AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Israeli leader Netanyahu faces growing pressure at home after Biden's Gaza proposal

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s prime minister faced growing pressure Saturday after U.S. President Joe Biden announced a proposed agreement to end the fighting in Gaza, with many Israelis urging Benjamin Netanyahu to embrace the deal but far-right allies threatening to collapse his government if he does.

Netanyahu called a permanent cease-fire in Gaza a “nonstarter” until long-standing conditions for ending the war are met, appearing to undermine the proposal that Biden described as an Israeli one.

A huge demonstration in Israel on Saturday night, led by families of hostages held by Hamas, urged the government to act now. Mediators the U.S., Egypt and Qatar pressed Israel and Hamas, saying the proposed deal “offers a road map for a permanent cease-fire and ending the crisis” and gives immediate relief to both hostages and Gaza residents.

But far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir said they would break up the government if it takes the deal. That could expose Netanyahu to new elections, scrutiny over security failures that led to the war and — if he loses the prime minister post — prosecution on longstanding corruption charges.

Netanyahu's statement said that “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel. Under the proposal, Israel will continue to insist these conditions are met before a permanent cease-fire is put in place."

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The Biden administration says Israel hasn't crossed a red line on Rafah. This could be why

WASHINGTON (AP) — Acknowledging only “an uptick” in Israeli military activity, the United States has gone to lengths to avoid any suggestion that Israeli forces have crossed a red line set by President Joe Biden in the deepening offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

In just the past week, Israeli strikes that hit displaced families sheltering in tents drew international condemnation and Israel confirmed that its forces were operating in the city's center. Still, Biden administration officials say Israel has avoided massive attacks on what had been thickly crowded neighborhoods of Rafah and kept strikes more limited and targeted than earlier in its nearly 8-month-old war with Hamas.

That refrain underscores an increasingly isolated U.S. position.

Critics charge that Biden, who declared early last month that he would not supply offensive weapons if Israel launched an all-out assault on Rafah, has come up against a domestic red line of his own and decided not to cross it: challenging ally Israel, which has support from Republicans and many American voters, in an election year.

Administration officials “keep moving the goalposts when it comes to the Rafah operation, saying, ‘You know, we won’t let the Israelis do X, Y or Z,’” said Colin Clarke, an international security expert and research director at the Soufan Center, a research center. "And then somebody says, 'Well, aren’t they doing that?’”

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Republicans join Trump's attacks on justice system and campaign of vengeance after guilty verdict

WASHINGTON (AP) — Embracing Donald Trump’s strategy of blaming the U.S. justice system after his historic guilty verdict, Republicans in Congress are fervently enlisting themselves in his campaign of vengeance and political retribution as the GOP runs to reclaim the White House.

Almost no Republican official has stood up to suggest Trump should not be the party's presidential candidate for the November election — in fact, some have sought to hasten his nomination. Few others dared to defend the legitimacy of the New York state court that heard the hush money case or the 12 jurors who unanimously rendered their verdict.

And those Republicans who expressed doubts about Trump's innocence or political viability, including his former hawkish national security adviser John Bolton or top-tier Senate candidate Larry Hogan of Maryland, were instantly bullied by the former president’s enforcers and told to “leave the party.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said she's voting for Trump “whether he is a free man or a prisoner of the Biden regime.”

She also posted the upside-down American flag that has come to symbolize the “Stop the Steal” movement Trump started with allies before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

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Black leaders call out Trump's criminal justice contradictions as he rails against guilty verdict

NEW YORK (AP) — As Donald Trump lambasted the guilty verdict of his hush money trial this week, he stood inside a Manhattan courthouse that was the site of one of the most notorious examples of injustice in recent New York history. And he had a part in that.

It's the same courthouse where five Black and Latino youths were wrongly convicted 34 years ago in the beating and rape of a white female jogger. The former president famously took out a newspaper ad in New York City in the aftermath of the 1989 attack calling for the execution of the accused in a case that roiled racial tensions locally and that many point to as evidence of a criminal justice system prejudiced against defendants of color.

But on Friday, a day after making history as the first U.S. president convicted of felony crimes in a court of law, Trump blasted that same criminal justice system as corrupt and rigged against him.

“This is a scam,” he said of the case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office led by Alvin Bragg, the first Black person in the role, and overseen by Judge Juan Merchan, who is of Colombian descent.

“This is a rigged trial. It shouldn’t have been in that venue. We shouldn’t have had that judge,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said Friday from Trump Tower in Manhattan.

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The ANC party that freed South Africa from apartheid loses its 30-year majority in landmark election

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The African National Congress party lost its majority in a historic election result Saturday that puts South Africa on a new political path for the first time since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule 30 years ago.

With more than 99% of votes counted, the once-dominant ANC had received just over 40% in Wednesday's parliamentary election, well short of the majority it had held since the all-race vote of 1994 that ended apartheid and brought it to power under Nelson Mandela.

The final results are still to be formally declared Sunday by the Independent Electoral Commission, but the ANC cannot pass 50% and an era of coalition government — also a first for South Africa — is looming.

The ANC remains the biggest party despite a staggering loss of support since the last election in 2019 as South Africa struggles with deep poverty and inequality. The country has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world and voters also blamed the ANC for shortages of clean water, electricity, housing and other services.

The ANC will now likely need to look for a coalition partner or partners to remain in the government and reelect President Cyril Ramaphosa for a second and final term. Parliament must meet to elect the South African president within 14 days after the election result is declared.

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100 years ago, US citizenship for Native Americans came without voting rights in swing states

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Voter participation advocate Theresa Pasqual traverses Acoma Pueblo with a stack of sample ballots in her car and applications for absentee ballots, handing them out at every opportunity ahead of New Mexico's Tuesday primary.

Residents of the tribal community's original mesa-top “sky city” that endured after the Spanish invasion in the late 1500s know firsthand the challenges voters have faced across Indian Country, where polling places are often hours away and restrictive voter laws and ID requirements only add to the barriers.

It's been a century now since an act of Congress granted citizenship to Native Americans, but advocates say that right bestowed in 1924 still hasn’t translated into equal access to the ballot. Inequities are especially pronounced in remote regions across the U.S., and some key Southwestern states with large Native American populations.

New Mexico is trying something new — a test run of sorts for many new and contested provisions that are part of the state's Native American Voting Rights Act that was passed last year. The measure promises tribal communities a greater voice in how and where they can vote, even opening the possibility that tribal offices can be designated as a street address for remote households that have none.

This should help at Acoma, where Pasqual said some residents still do not have standard addresses.

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From collapsed plea deal to trial: How Hunter Biden has come to face jurors on federal gun charges

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden's son was in federal court, prepared to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses. The culmination of a sprawling investigation, the deal between Hunter Biden and prosecutors was going to spare him a politically explosive trial in the middle of his father’s reelection campaign and likely prison time.

But it all fell apart.

Now, Hunter Biden is headed to trial on federal gun charges in a case brought by his father’s Justice Department at a time when America's political and legal worlds are colliding like never before. Dogged for years by investigations, scrutinized over his troubled personal life and vilified by Republicans, the younger Biden is now also confronting the threat of felony convictions and time behind bars.

The case opening Monday with jury selection in Delaware is not about Hunter Biden's business dealings, which have been the focus of the yearslong federal investigation and Republicans' fruitless impeachment inquiry into the Democratic president. It's about a gun Hunter Biden had for about 11 days — a .38-caliber Colt Cobra Special. Prosecutors say he bought it illegally in October 2018 because he falsely swore on a federal form that he was not a drug user. He never fired the gun, according to his lawyers, and it ended up dumped in a trash can.

The trial will lack details about his foreign business matters that Republicans have seized on to try to paint the Biden family as corrupt, but it is expected to feature deeply personal and embarrassing testimony about dark time in the younger Biden's life. And it probably will provide new political impetus for Donald Trump's allies, who are eager to distract from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's own legal problems after he was convicted of 34 felony counts in his hush money trial.

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Chad Daybell sentenced to death for killing wife and girlfriend’s 2 children in jury decision

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A jury in Idaho unanimously agreed Saturday that convicted killer Chad Daybell deserves the death penalty for the gruesome murders of his wife and his girlfriend’s two youngest children, ending a grim case that began in 2019 with a search for two missing children.

The 55-year-old Daybell, wearing a dress shirt and tie, sat with his hands in his lap at the defense table. He showed no emotion when learning he would face the death penalty for the murders of Tammy Daybell, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow.

When asked by the judge whether he wanted to make a statement, Daybell declined.

Jurors found him guilty Thursday and decided on the death sentence after deliberating for just over a day.

The mother of the children is Lori Vallow Daybell, whom Chad Daybell married shortly after his wife's death. Vallow Daybell was convicted last year in the three murders and is now awaiting trial in Arizona, charged with murder in connection with the shooting death of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. Charles Vallow was JJ’s father.

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Panama prepares to evacuate first island in face of rising sea levels

GARDI SUGDUB, Panama (AP) — On a tiny island off Panama’s Caribbean coast, about 300 families are packing their belongings in preparation for a dramatic change. Generations of Gunas who have grown up on Gardi Sugdub in a life dedicated to the sea and tourism will trade that next week for the mainland’s solid ground.

They go voluntarily — sort of.

The Gunas of Gardi Sugdub are the first of 63 communities along Panama’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts that government officials and scientists expect to be forced to relocate by rising sea levels in the coming decades.

On a recent day, the island’s Indigenous residents rowed or sputtered off with outboard motors to fish. Children, some in uniforms and others in the colorful local textiles called “molas,” chattered as they hustled through the warren of narrow dirt streets on their way to school.

“We’re a little sad, because we’re going to leave behind the homes we’ve known all our lives, the relationship with the sea, where we fish, where we bathe and where the tourists come, but the sea is sinking the island little by little,” said Nadín Morales, 24, who prepared to move with her mother, uncle and boyfriend.

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Boeing's first astronaut flight called off at the last minute in latest setback

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Last-minute computer trouble nixed Saturday’s launch attempt for Boeing’s first astronaut flight, the latest in a string of delays over the years.

Two NASA astronauts were strapped in the company’s Starliner capsule when the countdown automatically was halted at 3 minutes and 50 seconds by the computer system that controls the final minutes before liftoff.

With only a split second to take off, there was no time to work the latest problem and the launch was called off.

Technicians raced to the pad to help astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams out of the capsule atop the fully fueled Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Within an hour of the launch abort, the hatch was reopened.

The team can’t get to the computers to troubleshoot the problem until the rocket is drained of all its fuel, said Tory Bruno, CEO for the rocket maker, United Launch Alliance.

The Associated Press