By MELANIE LIDMAN and WAFAA SHURAFA

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that to destroy Hamas Israel intends to take full control of the Gaza Strip and eventually transfer its administration to friendly Arab forces, as the Security Cabinet discussed a widening of its 22-month offensive.

Asked in an interview with Fox News if Israel would “take control of all of Gaza,” Netanyahu replied: “We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza.” The Security Cabinet would still need to approve such a decision.

’We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter,” Netanyahu said in the interview. “We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life.”

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

An Israeli official had earlier said the Security Cabinet would hold a lengthy debate and approve an expanded military plan to conquer all or parts of Gaza not yet under Israeli control. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity pending a formal decision, said that whatever is approved would be implemented gradually to increase pressure on Hamas.

In Gaza, where Israel’s air and ground war has already killed tens of thousands of people, displaced most of the population, destroyed vast areas and caused severe and widespread hunger, Palestinians braced for further misery.

“There is nothing left to occupy,” said Maysaa al-Heila, who is living in a displacement camp. “There is no Gaza left.”

At least 42 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes and shootings across southern Gaza on Thursday, according to local hospitals.

A new escalation could deepen Israel’s isolation

Netanyahu has been meeting this week with advisers to discuss what his office said are ways to “further achieve Israel’s goals in Gaza” after the breakdown of ceasefire talks last month. The Security Cabinet meeting began Thursday evening, according to Israeli media, and was expected to stretch into the night.

Israel already controls about 75% of Gaza. Expanding military operations would further isolate Israel internationally, after several of its closest Western allies have called on it to end the war and facilitate more humanitarian aid. In Israel, families of the hostages have called for mass protests Thursday, fearing an escalation could doom their loved ones.

Hamas-led terrorists abducted 251 people and killed around 1,200 in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war. Most of the hostages have been released in ceasefires or other deals but 50 remain inside Gaza, around 20 of them believed by Israel to be alive.

Almost two dozen relatives of hostages set sail from southern Israel towards the maritime border with Gaza on Thursday, where they broadcast messages from loudspeakers.

Yehuda Cohen, the father of Nimrod Cohen, an Israeli soldier held in Gaza, said from the boat that Netanyahu is prolonging the war to satisfy extremists in his governing coalition. Netanyahu’s far-right allies want to escalate the war, relocate most of Gaza’s population to other countries and reestablish Jewish settlements that were dismantled in 2005.

“Netanyahu is working only for himself,” Cohen said, pleading with the international community to put pressure on the prime minister to stop the war and save his son.

Palestinians killed and wounded as they seek food

Israel’s military offensive has killed over 61,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters or civilians. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals who keep and share detailed records.

The United Nations and independent experts view the ministry’s figures as the most reliable estimate of casualties. Israel has disputed them without offering a toll of its own.

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Of the 42 people killed on Thursday, at least 13 were seeking aid in an Israeli military zone in southern Gaza where U.N. aid convoys are regularly overwhelmed by looters and desperate crowds. Another two were killed on roads leading to nearby sites run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American contractor, according to Nasser Hospital, which received the bodies.

GHF said there were no violent incidents at or near its sites on Thursday. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. The military zone, known as the Morag Corridor, is off limits to independent media.

Hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks while heading to GHF sites and in chaotic scenes around U.N. convoys, most of which are overwhelmed by looters and crowds of hungry people. The U.N. human rights office, witnesses and health officials have offered similar accounts of the near-daily shootings by Israeli fire going back to May, when Israel lifted a complete 2 1/2 month blockade.

The military says it has only fired warning shots when crowds approach its forces. GHF says its armed contractors have only used pepper spray or fired into the air on some occasions to prevent deadly stampedes.

Israel and GHF face mounting criticism

Human Rights Watch called on governments worldwide to suspend arms transfers to Israel after deadly airstrikes on two Palestinian schools-turned-shelters last year.

The New York-based rights group said an investigation did not find any evidence of a military target at either school. At least 49 people were killed in the airstrikes that hit the Khadija girls’ school in Deir al-Balah on July 27, 2024, and the al-Zeitoun C school in Gaza City on Sept. 21, 2024.

Doctors Without Borders, a medical charity known by its French acronym MSF, published a blistering report denouncing the GHF distribution system. “This is not aid. It is orchestrated killing, ” it said.

MSF runs two health centers very close to GHF sites in southern Gaza and said it had treated 1,380 people injured near the sites between June 7 and July 20, including 28 people who were dead upon arrival. Of those, at least 147 had suffered gunshot wounds — including at least 41 children.

MSF said hundreds more suffered physical assault injuries from chaotic scrambles for food at the sites, including head injuries, suffocation, and multiple patients with severely aggravated eyes after being sprayed at close range with pepper spray.

It said its health centers were set up for primary care, not mass casualty events, and the cases it saw were only a fraction of the overall casualties connected to GHF sites. It said the more severely wounded are mostly taken directly to hospitals or a nearby Red Cross field hospital, which has independently reported receiving thousands of people wounded by gunshots as they sought aid.

“The level of mismanagement, chaos and violence at GHF distribution sites amounts to either reckless negligence or a deliberately designed death trap,” the report said.

GHF said the “accusations are both false and disgraceful” and accused MSF of “amplifying a disinformation campaign” orchestrated by Hamas.

The U.S. and Israel helped set up the GHF system as an alternative to the U.N.-run aid delivery system that has sustained Gaza for decades, accusing Hamas of siphoning off assistance. The U.N. denies any mass diversion by Hamas. It accuses GHF of forcing Palestinians to risk their lives to get food and say it advances Israel’s plans for further mass displacement.

Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writers Josef Federman contributed from Jerusalem and Natalie Melzer contributed from Nahariya.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

THOMPSON, Pa. (AP) — Two Pennsylvania State Police troopers were shot Thursday morning, Gov. Josh Shapiro said at an event outside Philadelphia.

“About an hour ago in Susquehanna County, two state troopers were shot. Lori and I are praying for those troopers,” Shapiro said. “I want you to know I’ve communicated with Col. Paris. He is on the scene. It is an active situation and at the conclusion of this event I plan to head there myself.”

Christopher Paris heads the Pennsylvania State Police.

The shooting occurred in northeastern Pennsylvania.

A state police spokesperson, Trooper Logan T. Brouse, said the location was along Route 171 near the village of Thomson. That’s about 40 miles (63 kilometers) north of Scranton.

Sen. Dave McCormick said in a social media post that he was monitoring the developing situation. He also expressed empathy for the troopers who were shot.

“Dina and I are praying for our brave state troopers in Susquehanna County and monitoring the situation closely as more details emerge,” McCormick posted.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan said on X that he was “relieved to hear the troopers involved in today’s incident in Thompson Township are expected to be in stable condition.”

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By Tim Henderson, Stateline.org

Inside immigration courts around the country, immigrants who crossed the border illegally and were caught and released are required to appear before a judge for a preliminary hearing.

But in a new twist, the Trump administration has begun using an unexpected legal tactic in its deportation efforts. Rather than pursue a deportation case, it is convincing judges to dismiss immigrants’ cases — thus depriving the immigrants of protection from arrest and detention — then taking them into custody.

The practice, affecting immigrants released at the border and given a “notice to appear” in court under both the Trump and Biden administrations, sometimes leads to people being quickly deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement through a process called expedited removal.

Many of the immigrants had requested asylum, as allowed under U.S. law. Late last month, advocates filed a lawsuit on behalf of a dozen immigrants unexpectedly arrested by ICE, often after having their cases dismissed.

When an immigrant crosses the border illegally and is caught, they may be given a “notice to appear,” or NTA, ordering them to appear before an immigration judge. It can sometimes take years, however, before their case comes up.

One of the immigrants in the lawsuit was caught at the border with Mexico and given a court appearance ticket in 2022 after fleeing Cuba. His opposition to forced conscription and the communist government in Cuba led to his arrest there and he was raped in custody, according to the lawsuit.

At his first hearing in U.S. immigration court in May, his case was dismissed with no reason given and his attorney agreed, thinking the relatively new maneuver was a positive development.

But as he left the Miami court, the immigrant was arrested and sent to Washington state for detention, thousands of miles from his family and his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, according to the lawsuit.

“The aftermath of these courthouse arrests and dismissals for placement in expedited removal wreaks further havoc on people’s lives,” according to a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice filed in July by a group of immigrant advocates. The group argued the practice is illegal and contrary to the traditional way people are treated when released at the border for court dates.

The lawsuit includes 12 immigrants: three from Cuba, three from Venezuela, two from Ecuador, two from Guinea and others from Liberia and the Chechen Republic. A Department of Justice spokesperson, Natalie Baldassarre, said the department had no comment on the lawsuit.

After a courthouse arrest in New York City in July, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told CBS News that the new policy “is reversing [President Joe] Biden’s catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets.”

However, the Trump administration has also released immigrants seeking asylum at the border pending court dates, according to a June 27 report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at the University of Syracuse, an organization that tracks federal statistics.

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Almost 18,000 people were released at the border in May “even after Trump officials closed the border, vowed not to allow anyone in and to immediately detain anyone not legally in the country caught inside the U.S.,” the report stated.

Other immigration attorneys who spoke with Stateline said the new practice of arresting people when they show up for court hearings but declined to speak on the record for fear of drawing negative attention to their clients’ cases.

Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which represents more than 17,000 immigration attorneys and is not involved in the lawsuit, said the Department of Homeland Security is now arguing in court that anyone caught crossing the border should be arrested and detained, though it’s not happening in every case.

“There is a large number of people going to court and getting arrested, and also people in detention not getting let out,” Dojaquez-Torres said. “This happens to people with no criminal background, no negative immigration history — they might even have a sponsor that says, ‘We will house them and feed them and make sure they show up to their court hearings.’”

There are also cases of people arrested in court even if their case isn’t dismissed, Dojaquez-Torres said.

One of the immigrants in the lawsuit, a Venezuelan who said he faced persecution in his home country as a gay man with HIV, was arrested July 1 after a hearing in New York City even though his case is still active, according to the lawsuit.

One woman born in Venezuela, who fears persecution because of her sexual orientation and opposition to the Venezuelan government, applied for asylum within a year of entering the United States in 2022, but was arrested at her first court hearing May 27. She now faces an expedited removal order, which could mean an immediate deportation if she loses appeals. She is currently in detention in Ohio, according to the lawsuit.

Other cases mentioned in the lawsuit involved arrests at immigration courts in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Nevada.

Most of the immigrants mentioned in the lawsuit were caught crossing illegally. But two presented themselves at the border legally via an appointment set up through a phone app for asylum-seekers, CBP One, designed to limit the number of people who could cross the border asking for asylum. (The Trump administration shut down the app on its first day in office.)

In one of those cases, a gay man from Ecuador, facing government threats over his LGBTQ+ advocacy efforts, used the app in January and appeared in court June 4, according to the lawsuit.

The government moved to dismiss his case, and he was deported back to Ecuador within a month, despite asking for more time to file an asylum case, according to the suit. He is now living in hiding.

The class-action lawsuit has not yet been answered by the government, though the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, James Boasberg, ruled July 18 that the immigrants suing could use pseudonyms without identifying information as long as they provide real names and addresses in documents sealed from public view.

Courthouse arrests may cross a new line legally but they’re not likely to increase deportation significantly the way current large-scale workplace raids and transfers from local jails might, said Muzaffar Chishti, an attorney and policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. The administration’s goal of 1 million deportations a year still seems unlikely, he said.

Arrests declined in July over the previous month, but deportations increased, according to an Aug. 2 TRAC report, with 56,945 people in detention. The number of detainees will increase with more federal funding for detention, but is still unlikely to reach the level needed to deport a million people in a year, Chishti said.

The issue of courthouse arrests makes legal representation for immigrants all the more important, Chishti said.

“Even in these horrendous cases, if you have a lawyer, he’ll know how to handle it and say, ‘He can’t be removed, he’ll be subject to torture,’” Chishti said. “The difference between arrest and deportation could be the presence of a lawyer.”

Nevertheless, the prospect of arrest and detention during a case that may last years could make immigrants hesitant to show up for court dates, which in turn could make them subject to immediate deportation.

“If you don’t show up for a court date, they will enter what’s called an in absentia removal order. If you come into any contact with ICE after that, you will be most likely detained and removed,” Dojaquez-Torres said.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By DAVID A. LIEB and JONATHAN J. COOPER

After leaving Texas for Illinois to prevent a legislative vote on a Republican redistricting plan, state House Democratic leader Gene Wu needed a means to project his voice — and viewpoints — to a national audience. So he tapped his campaign account to buy a microphone for news conferences.

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When it came to covering the hefty hotel bill for Wu and his roughly 50 colleagues, the lawmaker said he relied on money from his chamber’s Democratic Caucus.

Now Texas Democrats are pleading for donations to help finance what could be a walkout of weeks — if not months — in a high-stakes attempt to prevent the Republican majority from passing a plan sought by President Donald Trump. The president is urging Texas and other GOP-controlled states to redraw their congressional districts to help Republicans maintain control of the U.S. House in next year’s midterm elections.

“We’re getting a lot of small-dollar donations,” Wu told The Associated Press, “and that’s going to be used to help keep this thing going.”

A political group led by Beto O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman who ran unsuccessfully for governor and Senate, gave money to the Texas House Democratic Caucus to help cover the up-front costs, according to a spokesperson for the group, Powered by People. O’Rourke this week has been holding events in red states to fire up Democrats and encourage donations.

Powered by People has not disclosed how much it contributed. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said Wednesday he’s launching an investigation into whether O’Rourke’s group has committed bribery by a “financial influence scheme” benefiting Democrats who left Texas.

In response, O’Rourke said he would be undeterred by the threat of an investigation and used it as a fundraising opportunity.

Democratic state lawmakers from across the U.S. and their supporters protest outside the Massachusetts State House on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025 in Boston. (AP Photo/Leah Willingham)

Lawmakers face travel costs and potentially huge fines

By departing the state, Democratic lawmakers have prevented Republicans from obtaining the quorum needed to conduct business. Democrats hope to run out the clock on a special legislative session that ends Aug. 19. But Republican Gov. Greg Abbott could immediately call another session, raising the prospect of a prolonged and an expensive holdout.

Not only could Texas Democrats face thousands of dollars in out-of-state lodging and dining costs, they also could eventually face fines of $500 for each day they are absent, which under House rules cannot be paid from their office budgets or political contributions.

Texas has a part-time Legislature where lawmakers receive $600 a month, plus an additional $221 for expenses each day they are in session.

On Wednesday, state Sen. Jose Menendez joined Democrats from other states at a rally in Boston, where he noted that the potential daily fine for quorum-breaking lawmakers is nearly as large as their entire monthly legislative salary.

“They need your prayers, they need your thoughts and they need you to get behind them,” he said.

Some Democrats in the Texas Senate have traveled out of state this week to support their House colleagues, but lawmakers in that chamber are not leaving the state to hold up legislative business.

Empty chairs belonging to House Democrats remain empty during a session convocation in the State Capitol, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Rodolfo Gonzalez)

‘This fight is for the people’

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat and billionaire, has welcomed the Texas lawmakers to his state but said he has not financially supported them. Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who has built a national following in recent weeks, said the lawmakers told Pritzker they didn’t want him to fund their trip.

“We’ve already been inundated with donations from across the state of Texas, from across the country, just regular people donating $5, $10, $15,” Talarico said this week. “And that’s appropriate, because this fight is for the people and it should be funded by the people. We don’t have billionaires who are funding this operation.”

The House Democratic Caucus has set up a website seeking donations of between $25 and $2,500 — with a default amount of $250.

Earlier this week, Abbott asked the state’s highest court to remove Wu from office and ordered the Texas Rangers to investigate possible bribery charges related to how Democrats are paying for the walkout, alleging anyone who financially helped them could be culpable.

Wu, a former prosecutor from Houston, said the bribery suggestion is “monstrously stupid.”

“No member is leaving because they might get a campaign contribution that might restore some of the money that they’re spending,” he said.

How left-leaning groups are helping

Before Democrats decided to leave Texas, Wu said he called potential allies for assurance “that there would be resources that would come to our assistance.” But he said that’s no different from an aspiring candidate asking others for support before officially launching a campaign.

Wu, who is chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, said he has participated in online sessions with representatives of dozens of Democratic, progressive and redistricting-oriented groups. Not all are financial supporters. Some are providing help in other ways, such as by coordinating publicity.

The Democratic National Committee has helped with communications and organizing, as well as providing help from a data analytics team, Chair Ken Martin said.

Texas Democrats aren’t worried that they’ll be forced to return home in the near future because of a lack of money, said Luke Warford, founder of Agave Democratic Infrastructure Fund, a Texas fundraising and organizing group. He said longtime Democratic funders understand the high cost of competing in tougher U.S. House races if Republicans succeed in redrawing the map.

“Of course having most of the delegation out of the state is going to rack up a bill,” Warford said. But “when you think about it in the context of what Donald Trump has to gain and what Democrats might lose in the short term, it’s just not even close to the cost of trying to win back either these races or a bunch of other races in the country.”

The Democratic lawmakers have been holed up at a hotel and conference center outside Chicago that was evacuated Wednesday after an unfounded bomb threat. Many lawmakers have been dining and meeting together, and are prepared to keep doing so.

Democratic state Rep. John Bucy III, speaking by phone from the hotel, said he isn’t concerned about how the costs ultimately get covered.

“There’s too much at stake here to be worried about those things,” Bucy said. “Our hotel bills seem so minor compared to what we’re trying to do — to protect democracy.”

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Washington, Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, John O’Connor in Springfield, Illinois, and Leah Willingham in Boston contributed to this report.