to Americans over the direction of the current debate around the Israel-Hamas war. Dressed in a navy blue suit with world flags draped behind him, he connected the horrors of World War II, with Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 and the current rise of antisemitism. A solemn crowd of Holocaust survivors, families and lawmakers sat before him in the softly lit hall, giving him sustained applause when he was introduced and at various points in his address.

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