Special counsel team attorney Michael Dreeben has gotten to the heart of the government’s case during Supreme Court arguments over immunity for Donald Trump. He ticked Thursday through the acts Trump is charged with that he said were undertaken in his status as a presidential candidate and not a president. He says those include acts to elevate fake electors in battleground states. But Dreeben did note that Trump’s interactions with Justice Department officials in his administration were perhaps protected. The justices appear skeptical of Trump’s claims of absolute immunity. But the timing of their ruling could be as important as the outcome.

Palestinian hospital officials said Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip killed at least five people. More than half of the territory’s population of 2.3 million have sought refuge in Rafah. Israel has conducted near-daily raids there as it prepares for an offensive in the city. Four people were killed in Israeli tank shelling in central Gaza. Officials said that a ship traveling in the Gulf of Aden came under attack Thursday. It was the latest assault likely carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels over the Israel-Hamas war.

Ukraine is seeking to reverse the drain of potential soldiers from the country. It has announced that men of conscription age will no longer be able to renew their passports from outside the country. The move late Wednesday comes as Ukraine works to get much-needed new supplies of weapons and ammunition from a huge U.S. aid package to the front line. Millions of Ukrainians have fled the country since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Poland's defense minister said Warsaw was ready to help ensure “those who are subject to compulsory military service go to Ukraine,” though he did not specify how.

A new port is being built in the Gaza Strip ahead of a U.S. military-led operation to bring more desperately needed food and other aid into the besieged enclave as Israel’s war on Hamas grinds on. That's according to satellite images analyzed by The Associated Press on Thursday. The port sits just southwest of Gaza City, which once was the Gaza Strip’s most-populous area before the Israeli ground offensive rolled through, pushing over 1 million people south toward Rafah on the Egyptian border. Its construction comes as Israel has faced widespread international criticism over the slow trickle of aid into the area, where the United Nations says a quarter of population sits on the brink of starvation.