The United Nations has accused Israel of continuing to unlawfully restrict aid into Gaza despite acknowledgments by the United States that parts of Gaza are already experiencing famine. Ravina Shamdasani of the U.N. Human Rights Office spoke in Geneva Tuesday.

Ravina Shamdasani: “Israel continues to impose unlawful restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance, carry out widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure, as well.”

The official death toll in Gaza is nearing 34,000, including over 14,000 children and 10,000 women. A new report by U.N. Women finds that Israel’s assault on Gaza has left more than 19,000 children orphaned. Earlier today, Israel struck a playground and busy market in the Maghazi refugee camp.

Tension remains high in the Middle East as world leaders urge Israel to show restraint following Iran’s recent drone and missile attack. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron has urged Israel to do “as little as possible to escalate” tensions with Iran. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of provoking Iran by bombing the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria, two weeks ago.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: “Netanyahu is endangering the lives of both his own citizens and all the peoples in the region to extend his political life. This is an indisputable fact: The one responsible for the tension that made our hearts skip a beat on the night of April 13 is Netanyahu and his government, which is seeing red.”

The United Nations Human Rights Office is calling on Israel to stop supporting violent Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank. In recent days settlers have killed at least three Palestinians and attacked a number of villages, burning dozens of homes to the ground. Human Rights Watch has accused Israeli military forces of either taking part in the attacks or failing to protect Palestinians from the settlers. Meanwhile, The Guardian has revealed Israel has been speeding up plans over the past six months to build thousands of housing units in new illegal settlements in East Jerusalem.

At least nine workers at Google were arrested Tuesday after staging sit-ins at Google’s office in New York City and the office of Google Cloud’s CEO in Sunnyvale, California, to protest Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli government and military. Emaan Haseem is a Google software engineer in Sunnyvale.

Emaan Haseem: “We demand that Google drop Project Nimbus, the $1.2 billion contract between them and Israel. We demand that Google protect their Arab, Muslim and Palestinian worker voices from harassment, retaliation, suppression. And we demand that Google recognize Project Nimbus as a workplace safety and health concern.”

We’ll have more on Google later in the show.

In other protest news, students at Columbia University and Barnard College have set up dozens of tents on campus to create what they are calling a Gaza Solidarity Encampment. This is Isra Hirsi, a student at Barnard who is the daughter of Congressmember Ilhan Omar.

Isra Hirsi: “Hello. I am a organizer with CU Apartheid Divest. Today we have over a hundred-plus people who have come together to form the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Today we are calling for divestment. We are calling for amnesty for suspended students, as well as transparency from Columbia University on what they invested.”

The encampment began hours ahead of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik’s scheduled testimony before Congress.

The first seven jurors have been selected in Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial. Jury selection is expected to continue on Thursday. Opening arguments could begin as soon as Monday. Judge Juan Merchan has admonished the former president for intimidating jurors, after Trump was heard muttering something under his breath during jury selection. On Tuesday, Trump reportedly fell asleep during the proceedings for the second day in a row. Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide $130,000 paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.

The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether the Justice Department has improperly used a federal obstruction law to charge more than 350 people involved in the January 6 insurrection. Several justices appeared skeptical of the DOJ’s reasoning during oral arguments Tuesday. This is Justice Clarence Thomas.

Justice Clarence Thomas: “There have been many violent protests that have interfered with our proceedings. Has the government applied this provision to other protests in the past? And has this been the government’s position throughout the lifespan of the statute?”

Clarence Thomas has refused to recuse himself from cases related to the January 6 insurrection even though his wife Ginni Thomas attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse just before Trump supporters attacked the Capitol. The Supreme Court’s decision could also impact the prosecution of Donald Trump, who faces four counts under the law which was passed after the Enron scandal.

The possible extradition of imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to the United States has edged a step closer. On Tuesday, the Biden administration provided assurances to the British High Court that Assange would not face the death penalty and that his First Amendment rights would be protected if he were to be extradited from Britain, where he has been locked up for five years. Assange’s wife Stella slammed the U.S. response, saying, “The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future — his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in U.S. prison for publishing award-winning journalism.”

In news from India, security forces have killed 29 Maoist rebels in the central state of Chhattisgarh just days before India’s national elections begin. It was one of the deadliest attacks on the Naxalite movement in years.

In news from Capitol Hill, Republican Congressmember Thomas Massie of Kentucky has joined Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bid to oust Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. Massie made the announcement a day after Johnson unveiled a plan to advance separate bills to send aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. Meanwhile, House Republicans have sent articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate.

In voting news, Maine has become the latest state to join the National Popular Vote compact, which could transform the way presidents are elected in the United States. Sixteen states and Washington, D.C., have now pledged to award their combined 209 electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the nationwide popular vote. The compact will only go into effect once supporters of the compact control at least 270 votes. Support for the National Popular Vote compact has grown in recent years after both George W. Bush and Donald Trump were elected president despite losing the popular vote.

In California, a former U.S. marine has been sentenced to nine years in prison for firebombing a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa in 2022. Chance Brannon pleaded guilty in November. He admitted he had also planned to attack a second Planned Parenthood clinic and an LGBTQ Pride celebration at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Two other people involved have also pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in May.

In a major win for LGBTQ rights advocates, a federal appeals court has blocked West Virginia’s measure banning transgender children and youth from participating in public school and college sports. The ruling stemmed from a case involving 13-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson, a trans athlete who’s been challenging West Virginia’s ban since 2021.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court is allowing Idaho to enforce its ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth while lawsuits over the measure are heard in lower courts. Under the law, physicians in Idaho face up to 10 years in prison for providing hormones, puberty blockers or other gender-affirming care to trans children under the age of 18.

Here in New York, two police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Kawaski Trawick in 2019 will not face internal discipline. New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban said officers Brendan Thompson and Herbert Davis “acted within the law” when they entered Trawick’s Bronx apartment and officer Thompson, who is white, shot him four times. Trawick, who was 32 and an aspiring dancer, had a history of mental illness and was living in special housing when he called 911. The two officers found Trawick holding a knife as he repeatedly told them he was cooking and asked why the officers were inside his home. The full incident lasted less than two minutes. The officers did not face criminal charges.