In the Gaza Strip, at least 21 people were killed Wednesday morning at a food distribution site run by the militarized so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Survivors report guards fired tear gas at starving Palestinians lined up to receive aid parcels, triggering a panic that saw at least 15 people die as a result of a stampede. According to the United Nations, since May, at least 875 Palestinians have been killed and another 5,600 wounded by Israeli army and U.S. contractor gunfire while trying to gather food — most of them shot close to GHF sites.

Meanwhile, Palestinian doctors report stocks of specialized formula for premature infants have run dry due to Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza. Esraa Abu Halib is the mother of a 5-month-old struggling to survive at Nasser Hospital, where she says she’s witnessed three other children die of malnutrition.

Esraa Abu Halib: “Once the milk carton is finished, you need the same type of milk that she took before. Where do we get it from? The crossings are closed. The whole world is closed in our faces. For how long must we remain like this? I mean, do we wait until the baby dies?”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has called on Israeli authorities to launch a probe into the killing of 20-year-old U.S. citizen Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death Friday by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. In a statement, Huckabee wrote, “There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act.” Huckabee, however, did not demand a U.S. investigation into Musallet’s murder, as his family is requesting.

Meanwhile, Israeli settlers backed by Israel soldiers are continuing to attack Palestinian communities. On Tuesday, dozens of Israeli settlers set fire to a vehicle yard in the village of Burqa, east of Ramallah, destroying dozens of cars. Auto parts dealer Mohammad Assaliyeh says it was the sixth time he’s been attacked by settlers.

Mohammad Assaliyeh: “Who said we are not afraid? The settlers scare us, not only in this town, in all villages, but specifically here. They come and burn cars, land, and they cut down olive trees. They burn. … We do not have weapons to resist them. The army comes, and they stand with the settlers. They don’t come to protect us, but to stand with them. This happens over and over.”

Israel’s military says it has bombed the Syrian Army’s headquarters in Damascus. Syrian media reported two civilians were injured in the attack, which came even as Israel separately stepped up attacks on the Druze-majority city of Suwayda in southern Syria. Israel’s attacks came as fighting resumed between Syrian government forces and Druze armed groups, after a ceasefire agreement collapsed.

Delegates from 30 countries gathered in Bogotá, Colombia, Tuesday for an emergency conference on the situation in Gaza. The conference is led by South Africa and Colombia, two members of The Hague Group, a coalition of nations that pledged to cut military sales to Israel and to comply with an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Tuesday, Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, told the conference that all nations are obliged to take action against Israel’s occupation and the slaughter of Palestinians.

Francesca Albanese: “Each state must immediately review and suspend all ties with the state of Israel, military, strategic, political, diplomatic, economic relations, both imports and exports, and to make sure that their private sectors, insurers, banks, pension funds, universities and other goods and service providers in the supply chain do the same.”

Click here to see our recent interview with Francesca Albanese.

The U.S. Senate will take up President Trump’s request to claw back more than $9 billion in congressionally approved spending, after Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 tie Tuesday to open debate on a rescission bill. The legislation is aimed at codifying cuts made by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to foreign aid, including lifesaving global health programs, emergency food and shelter assistance, peacekeeping and economic development. The bill would also eliminate all $1.1 billion allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the next two years, zeroing out federal funding to PBS, NPR and community TV and radio stations. PBS President Paula Kerger called the bill an “existential” threat for local stations. Democrats condemned the move as a power grab by President Trump. This is Michigan Democratic Senator Gary Peters.

Sen. Gary Peters: “Funding laws are still laws, and Congress passed these laws with bipartisan support to direct resources to these programs. No president gets unilateral say on how any law is implemented, and no president gets to overrule Congress’s bipartisan laws.”

The Pentagon said Tuesday half of the 4,000 National Guard troops deployed to suppress protests in response to mass immigration raids in California will be removed from Los Angeles. This comes six weeks after the Trump administration deployed the California National Guard to Los Angeles, the first time in decades that a president has deployed the National Guard without a governor’s request. Some 700 active-duty Marines will remain deployed in L.A.

In Houston, Texas, a 22-year-old Palestinian man who was detained by federal agents without charge at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport for nine days was released Monday following mounting pressure from advocates. Muhanad J. M. Alshrouf had obtained a U.S. visa before traveling to Texas from the occupied West Bank to reunite with his father, who is a U.S. citizen, and his siblings. Advocates said he had completed a yearslong immigration process and successfully passed rigorous background checks by both U.S. and Israeli authorities. Alshrouf was reportedly held in a waiting room, denied access to legal counsel, a change of clothes, proper food or basic hygiene. Customs and Border Protection agents are typically prohibited from detaining people for longer than 72 hours.

In Washington state, longtime immigrant farmworker and organizer Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino has agreed to voluntarily leave the United States after being detained in an ICE jail for four months. A crowd of his supporters and family gathered outside Tacoma’s Northwest ICE Processing Center Monday as 25-year-old Juarez appeared for an immigration hearing inside the jail. A judge has given him until August to return to his birth country of Mexico. For now, he’s still detained. Juarez was taken by ICE agents in March after they stopped him on a rural road as he drove his girlfriend to her job on a tulip bulb farm. When he asked for a warrant, the agents reportedly broke his car window and handcuffed him. Supporters denounced his arrest as a kidnapping and said he was targeted over his labor activism. Juarez has lived in the United States for over a decade, since he was a child. See our interview with Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino when he was 16 years old and our coverage of his case.

In more news from Washington state, former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart and at least eight others have been indicted on federal charges related to protests in June against Trump’s immigration raids. Stuckart and over 30 others were arrested last month as a crowd gathered outside the Spokane ICE office to oppose the detention of a 21-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker, whom Stuckart was sponsoring.

On Capitol Hill, President Trump’s pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday applauded Republican efforts to defund the U.N., saying he’d go even further if confirmed by the Senate. Mike Waltz testified that, if confirmed, he would work to dismantle the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. He also backed Republican efforts to cancel about $1 billion in federal funding to the U.N. as part of the Senate’s rescission package. Waltz served as U.S. national security adviser from January to May before his removal over the “Signalgate” scandal, in which Waltz added the editor of The Atlantic magazine to a group chat about U.S. war plans against Yemen. He was grilled over the scandal by Delaware Democratic Senator Chris Coons.

Sen. Chris Coons: “I mean, this was demonstrably sensitive information. And the question I asked was: Were you investigated for this expansion of the Signal group to include a journalist?”

Mike Waltz: “The White House conducted an investigation, and my understanding is the Department of Defense is still conducting an investigation.”

Sen. Chris Coons: “Was any disciplinary action taken?”

Mike Waltz: “From the White House investigation, Senator?”

Sen. Chris Coons: “Yes.”

Mike Waltz: “No, the use of Signal was not only — not only authorized, it’s still authorized and highly recommended.”

Republicans on the House Rules Committee have blocked a Democratic-led effort to force the Justice Department to release documents related to its investigation into the dead convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein — whom Donald Trump once called a “terrific guy.” This comes after President Trump published a lengthy diatribe defending Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files and calling interest in the Epstein case a “waste of time.” Trump’s post sparked an unprecedented backlash among his MAGA supporters. For the first time ever, Trump was “ratioed” on his own social media platform, meaning he drew more replies than shares — the vast majority of them negative. On Tuesday, Attorney General Bondi refused to answer reporters’ questions about her claim last February — which she later reversed — that Epstein’s client list was sitting on her desk to review.

Attorney General Pam Bondi: “I appreciate your question, but this today is about fentanyl overdoses throughout our country and people who have lost loved ones to fentanyl. That’s the message that we’re here to send today, nothing about Epstein. I’m not going to talk about Epstein. Go ahead.”

A Wired magazine investigation has raised new questions about the Justice Department’s handling of prison surveillance video from the New York City federal jail where Epstein died six years ago in what was later ruled a suicide. According to Wired, metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from what the Trump administration described as “full raw” video from the only functioning camera near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead.

In Arizona, Adelita Grijalva won the Democratic nomination by a landslide Tuesday in a closely watched special election primary for the congressional seat left vacant when her father Raúl Grijalva died in March. Four other candidates were vying for the nomination, including 25-year-old activist Deja Foxx, who has advocated for generational change in politics and had criticized Grijalva’s “legacy last name,” and Daniel Hernández, who survived a mass shooting in Tucson in 2011, where former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot — he was an intern at Giffords’s office at the time. Adelita Grijalva was born in Tucson, has held multiple positions in public office and garnered a list of heavyweight endorsements, including Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. If elected, Grijalva would become the first Latina to represent Arizona in Congress. Grijalva will face Republican nominee Daniel Butierez in the general special election in September.