Donald Trump took to the stage to close out the Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee last night. In the lengthiest-ever speech recorded at a party convention, Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination. As in previous campaign addresses, Trump promised to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” and “drill, baby, drill.” We’ll have more from the RNC after headlines.

On the Democratic side, several outlets are reporting Democratic insiders believe “we’re close to the end” of Biden’s presidential run and that he could step down as soon as this weekend. Montana Senator Jon Tester, who is in a close reelection bid, became the second Democratic senator to call on President Biden to drop out of the race. This comes as The Washington Post reports former President Obama has privately told allies that Biden should reconsider staying in the race. Biden is now in isolation suffering from COVID.

In Gaza, Israel has bombed another U.N. school in Gaza City. It’s at least the ninth U.N. school shelter Israel has attacked in the past two weeks. Deadly attacks have also been reported in the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps, killing at least 13 Palestinians.

In Khan Younis, health officials exhumed and transferred the bodies of at least 12 Gazans who were killed when Israel attacked and besieged the Red Crescent-run Al-Amal Hospital earlier this year. The mother of one of the victims traveled from Gaza City to retrieve her son’s body.

Areej Hamouda: “He was martyred at the Red Crescent hospital. They shot him, and he had a loaf of bread with him, which he had to beg for to get for his daughter. They shot him in the eye and in the head. It rained on him. He was washed with blood. He was just thrown there all day long. They weren’t able to move him. They pulled him with a rope when they brought him to be buried here. … I was able to know his whereabouts. They called me to inform me that my son had died. I risked my life to come here from Gaza City. But I said to myself that if I will die, I will die. So I put a piece of paper on my chest with my name on it, and I kept walking by the sea. I kept walking and asked around until I reached here with his sick father.”

A new report by Oxfam finds Israel has used water as a weapon of war, with Gaza’s water supplies plummeting by 94% over the past 10 months due to Israel’s blockades and nonstop bombardment. Even before October 7, Gazans’ access to water was severely restricted. The destruction of Gaza’s water treatment plants has forced people to resort to using sewage-contaminated water containing pathogens that lead to diarrhea — which is especially deadly for children — and diseases like cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid. Meanwhile, Palestinian health authorities say the polio virus has been found in sewage samples from Gaza.

Yemen’s Houthi fighters claimed responsibility for a drone attack on a residential building in Tel Aviv, which killed one person. A Houthi spokesperson warned the group will continue attacking targets inside Israel. Until today, Israel had intercepted the majority of Houthi strikes against Israel.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah has claimed three separate attacks in northern Israel amid mounting tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border.

In Bangladesh, up to 28 people have been killed as student-led protests continue across the country amid widespread anger over government quotas on public sector jobs. Hundreds have been injured as riot police clashed with protesters Thursday, deploying tear gas and rubber bullets in the capital Dhaka and other cities. Telecommunications were disrupted Friday, with television news channels going off the air. This is a protester in Dhaka.

Yasmin Juthi: “How can the government run these attacks? We have been saying since the beginning that we are general students. It is a matter of common sense that over 50% of the jobs cannot be given away to quota holders. A normal state cannot be run like this.”

Top U.S. airlines, including Delta and American Airlines, were among a number of carriers around the world forced to ground flights this morning amid a massive global communication outage. The outage, parts of which have now been resolved, appears to stem partly from a Microsoft software update issued by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The IT crisis also hit mass transit, media, banking, and health services.

A British court sentenced five climate activists to record four- and five-year prison terms for participating in a Zoom call to plan a peaceful protest on a major London highway in 2022. The activists, who are with the direct action group Just Stop Oil, were convicted of “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” in a case which has triggered widespread outrage. Michel Forst, the U.N. special rapporteur on environmental defenders, warned, “This sentence should shock the conscience of any member of the public.” Meanwhile, Greenpeace UK said, “We’re giving a free hand to the polluting elite robbing us of a habitable planet while jailing those who’re trying to stop them.” Outside of the London courthouse, protesters gathered to support the activists, who have become known as the “Whole Truth Five,” as a van carted them off to prison. This is Just Stop Oil spokesperson Grahame Buss.

Grahame Buss: “We clearly do not live in a functioning democracy. A functioning democracy would be one in which we could act, in which we could make a change, in which we would be allowed to protest. The nonfunctioning democracy that we have is one in which oil companies and very wealthy people determine what our laws are, in which we get the chance to vote once every five years and it makes no bloody difference at all, where we see governments — a new government coming in with virtually the same policies as the one that went out. How can you talk about a functioning democracy when we are in a climate collapse and our government is not recognizing it and not protecting us? It’s absolutely disgraceful. It has to stop.”

Back in the U.S., a federal appeals court has blocked the Biden administration’s student debt relief program that lowered payments for millions of people. The ruling stems from a suit filed by a handful of Republican states and affects the federal SAVE plan. Other aspects of that plan had already been blocked by lower courts. This came on the same day the Biden administration canceled another $1.2 billion in student debt for about 35,000 people working in public service jobs.

A Texas-based nonprofit that contracts with federal immigration authorities subjected unaccompanied migrant children to pervasive sexual abuse for nearly a decade. That’s according to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department Wednesday detailing how workers at Southwest Key Programs repeatedly sexually assaulted children under the organization’s care between 2015 to 2023. Workers also forced migrant children to perform sexual acts and pose for nude photos while threatening the children so they would fear reporting any of the abuse. Southwest Key is the largest private provider of housing for unaccompanied migrant children and receives grants from the Department of Health and Human Services. It contracts with the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Lou Dobbs died Thursday at the age of 78. Dobbs spent two decades at CNN before becoming one of Fox News’s star presenters. Among other things, he repeatedly spewed false anti-immigrant and racist talking points. He helped spread the “birther” theory against President Obama. A die-hard Trump supporter, Dobbs was let go from Fox after the 2020 election in the wake of Trump’s election fraud scandal, after helping buoy Trump’s lies. Back in 2007, Lou Dobbs joined us on Democracy Now! This clip starts with Democracy Now!’s Juan González grilling Dobbs over his lies demonizing immigrants.

Juan González: “All that would be needed to do is to raise the economic level in Mexico, and the entire illegal immigration population problems would decline in this country. And not only that, but the country, if it had a higher immigration quota in connection with” —

Lou Dobbs: “Are you giving me instruction, or are you telling me what we agree upon?”

Juan González: “No, we don’t agree. We don’t agree, because you are demonizing illegal immigration as a separate issue.” …

Lou Dobbs: “How in the world can you use my name and 'anti-immigrant' in the same breath?”

Amy Goodman: “When we hear comments like” —

Lou Dobbs: “You hear” —

Amy Goodman: — “a third of the — from you — we’ve played them, so we can’t refute the videotape, Lou.”

Lou Dobbs: “Have you looked, Amy” —

Amy Goodman: “We can’t refute — a third of prisoners are” —

Lou Dobbs: “Yes. And we discussed that?”

Amy Goodman: — “are illegal immigrants” —

Lou Dobbs: “Have we discussed it?”

Amy Goodman: “No, a third of prisoners are illegal immigrants, not true. Seven thousand leprosy cases in the last three years because of illegal immigrants” —

Lou Dobbs: “Christine Romans misspoke.”

Amy Goodman: — “not true.”

Lou Dobbs: “We said that. And that’s as straightforward as we can put it.”

Amy Goodman: “And you made an announcement on your show” —

Lou Dobbs: “Absolutely.”

Amy Goodman: — “and you will say it here” —

Lou Dobbs: “Absolutely.”

Amy Goodman: — “that it is not true. Illegal immigrants are not responsible for 7,000 cases of leprosy over the last three years.”

Click here to see our full hour with Lou Dobbs.

A Russian court has convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich of espionage, sentencing him to 16 years in prison. Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen, was tried behind closed doors. He was arrested nearly 16 months ago and accused of spying on a military factory for the CIA. The Wall Street Journal called the conviction “disgraceful” and a “sham”. Earlier this week, Russia said it’s holding talks with the U.S. on a possible swap involving Evan Gershkovich.

In the occupied West Bank, local news is reporting illegal Israeli settlers have attacked multiple Palestinian towns, including Beit Jala, where settlers stormed a school and raised Israeli flags. Israeli forces and settlers have stepped up their attacks on the occupied West Bank since October 7, killing over 500 Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the U.K. announced it is resuming funding to UNRWA. Britain’s new foreign minister, David Lammy, said the U.K. will provide 21 million pounds to the agency. Britain joined the U.S. and others in pausing its funding in January after Israel made unsubstantiated claims that UNRWA staffers were involved in October 7 attacks by Hamas.

Rwanda’s Electoral Commission confirmed President Paul Kagame has been reelected for a fourth term with over 99% of support following Monday’s vote. Kagame has been in power since 2000, making him the only elected president of Rwanda since the 1994 genocide, during which up to 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by militia members. Ahead of the election, Rwandan courts banned Kagame’s biggest rivals from running. Rights groups have called out Kagame’s sweeping crackdown on the press and dissent, as well as his backing of M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have been accused of widespread abuses.

In Peru, Indigenous leaders have declared a state of emergency following the killing of Mariano Isacama Feliciano, leader of the Kakataibo community, whose body was found Sunday with signs of torture after being missing for over three weeks. Indigenous leaders are also calling on foreign governments to stop enabling the violence through their invasion and exploitation of the Amazon. This is Jorge Pérez, president of the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest.

Jorge Pérez: “We declare a permanent state of emergency for the government’s negligence, demonstrated with 24 days of inaction after the disappearance of brother Mariano Isacama Feliciano, leader of the Kakataibo people. Thirty-five leaders have been assassinated for defending their ancestral territory, for defending the Amazon. And we urge major changes to end the crimes and threats against Indigenous defenders.”

In other news from Peru, a new report by Amnesty International finds President Dina Boluarte is likely criminally responsible for the killing of 50 people during major protests between December 2022 and March 2023 following the overthrow of leftist President Pedro Castillo. Another 1,400 were injured in the brutal crackdown by armed forces and police. On Thursday, Amnesty presented its findings in Lima, alongside relatives of some of those killed in the December 15 protest. This is Yovana Mendoza, who lost her brother and now runs an organization representing other grieving family members.

Yovana Mendoza: “They have shot in order to kill. At no time have they only wanted to disperse the people. No, they have shot to kill, because they were shooting straight at the body. Straight at the body, they were shooting with firearm projectiles at our relatives and also at the survivors, who are now suffering in their homes.”

In New York, organizers say more than 1,000 Uber and Lyft drivers marched in the streets this week to protest the companies’ unfair pay rules. Uber has started locking workers out of the app during low demand periods in order to avoid paying them for “idle time” between rides. Lyft is threatening to do the same. Workers say this not only costs them wages, but makes it impossible to have a reliable work schedule. The anti-worker move was implemented as a workaround to New York City rules that require ride-share companies to pay drivers when they are on the clock, even if they are not actively driving around passengers. Unionized drivers say they could go on strike unless the policy ends.

Unionized driver: “Uber is just a corporation, a capitalist. Uber just want to make profit. They don’t care about your well-being.”