Netanyahu hopes to announce the release of all hostages from Gaza 'in the coming days'
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hopes to announce the release of all hostages from Gaza “in the coming days,” as Israel and Hamas prepare for indirect talks in Egypt on Monday on a new U.S. plan to end the war.
In a brief statement late Saturday, Netanyahu said he has sent a delegation to Egypt “to finalize technical details,” adding that “our goal is to contain these negotiations to a time frame of a few days.”
But Netanyahu signaled there would not be a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, something Hamas has long demanded. He said Israel's military will continue to hold territories it controls in Gaza, and that Hamas will be disarmed in the plan's second phase, diplomatically “or through a military path by us.”
The prime minister spoke after Hamas said it has accepted some elements of the U.S. plan. President Donald Trump welcomed the militant group's statement but on Saturday warned that “Hamas must move quickly, or else all bets will be off.”
Trump later said the ceasefire would begin immediately once Hamas confirms the “initial withdrawal line” in Gaza. A map with his social media post appeared to show much of Gaza still open to Israeli forces.
What to know after Hamas welcomes US peace plan for Gaza
CAIRO (AP) — Both Israel and now Hamas have signaled support for the new U.S. plan to end the war in Gaza and release all remaining hostages there. President Donald Trump says he thinks Hamas is ready for a “lasting peace” and has told Israel to stop bombing the territory, but he warns that “all bets will be off” if Hamas doesn't move quickly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he hopes to announce the release of all hostages “in the coming days.”
Many uncertainties remain around the plan ahead of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas in Egypt on Monday. Already, Netanyahu says there will not be a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Tuesday marks two years since the war began.
Here’s what we know.
All hostilities would immediately end. Within 72 hours, Hamas would release all hostages it holds, living or dead. The militants still have 48 hostages. Israel believes 20 of them are alive.
Israel would free 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in its prisons and 1,700 people detained from Gaza since the war began, including all women and children. Israel also would hand over the bodies of 15 Palestinians for each body of a hostage handed over.
Trump plans to deploy National Guard in Illinois, governor says
The Trump administration plans to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said Saturday.
Pritzker said the guard received word from the Pentagon in the morning that the troops would be called up. He did not specify when or where they would be deployed, but President Donald Trump has long threatened to send troops to Chicago.
“This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will,” Pritzker said in a statement. “It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.”
A spokesperson for the governor's office said she could not provide additional details. The White House and the Pentagon did not respond to questions about Pritzker's statement.
The escalation of federal law enforcement in Illinois follows similar deployments in other parts of the country. Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles over the summer and as part of his law enforcement takeover in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile Tennessee National Guard troops are expected to help Memphis police.
The GOP says it's winning the shutdown. Some fear Trump's cuts may change that
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has embraced the federal shutdown as an “unprecedented opportunity” to slash spending and shrink government, but new rounds of targeted spending cuts from the White House aimed at Democratic states and priorities are raising concerns among Republicans that they may be at risk of ceding their political advantage.
Republicans in Congress believe they hold the upper hand in four-day-old stalemate, as Democrats voted against measures to keep the government open because they want to attach additional policy measures. But the sweeping cuts to home-state projects — and the threat of mass federal firings — have some in the GOP worried the White House may be going too far and potentially give Democrats a way out of their tight spot.
“This is certainly the most moral high ground Republicans have had in a moment like this that I can recall, and I just don’t like squandering that political capital when you have that kind of high ground,” GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told reporters this week.
As hopes faded Friday for a quick end to the shutdown — with Democrats holding firm in a key Senate vote — the White House signaled more layoffs and agency cuts could follow. Trump shared a video Thursday night portraying budget director Russ Vought as the grim reaper. The cuts are raising fresh questions about whether voters want a government that uses discretionary power to punish political opponents — and whether Republicans may face electoral consequences for the White House’s actions.
“There’s the political ramifications that could cause backlash,” Cramer said in another interview. “It makes everything going forward more difficult for us.”
International journalists visit Gaza City under the supervision of Israel's army
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli army vehicle rumbles through the empty streets of a shattered neighborhood in Gaza City, and with help from a video camera, a soldier spots people standing inside a blasted out nearby building. The armored personal carrier revs its engine and moves on.
A little further along, the vehicle stops near an empty hospital formerly overseen by the Jordanian government. A senior official speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military rules says soldiers recently found a tunnel used by Hamas adjacent to the hospital.
On Friday, the Israeli military escorted international journalists through Gaza City, the focus of a new offensive to root out Hamas, offering a rare – and limited -- glimpse into the territory devastated by nearly two years of war and where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed.
In August, international experts said the city was in a famine and warned that Israel's offensive and mass displacement of people would exacerbate the humanitarian crisis.
The soldiers escorting the journalists through Gaza City portrayed their military operations as deliberate, to minimize harm to civilians – yet justified, to eliminate a militant group that has been severely weakened but remains dug in, capable of carrying out attacks and still in possession of 48 hostages.
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NFL analyst Mark Sanchez is hospitalized in stable condition after a stabbing in Indianapolis
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Former NFL quarterback and current Fox Sports analyst Mark Sanchez was apparently stabbed in an overnight altercation in downtown Indianapolis and was hospitalized on Saturday.
Sanchez, who was in Indianapolis to call Sunday’s Raiders-Colts game, was in stable condition, Fox Sports said on social media.
Indianapolis police released a statement that didn't identify Sanchez but said they were investigating a confrontation that occurred around 12:30 a.m. Saturday between two men, one of whom was hospitalized with stab wounds.
The other man received treatment for lacerations, police said. Detectives had reviewed video footage of the confrontation, which police said occurred in the popular downtown nightlife Wholesale District next to the Indiana statehouse.
Police said the case would be given to the Marion County prosecutor's office to decide on charges. That office didn't immediately respond to an inquiry from The Associated Press.
The Oval Office meeting didn't stop a shutdown, but the Trump 2028 hats and a sombrero set a tone
WASHINGTON (AP) — Halfway through Donald Trump’s inaugural White House meeting with congressional leadership days before a government shutdown, the red hats appeared on the president’s desk.
“Trump 2028," they said, situated across from the seated lawmakers, Vice President JD Vance and several untouched Diet Cokes.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries leaned over to Vance, himself a potential 2028 contender, and quipped, “Hey, bro, you got a problem with this?”
The room chuckled in response.
“It was the random-most thing in the world, because we’re sitting there, we’re having a serious conversation, and all of a sudden these two red hats appear,” Jeffries recalled later at the Capitol.
New Supreme Court term confronts justices with Trump's aggressive assertion of presidential power
WASHINGTON (AP) — A monumental Supreme Court term begins Monday with major tests of presidential power on the agenda along with pivotal cases on voting and the rights of LGBTQ people.
The court's conservative majority has so far been receptive, at least in preliminary rulings, to many of President Donald Trump's aggressive assertions of authority. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson invoked the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip after one such decision allowing the cut of $783 million in research funding.
"This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist,” Jackson wrote. “Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this administration always wins.”
The conservative justices could be more skeptical when they conduct an in-depth examination of some Trump policies, including the president's imposition of tariffs and his desired restrictions on birthright citizenship.
If the same conservative-liberal split that has marked so many of Trump's emergency appeals endures, "we are in for one of the most polarizing terms yet,” said Irv Gornstein, executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University’s law school.
Journalists work in dire conditions to tell Gaza's story, knowing that could make them targets
BEIRUT (AP) — Minutes after journalists gathered outside a Gaza hospital to survey the damage of an Israeli strike, Ibrahim Qannan pointed his camera up at the battered building as the others climbed its external stairs. Then Qannan watched in horror — while broadcasting live — as a second strike killed the friends and colleagues he knew so well.
“We live side by side with death,” Qannan, a correspondent for the Cairo-based Al-Ghad TV said in an interview.
“I still cannot believe that five of our colleagues were struck in front of me on camera and I try to hold up and look strong to carry the message. May no one feel such feelings. They are painful feelings.”
The deaths of the five journalists in the Aug. 25 strikes on Nasser Hospital add to a toll of nearly 200 news workers killed by Israeli forces while working to bring Gaza’s story to the world. Those killed in the attack, which left a total of 22 people dead, included Mariam Dagga, 33, a visual journalist who freelanced for The Associated Press and other outlets.
Like the vast majority of Gaza’s population, most of its journalists have seen their homes destroyed or damaged during the war and have been repeatedly displaced after evacuation orders by Israel’s military. Many have mourned the deaths of family members.
Legal setbacks mount for Trump’s birthright order before likely Supreme Court review
BOSTON (AP) — Over a span of a month this summer, four separate federal courts rejected President Donald Trump’s executive order ending automatic citizenship for the children of people in the country illegally or temporarily.
On Friday, one more court weighed in, and the result was no different.
A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said in a unanimous decision that the Republican president cannot enforce the order. The court joined the four others that earlier had issued or upheld decisions blocking it nationwide.
The U.S. Supreme Court is almost certain to have the final word on birthright citizenship. The Trump administration has already asked the high court to take up the issue.
Federal judges have made clear how much his order conflicts with Supreme Court precedent, to say nothing of the Constitution. The Supreme Court is not bound by what those lower court judges have said or even its own past rulings. Nonetheless, those losses could mean an uphill fight for his administration even in front of the justices, who have so far sided with the president on many legal challenges to his effort to remake the government.
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