In Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry reports Israeli strikes have killed at least 47 people and wounded more than 180 others in the past 24 hours. Among the dead is a child who was killed when a massive Israeli airstrike tore through a makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians in al-Mawasi, an area in southern Gaza designated by the Israeli army as a so-called safe humanitarian zone. This comes as the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has again warned famine is “imminent” in northern Gaza. On Tuesday, top U.N. humanitarian official Joyce Msuya told the Security Council that Israel has committed grave international crimes by blocking aid to Palestinians. She added, “The daily cruelty we see in Gaza seems to have no limits.” 

Joyce Msuya: “Most of Gaza is now a wasteland of rubble. What distinction was made and what precautions were taken, if more than 70% of civilian housing is either damaged or destroyed? Essential commercial goods and services, including electricity, have been all but cut off. This has led to increasing hunger, starvation, and now, as we have heard, potentially famine. We are witnessing acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes.”

The Biden administration said Tuesday it will not limit weapons transfers to Israel — even after Israeli forces failed to meet a U.S.-imposed 30-day deadline to increase the flow of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza. Aid groups say Israel has only worsened the catastrophe over that period, with the amount of aid reaching Gaza now at its lowest level since December. The decision to continue arming Israel despite widespread evidence of gross human rights abuses appears to violate multiple U.S. laws, including the Leahy Law, the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act. On Tuesday, a coalition of former Biden administration employees who’ve resigned in protest of U.S. policy released a video calling on Biden to uphold the law and halt U.S. weapons transfers to Israel. 

Stacy Gilbert: “There is no provision in U.S. or international law that allows extra time to starve people. 

Josh Paul: “Joe Biden’s administration has repeatedly put Israel’s interests over the interests of the American people.”

Alex Smith: “Even at the expense of not enforcing our own laws.”

Josh Paul: “That’s why I resigned from the State Department.”

Stacy Gilbert: “The State Department.”

Annelle Sheline: “State Department.”

Hala Rharrit: “The State Department’s diplomatic corps.”

Tariq Habash: “The Department of Education.”

Maryam Hassanein: “The Department of the Interior.”

Harrison Mann: “Army.”

Lily Greenberg Call: “Department of the Interior.”

Riley Livermore: “Department of the Air Force.”

Click here to see our interviews with many of the Biden administration officials who’ve resigned over Gaza.

Israel has continued its relentless air and ground attacks on Lebanon, killing at least two dozen people in Beirut’s southern suburbs and towns in Mount Lebanon Governorate. Israeli forces have persistently targeted residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities issued new forced evacuation orders for residents in certain areas south of Beirut ahead of more Israeli military attacks.

The National Press Club has handed its top award for press freedom to Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, for continuing to report on Israel’s assault on the besieged territory despite enduring “unspeakable personal tragedies.” Just weeks into the war, al-Dahdouh was live on air when he was informed his wife, 7-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp. Another of al-Dahdouh’s children, Hamza al-Dahdouh, who was also a journalist and cameraperson for Al Jazeera, was killed in a separate Israeli attack early in January. Earlier this year, al-Dahdouh was evacuated from Gaza to receive medical care in Qatar for injuries he suffered while covering an Israeli attack on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis. At the time, al-Dahdouh’s cameraperson, Samer Abudaqa, was left to bleed to death as Israeli forces blocked ambulances from reaching the scene for several hours. Al-Dahdouh is now living in Germany.

Donald Trump has selected former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to become U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is a leading U.S. Christian Zionist who in recent years has led all-inclusive evangelical Christian tours of Israel. Huckabee has openly advocated for Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. During a failed run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, Huckabee declared, “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” adding, “That’s been a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.” In 2017, he told Politico, “There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
Meanwhile, Trump has named his longtime friend and golfing partner Steve Witkoff as a special envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff is a real estate investor from Florida with no foreign policy experience.

Donald Trump will nominate Fox News personality Pete Hegseth to become secretary of defense. Hegseth co-anchors the morning talk show “Fox & Friends,” where Trump has been a frequent guest. He previously led Concerned Veterans for America, a group backed by the far-right billionaire Koch brothers. Hegseth served as infantry captain in the Army National Guard, completing tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. He was a guard at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in 2004 and 2005, and has argued the prison should not be closed. In 2019, Hegseth successfully lobbied Trump to pardon three U.S. servicemembers accused of war crimes, including an officer found guilty of ordering soldiers to open fire on unarmed Afghan civilians. Hegseth is author of the book “The War on Warriors,” which argues the U.S. military has been made weak by diversity and inclusion initiatives. He has promised to fire so-called woke generals and has argued women should not have combat roles, calling men “more capable.”

Donald Trump has nominated John Ratcliffe to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. Ratcliffe is a former Texas Republican congressman and former federal prosecutor who served as director of national intelligence from 2020 until Trump left office in 2021. Ratcliffe was a member of Trump’s impeachment advisory team in 2019 when he questioned witnesses during Trump’s first impeachment hearings.

Donald Trump has named Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency.” In announcing the appointments, Trump said the billionaires would be tasked with dismantling government bureaucracy, cutting waste and restructuring entire federal agencies, with their work set to conclude by July 4, 2026. Musk is the world’s richest person and is majority owner of SpaceX, which receives billions of dollars in contracts from NASA, the Pentagon and U.S. spy agencies. The Associated Press reports Elon Musk spent $200 million through his political action committee on efforts to help Trump win the election.

Senate Republican leaders are gathering behind closed doors today to pick a new majority leader to replace Mitch McConnell. Three leading candidates have emerged: South Dakota Senator John Thune, Texas’s John Cornyn and Florida’s Rick Scott. Meanwhile, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, Republican Andy Harris, said a far-right congressmember might challenge Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson for the gavel during leadership elections.

In more news from Capitol Hill, the House has voted down a bill that would have allowed incoming President Trump to target nonprofit organizations as political enemies. The bill failed to win the two-thirds majority needed for approval. This is Texas Democratic Congressmember Lloyd Doggett of Austin speaking ahead of Tuesday’s vote. 

Rep. Lloyd Doggett: “Mr. Speaker, this bill authorizes Donald Trump to recklessly impose a death penalty on any nonprofit in America that happens to be on his enemies list. With this bill, he can destroy the very life of civil society in this country, one group after another, even though the group involved that he targets as a terrorist-supporting group has not violated a single law.”

A federal jury in Virginia has found the U.S. military contractor CACI Premier Technology liable for the torture of three prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq in the early 2000s. The landmark verdict came after 16 years of litigation. It’s the first time a civilian contractor has been found legally responsible for the gruesome abuses at Abu Ghraib, which included murder, sexual assault and rape, the use of attack dogs, sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, dietary manipulation, induced hypothermia, mock executions and the humiliation of prisoners. On Tuesday, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Baher Azmy of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the jury had rendered an important verdict. 

Baher Azmy: “They granted each plaintiff $3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million each in punitive damages, sending a strong message that this kind of corporate malfeasance and neglect and recklessness and deflection is outrageous and deserves to be punished.”

In Scotland, climate activists are appearing in court this week in a bid to stop the development of the Rosebank oil field in the North Sea by the Norwegian company Equinor. Earlier this year, the U.K.'s Labour government acknowledged the previous Conservative government's approval of the Rosebank project without considering whether its full climate impact was unlawful. If the plaintiffs are successful, the landmark case could help establish a precedent for all new oil and gas development. This is climate campaigner Lauren MacDonald speaking outside the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Lauren MacDonald: “This case, if we win, it could set a precedent that could stop all new oil and gas drilling in the U.K. and further afield, which is absolutely needed, because when we look at the intense rainfall and flooding that we’ve seen here in the U.K. and across Europe this year, we know that this is only going to become worse and be made more frequent as long as we continue burning fossil fuels.”