Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. We've made it to Wednesday. It's June 15th. I'm Nailibutu.

Here's what we're watching today. Why we don't know how bad crime in the US actually is.

Plus, the value of encouraging our kids to debate. But first, President Biden's balancing act with Saudi Arabia is today's one big thing.

The White House announced yesterday that President Biden will visit Saudi Arabia in July, where he's expected to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The White House wants to address sky high oil prices, but is also facing pressure to hold Saudi Arabia accountable on human rights.

Here to explain what's behind all of this is Axios World Editor Dave Lawler. Hey, Dave.

First, we heard different things yesterday from the US and Saudi Arabia about the purpose of the trip and who's meeting who?

Yes, it was really interesting. I was on this briefing call that the White House did to lay out the stops on the trip and they said he'll meet with, quote, his Saudi hosts and then asked who that was.

He said King Salman, the Crown Prince's father and then eventually he said and he'll probably see the Crown Prince when the Saudis put out their own announcement.

They said explicitly that Biden and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would be meeting.

And this was obviously the big question mark that was hanging out there ahead of this trip because Biden said on the campaign trail that he was ready to make Saudi Arabia a pariah over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and their human rights abuses.

Now, as you said, oil prices are sky high. They have business that they want to do with the Saudis and Biden is at this point willing to have a meeting with the Crown Prince despite the criticism that they know is coming over this.

Right. And so this was the brutal assassination of a Washington Post columnist. What has been the Biden administration's response to criticism that this all seems to have gone out of the window because of high oil prices?

Yes. So if we back up to the beginning of the administration, they did put out this document basically blaming the Crown Prince saying he's responsible for what happened to Jamal Khashoggi.

So that criticism came early on, but there was also at the same time a recognition on the White House side that they were going to have to interact with the Saudis.

And so it was how do you manage that? How do you both interact with the Saudis on things like Iran, which was one of the pressing issues, but also, you know, keep your distance from the Crown Prince himself.

Now they've decided, I guess that that's untenable and that Biden will be meeting with the Crown Prince. What they say is we've reset this relationship, but we don't want to rupture this relationship.

Basically, there are US interests that are tied up in the relationship with Saudi Arabia, and we don't want to undermine our own interests by isolating the Crown Prince.

Obviously, when the two shake hands, if there's a photographer in the room, that's a picture they don't want going around the world, but it's a decision that they've decided it's worth it to have this meeting.

President Biden also plans to visit the occupied West Bank during this trip and meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. What are we expecting to see out of that meeting?

So this could actually be a pretty tense meeting. Biden also promised during the campaign to reopen the US consulate in Jerusalem that was the primary, you know, point at which diplomacy with the Palestinians took place.

They have not done that mainly because of political pressure from the Israeli side. The Palestinians think that basically the Biden administration has bent over backwards to accommodate Israel has not taken their needs into account as much as they would like.

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