The Israeli attack that killed seven aid workers, including an American, who were with the World Central Kitchen nonprofit on Monday appears to have flipped a rusted switch with the United States government. It’s been a rarity this century for leading members of either party to even discuss the idea of conditioning military aid to Israel on its military’s conduct. But after the WCK attack, the Biden administration and its allies in Congress had a new tone. According to a readout of President Joe Biden’s Thursday call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” and “that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.” He called, too, for an “immediate cease-fire” to “improve the humanitarian situation.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meanwhile, said that “if we don’t see the changes we need to see, there will be a change in our policy.” What “changes” or “steps” is the U.S. government needing to see? The government’s spokespeople kept this vague. This new verbal posture won’t be enough to satisfy most critics of the United States’ traditional policy of giving Israel as many bombs as it wants to do whatever it wants with them. But rhetorical movement toward even suggesting Israeli military assistance could depend on Israeli military practice is movement nonetheless.

Across transatlantic diplomatic channels this week, all the chatter was: Is the big dog getting a li’l eh on Israel, too? Is he giving the wisdom of Israel’s tactics a li’l rethink? In an interview with a right-wing Israeli news outlet, Trump raised some eyebrows by saying “you have to finish up your war,” and “you have to get it done. We have to get to peace. We can’t have this going on.” This rhetoric, according to one of the interviewers, “shocked us deeply.” Trump reiterated this argument in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt this week. “Get it over with and let’s get back to peace and stop killing people. And that’s a very simple statement,” Trump said. “They have to get it done. Get it over with and get it over with fast because we have to—you have to get back to normalcy and peace.” He warned that Israel was “absolutely losing the PR war.” Much to chew on. But in his most trenchant analysis during the Hewitt interview, Trump explained that years ago he sold his luxury yacht because he preferred playing golf to yachting. “The problem I had is I play golf, and you can’t play golf and have a yacht, because you want to play golf, then you’re supposed to go on the yacht,” he explained. “You’d rather play golf.” This is so simple, yet so expertly put. Why go on a boat when you can play golf? Anyway, we’ll see what happens with Israel.

Hallelujah, Congress returns next week after a two-week recess. The Surge will be right there with our “CONGRESS #1!” foam finger to greet them. And with government funding debates finally out of the way for the next six months, House Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to finally turn to the delicate matter of Ukraine assistance. The gist is that Johnson wants to get assistance to Ukraine, but he isn’t quite sure how. Ideas he’s floated include making the aid a loan (semantics, really), offsetting the cost by selling off frozen Russian assets, and requiring the Biden administration to lift its pause on liquefied natural gas in exchange. (Sure, sure, sure, in the Surge’s opinion.) But such trades would do little to temper the white-hot rage he’d receive from the MAGA right for continuing to send Ukraine assistance; simultaneously, any such trade could likely cost him the needed Democratic votes to pass such a package. The game here may be to try a couple of more conservative-friendly options in the House, watch them fail, pass the Senate-passed foreign aid bill, and then rely on Democratic votes to protect his speakership once Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tries to oust him. Get it over with.

In the end, the labels were simply too powerful. No Labels, the deep-pocketed centrist advocacy group, announced this week that it would not field a “unity ticket” for the presidency after a year of fundraising, securing ballot access, and bloviation on the subject. Per the group’s CEO, Nancy Jacobson, the problem was that they couldn’t find a decent candidate with a path to winning the White House. “No such candidates emerged,” Jacobson concluded, “so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.” The group had reportedly reached out to 30 prospective candidates, and came up with bupkis. Good on all of those prospects, then, for recognizing that zero of them had a chance of winning the presidency this way, and that the only effect would have been to help Donald Trump win the presidency, as everyone has been saying the entire time this was under discussion. Now those who don’t want third-party candidates to place Trump into the presidency should look toward the third-party candidate who’s already there.

To whom does Kennedy’s campaign pose the bigger spoiler risk? That’s not entirely clear. While he’s a more ideologically kindred spirit with the sort of low-trust, anti-establishment voters who’ve flocked to Trump in recent years, his last name is still “Kennedy,” which makes him a threat to the Democratic ticket. Kennedy himself often seems unsure of how to manage this balance, whether he’s talking about Israel or abortion. And this week—not for the first time—Kennedy’s team issued an off-balance opinion on an issue, only to reverse course immediately and blame it on clerical error. In a fundraising email to supporters, the Kennedy campaign lamented, among other things, “the J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties” and urged supporters to “help our campaign call out the illiberal actions of our very own government.” When reached for comment, though, a Kennedy spokesperson said that “that statement was an error that does not reflect Mr. Kennedy’s views. It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process.” On Friday afternoon, Kennedy released a new 8-paragraph equivocating statement about Jan. 6 prosecutions that said “I have not examined the evidence in detail,” and then set about demonstrating that. The 2024 presidential election is punishment from the Old Gods.

On Tuesday afternoon, conservative media personality Charlie Kirk delivered instructions via social media to the Republicans who control Nebraska. He urged the Legislature to pass a bill that would eliminate the state’s current hybrid system of awarding electoral votes in presidential elections. Under that, some of Nebraska’s electoral votes get awarded to the statewide vote winner, while an electoral vote apiece goes to the winner of each congressional district. Instead, the bill would have the state award all of its electoral votes to the statewide popular-vote winner. The existing hybrid model, unique to Nebraska and Maine, has allowed Democrats to be competitive for a single electoral vote in the Omaha-centered district, which Biden won in 2020. Shortly after Kirk’s posts this week, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen issued a letter urging the Legislature to pass it, and shortly after that, Donald Trump posted on social media that Pillen had written a “very smart letter.” The sudden jolt to passing a bill that had been languishing in committee, though, may not work. An effort to attach it to unrelated legislation went nowhere, and days are running out in the state’s legislative session. State Republicans, meanwhile, may not have the votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster on the bill, as even some Omaha-area Republicans won’t want to lose the relevance that the competitive electoral vote brings them. Are they really going to make Mr. Kirk ask twice?

Speaker Johnson announced last week that he would transmit the impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate on Wednesday, April 10. In a letter to his colleagues on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer played along, advising that “all Senators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the day after the articles are presented, and Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray will preside. I remind Senators that your presence next week is essential.” But is there really going to be an impeachment trial against Mayorkas for administering border security policies with which Republicans disagree? We’re skeptical. Many in the Senate predict that Schumer will immediately move to dismiss the charges before the trial, and he could even get bipartisan support to do so. Conservatives would hoot and yell at Democrats if they did this, but who cares? Dismiss the charges, ban TikTok effective immediately, and fly home.