Good morning.
Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected a US-backed 15-point peace plan for Gaza in a rare public break with Donald Trump. In a statement, Israel’s prime minister said he was confronting a “wave of rumours about Israeli weakness and Israeli withdrawals on all fronts” and rebuked US pressure to end wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran without Israel’s buy-in.
Trump’s Board of Peace in July proposed the 15-point plan, which mandated that Hamas disarm in exchange for providing a full Israeli military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and an eventual transition of power to an independent Palestinian national committee. Trump had said the agreement would be implemented in stages, but Netanyahu on Sunday said he wanted a full Hamas disarmament first in order to implement the deal.
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What other developments have happened in the region? Iran has issued tough new demands for reopening the strait of Hormuz, while the United Arab Emirates said one of its ships was targeted by an Iranian missile over the weekend. Tehran said the strait of Hormuz would not open until the US “corrects its behaviour”. Yemen’s Tehran-aligned Houthis have claimed responsibility for an attack on a refinery in Saudi Arabia on Sunday morning.
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What impact is the conflict having on seafarers in Hormuz? The US-Iran war has stranded up to 20,000 seafarers, mostly Indian and Filipino crews, with none knowing when the nightmare will end. Seventeen seafarers have died since hostilities began, the majority following Iranian strikes.
Top Democrats simulate election threats as Trump continues assault on voting
Chuck Schumer, the US Senate minority leader, and senators including Alex Padilla, Adam Schiff, Mark Warner, Elissa Slotkin and Raphael Warnock were among those in the room as a team of legal experts offered scenarios they might face in the coming months: an assault in real-time on the integrity of November’s election results from the right wing and their Republican opponents.
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What sort of exercises did they take part in? Justin Vail, who leads the DC office of the non-partisan advocacy group Protect Democracy, said: “These tabletop exercises are a standard planning tool for experts and stakeholders to prepare for potential scenarios. We’re not predicting exactly what would happen. But we do want to create a realistic context that can help us identify gaps, test our assumptions, and strengthen coordination, and then ultimately develop some recommendations to increase our preparedness.”
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How has Trump been working to undermine confidence in US elections? Voting rights advocates pointed toward Trump’s July primetime address as indicative of the president’s intentions – rhetorical attacks on the integrity of voting machines and elections offices, potentially escalating into more direct interference. Trump threatened the broadcast licenses of networks that refused to carry that address live, and in his speech, he again implored Congress to pass the Save America Act, which would ban mail-in ballots nationwide and impose new identification requirements on voters when they register and report to polls.
Abdul El-Sayed embraces Trump claim he represents ‘very different’ America
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Michigan, embraced Donald Trump’s suggestion that the two represent “VERY DIFFERENT” versions of the US, pledging to fight inequality while the president is “making billions of dollars off of you”.
“Yeah, he’s right,” El-Sayed told CNN when asked about a post by the US president that depicted an image of Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, beside a photo of El-Sayed, who is Muslim, and his wife, Sarah Jukaku, wearing a hijab.
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What did El-Sayed say? “One in which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other, but join in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you – or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family and know that that family is going to have the good things. Donald Trump’s vision is the one you’re living in right now. Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries?”
In other news …
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Donald Trump has appointed his staff secretary, Will Scharf, as the new White House counsel. Scharf, who helped the president win approval for his $400m ballroom, will replace David Warrington on 1 September.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has announced she is going to freeze her eggs and will be sharing the process online. The progressive New York congresswoman, 36, revealed her decision to undergo fertility treatment in a series of Instagram stories
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Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, has plummeted to its lowest water level since it was filled some 90 years ago, the latest sign of a deepening water crisis in the American west.
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Mark Zuckerberg faces questions over why his superyacht reportedly declined to help a stranded boat. The Meta CEO was not onboard at the time.
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Some of Taylor Swift’s songs have been removed from videos posted on social media by Donald Trump’s campaign and the White House, silencing efforts to mock the pop star.
Stat of the day: More than a million people evacuated in China as record rainfall dumped on Shanghai
A weather station in central Shanghai recorded over 12 inches of rain in 24 hours, its highest 24-hour rainfall in more than 150 years of records, as more than a million people were moved to safety across eastern China as powerful Typhoon Dolphin made landfall.
Building power: How clean air clubs are protecting Americans from wildfire smoke
Mutual aid groups that started giving out PPEs during Covid are now loaning air purifiers and distributing masks to fume-addled communities.
Don’t miss this: An Indigenous photographic history of America – in pictures
Spanning generations and multiple Indigenous societies and nations, Sarah Gilbert has picked highlights from In Light and Shadow, a new book tracing the visual importance of Indigenous photographers.
… or this: ‘This is asking a lot of the buttocks’
Flora Willson explains how she was swept up in his mad, miraculous marathon of a score as she enjoys – endures? – a 23-hour Richard Wagner marathon on a rock-hard seat in a heatwave at the Bayreuth festival in Germany. It sounds like … a challenge.
Climate check: World’s seas have hit hottest temperature on record for July, say scientists
The world’s seas were hotter last month than in any July on record. Sea surface temperatures hit record highs for July on the Atlantic coast and western Mediterranean. Globally, the average sea surface temperature outside the cold polar regions was the highest on record for the month, beating the previous July record set in 2023.
Last Thing: Perseid meteor shower set to dazzle northern hemisphere this week
The Perseid summer light show is back. Up to 100 meteors an hour may be visible under ideal conditions, according to Nasa. The American Meteor Society estimates 30 to 50 meteors an hour could be seen from rural regions in the US.
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