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      Conservatives’ racist and sexist attacks on Kamala Harris show exactly who they are | Judith Levine

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      Like a warm compress drawing pus from a wound, the Democratic presidential candidacy of Kamala Harris immediately brought out the misogyny and racism of the Maga Republican party.Tim Burchett, the Tennessee Republican representative, called Harris, the child of a Black Jamaican father and an Indian mother, a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) hire – picked, that is, because she is Black, not because she’s qualified. Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, insinuated that Harris is a welfare queen. “What the hell have you done other than collect a check?” he asked at a Michigan rally of Harris, a former state attorney general, US senator and now the vice-president. At the same time, social media posts showing Harris with her parents falsely claim she’s not really Black, because her father is light-skinned.Popping up again are rumors circulated in 2020 by Trump lawyer John Eastman that Harris is ineligible to run for office because she might not be a citizen. Like Barack Obama, about whom Trump stirred the same “birther” calumny, Harris was born in the US.Far-right blogger Matt Walsh and former Fox host Megyn Kelly suggested Harris slept her way to the top. Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer went further, alleging that the veep was “once an escort” who started out by “giving blow jobs to successful, rich, Black men”. The founder of Pastors for Trump tweeted: “Both Joe + the Ho gotta go!”While allegedly copulating with all comers, Harris is slammed for failing in her womanly duty to reproduce. In a video that recently turned up, Vance, the father of three, told Tucker Carlson in 2021 that the US was being run by “childless cat ladies” – Harris among them – who don’t “have a direct stake” in the country’s future. Will Chamberlain, a lawyer who worked on Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, proclaimed that “people without kids … are highly susceptible to corruption and perversion. They have no care for the future and live in the present.”Being a step-parent – as Harris is to her husband’s biological children – doesn’t count, Chamberlain added. This criticism has never been leveled against the childless George Washington – although, to be fair, he was the Father of Our Country.And if misogyny and racism are not sufficient, the right keeps searching for plain weirdness to use against the Democratic candidate. All they’ve come up with, though, is one of her more charming characteristics, her laugh, from which Trump derives his lamest-yet political nickname: “Laughing Kamala”.This stuff is vile to watch. But as with drained pus, it’s got to be exposed to the air. Because it’s not just talk. It reveals what a Trump presidency would mean. By exposing what’s festering barely under the skin of Trumpism, the Republican party is telling us to vote against him.While in office, Trump’s ignorance and incompetence prevented him from accomplishing – or, often, knowing – what he wanted to do. In his madder moments, some of his advisers pulled him back from the edge. But this time, he’s got a team of smart, loyal experts and a detailed plan, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, to get it done.In 2020, when Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd’s murder spread across the country, Trump gunned to gun down the protesters – literally. “Can’t you just shoot them?” he asked Mark Esper, according to the then defense secretary’s memoir. In another memoir, then Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender quotes the apoplectic president calling on police and the military to “crack [protesters’] skulls” and “beat the fuck” out of them. For the most part, this didn’t happen.Should Project 2025 become reality, however, the commander-in-chief would be freer to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which authorizes him to direct the military to put down domestic unrest. The blueprint also advises the administration to revoke all consent decrees imposing federal oversight on police departments with records of brutality and murder of civilians, particularly civilians of color.The 2024 Republican national convention, featuring Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock and another straight white man on the ticket, was practically a parody of the white hypermasculinity animating the party. But the Republican party promises to force its gender ideology on the rest of us. “Cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children,” reads the platform. Project 2025 proposes that “the redefinition of sex to cover gender identity and sexual orientation … be reversed” and the phrase “sexual orientation and gender identity” be eliminated from anti-discrimination policies across federal agencies. In fact, its aim is to eliminate anti-discrimination policies altogether.And, of course, there’s abortion. In 2016, Trump opined that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions. Then he walked the statement back. This April, he told a reporter that states should be allowed to punish doctors. “Everything we’re doing now is states and states’ rights,” he elaborated, using the historical code words for legislated racial segregation – now updated to gender oppression. And while he’s distanced himself from a federal abortion ban, Project 2025 is riddled with pledges to protect the safety, dignity and humanity of the unborn.Clueless as he was, Trump attained the right’s holy grail: a supreme court majority that will decimate the civil and human rights of people of color, pregnant people, the poor, immigrants and the marginalized long into the future. The Trump court is already punishing people who seek abortions. Even if Congress founders, this court will realize every racist and misogynist dream.It’s hard to say whether this bigotry will sway voters. A month before the 2016 election, after a campaign of one racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic outburst after another, Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” tape was leaked and a dozen women accused the candidate of sexual misconduct. Hillary Clinton surged to a lead of as much as 11 points. Then, FBI director James Comey released a letter equivocating on the extent or importance of those official emails on her private server, and Trump won. It’s still unclear whether the Comey report turned the election. But the pussy-grabbing tape did not.Still, in 2016, Trump was a pig but an untested pig. A lot has happened since then. His presidency was bookended by the Women’s March and the Black Lives Matter protests. In 2017, Tarana Burke’s #MeToo hashtag went viral and rage over sexual harassment exploded. Five years later, Pew Research found that the majority of Americans, including Republicans, felt the #MeToo movement had a positive impact. BLM engaged protesters of every age and race, and antiracist movements continue to. Trump has been convicted of sexual abuse. Now, if anything, Maga is focusing the anger of women and people of color.Republican leaders sense these changes, and they’re worried – worried enough that Richard Hudson, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, called a closed-door meeting to tell the caucus to cut the slime and focus on the issues.Maybe they will. But Trump and his nastier champions will not: hatred will continue to ooze from their mouths. Disgusting as it, pay attention. Because sexism and racism are not just talk. They’re policies – the calamitous policies a Trump presidency augurs.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books More

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      Harris navigates Netanyahu visit – podcast

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      Kamala Harris enjoyed a brief period of excitement as Democrats rallied behind her presidential bid ahead of November’s election. Only a few days in, however, she is being asked questions over her stance on Israel and the war in Gaza.
      With fewer than 100 days left, Joan Greve speaks to the former adviser to Barack Obama and co-host of Pod Save The World, Ben Rhodes, about the state of play for November 2024

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      New York prosecutors urge judge to uphold Trump hush-money conviction – live

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      Prosecutors have asked a judge to reject Donald Trump’s appeal of his conviction in New York on charges related to falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, the Associated Press reports.Lawyers for the former president earlier this month appealed his conviction, saying a recent supreme court decision shielding presidents from prosecution for official acts applies to his conviction in the case brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.In a response filed today, prosecutors said that was not the case. Here’s more, from the AP:
      The Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a court filing that the high court’s opinion “has no bearing” on the hush money case and does not support vacating the jury’s unanimous verdict or dismissing the case.
      Prosecutors said Trump’s lawyers failed to raise the immunity issue in a timely fashion and that, even so, the case involved unofficial acts — many pertaining to events prior to his election — that are not subject to immunity.
      Lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee are trying to get the verdict — and even the indictment — tossed out because of the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision. It gave presidents considerable protection from prosecution.
      The ruling came about a month after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to conceal a deal to pay off porn actor Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. At the time, she was considering going public with a story of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, who says no such thing happened. He has denied any wrongdoing.
      Here’s more on what the former president’s lawyers are arguing:Kamala Harris is now meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the vice president’s ceremonial office.Harris did not take questions from reporters ahead of their meeting, but told Netanyahu:
      I look forward to our conversation. We have a lot to talk about.
      “We do indeed,” Netanyahu replied.Family members of American hostages being held captive in Gaza said they held “productive and honest” discussions with Joe Biden and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the White House today.Relatives said they “came today with a sense of urgency” and emphasized the need to reach a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that could result in the release of their loved ones, AP reported. They said:
      We got absolute commitment from the Biden administration and from prime minister Netanyahu that they understand the urgency of this moment.
      They added that they were more optimistic about a deal than they have been in months.Nikki Haley, in the CNN interview, criticized Republicans who have referred to Kamala Harris as a “DEI” candidate. “It’s not helpful,” the former South Carolina governor said.
      There’s so many issues we can talk about when it comes to Kamala Harris that it doesn’t matter what she looks like. It matters what she’s said, what she’s fought for, and the lack of results that she’s had because of it.
      Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, offered no apologies for the “tough things” she said about Donald Trump during the Republican primary race, but said she did not doubt her decision to support the former president in the November election.Haley, in her first interview since endorsing Trump, told CNN that she was not surprised by Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race. “I didn’t take happiness in it,” Haley said.
      There is an issue we have in DC, where people will go into office and they won’t let go. And then their staffers and their family keep propping them up, and it’s a problem for the American people.
      She argued that the Democrats’ decision to put forward Kamala Harris as their nominee would give them “the weakest candidate they could put in”.Harris “is much more progressive than Joe Biden ever was”, Haley said, adding:
      The fact they put in Kamala Harris – kudos for putting in someone younger – the fact that you put in one of the most liberal politicians you probably could have put in, it’s going to be an issue.
      Elena Kagan, a member of the three-justice liberal minority on the supreme court, said she would support creating an enforcement mechanism for its recently adopted code of ethics, Bloomberg Law reports.The nation’s highest court last year adopted a code setting out “rules and principles that guide the conduct of members of the court” following media reports of connections between conservative justices and parties with cases before the judges. However, the code was criticized for having no enforcement mechanism, leaving the judges to essentially enforce it on themselves.According to Bloomberg Law, Kagan told a judicial conference in California that if chief justice John Roberts creates “some sort of committee of highly respected judges with a great deal of experience and a reputation for fairness” to enforce the code, she would approve.In the months since the code was adopted, conservative justice Samuel Alito was reported to have flown flags connected to rightwing causes at his property, sparking further uproar over the court’s impartiality.Here’s a look back at when the ethics code was originally created:Joe Biden greeted Benjamin Netanyahu this afternoon at the White House, the day after the Israeli prime minister addressed Congress in a speech boycotted and criticized by many of the president’s fellow Democrats:“We’ve known each other for 40 years, and you’ve known every Israeli prime minister for 50 years. So, from a proud Zionist Jew to a proud Zionist Irish American I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the State of Israel. I look forward to discussing with you today thank you,” Netanyahu told Biden in the Oval Office.He was the first foreign leader to meet the US president since he abandoned his bid for a second term.The two leaders then met in private with the families of Americans taken hostage by Hamas in the 7 October attack. Kamala Harris is scheduled to meet separately with Netanyahu this afternoon.In addition to catching up to Donald Trump in polls of voters nationwide, the Guardian’s Melissa Hellmann reports that Kamala Harris is much more trusted than the former president among African Americans:A vast majority of Black Americans trust Kamala Harris and distrust Donald Trump – 71% compared to 5% – according to the largest-known survey of Black Americans since the Reconstruction era. The survey of 211,219 Black people across all 50 states showed that the presumptive Democratic nominee may have a higher chance of winning over Black voters than the Republican candidate.At a virtual press conference on Thursday afternoon, the Black-led innovation thinktank Black Futures Lab, revealed findings from its 2023 Black Census, which was conducted with the help of 50 Black-led grassroots organizations and national partners across the country from February 2022 to October 2023. The latest survey garnered seven times the respondents from the first census in 2018, which received 30,000 responses. Two-thirds of the respondents were women, a majority were from the south, and nearly half were from 45 to 64 years old. Black Futures Lab believes that the census results will help inform voter mobilization efforts ahead of presidential and local elections.“For us to be powerful in politics, we must control the agenda,” said Black Futures Lab’s field director Natishia June at the press conference. “This is why the Black Census is crucial.”Prosecutors have asked a judge to reject Donald Trump’s appeal of his conviction in New York on charges related to falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, the Associated Press reports.Lawyers for the former president earlier this month appealed his conviction, saying a recent supreme court decision shielding presidents from prosecution for official acts applies to his conviction in the case brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.In a response filed today, prosecutors said that was not the case. Here’s more, from the AP:
      The Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a court filing that the high court’s opinion “has no bearing” on the hush money case and does not support vacating the jury’s unanimous verdict or dismissing the case.
      Prosecutors said Trump’s lawyers failed to raise the immunity issue in a timely fashion and that, even so, the case involved unofficial acts — many pertaining to events prior to his election — that are not subject to immunity.
      Lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee are trying to get the verdict — and even the indictment — tossed out because of the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision. It gave presidents considerable protection from prosecution.
      The ruling came about a month after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to conceal a deal to pay off porn actor Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. At the time, she was considering going public with a story of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, who says no such thing happened. He has denied any wrongdoing.
      Here’s more on what the former president’s lawyers are arguing:In remarks to reporters as she deplaned after returning to Washington DC, Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump of trying to cancel the second presidential debate, which is scheduled for 10 September.“I’m ready to debate Donald Trump. I have agreed to the previously agreed upon September 10 debate. He agreed to that previously,” the vice-president said.“Now, here he is backpedaling and I’m ready and I think the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage. And so, I’m ready to go.”The polls published by the New York Times and Siena College over the past year have been among the most talked about surveys in US politics – perhaps because they have typically shown Joe Biden struggling to match Donald Trump’s support.In an analysis of their latest batch of data, which is the first with Kamala Harris as the Democratic contender, Nate Cohn, the Times’s chief political analyst, writes that this poll is much different than those that came before it. Here’s why:
      Mr. Trump hits a high in popularity. Overall, 48 percent of registered voters say they have a favorable view of him, up from 42 percent in our last poll (taken after the debate but before the convention and assassination attempt). It’s his highest favorable number in a Times/Siena poll, which previously always found his favorable ratings between 39 percent and 45 percent.
      Ms. Harris is surging. In fact, her ratings have increased even more than Mr. Trump’s. Overall, 46 percent of registered voters have a favorable view of her, up from 36 percent when we last asked about her in February. Only 49 percent have an unfavorable view, down from 54 percent in our last measure. As important, her favorable rating is higher than Mr. Biden’s. In fact, it’s higher than his standing in any Times/Siena poll since September 2022, which so happens to be the last time Mr. Biden led a Times/Siena national poll of registered voters.
      The national political environment is a little brighter. The share of voters who say the country is on the “right track” is up to 27 percent – hardly a bright and smiley public, but still the highest since the midterm elections in 2022. Mr. Biden’s approval and favorable ratings are up as well. The ranks of the double haters have dwindled: With both Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump riding high, the number of voters who dislike both candidates has plunged to 8 percent, down from 20 percent in Times/Siena polls so far this year.
      He concludes with:
      With all of these underlying changes in the attitudes about the candidates, there’s no reason to assume that this familiar Trump +1 result means that the race has simply returned to where it stood before the debate. For now, these developments have mostly canceled out, but whether that will still be true in a few weeks is much harder to say.
      New polling indicates Kamala Harris has re-engaged voters turned off by Joe Biden’s candidacy, and is vying closely against Donald Trump in crucial swing states.While it’s unclear if the vice-president has the overall advantage, the data is a reversal of fortune for the Democrats, who had grown nervous after months of polling had showed Biden at best tied, or at worst trailing, Trump nationally and in the states along the Great Lakes and in the southern Sun belt whose voters are set to decide the election.The closely watched New York Times/Siena College poll found that among likely voters nationwide, Trump has only a one-point lead. In their previous survey following the Trump-Biden debate, the former president led by six points:Emerson College found that Trump leads in most swing states, albeit narrowly and with Wisconsin tied:However, that data was far better than Biden’s numbers in those states the last time Emerson polled voters on his candidacy.“Harris has recovered a portion of the vote for the Democrats on the presidential ticket since the fallout after the June 27 debate,” said executive director of Emerson College Polling Spencer Kimball. “Harris’ numbers now reflect similar support levels to those of Biden back in March.”Some Democratic and labor leaders from battleground states joined the DNC press call today, and reported genuine and widespread enthusiasm for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.“There’s a lot of excitement on the ground,” said Yolanda Bejarano, chair of the Arizona Democratic party. “We are seeing just a lot of folks coming out, trying to find out what they can do to volunteer, to help get Vice-President Harris elected.”Ron Bieber, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, described the environment in the battleground state as “electric” and echoed Harris’s message that Americans “won’t go back” to a time of fewer rights.“Trump was devastating to the auto industry and auto workers here in Michigan. They are not going to go backwards. We’re moving forward,” Bieber said.“President Biden and Vice-President Harris have been the biggest supporters of union workers and the auto industry here in Michigan, and people are fired up. I’ve been doing this stuff a long time now, and I’ve never seen the energy and excitement as I am right now.”The Democratic national committee held a press call today to attack Donald Trump and JD Vance for their “anti-worker” agenda, after Republicans spent much of their convention pitching themselves as economic populists.“It’s more of that trickle-down economic fairytale that has never worked. It has gutted so much of our economy. It’s hurt working people; it’s hurt the labor movement,” said Congressman Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania.“It’s been great for big corporations and billionaires and Wall Street. It is fiscally irresponsible, and we can’t let it happen again.”Touting the legislative accomplishments of the Biden administration, Deluzio argued Kamala Harris would continue the president’s pro-labor record if she wins in November.“We’re going to take more strong action to bring home offshore jobs, to bring home more manufacturing, to defend the ability and the freedom for folks to form and join the union,” Deluzio said. “That’s the backbone of the union way of life.”Republican congressman and former White House doctor Ronny Jackson accused the FBI director, Christopher Wray, of making a “politically motived move” when he told Congress that it was not yet clear if the former president was hit by a bullet or shrapnel after a gunman opened fire at his rally in Pennsylvania.Following the assassination attempt, Jackson issued a memo offering some details of the wound Trump suffered. Before we get into what he said about the FBI director, it’s worth noting that Jackson denied that Trump had contracted Covid-19 back in 2020, before being refuted by an official in the then-president’s administration.Anyway, here’s the tweet: More

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      Netanyahu is presiding over a sharp decline in the US’s pro-Israel consensus

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      Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of the House and Senate may look like a political victory: the prime minister of a foreign country speaking before Congress, only interrupted by multiple standing ovations. But the political events serving as a backdrop for the speech reveal Netanyahu’s political career, and the bipartisan pro-Israel consensus in the US, in sharp decline.At home in Israel, it’s virtually unthinkable that Netanyahu could have found such a supportive audience. A staggering 72% of Israelis want him to resign over failures that permitted the 7 October attacks by Hamas to succeed.And 72% of Israelis also support a deal to release hostages over the destruction of Hamas. Despite saying he is doing everything he can to “bring all our hostages home”, Netanyahu appeared to outright reject a hostage deal in his speech to Congress, declaring Israel “must retain overriding security control [in Gaza] to prevent the resurgence of terror, to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel”, a war goal the Israeli military says is unachievable and terms to which Hamas will not agree.Indeed, blatant falsehoods were scattered throughout his speech. He claimed “practically no civilians were killed in Rafah” (daily reporting shows women and children dead from Israeli air strikes on Rafah and surrounding areas), downplayed the role of Israel in creating famine conditions for much of Gaza’s population, and claimed that Israel helps “keep American boots off the ground while protecting our shared interests in the Middle East”, conveniently omitting the 4,492 US service members who died in the Iraq war, a war Netanyahu lobbied Congress to undertake in 2002.While the speech was Netanyahu’s fourth address to Congress, the political landscape in Washington has shifted beneath his feet, creating a far less welcoming American public than the applause might suggest. Around half of House and Senate Democrats boycotted the speech while thousands of protesters demonstrated outside the Capitol building, revealing the steep drop in support for Israel’s war on Gaza over the past nine months.Before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, 38% of voters said they were less likely to vote for him due to his handling of the war on Gaza. “Many core constituencies – including independents, swing state likely voters, and Democratic party activists – are angry at Biden’s unqualified support for the Israeli assault on Gaza,” said a report from the Century Foundation, the thinktank that commissioned the poll.While sentiments towards Israel are warmer within the Republican party – Israeli flags were visible on the floor of the Republican convention last week and Republican members of Congress led many of the standing ovations for Netanyahu’s speech – that support has increasingly coincided with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Republicans by the world’s richest Israeli, Israeli-US dual national Miriam Adelson, who alongside her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, topped the list of Republican donors since the late 2000s, raising questions about whether support for Israel is an issue of deep concern to the Republican base or simply a transaction required for campaign contributions.The election wins of Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky and Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from West Virginia (both Republican critics of US aid to Israel), suggest an appetite, or at least an acceptance, of a more balanced US-Israel relationship within Republican voters.Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, planned before Biden ended his campaign for re-election, is now set against the political uncertainty of how Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will approach the relationship with Israel. The administration of which she is still a part of bled dangerous levels of support from its own base, particularly in vital swing states like Michigan, where 100,000 Arab and Muslim voters expressed their dissatisfaction with Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza by submitting “uncommitted” ballots in their Democratic primary.Pressure is building on the vice-president to distance herself from Biden’s “bearhug” strategy of Netanyahu and utilize the leverage the US holds over Israel: threatening to turn off the spigot of munitions necessary for Israel’s war to drag on.The speech may have looked like a victory for an embattled Israeli prime minister but the real test of Netanyahu’s political gambit will only become clear as Harris sets the foreign policy agenda for her presidential campaign.If the boycott of the speech by Democrats, polling showing dissatisfaction with ongoing support for the war on Gaza, and protesters outside the Capitol were any sign of the political tides within the Democratic party, Harris may conclude that the time has come for greater daylight between the US and Netanyahu, distancing the US from the nearly 40,000 casualties suffered by Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military, and a conditioning of US military aid to Israel on an end to the war on Gaza and Israeli participation in a deal to release hostages held by Hamas. Such a move would cast Netanyahu’s speech as a symbolic, and highly visible, breaking point in the bipartisan US support he has enjoyed for his entire political career.

      Eli Clifton is a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and investigative journalist at large at Responsible Statecraft More

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      Israel and Hamas closer than ever to ceasefire deal, White House says

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      White House officials said Israel and Hamas were “closer now than we’ve been before” to reaching a ceasefire deal as Benjamin Netanyahu met Joe Biden on Thursday to discuss an end to the nine-month conflict in Gaza.The talks at the White House came amid unprecedented political turmoil in the US and domestic pressure on the Israeli prime minster to rescue the dozens of hostages still being held captive after Hamas’s 7 October attack. Netanyahu was also expected to meet the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, who is likely to replace Biden as the Democratic candidate for November’s election.“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” Biden said when he welcomed Netanyahu to the Oval Office. “From a proud Jewish Zionist to a proud Irish-American Zionist, I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the state of Israel,” Netanyahu told Biden at the start of their meeting.The president thanked Netanyahu and noted that his first meeting with an Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, was in 1973, soon after he was elected to the Senate.Biden was expected to put pressure on Netanyahu to commit to at least the first stage of a three-part deal that would see some hostages released in exchange for a temporary ceasefire. A senior administration official said that a framework for the deal had been agreed upon but that “serious implementation issues … still had to be resolved.“I don’t expect the meeting to be a yes or no,” the official said. “It’s a kind of like, ‘How do we close these final gaps?’”At a press conference while the two leaders were meeting, the White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said gaps in the ceasefire deal could be overcome. “We need to get there soon,” he said. “We are closer now than we’ve been before. Both sides have to make compromises.”The State Department spokesperson, Matt Miller, said: “I think the message from the American side in that meeting will be that we need to get this deal over the line.”More than 39,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed in the conflict, and the international criminal court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The US does not recognise the court’s jurisdiction.Harris was expected to meet Netanyahu separately as she began her late campaign to challenge Donald Trump in November’s presidential vote. The vice-president must prove her mettle as a negotiator in one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.She has spoken forcefully about the need for a ceasefire and about the plight of Palestinian civilians in the conflict, and there is a possibility that she could win back some Democratic voters who believe that the Biden administration has done too little to end the conflict or limit sales of arms to Israel.Harris – the presiding officer of the Senate – did not attend Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday but released a careful statement saying that her absence should not be interpreted as a boycott of the event.A senior administration official told the Associated Press there was “no daylight between the president and vice-president” on Israel.On Thursday, Harris issued a statement forcefully condemning pro-Palestine protesters who had demonstrated against Netanyahu’s speech in Washington.She said: “Yesterday, at Union Station in Washington DC we saw despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fuelled rhetoric.“I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organisation Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the state of Israel and kill Jews. Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent and we must not tolerate it in our nation.”The vice-president added: “I condemn the burning of the American flag. That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America. It should never be desecrated in that way.“I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: antisemitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation.”Netanyahu is also scheduled to meet Trump on Friday at his residence in Mar-a-Lago. The two men have had a strained relationship since Netanyahu congratulated Biden on his victory in the 2020 elections, a vote that, Trump has claimed without evidence, was manipulated.Netanyahu promised “total victory” in the Gaza war in a raucous speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, saying that there were “intensive” efforts to bring the hostages home but giving little detail about how that would be achieved.About 40 Democratic lawmakers – including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi – boycotted the speech, and only half of congressional Democrats attended.“Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentation in the House Chamber today was by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States,” Pelosi wrote on X.Thousands protested on the streets of the capital, with both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups saying Netanyahu was using the conflict as cover for his own political problems at home.He did not mention the word “ceasefire” or the negotiations with Hamas once during the speech, instead he called for expedited deliveries of US arms to “help us finish the job faster”.“I will not rest until all their loved ones are home,” said Netanyahu during the speech. “All of them. As we speak, we’re actively engaged in intensive efforts to secure their release, and I’m confident that these efforts can succeed. Some of them are taking place right now. I want to thank President Biden for his tireless efforts on behalf of the hostages and for his efforts to the hostage families as well.”It is unclear whether Biden’s recent decision to end his presidential campaign will allow him to use greater leverage to convince Netanyahu to sign on to a deal.“The framework of the deal is basically there,” said a senior administration official. “There are some very serious implementation issues that still have to be resolved, and I don’t want to discount the difficulty of those … There are some things we need from Hamas, and there are some things we need from the Israeli side, and I think you’ll see that play out here over the course of the coming week.” More