The Biden administration says it wants to de-escalate the violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, but the White House is resisting calls to demand a cease-fire in a conflict that has cost at least 200 lives.

Pressed on why President Joe Biden and other top officials aren’t publicly calling for a cease-fire, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that “every statement we make is with the objective of reducing the violence and bringing an end to the conflict on the ground.”

“There are times in diplomacy where we’ll need to keep those conversations quieter, where we won’t read out every component of it,” Psaki told reporters. “But that is our objective and that is the prism through which every action and every comment is being made.”

Psaki said she wasn’t sure if Biden had seen the latest statement by a group of Senate Democrats calling for a cease-fire. She emphasized dozens of calls made by the president and top officials seeking to resolve the crisis, calling it “quiet, intensive” diplomacy, and said Biden was aware of the views held by members of Congress.

The statement signed by 29 Senate Democrats on Sunday said it’s time for the violence to stop.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Dannon told Breitbart News on Monday that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) notified people within a building in Gaza holding Associated Press (AP) offices prior to striking it with warplanes.

Danon discussed the IDF’s destruction of the Jala Tower in Gaza, which also housed the AP, Al Jazeera, and other news media outlets’ offices on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow, author of Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption.

“This building was an office building in the center of Gaza, and in that  building there were a few headquarters of Hamas intelligence units, and you had some media offices — AP and Al-Jazeera — and we decided to target this building because of information we gathered,” he said. “We notified everybody to evacuate the building. We allowed them to take out all their instruments, their computers, and then we attacked the building, making sure there would be no casualties, so no one can blame Israel for that.”

DALLAS—An 18-year-old man has been arrested after the body of a 4-year-old boy was found lying on a neighborhood street in Dallas, police said Sunday.

Police said that Darriynn Brown has been charged with kidnapping and theft. Police say they also anticipate additional charges pending the results of a forensic analysis.

Brown was being held Sunday in Dallas County jail on a $750,000 bond. Jail records did not list an attorney for him.

Police received a call that there was a child dead in the street at about 6:50 a.m. Saturday.

Assistant Police Chief Albert Martinez has said it appeared the child suffered a violent death and that “an edged weapon” was used. He said it’s believed the child was killed at about 5 a.m.

The child’s name hasn’t been released, but he’s believed to have lived in the southwest Dallas neighborhood where he was found, Martinez said.

Antwainese Square, 39, told The Dallas Morning News she alerted authorities after seeing the boy’s body while she was jogging. She said the boy’s face and upper half of his body were covered in blood and that he didn’t have shoes or a shirt.

“It breaks my heart,” Square told the newspaper. “And now I’m afraid. Now I’m paranoid. Because I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what’s going on.”

Former Texas Rep. Matt Rinaldi told National File that a group of Texas Republican legislators – reportedly acting on orders from Gov. Greg Abbott – worked together to kill a bill that would have effectively banned child transgender surgeries and chemical castrations in the state.

Family activists in Texas are reeling after H.B. 1399, which would have stripped doctors of their ability to acquire liability insurance if they engaged in child transgender surgeries or chemical castrations at their practices, was almost certainly doomed by Texas Reps. Dustin Burrows and Jared Patterson, both on the Calendars Committee responsible for assigning the legislation a date for a full House vote. Burrows and Patterson scheduled the bill for last Wednesday after extreme pressure from activists, but placed hundreds of other legislative items on the agenda ahead of the vote, all but ensuring the bill would not receive a vote before the end of the legislative session and effectively killing it.