By WAFAA SHURAFA and MELANIE LIDMAN, Associated Press

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — President Donald Trump’s special envoy arrived in Israel on Thursday to discuss the disintegrating humanitarian situation in Gaza, as the death toll of Palestinians waiting for food and other aid continued to climb.

At least 91 Palestinians were killed and more than 600 wounded while attempting to get aid in the past 24 hours, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. This includes 54 people killed while awaiting food in northern Gaza near the Zikim crossing on Wednesday, the ministry said. The toll is expected to rise further as many of those killed or wounded were brought to isolated, smaller hospitals in northern Gaza and have not yet been counted.

The Israeli military said Palestinians surrounded aid trucks and the Israeli military fired warning shots into the crowd, but that it isn’t aware of any injuries stemming from Israeli fire. A security official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations said the gunfire came from within the crowd and altercations between Palestinians attempting to access aid.

A diplomatic push

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Israel on Thursday afternoon as the U.S. imposed new sanctions on officials from the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. He is expected to speak with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the humanitarian situation in Gaza and a possible ceasefire, according to an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

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This is the first meeting between Witkoff and Netanyahu since both Israel and the U.S. called their negotiation teams home from Qatar one week ago. Witkoff said at the time that Hamas “shows a lack of desire” to reach a truce. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Hamas started the war with its attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which terrorists killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others. They still hold 50 hostages, including around 20 believed to be alive. Most of the others have been released in ceasefires or other deals.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Its count doesn’t distinguish between fighters and civilians. The ministry operates under the Hamas government. The U.N. and other international organizations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties.

In Jerusalem, about 50 people, including families of some of the approximately 50 hostages still being held in Gaza, demonstrated on Thursday in front of Netanyahu’s office calling for an end to the war.

Aid trickles into Gaza

Under heavy international pressure, Israel announced a series of measures over the weekend to facilitate the entry of more international aid to Gaza, but aid workers say much more is needed.

The Israeli defense body in charge of coordinating humanitarian aid in Gaza said 270 trucks of aid entered Gaza on Wednesday, and 32 pallets of aid were airdropped into the Strip. That amount is far lower than the 500 to 600 trucks per day that aid organizations say are needed.

The international community has heaped criticism on Israel over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza. International organizations said that Gaza has been on the brink of famine for the past two years, but that recent developments, including a complete blockade on aid for 2 1/2 months, mean that the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in Gaza.”

Criticism of Israel in Gaza comes from staunch allies

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul was also due in Israel later Thursday on a two-day trip that will also take him to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Germany, traditionally a staunch ally of Israel, has been increasingly critical recently of Israel’s actions in Gaza. It has insisted that Israel must do more to increase aid supplies and pushed for a ceasefire.

Berlin hasn’t joined major allies France, Britain, and Canada in saying it will recognize a Palestinian state in September. But in a statement ahead of his departure Thursday, Wadephul underlined Germany’s position that a two-state solution is “the only way” to ensure a future in peace and security for people on both sides.

“For Germany, the recognition of a Palestinian state stands rather at the end of the process. But such a process must begin now. Germany will not move from this aim,” Wadephul said.

U.S. revokes visas of Palestinian officials

Palestinian officials linked to the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization will no longer be able to travel to the U.S. after their visas were revoked Thursday, marking a further deterioration of their relations with the United States.

The State Department said the organizations had violated longstanding agreements not to undermine the peace process or globalize the conflict through international courts. It accused them of inciting violence and supporting attackers and their families.

It did not specify which officials would be sanctioned, but similar actions taken during President Donald Trump’s first term led the group to shutter it’s Washington-based office in 2018.

Some of the recent recognitions of Palestinian statehood have been predicated on reforming the PA, which is mired in corruption and widely unpopular at home. The PA has also clashed bitterly with Hamas, the group that controls Gaza.

The PLO, the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people, oversees the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited autonomy in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

PLO member Mustafa Barghouti called the move a response to nations recognizing Palestine and said it proved the U.S. couldn’t be a neutral mediator in the peace process.

“It is time for everyone — including the Palestinian Authority, which along with the PLO is facing U.S. sanctions — to realize that it is futile to bet on the illusion that the United States can act as a mediator,” he said in an interview. “The U.S. is completely and absolutely biased toward Israel and is complicit in its war crimes.”

Sam Metz in Jerusalem and Imad Isseid in Ramallah, the West Bank, contributed reporting.

This version corrects the number of people who protested Wednesday outside Netanyahu’s office.

By ANDREW DeMILLO, Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas police charged a 28-year-old schoolteacher in the killing of a married couple who were hiking with their children at Devil’s Den State Park, finding him in a nearby city after a five-day search and public pleas for trailgoers to look through their photos.

State Police arrested Andrew James McGann at a barbershop in Springdale, said Col. Stacie Rhoads, commander of the department’s criminal investigation division. He was charged with two counts of capital murder and was being held without bond Thursday in the state’s Washington County jail.

The map above locates Devil’s Den State Park in Arkansas. (AP Graphic)

Police announced the arrest at a Wednesday night news conference but would not discuss a motive. McGann had been hired at Springdale Public Schools as a teacher candidate for the upcoming year but had not yet come into contact with any of its families or students, the district said in a statement.

A lawyer couldn’t be located for McGann, and a message was left for a number listed for him. His first court appearance was scheduled for Friday.

“If you commit a violent, senseless act here in our state, our law enforcement will hunt you down and bring you to justice, because that’s what the people of Arkansas frankly deserve,” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.

Springdale is roughly 30 miles north of the state’s remote Devil’s Den park, where trails have remained closed since Saturday’s killings.

Police flooded with tips

Clinton David Brink, 43, and Cristen Amanda Brink, 41, were found dead on a walking trail at Devil’s Den. Their daughters, who are 7 and 9, were not hurt and are being cared for by family members, authorities have said.

The State Police have released few details about the investigation, including how the couple was killed. In the days after the attack, police released a composite sketch and then a photo of a person of interest that showed them only from behind. Authorities urged trailgoers who had been at the park to check their camera rolls for photos or video that might help point to a suspect.

Rhoads said the public’s help and video footage they received was instrumental in capturing McGann. Tips came in from as far away as Washington state, she said.

“It was overwhelming,” she said.

Suspect taught in Oklahoma before Arkansas job

McGann was a teacher at a small Oklahoma school district until May and then resigned to take a job in another state, according to a statement from Sand Springs Public Schools, which is near Tulsa. It added that McGann had passed all background checks.

This photo provided by Washington County Sheriff’s Office shows Andrew McGann. (Washington County Sheriff’s Office via AP)

McGann had not yet started his new job in Arkansas at Springdale Public Schools, said Jared Cleveland, the district superintendent. He said the district could not provide more information, citing the investigation.

“Our entire team extends our deepest condolences to the Brink family. Their children are especially in our thoughts and prayers,” Cleveland said.

Sierra Marcum said three years ago, her son was a student in McGann’s fourth grade classroom in Flower Mound, Texas, and described him as the “most standoff teacher she had ever met.” Her son’s yearbook includes a photo of McGann.

“Pretty cold. You could ask him a question and he would give you a one word response,” she said. “Overall just pretty disinterested in his students.”

Victims had recently moved before hike

Clinton and Cristen Brink had just moved from South Dakota to the small city of Prairie Grove in northwest Arkansas. Their water had been connected less than two weeks ago, Mayor David Faulk said.

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Clinton Brink had been scheduled to start a job as a milk delivery driver Monday in the nearby Fayetteville area, according to Hiland Dairy, his employer. Cristen Brink had been licensed as a nurse in Montana and South Dakota before moving to Arkansas.

The Brink family said the couple died “heroes protecting their little girls.”

“Our entire state is grieving for the tragic loss and senseless and horrific crime that’s taken place in this area,” Sanders said.

Devil’s Den is a 2,500-acre state park near West Fork, about 140 miles (220 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock, the state capital.

The park is known for its hiking trails and rock formations, and it is a short drive from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and Walmart’s Bentonville headquarters.

It was selected as a state park site in the 1930s and the park’s trails lead to the surrounding Ozark National Forest.

Associated Press reporter Hallie Golden contributed from Seattle.

(Ben Sargent)

To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section or find Observer political reporting here.

The post Loon Star State: Render unto Trump… appeared first on The Texas Observer.

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — Summer has returned to Yosemite National Park’s High Country — the snows have melted along the park’s famed Tioga Road, purple lupin and yellow buttercups are in bloom and the lakes provide a stunning backdrop to massive granite domes.

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But one common fixture has been in short supply in recent years: campers.

That’s about to change. The largest campground in Yosemite National Park — and one of the largest at any national park in the United States — is reopening after being closed for three years for a major upgrade.

Workers have finished construction on a $26.2 million renovation of Tuolumne Meadows Campground. It is set to reopen Aug. 1.

Located at 8,600 feet along Tioga Road more than an hour’s drive from Yosemite Valley, the campground has 336 campsites that serve more than 140,000 visitors a year, offering a key starting point where generations of hikers and backpackers have set out to explore Yosemite’s wilderness of sub-alpine meadows, Ponderosa pine forests and scenic granite peaks.

The campground originally was built in 1934 by President Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. Back then, the goal was to stop people from parking randomly in the fragile meadows. The facilities they built created countless vacation memories over the decades. But time took its toll.

“This is a well-loved campground,” said Kathleen Morse, Yosemite’s chief of strategic planning during a recent visit.

“It has a historic and more rustic atmosphere than Yosemite Valley,” she said. “But it was getting pretty dilapidated. Drainage was poor. Sites weren’t level. It was a free-for-all with parking.”

Crews rebuilt the campground’s aging water and sewer systems. They upgraded electrical equipment, and replaced every picnic table, fire ring and food locker at 336 campsites. They renovated the outdoor amphitheater, repaved the access road, added disabled parking spaces, and moved 21 sites out of the floodplain of the Tuolumne River.

“Yosemite gets 4 million visitors a year,” Morse said. “That’s hard on infrastructure. We want to protect the natural resources so they are here forever, and provide a good visitor experience. This is a crown jewel park. We want to have crown jewel facilities that the public can be proud of.”

The Tuolumne Meadows Campground is more than a stop on one of the most famous mountain roads in the American West. It’s also a critical access point for the public.

With campsites for cars, groups and walk-in users, Tuolumne Meadows makes up nearly one-fourth of the roughly 1,500 campsites in all of Yosemite National Park. It has been closed since 2022 for the construction, which could only take place in summer months because the area is buried in up to 6 feet of snow during winter.

Last week, a few early visitors wandered in to see its rebirth.

“This is one of the nicer places we’ve seen on our trip,” said Kevin Thurston, who was visiting with his wife and two sons from Houston. “If we lived closer we’d come up here more. Definitely thumbs up.”

Nearby, Meg Henry, visiting with her husband, Bill Henry, and their two nieces from Los Osos in San Luis Obispo County, remembered how the old campground had aging facilities and a scattershot parking system.

Meg Henry, of Los Osos, fills her camelback with water as her husband, Bill Henry, and their nieces look on at the Tuolumne Meadows Campground in Yosemite, Calif., on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

“There used to be cars everywhere,” Meg said. “Instead of cars you see nature.”

Campsites at Tuolumne Meadows are $36 a night. Reservations for all Yosemite hotels and campgrounds can be made at recreation.gov.

The upgrade is the latest in a series of major renovations at Yosemite in recent years. Last year, the park built a new $12.5 million visitor center in the heart of the valley near the Village Store, and completed a $19 million renovation of the trails, restrooms, parking lots, signs and wooden boardwalks around Bridalveil Fall.

This month, crews broke ground on a $220 million project to rebuild the park’s 45-year-old wastewater treatment plant at El Portal.

The money for the Tuolumne Meadows Campground, the El Portal upgrades and several other key projects came from the Great American Outdoors Act. That law, signed by President Trump during his first term in 2020, provided $6.5 billion in new funding to the National Park Service and $3 billion to the U.S. Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal lands agencies to upgrade long-overdue maintenance projects.

A buck feeds from a branch at the Tuolumne Meadows Campgrounds in Yosemite, Calif., on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. After three years of being closed for major renovations, the campground, originally built by Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, will open on Aug. 1. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

Republicans who have in recent years voted against similar environmental efforts embraced the bill after two Western senators, Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, and Steve Daines, R-Montana, were up for re-election in 2020 and urged the White House to embrace a major parks bill they were supporting to help their chances. Daines ended up winning his election. Gardener lost to Democrat John Hickenlooper.

The money, however, continues to fund projects across the United States and the West. In California, it has paid to rebuild water lines at Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, upgrade a wastewater system at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, and repave roads and build a new drainage system at Yosemite’s Glacier Point.

Frank Dean, a ranger at Yosemite from 1990 to 1995, also served for 10 years as president of the Yosemite Conservancy, a nonprofit group in San Francisco that has raised private donations to fund hundreds of projects to improve the park’s facilities and restore its environment.

Dean said that although Yosemite Valley receives most of the attention and visitors, Tuolumne Meadows and the park’s higher elevations are singularly beautiful.

“Yosemite Valley is incredible,” Dean said. “Everyone should be able to see it at least once in their life. But to get into the heart of the park’s high country is really special. If you haven’t been up there, you should go. The meadows are flat. You can walk along the river. You can see iconic peaks. It’s an amazing place and it is easy to get to. It’s very special up there.”

Jonathan Winters of the National Park Service and his dog, Tuli, walk past one of the renovated campsites during a tour of the Tuolumne Meadows Campgrounds in Yosemite, Calif., on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. After three years of being closed for major renovations, the campground, originally built by Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, will open on Aug. 1. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)