The Latest: Trump announces deal for Hamas to disarm in Gaza, but hurdles and uncertainty remain
Hamas said Friday that it reached an agreement to disarm, a significant move that could help end the war in Gaza — but one that will face many hurdles and could take a long time to achieve, if at all. Israel has not commented on the deal, which President Donald Trump announced hours earlier. It comes nine months after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire to end the fighting between Israel and the group was signed.
Trump is taking Friday’s Cabinet meeting on the road — to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. It will be the first Cabinet meeting at Camp David in Trump’s second term after an earlier attempt in May was scuttled because of bad weather.
Trump said Thursday he may pull acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination for the full-time post to avoid conceding to Senate Republicans’ demands over a sweeping tax audit immunity deal benefiting the president and members of his family.
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Hamas said Friday that it’s committed to implementing the Gaza ceasefire agreement, including the new roadmap focused on the steps it needs to take to disarm.
The group’s statement says it and other Palestinian factions agreed to the framework as part of a national consensus to protect people in Gaza and help meet their humanitarian needs.
It said Israel must adhere to the ceasefire deal agreed to in October and halt its attacks in order for implementation to move forward, echoing language in the new roadmap released Friday by the Board of Peace.
The agreement calls for Hamas, which ran the government in Gaza, to first turn over all police weapons to a national committee of technocrats responsible for administering the strip. Only later, once the Israeli military withdraws from Gaza, would it be required to decommission and hand over its heavier weapons, according to the text.
With midterm elections looming, Democrats hope to convince voters that Trump administration lawlessness is the biggest threat to their rights and pocketbooks. The party’s past debates over crime and safety threaten to undermine that pitch.
Across the country, Democratic candidates are facing tough questions about their past calls to “defund the police” by reimagining public safety services or redirecting spending to other social programs — a prominent demand during the protests that followed George Floyd’s death.
Democratic leaders fear the outlier opinions may sink their chances of gaining ground in Congress, governor’s mansions and statehouses as the party’s rising left flank captivates its base, just as Republicans stoke fears about crime, immigration and democratic socialism in their closing midterm message.
The Asian Football Confederation, a key ally in Gianni Infantino’s presidency of global soccer, has joined UEFA and CONCACAF in protesting his plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to private equity investors tied to the Trump family.
“Football should never have been placed in such a position,” said the Asian soccer body. Together with Europe and North America, they count 136 of FIFA’s 211 members.
“Some things are simply too important to sell,” UEFA said in a statement Thursday announcing a boycott of FIFA events.
Infantino’s secret proposal revealed Tuesday would spin off its commercial operations in a new $20 billion subsidiary 20% owned by private investors, whose core investor would be a New York investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Trump, still frustrated about the status of his attorney general pick, began his Friday morning by going after one of the Republican senators who was holding up Todd Blanche’s confirmation to lead the Justice Department.
Continuing a criticism he began earlier this week, Trump said Texas Sen. John Cornyn had no issue with the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund until after he endorsed his primary challenger, Ken Paxton, for the Senate.
In the post, Trump also continued to defend the controversial fund, which Blanche said in his Senate testimony was dead. Republican senators want him to put that commitment into writing.
“Perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history,” Trump said. “They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them.”
Blanche met privately with Cornyn and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis over the issue later Thursday and the sides were working collaboratively, although Blanche’s confirmation prospects still remain unclear.
Senior FIFA adviser Carlos Cordeiro, who represented the soccer body on the White House Task Force for the World Cup, resigned Friday to protest its private equity plan.
“I cannot stand by while FIFA considers selling a stake in the World Cup,” Cordeiro, a former Goldman Sachs banker, said in a statement resigning as adviser to FIFA President Gianni Infantino that urged other senior FIFA staff to speak out.
Cordeiro often joined Infantino on working visits to meet Trump at the White House in recent years.
“Let me be clear. I had no involvement in this proposal, and I oppose it unequivocally,” the former U.S. Soccer Federation president said, calling the $20 billion commercial subsidiary “a bad deal for football.”
“Football has been central to my life, and after more than 35 years in banking, I understand both the value of this asset and the consequences of giving part of it away” he said. “That is why this proposal should be rejected.”
Millions of older adults on Medicare prescription drug coverage could face steeper monthly costs in 2027, after the Trump administration concludes a temporary subsidy program that has helped offset premiums for the past two years.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services this week announced it would wrap up the program, which was initially implemented by the Biden administration in 2024 to lower patients’ Medicare Part D prescription drug costs in response to the effects of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
While federal officials insist the financial impact on Medicare beneficiaries will be minimal, the decision opens the Republican-led administration to potential political consequences in a high-stakes midterm election year. Voters have identified cost of living as a top concern, and many older adults, who tend to vote in high numbers, are on fixed incomes where every dollar counts. The roughly 25 million Americans with Medicare Part D plans will find out about their 2027 rates in the fall, when they are casting ballots in November’s elections.
Trump said Thursday he may pull acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination for the full-time post to avoid conceding to Senate Republicans’ demands over a sweeping tax audit immunity deal benefiting the president and members of his family.
After failed negotiations forced the delay of a committee vote to advance Blanche’s nomination, Trump suggested he was holding firm against pressure from Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis. They have expressed concerns about the controversial settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, which a judge denounced as an exercise in self-dealing.
The senators said the Justice Department seemed interested in reaching an agreement with them, but the White House wouldn’t budge to aid the confirmation of Trump’s loyal former personal attorney, who has aggressively pursued the administration’s priorities as acting attorney general. Instead, Trump said in a social media post that he might pull Blanche’s nomination and resubmit it after Cornyn and Tillis leave office next year.
Trump told his Cabinet members to meet him at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, a rustic backdrop for the Trump administration sessions that have come to be known for being overly long and consumed by endless praise for their boss.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the 13th such meeting of the Republican president’s second term “will be a lot of fun and something different for the Cabinet to experience together.”
An earlier attempt in May was scuttled because of bad weather. During his first term, Trump held a Cabinet meeting at the retreat.
The public portion of Trump’s Cabinet meetings has lasted as long as three hours, with the president letting everyone at the table update him on their departments or agencies — with added praise for him personally and his leadership thrown in. In a departure from other presidents, he allows the news media to stay for the duration, a move that Leavitt has said proves his commitment to transparency.
A Hamas official said Friday that they did reach an agreement on disarmament, the most crucial part of the ceasefire deal. Israel didn’t give an indication that they had agreed.
Trump said Thursday that a deal has been reached for Hamas to disarm and Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza, but many hurdles, conditions and long timelines remained to wind down the war in the Palestinian territory.
The White House announcement comes nine months after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire was signed. Negotiations between Israel and Hamas had largely deadlocked over the implementation of its second phase, including the disarmament of Hamas and the reconstruction of Gaza.
Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan calls on the militant group to surrender its weapons and destroy its vast network of tunnels. It also envisions Israeli forces withdrawing from Gaza, the arrival of a new technocratic Palestinian government, deployment of an international security force and the rebuilding of the battered Palestinian enclave.
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