Netanyahu and Trump to Meet Amid Fragile Ceasefire Agreement

Happy Wednesday! A team of French chefs won gold in the Bocuse d’Or—basically the Olympics of fine dining—this week, returning France to the heights of culinary prestige. You may notice, however, that they are all wearing toques. We won’t be fooled again.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• A federal judge issued an administrative stay on Tuesday afternoon temporarily blocking the Trump administration’s attempted freeze on the disbursement of federal grants, loans, and other financial assistance. The Office of Management and Budget had on Monday night announced a temporary pause on all federal funding—“to the extent permissible under applicable law”—that may be affected by President Donald Trump’s early executive orders, effective Tuesday at 5 p.m. ET and pending the administration’s review. The move implicated tens of billions of dollars at a minimum, and federal agencies and lawmakers scrambled on Tuesday to determine whether various programs were affected by the freeze. The administrative stay will remain in effect until 5 p.m. ET on February 3, giving the court a few days to deliberate before an expedited briefing and hearing.
• The State Department on Tuesday advised U.S. citizens to leave the Democratic Republic of the Congo following the outbreak of violent protests targeting the American and other foreign embassies in the country’s capital of Kinshasa. “Due to an increase in violence throughout the city of Kinshasa, the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa advised U.S. citizens to shelter-in-place and then safely depart while commercial options are available,” an embassy security alert urged yesterday. “We encourage U.S. citizens to depart via commercial flights when they feel like they can safely go to the airport.”
• President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to stop federal funding for gender-transition treatments for people under the age of 19, coverage of which is currently provided by Medicaid in some states. The order states that the federal government “will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another,” and directs federal agencies—including the Department of Health and Human Services—to curtail grants to hospitals and medical schools that provide such gender-transition treatments. Trump also issued an executive order on Monday night intending to eventually bar “individuals with gender dysphoria” from serving in the military, though the move has already drawn a lawsuit from two national LGBT advocacy organizations.
• Law enforcement officials arrested a man near the U.S. Capitol building on Monday who claimed he intended to kill House Speaker Mike Johnson, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. A Tuesday court filing revealed the arrest and alleged the suspect approached a Capitol Police officer, requested to turn himself in, and had two molotov cocktails and a knife in his possession. The man—who said he traveled to Washington, D.C. from Massachusetts—also allegedly said he intended to burn down the Heritage Foundation, a think tank closely aligned with the Trump administration.
• The Senate voted 77-22 on Monday to confirm Sean Duffy to lead the Department of Transportation, with 24 Democrats joining all Republicans in support of his bid. Duffy, a former congressman from Wisconsin and Fox Business host, passed a procedural vote with unanimous support on Monday, but he lost Democrat votes yesterday in the wake of the Trump administration’s announced funding freeze.
• The village of East Palestine and the Norfolk Southern Railway reached a $22 million settlement on Tuesday that will resolve legal claims stemming from the February 2023 train derailment and resulting toxic chemical spill in the eastern Ohio town. Norfolk Southern had already agreed to a separate, $600 million class-action settlement last April, with that money going to residents of East Palestine directly—although some are still in the process of challenging the settlement amount. 

A Ceasefire, If You Can Keep It

On Saturday, four young Israeli women—all Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers captured by terrorists on October 7, 2023, and held as hostages ever since—were marched onto a stage in Gaza’s Palestine Square in front of groups of Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians. As Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy, and Liri Albag stood there, they linked arms and waved to the crowd as part of what they later explained as an effort to showcase their undefeated spirits and put a dent into the sense of sinisterness the armed Hamas fighters were clearly trying to project. 

With the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas nearing its third week, the hostage-for-prisoner exchanges have continued apace. But the mere presence of the Hamas gunmen on Saturday as the main Palestinian force in the Gaza Strip served as a stark reminder of why a lasting peace is likely to remain elusive.

The U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, signed on January 15, outlined three six-week stages, the first of which is currently about a third complete. The parameters? A cessation of hostilities, the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the edges of Gaza, the return of some Gazan civilians to the northern part of the enclave, and the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas’ parade in Gaza City over the weekend was part of that exchange, the terms of which are lopsided in Hamas’ favor, to say the least. If everything goes according to plan, the terrorist group will release 33 hostages—including children, female civilians and soldiers, and civilians over the age of 50—in exchange for hundreds upon hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are convicted terrorists.

The swaps are thus far occurring as expected, but that doesn’t mean everyone is happy. Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, announced last Sunday he would resign from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet—where he served as national security minister—in protest against the deal. “The deal that is taking shape is a reckless deal,” he said earlier this month, arguing it would “erase the achievements of the war” by allowing Hamas to regroup and rebuild. Ben-Gvir doubled down on his resignation on Monday, saying he would only return to Netanyahu’s government if the prime minister “comes to his senses.” 

Netanyahu is set to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House next week, and the ceasefire is certain to be the focus of their conversation. If the swaps continue to go relatively smoothly, the two sides are supposed to enter negotiations over the agreement’s second phase no later than 16 days after the first began: this coming Saturday.

This phase will in theory include a mutual declaration of “sustainable calm,” the exchange of all remaining living hostages by Hamas for some number of Palestinian prisoners, and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, in theory rendering the ceasefire permanent. The third stage would involve the return of dead Israeli hostages’ bodies and the kickstarting of an international reconstruction effort in Gaza.

That said, reaching Phase 2 of the deal—let alone Phase 3—is far from a given. “If Israel does agree to phase two of this ceasefire, I think there’s a better than average chance that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu would collapse,” Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, predicted in an interview with TMD. 

With Netanyahu’s majority in the Knesset already razor-thin, a further collapse in his support could doom his government. In addition to Ben-Gvir’s withdrawal, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the far-right Religious Zionist Party, has also threatened to leave the coalition government over the deal—though he softened his stance earlier this week.

And it’s not just far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition who are incensed at the prospect of Hamas remaining in power in Gaza—much of the Israeli public is too. But recent polling of Israelis has also found that nearly three-quarters of respondents—including a majority of Netanyahu’s own supporters—favored some sort of ceasefire agreement in order to secure the return of the remaining hostages. The prime minister—well aware of the political realities—has therefore shifted his tone on the war somewhat in recent months, while publicly stressing throughout the ceasefire process that the IDF could proceed with operations at any point. “We reserve the right to resume the war if necessary, with American support,” Netanyahu said in a TV address earlier this month, referring to the first phase of the deal as a “temporary ceasefire.” 

Hamas, of course, has its own reasons for coming to the negotiating table. “What they want under Phase 2 is a decision undertaken by Israel to allow Hamas to exist,” Schanzer said. Like Hamas’ show of force in Palestine Square, a formal ceasefire agreement that provides legitimacy to the Islamist terrorist organization and cements it as the undisputed power center in the Gaza Strip would be a major strategic victory for Israel’s enemies.

The new Trump administration maintains that such an outcome would be unacceptable. On Saturday, President Trump himself floated a dramatic solution for Gaza: moving the enclave’s civilian refugee population to Jordan, Egypt, or other Arab countries and “just clean[ing] out” those who remain. He claimed he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about the idea and was going to talk to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi soon.

“You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump suggested. “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change.” He doubled down when speaking to reporters on Air Force One Monday. “You could get people living in areas that are a lot safer and maybe a lot better and maybe a lot more comfortable,” he said. 

The president may, however, be too optimistic about his dealmaking prowess. Egypt and Jordan have long resisted taking in large numbers of Palestinian refugees; Jordan was destabilized by Palestinian nationalist agitation in the 1970s, and Palestinians still constitute a significant portion of the country’s population. Since the war started, tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees have crossed into Egypt, where they face difficult living conditions and uncertain legal status.

Trump also has relatively sunny plans for how Gaza can be rebuilt after the war. “You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place—the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate. It could be so beautiful,” he said during an October radio interview. “[It] could be better than Monaco.”

But according to Schanzer, two fundamental questions must be answered before any effort to rebuild Gaza begins: “One: Are there patrons?” and “Two: How can such an undertaking occur while Hamas is still in power?”

Finding patrons would require cooperation from Arab states, especially Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As a precondition for their participation in the rebuilding process, the UAE has demanded reforms and a new prime minister for the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank. They also want “an explicit commitment to the two-state solution” from Israel.

But the UAE, like Israel, sees no role for Hamas in the future of Gaza. Leaders of the Gulf state do want the PA to be involved, unlike Israel. In remarks last month, Netanyahu described the Palestinian Authority as “defective” and its establishment under the Oslo Accords as “a terrible mistake.” He added that he wouldn’t “delude himself” into thinking it should govern Gaza after the war.

There are some signs, however, that Netanyahu’s government might be singing a slightly different tune a few short weeks later. Last week, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar did not rule out the PA playing a role in postwar Gaza if it made some significant changes, such as ending its “pay to slay” policy of paying the family members of those imprisoned, killed, or wounded for perpetrating violence against Israelis. “The PA must stop educating children to hate, inciting against Israel, and conducting legal warfare against it,” he said. “If they met these conditions, addressed these problems, and changed their attitudes, it would be a different Palestinian Authority, and then we could seriously discuss together a better future for both nations.”

Worth Your Time

• In his New Cartographies Substack, technology writer Nicholas Carr explored how media technology has transformed the human relationship with selection and creation of messages and meaning. For centuries, he argued, machines were only involved in the transmission of media, not its selection or creation, but that changed in 2006 with Facebook’s News Feed. “The editorial function was no longer the exclusive purview of human beings,” he wrote. “When, sixteen years later, on November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public, communication technology’s ambit expanded once again, this time to encompass the role of message creation—the speech function that up to then was seen not just as the exclusive purview of humans but as an essential and singular quality of humanness itself. Machines still don’t understand the meaning of the speech they produce—that may or may not change in the future—but it turns out that doesn’t matter. For computers, understanding is not a prerequisite to speaking.”

Presented Without Comment 

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Also Presented Without Comment 

CNBC: Google Reclassifies U.S. As ‘Sensitive Country’ Alongside China, Russia After Trump’s ‘Gulf of America’ Comments

In the Zeitgeist 

English singer-songwriter Sam Fender is in the process of rolling out his third studio album, People Watching, and this single goes out to Lola, the official dog of The Morning Dispatch, who never fails to keep Grayson company no matter how late the writing process goes.

 Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Nick Catoggio unpacked (🔒) Trump’s funding freeze gambit. 
• On the podcasts: Jonah Goldberg is joined on The Remnant by Francis Dearnley, executive editor at The Telegraph, to discuss Keir Starmer’s woes and the British perspective on Trump’s second term. 
• On the site: David Drucker reports on how Elon Musk has made himself “truly untouchable” within the Trump administration, Charles Hilu provides an update on support for Tulsi Gabbard on Capitol Hill, Kevin Williamson knocks Trump’s lackluster effort to pressure Vladimir Putin, and Jonah argues Trump is risking the GOP’s unity with his demands for loyalty.

Let Us Know

Do you expect the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will reach its second stage? Should it?