Israel’s security cabinet has approved plans to take over Gaza City, which would significantly expand Israeli military operations in the Palestinian enclave. Under the plan, Israel will force all Palestinian civilians from Gaza City into displacement camps further south.

This comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News that he intends to take over all of Gaza. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid blasted the plan, calling it a “disaster.” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the decision “wrong,” adding, “It will only lead to more bloodshed.” Germany said that it would suspend some arms exports to Israel until further notice. Meanwhile, U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said that Israel’s complete takeover of Gaza should be “immediately halted.” Palestinians in Gaza reacted to Netanyahu’s takeover plans.

Mahmoud al-Qurashli: “Netanyahu’s decision to occupy Gaza — it’s like there’s nothing left to occupy in the first place. We’re already dying, a hundred thousand deaths every day. Around 100 to 150 people die daily, from starvation, on top of everything else we’re going through. Practically all of Gaza has been squeezed into the western part of Gaza City, and that’s all that’s left, just that, west Gaza City. At this point, for the people, there’s no difference anymore whether he occupies it or not.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli TV station Channel 13 is reporting that Netanyahu deliberately imposed starvation on Gaza, restricting aid to the besieged enclave, as part of a strategy to force Hamas to surrender. Internal government transcripts from March show that Netanyahu repeatedly ignored calls from senior ministers to move to the second phase of the ceasefire agreement to release the Israeli hostages.

Meanwhile, Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Thursday to protest Netanyahu’s plans to occupy all of Gaza.

Ami Dror: “We are here demanding the end of the war, the immediate return of the hostages, end of the atrocities in Gaza, atrocities about the children in Gaza and atrocities against our own soldiers and against our own hostages. This war is a political war. The only person that benefits from this war is Benjamin Netanyahu, that’s trying to avoid jail.”

Al Jazeera reports at least two Palestinians were killed today as they sought aid at a distribution site run by the shadowy U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The latest killings of aid seekers at GHF sites came as hungry and displaced Palestinians scrambled for extremely limited supplies of food aid dropped into Gaza by air. This is Abu Mohammed al-Omar, who rushed to grab food from a pallet of aid that parachuted to the ground in northern Gaza.

Abu Mohammed al-Omar: “I got lentil and tomato paste, as you can see, for a family of six. We are dying. You can see the people. They get something, and it’s not enough — one pallet for a million people. This is what I got. It ripped open. We want to feed our children.”

The head of the World Food Programme criticized airdrops over Gaza as entirely inadequate. WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain wrote on social media, “We can’t airdrop our way out of an unfolding famine. Not in Gaza. 500,000 people are starving TODAY. The only way to get food to them, at scale, is by land.”

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Interior Ministry says falling pallets of aid have killed and maimed people on the ground, including Oday Al-Quraan, a Palestinian nurse reportedly crushed to death when a crate fell on him on Monday.

In Atlanta, Georgia, Palestinian American medical student Umaymah Mohammad has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing Emory University of unlawfully suspending her over her remarks about Israel and Gaza. Mohammad’s lawsuit alleges the disciplinary proceedings that led to her suspension began after she appeared on Democracy Now! in April of last year and made remarks critical of Emory and its crackdown on protests in support of Palestinian rights.

Umaymah Mohammad: “We have repeatedly organized peacefully to put pressure on our institutions, especially at Emory, to stop harassing and doxxing students and to stop repressing speech around Palestine and to divest from the Israeli apartheid state. And every single time, Emory shuts us down. Every single time, they crack down, and they punish students. Every single time, they silence our voices.”

Meanwhile, the University of Maryland has agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by students who say they were denied their right to free speech during a crackdown on campus protests opposing Israel’s siege of Gaza.

The City Council of Medford, Massachusetts, has approved an ordinance divesting the Boston suburb from companies that contribute to human rights violations. On Thursday, Palestinian American Dina Alami joined fellow Medford residents who rallied at City Hall in support of the Values-Aligned Local Investments Ordinance.

Dina Alami: “We passed an ordinance at the Medford City Council that divests from fossil fuels, weapons manufacturers, prisons, detention centers and any company that violates human rights. So, this is very personal for me. What we know is that Medford has $12 million invested in a portfolio that includes Chevron, the world’s largest fossil fuel emitter, and Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer. Both are interconnected. Both harm human life, harm our planet. And for me as a Palestinian with family in Gaza, the weapons that we invest in are harming my family.”

Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn says the FBI has granted his request to track down and arrest more than 50 Democratic state lawmakers who left the state of Texas to block a vote on the GOP’s new congressional map, which could allow Republicans to win up to five additional congressional seats in the midterm elections.

On Wednesday, Texas legislators were evacuated from a hotel in Chicago after a bomb threat. Police did not find a device.

President Trump is calling for a new census that would take the unprecedented step of excluding undocumented immigrants for the first time. As mandated by the Constitution, the census is conducted every 10 years and counts all U.S. residents regardless of their immigration status, since the 14th Amendment requires the “whole number of persons in each state” to be included. It’s unclear whether Trump will attempt to move up the census from 2030 to an earlier date.

The Justice Department has hired a January 6 rioter who was seen on bodycam footage encouraging rioters to kill police officers at the Capitol. Jared Wise is now a senior adviser and counselor to Ed Martin, the director of the DOJ’s so-called Weaponization Committee, which was established by President Trump to go after his political enemies. The footage, obtained by NPR, was shown during Wise’s trial earlier this year — before Trump pardoned him along with about 1,500 Capitol riot defendants.

Jared Wise: “You are the Nazi. You are the Gestapo. You can’t see it, because you’re chasing your pension, right? Your pension, your retirement, right? That’s what runs your life, your retirement.”

Unidentified: “And the sad thing is they’re not even going to get their pension because it’s going to be worthless.”

Jared Wise: “Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you! Yeah! [Bleep] them! Yeah! Kill ’em! Yeah!”

The Trump administration has forced out more FBI officials who investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The purge includes Steven Jensen, the head of the FBI’s Washington, D.C., field office. Jensen led a domestic terrorism unit that investigated the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Also fired is Brian Driscoll, who briefly served as acting FBI director at the beginning of the second Trump administration. Driscoll resisted demands that he turn over the names of FBI agents previously assigned to January 6 probes. And FBI special agent Walter Giardina was fired. He was a member of the team that investigated Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro’s work to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

The Trump administration is set to use military bases for its mass deportation operation, tapping Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, to house 1,000 immigrants. ICE says the facility will begin accepting detainees starting on August 17 and will expand to 5,000 beds. The El Paso Times reports that at full capacity, Fort Bliss would become the largest immigration detention facility in the U.S.

The actor Dean Cain, who rose to stardom for portraying Superman in a 1990s TV series, said Wednesday he will join ICE, as the agency struggles to recruit and retain enough people to carry out Trump’s mass deportation plans. This week, the Department of Homeland Security removed age limits for new hires; it’s also offering $50,000 bonuses and student loan forgiveness to new recruits.

In Los Angeles, activists are calling for a 24-hour boycott next Tuesday of Target, Walmart, McDonald’s and other companies they say are complicit in Trump’s mass deportation efforts. The boycott follows an ICE raid at a Home Depot parking lot this week. Angelica Salas is the executive director of the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights.

Angelica Salas: “While we’re asking you not to participate and purchase in certain corporations that have been complicit in this enforcement, we’re also asking you to support street vendors and support immigrant businesses that are suffering right now in many of the neighborhoods in which many of these raids have happened. So we’re asking you to take action on the 12th [of August], to mobilize in the streets, to use your economic power, especially our immigrant construction workers, not to purchase at Home Depot on that day, and to send a message that we will not accept this terror on our community.”

A federal judge has ordered Florida to halt construction at a notorious ICE jail in the remote Everglades for at least 14 days, citing environmental concerns. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s office said in response that immigrant detainees would remain at the immigration detention camp, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” and that the ruling would have no impact on deportation efforts.

After threatening a federal takeover of Washington, D.C., President Trump has ordered federal law enforcement agents to be deployed to the city. This comes as President Trump claimed that crime in the capital was “totally out of control” after a former DOGE staffer was assaulted during an attempted carjacking. In recent years, crime rates in D.C. have fallen sharply.

CNN is reporting that Vice President JD Vance met with top Justice Department officials Wednesday to discuss the Jeffrey Epstein case. The meeting was reportedly set to take place at Vance’s Washington, D.C., home but was moved to the White House amid intense media coverage. CNN’s reporting directly contradicts Vice President Vance’s denial that officials had huddled behind closed doors to discuss Epstein. The gathering reportedly included Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, who discussed the need to craft a unified response to the Epstein scandal and emerging details of Trump’s longstanding friendship with the dead serial sex trafficker.

President Trump has signed an executive order broadening the ways people can invest in the most common type of U.S. retirement accounts. Under Trump’s order, 401(k) retirement plans can now include private equity, real estate, cryptocurrency and other alternative investments. Prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, including the $TRUMP meme coin, surged as Trump signed the order. Blackstone CEO and Trump backer Stephen Schwarzman once told investors it was a “dream” of the private equity industry to draw upon 401(k) retirement accounts.

The U.S. Air Force said Thursday it will bar transgender service members with up to 18 years of experience from applying for early retirement — and will instead force them out of the military with only lump-sum separation payments. Shannon Minter of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights told Reuters, “This is just betrayal of a direct commitment made to these service members.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs said Wednesday it’s canceling collective bargaining agreements for most of its 377,000 unionized workers, citing national security reasons.