President Biden invites Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House

and now, for an update on cooling relations between two close allies, Israel and the United States, the Biden administration has criticized the actions of Israel's right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. NC Cordes has the details that President Biden has known Benjamin Netanyahu for decades, but has not invited him to the White House since Netanyahu became

prime

minister

again last year, just last week, Mr. Biden called the Netanyahu cabinet. We are talking to them regularly trying to get a handle on what is happening and hopefully baby will continue to move towards moderation. The hardline nationalist Coalition has sparked months of protests in Israel over its attempts to reform the judiciary.

The current government has also aggressively expanded settlements in the occupied West Bank. The State Department said those settlements were built illegally and constitute an obstacle to reaching an agreement. two-state solution Netanyahu has ignored those criticisms it is an internal matter that we have to resolve and we are doing it Tensions increased this weekend when the chair of the House progressive group, Pramila Jayapal, said that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state, the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, the congresswoman used that language again in the face of criticism from both parties and in what could be seen as a kind of olive branch, President Biden spoke for phoned Netanyahu yesterday and invited him to the United States to meet later this year.

White House officials emphasize that they still have the same concerns about Netanyahu's government, but those are not going away, and although Netanyahu stated that the meeting will take place here at the White House, officials here say. those details are still being worked out interesting Anne-Marie, do we have any idea why the invitation was extended now? Well, I think things were getting pretty awkward, particularly in Israel, with President Biden inviting Isaac Herzog once again to the White House and deliberately not inviting. Netanyahu, it is very unusual for an American

president

not to invite a sitting Israeli Prime Minister;

Normally those two countries are more or less at the same level and the United States is very eager to show its support for the only democracy in the region, that is the way many members of Congress see it and that is why this is an attempt to make things a little less tense before the meeting today, but it's very unusual for the White House to not come out and just say yes, we're inviting you to the White House, they'll sit down at the end of this year, it's strange for them to say Well, Netanyahu is being invited to the US and we can't say right now where exactly they will go. to meet normally, President Biden meets with heads of state here at his workplace, which is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, meanwhile his package mentions Rep.

Jayapal's comments, the House will vote today on a resolution defending Israel against accusations of racism, what do we do? We know about that, well, what we know is that the Republicans who control the House are looking to make a point here, as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy put it yesterday. There have been anti-Semitic comments coming from a couple of House Democrats and he wants to make it clear that, for his part, Jayapal apologized for calling Israel a racist state, said he shouldn't have said that, but still maintains that Israel is instituting racist policies, so, you know, it's not going back that much. but she acknowledged that she went too far and is working to smooth things over before this Herzog visit, which will include a speech to Congress that she and some Democrats say they probably won't attend and just want to ask him about something completely different, you know, before talk to you, we talked about the Senate preparing to debate the massive defense spending bill.

I want to ask you what is happening with those oceans of military promotion. Senator Tuberville has been holding them back over 270 military promotions, I mean. It's just that things are still kind of frozen, you know, much to the distress of the White House, yes, it seems like they are, and Kareem Jean-Pierre, the White House Press Secretary, when asked about this yesterday accused Tuberville to sequester what has been done. It has traditionally been a bipartisan process and that is true. Normally, passing the defense spending bill is something Congress doesn't mess with. This is considered vital to the functioning of the US government, the fact that the military has certainty. over its funding, so this is kind of an all-out battle right now between the Democrats and Tommy Tuberville, and add to that the fact that the House Republicans, when they passed a version of this bill , they added a bunch of measures that House Democrats labeled as extreme that actually didn't necessarily have to do with military funding, issues that they want to address in the military, like abortion and, you know, in training on diversity and that sort of thing and the White House is signaling that those items will be eliminated, they won't be the ones that make it to the

president

's desk and get signed, but obviously it's hard to predict exactly which way things will go at this point.

Well, Nancy, thank you. you