Palestinian officials in Gaza report Israeli attacks have killed at least 17 people so far today, including seven people seeking aid near a distribution point south of Khan Younis. The attacks came as medics said at least two more Palestinians have died of starvation over the past 24 hours, as the trickle of aid entering Gaza fails to meet the needs of more than 2 million people. Hungry Palestinians who searched for a meal Thursday at a community kitchen in Gaza City said they came away empty-handed.

Um Mohammed: “There is no water, no food, no bread. And what forces us to come here is more humiliating than anything. In the end, we return with nothing. Either we come back burned by the sun, or we are trampled underfoot because of the overcrowding. We return empty-handed.”

Bassam Abu Ouda: “We call on all free people of the world and peace lovers to help us provide food and water until this famine imposed on us by the occupation ends. What the occupation allows in, in terms of truck entries, does not equal a drop in the ocean.”

As Gaza’s starvation deaths continued to mount, President Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee toured an aid distribution site in Gaza run by the shadowy, U.S.- and Israeli-backed so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. According to the U.N., at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while trying to access food since Israel barred the United Nations and NGOs from distributing aid in Gaza. The majority of those killed were at GHF sites. Witkoff’s trip to Gaza comes one day after he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. Outside the prime minister’s office, families of Israelis held hostage by Hamas rallied in a protest to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. 

Antiwar Israelis held a protest outside a military recruitment center in Ramat Gan Thursday in support of two 18-year-old draft resisters who announced they would refuse to enlist in Israel’s army. Ayana Gerstmann was sentenced to 30 days in a military prison for her refusal; Yuval Peleg received a 20-day sentence.

Ayana Gerstmann: “I can’t be a part of the war in Gaza, of the misery and suffer caused to so many people.”

Yuval Peleg: “I am here to refuse the genocide, first and foremost, to refuse to participate and to be complicit in genocide.”

Palestinian citizens of Israel have been holding daily protests, banging pots and pans to protest Israel’s starvation campaign in Gaza. On July 25, over 10,000 protesters gathered in Sakhnin, where they faced a heavy police presence. Protests are continuing in cities including Haifa, Umm al-Fahm and Jaffa. In Haifa, two antiwar protesters allege the city’s police commander assaulted them inside a police vehicle after their arrest at a protest last week.

Israeli airstrikes have hit multiple areas in southern and eastern Lebanon in a major escalation. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the bombings targeted a missile manufacturing site run by Hezbollah. On Thursday, Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun called on Hezbollah to disarm and hand over its weapons to the Lebanese army. Hezbollah officials rejected those calls and said that they will not discuss disarmament until Israel withdraws from Lebanon and halts its attacks. Israel has continued airstrikes on Lebanon despite a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah last November. 

In Ukraine, at least 31 people were killed overnight as Russia’s military launched a massive drone and missile attack on Kyiv. Among the dead are five children. At least 159 others were wounded. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the attacks as “vile” and said they showed the need for additional sanctions on Moscow. Meanwhile, Russian forces say they’ve captured the city of Chasiv Yar in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Residents of nearby Ukrainian villages have been fleeing Russia’s steady advance.

Liubov: “It is impossible to express how I feel. It’s tough. It’s hard to live in one place and then to tear yourself away. But what can I do? Nothing.”

In Washington, President Trump called Russia’s attacks on Ukraine “disgusting” and said he would impose additional sanctions on Russia. Meanwhile, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Lisa Murkowski have introduced bipartisan legislation to provide $54.6 billion in new U.S. aid to Ukraine over the next two years.

President Trump has announced a series of new tariffs on dozens of countries. Canada will see tariffs on its goods increase immediately, to 35% from 25%, while Mexico will get a 90-day extension to reach a trade deal. Hardest hit is Brazil, which faces 50% tariffs on most of its goods, after Trump called for an end to the prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who’s on trial for plotting a coup after his 2022 election loss. 

Meanwhile, a panel of federal appeals court judges on Thursday questioned President Trump’s authority to impose such sweeping tariffs without congressional approval. During the hearing, a judge called the Trump administration’s invocation of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act suspect, because the law doesn’t use the word “tariff.” 

ICE is launching a major recruitment campaign to hire officers, lawyers and investigators by offering $50,000 signing bonuses and student loan forgiveness. ICE is flush with funds after President Trump’s tax and spending bill granted the agency $76.5 billion, $30 billion of which would be used for hiring thousands of staffers to meet the Trump administration’s goal of 1 million deportations annually.

The Trump administration has authorized the deployment of the National Guard to immigration detention centers in 20 states in the coming weeks, according to a private memo to field offices obtained by The New York Times. The unprecedented deployment will see Guard members assist in paperwork to process the mass detention of immigrants and asylum seekers.

In Texas, top emergency management officials from Kerr County have testified publicly for the first time since devastating floods killed more than 130 people over the Fourth of July weekend. Two emergency management officials told state lawmakers they were asleep as the disaster unfolded. Judge Rob Kelly is the top-ranking official in Kerr County and directs emergency management.

Judge Rob Kelly: “My wife was at home during the early hours of July Fourth, while I was at our lake house preparing for a family gathering. On the afternoon and evening of July 3rd, nothing felt out of the ordinary in Kerr County.”

Survivors confronted Kerr County officials over their disaster response as floodwaters rose to historic levels. Here’s resident Lawrence Walker on the county’s lack of an alarm warning system.

Lawrence Walker: “So, the alarms work. Europeans have alarms. Canadians have alarms. Comfort, Texas, which is right over the county line, has alarms. We don’t have alarms. We had the chance to have alarms. The research had been done, and the money was offered. But I think the conservative aspect of our commissioners, they didn’t want that federal money, and they turned it away.”

Medics in Sudan’s East Darfur state say more than a dozen children have starved to death in the Lagawa refugee camp amid a cholera outbreak, heat waves and flooding in the region. The U.N. says more than 15 million people have been displaced since the start of Sudan’s civil war in April 2023, making it the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. This week, the Sudanese paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces formally announced it had established a rival government headquartered in the city of Nyala. The African Union has condemned the move. On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio postponed a meeting of foreign ministers aimed at advancing peace talks between Sudan’s warring military factions. 

A U.N. body has told Reuters that Rwanda-backed M23 rebels attacked civilians in east Democratic Republic of Congo, killing 169 people earlier this month. Speaking to Reuters, the group’s leader called the report a “smear campaign.” This is the first time the U.N. is reporting on the M23’s attack, as President Trump is pushing for a peace deal between Congo and Rwanda, which would allow the U.S. to tap the DRC’s rich mineral resources. 

In El Salvador, lawmakers aligned with President Nayib Bukele approved constitutional amendments Thursday that will allow presidents to run for reelection indefinitely. The reforms also extend presidential terms from five years to six and will end runoff elections. Opposition politician Marcela Villatoro accused lawmakers of condemning future generations to live under authoritarian rule.

Marcela Villatoro: “Because once they sit in that presidential chair, they never let go of that power. And we have had examples of dictatorships, and we have had examples of authoritarianism, both from the right and from the left, and neither is good.”

Last year, Nayib Bukele was sworn in to a second term as president even though El Salvador’s constitution prohibited him from running for reelection. Bukele is a close ally of President Donald Trump. He’s described himself as the “world’s coolest dictator.” 

Florida prison officials have killed a condemned prisoner for the ninth time this year, setting a new state record, with two more executions scheduled for later this month. On Thursday evening, Edward Zakrzewski was strapped to a gurney, covered with a white sheet and injected with a lethal three-drug cocktail. His killing came a day after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal for a stay of execution.

Meanwhile, Tennessee’s state Supreme Court has ruled that a death row prisoner can be put to death without deactivating an implanted device that regulates his heartbeat. Sixty-eight-year-old Robert Black suffers from chronic heart failure and dementia. His lawyers argued that the implanted device, which acts as both a pacemaker and a defibrillator, could deliver painful shocks to Black’s heart to try to revive him during his execution. He’s scheduled to die by lethal injection on August 5. 

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History removed explicit references to President Trump’s impeachments from an exhibit last month. A person familiar with the exhibit told The Washington Post that the change occurred during a content review done under pressure from the White House to remove an art museum director. A spokesperson mentioned that a future exhibit would include all impeachments. Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order calling for “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” to be removed from the Smithsonian. 

Meanwhile, the White House has announced plans to spend $200 million to build a new ballroom in the East Wing starting next month. The construction costs would be covered by Trump and anonymous donors. 

The family of Jeffrey Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre is calling on President Trump not to consider clemency for the serial sex trafficker’s co-conspirator and confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre was the first survivor to come out publicly against Jeffrey Epstein. She died in Australia in April, reportedly by suicide. In a statement, Giuffre’s family members said they were alarmed by these comments by Donald Trump on Tuesday, when Trump said Epstein “stole” Giuffre away from his Mar-a-Lago club.

President Donald Trump: “I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people, yeah. He — he stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know. None whatsoever.”

In response, Giuffre’s siblings and their spouses wrote, “It was shocking to hear President Trump invoke our sister and say that he was aware that Virginia had been 'stolen' from Mar-a-Lago. It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey 'likes women on the younger side … no doubt about it.' We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this.”