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The deadline for U.S. travelers to get a Real ID is fast approaching — and those who don’t have one may not be able to board flights within the U.S.

The Real ID card is an optional, upgraded driver’s license or state identification card that is issued by a state driver’s licensing agency and marked with a star.

The good news: There are other forms of identification U.S. travelers can use — such as a valid U.S. passport, passport card, permanent resident card, or certain Department of Homeland Security trusted traveler cards — if they can’t get a Real ID by the deadline, May 7.

“There are workarounds people can use,” said John Breyault, a travel expert at the National Consumers League, a consumer advocacy group. “Most people already have the ability to travel, whether they have a Real ID or not.”

About 19% of travelers don’t yet have a Real ID-compliant type of identification, according to Transportation Security Administration data as of Thursday.

Passengers who arrive at the airport without an acceptable form of ID “can expect to face delays, additional screening and the possibility of not being permitted into the security checkpoint,” according to the TSA.

Even passengers who have a Real ID card or other acceptable ID should aim to be at the airport at least 1½ hours ahead of their flight, due to likely delays in airport security lines as enforcement gets underway, Breyault said.

What is the Real ID law?

Congress passed the Real ID Act in 2005. The law set minimum security standards for state-issued driver’s licenses and ID cards.

The federal government will require Americans who access federal facilities to have a Real ID starting May 7. That includes travelers who go through TSA airport security checkpoints and board commercial airplanes, even for domestic flights.

The rule applies to all airline passengers 18 years and older, including TSA PreCheck members.

How to get around the Real ID rule

Travelers can skirt the requirement to present a Real ID card if they have other types of approved identification.

Experts said the most common among them are: a passport or passport card; a Global Entry card; an enhanced driver’s license issued by Washington state, Michigan, Minnesota, New York or Vermont; or a permanent resident card, also known as a green card.

Here’s a list of all acceptable alternatives, according to the TSA:

State-issued enhanced driver’s license

U.S. passport

U.S. passport card

Department of Homeland Security-issued trusted traveler cards (Global Entry, NEXUS, SENTRI, FAST)

U.S. Department of Defense ID, including IDs issued to dependents

Permanent resident card

Border crossing card

An acceptable photo ID issued by a federally recognized Tribal Nation/Indian Tribe, including Enhanced Tribal Cards (ETCs).

HSPD-12 PIV card

Foreign government-issued passport

Canadian provincial driver’s license or Indian and Northern Affairs Canada card

Transportation worker identification credential

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Employment Authorization Card (I-766)

U.S. Merchant Mariner Credential

Veteran Health Identification Card (VHIC)

‘Get that Real ID’

It may be somewhat riskier to travel with an alternative document such as a passport for domestic flights, said Sally French, a travel expert at NerdWallet.

“A passport is much more complicated to replace than a driver’s license, and it’s more expensive,” French said. “Get that Real ID.”

A traditional passport book costs $130 to renew. Real ID fees vary by state but are generally less costly, experts said. They typically aren’t more expensive than a standard driver’s license.

For example, in California it costs $45 to renew a standard driver’s license or $39 to renew a regular ID card; in Virginia, there’s a $10 one-time Real ID fee, plus a driver’s license fee, usually $32.

Desperate travelers can also gamble by showing up at the airport without a Real ID-compliant form of identification on May 7 and beyond, and hope airport agents show some mercy, French said.

It’s a “much longer screening” process and isn’t guaranteed, French said. It’s a “Hail Mary,” she said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Sunday responded to criticism from a fellow Democratic caucus member for using the term “oligarchy” to describe allies of the Trump administration, saying the “American people are not quite as dumb” as to not understand the term.

Sanders’ remarks come days after Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., a first-term senator who won a competitive Senate race in Michigan the same year that President Donald Trump won the presidential election there, told Politico that she thinks her party should stop using the term “oligarchy.”

Slotkin added that the term doesn’t resonate beyond coastal institutions.

While she didn’t mention Sanders in her remarks, her comment comes as Sanders and fellow progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have been traveling across the country and speaking before crowds of tens of thousands as part of their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.

On Sunday, Sanders referenced those crowds, telling NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” “Well, Jesus, we had 36,000 people out in Los Angeles, 34,000 people in Colorado. We had 30,000 people in Folsom, California, which is kind of a rural area.”

“I think the American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are,” Sanders added.

A spokesperson for Slotkin declined to comment on Sanders’ remarks.

The Vermont senator went on to explain the core message of the “Fighting Oligarchy,” rallies, telling moderator Kristen Welker, “When the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%, when big-money interests are able to control both political parties, [Americans] are living in an oligarchy.”

The spat between Slotkin and Sanders comes as Democrats are still trying to assess how to move forward in a second Trump administration, months after they faced a devastating loss in the presidential election and in multiple Senate races.

Many Democrats in recent weeks have agreed that the party must focus on the future and what their post-Trump vision for America could look like but can’t agree on what that vision should look like.

It’s a point that Sanders made on Sunday, telling Welker, “We’re on the same page, but what Democrats lack right now is a vision for the future.”

Sanders has long been the standard bearer for progressive Democrats, ever since he launched his long-shot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

But Slotkin is a new rising star. In 2018, she flipped a competitive Michigan House seat in favor of the Democrats. And months after defending an open Senate seat in her home state for the Democratic Party, she was selected by party leaders to give the official Democratic response to Trump’s joint address to Congress earlier this year.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Hospitals in the Gaza Strip received the remains of 51 Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes in the past 24 hours, the local Health Ministry said Sunday, bringing the Palestinian death toll from the 18-month-old Israel-Hamas war to 52,243.

Israel ended its ceasefire with Hamas by launching a surprise bombardment on March 18, and has been carrying out daily waves of strikes since then. Ground forces have expanded a buffer zone and encircled the southern city of Rafah, and now control around 50% of the territory.

Israel has also sealed off the territory’s 2 million Palestinians from all imports, including food and medicine, for nearly 60 days. Aid groups say supplies will soon run out and that thousands of children are malnourished.

The overall death toll includes nearly 700 bodies for which the documentation process was recently completed, the ministry said in its latest update. The daily toll includes bodies retrieved from the rubble after earlier strikes.

Israeli strikes killed another 12 people after the ministry’s update. Eight of them, including three children and two women, were killed in a strike on a tent in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital. A strike in the central city of Deir al-Balah killed four people, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Israeli authorities say the renewed offensive and tightened blockade are aimed at pressuring Hamas to release hostages abducted in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed or disarmed, and all the hostages are returned.

Hamas has said it will only release the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as called for in the now-defunct ceasefire reached in January.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7 attack and took 251 people hostage. Most have since been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says women and children make up most of the Palestinian deaths, but does not say how many were militants or civilians. It says another 117,600 people have been wounded in the war.

The overall tally includes 2,151 dead and 5,598 wounded since Israel resumed the war last month.

Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence. The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and it blames Hamas for their deaths because the militants operate in densely populated areas.

Israel’s offensive has destroyed vast parts of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population, leaving hundreds of thousands of people sheltering in squalid tent camps or bombed-out buildings.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s agenda of deporting undocumented immigrants but said that “of course” all people in the U.S. are entitled to due process.

“Yes, of course,” Rubio told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” when asked whether citizens and noncitizens in the U.S. are entitled to due process.

His comments come as the Trump administration has pressed the courts to allow the immediate deportations of immigrants it accuses of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the Alien Enemies Act without giving them a chance to plead their case before a judge.

Last week, the Supreme Court asked the administration to pause deportations of some Venezuelan men based in Texas who the Trump administration said were members of Tren de Aragua, with attorneys for the immigrants asking for them not to be deported “before the American judicial system can afford them due process.”

That decision came after the Supreme Court in early April allowed the Trump administration to move forward with some deportations under the AEA as long as detainees “receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act.”

“The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” the Supreme Court justices added.

On Sunday, the secretary of state defended the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, which have included deporting three children who are U.S. citizens — ages 2, 4 and 7 — alongside their mothers, according to The Washington Post.

“Their mothers, who were illegally in this country, were deported. The children went with their mothers,” Rubio told moderator Kristen Welker.

“If those children are U.S. citizens, they can come back into the United States if there’s their father or someone here who wants to assume them. But ultimately, who was deported was their mother, their mothers who were here illegally. The children just went with their mothers,” the secretary of state added.

Rubio called the story “misleading,” saying that “you guys make it sound like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed the 2-year-old and threw him on an airplane.”

In a December interview with “Meet the Press,” then-President-elect Donald Trump previewed his approach to deportations involving mixed-status families, or those where some family members are in the U.S. legally and others aren’t.

“I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” Trump told Welker at the time.

Rubio also defended the Trump administration’s broader approach to deporting undocumented immigrants, calling the strategy a departure from decadeslong norms in the U.S. that allowed undocumented migrants to remain in the country while pursuing asylum claims.

“Once you come into our country illegally, it triggers all kinds of rights that can keep you here indefinitely. That’s why we were being flooded at the border, and we’ve ended that,” Rubio said.

He also spoke about the ongoing negotiations to reach a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, just one day after Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome.

Rubio said the deal was “closer in general than they’ve been any time in the last three years, but it’s still not there.”

Speaking about the state of negotiations, the secretary of state told Welker, “There are reasons to be optimistic and there are also reasons to be concerned.”

“If this was an easy war to end, it would have been ended by someone else a long time ago,” Rubio added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered several planes to be sent to Iran to help deal with the aftermath of a blast at Iran’s port of Bandar Abbas, Russia’s emergency ministry said on Sunday.

Putin has expressed his condolences over the loss of life and offered to provide help to Iran dealing with the aftermath of a blast, the Kremlin said.

It said Putin had conveyed “words of sincere sympathy and support to the families of the victims, as well as his wishes for a recovery to all those injured.”

The emergency ministry said a Beriev Be-200 amphibious aircraft specialising in firefighting, as well as an Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane, would be sent to Iran to help out.

Iranian state media have reported that a huge blast, probably caused by the explosion of chemical materials, killed at least 25 people and injured more than 700 on Saturday at Bandar Abbas, Iran’s biggest port.

President Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by a trade war, stock market swings and Elon Musk’s DOGE and its attempts to slash the federal workforce. The administration has moved fast, drawing praise from supporters and criticism and lawsuits from opponents.

But what does the American public think of Trump, and how do those views compare to opinions of Joe Biden and other past presidents?

Find out below. NBC News has tracked presidential approval for more than 30 years. The charts below show Trump’s current approval rating, as well as historical approval ratings for Presidents Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. This page will be updated as new NBC News polls are released.

The World Food Programme has run out of food, the United Nations agency said Friday, 54 days after Israel imposed a complete blockade on the Gaza Strip.

“Today, WFP delivered its last remaining food stocks to hot meals kitchens in the Gaza Strip. These kitchens are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days,” it said in a statement on Friday.

Since Israel imposed its blockade on March 2, stopping the entry of humanitarian aid and commercial goods into the enclave, WFP has been the only steady source and the largest provider of hot meals in Gaza.

Only a few smaller agencies are still providing food in Gaza, including the World Central Kitchen, which said in a post on Facebook Saturday that it was “working nonstop to stretch flour supplies and bake as much bread as possible” inside its bakery, the last one still operating in Gaza.

With all border crossings closed, no humanitarian or commercial supplies, including more than 116,000 tons of food from WFP waiting at aid corridors, have entered Gaza in more than seven weeks, the aid agency said.

“This is the longest closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced, exacerbating already fragile markets and food systems,” it said, adding, “People are running out of ways to cope, and the fragile gains made during the short ceasefire have unravelled.”

The news comes after WFP in late March said that all of its 25 bakeries in the Gaza Strip had shut down because of the lack of fuel and flour in the territory.

Israel says its blockade is crucial to its goal of weakening the militant group’s control over the population, while Israeli officials have repeatedly stated there is “no shortage” of aid in Gaza and accused Hamas of withholding supplies.

After a meeting at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate with senior Republican Party officials, Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on X Wednesday that, “They expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to return our hostages home safely.”

The Israeli government has been accused of using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip, which the UN said could amount to war crimes under international humanitarian law.

With essential food commodities including safe water and cooking fuel in short supply, more than 2 million people in Gaza now face an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease, and death, WFP warned.

The extreme food insecurity has also raised serious nutrition concerns for vulnerable populations, including children under the age of five, pregnant women, and the elderly.

The Global Nutrition Cluster, a coalition of humanitarian groups, warned that in March alone, 3,708 children were identified for acute malnutrition, out of 84,000 children screened — a marked increase from February, when 2,053 children were admitted from a total of 92,000 screened, OCHA said in a report on Thursday.

Video footage posted by WFP showed depleted stocks of food supply in a warehouse in Gaza, and children lining up at food stands to receive hot meals and bread. The agency said that despite providing a “critical lifeline” to those in need, it had reached just half the population in Gaza.

With food prices inside the strip also skyrocketing to 1,400% compared to during the ceasefire, people are now being forced to scavenge for items to burn to cook a meal, the WFP said.

More than 51,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including thousands of children, according to the local health ministry, since Israel launched its offensive in the enclave following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks.

Some 1,200 people were killed during the attacks in southern Israel and around 250 taken hostage, marking a major escalation in a decadeslong conflict.

The situation has raised widespread concerns among international NGOs and UN agencies working in Gaza, with the CEOs of 12 major aid organisations in mid-April warning of aid systems collapsing as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza reached the worst levels in 18 months.

“Famine is not just a risk, but likely rapidly unfolding in almost all parts of Gaza,” the CEOs said in a statement posted by Oxfam, adding, “Let us do our jobs.”

On Thursday, the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom also urged Israel to restart the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. “Palestinian civilians — including one million children — face an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death. This must end,” they said in a statement.

They added, “We urge Israel to immediately re-start a rapid and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza in order to meet the needs of all civilians.”

Several district attorneys have considered charging former death row prisoners whose sentences were commuted by former President Joe Biden months after a White House executive order called on them to do so.

So far, a Louisiana prosecutor successfully sought a first-degree murder charge against Thomas Steven Sanders in the death of a 12-year-old girl who was killed in Catahoula Parish in 2010. While Sanders’ federal death sentence was commuted to life without parole by Biden’s order just a few months ago, a Louisiana jury could reimpose a death sentence on him under state law if he’s found guilty.

Catahoula Parish prosecutor Brad Burget did not respond to requests for comment about the grand jury’s indictment two weeks ago, but told NBC affiliate KALB in Alexandria that he disagreed with Biden’s decision in December to grant clemency for those death row inmates.

“It just disrespects the victim,” he said.

Burget’s decision comes after President Donald Trump issued an executive order on the death penalty that both broadly declared that the U.S. should “ensure that the laws that authorize capital punishment are respected and faithfully implemented,” and also took specific aim at “each of the 37 murderers whose Federal death sentences were commuted by President Biden.”

Trump’s order specifically calls on the U.S. attorney general to take two specific actions related to those recently resentenced inmates: to “ensure that these offenders are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose,” and secondly, to “further evaluate whether these offenders can be charged with State capital crimes and shall recommend appropriate action to state and local authorities.”

NBC News has learned that several other district attorneys have considered weighing charges against these former death row prisoners after contacting prosecutors’ offices in seven other cases.

The prosecutor in Horry County, South Carolina, has two separate cases involving the recently commuted death row inmates: one involving Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks, whose 2002 crime spree included the abduction and murder of a 44-year-old woman in Conway, and another involving Brandon Council, who was convicted of the murders of two bank employees in Conway in 2017.

“We have not made any decisions on those cases yet,” 15th Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson said. “We have met with the families and are in the process of reviewing the evidence, but no decisions have been made.”

South Carolina only began resuming executions in September after a 13-year pause, and for the first time last month, put a condemned inmate to death by firing squad.

Meanwhile, two other district attorneys’ offices confirmed they have similarly reviewed their cases involving death row inmates whose sentences were commuted by Biden. It’s unclear whether Trump’s order prompted the reviews.

The St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office in Missouri said it had evaluated the case of Billie Allen and Norris Holder, who were convicted in separate federal trials in the death of a security guard during an armed bank robbery in 1997.

With both men now serving federal life sentences without the possibility of parole, “additional charges at the state level would not enhance public safety in the St. Louis region,” the attorney’s office said in a statement, adding further prosecution “is not in the public interest.”

The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office in Texas said it had also looked into the case of a former federal death row inmate, Julius Robinson, who was convicted in 2002 in the killing of three men in drug-related incidents.

“We have discussed the facts and circumstances of Julius Robinson’s case with both former and current federal prosecutors familiar with the case. This case is not viable for a capital murder prosecution in Tarrant County,” prosecutors said in a statement, without elaborating further.

Bringing state charges in cases that were already federally prosecuted — and vice versa — is not uncommon, experts say, but doing so in an effort to reinstate death sentences may be complicated if not impossible.

For 15 of the 37 former federal death row inmates, their crimes occurred in states that either abolished the death penalty, such as Illinois and Virginia, or have either formal or informal moratoriums on executions, such as California, North Carolina and Ohio.

Then, for 11 other inmates, the crimes for which they were sentenced to death transpired on federal lands, such as a national park or in a U.S. government-run prison.

In those cases, prosecutors could still attempt to bring charges as long as they show the state has jurisdiction as well, said Barry Wax, a Florida defense attorney.

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the long-standing idea that prosecuting someone for the same crime in state and federal courts doesn’t violate their protection against double jeopardy because states and the federal government are “separate sovereigns.”

“When a state looks to prosecute someone for murder that they’re already doing life in a federal penitentiary for, it’s a roll of the dice,” Wax said. “The only difference is if you can get a jury to agree on a death sentence, and that’s not guaranteed. Otherwise, is it worth going through all of that again?”

Louisiana defense lawyer Cecelia Kappel, an attorney for Jessie Hoffman Jr., who last month became the first inmate in the state to be executed by nitrogen gas, said it is “extremely unusual” that a prosecutor in Catahoula Parish would want to seek another trial in a case that had already won a conviction for federal prosecutors.

Kappel said the parish, which is rural and has fewer than 9,000 people, does not typically hold capital trials and doubted it has the necessary resources to put one on. Capital trials can be costly because of the need to house and feed jurors if they are sequestered and potential payment for expert witnesses and their travel expenses. In 2014, it reportedly cost DeSoto Parish, which has three times the population of Catahoula, $105,209 for one capital trial.

Kappel said there are other factors to consider in trying cases many years later, such as the availability of witnesses and evidence, as well as the defendants themselves, who may be older and in declining health. She added that another murder trial against Sanders, who is now 67, could take years to begin.

A federal defender in Sanders’ case did not respond to requests for comment.

“They’re playing games with taxpayer money and playing games with people’s lives,” Kappel said. “And especially playing with the state public defense system.”

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who supports the death penalty, had thanked Burget, the local prosecutor, in a social media post for seeking an indictment against Sanders. Her spokesperson said in an email that the office “will offer any assistance they may need in handling this death penalty case, like the AG has offered to every other DA in our state.”

When asked for comment about Louisiana’s efforts, a Justice Department spokesman referred NBC News to a February memo issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi on her first day in office that says the federal Bureau of Prisons would ensure states “have sufficient supplies and resources to impose the death penalty.”

Since then, the Justice Department announced it would seek a death sentence against Luigi Mangione, the man suspected of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year. Three others currently remain on federal death row.

A federal grand jury has indicted a Maryland man on charges of making threatening communications to kidnap and injure Cameroon citizens and providing material support to separatist groups, federal prosecutors announced Friday.

Eric Tataw, 38, of Gaithersburg, who allegedly refers to himself as the “Garri master” a term he coined referring to mutilation, ordered violent groups to murder, kidnap and maim civilians in support of the violence separatist fighters use against the Cameroonian government, prosecutors said.

A Cameroonian national, Tataw surrendered and was set to make his initial court appearance on Friday, the department said.

“The defendant is alleged to have ordered horrific acts of violence, including severing limbs, against Cameroonian civilians in support of a violent secessionist movement,” said Matthew Galeotti, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, in the release.

Tataw allegedly referred to the dismemberment as “Garriing,” using the phrase “small Garri” for smaller appendages and “large Garri” for limbs or murder, prosecutors said.

He allegedly referred to himself as the “Garri master.”

The separatist fighters, referred to as “Amba Boys,” are calling for the Northwest and Southwest regions to form a new country called “Ambazonia,” prosecutors said. The Amba Boys’ strategies include attacking the Cameroonian military and civilians in efforts to pressure the government into allowing the regions to secede.

The violence in the western regions of Cameroon sparked in 2016, when French-speaking judges and teachers were sent to English-speaking regions, sparking Anglophone demonstrations and protests that Francophones were attempting to reduce their political and cultural significance, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

Cameroon inherited two legal systems — English common law and French civil law — following split colonial rule in the early 20th century.

When military forces violently broke up the protests in 2016, the current “Anglophone crisis” began.

The indictment alleges that Tataw began to raise funds in April 2018 to finance the Amba Boys’ attacks in the western regions.

Prosecutors said Tataw, with a large social media following, wrote hundreds of posts across Facebook, YouTube and Twitter calling for the civilian attacks and seeing funds to arm the Amba Boys.

The posts regularly received tens of thousands of views, and the Amba Boys, and Tataw allegedly directed other third parties to circulate the posts further, the department said.

“From about September 2018 through December 2020, Tataw and his co-conspirators raised more than $110,000,” the release stated. “Tataw and co-conspirators transferred portions of these funds — either directly or through intermediaries — to Amba Boys located in Cameroon and neighboring Nigeria.”

Any alleged co-conspirators were not named in the release.

The “National AK Campaign” sought to arm each Amba Boy with an AK-47 rifle in Cameroon, the department said. Prosecutors said funds supplied Amba Boys with explosive materials and items for enforced lockdowns or “ghost-town” orders.

Tataw is alleged to have communicated with the Amba Boy leaders directly, repeatedly taking personal credit for the group’s murders and kidnappings, the release stated.

Tataw allegedly threatened and targeted people he believed were cooperating with the Cameroonian government, such as municipal officials and traditional chiefs, the release stated. Employees of the Cameroon Development Corporation, a public company that grows, processes and sells products like bananas and rubber, were also target, prosecutors said.

Tataw also called for public, educational and cultural properties to be destroyed, according to the release.

“Tataw and his co-conspirators masterminded and financially supported a vicious scheme to overthrow a foreign government,” said U.S. Attorney Kelly O. Hayes for the District of Maryland in the release. “They resorted to an unthinkable level of violence while instilling fear in innocent victims to advance their political agenda.”

Tataw is charged with four counts of interstate communication of a threat to harm and one count of conspiracy to provide material support.

If convicted, he could face a maximum penalty of five years on each count of communication of threat to harm, and up to 15 years on the material support count.

It’s morning in Khan Younis, and the Al-Zurai family wakes up in a tent pitched on the rubble of the cement house they once shared. The tiles that used to be the floor of their home are loosely laid across the sandy ground, marking the space of what is now a makeshift outdoor kitchen.

“Today, God sends us cans, so we’re cooking them for the children,” Suad Al-Zurai, 57, said of the canned beans that she stirs in a simmering pot. It’s the 558th day of the war, and the children, along with the adults, are hungry, covered in dust, haunted by death and facing another day of scraping together a life from the ruins of the Gaza Strip.

NBC News’ crew on the ground spent a day with the Al-Zurai family, from early morning to sunset, to see how they, and thousands of families across the enclave, are living after the ceasefire broke, and Israel began a blockade in early March, barring the entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies into the enclave.

There are 16 members of the Al-Zurai family to share the single pot of beans, eight of them children. At least five more should be there with them, Suad says.

One of her sons was killed along with two of her grandchildren, while another, Khaled Al-Zurai, has been missing for days after an explosion that killed one of his sons. Suad is now taking care of his wife, who has cancer, and their four surviving children. Her third son, Hamed Al-Zurai, and his four children also live with her. Other relatives are displaced to other parts of Gaza.

Suad’s exhaustion is palpable as she stirs the pot under a blazing sun.

For her, enduring survival has begun to feel like death. “We all die one hundred times, every day,” she said, “we die one hundred times daily from fear and horror.”

Her slain loved ones are among more than 51,000 people who have been killed in Gaza, including thousands of children, according to the local health ministry, since Israel launched its offensive in the enclave following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks.

Some 1,200 people were killed during the attacks in southern Israel and around 250 taken hostage, marking a major escalation in a decadeslong conflict.

Throughout the course of the day, worries over food, water and other necessities dominate the family’s discussions, and finding those supplies takes up much of the rest of their time as humanitarian groups warn that aid is running out.

At one point, Hamed Al-Zurai’s 3-year-old daughter, Anwar, throws herself to the floor, crying out for rice, but there isn’t any more to give her.

“My children are constantly crying,” he said. “They want to eat. And I answer them, ‘How? There are no open crossings, so how can I get you food, my love?’”

Before the war, most of the children spent their mornings at school. Now, they dedicate hours each day to trying to find food and water.

Pushing their fears for their missing father aside, Khaled Al-Zurai’s children, Mohammed, 13, and Suad, 12, dutifully pick up their pots and pans and head to the soup kitchen with their cousin, Shadi, 7, taking NBC News’ crew with them on the roughly 30-minute walk.

At the soup kitchen, there’s already a crowd of other children, along with some women and men, waiting for food under the hot sun. The younger Suad stands with her empty pot in her hands, gazing into the distance, bored and exhausted, as she waits, later joining her brother and sister and sitting in a ditch in the shade before they try again.

On offer is rice — and after waiting for an hour, they fill their pots, carrying it back to their tent.

While they’re getting food, Hamed and young Anwar are out to get water for the family. Anwar walks swiftly as she carries two water jugs, each nearly half the size of her small body.

Before the war, Hamed Al-Zurai had a cart and a donkey that he would use to rent out transportation services, but after the donkey died in the war and he lost his cart, he no longer has a way to make money. Unable to buy food or water, the family is left dependent on swiftly dwindling aid.

“The situation is dire,” he said.

But even at a time of incredible darkness, there are moments of light for the Al-Zurais: smiles as they gather together in their tent, finally sharing their hard-won lunch.

After eating, Mohammed gives his younger siblings and cousins old rubber tires to play with. Anwar grins as she wheels one across the sandy ground.

As the sun goes down, the children huddle in a circle outside, laughing as they play hand-clapping games. And for a moment, they look just like any other children anywhere else in the world.

Then, they return to their makeshift tent to eat a meager dinner of more rice and beans, before eventually settling down for bed, huddling together on the ground, wrapped in blankets.

“We hate the nighttime,” Suad Al-Zurai said. And, she added, “the daytime.”