The Palestinian Ministry of Health has declared an epidemic of polio, after Israel’s devastating assault decimated Gaza’s health, water and sanitation infrastructure, leading to an outbreak of the viral disease. On Monday, health officials called on Israel to immediately halt its offensive in order to combat the spread of polio by restoring access to potable water, personal hygiene, sewage networks and waste collection. Displaced Palestinians sheltering in Khan Younis say diseases are spreading rapidly.

Awan Abu Odeh: “We, as mothers, along with our children, are suffering from skin diseases. Our skin has begun to show spots in both moms and kids, young and old. Everyone is starting to suffer from this problem. We have been struggling with a lack of cleaning supplies for a while, like shampoo, soap, sponges, chlorine. We are living in tents, in sand, among insects, lacking in hygiene.”

Drop Site News reports video posted online by an Israeli soldier shows the calculated demolition of a chief water facility in Rafah. In 2003, the U.S. human rights activist Rachel Corrie spent much of her time during the last month of her life helping to protect the water facility, also known as the Canada Well. Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer later that year while nonviolently defending a Gaza home from demolition.

In Israel, a group of far-right protesters, including at least one member of the Knesset, broke into two Israeli military bases on Monday in an effort to prevent Israeli military police from detaining nine soldiers suspected of torturing Palestinian prisoners. The nine soldiers are reportedly being investigated for gang raping a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman, a facility where prisoners from Gaza say they have been routinely beaten and tortured. Some prisoners held at the site had limbs amputated due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing.

The protesters who stormed the military bases on Monday included far-right Knesset member Zvi Sukkot, who is a member of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s party.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened a “harsh” response after blaming the Lebanese-based Hezbollah movement for Saturday’s rocket attack that killed 12 Druze children and teenagers at a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Netanyahu’s threat came as he visited the site of the explosion in the town of Majdal Shams in a part of Syria occupied by Israel since 1967. Hezbollah has denied involvement in the attack. As Netanyahu spoke, a crowd of Druze protesters gathered chanting “Bibi is a murderer!” and holding up signs calling the Israeli leader a war criminal.

Fahed Safad: “He is an unwelcome person in our place. He is a liar and corrupt. He is coming to use the bodies of our children to be on TV. We will not allow this to happen.”

In Venezuela, anti-government protests erupted Monday after Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of Sunday’s election. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council said Maduro won 51% of the vote, defeating opposition candidate Edmundo González. But opposition leader María Corina Machado claims she has proof of fraud.

María Corina Machado: “At this moment, I am very excited to tell everyone that we have 73.20% of the voting tallies. … And with this result, our president-elect is Edmundo González Urrutia.”

Maduro and election observers accuse the opposition of attempting to stage a coup. Venezuela’s attorney general accused Machado of attempting to hack elections systems, saying the alleged cyberattack delayed reporting on vote tallies.

International response to the election has been mixed. China, Cuba, Honduras, Russia, Iran and Nicaragua congratulated Maduro on his reelection. Mexico also said it would recognize the election results. Meanwhile, seven Latin American nations signed a joint letter calling for a complete review of the election results. Venezuela responded to the letter by pulling diplomatic staff from the countries: Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, Dominican Republic and Uruguay. We will have more on Venezuela later in the program.

In climate news, the United Nations Children’s Fund is warning that a severe drought affecting large swaths of southern Africa is threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. Lesotho is the latest country to declare a state of national food disaster, following Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. UNICEF warns more than 270,000 children across the region are expected to suffer from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition in 2024, which is on track to break last year’s record as the hottest year in human history. 

In southern India, landslides triggered by torrential rains have killed 70 people, with dozens more trapped under debris. Climate scientists say climate change has caused India’s monsoon rainfall patterns to become more erratic.

In Northern California, the Park Fire has exploded in size to become the sixth-largest wildfire in state history. By Monday, the fire had consumed more than 370,000 acres across Butte and Tehama counties — an area nearly half the size of Rhode Island. Thousands of residents have been forced to evacuate their homes, including the entire town of Paradise, which was almost completely consumed by a massive wildfire in 2018.

On Capitol Hill, police arrested eight climate activists with the youth-led Sunrise Movement Monday as they staged a sit-in protest outside the office of Ohio Republican Senator JD Vance. The group was highlighting the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s close ties to the fossil fuel industry. Some of the protesters spoke as they were led away in plastic handcuffs by Capitol Police.

Protester 1: “JD Vance does not fight for working people. JD Vance doesn’t fight for young people. I’m fighting for my generation.”

Protester 2: “JD Vance is not for the working class. He is a Big Oil sellout. And he is putting people who work out in the heat at risk.”

Protester 3: “JD Vance is selling out to oil billionaires while California burned to the ground. People I love are at stake. My future is at stake. And JD Vance does absolutely nothing. He is taking millions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry.”

Protester 4: “Our families are not for sale. Our families are not for sale.”

According to the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets, Senator JD Vance is among the top 20 U.S. lawmakers receiving oil and gas industry contributions.

On Monday, the Sunrise Movement also staged protests outside the Democratic National Committee, calling out Vice President Kamala Harris’s climate policies. The group said in a statement, “VP Harris has the opportunity to put forward a bold climate plan that mobilizes young voters and faces the scale of the climate crisis.”

In other JD Vance news, CNN has revealed new details about his long history of disparaging people who don’t have children. In addition to his comment about “childless cat ladies,” Vance once described Democrats as “childless sociopaths.” During a podcast interview in 2020, he claimed that childless Americans were making the country “less mentally stable.”

JD Vance: “I worry that it makes people more sociopathic and, ultimately, our whole country a little bit less — less mentally stable. And, of course, you talk about going on Twitter. Final point I’ll make is, you go on Twitter, and almost always the people who are most deranged and most psychotic are people who don’t have kids at home.”

A ban on most abortions has taken effect in Iowa after a state district judge lifted an injunction blocking enforcement of law, which was signed by Republican Governor Kim Reynolds last year. On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris warned the new law adds to a growing reproductive healthcare crisis.

Vice President Kamala Harris: “Today, Iowa put in place a Trump abortion ban, which makes Iowa the 22nd state in our country to have a Trump abortion ban. And this ban is going to take effect before many women even know they’re pregnant. And what this means is that one in three women of reproductive age in America lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban. So, what we need to do is vote, because I’m going to tell you something: When I am president of the United States, I will sign into law the protections for reproductive freedom.”

On Monday, Kamala Harris also endorsed President Biden’s plan to reform the U.S. Supreme Court that calls for term limits, an ethics code and an end to presidential immunity. We’ll have more on this story after headlines.

In Illinois, a local sheriff has publicly apologized after one of his deputies fatally shot Sonya Massey in her own kitchen after she called 911 for help on July 6. Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell rejected calls to resign but did apologize during a public meeting in Springfield, Illinois, on Monday.

Sheriff Jack Campbell: “I am sorry. She called for help, and we failed her. That’s all she did. That’s all — she was calling for help. And I’m going to say something right now that I’ve never said in my career before, that we failed. We did not do our jobs.”

The only person ever convicted over the notorious My Lai massacre of 1968 has died at the age of 80. Army Lieutenant William Calley was convicted in 1971 of murdering 22 North Vietnamese civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labor at Fort Leavenworth prison for his role in the massacre, when U.S. soldiers killed more than 500 Vietnamese women, children and old men. Calley ultimately served just three years under house arrest for the murders, and his sentence was commuted by President Nixon. In 2009, Calley issued a public apology for the massacre. The previous year, I spoke about Calley’s role at My Lai with investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who first broke the story.

Seymour Hersh: “They all got up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, jumped on choppers and went to kill and be killed — you have to give them their due. And they got into the village, and there’s no soldiers there. The intelligence was bad, as it always is. And they gathered people. There was no fire at all, really, just old women, men and children making their — heating up water for their morning rice. And they gathered them eventually into three large ditches and began to execute them. Calley was — become infamous, but there were five or six first and second lieutenants that were also organizing it.”

Click here to see our coverage of the My Lai massacre.