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      What to Know About the Latest Gaza Cease-Fire Proposal

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      President Biden raised hopes last week when he endorsed a plan that he said could lead to a “cessation of hostilities permanently.” He said Israel had put forward the plan, but neither Israel nor Hamas has said definitively that they would accept or reject the proposal, and they appear to still be locked in disagreement over fundamental issues.Here’s a look at what is known about the cease-fire deal, which key points still must be negotiated, and the hurdles still ahead:What’s in the plan?Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire in November that lasted for a week. But the proposal now on the table — as laid out by Mr. Biden, a senior U.S. administration official and Israeli officials — is more ambitious. Major issues remain unresolved, including whether Hamas would remain in control of the Gaza Strip.The proposal would unfold in three phases.In phase one, among other things, Israel would withdraw from population centers in Gaza during a six-week cease-fire, and dozens of women and elderly hostages held in Gaza by Hamas and its allies would be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.During that time, talks over a permanent cease-fire would continue, and if successful, the deal would enter phase two, with the full withdrawal of Israel’s military from the enclave. All hostages and more Palestinian prisoners would be freed. Under phase three, Hamas would return the bodies of hostages who had died, and a three- to five-year reconstruction period, backed by the United States, European countries and international institutions, would begin.Near a rally on Wednesday in Tel Aviv for hostages who were kidnapped during the Oct. 7 attack.Marko Djurica/ReutersWhat are Israel’s concerns?One of the key gaps between Hamas and Israel over the plan is the length of the cease-fire and the future role of Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Monday that he was open to a six-week cease-fire, according to a person who attended a closed-door meeting he held with Israeli lawmakers. But publicly he has said that Israel will fight until Hamas’s governing and military capabilities are destroyed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hunter Biden’s Trial: A Routine Gun Case, but Abnormal in Every Way

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      At Hunter Biden’s trial, he listened with the jury to his own voice on the audio version of his memoir. “We’ve all been inside rooms we can’t afford to die in,’’ he heard himself say.When the federal prosecutor, Derek Hines, began his opening statement with the words “no man is above the law,” it signified the only rhetorical acknowledgment to the jury that the trial of Hunter Biden was not an ordinary gun charge.Mr. Hines seemed intent on trying a seemingly run-of-the-mill case of a drug addict charged with illegally purchasing a firearm. In doing so, however, it was as if he had instructed the 12 jurors, in the manner of the wizard in “The Wizard of Oz,” to pay no attention to the extraordinary spectacle plainly in view.Pay no attention to the defendant’s last name, the most famous one in Wilmington. Pay no attention to the first lady, Jill Biden, sitting in the front row behind the defendant, whom she raised as her own son. Pay no attention to Mr. Biden’s famous attorney, Abbe Lowell, or to the millionaire Hollywood lawyer also in the front row, Kevin Morris, who is largely bankrolling his friend Mr. Biden’s legal defense.And pay no attention to the 50 or so members of the media taking up most of the spectator space — among them a documentary film team paid for by Mr. Morris.The 12 jurors were left to deduce these matters on their own. Several of them stole glances at the defendant, as if trying to square the image of the 54-year-old man in the dark suit, flag lapel pin and tortoiseshell reading glasses with the crack addict described in the testimony. At one point, Mr. Biden flashed a genetically familiar broad smile while talking to Mr. Lowell during a courtroom break.For the most part, however, the defendant looked the somber part of a man facing up to 25 years in prison. He sat impassively, listening along with the jury to his own voice reciting the audio version of his memoir, “Beautiful Things,” including the observation, “We’ve all been inside rooms we can’t afford to die in.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Goes After Trump’s Felon Status at Connecticut Fund-Raiser

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      Democrats had been clamoring for the president to ratchet up his criticism of his predecessor.President Biden, prodded by Democrats to confront former President Donald J. Trump head-on about Mr. Trump’s criminal conviction in his New York hush-money case, heeded those calls on Monday night during a big-dollar fund-raiser in Connecticut for his re-election campaign and for the party.Mr. Biden railed against his rival at a reception in Greenwich, telling a group of supporters who included Connecticut’s governor and its two sitting U.S. senators that the campaign had entered “unchartered territory” when a jury on Thursday found Mr. Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts that he had been facing.He said Mr. Trump had cemented the distinction of being the first former president and convicted felon to seek the Oval Office.“But as disturbing as that is, more damaging is the all-out assault Donald Trump is making on the American system of justice,” Mr. Biden said, according to a pool reporter covering the event.Mr. Biden called Mr. Trump “unhinged” and said he was undermining another democratic institution with his vitriol after the verdict.“It’s reckless and dangerous for anyone to say that’s rigged just because they don’t like the outcome,” he said.A spokesman for the Trump campaign, responding to a request for comment on Monday night, attacked Mr. Biden in a statement and said the president was trying to divert attention from the federal gun charge trial of his son, Hunter, that opened on Monday.Mr. Biden’s bluster at the reception, hosted by Richard Plepler, the former chief executive of HBO, was a notable shift in his approach to Mr. Trump’s conviction by a Manhattan jury.When asked on Friday by reporters at the White House about the verdict, Mr. Biden grinned and walked away silently after making remarks about the war in Gaza. His reluctance to weigh in on the issue tracked with his general strategy to avoid personally engaging Mr. Trump about his legal woes.Mr. Biden’s remarks at the fund-raiser echoed portions of a televised statement at the White House on Friday before he outlined his administration’s latest efforts to end the war between Israel and Hamas. Still, Democrats had called for him to be more aggressive.Mr. Trump’s offender status was not the only line of attack for Mr. Biden during the fund-raiser.Mr. Biden brought up the time when Mr. Trump suggested during a White House coronavirus briefing four years ago that bleach could be used to treat the disease, medical advice that was instantly debunked.“He must have injected it into his brain,” Mr. Biden said, according to a pool report. More

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      Biden Expected to Sign Executive Order Restricting Asylum

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      The move, expected on Tuesday, would allow the president to temporarily seal the border and suspend longtime protections for asylum seekers in the United States.President Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Tuesday allowing him to temporarily seal the U.S. border with Mexico to migrants when crossings surge, a move that would suspend longtime protections for asylum seekers in the United States.Mr. Biden’s senior aides have briefed members of Congress in recent days on the forthcoming action and told them to expect the president to sign the order alongside mayors from South Texas, according to several people familiar with the plans.“I’ve been briefed on the pending executive order,” said Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas who previously criticized Mr. Biden for not bolstering enforcement at the border earlier in his presidency. “I certainly support it because I’ve been advocating for these measures for years. While the order is yet to be released, I am supportive of the details provided to me thus far.”The order would represent the single most restrictive border policy instituted by Mr. Biden, or any modern Democrat, and echoes a 2018 effort by President Donald J. Trump to block migration that was assailed by Democrats and blocked by federal courts.Although the executive action is almost certain to face legal challenges, Mr. Biden is under intense political pressure to address illegal migration, a top concern of voters ahead of the presidential election this year.The decision shows how the politics of immigration have tilted sharply to the right over the course of Mr. Biden’s presidency. Polls suggest growing support, even inside the president’s party, for border measures that once Democrats denounced and Mr. Trump championed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Harder Line on Immigration Appears to Resonate With Many Americans

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      As the 2024 presidential election ramps up, here is what polls say about public views on the growing number of migrants.Former President Donald J. Trump has described his plans to remove large numbers of unauthorized immigrants from the country if elected to a second term by citing the mass deportations under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s.In that initiative, federal agents and law enforcement officers used military techniques such as sweeps, raids and surveillance checkpoints — as well as a blunt form of racial profiling — to round up undocumented workers and load them onto buses and boats. As many as 1.3 million people were expelled, mostly Mexican and Mexican American workers, some of whom were U.S. citizens. Critical to the initiative — named Operation Wetback, for the racial slur — was intense anti-immigrant sentiment. Officials at the time used that sentiment to justify family separations and overcrowded and unsanitary detention conditions — practices that the Trump administration would deploy decades later in its own immigration enforcement.As the 2024 presidential election heats up, some Latino advocacy and immigrant-rights groups are sounding the alarm that Mr. Trump’s tactics could amount to a repetition of a sordid chapter of American history. But recent polling shows that Mr. Trump’s position on immigration appears to be resonating. About half of Americans have said they would support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a CNN poll conducted by the research firm SSRS in January. Authorities have reported record numbers of migrant apprehensions at the southern border for three straight years, including 2.4 million apprehensions in the fiscal year that ended in September 2023. Although the numbers have dropped sharply in recent months, immigration remains an albatross for President Biden: Even some Democratic mayors have complained that they need help from the federal government to contend with the migrant populations in their cities.Americans’ views on immigration are complex and constantly changing. Here is a snapshot of where public attitudes on immigration stand now.Public support for more immigration has ebbed after rising under Trump.Mr. Trump’s restrictive approach to immigration, both legal and illegal, helped push Americans of various political stripes to support more permissive policies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Biden’s Push for Truce, Netanyahu Calls Israel’s War Plans Unchanged

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      The timing of the remarks seemed to rebuff the president’s hopes for a speedy end to the war. But some analysts said the prime minister was aiming at domestic supporters, not the White House. A day after President Biden called on Israel and Hamas to reach a truce, declaring that it was “time for this war to end,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday reiterated that Israel would not agree to a permanent cease-fire in Gaza as long as Hamas still retains governing and military power.In his statement, Mr. Netanyahu did not explicitly endorse or reject a proposed cease-fire plan that Mr. Biden had laid out in an unusually detailed address on Friday. Two Israeli officials confirmed that Mr. Biden’s proposal matched an Israeli cease-fire proposal that had been greenlit by Israel’s war cabinet. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.But the timing of Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks, coming first thing the next morning, seemed to put the brakes on Mr. Biden’s hopes for a speedy resolution to the war, which has claimed the lives of more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.“Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in the statement released on Saturday morning. Biden administration officials and some Israeli analysts said they believed that Israel still supported the proposal Mr. Biden described on Friday, and that Mr. Netanyahu’s statement on Saturday was more tailored to his domestic audience and meant to manage his far-right cabinet members, rather than to push back against the White House. Mr. Biden is eager for the war to end, with the American presidential election just five months away.But Mr. Netanyahu’s domestic political worries could prove paramount. On Saturday night, two of Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners — Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir — threatened to quit his government should he move forward with the proposal. Mr. Ben-Gvir labeled the terms of the agreement a “total defeat” and a “victory for terrorism.” If both of their parties left his coalition, it could mark the end of Mr. Netanyahu’s government.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump and Allies Assail Conviction With Faulty Claims

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      After former President Donald J. Trump was found guilty, he and a number of conservative figures in the news media and lawmakers on the right have spread false and misleading claims about the Manhattan case.After former President Donald J. Trump was found guilty of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, he instantly rejected the verdict and assailed the judge and criminal justice system.His loyalists in the conservative news media and Congress quickly followed suit, echoing his baseless assertions that he had fallen victim to a politically motivated sham trial.The display of unity reflected the extent of Mr. Trump’s hold over his base.The former president and his supporters have singled out the judge who presided over the case, denigrated the judicial system and distorted the circumstances of the charges against him and his subsequent conviction.Here’s a fact check of some of their claims.What Was Said“We had a conflicted judge, highly conflicted. There’s never been a more conflicted judge.”— Mr. Trump in a news conference on Friday at Trump Tower in ManhattanThis is exaggerated. For over a year, Mr. Trump and his allies have said Justice Juan M. Merchan should not preside over the case because of his daughter’s line of work. Loren Merchan, the daughter, served as the president of a digital campaign strategy agency that has done work for many prominent Democrats, including Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign.Experts in judicial ethics have said Ms. Merchan’s work is not sufficient grounds for recusal. When Mr. Trump’s legal team sought his recusal because of his daughter, Justice Merchan sought counsel from the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics, which said it did not see any conflict of interest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Dons Kansas City Helmet to Celebrate Its Super Bowl Victory

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      Taylor Swift was not at the White House to celebrate with her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, but kicker Harrison Butker, who recently drew controversy for a commencement speech, attended.On Friday, President Biden urgently called for an end to the war in Gaza. He solemnly discussed the rule of law after former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal conviction. And he donned a shiny red helmet to the whoops and cheers of a pack of football players and fans.The visit to the White House by the Kansas City Chiefs to celebrate their second straight Super Bowl win gave the president a few moments of frivolity in a week replete with sobering events.“Winning back-to-back — I kind of like that,” Mr. Biden said, hinting at the tough re-election bid he faces in his rematch with Mr. Trump. He added, “When the doubters question if you can pull it off again, believe me, I know what that feels like.”The South Lawn celebration was a blip on the president’s schedule, squeezed between a meeting with the prime minister of Belgium and his weekend plans in Rehoboth Beach, Del., during a month with an endless string of campaign events. Yet, with some of the National Football League’s most famous names, it carried a certain celebrity wattage.Still, the spotlight was far dimmer than it could have been. Taylor Swift did not make the trip with her boyfriend, the star tight end Travis Kelce, as she was touring in Europe and had performed in Madrid on Thursday night.The White House had previously said it was up to the Chiefs whether to extend an invitation to the star musician, who has largely avoided embroiling herself in politics. She endorsed Mr. Biden in 2020, leading to speculation about whether she would do so again.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More