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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. believes the Middle East cannot return to the status quo and must agree on a new future for the Palestinians in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack, which led Israel to launch a war in the region, a top White House official said on Sunday.

“What I think we believe in strongly is that Gaza cannot and should not be allowed to be a platform from which horrific terrorist attacks can be conducted against Israel,” Biden deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said in an interview with ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos, referring to the Palestinian territory Hamas controls.

“And so to the extent that they are seeking to make that no longer possible, that is both a very legitimate and, we believe, an achievable goal,” Finer added.

“Beyond that, what comes on the day after [fighting ends], I think we’ve also started to speak to: We cannot go back to a pre-Oct. 7 environment in Gaza where [terrorists] can threaten Israel in that way,” Finer said.

That applies both to supporting Israel in its current military operations and supporting a political future for the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank next to Israel, Finer said.

“That means resuming the urgent work of giving a political horizon to the Palestinian people, which to President [Joe] Biden means a two-state solution,” Finer told Stephanopoulos.

That message was also delivered by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during an early Sunday morning surprise visit to the West Bank territory.

Blinken “made clear that Palestinians must not be forcibly displaced” and “expressed the commitment of the United States to working toward the realization of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for the establishment of a Palestinian state,” his spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

The October attack on Israel by Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., killed more than 1,400, according to Israeli officials.

More than 9,400 people have also been killed in Gaza since the conflict began, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Israel insists it takes steps to curb civilian casualties, though it has faced mounting criticism over the death and injury toll in Gaza.

Many pro-Palestinian activists and some Democratic members of Congress have called for a cease-fire in light of the Gaza casualties, but it’s a move the Biden administrations does not support. Thousands of demonstrators gathered in front of the White House on Saturday.

On Sunday, Stephanopoulos asked Finer about Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who is perhaps the most vocal Democrat in criticizing the administration’s support of Israel in the war. “The majority of the American people are not with you on this one,” she wrote Friday in a social media post. She also denounced Palestinian “genocide.”

Tlaib has herself come under fire for using controversial language around the conflict, including the phrase “from the river to the sea” — seen by many as a call for the end of Israel’s existence, though Tlaib has said it’s “an aspirational call for [Palestinian] freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence.”

Finer, when pressed by Stephanopoulos on Tlaib’s criticism, said that the Biden administration “strongly” disagreed with some of the words and phrases used amid the conflict — in what seemed to be a subtle rebuke of Tlaib — but he acknowledged there are “strong views on all sides,” including within the administration.

“We have seen strong comments made by members of Congress, we respect the fact that there are people who have deep personal ties to this conflict in way that may be unusual in terms of recent world events,” Finer said.

He continued: “All that said, some of the characterizations and the terms used, we believe, have technical definitions, have certain historical resonance and weight, and we do not accept their application to this particular war, even as we continue to raise our serious concerns about the toll that this is taking on civilian life and the need to do even more to protect it.”

Stephanopoulos asked Finer if Blinken made progress in the U.S. effort to secure Palestinian sovereignty alongside the Israelis — a long-stated goal of the U.S. that has repeatedly failed amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East.

“There is actually a lot of alignment among the United States and our Arab partners on the fact that we cannot go back to a pre-Oct. 7 mindset,” Finer argued.

“None of them are particular supporters of Hamas. That is quite clear. And all of them, I think, are strong supporters of the need for a two-state solution, which is what Secretary Blinken and President Biden have also been calling for, and the need to resume that work.” Finer added.

Despite the calls for cease-fire also coming from some American allies in the region, such as Egypt, Finer said: “Secretary Blinken spoke quite clearly to why we believe now is not the time for an overall ceasefire, although we have made clear that we would support and are advocating for humanitarian pauses to allow humanitarian aid to be distributed, to potentially facilitate the release of more hostages and to give some relief and to allow the Palestinian residents of Gaza to take a breath amid this heavy, heavy bombardment.”

In the meantime, Finer said, the U.S. continues to engage in “quiet, intensive negotiations” to secure the release of the more than 200 people, including Americans, believed to have been taken captive by Hamas after its terror attack.

“It is a huge priority for the president and for all of us to get as many of those hostages home. … And we believe that it’s still possible,” Finer said, “but that work is continuing and there is no agreement yet.”

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(RICHMOND) — With three days until Election Day in Virginia’s pivotal legislative races, Gov. Glenn Youngkin believes the state can “lead” on rather than “fight” about abortion if enough of his fellow Republicans take office to enact a 15-week ban with exceptions, he said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

Virginia is a battleground on the issue this year as the southern-most state that hasn’t widely banned or restricted abortion access since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

Control of the state Legislature, currently divided between Democrats and Republicans, could decide the fate of abortion access.

“It’s one of the most divisive topics across Virginia,” Youngkin told “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.

But, he argued, his stance — a “limit” on the procedure after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and saving the life of the mother — could be a compromise. Current law bans abortions after 26 weeks.

“I think this is one where Virginians come together around reasonableness. And it then allows us to move onto really important topics,” Youngkin said, going on to cite concerns about inflation, education and crime — while touting how the state has added workers and increased education and public safety funding while he’s been in office.

Abortion rights advocates and Democrats in Virginia have also heavily campaigned on the possibility of Republican-led restrictions, should the party take control of the Legislature as Youngkin predicts.

In September, Virginia Democratic Party Chairwoman Susan Swecker contended that Youngkin and “the MAGA extremists who are running to control the General Assembly” would seek to “overturn our rights and then keep taking more.”

When pressed on Sunday by Stephanopoulos about why Virginia shouldn’t preserve its current 26-week law, Youngkin said more restrictions were needed but he stressed that he viewed that as the consensus move.

“I think this is a choice between no limits and reasonable limits, and I think this is one where Virginians come together around reasonableness,” he said.

“This is a place we can come together and settle on a very difficult topic,” he said, “and I think we can lead here as opposed to fight.”

Youngkin won the governorship in what was seen as something of an upset in 2021 and he has since built an increasingly national profile. Asked by Stephanopoulos if he has ruled out joining the 2024 presidential race — especially in light of GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s unpopularity in general election polls — Youngkin said he “continues to be very focused on Virginia.”

The governor has been eyed by some prominent donors like billionaire Thomas Petterfly as a potential late entrant in the Republican primary race.

“To even have my name tossed around in this is incredibly humbling,” Youngkin said.

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(WASHINGTON) — House Majority Leader Steve Scalise on Sunday defended Republicans seeking to send aid to Israel in its war with Hamas by cutting funding for the IRS to go after tax crimes, including by the wealthy.

“We passed a bill that addressed two problems that our Defense Department talks about: One, we need to get aid to Israel, and we do; but when our generals come and testify before committees like armed services, they say our debt is our biggest national threat. Not other countries like China, Russia — they say it’s our debt. We addressed both in this bill in a bipartisan vote,” Scalise told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.

Stephanopoulos had noted that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the GOP-led funding package for Israel in the House would add $12.5 billion to the government’s deficit mostly because it would reduce the ability of the IRS to enforce tax collections.

Scalise was also separately pressed about the issue of the 2020 presidential election after Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado, said last week that he would be retiring — and blamed conservatives’ focus on election denialism.

“Can you say unequivocally the 2020 [presidential] election was not stolen?” Stephanopoulos asked Scalise.

The majority leader repeatedly declined to answer directly, instead raising concerns with how some states changed their voting rules in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“So you just refuse to say unequivocally that the 2020 election was not stolen?” Stephanopoulos said.

“You want to keep rehashing 2020. We’re talking about the future,” Scalise responded.

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(HAMBURG) — One of Germany’s largest airports was shut down for more than 18 hours after a man believed to be armed and holding his 4-year-old child hostage drove a vehicle through a security barrier and parked under a Turkish Airlines jet, authorities said.

The incident — described by police as “tense” — began Saturday night at the Hamburg Airport, and hostage negotiators worked for hours to get the suspect to release the child and surrender, officials said.

The incident was resolved peacefully around 2:30 p.m. local time when the suspect got out of his vehicle with his daughter and surrendered, the Hamburg police department said in an online statement.

“The hostage situation is over. The suspect has left the car with his daughter. The child appears to be unharmed,” according to the police statement.

The suspect, whose name was not immediately released, was taken into custody without incident, police said.

The incident unfolded around 8 p.m. local time Saturday when a vehicle crashed through a security barrier surrounding the airport, according to police. The suspect allegedly fired a gun twice in the air as he drove onto the airport’s tarmac and apparently hurled a burning bottle from the vehicle, police said.

The suspect drove to an area where airplanes usually park and stopped underneath a Turkish Airlines plane, according to local media reports.

All flights in and out of Hamburg Airport were suspended as police hostage negotiators and psychologists communicated with the suspect, according to Sandra Levgruen, a spokesperson for the Hamburg Police.

Levgruen said authorities suspect the incident stemmed from a child custody dispute. Levgruen said the child’s mother contacted police and reported that her daughter was taken.

Levgruen said that during the hourslong standoff, the suspect told negotiators that his life was a “heap of shards.”

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(NEW YORK) — The attorney leading a bipartisan campaign to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot in every state says there’s a “very good chance” a top court in Minnesota, Colorado or Michigan will rule on the issue before the end of the year — teeing up urgent review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This question needs to be decided ideally before any ballots are printed, and I hope and expect it will be decided in our favor,” said Ben Clements, chairman and senior legal advisor of Free Speech for People, a legal advocacy group behind some of the constitutional challenges to Trump’s candidacy.

Judges in Colorado and Minnesota last week heard arguments in cases brought by groups of voters alleging an often-overlooked part of the Constitution — Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — bars Trump from their state ballots.

The district court in Colorado is expected to deliver an initial ruling this month.

A court in Michigan this week will take up a similar case against Trump as his attorneys counter-sue officials in that state to forcibly include him on the ballot.

“We the people have an obligation, the secretaries of state have an obligation, the courts have an obligation to enforce and give meaning to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Even if it might be politically hard,” Clements said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was ratified after the Civil War to keep former Confederate rebels from being elected to government roles. It says anyone who took an oath “as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution” and who then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or gave “aid or comfort to the enemy” cannot hold office.

Trump’s critics allege he clearly violated Section 3 given his connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and efforts to block certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.

“It’s very clear cut,” said Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. “The odds are that at least one state court is going to decide that the language of the 14th Amendment means what it says and says what it means, applying in this obvious case.”

Trump has called the lawsuits an “absurd conspiracy theory” and “election interference.” His legal team argues in court documents that the First Amendment right to free speech protects the former president from allegations he engaged in insurrection.

Trump attorney Scott Gessler, defending him in court in Colorado last week, called the 14th Amendment challenge there “anti-democratic” and contended that “it looks to extinguish the opportunity … for millions of Coloradans, Colorado Republicans and unaffiliated voters to be able to choose and vote for the presidential candidate they want.”

The constitutional argument for disqualifying Trump gained steam after two prominent conservative legal scholars wrote an analysis in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review concluding that Section 3 is “valid, enforceable, and self-executing” — and applies to Trump.

“The fact that they are associated with the Federalist Society, that, unlike me, they are not liberals, I think adds credibility,” Tribe said.

The claim, under this theory, that each secretary of state has the power to unilaterally remove Trump from ballots is backed up, at least in part, by a 2012 appeals court ruling from now-Supreme Court justice — and Trump nominee — Neil Gorsuch.

In a dispute over a naturalized citizen seeking to run for president in Colorado, Gorsuch concluded “a state’s legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.”

“This is a provision that’s supposed to operate whether or not you are prosecuted and convicted,” Tribe said of Section 3.

But so far, no secretary of state has enforced Section 3 on their own.

“Eligibility challenges of any kind, whether it’s residency or age or anything else, go through one channel and one channel alone, and that’s the court,” insisted Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat.

“We’re not an investigatory office. We’re not a law enforcement office. The ones who are going to make the legal calls about who engaged in what conduct and whether it rises to the level of constitutional disqualification — that’s what a court will do,” he said.

The case “is tough,” said Sarah Isgur, an ABC News legal analyst and former Trump Justice Department official.

“Was Jan. 6 an ‘insurrection’ or ‘rebellion’ in that legal sense of the term? Did Donald Trump ‘engage’ in that insurrection?” Isgur said of questions the courts will have to weigh. “The other problem, and I think this one’s more difficult, is that the language of Section 3 actually only applies to people who took the oath of office as officers of the U.S. When Donald Trump took the oath for president, he did not take the oath for an officer of the U.S.”

Clements believes his cases are compelling and will be difficult for the Supreme Court to ignore.

“The purpose of Section 3 was to say certain people engage in conduct that’s so egregious that is such a threat to our democracy,” he said, “that even if they have the support of the majority of Americans — they should not serve.”

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(NEW YORK) — A year before the presidential election, three-quarters of Americans (76%) believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and the leading Democratic and Republican candidates are viewed broadly unfavorably, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll. Only 23% of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction.

Republicans are overwhelmingly negative, with 95% thinking things in this country are heading in the wrong direction, followed by 76% of independents and 54% of Democrats, according to the poll.

Among the two candidates most likely to face off again in 2024, one in three (33%) Americans view President Joe Biden favorably, while former President Donald Trump is viewed favorably by only 29%, according to the poll.

Less than half of Black people (49%) and Hispanic people (33%) have a favorable impression of Biden. Both of these groups voted overwhelmingly for him in the 2020 presidential election. According to ABC News’ 2020 exit poll, 87% of Black voters supported Biden in 2020 as did 65% of Hispanic voters.

If someone other than Trump or Biden is the nominee of their respective party, about three in 10 Americans say they would be more likely to vote for the candidate of that party, but many more say that it would not make a difference in their vote.

By a 23-point margin (31% to 8%), Americans would be more likely to vote for the Republican candidate if someone other than Trump is the party’s nominee. That margin is slightly higher among Republicans (37% to 9%) and independents (38% to 9%). Just under half (48%) say someone other than Trump being on the ballot would make no difference in their vote.

Similarly, by a 25-point margin (29% to 4%), Americans would be more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate if someone other than Biden is the party’s nominee — with 55% saying it would make no difference. The margin is somewhat higher, 35 points, among both Democrats and independents.

A year out from the 2024 elections, the economy and inflation are top issues for Americans, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel. Seventy-four percent say the economy is very important to them, while 69% say inflation is very important.

Republicans are more likely to be trusted to do a better job on these two issues, according to the poll: Americans trust Republicans to do a better job handling the economy over Democrats 35%-25%, and, on inflation, they trust Republicans to do a better job 35%-21%. But across a range of issues asked about in the poll, around a third of Americans say they trust neither party.

Among other key issues, a majority of Americans also say healthcare (64%) and education (61%) are very important to them personally. On those issues, the Democrats have an advantage, according to the poll: Americans trust Democrats to do a better job than Republicans on healthcare (37%-18%). On education, they trust Democrats to do a better job over Republicans 33%-24%.

Most Americans also think that crime (57%) and gun violence (56%) are very important, but the public splits on which party they trust to do a better job. Republicans have the edge over Democrats, 32% to 20% on crime whereas Democrats have a 34% to 24% edge on gun control.

Abortion is seen as less of a priority to Americans, with less than half (45%) saying it is very important. Democrats are trusted more than Republicans on this issue, 40% to 23%.

How strong that advantage is and how important a factor abortion is in deciding voter choice could play out in Tuesday’s elections.

In Ohio, voters will decide on a proposed constitutional amendment that would protect abortion access in the state.

In Virginia, if Republicans capture the Senate and hold onto the House in the state legislature, that could open the door on conservative issues including Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed 15-week abortion ban.

METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted using Ipsos Public Affairs’ KnowledgePanel® November 3-4, 2023, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 949 U.S. adults with oversamples of 18-29 year olds, Black people, Hispanic people, and Born Again Christians weighted to their correct proportions in the general population. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.3 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 25-25-42 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll’s topline results and details on the methodology here.

ABC News’ Dan Merkle and Ken Goldstein contributed to this report.

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