By SAMY MAGDY and MELANIE LIDMAN, Associated Press

CAIRO (AP) — Hamas will return the bodies of four dead Israeli hostages on Thursday in exchange for Israel’s release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, the group said, just days before the first phase of the ceasefire between the warring parties was to expire.

Israel has delayed the release of about 600 Palestinian prisoners since Saturday to protest what it says is the cruel treatment of hostages during their release by Hamas.

The group has said that the delay is a “serious violation” of their ceasefire and that talks on a second phase aren’t possible until the Palestinians are freed.

Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif al-Qanou told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Hamas would hand over the bodies of four Israelis the next day.

In exchange, Israel would release the Palestinian prisoners, as well as an unspecified number of women and minors detained since the group’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel that sparked the conflict.

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

An Israeli official confirmed that the bodies of four hostages were expected to be turned over but provided no further details. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak with the media.

Israel and Hamas had already said on Tuesday that an agreement had been reached to return the bodies of the hostages, but no date had been announced.

Hamas has released hostages, and the bodies of four dead hostages, in large public ceremonies during which the Israelis were paraded and forced to wave to large crowds.

Israel, along with the Red Cross and U.N. officials, have said the ceremonies were humiliating to the hostages, and Israel last weekend delayed the scheduled prisoner release in protest.

There will be no public ceremony when the four bodies in the latest exchange are returned to Israel in the early hours of Thursday, according to a senior Hamas official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak with the media.

A fragile ceasefire in peril

The deadlock over the exchange had threatened to collapse the ceasefire when the current six-week first phase of the deal expires this weekend.

The latest agreement would complete both sides’ obligations of the first phase of the ceasefire — during which Hamas is returning 33 hostages, including eight bodies — in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Mourners gather around the convoy carrying the coffins of slain hostages Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, during their funeral procession in Rishon Lezion, Israel, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025. The mother and her two children were abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and their remains were returned from Gaza to Israel last week as part of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

It also could clear the way for an expected visit this week by U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to the region.

Witkoff has said that he wants the sides to move into negotiations on the second phase, during which all remaining hostages held by Hamas are to be released and an end to the war is to be negotiated. The Phase 2 talks were supposed to begin weeks ago, but never did.

The ceasefire, brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar, ended 15 months of heavy fighting that erupted after Hamas’ 2023 attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people. About 250 people were taken hostage.

Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials, displaced an estimated 90% of Gaza’s population and decimated the territory’s infrastructure and health system. The Hamas-run Health Ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilian and militant deaths, but it says that over half of the dead have been women and children.

Another infant in Gaza dies of hypothermia

With people are living in tent camps and damaged buildings in the Gaza Strip, health officials said another infant had died of hypothermia Wednesday, bringing the toll to seven over the past two weeks.

Dr. Munir al-Boursh, director general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said a baby less than two months old died due to the “severe cold wave” that has hit the Palestinian enclave.

Temperatures have been below 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) at night and the last few days have been particularly cold.

Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writer David Rising in Bangkok contributed to this report. Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Throughout her political ascent, Sylvia Garcia has been followed by the word “first.” 

In 1987, she became the first woman and first Hispanic to preside over Houston’s municipal courts. Fifteen years later, after a stint as city controller, she broke those same barriers upon her election to the Harris County Commissioners Court. And yet again, in 2018—following five years in the state Senate—she became one of the first two Latinas ever elected by Texans to the U.S. House.

It’s a path she had to pave herself.  A native of Palito Blanco (a speck of a South Texas farming community somewhat near Alice) and the eighth of 10 children of parents without high school educations, the 74-year-old grew up working the fields. Yet she made her way through both Texas Woman’s University and Texas Southern University’s law school, working as a social worker and legal aid attorney before becoming a Houston city judge.

Her South Texas roots have shown in both her advocacy for outdoor workers—she’s pushed legislation requiring rest breaks nationwide for construction laborers—and in her staunch defense of immigrants. She is a persistent champion of Dreamers, those migrants brought to America as children who’ve been neglected by our Congress for decades now, and she has also resisted the recent rightward shift on immigration among Democrats. 

Garcia criticized a late Biden administration move to end humanitarian parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, and she’s opposed anti-immigrant legislation that some Dems have supported in an apparent attempt to protect their own reelections or cut into Trump’s voter base. Over the same time, she’s built a reputation as a representative deeply in touch with her electorate, earning ringing endorsements from her hometown paper for her work on issues that don’t grab many headlines, such as stalled and slow-moving trains endangering schoolchildren in her district. 

A few days after Trump was sworn into office for the second time, the Texas Observer caught up with Garcia about border propaganda, the fate of the U.S. Constitution, and faith.

TO: The president just signed this raft of executive orders—shutting off asylum, the refugee program, ending birthright citizenship. These are going to be challenged in court, so things can change. But in the big picture, how do you see all of this affecting and changing the country? 

You know, he always said that he was going to be a dictator on day one. These executive orders are just the first step in his quest to be the dictator of the country. He is trying to act like a king, although he is not one, so he’s doing the next best thing. Most of the orders will not be held up in court when challenged because they’re all unconstitutional, and the best example of that, of course, is the bedrock constitutional principle that all people born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States—that’s in the Constitution. He could issue 45,000 executive orders saying otherwise, but it doesn’t matter. 

But it’s going to take a while before they regrettably work their way up through the courts, while the people who will be implementing his orders, because he does control the agencies, will do some damage. And it’s going to hurt no one more than the state of Texas. … So it’s a tragedy, and the losers are the American people because they’re worried about gas, groceries, their jobs. None of this is helping. In fact, it’s going to make it worse because if you cut off all immigration, you don’t have the workers that you need to maintain the industries that help put bread and butter on the table for people.

So, something like ending birthright citizenship, it’s unconstitutional. But he’s surely trying to send a message. I know you’re from South Texas, and there’s this history of people having their Americanness questioned, being excluded from what it can mean to be American. I wonder what you think about the symbolism and the message of the things he’s trying to do, even if they’re not legal.

For me, it’s just real hard to think of this [outside of] him trying to—remember what he said during the campaign, that he wanted to just tear up the Constitution. He can’t go in front of the cameras and get the Constitution and literally tear the piece of paper. But he’s going to puncture and take pieces. This is the first round of executive orders. I expect more. And he’ll take another little piece here, another piece here, so that ultimately, by the end of the four years, we would look at that paper and it’s going to look like our Mexican cut-up paper [papel picado]. Because he would have taken so much—and what he’s taken is the core of the American dream. 

For example, the bill that just got passed, the Laken Riley bill, that’s been talked about by the media and everybody as an immigration bill, but it’s a criminal justice bill. And they’ve punctured the due process in criminal cases. They’re basically saying that as long as [immigrants are] charged … not even that they’ve been convicted or that they’re on trial, [that they’ll be deported]. You know, look at the January 6 people that he pardoned, those people were not just charged but convicted and sentenced by judges, and he’s saying, no, that’s okay for them; we’re going to let them go. But he’s saying, if you happen to be an immigrant, as long as you’re charged, you’re going to get deported. And to me, it’s just his way of wanting to pick and choose who can be an American, who can get the full justice based on whether or not he likes them. 

Sylvia Garcia in February 2024 (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

You did a recent op-ed about mass deportations, and you talked about the economic costs, but you also wrote that those who will be affected “are our neighbors, our friends and our coworkers. They sit next to us at church and restaurants, and their children are friends with yours at school.” How have we gotten to where so many people, especially in Texas, have forgotten that?

I think that [Governor Greg] Abbott and Operation Lone Star for Texas has set the stage. They were in … Eagle Pass, they pretty much set a stage of taking one very small piece of a very long border, and having the troops there, having the buoys there, and having constant daily media attention. It was like a movie set because if you went just a mile down the river, none of it was there. It was a stage that was set, and the media filmed that as a clip and used those clips for every freaking story, so that’s all people see is that one clip of that one piece of the river. Well, then you’re gonna start believing it, if you keep hearing it on national news. So after a while, unless there’s someone else bringing up the other side of the story, and we worked real hard to get out those positive stories, to show Dreamers saving people’s lives working at hospitals, being nurses … during the pandemic, they were giving of themselves, the Dreamers that are teachers and firefighters that work to save people’s lives during storms, but they’re always just little clips. 

You’ve been in the U.S. House six years. Do you have an understanding now of what is wrong over there that somehow the DREAM Act, any version of the DREAM Act, hasn’t passed in more than 20 years? 

Well, that’s another long discussion for another day. I’m the sponsor of the Dream and Promise Act. This last session, I filed it, a bipartisan act, I had four Republicans who actually were original co-sponsors. … We’re going to file it again. And I’m not giving up. 

I’m not giving up because when you poll this country, America loves Dreamers. They support Dreamers. It’s just that it doesn’t work for [MAGA Republicans]—again they don’t look for solutions. They want to keep the problem and create more chaos. Chaos at the border. They focus on sound bites; I focus on solutions. I’ll keep working to get this done till they have to roll me off the floor. 

I know you’re Catholic. There’s right-wing Christian nationalism rising everywhere; how does your faith lead you to different conclusions on immigration, abortion, and LGBTQ+ issues? 

Listen, that one I have not figured out. I mean, especially so many people who are full of cruelty and hate, even against immigrant children, unaccompanied minors, how they balance being a Christian and having those views, I don’t understand. I just know what my faith tells me to do. And I’ll readily admit I’m a social justice Democrat because I truly believe that everyone needs to be treated with dignity and respect. And that’s, to me, the bottom line. You know, we’re all God’s children. I really believe that.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post ‘Till They Have to Roll Me Off the Floor’ appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new federal lawsuit in Maryland is challenging a Trump administration memo giving the nation’s schools and universities two weeks to eliminate “race-based” practices of any kind or risk losing their federal money.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the American Federation of Teachers union and the American Sociological Association, says the Education Department’s Feb. 14 memo violates the First and Fifth Amendments. Forcing schools to teach only the views supported by the federal government amounts to a violation of free speech, the organizations say, and the directive is so vague that schools don’t know what practices cross the line.

“This letter radically upends and re-writes otherwise well-established jurisprudence,” the lawsuit said. “No federal law prevents teaching about race and race-related topics, and the Supreme Court has not banned efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.”

The memo, formally known as a Dear Colleague Letter, orders schools and universities to stop any practice that treats people differently because of their race, giving a deadline of this Friday. As a justification, it cites a Supreme Court decision banning the use of race in college admissions, saying the ruling applies more broadly to all federally funded education.

President Donald Trump’s administration is aiming to end what the memo described as widespread discrimination in education, often against white and Asian American students.

At stake is a sweeping expansion of the Supreme Court ruling, which focused on college admissions policies that considered race as a factor when admitting students. In the Feb. 14 memo, the Education Department said it interprets the ruling to apply to admissions, hiring, financial aid, graduation ceremonies and “all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.”

The lawsuit says the Education Department is applying the Supreme Court decision too broadly and overstepping the agency’s authority. It takes issue with a line in the memo condemning teaching about “systemic and structural racism.”

“It is not clear how a school could teach a fulsome U.S. History course without teaching about slavery, the Missouri Compromise, the Emancipation Proclamation, the forced relocation of Native American tribes” and other lessons that might run afoul of the letter, the lawsuit said.

The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the memo, Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, had said schools’ and colleges diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have been “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline.

“But under any banner, discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal,” Trainor wrote in the memo.

The lawsuit argues the Dear Colleague Letter is so broad that it appears to forbid voluntary student groups based on race or background, including Black student unions or Irish-American heritage groups. The memo also appears to ban college admissions practices that weren’t outlawed in the Supreme Court decision, including recruiting efforts to attract students of all races, the lawsuit said.

It asks the court to stop the department from enforcing the memo and strike it down.

The American Federation of Teachers is one of the nation’s largest teachers unions. The sociological association is a group of about 9,000 college students, scholars and teachers. Both groups say their members teach lessons and supervise student organizations that could jeopardize their schools’ federal money under the memo.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.