The team under Special Counsel Jack Smith is up before the Supreme Court in Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Smith team lawyer Michael Dreeben said Thursday that the court has never before recognized absolute immunity for a former president. Justice Clarence Thomas said that other presidential acts in the past would have seemed ripe for prosecution and yet none occurred. Dreeben responded that the core distinction is that those other acts were not crimes. Dreeben says the Smith team is not endorsing a system in which presidents would be exposed to prosecution for mistakes or bad judgments.

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.

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.

A U.S. Army reservist who provided the clearest warning ahead of Maine’s deadliest mass shooting will answer questions from the commission that's investigating the tragedy. Six weeks before Robert Card killed 18 people at a bar and bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, his best friend and fellow reservist Sean Hodgson texted a warning to supervisors saying he feared Card was about to conduct a mass shooting. The commission is hearing Thursday from Hodgson, other Army personnel and the state’s director of victim witnesses services. The failure of authorities to remove guns from Card in the weeks before the shooting has become the focus of a monthslong investigation.

The first six of 12 Rafale multipurpose fighter jets purchased by Croatia from France have landed at an air force base near Zagreb  with a welcome ceremony attended by top officials. The deal, signed in 2021 with French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation, was said to be worth over a billion euros. In addition to the aircraft, the contract covers weapon systems, spare parts, logistics and training. France is to deliver the remaining six jets in 2025. The acquisition will enable the air force of Croatia, a NATO member, to replace its outdated Soviet-designed Mikoyan MiG-21 fighters.