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      House approves $61bn aid for Ukraine – what we know so far, and what happens next

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      The US House of Representatives has approved $95bn in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies in a rare Saturday session as Democrats and Republicans banded together after months of hard-right resistance over renewed American support for repelling Russia’s invasion.With an overwhelming vote, the $61bn in aid for Ukraine passed in a matter of minutes, a strong showing as American lawmakers race to deliver a fresh round of US support to the war-torn ally. Many Democrats cheered on the House floor and waved Ukraine flags.The speaker, Mike Johnson, who helped marshall the package to passage, said after the vote: “We did our work here, and I think history will judge it well.”What does this new aid package include?The $95bn in total funding includes roughly $61bn for Ukraine with some of the funding going towards replenishing American munitions; $26bn for Israel; $8bn for US allies in the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan; and $9bn in humanitarian assistance for civilians in war zones, such as Haiti, Sudan and Gaza, though the package also includes a ban until March 2025 on direct US funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), an agency providing key assistance to Gaza.In the Ukraine bill, of the $60.7bn, a total of about $23bn would be used by the US to replenish its military stockpiles, opening the door to future US military transfers to Ukraine. Another $14bn would go to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, in which the Pentagon buys advanced new weapon systems for the Ukrainian military directly from US defence contractors.There is also more than $11bn to fund current US military operations in the region, enhancing the capabilities of the Ukrainian military and fostering intelligence collaboration between Kyiv and Washington; and about $8bn in non-military assistance, such as helping Ukraine’s government continue basic operations, including the payment of salaries and pensions.The package includes several Republican priorities that Democrats endorsed, or at least were willing to accept. Those include proposals that allow the US to seize frozen Russian central bank assets to rebuild Ukraine; impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, China and criminal organisations that traffic fentanyl; and legislation to require the China-based owner of the popular video app TikTok to sell its stake within a year or face a ban in the US.What happens next?Passage through the House has cleared away the biggest hurdle to Joe Biden’s funding request, first made in October as Ukraine’s military supplies began to run low.The whole package will now go to the Senate, which could pass it as soon as Tuesday. It is then passed to Biden, the US president, who has promised to sign it immediately.“I urge the Senate to quickly send this package to my desk so that I can sign it into law and we can quickly send weapons and equipment to Ukraine to meet their urgent battlefield needs,” the president said.Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, announced it would begin procedural votes on the package Tuesday, saying: “Our allies across the world have been waiting for this moment.”The Senate Republican minority leader, Mitch McConnell, as he prepared to overcome objections from his right flank next week, said: “The task before us is urgent. It is once again the Senate’s turn to make history.”What has been the reaction from Ukraine?Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, said he was “grateful” to both parties in the House and “personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track”.“Democracy and freedom will always have global significance and will never fail as long as America helps to protect it. The vital US aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations to become stronger … Thank you, America!”Sergii Marchenko, the Ukrainian finance minister, pointed to the legislation’s provision for budget support.“This is the extraordinary support we need to maintain financial stability and prevail,” he wrote on X.What has been the reaction from other countries?Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Sunday it will discuss with the US how to use funding for the island.The ministry said it “will coordinate the relevant budget uses with the United States through existing exchange mechanisms, and work hard to strengthen combat readiness capabilities to ensure national security and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”.The defence ministry also expressed thanks to the US House for passing the package on Saturday, saying it demonstrated the “rock solid” US support for Taiwan.Taiwan has since 2022 complained of delays in US weapon deliveries, such as Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, as manufacturers focused on supplying Ukraine.How has Russia responded?The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the approval of security aid to Ukraine would lead to more damage and deaths in the conflict there.The decision “will make the United States of America richer, further ruin Ukraine and result in the deaths of even more Ukrainians, the fault of the Kyiv regime”, Peskov said, according to Russian news agencies.Peskov also said that provisions in the legislation allowing the US to confiscate seized Russian assets and transfer them to Ukraine to fund reconstruction would tarnish the image of the US, and Russia would enact retaliatory measures.The former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the approval of US aid for Ukraine was expected and grounded in “Russophobia”.“We will, of course, be victorious regardless of the blood soaked $61 billion, which will mostly be swallowed up by their insatiable military industrial complex,” wrote Medvedev, who acts as deputy chairman of the security council.Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said the approval of aid in the legislation to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan would “deepen crises throughout the world”.“Military assistance to the Kyiv regime is direct sponsorship of terrorist activity,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram. “To Taiwan, it is interference in China’s internal affairs. To Israel, it is a road straight to escalation and an unprecedented rise in tension in the region.”Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, and launched its similarly unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022; while Ukraine, an independent and sovereign country, has acted in self-defence.How will the US get weapons swiftly to Ukraine?The Pentagon could get weapons moving to Ukraine within days once the military aid package clears the Senate and Biden signs it into law. It has a network of storage sites in the US and Europe that already hold the ammunition and air defence components that Kyiv desperately needs.According to a US military official, the US would be able to send certain munitions “almost immediately” to Ukraine. Among the weapons that could go very quickly are the 155 mm rounds and other artillery, along with some air defence munitions. “We would like very much to be able to rush the security assistance in the volumes we think they need to be able to be successful,” said Pentagon press secretary Maj Gen Pat Ryder.“We have a very robust logistics network that enables us to move material very quickly,” Ryder told reporters this past week. “We can move within days.”The Pentagon has had supplies ready to go for months but hasn’t moved them because it is out of money. It has already spent all of the funding Congress had previously provided to support Ukraine, sending more than $44bn worth of weapons, maintenance, training and spare parts since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Biden administration moves to restrict oil and gas leases on 13m acres in Alaska

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      The Biden administration said on Friday it will restrict new oil and gas leasing on 13m acres (5.3m hectares) of a federal petroleum reserve in Alaska to help protect wildlife such as caribou and polar bears as the Arctic continues to warm.The decision – part of an ongoing, years-long fight over whether and how to develop the vast oil resources in the state – finalizes protections first proposed last year as the Biden administration prepared to approve the controversial Willow oil project.The approval of Willow drew fury from environmentalists, who said the large oil project violated Biden’s pledge to combat the climate crisis. Friday’s decision also cements an earlier plan that called for closing nearly half the reserve to oil and gas leasing.The rules announced on Friday would place restrictions on future leasing and industrial development in areas designated as special for their wildlife, subsistence or other values and call for the Bureau of Land Management to evaluate regularly whether to designate new special areas or bolster protections in those areas. The agency cited as a rationale the rapidly changing conditions in the Arctic due to the climate crisis, including melting permafrost and changes in plant life and wildlife corridors.Environmentalists were pleased. “This huge, wild place will be able to remain wild,” Ellen Montgomery of Environment America Research & Policy Center said.Jeremy Lieb, an attorney with Earthjustice, said the administration had taken an important step to protect the climate with the latest decision. Earthjustice is involved in litigation currently before a federal appeals court that seeks to overturn the Willow project’s approval. A decision in that case is pending.Earlier this week the Biden administration also finalized a new rule for public land management that is meant to put conservation on more equal footing with oil drilling, grazing and other extractive industries on vast government-owned properties.A group of Republican lawmakers, led by Alaska’s junior senator, Republican Dan Sullivan, commented ahead of Friday’s announcements about drilling limitations in the national petroleum reserve in Alaska even before it was publicly announced. Sullivan called it an “illegal” attack on the state’s economic lifeblood, and predicted lawsuits.“It’s more than a one-two punch to Alaska, because when you take off access to our resources, when you say you cannot drill, you cannot produce, you cannot explore, you cannot move it – this is the energy insecurity that we’re talking about,” Alaska’s senior senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, said.The decision by the Department of the Interior does not change the terms of existing leases in the reserve or affect currently authorized operations, including the Willow project.The Biden administration also on Friday recommended the rejection of a state corporation’s application related to a proposed 210-mile (338km) road in the north-west part of the state to allow mining of critical mineral deposits, including copper, cobalt, zinc, silver and gold. There are no mining proposals or current mines in the area, however, and the proposed funding model for the Ambler Road project is speculative, the interior department said in a statement.Alaska’s political leaders have long accused the Biden administration of harming the state with decisions limiting the development of oil and gas, minerals and timber.“Joe Biden is fine with our adversaries producing energy and dominating the world’s critical minerals while shutting down our own in America, as long as the far-left radicals he feels are key to his re-election are satisfied,” Sullivan said on Thursday at a Capitol news conference with 10 other Republican senators.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden defended his decision regarding the petroleum reserve.Alaska’s “majestic and rugged lands and waters are among the most remarkable and healthy landscapes in the world”, are critical to Alaska Native communities and “demand our protection”, he said in a statement.Nagruk Harcharek, president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, a group whose members include leaders from across much of Alaska’s North Slope region, has been critical of the administration’s approach. The group’s board of directors previously passed a resolution opposing the administration’s plans for the reserve.The petroleum reserve – about 100 miles (161km) west of the Arctic national wildlife refuge – is home to caribou and polar bears and provides habitat for millions of migrating birds. It was set aside about a century ago as an emergency oil source for the US navy, but since the 1970s has been overseen by the interior department. There has been ongoing, longstanding debate over where development should occur.Most existing leases in the petroleum reserve are clustered in an area that is considered to have high development potential, according to the Bureau of Land Management, which falls under the interior department. The development potential in other parts of the reserve is lower, the agency said.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Joe Biden will cancel $7.4bn in student debt for 277,000 borrowers

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      The Biden administration will cancel $7.4bn in student debt for 277,000 borrowers, the White House said on Friday, the latest in a series of debt cancellations.Joe Biden announced plans on Monday to ease student debt that would benefit at least 23 million Americans, addressing a key issue for young voters whose support he needs as he seeks re-election in November.Those plans include canceling up to $20,000 of accrued and capitalized interest for borrowers, regardless of income, which Biden’s administration estimates would eliminate the entirety of that interest for 23 million borrowers.The latest round of debt relief affects 277,000 Americans enrolled in the Save Plan, other borrowers enrolled in Income-Driven Repayment plans, and borrowers receiving Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the White House said in a statement.It follows an announcement in March that $6bn in student loans would be canceled for 78,000 borrowers.The administration said on Friday it had approved $153bn in student debt relief for 4.3 million Americans.Biden, a Democrat, last year pledged to find other avenues for tackling debt relief after the US supreme court in June blocked his broader plan to cancel $430bn in student loan debt.The campaign of the former president Donald Trump, Biden’s Republican challenger in the White House race, in March criticized the student loan cancellation as a bailout that was done “without a single act of Congress”.The issue remains high on the agenda of younger voters, many of whom have concerns about Biden’s foreign policy on the war in Gaza and fault him for not achieving greater debt forgiveness.Republicans have called Biden’s student loan forgiveness approach an overreach of his authority and an unfair benefit to college-educated borrowers while other borrowers received no such relief.Roughly half of federal student loan debt is held by people with a graduate degree, according to the Brookings Institution thinktank. An August 2023 report by the Department of Education said graduate students received the highest share – 47% – of federal student loan disbursements from 2021-22, even though they accounted for only 21% of all borrowers. More

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      Companies are using inflation to price-gouge Americans – and making it worse | Robert Reich

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      We learned this week that the Consumer Price Index climbed 3.5% in March from a year earlier, up from 3.2% in February, and faster than most economists anticipated.This poses a conundrum for central bankers who have made it clear they want to see further evidence that inflation is cooling before they cut interest rates.The Fed’s high interest rates haven’t pushed America to the brink of a recession, fortunately, but they haven’t slowed inflation as much as policymakers had hoped.The question is whether Fed officials can cut interest rates at all this year.Joe Biden acknowledged that “prices are still too high for housing and groceries”, and said he was “calling on corporations, including grocery retailers, to use record profits to reduce prices”.What’s the president getting at?Corporate profits reached a record high in the fourth quarter of last year.The easiest explanation for record corporate profits at the same time prices remain elevated is that corporations have enough monopoly power to keep prices high.(Note that many corporations are also shrinking the size of the products you’re buying without lowering their prices – a variant of the same thing.)This is one of the biggest reasons the American public is not yet crediting Biden with a great economy. Most people still aren’t feeling it.In 2023, PepsiCo’s chief financial officer said that even though inflation was dropping, its prices would not be. Pepsi hiked its prices by double digits and announced plans to keep them high in 2024.If Pepsi were challenged by tougher competition, consumers would just buy something cheaper. But PepsiCo’s only major soda competitor is Coca-Cola, which – surprise, surprise – announced similar price hikes at about the same time as Pepsi and has also kept its prices high.The CEO of Coca-Cola claimed that the company had “earned the right” to push price hikes because its sodas are popular. Popular? The only thing that’s popular these days seems to be corporate price gouging.We’re seeing this pattern across much of the economy – especially with groceries. At the end of 2023, Americans were paying at least 30% more for beef, pork and poultry products than they were in 2020.Why? Near-monopoly power. Just four companies now control processing of 80% of beef, nearly 70% of pork, and almost 60% of poultry. So of course it’s easy for them to coordinate price increases.The problem goes well beyond the grocery store. In 75% of US industries, fewer companies now control more of their markets than they did 20 years ago.What should be done?First, antitrust laws must be enforced.Kudos to the Biden administration for enforcing antitrust more aggressively than any administration in the last 40 years. This administration has taken action against alleged price fixing in the meat industry – which has been a problem for decades.The Biden administration has sued to block the merger of Kroger and Albertsons – two giant grocery chains.Kroger operates 2,750 stores in 35 states and the District of Columbia. The company’s 19 brands include Ralphs, Smith’s, King Soopers, Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, Mariano’s, Pick ’n Save, and Harris Teeter. Albertsons operates 2,273 stores in 34 states. Its 15 brands include Safeway, Jewel-Osco, Vons, Acme and Shaw’s. Together, Kroger and Albertsons employ around 700,000 people.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Biden administration is suing Amazon for using its dominance to artificially jack up prices, in one of the biggest anti-monopoly lawsuits in a generation.The Biden administration is suing Apple for using its market power to control its apps and prevent other businesses from offering them.The administration successfully sued to block the merger of JetBlue and Spirit Airlines, which would have made consolidation in the airline industry even worse.But given how concentrated American industry has become, there’s still a long way to go. Biden should make his antitrust enforcement against corporate power a centerpiece of his campaign.Second, big corporations must not be allowed to use their power to gouge consumers.Senator Elizabeth Warren and others recently unveiled the latest version of their Price Gouging Prevention Act.“Giant corporations are using supply chain shocks as a cover to excessively raise prices and sometimes charging the same price but shrinking how much consumers actually get,” Warren charges.The bill would empower the Federal Trade Commission (which would also get $1bn in additional funding) and state attorneys general to stop companies from charging “grossly excessive” prices, regardless of where alleged price gouging took place in a supply chain.The legislation would also protect small businesses – those earning less than $100m – from litigation if they had to raise prices in good faith during crises, and require public companies to disclose more about their costs and pricing strategies.I don’t have any illusions that this bill will find its way into law soon. Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate, and not all Democrats support it. Meanwhile, Republicans and their business backers are dead set against it – and are eager to blame continued high prices on Biden, not on corporations.But this bill is just as necessary as aggressive antitrust enforcement – and an example of what could and will be done if Democrats sweep the 2024 elections.The record profits of large corporations are coming out of the paychecks of average Americans, who are still struggling to get by.Biden and the Democrats must say this loudly and clearly and tell the public what they are doing – and will do – to stop corporate monopolies and price gouging.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Xavier Becerra reportedly mulls cabinet exit to run for California governor

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      Xavier Becerra, the health and human services secretary, is reportedly considering leaving his post to run for California governor.Becerra has discussed in private conversations his desire to leave Washington in November and join an already crowded field of candidates to succeed Gavin Newsom as governor, Politico reported, citing anonymous sources.Becerra’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.If he enters the 2026 governor’s race, Becerra will be facing off against several fellow Democrats and colleagues, including the lieutenant governor, Eleni Kounalakis, former California senate president pro tempore Toni Atkins and state superintendent of public instruction, Tony Thurmond. The current California attorney general, Rob Bonta, is also expected to announce a run.Before taking his post as health and human services secretary, Becerra was California’s attorney general. He is the first Latino to hold both posts. Before that, he served in the US House of Representatives for 26 years. In the Biden administration, he had a role overseeing the Covid-19 response, including the vaccine rollout.Becerra’s critics have decried his lack of public health training and experience; he is an attorney by training and a longtime politician who helped pass the Affordable Care Act into law. But he has nonetheless carved out a role in defending and promoting the administration’s policies to lower drug prices and protect the right to abortion.In recent weeks, he has made visits across the country highlighting the Biden administration’s reproductive rights agenda before the 2024 election.“No woman today should fear [not having] access to the care that she needs. President Biden has made that clear,” Becerra told supporters in Florida last week. He characterized the Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s six-week abortion ban as “medical apartheid”.Becerra sidestepped questions about a gubernatorial run. “It’s a blessing to hear that someone is saying that I’m running for governor because I don’t know who they are,” he told Politico. “I am secretary of HHS and, by law, I have to be secretary of HHS and nothing else. So I’m gonna do my job as best I can. It’s a thrill – I think my mom would be happy to hear that someone thinks I can run for governor as well.” More

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      Mitt Romney says Alejandro Mayorkas’s actions do not merit impeachment

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      Alejandro Mayorkas is not guilty of a high crime or misdemeanour, the Republican senator Mitt Romney said, making clear he will not vote to remove the US homeland security secretary from office if his impeachment goes to a trial.“Secretary Mayorkas is following the position of his party and of the president who was elected,” Romney, from Utah and his party’s nominee for president in 2012, told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.“We have pointed out that President Biden is for open borders, as are the Democrats, and Mayorkas is simply following that policy. It’s the wrong policy, it has a huge damaging effect on the country – but it’s not a high crime or misdemeanour.”Republicans have zeroed in on undocumented migration and the southern border as campaign issues in an election year.House Republicans impeached Mayorkas in February but have not yet formally sent the articles of impeachment across the Capitol to the Senate. On Tuesday, John Kennedy, a Republican senator from Louisiana, told reporters that process would now be delayed until Monday.Under article two, section four of the US constitution, “the president, vice-president and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours”.Debate over what exactly constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanours” is a constant of US political life.Impeachment is meant to be rare: from the founding until Donald Trump only two presidents were impeached and both, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, were acquitted at trial.Donald Trump, however, was impeached twice: first for seeking to blackmail Ukraine for dirt on political rivals, second for inciting an insurrection, the attack on Congress of 6 January 2021.Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict both times. Now a lonely anti-Trump Republican voice, he will quit Congress this year.Democrats control the Senate, making conviction and removal of Mayorkas a near impossibility. But Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, must still decide what to do. Republicans are pressing for a trial. Schumer has indicated Democrats will do so, though they do not have to.Romney said: “Precedent is a matter of interpretation in this case. There have been impeachments that have been brought forward that did not go to trial in part because the people left office.”The last impeachment of a cabinet official concerned William Belknap, secretary of war to President Ulysses S Grant, in 1876. Belknap resigned, was tried anyway on charges of corruption, and acquitted.Romney did not say if he would vote to table the articles of impeachment, thereby avoiding a trial.“What does one do will depend on what the legal options are,” he said. “When to vote and how is uncertain at this stage. I believe a high crime or misdemeanour has not been alleged.” More

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      Biden announces new plan to cancel student loans for 30m borrowers

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      Joe Biden announced plans to cancel student loans for 30 million borrowers on Monday, the administration’s latest push on addressing student debt before the presidential election.The plan primarily targets borrowers who have accrued a high level of interest on their debt and those who have been in repayment for at least 20 years. Borrowers who face extreme economic hardship could also see some relief.The White House said that parts of the plan could begin to take effect in the early fall, at the earliest. In addition to a waiting period to receive public comment, the administration is expecting legal challenges from Republicans that could stall the plan from going into effect.Biden touted the new plan in a speech Monday afternoon in Madison, Wisconsin, where he said “too many people feel the strain and stress” of student loans.“Today, too many Americans, especially young people, are saddled with unsustainable debts in exchange for a college degree,” Biden said. “It’s a drag on our local economy.“Now, thanks to what we’re doing, that debt is no longer holding you back.The bulk of borrowers impacted by the plan will be those who owe more than their original balance because of accumulated interest. Borrowers who make under $120,000 a year, or married borrowers who make under $240,000, will automatically receive cancellation for the amount their balance has grown because of interest, up to $20,000. This cancellation will be automatic, and the administration estimates it will impact more than 25 million borrowers.The plan also targets borrowers who have held their debt for nearly 20 years. Borrowers who started repayment on their undergraduate debt on or before 1 July 2005 or their graduate school debt on or before 1 July 2000 will see the rest of their loans forgiven. The White House estimates about 2.5 million borrowers would be affected by this.Borrowers who are facing economic hardship and are at high risk of defaulting on their loans because of economic hardship in their daily lives, for example having medical debt or child care costs, may see their debt automatically cancelled under the plan.The administration is also trying to automatically enroll borrowers who are qualified for various forgiveness programs, including the Save plan and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness plan, but have not signed up for them. The White House estimates 2 million borrowers who could see their loans forgiven have not signed up for the programs.If the plan is executed, it would bring the total number of borrowers who have seen debt relief under Biden to 30 million.Though he had promised to cancel student debt during his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden has been fighting an uphill battle to try to address student debt after the supreme court last year blocked his big plan to cancel some debt for at least 43 million borrowers, including $20,000 in cancellation for some borrowers.After the supreme court’s decision, the White House’s student debt strategy has been to specifically target groups of borrowers for relief, especially those who have held debt for multiple decades and students who attended predatory for-profit schools.The White House also launched the Save (Saving on A Valuable Education) plan, a revamped income-driven repayment plan that allows borrowers to be on track for forgiveness if they pay a set portion of their income every month.Biden on Wednesday noted that “tens of millions of people’s debt was literally about to get cancelled”.“Then some of my Republican friends, elected officials and special interests sued us, and the supreme court blocked us. But that didn’t stop us,” he said. “I mean it sincerely, we continue to find alternatives past student debt repayments that are not challengeable.” More

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      Chef José Andrés says Israel engaging in ‘war against humanity itself’ in Gaza

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      The White House has pushed back on comments by World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés that Israel is engaged in “war against humanity itself” following the Israeli drone strike attack that killed seven of his aid workers on 1 April, but ruled out putting US monitors on the ground in Gaza.“There’s going to have to be some changes to the way Israeli defense forces are prosecuting these operations in Gaza to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” White House national security communications adviser John Kirby told ABC’s This Week said on Sunday.“There have to got to be changes in the deconfliction process, between aid workers on the ground and the IDF headquarters so that this kind of targeting can’t happen again,” Kirby said Sunday, but would not be drawn on claims that Israeli drone operators would have been able see the insignia three WCK vehicles carrying the workers that identified them as part of an aid convoy.In an earlier interview on This Week, Andrés had said that the IDF attack on his workers “is not anymore about the seven men and women of World Central Kitchen that perished on this unfortunate event. This is happening for way too long. It’s been six months of targeting anything that seems – moves,” Andrés said.“This doesn’t seem a war against terror,” Andrés added. “This doesn’t seem anymore a war about defending Israel. This really, at this point, seems it’s a war against humanity itself.”The IDF said Friday that there had been three strikes against the convoy, and confirmed that World Central Kitchen had coordinated their movements correctly with them in advance.It said that Israeli officials had failed to update commanders on the convoy and that they were“ convinced that they were targeting armed Hamas operatives and not WCK employees.” The strikes, the IDF added, had been “a grave mistake”.But Andrés refuted those findings, telling ABC News: “Every time something happens, we cannot just be bringing Hamas into the equation.”Asked if destroying three vehicles was following legitimate rules of engagement, Kirby said that the US knew from its own experience that “the intelligence you get, analyze and process may not always be accurate and you act on that intelligence…”But the White House adviser refused to say what consequences the US would impose if the Israel does not act on commitments to allow more humanitarian aid in and reduce violence against civilians in Gaza.“We have to judge it over time, and see if there’s a sustained and verifiable way so that confidence can be restored,” Kirby said. But against increasing calls for the US to suspend or reduce weapons transfers to Israel, Kirby echoed president Biden’s comments to Israeli prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu last week.“We’ve got to see changes in the way they are prosecuting these operations and we’re going to have to think about making changes in our own policy toward Gaza.” But, he said: “We have to remember that Israel has a right to defend itself and its important to remember they live in a tough neighborhood.”Kirby downplayed reports on Sunday that the IDF was withdrawing forces from southern Gaza, saying he would let the Israelis speak to their operations.“It’s hard to know exactly what that tells us,” he said. “This is really just about rest and refit for these troops that have been on the ground for four months – and not indicative, so far as we can tell, or some coming new operation.”“The word we’re getting is that they’re tired and need to be refit,” he added.But Kirby rejected calls for there to be US personnel on the ground in Gaza to monitor Israeli accountability to the rules of law are followed. “What we will do is make sure they have the tools and capabilities they need to defend themselves, and hold Israel accountable for the way they are conducting these operations.”Kirby said that Chef Andrés was not wrong when he said you can be a “good friend of Israel in helping them to defend themselves and at the same time holding them to an appropriate standard of accountability”.Meanwhile, one of the late aid workers’ father told Secretary of State Antony Blinken the killings by Israel in the Hamas-run territory must end, and that the United States needs to use its power and leverage over its closest Mideast ally to make that happen.John Flickinger’s 33-year-old son, Jacob Flickinger, a dual US and Canadian citizen, was among the seven humanitarian workers killed in the 1 April drone strikes.“If the United States threatened to suspend aid to Israel, maybe my son would be alive today,” John Flickinger told the Associated Press in describing his 30-minute conversation Saturday with Blinken. More