The U.N. General Assembly is probably going to pass a resolution giving the Palestinian Authority official recognition akin to membership in the international organization tomorrow. That’s going to dramatically increase the likelihood that the U.S. enacts steep cuts to its funding for the U.N., whether that decision comes from Congress or a future president.

A pretty clear-cut majority of members of the body despise Israel and seek to promote an independent Palestinian state separately from a peace process that sidelines Hamas. America can, of course, veto efforts at the Security Council cementing Palestinian statehood at the U.N.; it did that just last month. But members have found a workaround: They are convening an emergency session of the General Assembly tomorrow to vote on a resolution for de facto Palestinian membership. It’s almost certain to pass.

The specifics of that resolution have not yet been narrowed down. But the General Assembly can’t admit new members to the U.N. without Security Council approval. So the P.A.’s friends at Turtle Bay are getting creative. Reports on draft resolutions circulating around the U.N. indicate that the General Assembly will instead call on the Security Council to approve Palestinian membership, direct Palestinian participation in General Assembly meetings, and participation in other U.N. meetings from which Palestinian representatives are currently barred. The P.A. already has observer status at the U.N., which grants it some access. Tomorrow’s vote would effectively give it membership in a functional sense, if it’s not official.

Washington doesn’t need to stand idly by as that happens. Over at the New York Post, Eugene Kontorovich explained that the president could invoke legal provisions passed in the 1990s that require the U.S. to cut off funding for the U.N. if it makes the Palestinian Authority a member state. He also predicted that while the law provides sufficient room for the president to respond to the type of vote expected tomorrow, where the General Assembly will make Palestine a de facto, but not official, member, that President Biden would not opt to cut off U.N. funding.

That’s a reasonable assumption, considering Biden’s general orientation toward international organizations — and his ongoing effort to pressure Israel into abandoning its plans to go into Rafah. Kontorovich cited Biden’s move to rejoin UNESCO, after President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the organization, citing its anti-Israel bias; Biden also renewed America’s participation in the World Health Organization, stopping the withdrawal process initiated under Trump, and in the U.N. Human Rights Council. He also resumed U.S. funding for UNRWA. It’s difficult to see a situation in which Biden would choose to invoke the funding cutoff laws here.

Congress can force Biden’s hand with new legislation, though. This afternoon, Senator Jim Risch and several other Republican lawmakers introduced a bill to switch the legal trigger for a U.S. aid cutoff from a vote for Palestinian “full membership” to one that bestows on the P.A. “any status, rights, or privileges beyond observer status.”

While its current sponsors are all Republicans, it’s not difficult to see how a few Senate Democrats who have increasingly voiced their criticisms of the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias — such as John Fetterman — could be persuaded to sign on. It’s still unlikely that this will become law in the near future. Yet, after October 7, the likelihood that a provision like this could win adoption in Congress, perhaps as part of the annual defense-policy bill, has also increased significantly.