At least 2 members of Congress were in Israel during attack

Both Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) were in Israel over the weekend while extremist group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack at the country’s border with Gaza. Both congressmen have since left the country, according to their offices.

Goldman was in Israel for a Bar Mitzvah with his wife and three of his children, his spokesperson, Simone Kanter, said. “Congressman Goldman and his family sheltered from Hamas rocket fire in their hotel’s interior stairwell until early Sunday morning, when they were able to safely depart for New York,” Kanter said in a statement.

Booker arrived in Israel on Friday, according to his office, ahead of a summit on the Abraham Accords at which he was scheduled to speak Tuesday.

“Senator Booker and accompanying staff were in Jerusalem when Hamas launched their attacks against Israel on Saturday, and sheltered in place for their safety,” spokesperson Maya Krishna-Rogers said in a statement. “We are grateful that Senator Booker and our colleagues were able to safely depart Israel earlier today.”

The Saturday morning assault blindsided Israeli forces, leaving hundreds dead, wounded and kidnapped, including civilians. Both congressmen took to social media to condemn Hamas’ actions and offer their support for Israel in the hours and days after the attack.

“At a minimum, Congress must replenish — and expand — the Iron Dome as soon as possible,” Goldman posted on X, formerly Twitter, early Sunday morning, referring to Israel's defense system against rockets. “I hope Republicans can get their House in order so we can pass emergency legislation to assist Israel in defending herself.”

“I emphatically condemn Hamas' horrific acts of violence, kidnapping and terror targeting Israeli families, children and other civilians in towns and cities across the nation of Israel,” Booker wrote. “I stand with the people of Israel and the families of those who have lost loved ones.”

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Illinois governor says White House has ‘heard’ him on migrants

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Sunday the White House has “heard” his calls to put together a singular office to manage asylum-seekers.

“They heard me, you know, there are so many departments that are responsible for helping to care for these asylum-seekers, as well as managing them as they cross the border, I hope that they will put one office together,” Pritzker said during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

He had sent a letter to President Joe Biden with that request, while also pleading for more federal funding to help the thousands of asylum-seekers who have arrived in Chicago.

Chicago is one of a handful of Democratic strongholds struggling to keep up with the flow of migrants arriving after crossing the border. More and more, leaders in those cities and states are finding themselves at odds with the Biden administration as the flood of asylum-seekers threatens to overwhelm their shelter systems.

"Governors and mayors from border states have shipped people to our state like cargo in a dehumanizing attempt to score political points. The people of Illinois are kind and generous. We believe in the fundamental right of every human, especially those facing persecution, to find refuge and live with dignity in this great country of ours," Pritzker wrote in the letter addressed to Biden on Oct. 2. "But as the numbers being transported to Chicago are accelerating, the humanitarian crisis is overwhelming our ability to provide aid to the refugee population."

In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has publicly feuded with Biden over the migrant crisis in his city, and leaders in Massachusetts have recently become more forceful in demanding action from the White House.

On Sunday, Pritzker reupped his request for additional support.

“We're a welcoming state, and we understand the humanitarian crisis that we're addressing. But we can't address this all by ourselves, and we need help from the White House,” he said.

Chicago is set to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention, and while Pritzker said he is “confident” the city will have a better handle on its migrant situation, “it will require help from the federal government,” he said.

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As death toll rises, Israel approves ‘significant’ steps to retaliate for surprise attack by Hamas

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli government formally declared war Sunday and gave the green light for “significant military steps” to retaliate against Hamas for its surprise attack, as the military tried to crush fighters still in southern towns and intensified its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The toll passed 1,000 dead and thousands wounded on both sides.

More than 24 hours after Hamas launched its unprecedented incursion out of Gaza, Israeli forces were still trying to defeat the last groups of militants holed up in several towns. At least 700 people have reportedly been killed in Israel — a staggering toll on a scale the country has not experienced in decades — and more than 300 have been killed in Gaza as Israeli airstrikes pound the territory.

The declaration of war portended greater fighting ahead, and a major question was whether Israel would launch a ground assault into Gaza, a move that in the past has brought intensified casualties. Meanwhile, in northern Israel, a brief exchange of strikes with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group fanned fears that the fighting could expand into a wider regional war.

Authorities were still trying to determine how many civilians and soldiers were seized by Hamas fighters during the mayhem and taken back to Gaza. From videos and witnesses, the captives are known to include women, children and the elderly.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” U.S. Secretary of State Andrew Blinken said as many as 1,000 Hamas fighters were involved in the assault — a high figure that underscored the extent of planning by the militant group ruling Gaza. The gunmen rampaged for hours, gunning down civilians in towns, along highways and at a techno music festival being held in the desert near Gaza.

Israel hit more than 800 targets in Gaza so far, its military said, including airstrikes that leveled much of the town of Beit Hanoun in the enclave’s northeast corner.

Warplanes fired tons of explosives on 120 targets, Israeli Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters, saying Hamas was using the town as a staging ground for attacks. There was no immediate word on casualties, and most of the community’s population of tens of thousands of people likely fled before the bombardment.

“We will continue to attack in this way, with this force, continuously, on all gathering (places) and routes” used by Hamas, Hagari said.

Civilians on both sides were already paying a high price.

A line of Israelis snaked outside a central Israel police station to supply DNA samples and other means that could help identify missing family members. Israeli TV news aired a stream of accounts from relatives of captive or missing Israelis who wept and begged for assistance and information.

In Gaza, the tiny enclave of 2.3 million people sealed off by an Israeli-Egyptian blockade for 16 years since the Hamas takeover, residents feared an intensified onslaught. Israeli strikes flattened a number of residential buildings. Some 74,000 displaced Gazans were staying in 64 shelters, with the number expected to increase. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNWRA, said a school sheltering more than 225 people took a direct hit. It did not say where the fire came from.

Several Israeli media outlets, citing rescue service officials, said at least 700 people have been killed in Israel, including 44 soldiers. The Gaza Health Ministry said 313 people, including 20 children, were killed in the territory. Some 2,000 people have been wounded on each side. An Israeli official said security forces have killed 400 militants and captured dozens more.

The exchange of fire with Hezbollah added to concern that the conflict could spread. Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets and shells Sunday at three Israeli positions in a disputed area along the border, and the Israeli military fired back using armed drones. Two children were lightly wounded by broken glass on the Lebanese side, according to the nearby Marjayoun Hospital.

The Israeli military said the situation since was calm after the exchange.

Iranian-backed Hezbollah is estimated to have tens of thousands of rockets at its disposal. Since its brutal 2006 war with Israel, Hezbollah has stayed on the sidelines amid previous outbreaks of Israeli-Hamas fighting. But if destruction in Gaza escalates, it may feel pressure to intervene.

The declaration of war announced by Israel’s Security Cabinet was largely symbolic, said Yohanan Plesner, the head of the Israel Democracy Institute, a local think tank. But it “demonstrates that the government thinks we are entering a more lengthy, intense and significant period of war.”

Israel has carried out major military campaigns over the past four decades in Lebanon and Gaza that it portrayed as wars, but without a formal declaration.

The Security Cabinet also approved “significant military steps.” The steps were not defined, but the declaration appears to give the military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a wide mandate.

Speaking on national television Saturday, Netanyahu vowed that Hamas “will pay an unprecedented price.” He further warned: “This war will take time. It will be difficult.”

In a statement, his office said the aim will be the destruction of Hamas’ “military and governing capabilities” to an extent that prevents it from threatening Israelis “for many years.”

Israelis were still reeling from the breadth, ferocity and surprise of the Hamas assault. The group’s fighters broke through Israel’s security fence surrounding the Gaza Strip early Saturday. Using motorcycles and pickup trucks, even paragliders and speedboats on the coast, they moved into nearby Israeli communities — as many as 22 locations.

The high death toll and slow response to the onslaught pointed to a major intelligence failure and undermined the long-held perception that Israel has eyes and ears everywhere in the small, densely populated territory it has controlled for decades.

The Israeli military was evacuating at least five towns close to Gaza and them scouring them for militants.

Much of the territory’s population was thrown into darkness Saturday night as Israel cut off electricity and said it would no longer supply power, fuel or other goods to the territory.

One woman sheltering at an UNWRA school in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood described a panicked flight from her home in the middle of the night. The Israeli military made announcements on loudspeakers telling people to leave.

“We didn’t know where to go,” she said. “It was a miracle we arrived at the schools because there was no transport.”

The presence of hostages in Gaza complicates Israel’s response. Hamas officials have said they will seek the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, and Israel has a history of making heavily lopsided exchanges to bring captive Israelis home.

The military has confirmed that a “substantial” number of Israelis were abducted Saturday without giving an exact figure.

An Egyptian official said Israel sought help from Cairo to ensure the safety of the hostages, and that Egypt’s intelligence chief contacted Hamas and the smaller but more radical Islamic Jihad group, which also took part in the incursion, to seek information. Egypt has often mediated between the two sides in the past.

The official said Palestinian leaders claimed they don’t yet have a “full picture” of the number of hostages but said they were held in “secure locations” across Gaza. The official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to brief media. estimated Hamas held “a big number — several dozens.”

Egypt also spoke with both sides about a potential cease-fire, but the official said Israel was not open to a truce “at this stage.”

In Iran, which has long supported Hamas and other militant groups, senior officials have openly praised the incursion. President Ebrahim Raisi spoke by phone with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Islamic Jihad leader Ziad al-Nakhalah, the state-run IRNA news agency reported Sunday.

The shadowy leader of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, said the assault, named “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm,” was in response to the 16-year blockade of Gaza, the Israeli occupation and a series of recent incidents that have brought Israeli-Palestinian tensions to a fever pitch.

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Senate Dems make push for Jack Lew’s confirmation after attack in Israel

Senate Democrats are pushing aggressively for quick confirmation of Jack Lew as ambassador to Israel after the attack by Hamas on Saturday.

Lew was nominated in early September. But the attack, widely condemned by both parties and across the ideological spectrum, will kick the effort into high gear. It will jump start a broader debate over aid to Israel in an already chaotic fall.

Senate Foreign Relations Chair Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said he hopes fellow senators “will join me in promptly confirming” Lew. And Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democratic member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said "we should do this instantaneously and we also need to confirm a chief of Naval Operations."

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is preventing many military promotions from a quick vote in protest over the Pentagon's abortion travel policy.

"This is serious business. If he wants to change healthcare policy at DOD, he can introduce a bill. But he cannot undermine our ability to partner with our allies and partners," Schatz said on Saturday.

Biden administration officials also are eager to see Lew confirmed in light of the Saturday’s attacks in Israel. In a conference call Saturday, one senior official noted that he has yet to be confirmed. “Obviously it would be great to have him on the ground in Israel,” the official said.

Myah Ward contributed to this repot.

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Newsom signs first-in-the-nation corporate climate disclosure bills

SACREMENTO, Calif. — Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills Saturday that would require large corporations operating in the state to disclose both their carbon footprints and their climate-related financial risks starting in 2026.

Background: SB 253, by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), and SB 261, from Sen. Henry Stern (D-Sherman Oaks), are the two most ambitious climate bills to come out of deep-blue California this year.

The laws faced heavy opposition from groups like the California Chamber of Commerce and the Western States Petroleum Association. Both authors amended their bills late in session to delay implementation and roll back corporate penalties for noncompliance. For SB 253 in particular, those amendments led companies like Google and Apple to support the bill and, ultimately, get enough Assembly Democrats on board to land it on Newsom’s desk.

Both bills failed in the Assembly last year.

Context: Taken together, the laws will change the landscape for corporate disclosure. For the first time in the U.S., large publicly traded and privately held corporations doing business in California will need to make public both their impact on the environment, including Scope 3 emissions or those generated through a company’s value chain, and how climate change is impacting their bottom line.

The laws go beyond proposed federal climate disclosure rules, which would only apply to publicly traded companies and wouldn't mandate full Scope 3 disclosure.

What’s next: The laws will now be implemented by the California Air Resources Board, which needs to pass regulations by Jan. 1, 2025, before companies start filing disclosures in 2026.

Newsom has said he thinks the measures will need some “clean up.” CalChamber made similar comments on the need for additional legislation next year, but Wiener has warned that those industry efforts could signal a desire to “gut” SB 253 by removing the Scope 3 reporting requirement.

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'The only option': Migrants say NYC remains best choice amid Adams' discouragement

NEW YORK — A day before Mayor Eric Adams set off through Latin America on a mission to slow the flow of migrants to his city, Mariana and Abel Gomez arrived in New York following a harrowing weekslong trip from Venezuela.

The couple and their toddler had stepped over dead bodies in the treacherous Darién Gap in Colombia, where Adams was set to visit Saturday, and slipped past crocodiles as they traversed the jungle. They traveled under the cover of darkness, heeding the stern directions of smugglers who demanded their silence.

And at no point — not even as they crossed the border at El Paso, Texas, and took a bus north to New York — did they hear that the Democratic mayor of the nation's largest city had been encouraging migrants not to come.

If they had, they wouldn’t have cared. And they doubt any others would have, either.

“You think the mayor will go there and say, ‘Don't come in,’ and they won't come? They're not going to listen to that,” Abel Gomez said Wednesday, speaking in Spanish as he sat on a curb with his family outside a McDonald's in Queens.

The family’s comments were echoed this week in interviews with more than a dozen migrants in New York City, across Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan. Not one said they were lured to the United States by coordinated media campaigns that promised glitz and glamor, as Adams had suggested. Not one thought they’d encounter the “five-star hotel” stays that the mayor says some were led to expect.

The interviews suggest Adams' trip was unlikely to achieve its primary objective and illustrated the difficulty President Joe Biden and American city leaders face as they confront a surge of asylum-seekers to the U.S.

Adams trip comes as Biden makes a pivot rightward on the issue, his administration announcing Thursday new deportation of Venezuelans and a plan to extend the border wall.

The migrants in New York, all speaking in Spanish, said they’d rather take their chances at a brighter future in New York, even with its overwhelmed shelters and high cost of living, than remain any longer in their ravaged counties.

“People say they don't want [migrants] to come over here, but it's tough over there,” said Juan Rodriguez, a 32-year-old father of four who had arrived in the city from Venezuela on Monday. “I traveled two months walking, by bus, with my children, passing through the jungle. Imagine everything that someone risks for a better future for their kids.”

Adams said the purpose of his trip is to rebut what he viewed as misinformation that migrants are receiving about what they’d find in New York.

City Hall officials stressed that Adams’ message is to simply better inform migrants that if they come to New York, there will be limited services and housing amid a strained system. But he also recognized that the city remains a destination point.

“We want to help as many people as possible,” Adams told reporters Thursday from Mexico. “Our hearts are endless, but our resources are not. And I'm heartened by the discussions and meetings I've had thus far and hopeful that this is the start of a real international collaboration.”

None of the migrants interviewed by POLITICO said they expected white-glove service when they made it to New York. Instead, migrants said they were approached by smugglers who often provided them with limited choices of destinations in the U.S.

“He’s wrong; he’s not well informed,” Felix Valdez, who arrived from Ecuador last year, said in Spanish. Valdez, 36, runs an impromptu sidewalk barber shop outside of a trio of Clinton Hill shelter buildings in Brooklyn

“People come here to work and to improve themselves,” he continued while cutting a Togolese migrant's hair. “How are they going to lie to you? Who is going to lie to you? You can't lie because the majority of the people who are here, they have a family friend that tells them (the situation).”

Adams’ trip — which has included stops in Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia and ends Saturday — comes as the influx of migrants to New York City has recently spiked to 600 a day, with about 60,000 still in city care.

City officials say New York is a draw in part because it’s the only major U.S. city to offer migrants a right-to-shelter rule, which guarantees anyone in the city a place to sleep at night. The Adams administration is battling the measure in court, saying the 1981 mandate should not be applicable in its current emergency situation.

But a reason many migrants said they came to New York — the city with the largest foreign-born population in the country — is because they may already have family or friends in the area.

“I came because there is too much crime in that country already, it is no longer bearable,” Andres Pabon, 34, said in Spanish of his home country Ecuador.

Pabon was waiting on the sidewalk of the Roosevelt Hotel, the city’s migrant processing center, for a friend to pick him up. He said his friend had already been in New York for three years and promised Pabon a short-term job here.

New York “was the only option to be able to come to because he could help me,” he said.

None of the migrants said life was easy in New York without an immediate legal way to work; only last month did the Biden administration expedite work permits for people from Venezuela who came to the U.S. before July.

But they did agree with Adams that there are rumors among friends that wealth runs abundant in New York and other locations. The sentiment never came from smugglers, though, as Adams suggested. The city said it’s proceeded more than 100,000 migrants and has received reports of them being misled by smugglers and offered the option of mainly going to New York or Chicago.

Abel Gomez said when the smugglers sell tickets to the U.S., “They don't say anything at all.”

“It's not like ‘Don’t go there’ or ‘Ah New York, it’s nice,’ No. No. They don't let you say anything. They say ‘Where do you want to go? We have available Chicago or New York. New York? Ok, Done. Finished.’”

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Iowa surrenders, falls back to Super Tuesday for Democrats in 2024

ST. LOUIS — Iowa Democrats will surrender their first-in-the-nation caucuses next year, party officials said Friday, while Democrats in New Hampshire — still fighting with the Democratic National Committee — moved closer to holding a rogue primary.

Iowa’s influential perch within the Democratic Party formally came to an end in a windowless hotel ballroom here, where members of the Democratic National Committee voted to accept Iowa’s plan to release its presidential preference numbers on March 5, Super Tuesday. Iowa officials said they will lobby for an earlier nominating contest in 2028.

But New Hampshire, as expected, is still not budging on its early primary, and DNC members officially declared it “not compliant.”

“We've made our decision about the sequence of these early states and we're going to stick to that sequence,” said Elaine Kamarck, a DNC member.

The votes out of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws meeting on Friday cap off more than a year of internal party machinations over how to retool the party’s presidential nominating calendar, prioritizing battleground states with more diverse populations over Iowa, long the party’s first-in-the-nation caucus state.

Following a plan blessed by President Joe Biden, next year’s nominating calendar will kick off with South Carolina on Feb. 3, followed by Nevada on Feb. 6 and Michigan on Feb. 27. Georgia, which was initially elevated to a top slot, wasn’t able to change its date, due to its Republican-controlled legislature and governor’s mansion. That means Iowa is effectively eliminated from the early-state process in the 2024 cycle.

The initial DNC schedule placed New Hampshire on Feb. 6, sharing the date with Nevada.

But New Hampshire has a law that says the state must hold its primary a week before any similar contest. With Republicans who control state government refusing to change the rule, New Hampshire Democrats say they have no choice but to hold their primary when the secretary of state sets it. And New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, has said the state will go first “no matter what.”

Earlier this year, New Hampshire was granted an extension to mid-October to comply with the DNC’s rules. By declaring the state “non-compliant” on Friday, New Hampshire Democrats have another 30 days to “come into compliance.” But if they don’t, the DNC will consider sanctions against the state.

"We believe the president's name won't be on the ballot. We don't know who will be filing on the ballot," New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley told DNC members. "What we're determined is to not allow any of those people to claim they have won the New Hampshire primary."

Democrats led by former state party chair and DNC member Kathy Sullivan and veteran Democratic operative Jim Demers "are going to conduct a write-in effort to ensure the president receives the strong support,” Buckley said. Both Demers and Sullivan previously told POLITICO informal conversations about a write-in campaign have been underway among New Hampshire Democrats for some time. Demers said Friday that a final decision is likely to be made in the next two weeks.

Based on party rules, if New Hampshire still holds its primary, the state would automatically lose half its delegates. The DNC has also broadly empowered the national party chair to take any other “appropriate steps” to enforce the early window.

"In 2024, I'm pretty sure that Joe Biden will not put his name on the New Hampshire primary ballot,” Kamarck said, discussing potential sanctions for states that ignore the DNC’s directives. “If he did, this would look really weird, since he was the one who said he wanted to have South Carolina first.”

New Hampshire Democrats could consider holding a party-run primary, going around the state's Republican-controlled government — a strategy deployed by other states. Buckley has rejected that idea, calling it a logistical nightmare.

“Absolutely impossible,” he told POLITICO in May. “Where would I rent 2,000 voting machines? Hire 1,500 people to run the polls? Rent 300 accessible voting locations? Hire security? Print 500,000 ballots. Process 30,000 absentee ballots.”

Iowa’s demise — at least for 2024 — is clearer cut. State Democrats came under fire from the national party for their handling of the 2020 Democratic presidential caucuses, when they failed to declare a winner for several days. The state also faced stiff criticism for its predominantly white population, which Democratic Party leaders said wasn’t representative of the party as a whole.

But for Iowa Democrats, this is a long game. In a letter to the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said she’d received “repeated reassurance from the co-chairs and this committee” that Iowa will “compete strongly for a significant voice” in future early nominating contests.

Republicans are still expected to hold their first nominating contest of 2024 in Iowa, on Jan. 15.

Democrats in the state said they will mail presidential preference cards on Jan. 12, while holding their in-person precinct caucuses on Jan. 15, timed with the Republican presidential primary caucuses. But to comply with the DNC — and minimize the significance of the contest — the Iowa Democratic Party plans to accept preference cards postmarked any time on or before March 5, Super Tuesday, and won’t release the results of their mail-in caucus until then.

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