Politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — Louis DeJoy, the head of the U.S. Postal Service, intends to step down, the federal agency said Tuesday, after a nearly five-year tenure marked by the coronavirus pandemic, surges in mail-in election ballots and efforts to stem losses through cost and service cuts.

In a Monday letter, Postmaster General DeJoy asked the Postal Service Board of Governors to begin looking for his successor.

“As you know, I have worked tirelessly to lead the 640,000 men and women of the Postal Service in accomplishing an extraordinary transformation,” he wrote. “We have served the American people through an unprecedented pandemic and through a period of high inflation and sensationalized politics.”

DeJoy took the helm of the postal service in the summer of 2020 during President Donald Trump’s first term. He was a Republican donor who owned a logistics business before taking office and was the first postmaster general in nearly two decades who was not a career postal employee.

DeJoy developed a 10-year plan to modernize operations and stem losses. He previously said that postal customers should get used to “uncomfortable” rate hikes as the postal service seeks to stabilize its finances and become more self-sufficient.

The plan calls for making the mail delivery system more efficient and less costly by consolidating mail processing centers. Critics, including members of Congress from several states, have said the first consolidations slowed service and that further consolidations could particularly hurt rural mail delivery.

DeJoy has disputed that and told a U.S. House subcommittee during a contentious September hearing that the Postal Service had embarked on long-overdue investments in “ratty” facilities and making other changes to create “a Postal Service for the future” that delivered mail more quickly.

DeJoy also oversaw the postal service during two presidential elections that saw spikes in mail-in ballots.

Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, a federal judge limited one of the postal service’s cost-cutting practices after finding it contributed to delays in mail delivery. DeJoy had restricted overtime payments for postal workers and stopped the agency’s longtime practice of allowing late and extra truck deliveries in the summer of 2020. The moves reduced costs but meant some mail was left behind to be delivered the following day.

DeJoy said in his letter that he was committed to being “as helpful as possible in facilitating a transition.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans pushed ahead late Tuesday on a scaled-back budget bill, a $340 billion package to give the Trump administration money for mass deportations and other priorities, as Democrats prepare a counter-campaign against the onslaught of actions coming from the White House.

On a party-line vote, 50-47, Republicans launched the process, skipping ahead of the House Republicans who prefer President Donald Trump’s approach for a “big, beautiful bill” that includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that are tops on the party agenda. Senate Republicans plan to deal with tax cuts later, in a second package.

“It’s time to act,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on social media, announcing the plan ahead as the House is on recess week. “Let’s get it done.”

This is the first step in unlocking Trump’s campaign promises — tax cuts, energy production and border controls — and dominating the agenda in Congress. While Republicans have majority control of both the House and Senate, giving a rare sweep of Washington power, they face big hurdles trying to put the president’s agenda into law over steep Democratic objections.

It’s coming as the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency effort is slashing costs across government departments, leaving a trail of fired federal workers and dismantling programs on which many Americans depend. Democrats, having floundered amid the initial chaos coming from the White House, emerged galvanized as they try to warn Americans what’s at stake.

“These bills that they have have one purpose — and that is they’re trying to give a tax break to their billionaire buddies and have you, the average American person, pay for it,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told AP. “It is outrageous.”

Schumer convened a private weekend call with Democratic senators and emerged with a strategy to challenge Republicans for prioritizing tax cuts that primarily flow to the wealthy at the expense of program and service cuts to U.S. health care, scientific research, veterans services and other programs.

As the Senate begins the cumbersome budget process this week — which entails an initial 50 hours of debate followed by an expected all-night session with dozens if not 100 or more efforts to amend the package in what’s called a vote-a-rama — Democrats are preparing to drill down on those issues.

The Senate GOP package would allow $175 billion to be spent on border security, including funding for mass deportation operations and to build the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border; a $150 billion boost to the Pentagon for defense spending; and $20 billion for the Coast Guard.

Republicans are determined to push ahead after Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and top aide Stephen Miller told senators privately last week they are running short of cash to accomplish the president’s mass deportations and other border priorities.

The Senate Budget Committee said the package would cost about $85.5 billion a year, for four years of Trump’s presidency, paid for with new reductions and revenues elsewhere that other committees will draw up.

Eyeing ways to pay for the package, Senate Republicans are considering a rollback of the Biden administration’s methane emissions fee, which was approved by Democrats as part of climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act, and hoping to draw new revenue from energy leases as they aim to spur domestic energy production.

While the House and Senate budget resolutions are often considered simply statements of policy priorities, these could actually become law.

The budget resolutions are being considered under what’s called the reconciliation process, which allows passage on a simple majority vote without many of the procedural hurdles that stall bills. Once rare, reconciliation is increasingly being used in the House and Senate to pass big packages on party-line votes when one party controls the White House and Congress.

During Trump’s first term, Republicans used the reconciliation process to pass the GOP tax cuts in 2017. Democrats used reconciliation during the Biden presidency era to approve COVID relief and also the Inflation Reduction Act.

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Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

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By Bianca Flowers and Helen Coster

CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Casey Cooper knew the odds were stacked against her as a Black woman when she entered the long-haul trucking industry, a male-dominated field. 

She grew her business for 11 years, long-hauling products from her home state of Virginia to Florida before landing her first federal contract in 2017. She has since secured nearly $6 million in federal contracts.

But when President Donald Trump began targeting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives across the federal government – which could include a program aimed specifically at helping Black-owned firms like her own compete for federal government contracts – Cooper was unfazed. 

Some minority-owned firms may have benefited from DEI programs,  the business owner said, but such initiatives did not go far enough in dismantling other barriers.

“DEI isn’t for us,” she said. “It looks good on paper, but that money doesn’t go to us anyway.” 

Now the Trump rollback of DEI initiatives threatens to erode even the modest progress made under President Joe Biden’s administration in increasing representation of Black-owned companies doing business with the federal government, according to 10 experts in DEI, government contracts and public policy and advocacy group leaders interviewed by Reuters.

Trump signed two executive orders in January that directed agencies and staff to repeal prior executive orders designed to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace. The exact implications of the orders are unclear, experts, contractors and trade association leaders say.  

“Many of these business owners feel disillusioned, betrayed, and deeply concerned about the future of their enterprises,” said Ken Harris, president and chief executive of the National Business League, a trade association for Black-owned businesses. “DEI policies, while far from perfect, provided a semblance of opportunity in an otherwise exclusionary system.”

MIXED RESULTS

In December 2021, the Biden White House bolstered DEI efforts by asking federal agencies to direct at least 11% of federal contract dollars to small disadvantaged businesses – a category that includes Black, Latino and other minority-owned ventures – with the goal of reaching 15% by 2025. For the previous five years, small disadvantaged businesses had received an average of 9.8% of contract dollars.  

The results have been mixed. Although small disadvantaged businesses overall received slightly over 12% of contract dollars in 2023, Black-owned businesses accounted for only a fraction of those contracts, 1.61%, according to government data. Black-owned firms received an even smaller slice of the pie last year, 1.54% of $637 billion in small business-eligible federal contracting, according to the data. In both years, the vast majority of federal contracts went to large companies.

In 2023 14.4% of the U.S. population identified as Black, according to Pew Research Center data.

Nine Black business owners and trade association representatives interviewed by Reuters blamed structural barriers including challenges raising capital to secure big jobs and the growing size of federal contracts, which tends to favor large companies.

“Over more than a decade, contracts have been getting larger and larger, and fewer and fewer. It gets more difficult for small firms to get in and get the experience they need to become federal prime contractors,” said Isabel Guzman, who headed the Small Business Administration under Biden and oversaw federal contracting programs for minority-owned businesses.   

The White House did not respond to multiple requests for clarification about the implications of the new policy for Black and other contractors of color.

Trump and his supporters say DEI programs unfairly discriminate against other Americans – including white people and men – and weaken the importance of candidates’ merit in job hiring or promotion.

DEI advocates say programs advancing minority-owned businesses are critical to remedy decades-long discrimination in traditional lending and race-based disparities in venture capital opportunities.  

Trump also rescinded a 1965 executive order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson that prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, religion and national origin by federal contractors. The new policy requires federal contractors to certify that they don’t operate any DEI programs deemed “illegal” by the administration. 

That is likely to end government pressure on companies to diversify their ranks, said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at NYU School of Law. It also creates uncertainty for contracting firms, he said.

“I think part of the intention behind this executive order is to be deliberately opaque about that, in order to sow confusion and panic among contractors of: ‘How do I know what’s legal and illegal? Maybe I should just shut all my DEI programs down, because I’m going to be creating risk for us if we do them,’” Glasgow said.  

When asked to comment, White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields said there should be no confusion around Trump’s orders. “He received a resounding mandate from 77 million voters who overwhelmingly chose him to restore common-sense policies, reestablish America’s dominance on the world stage, and strengthen the economy.”  

‘GOOD OLD BOY’ NETWORK

Patricia Sigers, a Black woman who owns a five-person construction firm that has done work for Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, said one of the biggest obstacles she has faced is getting the “performance bond” typically required for construction jobs.

Performance bonds are issued by insurance companies and provide assurance to a client that a construction firm will complete its job. The larger the job, the larger the performance bond, and as contracts balloon in size, small business owners like Sigers get shut out of the bidding process, she said.  

“White men can get a bond quicker than we can get a bond because they have been in business long enough to accumulate the wealth that is needed to get it,” Sigers said. 

Wendell Stemley, the owner of Black IPO Construction Management in San Diego and president of the National Association of Minority Contractors – which represents federal and state contractors and construction managers – said that a “good old boy network” has contributed to the lack of opportunities for minority contractors in government projects.

Stemley also described a false narrative about the effectiveness of initiatives designed to help Black and other minority contractors. 

“People want you to believe that, oh, the government got this big minority business program to give Blacks these multitude of contracts,” he said. “That’s just not the way it works.”

Stemley has requested a meeting with Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, whose department hires contractors for infrastructure projects, and plans to inquire about meeting with Trump. He described the lack of contracting opportunities for Black and other minority business owners as a “bipartisan failure,” citing the need for more minority workforce training and better compliance by prime contractors. 

Other leaders of minority-focused trade associations are considering legal challenges to the Trump orders and bringing in legal advisers to speak with members. They are also planning to meet with lawmakers to make the case for maintaining diversity efforts, Harris of the National Business League, said. 

Drexel Johnson, a Black general engineering contractor with the state of California, expressed frustration with previous administrations over the limited prospects for Black contractors and the possible risk to future opportunities. 

“If you take away the little bit of progress that we’ve gotten over the years, that’s not fair.”

(Reporting by Bianca Flowers in Chicago and Helen Coster in New York; Editing by Kat Stafford and Suzanne Goldenberg)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Billionaire Elon Musk’s role in the Trump administration is as a White House employee and senior adviser to the president, and is not an employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and has no decision-making authority, the White House said in a court filing on Monday.

According to a filing signed by Joshua Fisher, director of the Office of Administration at the White House, Musk can only advise the president and communicate the president’s directives.

“Like other senior White House advisors, Mr Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” it said.

Fisher’s filing, made in a case brought against Musk by the State of New Mexico, said that Musk was not an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service, or the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization, and added: “Mr Musk is not the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.”

DOGE has swept through federal agencies since Donald Trump began his second term as president last month and put Musk, the chief executive of carmaker Tesla , in charge of rooting out wasteful spending as part a dramatic overhaul of government that has included thousands of job cuts.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Michael Perry)

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NEW YORK (AP) — A former Watergate prosecutor on Monday urged a federal judge presiding over the prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams to assign a special counsel to help decide how to handle the Justice Department’s request to drop charges while three ex-U.S. attorneys urged a “searching factual inquiry.”

Attorney Nathaniel Akerman told Judge Dale E. Ho in a letter filed in the case record in Manhattan federal court that he sought to intervene because nobody was representing the public’s interest after three attorneys from the Justice Department in Washington made the request Friday.

The one-time Watergate prosecutor urged the judge to reject the dismissal request, saying the court could look into how the Justice Department reached its decision and could require Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who first directed prosecutors to drop the case, to appear in court and explain his position.

Akerman, representing Common Cause, a nonpartisan advocacy group for U.S. elections integrity, said the judge may ultimately need to appoint an independent special prosecutor to the case.

Three ex-U.S. attorneys also submitted arguments to Ho Monday, saying what was at stake was “far more than an internal prosecutorial dispute about an individual case.”

“The public furor that has arisen during the past week raises concerns about respect for the rule of law and the division of power between the Executive and Judicial Branches of government in our nation,” wrote John S. Martin Jr., the Manhattan U.S. attorney from 1980 to 1983; Robert J. Cleary, U.S. attorney for New Jersey from 1999 to 2002; and Deirdre M. Daly, U.S. attorney for Connecticut from 2013 to 2017.

They suggested Ho first learn why the Justice Department wanted the charges dismissed and whether its reasons were pretextual.

If the judge decides dismissal of charges is inappropriate, he will have multiple remedies, including the power to appoint a special prosecutor or to direct federal prosecutors to make evidence, including grand jury materials, available to state and local prosecutors, they said.

They also wrote that a factual inquiry might lead to other “necessary and important outcomes,” including the possibility of a contempt proceeding, criminal referrals and disciplinary recommendations.

“In short, depending on the circumstances, the Court could have a variety of procedural avenues available to protect the integrity of the Court and the justice system from abuse,” the former prosecutors said.

The ex-prosecutors also told the judge that additional public statements regarding the events of the past week have been issued or would be issued shortly by hundreds of former federal prosecutors.

Adams has pleaded not guilty to charges that while in his prior role as Brooklyn borough president, he accepted over $100,000 in illegal campaign contributions and lavish travel perks from a Turkish official and business leaders seeking to buy his influence.

The last week has featured after an unusual public fight between Bove, the second-in-command of the Justice Department, and two top New York federal prosecutors: interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan who led the Adams prosecution.

On Thursday, Sassoon resigned, along with five high-ranking Justice Department officials. A day later, Scotten resigned, noting that Sassoon had properly resisted a demand that the charges be dropped and the possibility they could be reinstated after this year’s election.

“No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives,” he wrote.

On Monday, Adams — amid calls to resign by some Democrats — confirmed that four of his top deputies had decided to resign in the fallout from the Justice Department’s push to end the corruption case against him and ensure his cooperation with Trump’s immigration crackdown.

In his letter to Ho, Akerman echoed Sassoon’s assertion that the Justice Department had accepted a request by Adams’ lawyers for a “quid pro quo” — his help on immigration enforcement in exchange for dropping the case. She called it a “breathtaking and dangerous precedent.”

Akerman wrote that there was “overwhelming evidence from DOJ’s own internal documents showing that the dismissal of the Adams indictment is not in the public interest and is part of a corrupt quid pro quo between Mayor Adams and the Trump administration.”

He said the internal documents show that in return for dismissal of the indictment, Adams agreed to improperly assist the Trump administration with immigration enforcement.

Adams’ lawyer Alex Spiro said Thursday that the allegation of a quid pro quo was a “total lie.”

When he directed Sassoon to drop the charges a week ago, Bove said the mayor of America’s largest city was needed to assist in Trump’s immigration crackdown and the dismissal of charges could enable Adams to campaign for reelection against multiple opponents unencumbered by criminal charges.

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By Valerie Volcovici and David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Aviation Administration fired fewer than 400 employees out of its workforce of 45,000, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Monday, as questions rise around air traffic safety amid a spate of recent plane accidents.

Duffy posted the number of layoffs in a social media post message on X, formerly known as Twitter, responding to a post by his Democratic predecessor Pete Buttigieg, who has been critical of the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation.

“Less than 400 were let go, and they were all probationary, meaning they had been hired less than a year ago. Zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go,” Duffy wrote on Monday.

The Trump administration sent air traffic controllers buyout offers but later said they were not eligible, also declaring other safety officials, including TSA officers, ineligible. The FAA remains about 3,500 controllers short of targeted staffing levels.

The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union said Saturday the FAA had fired several hundred probationary FAA employees.

The union said Monday it believed just under 300 FAA workers it represents were fired, including maintenance mechanics, aeronautical information specialists, aviation safety assistants and management and program assistants.

“These are positions that are vital to supporting public safety,” a union spokeswoman said.

The FAA and Transportation Department have declined to say what jobs the fired workers held or why they were fired.

The disclosure came on the same day that Elon Musk’s government downsizing team DOGE was visiting the FAA’s Air Traffic Control command center in Warrenton, Virginia, Duffy said.

Senator Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, on Monday slammed the Trump administration for firing FAA employees who inspect and maintain air traffic control communications, radio and computer systems – especially after a series of fatal crashes. 

“The FAA is already short 800 technicians and these firings inject unnecessary risk into the airspace — in the aftermath of four deadly crashes in the last month,” she said.

USDOT said Monday FAA “continues to hire and onboard air traffic controllers and safety professionals, including mechanics and others who support them.”

Duffy said on X that the Trump administration plans to overhaul what he called “our outdated, World War II-era air traffic control system.”

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and David Shepardson. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

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By Tom Hals

WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) – Delaware lawmakers on Monday proposed changes to the U.S. state’s widely used corporate law that would limit shareholder lawsuits after several high-profile companies said they might move their legal home to another state.

The bill sets out steps that corporate boards could take to insulate directors and controlling shareholders from litigation over alleged conflicts. The bill would also limit the kinds of internal records that shareholders can access, which they need to build their cases. The bill is sponsored by leaders of both parties in both houses of Delaware’s state assembly.

Delaware’s corporate law governs relations between company boards and their investors for around two-thirds of the S&P500 index. Companies tend to charter their businesses in the state for its stable law and well-respected courts and the fees those companies pay to the state generate around a third of Delaware’s general budget revenue. 

But several companies, including Meta Platforms, Dropbox and Bill Ackman’s management company, recently have said they were moving or considering moving their incorporation out of Delaware, which prompted the bill, according to the sponsor, Delaware state Senator Bryan Townsend, a Democrat and senate majority leader.

“And it also comes at a time when you have a couple other jurisdictions in particular that are seeming to gain some traction with being viewed as legitimate alternatives to Delaware,” Townsend told Reuters.

Texas has established a business court that is meant to rival Delaware’s Court of Chancery for specializing in business and investor disputes. Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX moved their state of incorporation to Texas from Delaware after a Chancery judge last year ordered Musk’s $56 billion pay package from Tesla to be rescinded.

Townsend said he’d like to move quickly on the bill, which he said was drafted with input from the state’s recently elected Governor Matt Meyer, a Democrat. The bill was not drafted by the state’s bar association, which typically oversees changes to the state’s corporate law.

Townsend said the bill would not change the case challenging Musk’s pay, which is on appeal before the Delaware Supreme Court. “This has nothing to do with Elon Musk. And I’ll note that this legislation is not retroactive,” Townsend said.

Townsend also introduced a bill that asked the state bar association to prepare a report on awarding attorneys fees. Delaware judges have awarded several fees that were among the largest ever in the past two years.

In recent years, several corporate leaders who lost costly cases in the Court of Chancery have attacked the state’s judiciary, most notably Musk. Another outspoken critic was Phil Shawe, who was embroiled in a long-running case over control of TransPerfect, a translation provider. Shawe has run ad campaigns in local media criticizing Chancery judges and was a leading proponent of Meyer’s campaign for governor.

Several rulings in recent years have held controlling shareholders liable over deals that corporate lawyers thought were properly structured, fueling criticism that the state was becoming too favorable to shareholder lawyers.

State lawmakers took the unusual step last year of amending the corporate law in response to three rulings before those cases had even been appealed, which was widely criticized by academics.  

Ann Lipton, a professor of corporate law at Tulane Law School, said Monday’s bill would make shareholder litigation in Delaware “dramatically less successful.”

The exact impact of that is unclear. Some experts argue shareholder lawsuits prevent the worst board room abuses and self-dealing. But others say litigation acts as kind of tax on companies that rarely results in much benefit for shareholders and that the real policing of corporate boards comes from institutional investors such as large pension funds.

However, the administration of Republican President Donald Trump may loosen federal securities regulations and place constraints on the ability of institutional investors to apply pressure to corporate boards. “That mechanism is failing at exactly the same time,” Lipton said.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Nick Zieminski)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Governor of New York Kathy Hochul said on Monday she will meet key leaders on Tuesday for a conversation about “the goal of ensuring stability” for New York City.

Her comments come amid calls for the resignation of New York City Mayor Eric Adams after President Donald Trump’s Justice Department asked to drop criminal charges against Adams.

“In the 235 years of New York State history, these powers have never been utilized to remove a duly-elected mayor; overturning the will of the voters is a serious step that should not be taken lightly,” Hochul said in a statement.

“That said, the alleged conduct at City Hall that has been reported over the past two weeks is troubling and cannot be ignored.”

(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

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RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said Monday he is running for governor of California in 2026, becoming the first major Republican to announce a bid for an election nearly two years away.

Bianco, an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump and his policies, was first elected sheriff in 2018 and has been in law enforcement for more than 30 years. He is joining a growing number of candidates looking to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom as the GOP struggles to field a serious statewide candidate.

During his campaign announcement in downtown Riverside, Bianco criticized Democratic policies that he says have led to the homeless crisis on city streets and the state’s housing affordability problems.

“It is only our Democrat elected officials who are responsible for the decline of California,” he said. “What is it they have given us? Rampant crime, higher taxes, the highest cost of living in our nation, tent encampments in every major city, more fentanyl deaths, catastrophic fires, a broken home insurance market and people across our state are struggling to afford groceries and gas. Californians deserve better.”

Bianco, a law-and-order conservative, said his campaign won’t focus on the divide between Republicans and Democrats but on a common goal of having “a better California.”

“We will take our message of restoring sanity to every corner of our beautiful state,” he said.

The Democratic candidates include former Los Angeles Mayor and Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, former Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, former state Controller Betty Yee and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. Polling from the Public Policy Institute of California shows former Vice President Kamala Harris would be in a strong position if she runs, but she hasn’t said what she’ll do.

The race to replace Newsom, whose term limit runs out in 2027, will be a Democratic free-for-all sure to attract the party’s top talent for the chance to lead the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fifth largest economy.

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By Alexander Cornwell

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham dismissed on Monday President Donald Trump’s proposal to seize Gaza and force out the Palestinians, while Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal said he expects Arab states to put forward a workable alternative.

The prominent lawmakers were among a bipartisan group of U.S. senators who earlier met in Tel Aviv with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who on Sunday repeated his backing for Trump’s controversial vision for Gaza.

Israeli officials have latched onto Trump’s proposal, with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz instructing the military to prepare a plan that would allow for Palestinians in Gaza to leave voluntarily.

But Graham, a longtime ally of Trump and a key Republican in Congress with influence on foreign policy and national security matters, told reporters there was little appetite in the Senate “for America to take over Gaza in any way, shape or form.”

Blumenthal simply said the plan was a “non-starter.”

Trump’s proposal has been widely denounced by Arab officials, while some critics have said it equates to ethnic cleansing. Netanyahu as recently as Monday said that the Palestinians in Gaza should be given the choice to leave.

Katz said on Monday that he would establish a directorate within the ministry for the voluntary departure of Palestinians from Gaza.

“The one thing that President Trump has done, he started a discussion that was long overdue,” Graham said, saying that Arab states had “woken up” to finding a better alternative for Gaza.

Saudi, Emirati, Jordanian and Egyptian officials are expected to meet as soon as this month to discuss the future of Gaza, hoping to devise a plan to counter Trump’s proposal that has rattled nearly all Arab capitals after 16 months of war in Gaza.

Blumenthal said Jordan’s King Abdullah had convinced him that Arab states would present a plan that covers normalising ties with Israel, self-determination for the Palestinians, regional defense arrangements and security for Israel.

“If those components are part of a realistic plan, it could be a game changer for the region,” he said.

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Mark Porter)

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