Health officials in Gaza say Israeli attacks have killed at least 21 people since dawn, as an intense heat wave compounds the suffering of Palestinians who continue to starve under Israel’s blockade. Among the dead is a 1-and-a-half-year-old Palestinian boy killed when an Israeli strike hit a tent in Gaza City. Several of the boy’s family members were injured. The U.N.'s humanitarian office warns the nutritional status of Gaza's children continues to deteriorate due to Israel’s siege — with almost 13,000 admissions of children for acute malnutrition recorded in July.

On Thursday, the emergency department of Gaza’s Nasser Hospital flooded with raw sewage after an Israeli strike damaged nearby infrastructure. The hospital’s director said Israeli forces were blocking efforts to repair the broken sewer lines.

Dr. Atef Al-Hout: “The problem is not inside Nasser Medical Complex. The problem is outside, but it is in an area known as the 'red zone,' which the municipality or any other institution can’t reach without coordination with the Israeli occupation. To be able to resolve this problem, the coordination needs 72 hours, according to what we’ve been told. The situation is tragic, and we can’t afford 72 hours. The hospital will collapse.”

Israeli forces are carrying out raids across the occupied West Bank, with at least 20 Palestinians arrested since last night. Separately, Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Atara north of Ramallah, setting fire to several vehicles. Another attack by settlers targeted the village of Susya south of Hebron. The surge of violence came amid international condemnation of remarks by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who on Thursday announced plans for the construction of more than 3,000 new homes on illegal settlements that would bisect land Palestinians want for a future state. The Israeli advocacy group Peace Now warned that Smotrich’s annexation plans are “guaranteeing many more years of bloodshed.” The European Union condemned the plans, as did British Foreign Secretary David Lammy. The office of the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called on Israeli authorities to immediately halt settlement construction.

Stéphane Dujarric: “Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the regime that’s associated with these settlements go against international law. Settlements, to state the obvious, further entrench the occupation and put the prospect of a two-state solution even further away.”

President Vladimir Putin has praised President Trump’s efforts to halt Russia’s war in Ukraine ahead of bilateral talks between the U.S. and Russian leaders in Alaska this afternoon. Putin suggested a new nuclear weapons agreement could be on the table. During his first term, President Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. At the White House, Trump predicted Friday’s summit will be a stepping stone to a future meeting that would include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

President Donald Trump: “It’s going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we’re having. We’re going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we’ll bring some of the European leaders along, maybe not.”

Today’s summit is taking place in Alaska, which the United States purchased from Russia in 1867. Putin’s visit to U.S. soil comes despite an outstanding warrant from the International Criminal Court seeking his arrest for war crimes involving the unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine. Neither Russia nor the U.S. is a party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC. We’ll have more on the war in Ukraine and the Trump-Putin summit later in the broadcast.

The private military contractor and Trump ally Erik Prince will soon deploy nearly 200 mercenaries to Haiti as part of an agreement with the Haitian interim government to conduct lethal operations against gangs who’ve seized Port-au-Prince and vast swaths of territory across the island nation. That’s according to Reuters, which spoke to Prince for an exclusive interview detailing a 10-year deal between his firm, Vectus Global, and Haiti’s interim government. Vectus Global will also assume a long-term role in working with Haitian officials to implement a tax collection system. Prince refused to say how much the Haitian government would pay his private firm or how much tax revenue he expects to collect in Haiti. Erik Prince is the founder of Blackwater, the private military firm accused of war crimes, including the 2007 Nisoor Square massacre in Baghdad.

Democratic state lawmakers from Texas say they’re prepared to end their nearly two-week walkout that has blocked Republicans from redrawing Texas’s congressional maps. On Thursday, state representative and Democratic leader Gene Wu of Houston said in a statement that lawmakers agreed to return to Texas, but only after a special legislative session called by Republican Governor Greg Abbott officially ends today. Republican leaders had sought to arrest or remove from office Democrats who fled Texas to deny Republicans a quorum to ram through a new, gerrymandered map.

Top Democrats in California are backing a ballot initiative that would allow the state Legislature to redraw California’s electoral maps. At a rally in Los Angeles, Governor Gavin Newsom said California Democrats would now play by the same set of rules as Texas Republicans.

Gov. Gavin Newsom: “Today is Liberation Day in the state of California. And as Senator Schiff said — as Senator Schiff said, Donald Trump, you have poked the bear, and we will punch back.”

As Governor Newsom and other Democratic leaders held their rally inside the Japanese American National Museum, Border Patrol agents made a show of force outside the venue. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she did not believe the Border Patrol’s presence was a coincidence; she called the agency’s actions provocative and disrespectful.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered Washington, D.C.'s mayor and police chief to recognize Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as emergency police commissioner for the District of Columbia, giving him full powers to act as chief of the Metropolitan Police Department. D.C. officials, including Mayor Muriel Bowser, have rejected the order, calling it unlawful. In a letter to MPD Chief Pamela Smith, Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb writes that the Home Rule Act does not grant the president the power to remove or replace the chief of police or to alter the chain of command. Schwalb writes to Chief Smith, “You are the lawfully appointed chief of police of the District of Columbia.” This comes after a House spending bill approved by Republicans in March withheld over $1 billion from D.C.'s budget.

On Thursday, Chief Smith announced the MPD will begin to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, conceding to a demand by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said the department must end its “sanctuary city” policies. President Trump welcomed the announcement, telling reporters, “I think this could happen all over the country.” The ACLU of Washington, D.C., called the police chief’s order “dangerous and unnecessary,” writing, “Immigration enforcement is not the role of local police — and when law enforcement aligns itself with ICE, it fosters fear among D.C. residents, regardless of citizenship status.”

Unhoused people in D.C. are bracing for more raids on tent encampments by federal agents and National Guard troops. The White House says people without homes must move to shelters, seek addiction or mental health services, or face fines or jail time. Advocates have condemned the crackdown. Andy Wassenich is director of policy at Miriam’s Kitchen, which provides food and services to unhoused people.

Andy Wassenich: “So, when we’re talking about, like, taking people out of the city, we’re removing people from their homes, from where they are. They may be homeless, but they do have homes. And so, that’s, in a way, also why we use 'unhoused.' Unhoused, you don’t have a roof over your head; you have a home. Your home is Washington, D.C.”

A new lawsuit accuses ICE of having violated its own policies and federal laws when agents quietly arrested families including U.S. citizen children, denied them due process and then rapidly deported them to Honduras, ignoring legal filings challenging their removal. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two mothers and their four children, including a 4-year-old boy with stage 4 kidney cancer. Lawyers for both families say the mothers were coerced into taking their children with them when they were deported, and were prohibited from contacting lawyers or family members after they were detained in Louisiana last April, following routine ICE check-ins. The 4-year-old boy, identified as Romeo, was receiving lifesaving cancer treatment at New Orleans Children’s Hospital before ICE deported him.

Florida is preparing to open a second immigration detention camp dubbed “Deportation Depot” at a state prison near Jacksonville. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis made the announcement Thursday as a federal judge weighs whether to shut down the newly opened “Alligator Alcatraz,” a remote immigration jail poorly set up on an airfield in the Everglades swamp. The new ICE facility will be located inside an unused section of the Baker Correctional Institution and cost an estimated $6 million to prepare, with enough space to imprison hundreds of immigrants. Florida officials say the detention camp will be operational in two to three weeks, raising questions about potentially dangerous conditions once immigrants are transferred there.

The ACLU of Michigan has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a Detroit man who was brutally beaten, shocked, pepper-sprayed and threatened with a K-9 dog by Warren police officers while undergoing a mental health emergency in 2022. Christopher Gibson was hospitalized for about a week with damage to his heart and kidneys after the violent attack. The suit says Gibson and his family repeatedly informed the officers that he was experiencing a mental health emergency and required immediate psychiatric treatment, but the Warren police officers assaulted him instead. Gibson was found wandering the streets lost, confused and without a coat during a winter night in December 2022 when police took him into custody because of outstanding warrants. This is Christopher Gibson’s mother Alwanda Gibson, speaking in a video released by the ACLU of Michigan.

Alwanda Gibson: “Christopher is afraid to sit on the porch. He’s afraid to see the police officers when they ride down the street. He thinks they’re going to jump out and finish the job of what the Warren Police Department did to him. Had they just listened and handled the situation better, we wouldn’t be here now. They need mental health experts to respond to these type of situations. It’s going to keep happening over and over again, unless the Warren Police Department changes.”

In Geneva, Switzerland, talks aimed at forging an international treaty to curb plastic pollution have failed. The United States was among a minority of oil-producing nations opposed to a more ambitious treaty. Representatives from about 100 countries had sought to put limits on plastic production and the use of toxic chemicals. This is Samoa’s representative to the talks.

Leituala Kuiniselani Toelupe Tago: “We must also join others in conveying our disappointment with the progress we have achieved over the last 10 days. Samoa is of the view that the urgency of this work cannot be overstated.”

It was the sixth time in just three years that negotiations for a global plastics treaty have failed to reach an agreement.

Here in New York, workers’ rights advocates have vowed to keep fighting after Mayor Eric Adams vetoed two bills this week that would have raised the minimum wages for thousands of grocery delivery workers in the city. The measures would have increased the pay to more than $20 an hour for delivery workers, many of whom are immigrants, working for apps such as Instacart. New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has vowed to override the mayor’s controversial last-minute veto.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: “These bills are about protecting working-class New Yorkers from the exploitation of poverty wages as a result of businesses treating workers as independent contractors. Mayor Adams chose to side with corporate special interests over workers and the nearly 20,000 working people these laws would protect. … I’m so proud to support these bills, and we look forward to overriding the mayor’s senseless anti-worker vetoes in the coming weeks yet again.”