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Top U.S. & World Headlines — July 16, 2025
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00:00Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.
00:06In the Gaza Strip, at least 21 people were killed Wednesday morning at a food distribution site
00:12run by the militarized, shadowy, so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
00:18Survivors report guards fired tear gas at starving Palestinians lined up to receive aid parcels,
00:26triggering a panic that saw at least 15 people die as a result of the stampede.
00:32According to the United Nations, since May, at least 875 Palestinians have been killed,
00:38another 5,600 wounded by Israeli army and U.S. contractor gunfire while trying to gather food.
00:46Most of them shot close to GHF sites.
00:49Meanwhile, Palestinian doctors report stocks of specialized formula for premature infants
00:55have run dry due to Israel's continuing blockade.
01:00Esra Abu Halib is the mother of a five-month-old struggling to survive at Nasser Hospital,
01:05where she says she's witnessed three other children die of malnutrition.
01:11Once the milk carton is finished, you need the same type of milk that she took before.
01:16Where do we get it from?
01:18The crossings are closed.
01:20The whole world is closed in our faces.
01:22For how long must we remain like this?
01:24I mean, do we wait until the baby dies?
01:28U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has called on Israeli authorities to launch a probe
01:34into the killing of 20-year-old U.S. citizen Sefola Musalet,
01:39who was beaten to death Friday by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
01:44In a statement, Ambassador Huckabee wrote, quote,
01:47there must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act, unquote.
01:53Huckabee, however, did not demand a U.S. investigation into Sef's murder, as his family is requesting.
01:59Meanwhile, Israeli settlers backed by Israeli soldiers are continuing to attack Palestinian
02:04communities. On Tuesday, dozens of Israeli settlers set fire to a vehicle yard in the village of Burqa,
02:11east of Ramallah, destroying dozens of cars.
02:14Auto parts dealer Mohamed Asaliyah says it was the sixth time he's been attacked by settlers.
02:25Who said we're not afraid?
02:26The settlers scare us, not only in this town, in all villages, but specifically here.
02:31They come and burn cars, land, and they cut down olive trees.
02:34They burn.
02:35We do not have weapons to resist them.
02:40The army comes and they stand with the settlers.
02:42They don't come to protect us, but to stand with them.
02:45This happens over and over.
02:47Israel's military says it's bombed the Syrian army headquarters in Damascus.
02:52Syrian media reported two civilians were injured in the attack,
02:55which came even as Israel separately stepped up attacks on the Druze-majority city of Soweda in southern Syria.
03:01Israel's attacks came as fighting resumed between Syrian government forces and Druze-armed groups after a ceasefire agreement collapsed.
03:08Delegates from 30 countries gathered in Bogota, Colombia, on Tuesday, for an emergency conference on the situation in Gaza.
03:16The conference is led by South Africa and Colombia, two members of The Hague Group,
03:21a collection, a coalition of nations that pledged to cut military sales to Israel
03:27and to comply with an international criminal court arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
03:34On Tuesday, Francesca Abanesi, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory,
03:40told the conference all nations are obliged to take action against Israel's occupation and the slaughter of Palestinians.
03:46Each state must immediately review and suspend all ties with the state of Israel.
03:53Military, strategic, political, diplomatic, economic relations, both imports and exports.
03:59And to make sure that their private sectors, insurers, banks, pension funds, universities,
04:05and other goods and service providers in the supply chain do the same.
04:09To see our recent interview with Francesca Abanesi, visit our website, democracynow.org.
04:16The U.S. Senate will take up President Trump's request to claw back more than $9 billion in
04:22congressionally approved spending after Vice President J.D. Vance broke a 50-50 tie Tuesday to open debate on a rescission bill.
04:30The legislation is aimed at codifying cuts made by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE,
04:38to foreign aid, including life-saving global health programs, emergency food and shelter assistance, peacekeeping, and economic development.
04:46The bill would also eliminate all $1.1 billion allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the next two years,
04:56zeroing out federal funding for PBS, NPR, and community TV and radio stations.
05:02PBS President Paula Kerger called the bill an existential threat for local stations.
05:08Democrats condemned the move as a power grab by President Trump.
05:12This is Michigan Democratic Senator Gary Peters.
05:16Funding laws are still laws, and Congress passed these laws with bipartisan support to direct resources to these programs.
05:25No president gets unilateral say on how any law is implemented, and no president gets to overrule Congress's bipartisan laws.
05:36The Pentagon said Tuesday half the 4,000 National Guard troops deployed to suppress protests in response to mass immigration raids in California will be removed from Los Angeles.
05:48This comes six weeks after the Trump administration deployed the California National Guard to Los Angeles,
05:54the first time in decades a president has deployed the National Guard without a governor's request.
06:01Some 700 active-duty Marines will remain deployed in Los Angeles.
06:07We'll speak with the head of the United Farm Workers later in the broadcast.
06:11In Houston, Texas, a 22-year-old Palestinian man who was detained by federal agents without charge at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport for nine days was released Monday following mounting pressure from advocates.
06:25Mahanid J.M. Alshroof had obtained a U.S. visa before traveling to Texas from the occupied West Bank to reunite with his father, who's a U.S. citizen, and his siblings.
06:36Advocates said he'd completed a years-long immigration process and successfully passed rigorous background checks by both U.S. and Israeli authorities.
06:46Alshroof was reportedly held in a waiting room, denied access to legal counsel, a change of clothes, proper food, or basic hygiene.
06:53Customs and border protection agents are typically prohibited from detaining people for longer than 72 hours.
06:59In Washington state, longtime immigrant farm worker and organizer Alfredo Leila Juarez Zafferino has agreed to voluntarily leave the United States after being detained in an ICE jail for four months.
07:13A crowd of his supporters and family gathered outside Tacoma's Northwest ICE Processing Center Monday as 25-year-old Juarez appeared for an immigration hearing inside the jail.
07:26A judge has given him until August to return to his birth country of Mexico.
07:30For now, he's still detained.
07:32Juarez was taken by ICE agents in March after they stopped him on a rural road as he drove his girlfriend to her job on a tulip bulb farm.
07:41When he asked for a warrant, the agents reportedly broke his car window and handcuffed him.
07:47Supporters denounced his arrest as a kidnapping and said he was targeted over his labor activism.
07:52Juarez has lived in the United States for over a decade since he was a young child.
07:56To see our interview with Alfredo Leila Juarez Zafferino when he was 16 years old and our coverage of his case, go to democracynow.org.
08:05In more news from Washington state, former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart and at least eight others have been indicted on federal charges related to protests in June against Trump's immigration raids.
08:18Stuckart and over 30 others were arrested last month as a crowd gathered outside the Spokane ICE office to oppose the detention of a 21-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker whom Stuckart was sponsoring.
08:31On Capitol Hill, President Trump's pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Tuesday applauded Republican efforts to defund the United Nations, saying he'd go even further if confirmed by the Senate.
08:45Mike Waltz testified that if confirmed, he would work to dismantle the U.N. agencies for Palestinian refugees.
08:51He also backed Republican efforts to cancel about $1 billion in federal funding to the U.N. as part of the Senate's rescission package.
09:00Waltz served as U.S. National Security Advisor from January to May before his removal over the Signalgate scandal,
09:07in which Waltz added the editor of The Atlantic magazine to a group chat about U.S. war plans against Yemen.
09:15He was grilled over the scandal by Delaware Democratic Senator Chris Coons.
09:19I mean, this was demonstrably sensitive information, and the question I asked was, were you investigated for this expansion of the signal group to include a journalist?
09:33The White House conducted an investigation, and my understanding is the Department of Defense is still conducting an investigation.
09:41Was any disciplinary action taken?
09:43From the White House investigation, Senator?
09:47Yes.
09:48No, the use of signal was not only authorized, it's still authorized and highly recommended.
09:55Republicans on the House Rules Committee have blocked a Democratic-led effort to force the Justice Department to release documents related to its investigation into the dead, convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, whom Donald Trump once called a terrific guy.
10:11This comes after President Trump published a lengthy diatribe defending his attorney general, Pam Bondi's handling of the Epstein files and calling interest in the Epstein case a waste of time.
10:23Trump's post sparked an unprecedented backlash among his MAGA supporters.
10:29For the first time ever, Trump was ratioed on his own social media platform, meaning he drew more replies than shares, the vast majority of them negative.
10:39On Tuesday, Attorney General Bondi refused to answer reporters' questions about her claim last February, which she has later reversed, that Epstein's client list was sitting on her desk to review.
10:52I appreciate your question, but this today is about fentanyl overdoses throughout our country and people who have lost loved ones to fentanyl.
11:01That's the message that we're here to send today.
11:03Nothing about Epstein.
11:05I'm not going to talk about Epstein.
11:06Go ahead.
11:07Meanwhile, a Wired magazine investigation has raised new questions about the Justice Department's handling of prison surveillance video from the New York City federal jail, where Jeffrey Epstein died six years ago and what later was ruled a suicide.
11:21According to Wired, metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from what the Trump administration described as full raw video from the only functioning camera near Jeffrey Epstein's prison cell the night before he was found dead.
11:37And in Arizona, Adelita Grijalva won the Democratic nomination by a landslide Tuesday in a closely watched special election primary for the congressional seat left vacant when her father, Raul Grijalva, died in March.
11:51Four other candidates were vying for the nomination, including 25-year-old activist Deja Fox, who has advocated for generational change in politics and had criticized Grijalva's legacy last name and Daniel Hernandez, who survived a mass shooting in Tucson in 2011, where former Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords was shot.
12:12He was an intern at Giffords' office at the time.
12:15Adelita Grijalva was born in Tucson, has held multiple positions in public office and garnered a list of heavyweight endorsements, including Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders.
12:27If elected, Grijalva would become the first Latina to represent Arizona in Congress.
12:33Grijalva will face Republican nominee Daniel Gutierrez in the general special election in September.
12:39And those are some of the headlines.
12:41This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
12:45I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now!'s Juan Gonzalez in Chicago.
12:50Hi, Juan.
12:52Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.
12:56Thanks for watching Democracy Now! on YouTube.
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13:16We'll see you next time.