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National

Around two weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu privately conveyed a message to the White House stressing that Israel's position regarding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has changed — and that it now supports a complete cut of all U.S. funding to the agency, which gives aid to Palestinian refugees, Israeli officials told me. The officials added Netanyahu communicated with the Trump administration without consulting Israel's security chiefs.

Why it matters: As with almost every past U.S. administration, Israel's position plays important part in White House's decision making on Israeli-Palestinian issues. Until several weeks ago, the Israeli policy was that any cut in American funding of UNRWA should be gradual and without any aid cuts to Gaza, thanks to the fear of a humanitarian collapse and an escalation on the ground. This position was supported by the IDF, the Shin Bet intelligence service and by the Israeli Ministry of Defense. For a long time, this was also the position conveyed to the White House and Congress by Israeli officials.

Israeli officials told me that Netanyahu decided to change the Israeli government's position several weeks ago, supporting a complete and immediate cut of all U.S. funding to UNRWA. The officials said Netanyahu conveyed this message privately to the White House and to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee via his close confidant, Ron Dermer, Israel's ambassador to the U.S.

The Israeli officials also told me Netanyahu decided on the policy shift without any discussion in the Israeli security cabinet and without any substantial consultation with the heads of the IDF and Israel's security and intelligence services. The officials said many senior defense and intelligence officials in Israel were caught by surprise by the policy shift and did not see it coming.

Netanyahu's office declined to comment but didn't deny the details in this story.  

Scoop: Netanyahu asked U.S. to cut aid for Palestinian refugees

He changed Israel's position on UNRWA without consulting security chiefs.

World

Israel

Axios AM

President Obama, after mostly staying out of the spotlight since leaving office, plans to campaign in coming weeks in California, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania — meaning there'll be a frequent fall contrast between Presidents 44 and 45.

What to watch for: Look for other travel and more endorsements. During a speech in Illinois on Friday, Obama will preview top themes for the campaign trail. These include the importance of turning out to vote at this particular moment, especially given that Dems are notorious for sitting out during midterms or when Obama isn’t on the ballot.

On Friday at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Obama will receive the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government and deliver remarks on the state of our democracy.

Obama communications director Katie Hill said: "President Obama will offer new thoughts on this moment and what it requires from the American people."

"He will echo his call to reject the rising strain of authoritarian politics and policies."

"His post-presidency is the next chapter in the cause of his life — bringing people together to change the world for the better."

Obama will also headline a fundraiser in New York City this month for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), which is chaired by Eric Holder, his former attorney general.

Barack Obama set to hit the midterm campaign trail

In coming weeks, he'll visit California, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Obama at John McCain's funeral. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Politics

2018 midterm elections

Omarosa taped nearly every conversation she had while working in the White House, including ones with "all of the Trumps," a source who watched her make many of the tapes tells Axios. Omarosa did this with a personal phone, almost always on record mode.

Why it matters: Omarosa is far from the only White House staffer to exploit lax internal oversight and loose loyalties to collect damaging info on Trump and others. And we know of several staffers who took careful notes for future deployment.

Omarosa, whose book became a New York Times bestseller after she was fired from the White House, was also (perhaps rightly) paranoid:

The source said Omarosa "wouldn't write me on email or text me — many [conversations] happened on Facebook Messenger (she didn’t want what happened to Hillary Clinton and her emails to happen to her)."

How Omarosa made the tapes, according to the source:

She carried two phones, her personal phone and her government-issued one.

She would often put conversations she had on her work phone on speaker, then record those with her personal phone.

Before heading into meetings, she would often press "record" on her personal phone — which she carried in her pocket or in a small purse.

Omarosa said she recorded people so she could go back and refer to them later, the source said. But she also wanted to "cover her own butt."

Why it was so easy: People in the White House paid much less attention to personal phones before leaking became ubiquitous.

In January, chief of staff John Kelly instituted a ban on personal devices in the West Wing on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m.

Between the lines: Omarosa's secret tapes.

Scoop: How Omarosa secretly taped her victims

She used a personal phone, almost always on record mode.

Omarosa

2024 will be an election year like no other, as President Biden seeks re-election amid economic uncertainty, two wars and questions about his age. His likely foe, former President Trump, faces felony charges and vows revenge on his political enemies. Meanwhile, Americans generally are dissatisfied with those choices and are divided over immigration, race, education and more.

Politics & Policy

For all the four-alarm fires around President Trump this summer — Putin, Mueller and Cohen, oh my! — his approval ratings have barely moved, as you can see from this remarkable chart of SurveyMonkey’s weekly tracking poll.

Data: 83 SurveyMonkey polls conducted between Jan. 26, 2017 and Aug. 29, 2018, averaging 14,161 respondents; Chart: Harry Stevens/Axios

Be smart: Trump's narrow trading range is both the reason he messages only to his base (no one else is gettable), and the reason he has to keep amping up for the volume for his true believers (he has nowhere else to go).

The high approval for Mueller in Friday's Washington Post-ABC News poll (63% support his investigation) was sobering for Trump strategists.

Only 18% support a pardon for Paul Manafort, despite Trump's tweeting on behalf of his former campaign chairman: "I feel very badly for Paul Manafort ... Such respect for a brave man!"

MSNBC analyst Matt Miller said 18% is therefore the base of the base — the "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" number.

A closer look at the SurveyMonkey numbers:

They’re not good: He hasn’t cracked 50% approval in this poll since the day he took office. But other than a few dips along the way, he has rarely fallen below 40%, even with the recent crises.

His negatives are stronger than his positives — the people who don’t like him really don’t like him.

The percentage of people who strongly disapprove of him in the SurveyMonkey polls — generally in the low to mid-40s — is remarkably close to the 44% who said in the most recent Axios-SurveyMonkey poll that they’re ready for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings.

Between the lines: The Post-ABC poll Friday appeared to show movement, with a record 60% disapproval rating for Trump that had jumped four points since April.

But the numbers look more stable when you compare it to previous Post polls, and nearly all of the movement is within the margin of error, since the Post’s sample size is smaller than SurveyMonkey’s.

Trump's stunning consistency

Since the start of the year, his approval ratings have barely moved.

Polls

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Israeli members of the Knesset during a meeting in his office in Ramallah Sunday that — despite the deep crisis with the Trump administration — a Palestinian delegation of security and intelligence officials is in Washington, D.C. for talks with the CIA. 

Why it matters: The connection between the CIA and the Palestinian General Intelligence service is one of the few functioning channels of communication between the Trump administration and the Palestinians. Despite cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority and projects in the West Bank and Gaza alongside its decision to stop funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the Trump administration has decided to maintain the funding it gives to the Palestinian security services.

According to two people who attended the meeting, Abbas said he wants to maintain security coordination and intelligence sharing with the U.S. even though he has cut all ties with the White House since President Trump's decision last year to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The official heading the Palestinian delegation is General Majed Faraj — who was also in Washington for medical treatments. 

Go deeper: Abbas says Kushner explored forming a Palestinian-Jordanian confederacy.

Scoop: Palestinian intelligence delegation in D.C. for talks with CIA

It's one of the few functioning channels of communication between the Trump administration and the Palestinians.

President Trump welcomes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the White House last year. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Mahmoud Abbas

The so-called "sonic attacks" that left American diplomats in Cuba with strange illnesses and brain trauma last year — and resulted in President Trump rolling back embassy staff and issuing a travel advisory — may have instead been caused by microwave weapons, reports the The New York Times.

The details: The medical team that inspected the 21 diplomats were initially skeptical, but now believe that the unusual reports of loud, painful sounds experienced by the victims may be attributed to the Frey effect — a phenomenon in which the brain is tricked into perceiving nonexistent noises by microwaves. The source and motive behind the attacks is still unknown.

Attacks on U.S. diplomats in Cuba possibly caused by microwave weapons

The unusual reports of loud, painful sounds could be caused by a phenomenon of microwaves.

Photo: Yander Zamora/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Cuba

Finish Line

Axios Finish Line

Disney World's unions will vote this week on a deal with the company that would raise the minimum wage from $10 to $15 over three years. But there's a big catch: it would also allow Disney World to hire more part-timers.

The big picture: Disney's move toward an increasingly part-time workforce is part of a national trend. Conventional, family-supporting, low-wage jobs are eroding, says Mark Muro of Brookings — and they're being replaced by part-time gigs.

By the numbers: 94% of the net increase in jobs between 2005 to 2015 was in "unsteady" employment — gig, contract, free-lance or temporary work — according to research conducted by Harvard's Lawrence Katz and Princeton's Alan Krueger. When people are in such jobs, it’s harder to establish a career path and move up, says Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. As a result, "there is less mobility out of the low-wage sector than there should be," Bernstein tells Axios.

The Disney World park in Orlando employs 70,000 people, making it the largest single-site employer in the country.

The agreement to raise the minimum wage, to be voted on Wednesday, will apply to part-timers as well as full-time employees, Matt Hollis, president of Disney's coalition of unions, told Axios.

Through the proposed deal, Disney is only raising its cap on part-time workers slightly — from 35% to 38% of the total workforce.

Currently, Disney World isn't close to reaching its part-timers cap — 31% of its workforce is part-time. But the fact that that Disney bargained for a higher cap indicates that the company wants to flexibility to grow its fleet of part-timers, experts say.

Companies keep making headlines for increasing minimum wages, but often those hikes come with some caveats, like in Disney's case, Muro says. For example, the Washington Post reports that higher entry-level wages at Walmart, Target and CVS have not translated to raises for middle-career workers.

The part-timers trend extends beyond low-wage work. Companies in all industries are moving away from full-timers, says Bernstein. Major tech companies like Microsoft and IBM are outsourcing a growing number of office jobs to contracting agencies, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Why it matters: Disney's deal for higher wages and more part-timers

Companies are raising minimum wages — but there are caveats.

A view of the castle in Disney World at night

The princess castle at Disney World in Orlando. Photo: Mark Ashman/Disney Parks via Getty Images

Future

Jobs

Business

David Hogg, a Parkland school shooting survivor and founder of the activist group Never Again MSD, has helped to raise close to $10,000 through GoFundMe to pin a 2016 tweet from President Trump attacking Sen. Ted Cruz on a billboard in Texas.

The big picture: The joint venture between USA Latinx, Hogg and the liberal Mad Dog PAC highlights GoFundMe as one of the moment's hottest political fundraising tools. And it's a perfect example of Hogg's social media savvy, which he and other Parkland survivors have utilized to amplify their political message ahead of this fall's midterm elections.

This post has been updated to add USA Latinx to the list of organizers.

David Hogg raises thousands for anti-Ted Cruz billboard in Texas

It features a 2016 tweet from President Trump.

Billboard with Trump tweet attacking Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz

Amid the Trump-shaming at the emotional Washington National Cathedral sendoff for Sen. John McCain, the televised eulogies and private conversations reflected a broader dream that the United States is still capable of a saner politics.

The big picture: "We were reminded by his funeral that we have been, and could again be, a nation based on values like honor, truth-telling, service, humility, respect, and kindness," Walter Isaacson, author of a shelf of historical biographies, told me.

One of the day's most socially viral moments was a bipartisan gesture that wasn't even on the program: TV coverage captured President George W. Bush trying to unobtrusively pass a piece of candy from Laura Bush, on his left, to Michelle Obama, on his right.

President Barack Obama captured the mood with the single word "small":

"So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse, can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insult, in phony controversies and manufactured outrage."

"We never doubted the other man’s sincerity or the other man’s patriotism, or that when all was said and done, we were on the same team."

Obama spoke right after Bush. Both had vanquished McCain for president, but got a call from the senator in his waning months, asking them to eulogize him.

The unusual invitation gave Obama the line of the day: "It showed his irreverence — his sense of humor, little bit of a mischievous streak. What better way to get a last laugh than to make George and I say nice things about him to a national audience?"

Bush called McCain "a man with a code": "John's voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder: We are better than this. America is better than this."

Reality interlude: This is likely to be a late-summer fling. Every single sign heading into President Trump's 2020 reelection campaign is that the rhetoric and reality of politics are only going to get worse.

Demography and technology are fueling the Trump brand of tribal politics, and his governing choices have left him more dependent on stoking his own forces rather than bringing in new swaths of support.

The day's only mid-speech applause went to Meghan McCain, who gave fiery remarks through tears: "The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great."

She certainly followed some of McCain's last advice: "When my father got sick, when I asked him what he wanted me to do with this eulogy, he said, 'Show them how tough you are.'"

One of the sweeter McCain memories came from former Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. The two senators had traveled the world together as part of congressional delegations. McCain always regretted not naming Lieberman to a historic bipartisan presidential ticket, instead crassly picking Sarah Palin.

"One of John's favorite cities in the world was Jerusalem," Lieberman recalled. "And one of his favorite things to do there was to stand on the balcony with [Sen. Lindsey Graham] and me of our hotel looking out at the old city and discussing all of the religious and political history that happened there over the centuries."

D.C. dreams of saner times

"John's voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder: We are better than this. America is better than this."

Axios

Sunday's top stories

Scoop: Netanyahu asked U.S. to cut aid for Palestinian refugees

Barack Obama set to hit the midterm campaign trail

Scoop: How Omarosa secretly taped her victims

Trump's stunning consistency

Scoop: Palestinian intelligence delegation in D.C. for talks with CIA

Attacks on U.S. diplomats in Cuba possibly caused by microwave weapons

Why it matters: Disney's deal for higher wages and more part-timers

David Hogg raises thousands for anti-Ted Cruz billboard in Texas

D.C. dreams of saner times

Abbas says Kushner explored forming a Palestinian-Jordanian confederacy

Donald Trump Jr. to hit the trail ahead of the midterms

How to get from our 4G reality to the 5G future

The retailers creeping up on Best Buy