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Jared Kushner — architect of the White House's Middle East plan, part of which is due for release at the end of June — casts doubt on the ability of Palestinians to govern themselves.

Driving the news: Asked in an interview on "Axios on HBO" whether he believes the Palestinians are capable of governing themselves without Israeli interference — a fundamental demand for Palestinians — Kushner said, "That's a very good question. ... The hope is, is that over time, they can become capable of governing."

Kushner said the Palestinians "need to have a fair judicial system ... freedom of press, freedom of expression, tolerance for all religions" before the Palestinian territories can become "investable." 

Asked whether the Palestinians could expect freedom from any Israeli governmental or military interference, Kushner said, "I think that it's a high bar. ... If you don't have a proper government structure and proper security when people are living in fear of terror, that hurts Palestinians."

Between the lines: Axios contributor Barak Ravid writes: "When he says 'it's a high bar' — I think that partially what he means is that even if there is a Palestinian state, the Israeli army would still have some responsibility for security."

Why it matters: Kushner, who represents a president whose actions have so far been all-in for Israel, in the interview seems to want to drive a wedge between the Palestinian people and their leadership and in so doing may make the sales pitch for his future plan even harder.

The Palestinian leaders have already announced they're boycotting the Trump administration's economic summit later this month in Bahrain, even as other Arab countries who support the Palestinians have said they'll attend.

Yes, but: Kushner also said in the interview that he believes the Palestinians "should have self-determination." Barak told me he takes this as a signal that the White House plans to propose a two-state solution. Barak said it's the first time Kushner has said so this clearly.

However, the phrase "self-determination" is slippery. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro told me that while "self-determination" usually connotes statehood, it could also mean "a level of limited autonomy that is little more than the Palestinians have right now — disconnected islands surrounded by overall Israeli control (and annexed settlements)."

"There aren't going to be any Palestinians who will endorse that definition of self-determination, and few others who matter elsewhere" would do so either, Shapiro said.

Context: I interviewed Kushner before his trip to Jerusalem ahead of the formation of a new Netanyahu government. But he arrived in Israel to discover that Netanyahu couldn't form a coalition and to news that Israel will have another election. This will further complicate the rollout of Kushner's peace plan.

Go deeper ... Kushner: "I'm not here to be trusted by Palestinian leaders"

Exclusive: Kushner uncertain Palestinians are capable of governing themselves

Kushner is the architect of the White House's highly anticipated Middle East peace plan.

Jared Kushner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: Amos Ben Gershom/GPO via Getty Images

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Jared Kushner asked about Trump's promotion of birtherism

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In response to Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Axios on HBO

Donald Trump

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

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, the grandson of refugees who fled to America to escape the Holocaust, defended President Trump's decision to slash the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. in an interview with "Axios on HBO."

Driving the news: Kushner told Axios that his family's experience — from "the precipice of life and death" to the West Wing in just two generations — is a reminder of "how great this country is." But "you can’t have all of them come into your country," Kushner said of the 68.5 million refugees in the world.

When asked whether he supported Trump's move to limit refugee admissions to the lowest level in 40 years, Kushner said the number "doesn’t make a difference one way or the another."

"I think the amount of money you can spend to help refugees to resettle in their countries and deal with aid is very impactful," he said.

Reality check: The Trump administration has cut or threatened to cut funding for refugee programs, as well as aid to the nations those refugees are fleeing. 

By the numbers: Since taking office, Trump has lowered the cap on refugee resettlements to the U.S. from 110,000 to a record low of 30,000. The U.S. is projected to fall short of that ceiling for the second year in a row, according to an analysis by World Relief, a humanitarian organization that resettles and cares for refugees. 

Meanwhile, there are more forcibly displaced people in the world than at any point since World War II, according to the UN. 

Details: Trump's 2020 budget request proposed a 23% cut to international programs and the State Department — the second-highest cut to any agency.

The sub-agency that oversees the refugee program would lose almost 90% of its budget, per the Washington Post.

Last year, the U.S. stopped funding the UN program that helps the roughly 5 million Palestinian refugees. Kushner reportedly supported the cuts. 

At Trump's request, the State Department said it will cut off aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where gang violence, high murder rates, poverty and political unrest have prompted hundreds of thousands of people to flee for the U.S.

Many of those people are seeking asylum, and that's a separate process from the refugee resettlement program. 

Both asylum-seekers and refugees, however, have fled persecution and danger in their home countries and have sought sanctuary in the U.S. 

The other side: Proponents of dropping the refugee cap have pointed to the asylum system as another way the U.S. cares for refugees. 

An average of 23,800 people have been granted asylum every year over the past decade, according to DHS data. 

But the administration has tried to curtail the asylum system as well.

The U.S. still resettles more refugees than any other wealthy nation, although Canada and Australia now resettle more refugees per capita than the U.S., according to World Relief's Jenny Yang.

"We’re doing our best ... to make sure that you're funding these situations so that the people who are immediately becoming refugees can have as much care as possible," Kushner said.

Kushner: "Doesn’t make a difference" how many refugees U.S. accepts

“You can’t have all of them come into your country," he said.

Jared Kushner. Photo: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

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The U.S. is in the middle of a full-blown trade war with China, our largest source of imports. There's broad bipartisan consensus that even if the Trump administration's tactics are misguided, China achieved its dominant trade position unscrupulously, being selective as to which international trade norms it would accept. 

GoPro will move some production from China to Mexico to avoid Trump tariffs.

Silicon Valley Business Journal headline, May 14

America's largest backup source of imports is Mexico, a member in good standing of NAFTA since inception. A natural part of any U.S. trade war with China would normally consist in encouraging American companies to source their products within the North American free trade area, rather than shipping them across the Pacific.

The White House is in a hurry to ratify USMCA, the successor agreement to NAFTA. The proposed treaty has support from Mexico, which also wants to see it signed quickly.

In six months, the U.S. could find itself fighting another big trade battle, this time with the EU and Japan.

In just over a month, the U.S. plans to end India's preferential trade privileges.

The bottom line: This is the worst possible time to start a trade war with Mexico, our most natural ally in any economic confrontation with China. And yet now we seem to be entering an entirely voluntary and preventable two-front war.

Any tariffs on Mexico will face legal challenges and might never even happen in the first place: Trump is nothing if not mercurial on such matters.

Why it matters: To get embroiled in one major trade war might be considered a misfortune; to find oneself in two of them looks like carelessness. Trump can't end global trade. But by making it much less predictable, he can cripple a key driver of American — and global — economic vitality.

Go deeper: How Trump's Mexican tariffs would impact goods in America

Trump's war on global trade

Mexico is usually our most natural ally in any economic confrontation with China.

Illustration of President Trump standing in front of a wall of shipping containers with the flags of China and Mexico on them.

Trump trade war

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Top stories & latest news on the Federal Reserve, real-time data, plus the biggest shifts happening in the U.S. and global economy.

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After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

The Trump administration has made it clear to the Kremlin that the U.S. fully supports Israeli airstrikes in Syria while Iranian forces, Hezbollah and pro-Iranian militias are still operating in the country, a senior U.S. official told me. 

Why it matters: Israel airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria continue every other week. Last night, a rocket was fired from Syria and landed in an Israeli military base on the border with Syria in the northern part of the Golan Heights. Israeli intelligence services think it was likely fired by pro-Iranian militia in Syria, and the Israeli air force retaliated against Syrian military bases. According to reports, three Syrian soldiers and seven non-Syrian militiamen were killed. 

Details: The senior U.S. official told me that State Department and White House officials have conveyed the message to the Russians several times in the last few months. The U.S. official added that the broader message to the Russians was that withdrawal of Iranian and Iranian-backed forces from Syria isn't just an Israeli demand, but an American one too.

The big picture: Three weeks from now, Israeli national security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat will host a trilateral summit in Jerusalem with his U.S. counterpart John Bolton and his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev. This will be an unprecedented event. 

Israeli officials told me the summit will focus on Syria and Iran. They added that they wanted to host this dialogue and have worked on it for a long time because they want to see the U.S. and Russia work together on a political solution in Syria that will push Iranian forces out of the country.

U.S. tells Russia it backs Israeli airstrikes in Syria as long as Iran stays

The U.S. is making clear that withdrawal of Iranian-backed forces from Syria isn't just an Israeli demand, but an American one too.

Vladimir Putin. Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev\TASS via Getty Images

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Majority Whip Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C), the third-highest ranking Democrat in the House, told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday that he believes President Trump will be impeached "at some point," but that Congress must first "effectively educate the public" on his corruption in order to get their support.

Jim Clyburn impeachment

CLYBURN: "We're trying to ensure we do what's necessary to educate the public, make sure the public understands exactly what we're doing, why we're doing it, so people won't misinterpret this as being a political move on our part. We believe that if we do it efficiently and effectively, it will be one that the public will understand and will support. If the public ever feels that we're being political with this, we will have done a tremendous harm to the country, to the constitution and to the people that we are sworn to serve."

TAPPER: "It sounds like you think that the president will be impeached or at least proceedings will begin in the house at some point, but just not right now."

Why it matters: Clyburn's comments go farther than what has previously been posited by Democratic party leadership, who will ultimately be the ones to decide whether to move forward on impeachment. The lawmaker pointed to two consecutive Democratic victories in the courts — where judges rejected attempts by Trump to quash subpoenas for his financial records — as reasons that Democrats should stay the course and not rush to impeach.

Go deeper: House Democrats' new case for impeachment

Democratic whip: Trump will be impeached "at some point"

Rep. Jim Clyburn is the third-highest ranking Democrat in the House.

Donald Trump impeachment

White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said on "Fox News Sunday" that President Trump is "deadly serious" about his threat to impose a 5% tariff on all Mexican goods crossing the border until the "illegal immigration problem is remedied," adding that he believes "American consumers will not pay for the burden of these tariffs."

Mulvaney Mexico tariffs

"[T]hat old-fashioned economic orthodoxy doesn't work when it's relatively easy to substitute other goods. Prices from China have gone up. American consumers are going to products that are made in the United States, for example, that don't carry those tariffs. We think the same thing will happen here and American consumers will not pay for the burden of these tariffs. Secondly, there's already a price associated with illegal immigration. American taxpayers are paying hundreds of billions of dollars for illegal immigrants. They're paying hundreds of billions of dollars for the drugs that come across the southern border. So there is already a cost associated with this that we are trying to get off of the backs of ordinary Americans."

Why it matters: Mexico recently became the No. 1 trading partner with the U.S. Trump's threat to impose tariffs at a rate as high as 25% on $350 billion worth of Mexican goods would effectively amount to an $87 billion tax increase on American consumers — and would impact goods ranging from avocados to cars, as Fox's Chris Wallace notes.

The New York Times reported Saturday that Trump overruled the objections of top White House advisers, including Jared Kushner and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who argued that it could upend the president's chances of passing his NAFTA replacement.

Mulvaney told Wallace that this is an "immigration matter, not a trade matter" — claiming that the latest tariffs and the USMCA are "not interrelated." Pressed on whether intentionally harming the Mexican economy would result in even more illegal immigration, Mulvaney admitted that that's "probably not inaccurate," but said that it's up to Mexico to help solve the problem if Congress won't act.

Go deeper: Trump's Mexico tariffs could decimate the auto industry

Mick Mulvaney: Trump is "deadly serious" about Mexico tariffs

Mulvaney argued that "American consumers will not pay for the burden of these tariffs," a claim that is disputed by many economists.

Trump tariffs

The number of Democrats running for president is just too damn high. And that's causing problems for the candidates and the Democratic Party.

The big picture: Voters have never had this many options to choose from in a presidential primary, so the national party is doing its part to narrow the field — and getting hammered for it — while the candidates are being forced to get creative to stand out.

And if some of their fundraising pitches are sounding more desperate, that's because they are.

Driving the news: There are only so many candidates you can fit on a stage. So the Democratic National Committee has announced new rules for candidates to qualify for the September debates, which double the current requirements set for the summer debates.

There's still room for up to 20 candidates to participate (10 per night), but given the number of candidates who struggled to make the first threshold, expect the fall debate stage to be even thinner. 

"The Democratic primary process is designed so that you don’t have 22 people in the race in June of an election year," said Adrienne Elrod, a Democratic strategist and former director of strategic communications for Hillary Clinton in 2016. 

Because of the unusually large field, "candidates have to do more with less," she added. Staffing is one example — there are only so many people to go around to 24 Democratic campaigns. 

At this point in 2015, Elrod said, Clinton's campaign had 20 communications staffers at her national headquarters. For comparison, Kamala Harris currently has 6 people.

Candidates are fighting for donations, and their emails are sounding more urgent. An email from Beto O'Rourke's campaign last month professed to "leveling with you" about how "lately our fundraising has slowed down." 

A recent fundraising email from Kirsten Gillibrand's campaign called her the "underdog in this race right now."

And some of the party's biggest donors are split between candidates. Susie Buell is a major Democratic bundler who endorsed Harris early on, but hosted a fundraiser for Pete Buttigieg in April.

Standing out in a crowded field is tough, especially if you were virtually unknown when you entered the race. 

Just look at Mayor Pete, who skyrocketed to fame in part by accepting so many interview requests and getting his face everywhere. 

Or Rep. Seth Moulton, who joined in on a Twitter joke about how he's indistinguishable from some of the other white men running.

Earning name recognition won't be easy when there are so many candidates. Wisconsin swing voters in an Engagious/FPG focus group, for example, knew AOC better than most of the 2020 Dems.

Yes, but: Voters don't seem too fazed by having 24 Democrats to choose from in 2020. A recent Fox News poll found that voter excitement is already at 2016 Election Day levels.

The bottom line: Voters have the biggest and most diverse field in history, but that probably won't last long.

2020 Democrats go after the DNC amid increased debate requirements

The unruly Democratic field

There are only so many candidates you can fit on a stage.

2020 presidential election

Kamala Harris

2020 election

2020 conventions

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday the Trump administration is willing to talk to Iran "with no preconditions," but that the U.S. does not currently plan to end sanctions or other forms of its maximum pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic, the AP reports.

Why it matters: Tensions between Iran and the U.S. have been ratcheting up for weeks, with military intervention briefly on the table at the direction of national security adviser John Bolton. Trump, however, says he opposes war and has long favored direct negotiations with leaders of belligerent countries, such as North Korea. Pompeo appears to have fallen in line with Trump's view and is currently meeting with the foreign minister of Switzerland, which has represented U.S. interests and diplomacy in Iran in the past. 

The other side: Iran President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday that the country would be willing to talk to the U.S. if it showed some "respect," but that Iran would not be "bullied" into negotiations, Reuters reports. The UN's atomic watchdog also said Saturday that Iran remains in compliance with the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal from which Trump withdrew the U.S., but raised red flags for the first time about its increased centrifuge activity.

Go deeper: Read Axios' special report on the multiplying global threats the U.S. faces

Pompeo: U.S. ready to talk to Iran "with no preconditions"

Trump has long favored negotiating directly with the leaders of belligerent countries, such as North Korea.

Mike Pompeo on May 31, 2019 in Berlin. Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Amazon and Google could face increased antitrust scrutiny after federal regulators agreed to split oversight of the tech giants, The Washington Post reported Saturday night, citing 3 people familiar with the matter.

Details: Under the agreement, the Federal Trade Commission would be responsible for oversight of Amazon, while Google would come under the watch of the Justice Department, the Post said, adding the sources spoke on the condition of anonymity "because the government’s work is confidential."

Why it matters: The apparent increased regulatory scrutiny in the United States comes at a time when President Trump has attacked the companies by name.

The big picture: The Federal Trade Commission previously directed a separate Google antitrust investigation, looking at the company's search and advertising practices and the negative impact on competitors. However, the probe was dropped in 2013. The company chose to make a handful of changes as a result.

Go deeper: Tech's regulation debate moves from "whether" to "how"

Federal regulators split scrutiny of Google and Amazon: Report

FTC will oversee Google, the DOJ Amazon, The Washington Post reports.

A using a Mac book pro as she uses Amazon website on January 18, 2017 in Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Technology

Antitrust law

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

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