Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed at least 22 people today. One attack on the Bureij camp killed nine members of the same family. This comes amid ever more dire warnings of mass starvation and death as Israel’s total blockade on Gaza enters its third month. The World Health Organization deplored the mounting crisis, condemning the international community’s complicity.

Dr. Michael Ryan: “The reality here is that we are breaking the bodies and the minds of the children of Gaza. We are starving the children of Gaza, because if we don’t do something about it, we are complicit in what is happening before our very eyes. We are complicit. We are causing this.”

In the Mediterranean, a ship carrying humanitarian aid bound for the Gaza Strip sent out a distress signal overnight after it was bombed by drones in international waters near Malta. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition is blaming Israel. The attack set the ship on fire, punched a substantial breach in its hull and cut off communication with those aboard. The Maltese government said 12 crew members and four civilians were “confirmed safe” after a nearby tug helped put out the flames. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg is among 40 humanitarian volunteers who’d been planning to board the vessel, named the Conscience, to set sail for Gaza this weekend.

Greta Thunberg: “The silence and the passivity, largely, from the outside world is completely deadly. And we all have a moral responsibility to act against that and to do our part to demand accountability for war criminals and our own governments’ complicity in this genocide and illegal occupation and siege.”

After headlines, we’ll have an update on the attack on the Freedom Flotilla with retired U.S. Army colonel and former diplomat Ann Wright.

Israel has again attacked Syria, striking near the presidential palace in Damascus earlier today. This follows recent deadly sectarian clashes in Syria involving the Druze community which killed over 100 people. Syria’s transitional government condemned “all forms of foreign intervention.”

President Trump removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser Thursday amid fallout from what’s known as “Signalgate,” in which Waltz added the editor of The Atlantic magazine to a group chat about Yemen war plans. Trump said he will instead nominate Waltz as ambassador to the United Nations, and has named Secretary of State Marco Rubio as interim national security adviser. A Reuters reporter snapped photographs of Mike Waltz using a modified version of Signal at a Cabinet meeting as recently as this Wednesday. He appeared to have recent exchanges with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

The U.S. has struck Yemen on a near-nightly basis since mid-March, killing over 250 people, according to reports, though experts say the true death toll could be twice as high.

Thousands of people joined demonstrations across the United States Thursday for May Day, widely celebrated as International Workers’ Day around the world. Protesters rallied for the rights of workers, immigrants and Palestinians, with much of their anger directed at the Trump administration and the “billionaire takeover” of Washington, D.C. This is Layan Fuleihan, education director at The People’s Forum.

Layan Fuleihan: “What the Trump administration is doing right now is, in fact, trying to reorganize the system of governance and the organization of society in the United States, that would actually take more wealth from the working class to line the pockets of the billionaire class. He’s trying to aggregate powers into the executive branch. He’s doing this by attacking hundreds of thousands of federal workers, attacking unions, stripping people of their bargaining rights and going after all of the small concessions that the ruling class has been forced to give the people of the United States because of the pressure that came from grassroots struggles over the past decades.”

In Philadelphia, police arrested 70 people for blocking a highway as part of May Day protests, while Senator Bernie Sanders rallied protesters outside Philadelphia’s City Hall as part of his Fighting Oligarchy tour.
In Maryland, 16-year-old high school student Zion Parras joined protests in Baltimore.

Zion Parras: “I’m here because my friends and my family and my community have seen the injustices that have occurred because of the second Trump administration. And we believe that as students with voices, that we should be able to stand up and fight for those rights.”

Millions took part in May Day protests around the globe, including in Istanbul, Turkey, where police arrested hundreds of people. Fifty thousand officers were deployed ahead of the demonstrations, which came at a time of heightened tensions in Turkey following the arrest in March of Istanbul mayor and opposition politician Ekrem İmamoğlu.

A federal judge has permanently barred the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to expel Venezuelan immigrants without due process from the Southern District of Texas. Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., who was appointed by Trump in his first term, rejected Trump’s claim of an “invasion” by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to justify the expulsions. It’s the first permanent ruling against Trump’s use of the 1798 wartime law.

The Bhutanese immigrant community says at least “a dozen” of its members have been caught up in the Trump administration’s brutal detention and deportation crackdown. Those targeted are refugees who fled persecution of Bhutan’s ethnic Nepali community and came to the U.S. under a program started nearly two decades ago by President George W. Bush. Their immigration status is not in question, but they’ve reportedly been targeted because they have criminal records.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, May Day protesters rallied Thursday to demand justice for Nhơn Ngọc Nguyễn, a 58-year-old Vietnamese refugee with dementia who was abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and died in its custody last month. He was jailed after his annual check-in in February; his family was unable to locate him for weeks after he disappeared. They say he died from medical neglect, alone and unaware of his whereabouts.

In Florida, another ICE detainee, a 44-year-old Haitian woman, died last week after spending over two months in an immigration jail. Florida Congressmember Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the only Haitian American in Congress, called for an investigation into the death of Marie Ange Blaise from the House floor on Wednesday.

Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick: “Marie had been complaining about chest pain for hours. They gave her some pills and told her to go lie down. Unfortunately, Marie never woke up. Her loved ones deserve answers. They deserve accountability, like so many immigrant families who have their loved ones missing and who are hurt. These conditions at the ICE facilities are inhumane.”

The Washington Post reports the Trump administration has tapped officers with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to help federal immigration officials locate undocumented immigrants using data from mail and packages. Video of a weekend raid in Colorado Springs confirms that postal inspectors joined officers from other law enforcement agencies, including ICE, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service, as they arrested more than 100 undocumented immigrants on Sunday. It’s the first time the Postal Inspection Service has been used for immigration enforcement since it was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1775.

The founder of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture said Thursday that a fund backed by Abu Dhabi will make a $2 billion investment in crypto exchange Binance using a Trump-branded crypto coin. The deal could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family, constituting a major contribution by a foreign government to the president of the United States. Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, responded, “This is far more than is captured by the term 'conflict of interest.' It is foreign policy for sale and justice for sale.”

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday seeking to end federal funding for public radio and TV stations through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, after accusing NPR and PBS of spreading “radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'” It’s likely the order will be challenged in court, and it’s unlikely to have an immediate impact, since the CPB is funded for two years in advance to protect it from political interference.

The Trump administration has cut $1 billion in mental health grants for schools that had been approved by a bipartisan Congress in the wake of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting that killed 21 people. The Education Department said the funding was canceled because it violated the Trump administration’s ban on DEI, since the grants sought to increase the diversity of mental health workers in schools.

The U.N. human rights chief warned, “The horror unfolding in Sudan knows no bounds,” as at least another 40 people were killed earlier this week in attacks by the Rapid Support Forces on the besieged city of El Fasher and Abu Shouk camp in North Darfur. Over 540 people have been reported killed in North Darfur over the past three weeks, though the actual death toll is likely much higher. The World Food Programme is warning time is running out to secure food aid for millions of people in need.

Shaun Hughes: “The rainy season is just around the corner, and we’re in a race against time to preposition food in areas that will be cut off when the rains come. During the rains last year, we saw a major surge in hunger and in disease outbreaks. … At the moment, we’re reaching 4 million people, but we need to scale that up to reach at least 7 million people.”

Back in the United States, the House voted Thursday to block California from banning all new sales of gasoline-powered cars by 2035. Nearly three dozen Democrats joined Republicans in their vote. California received a federal EPA waiver in 2022, greenlighting its ambitious plan to transition to zero-emission vehicles. Eleven other states, including New York and Massachusetts, have also adopted the rule. If Congress overturns their plans, some 40% of the U.S. auto market could be affected. The Government Accountability Office and the Senate parliamentarian say the Clean Air Act waiver cannot be repealed by Congress, though that ruling is not binding. The Senate will now vote on the measure, where Republicans need only a simple majority to pass it.

In related news, the Republican-led Senate on Thursday overturned an EPA rule that limits the seven most toxic air pollutants from industrial facilities, including chemical plants and oil refineries. It’s expected to also pass in the House.

A new study published in the journal Science finds three-quarters of all bird species are in decline across North America, with the strongest declines occurring in areas where species were most abundant.