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The biggest obstacle, perhaps, is that Saudi’s King Salman is acutely aware that the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative was conceived and proposed by his predecessor on the throne, then-crown prince Abdullah, his half-brother. The plan, endorsed on a number of occasions by the Arab League, advocates a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute. Given the establishment of a sovereign Palestine on territories overrun by Israel during the Six-Day War, and a just resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue, the plan promises full normalization of relations between the Muslim world and Israel.

In September 2021 King Salman addressed the UN General Assembly. In his speech he reiterated Saudi Arabia’s commitment to the 2002 Plan, completely disregarding the fact that the one-time Arab consensus – no normalization with Israel before a Palestinian state – had been breached. Four Arab states had ignored it. A precedent had been set.

According to The Cradle’s Arab and western diplomatic sources, Blinken asked his host: “Why don't you do with Israel what you did with Iran?”

MbS' response was equally direct. On the issue of a ‘peace agreement’ with Israel, he replied with three points, which Blinken later reported were unclear in terms of their order of importance:

And the Biden administration? Sadly, it has spent the past three years sitting on the sidelines of this historic transformation. Instead of embracing the Abraham Accords early-on and investing in their expansion, the administration effectively has sabotaged them. It has prioritized a renewed nuclear deal with Iran while beating up on Israel and Saudi Arabia for their democratic and/or human rights deficits. For a while Biden’s aides even refused to speak the term “Abraham Accords.” Only recently has the administration started talking about appointing a special envoy to drive expansion of the Accords, and only because the Saudis effectively have threatened to bolt their alliance with West. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has cozied-up to Qatar which sits securely in Iran’s regional camp, even extending non-NATO major ally status to Doha. And, as mentioned above, it seems about to agree to another bad deal with the mullahs of Iran. US policy must change. Despite “Trumpian residue” on the Abraham Accords and Palestinian dissatisfaction with the Abraham Accords dynamic — things that clearly bother Biden’s people; and even though Saudi-Israeli ties would be a political win for Netanyahu — something that clearly bothers Biden’s people too, doubling-down on the Accords should be a priority US foreign policy goal, a “no brainer.”

McCarthy has mocked Schumer for passing non binding resolutions and underestimating the House GOP on the debt ceiling. But Schumer forecast that “sooner or later, there’ll be some pushback against the hard right” that wants to tug McCarthy in its direction. 'Reckless': Schumer calls out McCarthy over debt limit plan SharePlay Video “If we pass some bipartisan bills … it’s going to put pressure on McCarthy,” he added. Must-pass bills like the annual Pentagon policy measure have a definite leg up in that department. This year’s looming expirations of the farm bill and Federal Aviation Administration legislation should also prompt action. Yet even the FAA bill’s already seen some drama, as Cantwell postponed a committee vote amid a dispute with Thune and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) over a proposal to alter pilot training requirements. Critics argue the change would weaken training — a charge backers dispute. Schumer made no bones about it: “They knew my position was very strongly“ in favor of keeping training hours intact. The rail bill has already cleared committee, and the FAA will be back in July. A bill to claw back bank executives’ pay and fentanyl legislation recently cleared the Banking Committee, the defense bill advanced last week and portions of drug pricing legislation are ready for the floor. Daines is hopeful the cannabis banking bill will follow suit. In addition, Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) energy permitting reform push already failed once, but he’s resolute about another shot — which could help Democrats cajole him into seeking reelection. And some of the dozen spending bills are starting to advance, which will require their own ample chunk of the Senate’s most valuable commodity: floor time. And there’s not a lot of it left this year, with seven more weeks on the schedule before government funding expires on Sept. 30. Meanwhile, legislating gets tougher every day the election creeps closer. Schumer said he doesn’t “have an artificial deadline” for when the chamber will close for bipartisan business.

After spending six months focused on confirming President Joe Biden’s nominees and fighting off GOP regulatory rollbacks, the Senate majority leader is planning to pivot into bipartisan policymaking mode. During an interview with POLITICO, Schumer outlined an enterprising agenda that includes must-pass bills on defense, aviation and farm policy, as well as long-held priorities like marijuana banking and China competitiveness.

That’s on top of a rail safety plan that could run into a wall of GOP resistance and a challenging push to lower prescription drug prices — plus more. And any of those bills risk falling to a filibuster by Republicans who are deciding whether they’re in a mood to compromise before the 2024 election, which could give them control of the Senate.

The House version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act passed 219-210, largely along party lines. Four Republicans voted against the bill and four Democrats voted for it. The House version of the legislation is expected to be doomed in the Senate, where the “anti-woke” amendments stand little chance of gaining approval. This sets up a clash over the must-pass defense bill that could consume increasingly scarce time in a Congress that also needs to pass a dozen funding bills to keep the government operating after the fiscal year ends in September.

Saudi Arabia has reportedly floated a series of demands as part of those negotiations, including advanced weapons sales and security guarantees from the U.S., as well as assistance with domestic nuclear enrichment. Some of these conditions, particularly the nuclear issue, appear problematic among some members of Congress, including strong supporters of Israel.

Ernst said that “there are a number of ways” to work with the Saudis, Israelis and other Arab states to “start hammering through” these requests, but acknowledged, “I don’t know that we could support everything the Saudis are asking for.”

US President Joe Biden said on Sunday that Israel and Saudi Arabia are “a long way” from normalising ties, in the clearest remarks to date that the US has been unable to seal a deal between its two Middle East partners.

Biden’s comments follow a media frenzy - mostly within the Israeli press - that Saudi Arabia and Israel were inching towards an agreement. The hype reached its apex in May after top Biden advisor Jake Sullivan said normalisation was in the US national security interests.

Israel and Saudi Arabia are a long way from a normalization agreement that would involve a defense treaty and a civilian nuclear program from the United States, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a CNN interview broadcast on Sunday. U.S. officials have been negotiating in a bid to reach an elusive normalization deal between the two countries. "We're a long way from there. We got a lot to talk about," Biden said in an interview with "Fareed Zakaria's GPS." Israel's energy minister expressed opposition last month to the idea of Saudi Arabia developing a civilian nuclear program as part of any U.S.-mediated forging of relations between the countries. Biden pointed to Saudi Arabia's decision on the eve of his visit to the kingdom last summer to open its airspace to all air carriers, paving the way for more overflights to and from Israel. The U.S. president also noted efforts toward a permanent ceasefire in Yemen, a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and has widely been seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. "So, we're making progress in the region. And it depends upon the conduct and what is asked of us for them to recognize Israel," Biden said in the interview. "Quite frankly, I don't think they have much of a problem with Israel. And whether or not we would provide a means by which they could have civilian nuclear power and/or be a guarantor of their security, that's - I think that's a little way off." Israel has said it expected to be consulted by Washington on a U.S.-Saudi deal affecting its national security. Israel, which is outside the voluntary Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has no nuclear energy, is widely believed to have atomic weaponry. Pointing to precedents like Iraq and Libya, Israel has long worried that potentially hostile neighbors could use civilian nuclear energy and other projects developed under the 1970 NPT as cover for clandestine bombmaking. Public fury grew in the Arab world last week after one of Israel's biggest military operations in the occupied West Bank in years, a raid in a Jenin refugee camp, a Palestinian militant stronghold. Saudia Arabia on Tuesday joined other Arab League nations in condemning the raid, which killed 12 Palestinians. Even before the latest violence, Riyadh said normalization is not possible until Palestinian statehood goals have been addressed. Israel’s religious-nationalist government has acknowledged setbacks in the normalization efforts amid Saudi censure of its policies toward the Palestinians

Importantly, authoritarianism does not depend on solving people’s problems to succeed politically; indeed, its genius is to harness and feast on unhappiness without trying to reduce it. In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, Trump spoke openly to this pain and offered the satisfaction of revenge: “In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”

This challenge will not be solved, as the Biden Administration seems to be realizing, by industrial policy or progressive economic policy alone. Although the wave of unhappiness is partly the result of neoliberalism, the cultural response has acquired its own force and exercises a powerful influence on social identities and modes of living, thought, and feeling. People who do not conceive of their unhappiness as a product of economic forces and seek solutions in other spheres of life are unlikely to be moved by an economistic response, however worthy it may be and even if they agree with specific policies. Biden has spent much of his political capital in his first term on delivering economic wins, while deprioritizing issues like racial justice, voting rights, immigration reform, and reproductive rights that have a deeper connection with people’s most salient identities. But his reelection campaign’s pivot toward defending personal freedoms and denouncing MAGA extremism signals a recognition that deliverism is not a viable political strategy.

More significantly, the U.S. is offering Iran the opportunity to export more oil if it will limit its uranium-enrichment levels and cooperate more fully with United Nations nuclear monitors. But the Biden administration is leery of using the “D” word to describe such a bargain. “Rumors about a nuclear deal, interim or otherwise, are false and misleading,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told journalists recently. “Our position on the question has not changed.”

In briefings with journalists, official have used expressions like “mini-agreement” and “interim arrangement.” But this is too cute by half and fools nobody. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, knows a deal when he sees one; he has told his officials that they can go ahead and make an agreement, providing the regime gets to keep its nuclear infrastructure. So does Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, the country with the most to fear from an unshackled Iran. He has told the Biden administration that he opposes “mini-agreements.”

House Republican leaders have been struggling to get the votes to move a partisan fiscal 2024 funding bill for USDA and FDA ahead of the long summer recess, raising fresh doubts about how soon lawmakers can start working on the farm bill this fall. Nearly 160 amendments have been filed for consideration on the FY24 Agriculture spending bill last week in anticipation of floor debate on the measure this week.

Hard-line GOP conservatives have been demanding deeper cuts in spending than the House Appropriations Committee's FY24 measures already contain, and as of this weekend the House Rules Committee had not scheduled a meeting to consider a rule for the Agriculture bill that will determine which of the proposed amendments get votes. Some 21 members of the House Freedom Caucus signed a letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., earlier this month, insisting that overall spending for FY24 be cut to the FY22 level of $1.47 trillion, and without the use of funding rescissions to exceed that limit. According to a report in Roll Call, senior House GOP members met Wednesday with some of the Freedom Caucus to discuss making deeper cuts in the legislation.

A bipartisan Senate bill introduced Wednesday would ban stock trading and individual stock ownership by members of Congress, executive branch officials and their families.

The measure, led by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is the latest of several seeking to ban or limit stock trading by members as public scrutiny of the practice increases. Gillibrand called the bill “the most substantive bipartisan effort to date,” and vowed to work hard alongside Hawley to get it signed into law.

The House Agriculture Committee will release the draft of a digital asset market structure bill this week and mark it up next week, along with the House Financial Services Committee, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., told reporters at a breakfast briefing today.

The bill is produced as part of the committee’s jurisdiction over the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Financial Services Committee has jurisdiction over the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the two committees have been working closely together on the CFTC provisions of the bill.

The House Agriculture Committee will release the draft of a digital asset market structure bill this week and mark it up next week, working jointly with the House Financial Services Committee, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn "GT" Thompson, R-Pa., told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday.

The bill is produced as part of the Ag Committee's jurisdiction over the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Financial Services Committee has jurisdiction over the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The two committees have been working closely together on the CFTC provisions of the bill.

House Republicans on Friday muscled through the annual defense policy bill, including one provision that would block the Defense Department from implementing President Joe Biden’s climate orders.

The final vote on the National Defense Authorization Act was a tight one, 219-210, with each party losing four votes.

Farm Bill. The last farm bill was not signed until December 20, 2018, more than ten weeks after the previous one expired. However, in 2018 the House Agriculture Committee finished its work in early May and the Senate Agriculture Committee finished in mid-June. This year neither committee has begun its markup yet. We expect considerable activity in the weeks ahead. Among other things, conservation, research programs, and additional work requirement proposals for nutrition programs will complicate the process.

Congressional members are returning to DC following a two-week break. They are already facing deadlines to get major spending bills finalized. About a month ago, Congress came up with an agreement on the debt ceiling. Within that bill, they agreed on an overall spending cap but now members have just a few short weeks to finalize important appropriation legislation.

To avert a government shutdown Congress needs to finalize the government budget before it expires on September 30th. This bill includes hundreds of billions of dollars for non-defense discretionary programs and defense funding, among other items. This is something we are expecting a big fight over. Some republicans were split over the defense spending agreement from the debt ceiling. In the debt deal, it capped security spending at 886-billion. Some congressional aids before the deal was struck were eying a security budget of more than 900-billion. Here’s what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R- KY) said about defense spending.

House Republican leaders have been struggling to get the votes to move a partisan fiscal 2024 funding bill for USDA and FDA ahead of the long summer recess, raising fresh doubts about how soon lawmakers can start working on the farm bill this fall.

More than 140 amendments were filed for consideration on the FY24 Agriculture spending bill last week in anticipation of floor debate on the measure this week.

Time is running out to get a farm bill written before the current legislation expires at the end of September. According to the most recent Ag Economists’ Monthly Monitor, the majority of ag economists don’t expect a farm bill to be written by the upcoming deadline, but a few think it could happen by the end of the year.

According to the June Ag Economists’ Monthly Monitor, the majority of ag economists surveyed say it’s “very unlikely” or “unlikely” a farm bill will be written by the time the current legislation expires on Sept. 30, 2023. And while no one expects a farm bill to be written by the end of September, there are some who think it could still be finished by Jan. 1, 2024.