House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has “met his nightmare scenario,” said Politico. The “Squad 2.0 is coming to Capitol Hill.” Jeffries is “poised to become the first Black speaker” if Democrats take the House next year, said The New York Times, and with no immediate challengers, it’s “unlikely the incoming faction of anti-establishment members would block his path.” But they could still “make his job very difficult.” Jeffries is viewed with “particular aversion” by many in the incoming bloc of leftist candidates, who see the leader as an “establishment politician who has purposefully held back” some of their progressive goals.

Republicans have “gleefully speculated” that next year’s likely Democratic majority could be “just as unruly and restive” as theirs, said The Washington Post. Feuding between moderate and progressive party wings is seen as potentially “undermining a possible speakership” for Jeffries. 

For his part, the minority leader is “somewhat downplaying the internal divisions” facing Democrats when New York’s “socialism-curious” electeds arrive in Washington next year, said Puck. It’s unclear how Jeffries will approach integrating these new members into the delegation, but he will “need confidantes and peacemakers” to ensure they “understand the rules of the road.” In that context, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is seen as a “potential asset.”

“Insurgent victories” from progressive candidates in New York, however, reveal a “striking dynamic” with “significant implications for national politics,” said The Atlantic. The man who would be speaker is “not the dominant force” even in his “own hometown.”

Trump’s newly constituted Board of Peace is meeting this week in Cyprus as “questions swirl about the organization’s work in Gaza,” said Semafor. The meeting is intended to “reset” the group after the war in Iran “completely shifted the attention in the last several months,” said a European Union official to Politico. The board “rejected the characterization.”

The board’s meeting comes “nearly nine months after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas,” although Trump’s “much-vaunted attempt to replace the United Nations has little to show for itself,” said The Economist. “Urgently needed reconstruction has yet to begin.” The “Washington-led” board has made “little progress” on its mandate to oversee Gaza redevelopment since its first meeting in February, due to “funding issues, logistical hurdles and questions regarding its international and legal legitimacy,” said Politico. 

The “U.N.-sanctioned” body is “planning a sweeping grant of legal immunity for itself,” said The Guardian. Language in a draft resolution obtained by the outlet also lets the organization “obtain public property in Gaza ‘free of charge.’”

Trump’s board is a “real estate grab masquerading as a peace plan and economic reconstruction,” said The American Prospect. Without being able to operate openly across much of Gaza, the Board of Peace is “hoping to at least begin building temporary communities in the green zone,” said The Times of Israel. It’s not yet known if Palestinians will be “willing to move to the Israeli side of the Strip” and if the group’s Palestinian members will “lose legitimacy by operating under Israeli occupation.”

A new crop of candidates is rattling Democratic leadership with their willingness to criticize what was once a pillar of party unity