When President Joe Biden called Mike Johnson Monday night to discuss the speaker’s complex plan for moving nearly $100 billion of foreign aid through the House, he shared serious doubts.

The president argued — as Democrats have for two months now — that it would be better for the House to take up the Senate-passed bill waiting in its hopper, according to a person familiar with the conversation. If Johnson did otherwise, Biden questioned whether the Senate could process it.

“If I do the same thing as the Senate bill, I know we can’t process it,” Johnson retorted, the person said. “This is the only way forward.”

So begins the trickiest moment of Johnson’s already messy speakership. He’s proposing the House take separate votes on Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan funding, plus other provisions such as turning some aid into loans, seizing Russian assets to help Ukraine and even forcing a TikTok sale. Whatever passes would then be knitted together and sent over to the Senate as a single package.

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LOS ANGELES — It appears, at first glance, that Democrats couldn’t have scripted it any better — their pathway to reclaiming the House runs straight through deep blue California, which is poised to back President Joe Biden by double digits.

Their Hollywood ending is far from certain.

The six fiercely competitive California districts key to flipping the chamber are a microcosm of the most pressing questions facing the party across the country — including whether their increasingly-wobbly coalition of Latino, Asian American, Black and young voters show up for them in November.

“It has been the rule of thumb that those constituencies help Democratic candidates more than Republican candidates,” said David Binder, a Democratic pollster. He expects that will still be the case in the fall — but the extent of that help is unclear.

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President Joe Biden’s campaign ramped up spending aggressively in March, flexing his cash advantage over former President Donald Trump with massive media buys.

Biden’s campaign spent $29.2 million in March alone, according to campaign finance records filed late Monday night. That’s more than four times the amount he spent in the previous month, when he dropped about $6.3 million.

His campaign still managed to add to its cash total, however, thanks to $43.8 million in new contributions, more than half of which came to the campaign through joint fundraising committees. He ended the month with $85 million cash on hand. Even Trump’s advisers have conceded they will have less money than Biden, while insisting they will have enough to compete. The bulk of the president’s spending last month came as advertising. His campaign spent $21.8 million on media buys and production, according to a POLITICO analysis of his campaign spending.

The president’s reelect launched an aggressive advertising campaign and national tour for a “month of action,” following the State of the Union in early March, as the president tries to close a persistent polling gap with his rival.

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President Joe Biden’s “ironclad” support for Israel following Iran’s weekend strike isn’t curtailing the U.S. pressure campaign on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protect civilians in Gaza, four Biden administration officials said.

The officials said the U.S. sees its military defense of Israel against Iran’s Saturday missile launches and drone attacks as completely separate from continuing negotiations over the Israel-Hamas war. Washington is still ready to rethink its support for Israel if it doesn’t do more to safeguard the enclave’s people while the war rages, they continued.

“They’re on different tracks,” said one of the four officials — a senior member of the administration. All were granted anonymity to detail a sensitive diplomatic and military matter.

Some analysts suggest Biden’s defense of Israel against Iran could give him the upper hand in tense negotiations with Netanyahu in the weeks ahead, particularly as disagreements remain over how to rid the border city of Rafah of Hamas’ remaining 3,000 fighters.

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The White House announced on Monday it would oppose a bill to fund Israel security if it did not include the president’s requests for aid to Taiwan and Ukraine.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby threw cold water on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to introduce a stand-alone bill funding Israel following the attacks from Iran over the weekend, saying it would not get President Joe Biden’s backing.

“We would oppose a stand-alone bill that would just work on Israel,” said Kirby.

The comments provide a clear signal to congressional Democrats that they should vote against the measure should it be brought to the floor. Already, the party had been urging Johnson to bring up the Senate bill that included all of President Biden’s national security supplemental request.

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The race for the White House and the battle for Congress are in full swing. And this week, campaigns up and down the ballot have to open up their books to reveal how they’re funding it.

As candidates shift from primary to general election mode, the resources they have will set the tone for the months ahead. The details of their war chests will be revealed this week, when the latest campaign finance reports are due to the Federal Election Commission. Reports due on Monday cover the first quarter of 2024 for congressional campaigns, joint fundraising committees and some super PACs. We’ll get our first look in a while at the financial situation for candidates in the pivotal House and Senate races likely to determine control of Congress this year.

And we’ll see the latest from former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden’s campaigns later this week, when their monthly totals for March are due on Saturday.

Here are some of the questions that will be answered in this week’s reports.

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Democrats from across the country are converging in Chicago this week to lay the groundwork for their upcoming convention, where they will nominate President Joe Biden and hope to avoid the kind of unrest that made this city notorious in the annals of political history.

Party leaders are quick to point out that they are unified at a time when the Republican National Convention has experienced upheaval, with Ronna McDaniel’s exit as party leader.

But Democrats have a juggling act as they plan a convention at the same time protesters are working to get front-and-center access to the United Center, though the demonstrations over the Israel-Gaza war are unlikely to match those over Vietnam in 1968.

Members of the Association of State Democratic Committees will get updates on convention planning, tour venues, including the United Center and McCormick Place, where daytime meetings will be held, and the eight hotels where their delegations will be staying, according to information shared with POLITICO ahead of their visit.

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President Joe Biden deliberately kept a low public profile following Iran's attacks against Israel over the weekend, hoping that his absence from the spotlight would help deescalate the situation.

White House aides on Sunday discussed the idea of Biden delivering a national address after Israel, in conjunction with U.S. forces, shot down the vast majority of the 300 drone and missile launches from Iran forces seeking to avenge the killing of senior paramilitary leaders.

But while scheduling was fluid, there were no immediate plans for Biden to address an American audience on the conflict in the Middle East, according to six officials, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal planning. Advisers assessed that a major presidential event, such as a televised address, would likely escalate the tensions and may provoke Tehran, two of the officials said.

“Putting the president behind the Resolute Desk turns up the temperature,” said one of those officials. “That’s something to ideally avoid.”

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The Biden administration’s main message for Israel following Iran’s aerial assault comes down to this: Stop and think.

U.S. officials expect Israel to respond in some fashion to Saturday’s strikes, but in both public and private ways they are taking steps they hope will convince Israel to choose a limited response as opposed to an all-out armed counter-attack.

The latter, they fear, will plunge the region into a major war. President Joe Biden in particular wants to avoid any battle that could drag in U.S. troops, and he’s made that clear to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We’re advising them to take a breath before responding,” said a U.S. official familiar with the Middle East, one of 10 people granted anonymity to freely discuss closed-door diplomacy. If Israel does respond, “it needs to be proportional and bring this cycle to an end.”

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Former President Donald Trump told supporters Saturday that Iran’s attack on Israel over the weekend “would not have happened if we were in office.” His former national security adviser says it was a ridiculous statement.

“I just think Trump is delusional on this point,” John Bolton said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It's a point that nobody can refute or confirm one way or the other. He doesn't have any idea what to do in the Middle East in this situation.”

At a rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, Trump said that both Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and the Iranian aerial attacks on Israel “would not have happened if we were in office,” casting blame on what he described as President Joe Biden’s “weakness” abroad. He has previously said that about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Trump has attempted to use Biden’s response to the fighting in the Middle East as a campaign cudgel, painting himself as a greater ally to Israel as the White House has increased pressure on Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to mitigate the impact of their attacks on civilians in Gaza.

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The White House defended the president's handling of the newly escalated conflict in the Middle East on Sunday, amid pressure on both sides of the aisle for Congress to finally pass supplemental aid for Israel.

“The president has been a man of his word. We said we're going to help Israel defend itself, and we've been doing that,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Sunday during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” In multiple TV appearances, Kirby also pushed for Congress to approve supplemental aid for Israel.

He was far from alone in that regard: Members of Congress from both parties pushed for additional international aid to be approved in the wake of Iranian drone strikes on Israel on Saturday — though Republicans and Democrats didn't necessarily agree on the details of what the bill ought to look like. Speaking to Fox News' Maria Bartiromo, House Speaker Mike Johnson said, "We've understood the urgency of this from the very beginning," before criticizing Democrats for rejecting a previous Israel-only bill.

The Senate in February approved a bill that would have bolstered aid to Israel and also provided assistance to Ukraine and Taiwan, but the legislation has been held up in the House, amid pressure from some Republican hardliners to drop aid to Ukraine. Saturday's attack on Israel — most of the hundreds of incoming drones and missiles were shot down — seemingly reset the discussion.

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Democrats are far more likely to say President Joe Biden needs to be harder on Israel than to say he’s pushed the Middle East ally too hard, according to a POLITICO-Morning Consult poll published Sunday.

All told, 33 percent of Democratic voters felt the president was “not tough enough on Israel" during the Gaza conflict while just 8 percent said he was being “too tough.” Taken together, those two groups were roughly equal in size to the 42 percentage of Democratic voters who said his approach was “just right.”

The numbers, which were part of a comprehensive examination of voter attitudes towards U.S.-Israel relations and the crisis in Gaza, paint a stark picture for the White House.

Republicans (12 percent) and Independents (19 percent) were far less inclined than Democrats to say that Biden was handing Israel “just right.”

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The fractious, sometimes violent debate over the Israel-Hamas war on college campuses has not cooled, even as the conflict enters its sixth month. College administrators have struggled to figure out the right balance between some students’ rights to free speech and others’ rights to be protected from discrimination and harassment.

That debate erupted at UC Berkeley this week when a dinner for graduating students held at the home of law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky devolved into a heated confrontation when a Muslim student disrupted the event to make a pro-Palestinian speech and was physically confronted by Chemerinsky's wife, Catherine Fisk. A fierce fight about freedom of speech — and accusations of anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish bias — quickly followed.

The debate at Berkeley is particularly notable since the campus was the birthplace of the student Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. The crown jewel of the University of California system is now under investigation by both the federal Department of Education and House Republicans about its on-campus antisemitism.

One of the administrators navigating this crisis is John A. Pérez, who sits on the Board of Regents for the University of California, the governing body of the sprawling 10 campus public university system that has nearly 300,000 students. Pérez, who attended Berkeley as an undergraduate, is used to the political spotlight, having served for four years as the state’s Assembly speaker. In an interview, Pérez told POLITICO that the student protest at Chemerinsky’s home crossed a line and described how campus leaders can do more to push back on what he sees as a dangerous surge in campus antisemitism.

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Donald Trump blamed both Iran’s strike on Israel and his looming hush money trial in New York on Democrats on Saturday, casting himself in opposition to “menacing forces and vicious opponents” as he enters an unprecedented, weeks-long legal chapter of his presidential campaign.

Once again, on everything from Israel to criminal justice to immigration and inflation, Trump sought to put himself at the center of events at home and abroad, portraying his reelection as a cure-all solution.

And his remarks — following a flurry of social media rants testing the limits of a gag order in the New York case — served as a preview of the pugilistic approach he is all but certain to take to the trial.

“They want to take away my constitutional right to talk,” Trump said Saturday, calling the judge in the case “crooked” and the proceedings a “Communist show trial.”

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Iran has made good on its threat to retaliate against a deadly strike on its consulate in Syria with a large aerial strike against Israel on Saturday.

The drone and missile strikes could spark a major escalation of fighting in the Middle East amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Here are some details about the attack and the response by Israel’s allies.

How big of an attack was this?
For weeks, Iranian leaders have vowed they would avenge the deaths of two top Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders who were killed in an airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, on Apr. 1.

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President Joe Biden on Saturday condemned Iranian attacks on the state of Israel and said he would convene fellow world leaders in the day ahead to coordinate a response.

In a statement issued after he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said that, in conjunction with U.S. forces, Israel was able to “take down” nearly all “the incoming drones and missiles" launched by Iran “and its proxies operating out of Yemen, Syria and Iraq.”

Biden reaffirmed “America’s ironclad commitment to the security of Israel” and said that coordination would continue.

“My team will engage with their counterparts across the region,” Biden’s statement read. “And we will stay in close touch with Israel’s leaders. And while we have not seen attacks on our forces or facilities today, we will remain vigilant to all threats and will not hesitate to take all necessary action to protect our people.”

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A majority of voters believe former President Donald Trump has committed “serious federal crimes,” according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.

Fifty-three percent of likely voters said they believe this, while 39 percent of those surveyed said they did not believe that Trump committed serious crimes. Nine percent said they didn’t know or didn’t answer the question.

The numbers broken down by party affiliation show that 90 percent of Democrats believe he has committed serious crimes, while 17 percent of Republicans fall in this category. Forty-nine percent of independents shared this sentiment.

The new poll comes as jury selection will begin in Trump’s New York trial on Monday, setting the stage for an unprecedented presidential race. In what will be the first time a former U.S. president has gone to criminal trial, the next couple of months will place into focus the long-anticipated clash of Trump’s legal perils with his push to win back the White House. The former president is set to hold a rally in Pennsylvania Saturday evening, the last before court will hamper his ability to be on the campaign trail.

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President Joe Biden is closing in on Donald Trump’s early polling advantage, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released Saturday.

While Trump sustained a four-point lead over Biden in February, the two candidates are now nearly neck-and-neck, with Trump polling at 47 percent among likely voters and Biden at 46 percent.

The poll reflects a narrowing of the contest in the leadup to the November election as the candidates face a dramatically polarized electorate.

Biden’s bump up from February’s poll likely indicates a consolidation of the Democratic base. While in February, only 85 percent of Biden’s 2020 voters said they would vote to reelect the president, according to Saturday’s poll, that number has jumped to 90 percent.

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