Now-failed Minnesota gubernatorial candidate and prolific 2020 election denier Mike Lindell lost his bid for Minnesota governor on Tuesday night to the state’s Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who received 44.7% of the vote. Predictably, however, Lindell now has some questions about the results of his primary loss, and what he claims could be “anomalies” in the results.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week publicly rejected President Donald Trump’s latest Gaza peace plan.
The Trump administration can live with it — for now.
The administration says it’s less concerned with what Netanyahu says than what the Israeli Defense Forces do. A U.S. official, who, like others in the story, was granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, said that the administration was initially “disappointed” that Israel responded to the 15-point peace proposal by ramping up attacks in Gaza — but is pleased that it has since eased its assault.
Now, the administration is willing to give the Israeli prime minister some leeway to message the peace plan in the way he needs to, the official said. There is broad understanding that he is two months from a tough reelection — and needs to please his own hard-right allies to win. Few expected the president’s roadmap to be wholesale embraced, even as Trump on Truth Social trumpeted it as a “major milestone” in the conflict.
“We recognize the complexities that come from the Israeli elections, and we’re obviously going to give Bibi a space to try and navigate that,” the official said. But in turn, “they need to give us a little bit of space in terms of no targeted killings in order to allow us to try to get to the next phase, so there’s a lot more challenges to go to get there.”
U.S. officials and Hamas negotiated the latest peace framework separately, with help from Middle East allies. The proposal, announced last month, called for Hamas to disarm and relinquish governance in Gaza and Israel to withdraw its military from the territory. The plan stalled when Hamas said it would not disarm until Israel withdrew, and Israel said it would not withdraw until Hamas disarmed.
Even as skeptics of the Trump plan criticized the president for overhyping its achievement, U.S. officials believed that they needed to go public once Hamas was on board to lock in its pledge to disarm. Despite the president’s public confidence, administration officials privately expected that the proposal would likely face pushback from Netanyahu but that talks could continue with Israel.
Still, they considered the roadmap a significant win.
“Nobody’s ever gotten to this point where they got Hamas to agree to this, so that’s a necessary step before actually disarming it,” the U.S. official said.
And there are signs that Israel is preparing for the possibility of withdrawal anyway, with Israeli media reporting Israel’s defense establishment began weighing contingencies to do so in the days after Netanyahu’s public rejection.
Another administration official said the Board of Peace, a 27-country initiative formed as part of Trump’s deal last year to end the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has been “getting good cooperation on the ground of late.”
“That’s what’s important,” the administration official said.
And it’s not just Trump administration officials hailing the framework as a step in the right direction. Former ambassadors and administration officials, including some who served in the Biden and Obama administrations, see the recent commitment the U.S. secured from Hamas to disarm — a monthslong sticking point in the peace process — as a small, but meaningful step, even as doubts remain whether Hamas will follow through. A member of the Hamas political bureau, according to the Associated Press, said this week that Hamas remains “committed to the roadmap.”
“For Netanyahu, his primary objective, of course, is getting through his election so he’s going to at least voice rejection even while he may allow some aspects of it to move forward,” said Dan Shapiro, a U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration. “It looks like Trump is tolerating the Netanyahu two-step. These two have done a dance like this before and as long as certain elements of it are moving forward … Trump seems to be willing to tolerate Netanyahu’s stated rejection.”
Even Trump appeared in little hurry Monday to escalate the dispute with Netanyahu, insisting to reporters in the Oval Office that he had a “good relationship” with the Israeli prime minister despite the very public rejection of his peace proposal.
The White House referred requests for comment to the Board of Peace.
A Board of Peace official added that “separate discussions with Israel are continuing.”
“The objective remains the full decommissioning of weapons and ensuring Gaza can never again pose the kind of threat Israel faced on October 7,” the official said. “Plans are moving forward in this regard. We have seen important elements of cooperation in recent days and we are intensifying our efforts to accelerate progress.”
The U.S. official added that Israel remains skeptical that Hamas will follow through on their commitments, while noting the country was similarly skeptical that Hamas would release the Israeli hostages.
“We basically have built a lot of credit with them. And I think that they’re willing to give us more of a shot to see if we can get to the next phase,” the official said. “We’re in an uncomfortable position for everyone, but I think that there’s a pathway to get through it.”
The idea that Israeli troops are at least planning to withdraw — especially if that withdrawal goes to the yellow line in Gaza, a key point of the plan the Board of Peace proposed — is giving Trump allies hope that Netanyahu’s words are meant for a domestic audience, while his actions are meant to demonstrate he might consider a deal in the future.
“Netanyahu’s playing a fairly tricky tightrope, where on the one hand he flexes his muscle for domestic audiences, given his situation at election eve, and on the other hand, he’s doing some baby steps in the direction of the 15-point plan — testing the tolerance of the American or Board of Peace team,” said Nimrod Novik, who served as senior diplomatic adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term, said that “of course it’s a win” to get Hamas to agree to disarm. And, behind the scenes, he said there continues to be movement between the U.S and Israel.
“Slowly we and Israel are moving forward on both Lebanon and Gaza even in the face of Israeli elections,” Jeffrey said.
Still, the incremental movement leaves fundamental questions, which have repeatedly stymied efforts to create a lasting peace between Israel and Gaza. U.S. allies are also concerned that Netanyahu’s public rejection of the latest peace plan is undermining confidence in the Board of Peace and the broader Middle East peace efforts.
Hamas’ willingness to disarm is conditioned on Israel withdrawing from Gaza, leaving unresolved how — and in what order — either side would carry out its commitments.
Hamas is supposed to turn over its weapons to a United Nations-created body responsible for governing the day-to-day operation in Gaza, and that governing authority is supposed to eventually run the territory, supervised by the Board of Peace, though the timeline for leadership handover remains uncertain. And Israel, meanwhile, has not agreed to the withdrawal in the plan, even as its military is preparing for the possibility.
But administration allies don’t really expect some big peace ceremony at Camp David or in Geneva. They’ll settle for dialogue, however tenuous.
“You have to judge these things incrementally in the Middle East,” a person familiar with the White House’s discussions around the peace process said.
Jerry Wu and Daniella Cheslow contributed to this report.
CLACTON-ON-SEA — Voters seeking to re-elect Nigel Farage Thursday will have to scan past an array of comedy characters and oddballs on the longest ballot paper in British history.
The man who hopes to be the U.K.’s next prime minister is all but certain to retain his seaside fiefdom of Clacton — but his self-styled “people versus the establishment” electoral gambit is sowing some seeds of discontent even among loyal supporters.
Fear of Clacton becoming a “laughing stock” is a common refrain during a pair of focus groups POLITICO attended in the run-up to this week’s election.
The feeling that the town has been made to look daft was apparent even among those preparing to vote once again to return the Reform UK leader to parliament. And it’s not the rival candidate wearing a trash can on his head that they’re holding responsible for the “farce.”
Thursday may not be the end of the matter, either. A parliamentary investigation into Farage’s alleged failure to declare millions of pounds of donations in the run-up to his 2024 election could mean yet another by-election — and a tougher battle for the right-wing populist next time around.
This self-inflicted campaign is taking place because of Farage’s decision to resign his parliamentary seat and put his fate in the hands of Clacton’s residents.
Ordinary punters, he argued, should be the ones to have their say as he faced mounting questions over undeclared donations. The gamble was that such a vote would absolve him of wrongdoing in the eyes of the public, regardless of the findings in two parliamentary probes — one over a £5 million donation from a crypto-entrepreneur, and the other into support from a convicted fraudster. Farage has denied wrongdoing in both instances, arguing that help was given in a personal capacity.
But Britain’s main political parties took one look at this ploy and opted out. That’s how Count Binface, one of the most enthusiastic inheritors of a rich British tradition of standing as a satirical candidate in elections, ended up as Farage’s most high-profile rival.
Others risking their £500 deposit to get their names on the 90-cm-long ballot paper include rival jokesters with names ranging from Howling Laud Hope, Nick the Incredible Flying Brick and Baron Von Thunderclap. Broadcast rules mean the 34-strong candidate list needs to be read in full at every mention of Farage’s by-election on TV.
The first focus group arranged by the More in Common think tank that POLITICO observed was made up of nine constituents who all voted for Farage in the 2024 general election, and are minded to do so again in the by-election. (Their names were withheld so they could speak candidly).
It was a retiree who was first to volunteer regret at Farage’s decision, blaming him for provoking an “influx of idiots” into the constituency. “Unfortunately, the action of causing a by-election has,” the former shopkeeper offered, “really made Clacton, in my opinion, a bit of a laughing stock.”
Two others repeated that same phrase, with one dog groomer-by-trade adding: “I think it was all a bit of a farce. I think he should have admitted that he was given this £5 million.”
“I guess it makes it very hard to trust him,” a delivery driver chimed in. “Most of my friends have gone towards Count Binface as opposed to Farage.”
Farage has since given varying explanations for some of the money he’s received, including as a “reward” for Brexit, or to cover lifelong security in the perilous world of modern politics. The veteran campaigner has been tetchy about the “unconditional gift” during media appearances, telling a radio interviewer he could spend it on Ferraris or bet on the horses, adding: “What’s it got to do with you?”
The dog groomer was among those lamenting the cost of running the by-election too. Reform had offered to pay for it, but in reality there is no mechanism to do this. The sheer number of candidates running has some extraordinary consequences.
Tendring Council, which is presiding over the vote, said even the cost of printing the ballot papers is four times that of a typical election because of their sheer length. Additional planning has had to go into every stage, from how the ballot is printed, folded and actually cast at polling stations — and counting will go on through the night and possibly past breakfast.
Then there are the Reform voters who have now been forced to choose whether to cast a vote for a comedy candidate or for Farage.
“From what I can tell about Binface, he seems like an okay guy from the research I’ve done,” said one local businessman. “And I do think there would be some tourism involved because of the absurdity of having that candidate as the MP of Clacton.”
That influx could already be observed, to some extent, on Tuesday this week. Even though it’s a school holiday, the pier and the amusement arcades in town weren’t exactly heaving with holiday-makers.
But there was a steady stream of journalists — so many that they even tried to vox pop each other at times. Then there was an obscure mobile phone network that set up an ice cream van selling “99s for 99p” — in a publicity stunt echoing one of Binface’s manifesto pledges. A vintage Jaguar painted all over with the Union Jack (and used in the Austin Powers franchise) is touring the streets all day in support of Binface.
Farage’s social media has done a good job of showing how much support he still commands from the diehards — at times at messiah-like levels. And it’s not hard to find his “I’m with Nigel” placards outside homes, a picture of the candidate ringed with a halo-like ferris wheel.
But supporters in the first focus group suggested that the sheen could be coming off a man who has, just this year, been enough of a campaigning force to send the governing Labour Party searching for a new leader.
The second focus group, held in a community garden overlooking the town, featured right-wing voters, and comprised largely of former Conservative supporters who, though discontented with their old party, aren’t eager to back Farage any time soon.
They roundly agreed with the “farce” analysis of the by-election. “People see this by-election as a total joke. If you talk to anyone, then that is their view,” said a retired printer.
They all lamented having no proper choice, though they generally backed the decision by Farage’s mainstream rivals not to contest the vote.
One bridge player with a firm grasp on politics described playing “eeny, meeny, miny, moe” with her postal vote to randomly pick a candidate who wasn’t Farage. Another spoke of spoiling her postal ballot and writing that the whole affair is a waste of time and money.
These were all the kind of right-wingers who Farage would want to win over to elevate himself from an insurgent outsider to true contender for high office — but their stances only seemed to have hardened in response to the by-election.
Anything but a crushing Farage victory would be a major upset. Constituency polling has him on course to win 73 percent of the vote to Binface’s 20 percent. Turnout in this bizarre by-election will also be closely looked at, as will spoiled ballots.
Reform aides have already been planning a victory speech to take place after the votes have finally been counted on Friday. But first their candidate will have to undergo that British ritual of standing next to an array of comedy characters on a stage in a leisure center to hear the results.
Should Farage make it back to parliament as expected, then the standards commissioner’s investigation into the donations resumes. That means yet more scrutiny at a time when Labour is riding a polling bounce after Andy Burnham took over as prime minister.
For the first time since March last year, Labour has topped POLITICO’s poll of polls ahead of Reform. The government’s apparent rehabilitation — combined with Reform being squeezed on the right by the splinter Restore Britain party — is adding to a worsening picture for Farage.
If the Reform UK leader is found to have committed wrongdoing and ends up being suspended from parliament, the next by-election — should he choose to fight it — could pose a far greater challenge. Not only would he come up against real opposition, but voters will have read yet more headlines about mega-bucks donations as they’re forced to the polls once again.
“It’ll be bad for us and it’ll make us look even more stupid,” said a Reform-minded instrument salesman when asked about the prospect of another by-election. “But then he [Farage] was the one that called it.”
CORRECTION: This article was updated to amend the number of constituents taking part in the first focus group.
SACRAMENTO, California — Nancy Pelosi said those close to Joe Biden during his reelection campaign should have shared what they knew about his mental acuity — and confirmed she had private conversations with him about her polling concerns.
“I do think that those who did know should have acted upon that information. Whoever knew,” Pelosi, the former House speaker said at POLITICO’s The California Agenda: Sacramento Summit on Tuesday. “There was staff saying the family knew. The family said the staff.”
Pelosi’s remarks, in an interview with POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin, reflect some of the most detailed reflections she’s shared publicly about the role she played in convincing Biden to not to run for another term. She has long insisted that she didn’t demand Biden drop out of the race, instead urging him to reconsider polling that showed his path against Donald Trump was fraught.
“I only said to President Biden, ‘I’ve come to question the polling that you have and how your campaign is being conducted,” Pelosi said. “Because, at that point, 72 percent of the American people didn’t think he should run.”
The former speaker said she also urged Biden, during their private meeting at the White House, to release a diagnostic test from a doctor to prove to the public that he could “serve the next term.”
“We’re Catholic, we’re prayerful, we had our rosaries and all of that,” Pelosi said. “We had a lovely meeting. It was only the two of us.”
Pelosi recalled her reaction to his disastrous performance during a televised debate with Trump in June 2024. “When you think of the debate and how sad that was, that’s really when we learned,” she said. “I didn’t know, and I think he had his sort of ups and downs.”
Pelosi, who by then was no longer speaker, said she had only seen Biden in person a few times the prior year and hadn’t witnessed his decline.
The former speaker, one of the Democratic Party’s foremost tacticians, also spoke about the upcoming midterm elections, saying she was optimistic that Democrats — who need to pick up three seats to win the House — will have a wave year.
“I’d rather see 10 times that, like 30,” Pelosi quipped. “Thirty is my goal.”
But Pelosi was reluctant to speak about the succession fight for her seat in San Francisco. Pelosi, who’s represented the city in Congress for nearly 40 years, has endorsed city Supervisor Connie Chan and is using her formidable political operation to try to sink Scott Wiener, a prominent state senator.
“I don’t want to talk against anyone,” Pelosi said. “I’m for Connie Chan because I think she will be the best. I know the Congress better than anybody, says she immodestly.”
Pelosi declined to say who she might support for president in 2028, though she said Democrats will have a strong bench. She did, however, speak glowingly about California Gov. Gavin Newsom, her longtime political ally and a likely contender.
“He’s just been remarkable,” Pelosi said. “His intellectual resources he brings to it, his strategic thinking, again his knowledge of issues is so remarkable.”
Pelosi also heaped praise on New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another potential presidential contender. Pelosi dismissed reports about early tension between the two lawmakers after Ocasio-Cortez was first elected in 2018. Pelosi suggested that tensions were due to staff around the lawmaker — an apparent illusion to Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff who unsuccessfully ran to succeed Pelosi in San Francisco’s primary election.
“I think that she has been so operational, and it’s just wonderful. Wonderful,” Pelosi said of Ocasio-Cortez. “I know it’s a joy to work with her.”
Marisa Guerra Echeverria contributed to this report.
U.S. allies see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of Washington’s 15-point plan for Gaza as undermining confidence in the Board of Peace — and in the Trump administration’s ability to influence the Middle East more broadly.
It increasingly appears that the U.S. either doesn’t have — or isn’t willing to exercise — the leverage needed to deliver on Gaza, a number of diplomats and others familiar with U.S. strategy in the region told POLITICO. And that has them concerned about U.S. efforts at negotiations across the region.
“Netanyahu’s rejection of the peace plan carries significant implications for long-term regional stability and Israeli security,” said an Arab diplomat familiar with U.S. policy in the Middle East. “President Trump is the only one to have the potential to influence this situation, as he could seek to reassert his political relevance by pressuring Netanyahu to reconsider his position.”
Netanyahu’s defiance adds to the growing list of woes Washington faces as it struggles to reshape the Middle East, from ending the Iran war to winding down the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The Arab diplomat warned: “Arab and regional leaders may find themselves in a complex position, needing to balance their interests amid these evolving dynamics.”
Netanyahu disavowed the White House-backed peace plan for Gaza on Sunday, declaring that Israel requires Hamas to have “genuinely disarmed” before it withdraws its troops from the territory. That hard line could further threaten the viability of Trump’s Board of Peace, a 27-country initiative formed as part of Trump’s deal last year to end the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“The Board of Peace has a distinct limp to its gait at the moment,” said Robert Jordan, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the George W. Bush administration.
“It never appeared to be a broadly based, highly viable substitute for the United Nations,” he added, referring to Trump’s assertions in January that the board could be used as an alternative to the world body. “That’s compounded by the political situation in Israel at the moment.”
The Board of Peace declined to comment, but an official with the organization insisted that work is continuing apace, with Israel’s buy-in. The official pointed to a logistical support area under construction that is meant to serve hundreds of troops expected to deploy to Gaza as part of the international stabilization force envisioned by the board.
“The roadmap is between the Board of Peace and Hamas,” said the board official. “Separate discussions with Israel are continuing. Israel is not being asked to rely on trust or to make irreversible moves before verified steps are taken on the ground.”
The official, like others, was granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiation process.
A Western diplomat familiar with Middle East policy argued Netanyahu’s action is a sign that U.S. strategy toward Israel is misguided.
“This latest rejection once again shows that appeasing Israel only leads to more maximalist demands,” the diplomat said. “I don’t think it kills the [Board of Peace] but what it does do is once again show that Israel remains one of the obstacles to a viable two-state solution.”
Trump has avoided clashing publicly with Netanyahu over the roadmap, telling reporters Monday that he had a “good relationship” with the Israeli prime minister even though Netanyahu rejected the U.S. proposal. The White House declined to comment further on Israel’s rejection of the deal.
A Trump administration official, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, said the White House doesn’t see Netanyahu’s action as derailing the peace process at all.
“Broadly speaking, we see this as election-posturing by Bibi for a domestic audience,” the official said. “The [Board of Peace] has actually been getting good cooperation on the ground as of late. So that’s what’s important.”
Netanyahu’s rejection of the road map comes as his popularity has been eroding in Israel ahead of an October parliamentary vote that could lead to his unseating.
In Europe, some governments are still holding out hope that the Board of Peace can rescue the Gaza peace process.
“I extremely appreciate the work of chief negotiator [Nickolay] Mladenov on behalf of the Board of Peace, his achievements in the 15-point plan are absolutely substantial,” said Hildegard Bentele, a center-right German lawmaker in the European Parliament. He said he was confident the U.S.-led effort would make progress “if re-submitted after Israeli elections and targeting the core point of full weapons’ decommissioning.”
Others with experience in the region said that Netanyahu appeared to be successfully pushing the Board of Peace in a direction more favorable to Israel.
Netanyahu’s actions are “testing the tolerance of the American or Board of Peace team,” said Nimrod Novik, who served as senior diplomatic adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and is now a fellow at the New York-based Israel Policy Forum.
“It’s really a Trump personal enterprise,” said Zaha Hassan, who advised the Palestinian negotiating team during its bid for U.N. membership from 2010 to 2012 and is now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “So if it can’t get Israel to stand down in Gaza, to withdraw, to allow the Board of Peace to do its work, how can any other regional actor believe that the U.S. can restrain Israel in their neighborhood?”
A European diplomat said the disillusionment with Trump’s sway in the Middle East was already evident in his failure to wrap up the war in Iran quickly.
“The solution is not as close as anticipated or as Trump told us at some point. I think Trump is losing credibility,” said the diplomat, granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly. “Everything seems to be in limbo and in a high degree of uncertainty that affects us all.”
Jerry Wu, Megan Messerly, Myah Ward and Nicholas Vinocur contributed to this report.
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