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The State Department's report on the war in Gaza - which suggested Israel had likely violated international law yet remained eligible to receive U.S. military aid - has left President Biden increasingly isolated on an issue that has consumed his presidency and complicated his reelection bid.
Like much of Biden's, at times, halting approach toward the war, the report released to Congress on Friday drew criticism from across the political spectrum. Progressives described the report as lacking moral clarity about a humanitarian catastrophe, while pro-Israel groups called it the latest example of the president undermining a key ally in the middle of a war.
The bipartisan praise Biden received for his early response to the Oct. 7 attack against Israel has all but disappeared, replaced instead by acrimony. In an election year already marked by protests and counterprotests, Biden faces the risk that voters who disapprove of his handling of the war in Gaza for disparate reasons could disrupt his path to a second term.
"There are two large groups of voters in the United States today when it comes to the domestic protests: people who want the president to stop the rage and people who want the president to solve the issues that have created the rage," said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. "The president's fundamental problem is that he has little real power to do either."
The memorandum released Friday, required under a presidential directive signed by Biden in February, offered a rare public assessment of whether Israel has followed international law as it used American weaponry to prosecute its war against Hamas. The report indicated that it was "reasonable to assess" that the Israel Defense Forces had run afoul of international law in some instances.
Israel has taken "some steps" to mitigate harm to civilians, and has the "knowledge" and the "tools" to do so, the report said. But "the results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions as to whether the IDF is using them effectively in all cases."
The report's conclusions, including that Israel nonetheless remained eligible to receive U.S. weapons, did little to resolve simmering tensions over the war, which have been especially raw among young Americans and other groups key to Biden's political coalition.
"It reeks of cowardice - an unwillingness to state the obvious," said one Democratic lawmaker, who, like several people interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a frank assessment of the report. The lawmaker said the Biden administration's position "appears to defy the facts."
Congress will want to "dig deeper" into the report's findings, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said. The report found there was insufficient information to draw a firm conclusion about any specific instances of Israel flouting international laws or U.S. policies. International organizations have found clear examples that Israel violated laws by blocking humanitarian aid from reaching civilians, Van Hollen added.
One congressional aide who works on foreign affairs suggested that the State Department's report reflected an administration that "came to its conclusions first and justified it after the fact."
Republicans have ramped up their attacks on Biden as he has grown more publicly critical of Israel's military campaign. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote Friday on X that Biden's "de facto position is a Hamas victory."
White House aides have rejected the idea that Biden is considering politics as he makes his decisions.
"The American people expect their presidents to have the guts to make hard national security decisions, and to put our safety, interests, principles, and alliances above politics," White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. "That's exactly what Joe Biden is doing. He is standing with Israel as they fight the Hamas terrorists who committed the hideous Oct. 7 attacks, and is making clear that how Israel defends itself matters because we do not want to see any more civilians killed."
Biden sparked a new wave of recriminations this week when he said that he would halt the shipment of U.S. offensive weapons to Israel if the country moves forward with a ground invasion of the city of Rafah.
"If they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically … to deal with the cities," Biden said Wednesday in an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett.
The shift in position - the first explicit public threat to withhold weapons from Israel - was met with some praise by pro-Palestinian activists, even as they qualified their support by saying that it was long overdue and cautioned that Biden's pronouncement needed to be followed up with clear actions.
But the backlash from pro-Israel figures was particularly intense, with Biden's critics accusing him of siding with Hamas over Israel. Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed an estimated 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostage.
Though much of the backlash came from the right, some Democratic donors and lawmakers also expressed their displeasure with Biden's move.
"Hard disagree and deeply disappointing," Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) wrote on X in response to Biden's threat to withhold weapons if Israel went into Gaza.
"The President's actions signal weakness to Hamas, to our allies and adversaries abroad, and at home," Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) said on X.
At the same time, Biden's allies are aware that his handling of the war is a political vulnerability, at least among some voters.
Even as Biden has pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu privately to change course, the White House has been focused on trying to reach a cease-fire deal that would halt fighting for several weeks and allow for the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas. But with hopes of such a deal appearing to grow slimmer in recent days - and with Netanyahu increasingly willing to defy Biden's entreaties - the president's options for changing public perceptions are limited, said Riley.
"Between now and the election, about the only tools available to him are symbolism and rhetoric," he said. "And those hardly seem equal to the current challenge of this White House."