President Joe Biden said on Thursday he did not believe there is going to be an "all-out war" in the Middle East, a region that has been on edge amid Israel's assaults in Gaza and Lebanon and escalation of the U.S. ally's tensions with Iran.
The president said that such a war can be avoided but more needed to be done to ensure that.
Asked how confident he was that such a war can be averted, he paused and told reporters: "How confident are you it's not going to rain? Look, I don't believe there is going to be an all-out war. I think we can avoid it."
He added: "But there is a lot to do yet, a lot to do yet."
When asked if he would send American troops to help Israel, he responded: "We have already helped Israel. We are going to protect Israel."
Tensions between Iran and Israel have been high as Israel has been weighing options to respond to Tehran's ballistic missile attack on Tuesday, which Iran had carried out in response to Israel's military action in Lebanon.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered by Palestinian Hamas militants' Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed 1,200, with about 250 taken as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's subsequent assault on Hamas-governed Gaza has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health ministry, and displaced nearly Gaza's entire population, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations that Israel denies.
Israel's recent military action in Lebanon has killed hundreds, wounded thousands and displaced a million. Israel says it is targeting Lebanese Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.
Tim Walz lectured on international relations at a state-run university in China and made dozens of trips to the Communist country — many of them now under scrutiny a week after he was chosen as the Democratic vice presidential candidate.
US Congressman Jim Banks of Indiana is demanding the Pentagon investigate whether the Minnesota governor complied with foreign travel reporting requirements “for his security clearance during his many trips,” some of which took place while he was a senior ranking member of his state’s Army National Guard.
A pro-democracy protester confronts Chinese tanks during the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, when Tim Walz first went to teach in China.AP
Walz was a visiting fellow at the CCP-sanctioned Macau Polytechnic University until at least 2007, according to public filings and press reports. The school was established in 1981 and subscribes to the vision of China’s Belt and Road Initiative — a massive infrastructure program that is the cornerstone of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s aggressive pursuit of influence overseas.
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“We do this in alignment with China’s Belt and Road Initiative,” reads a statement from Marcus Im Sio Kei, the rector of the Macau Polytechnic University, on the school’s website. “We are committed to cultivate talented individuals to serve the country and Macau.”
Macau, a former Portuguese colony, was taken over by China in December 1999.
In addition to teaching in Macau, Walz has taken more than 30 trips to China, beginning in the spring of 1989 during the massacre of pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square, which was universally condemned by the West.
Tim Walz worked as a visiting fellow at Macau Polytechnic Institute, teaching international relations.Shutterstock
During that first trip, Walz spent a year teaching under the auspices of World Teach, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based nonprofit that sends volunteers to teach in developing countries. The group, which was started by former Harvard University students, has partnered with Changsha Yuanjing Education Consulting Limited, a company affiliated with China’s Ministry of Public Security, according to public records.
“As a young man I was just going to teach high school in Foshan in Guangdong province and was in Hong Kong in May 1989,” he told a Congressional panel on China in 2014. Walz taught American culture and English as a second language to 1,000 high school and middle-school students each week, he said.
“As the events were unfolding, several of us went in,” he said. “I still remember the train station in Hong Kong. There was a large number of people — especially Europeans, I think — very angry that we would still go after what had happened.”
Walz was announced as Kamala Harris’s running mate last week.AFP via Getty Images
For China expert Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, traveling to China during the Tiananmen crackdown “was a mistake.”
“Any individual traveling dozens of times to an adversary nation in a personal capacity while having access to classified information poses an obvious security risk,” Banks wrote in the Aug. 12 letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. “An individual with a clearance should have had the good judgement not to engage in such travel in the first place, and any superiors or security officers for that individual are obliged to prevent such risky behavior.”
US service members are ordered to report on such trips, but “especially” so when dealing with an adversarial country, and are “required to complete debriefing questionnaires” and report any suspicious behavior they encountered, said Banks
Students conducted a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square during pro-democracy protests when Tim Walz first arrived in the Communist country.AFP/Getty Images
It’s not clear if Walz reported his trips to China to his superiors in the National Guard. Requests for comment were not returned Wednesday.
“The obvious question is did Walz have a [security] clearance and at what level?” said Scissors.
While he noted that attitudes around China changed in the mid 1990s during a period of engagement with the Communist country, Scissors said that traveling there as an active duty US service member could be problematic.
Tim Walz and wife Gwen Walz spent their honeymoon in China and returned multiple times to teach in Guangdong province.Governor Tim Walz/Facebook
After his first trip to the country, Walz gushed about receiving numerous gifts from his hosts. “No matter how long I live, I will never be treated that well again,” Walz, 60, recounted in 1990 after teaching American history, culture and English in Foshan in southern China.
Walz, a former high-school teacher, organized annual trips for US students to China.
In 1995, he and his wife registered a for-profit company in Nebraska to take high-school students on trips to the Communist country. Gwen Walz, a former teacher and school administrator, is listed as the president of Educational Travel Adventures, while Walz is listed as the secretary and treasurer of the company that was incorporated using their home address in Mankato, Minn., according to public documents.
They married a year earlier on June 4, 1994, the fifth anniversary of the end of the deadly Tiananmen protests. “He wanted a date he’ll always remember,” Gwen told the Scottsbluff Star-Herald in 1994. The two spent their honeymoon there, according to the paper.
“The toughest part was learning to tell them apart and memorizing their names, [Walz] said,” the Star-Herald reported at the time, adding, “in China students thought all Americans looked alike.”
Later, Walz advocated for human rights in the country, co-sponsoring the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2017 that called for the release of Nobel Peace Prize winner and activist Liu Xiaobo, before the activist’s death in July of that year.
AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV) has lowered its 2024 earnings forecast due to the impact of certain R&D and acquisition-related expenses it expects to record in the third quarter
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has signed an emergency preamble to the state’s sweeping gun control bill, fast-tracking its implementation and halting an ongoing effort by gun rights activists to delay its effects.
The law, H.4885, was originally scheduled to take effect on Oct. 23, or 90 days after Healey signed the bill in July, but her decision to proceed with signing the emergency preamble means it goes into effect immediately.
Under Massachusetts law, governors have the authority to issue an emergency preamble to expedite legislation when “the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, safety, or convenience” is deemed necessary.
The law’s expedited enactment was praised by gun control groups but sharply criticized by gun rights advocates, who had hoped to gather enough signatures to delay its implementation until a potential 2026 referendum.
H.4885 expands Massachusetts’ already strict gun regulations, in part as a response to the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which affirmed an individual’s right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.
The expedited law includes provisions banning untraceable “ghost guns,” expanding restrictions on “assault-style” firearms and large-capacity magazines, and tightening the state’s “red flag” rules. It also mandates that firearm license applicants pass a standardized safety exam and complete live-fire training, while also providing mental health information to local licensing authorities.
“This gun safety law bans ghost guns, strengthens the Extreme Risk Protection Order statute to keep guns out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others, and invests in violence prevention programs. It is important that these measures go into effect without delay,” Healey said in an Oct. 2 statement to media outlets.
The governor’s decision to fast-track the law has drawn swift condemnation from gun rights organizations. Tody Leary, owner of Cape Cod Gun Works and a leader of the grassroots Civil Rights Coalition, sharply criticized the move, accusing Healey of bypassing the democratic process.
“With a single stroke of the pen, Healey risks putting as many as 400 stores out of business and turning tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens into felons, simply for owning guns they have lawfully possessed for years,” Leary said in a statement. “She’s acting more like a dictator than a governor.”
Leary said that the Civil Rights Coalition was on track to collect the 49,716 signatures required to suspend the law and place it on the 2026 ballot, adding that Healey’s emergency order circumvented that effort.
Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL), expressed similar frustrations, with the group issuing a statement denouncing the law as a “historic attack on our civil rights.” Wallace noted that Healey’s past actions had already strained relations with the state’s Second Amendment advocates.
“At every turn, the Legislature and now the governor have avoided honest public input, especially from the [Second Amendment] community,“ Wallace said in a statement. ”We are the only stakeholders involved and there is a consistent effort to silence our voices and mislead the general public.”
GOAL, along with the National Rifle Association, pledged to take swift legal action.
“With the swipe of a pen, Governor Healey has shamelessly circumvented Massachusetts’ political process and expedited the effective date of her radical gun control law in the Commonwealth,” Randy Kozuch, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement.
“This extreme law will not go unchecked, and the NRA will be launching a challenge to restore the rights guaranteed to Bay Staters by the U.S. Constitution.”
By contrast, Healey’s decision was praised by the Massachusetts chapters of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, part of the Everytown for Gun Safety network.
“Gov. Healey is once again putting our safety first by taking meaningful steps to protect our communities from gun violence,” Olivia Benevento, a leader of Northeastern University’s Students Demand Action chapter, said in a statement.
“We’re thankful to the lawmakers and the governor for supporting this bill and helping us take a stand against the gun lobby’s dangerous agenda.”
The law’s passage marks the culmination of nearly a year of efforts by gun control advocates to respond to Bruen and tighten the state’s already strict regulations. In addition to banning ghost guns and “assault”-style firearms, the law prohibits firearms at schools, polling places, and government buildings and increases penalties for shootings near residential areas.
Minnesota Gov.Tim Walz,the Democratic vice presidential nominee, will attend a Muslim American advocacy group’s summit on Thursday in an effort to turn out voters as Vice President Harris works to win back Arab and Muslim American supporters disenchanted with her party’songoing supportfor Israel.
“In a groundbreaking moment, Vice Presidential Candidate and Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, will address Emgage Action’s ‘Million Muslim Votes: A Way Forward’ summit on Thursday, October 3,” Emgage Action wrote in a release.
Emgage Action retracted a previous version of the release that included incorrect information.
Walz will be joined by former House Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.), Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) at the “Million Muslim Votes” summit. Harris’s campaign also confirmed that Walz will be attending.
Then-candidate Joe Biden spoke at the same Emgage Action event in 2020 — the first time a Democratic candidate had addressed the group at the event. Biden’s speech at the time also marked his first time engaging with Muslim Americans specifically, and during that speech, he committed to reversing former President Trump’s Muslim ban.
According to Emgage Action organizers, Walz and other Democrats will present their party’s policies and hear from some Muslim Americans involved with Emgage. There will not be an interactive portion with voters tuning into the event.
However, Emgage Action and Walz are expected to announce a town hall in the coming weeks, at which Walz and other Democratic Party leaders will hear from Muslim voters.
Emgage Action has endorsed Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
According to Emgage Action organizers, Walz committed to appearing at the event Wednesday — the same day the Arab American Institute released a poll showing former President Trump ahead of Harris by 4 points among likely Arab American voters. Historically, Democrats have enjoyed a 2-to-1 margin in support among Arab and Muslim American voters.
Arab and Muslim American voters are critical to the coalition Harris needs to build in Michigan, with polls showing a neck and neck race between her and Trump in the state. The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling index shows Harris with a razor-thin lead over Trump in the battleground state, bringing in 48.4 percent support to Trump’s 47.9 percent.
According to Jim Zogby, the director of the Arab American Institute, the state has more than 200,000 Arab and Muslim voters, and their support is critical to Harris’s victory.
Israel’s incursions into Lebanon over the last week have also made the electoral math “more complicated” because Lebanese Americans make up the largest chunk of Arab American voters in the state, added Levin, who is also speaking at the event.
“They’re like the granddaddies of the Arab American community in Michigan,” Levin said about Lebanese Americans. “They were among the first people to come here, start businesses and work in the auto factories … so it’s become a lot more complex. … They have family members dying now.”
Emgage Action has also faced criticism from some within Michigan’s Arab American community for “not representing” the values of Arab voters.
“There are some that will lie for political motives, like Emgage, that will lie to you and tell you that we support Kamala, but we don’t,” Soujoud Hamade, the president of the Michigan chapter of the Arab American Bar Association, told The Hill. “If you speak to our community leaders, they will tell you, they will tell you that the majority of us do not support Kamala at all.”
Hamade plans to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
A recent poll by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that close to 1 in 3 Arab American voters polled plan on voting for Stein. The Arab American Institute poll found that closer to 1 in 10 Arab American voters polled plan on voting for a third-party candidate.
