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A curated guide to major news and developments over the weekend. Here’s today’s news:
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) yesterday accused Israeli forces of killing one worker and injuring three others in a “deliberate” attack on the humanitarian organisation’s headquarters in Gaza. The IDF said it was reviewing the claim that a PRCS building was damaged and “uninvolved individuals” were harmed. Adam Durbin reports for BBC News.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy have condemned Hamas’ videos showing two emaciated Israeli hostages held by the group in Gaza. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was “appalled” by the videos and reiterated its call to be granted access to the hostages. Hamas yesterday said it was prepared to work with the ICRC if aid corridors were opened into Gaza on a regular and permanent basis and air strikes halted during the time of receiving aid. Hugo Bachega and Mallory Moench report for BBC News; Nidal Al-Mughrabi reports for Reuters.
A 47-truck U.N. convoy was wholly overrun and ransacked within three hours last Wednesday, with “hundreds of thousands” of aid seekers surging towards the entry checkpoint as Israeli troops fired rifle and artillery rounds, according to an internal U.N. World Food Program mission security report seen by the Washington Post. A U.N. official and the security report said more than 50 people were killed and more than 600 injured during the mission. Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry has recorded at least 209 deaths among people seeking aid since last Saturday. Gerry Shih, Abbie Cheeseman, Miriam Berger, and Louisa Loveluck report.
Israel has told multiple journalists reporting from aid flights that they are prohibited from filming Gaza from above, the Washington Post reports. A Washington Post photojournalist who was not initially given such instructions last week captured rare low-altitude aerial views of the scale of destruction and displacement in the territory. Sammy Westfall, Evan Hill, Joshua Yang, and Heidi Levine report.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR — U.S. RESPONSE
The United States has disbursed an “initial amount” of the $30 million approved funding to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as of last Friday, a State Department spokesperson said. According to the Washington Post, the amount of aid funds disbursed is about 10%, or $3 million. President Trump has repeatedly claimed that the United States has contributed $60 million for food to Gaza. Karen DeYoung reports for the Washington Post.
The U.S. Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, on Saturday told families of hostages held by Hamas that he was working “collectively” with the Israeli government to create a plan that would “effectively” end the war in Gaza. Witkoff also said that Hamas was prepared to disarm in order to end the war. In response to Witkoff’s remarks, Hamas said that it would not relinquish “armed assistance” unless an “independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital” was established. Emily Rose reports for Reuters.
Victims and relatives of people killed or injured in Hamas and Hezbollah’s attacks last Thursday filed a lawsuit attempting to hold the U.N. aid agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) responsible for some measure of the two groups’ violent acts. A similar case has been playing out since last year in federal court in Manhattan. Ephrat Livni reports for the Washington Post.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
Trump on Friday said that he had “ordered two nuclear submarines” to be repositioned “just in case” in response to “foolish and inflammatory” remarks by Russia’s former president, Dmitri Medvedev. With nuclear submarine movements being highly classified, it is unknown whether the submarines were in fact repositioned. David E. Sanger reports for the New York Times.
The United States and NATO are working on a novel approach to supply Ukraine with U.S. weapons funded by NATO countries, according to sources. A European official and the sources said that under the new system, Ukraine would prioritize the weapons it needs in tranches of roughly $500 million, and NATO allies would then negotiate among themselves who would donate or pay for items on the list, up to a total of $10 billion in arms. Gram Slattery, Mike Stone, and Phil Stewart report for Reuters.
Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies on Saturday announced that they had uncovered a major corruption scheme that procured military drones and signal jamming systems at inflated prices. In a social media post, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that there can only be “zero tolerance” for corruption and that a sitting Ukrainian MP and other officials had been arrested over their involvement in the scheme. Tabby Wilson reports for BBC News; Max Hunder reports for Reuters.
In his first public remarks since Trump called on him to end the war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said that people disappointed with the lack of quick progress toward peace have “inflated expectations.” Russia’s conditions for ending the war “certainly remain the same,” Putin added. Nataliya Vasilyeva and Paul Sonne report for the New York Times.
SYRIA
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) yesterday said that Islamic State militants killed five of its members in an attack on a checkpoint in eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zor on July 31. Earlier on the weekend, Syria’s defense ministry and SDF traded blame over a Saturday attack in the northern city of Manbij, with the defense ministry accusing the SDF of carrying out a rocket barrage on one of the army’s outposts. Reuters reports.
Armed groups have killed one member of Syria’s internal security forces and wounded others in an attack in the Sweida region, state-run Ekhbariya TV reported yesterday, citing a security source. Reuters reports.
GLOBAL AFFAIRS
Families trapped within the besieged Sudanese city of el-Fasher face starvation, the U.N. World Food Programme has warned, saying that it had not been able to deliver food to the city in the western Darfur region by road for more than a year and pointing to reports that people in the city are eating animal fodder and food waste to try to survive. Barbara Plett Usher and Jaroslav Lukiv report for BBC News.
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday agreed on an outline for the regional economic integration framework, the U.S. State Department said. Daphne Psaledakis and Robbie Corey-Boulet report for Reuters.
The International Criminal Court on Friday ruled that the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan should recuse himself from its investigation of alleged crimes against humanity in Venezuela in light of his close family relationship with a member of the legal team defending the Venezuelan government. Samantha Schmidt and Ana Vanessa Herrero report for the Washington Post.
China’s recent mineral export restrictions are limiting the flow of critical minerals to Western defense manufacturers, delaying production and increasing the cost of defense technologies that rely on rare earths, according to industry traders, suppliers, and defense executives. Some U.S.-based companies warn of looming production cuts if more minerals are not forthcoming. Jon Emont, Heather Somerville, and Alistair MacDonald report for the Wall Street Journal.
Russian authorities are escalating a crackdown on workarounds that Russians have been using for access to foreign apps and banned content, with Moscow building a domestic ecosystem of easily monitored and censored Russian alternatives to Western tech products, according to statements from Russian officials and human rights and digital rights groups. Paul Sonne reports for the New York Times.
U.S. FOREIGN AFFAIRS
More than 60,000 metric tons of food purchased by the U.S. government languish in warehouses in the United States and around the world, with some items expiring and facing destruction instead of being sent to famine-stricken areas, according to a May State Department memo and manufacturers who produced the food. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers in May that no food aid would be wasted. Annie Gowen reports for the Washington Post.
Indian officials on Saturday said that New Delhi had not given “any direction to oil companies” to stop purchasing Russian oil, despite Trump’s threat to impose an unspecified penalty on New Delhi and claims of having heard that “India is no longer going to be buying oil from Russia.” Mujib Mashal reports for the New York Times.
The Trump administration is actively discussing with Azerbaijan the possibility of bringing Azerbaijan and some other Central Asian allies into the Abraham Accords, hoping to deepen their existing ties with Israel, according to sources. Gram Slattery reports for Reuters.
Iran is holding at least four American citizens at present, two of whom were arrested by security agents in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s attacks on Iran in June, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency and the Hengaw organization. Farnaz Fassihi reports for the New York Times.
U.S. DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS
Democrats from the Texas House of Representatives yesterday left the state in a last-resort attempt to stop Republicans from adopting an aggressively redrawn congressional map. Gov. Greg Abbott declared that the walkout amounted to an “abandonment or forfeiture of an elected state office” and that he would take steps to remove them from membership in the House if they do not attend a scheduled floor debate on the maps today. J. David Goodman and Julie Bosman report for the New York Times.
In a 50-45 vote, the Senate yesterday confirmed former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. Pirro’s statements questioning the validity of ballot tabulations in the 2020 election have formed part of a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against the network. Traci Carl reports for the New York Times.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ACTIONS
The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) on Saturday confirmed it is investigating Jack Smith, the former special counsel who investigated Trump, for a possible violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal workers from using their government jobs to engage in political activity. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) last Wednesday called for the OSC to investigate Smith. The office traditionally investigates and addresses violations of federal rules about the civil service, rather than prosecutorial decisions. Devlin Barrett reports for the New York Times.
Top Homeland Security Department officials are hoping to involve the Defense Department more deeply in domestic operations, according to an internal memo authored by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s younger brother, Philip Hegseth, that discusses a perceived need to persuade top Pentagon officials to “feel the urgency” of the “homeland defense mission.” Greg Sargent reports for the New Republic.
Trump on Friday announced he has directed the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Commissioner Erika McEntarfer. Without offering evidence, Trump described the Bureau’s most recent assessment of jobs and inflation as “rigged” and accused McEntarfer of manipulating the job numbers “for political purposes.” Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said she supported Trump’s decision and that Deputy Commissioner William Wiatrowski would take over the post on an acting basis. Nick Niedzwiadek and Sam Sutton report for POLITICO; Ashley Ahn reports for the New York Times.
Trump wants “his own people” in the Bureau of Labor Statistics to ensure that the Bureau’s job estimates can be “trusted,” the director of the White House National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, told NBC News yesterday. Separately, Hassett also claimed there were “partisan patterns” in the data. Alexandra Marquez reports; Tony Romm reports for the New York Times.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting on Friday announced it would begin “an orderly wind-down” of its operations in the wake of the Congressional rescission of funds appropriated to the non-profit over the next two fiscal years. Aaron Pellish reports for POLITICO.
The Trump administration has frozen more than $300 million in research funds for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) over carrying out “illegal affirmative action,” failing to do enough to combat antisemitism on campus, and allowing trans women to participate in women’s sports, according to letters the Energy Department, National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health sent to the school last week. Jonathan Wolfe and Michael C. Bender report for the New York Times.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LITIGATION
A federal appeals court on Friday authorized Trump to move forward with a component of his order instructing a broad swath of government agencies to end collective bargaining with federal unions while a lawsuit against the effort proceeds. The court ruled that while some of the White House’s statements on the motivations behind the order “reflect a degree of retaliatory animus” towards unions who launched lawsuits against Trump’s policies, Trump had authority to implement such a move on national security grounds and the “government has shown that the president would have taken the same action even in the absence” of the legal challenges. Chris Cameron reports for the New York Times.
Also on Friday, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s order temporarily blocking the Trump administration from carrying out indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in Southern California on the basis of race, language, location, and job. Responding to the ruling, a DHS spokesperson accused “unelected judges” of “undermining the will of the American people.” Vivian Ho reports for the Washington Post.
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out expedited removals of immigrants who had previously been paroled into the United States to flee violence and oppression in their home countries, ruling that plaintiff migrants and others in their position “face imminent, irreparable injury from those actions that outweighs any harm to the Government or the public.” Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein, and Myah Ward report for POLITICO.
Officials from 16 states and Washington D.C. on Friday filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration’s investigations into hospitals and doctors who provide transition-related care to minors. The lawsuit argues that the administration’s threats to prosecute such providers constitute efforts to institute a national ban on puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgeries for transgender minors with no Congressional approval. Jo Yurcaba reports for NBC News.
Did you miss this? Stay up-to-date with our Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions
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