WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats are imploring US President Donald Trump’s administration to step up its role in addressing suffering and reported starvation in Gaza, with at least 40 senators signing onto a letter Tuesday urging the resumption of ceasefire talks and sharply criticizing an Israeli-backed American organization that had been created to distribute food aid.

In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Republican president’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, the US senators said the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, created in February with backing from the Trump administration, has “failed to address the deepening humanitarian crisis and contributed to an unacceptable and mounting civilian death toll around the organization’s sites.”

Near-daily mass casualty incidents in Gaza have seen Palestinians killed and wounded, often by IDF fire, as crowds rush to aid sites and, amid the chaos, frequently deviate from approved paths.

The letter marked a mostly united plea from Senate Democrats — who are locked out of power in Washington — for the Trump administration to recalibrate its approach after the collapse of hostage-ceasefire talks last week.

Trump on Monday expressed concern about the worsening humanitarian situation and broke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that people are not starving in the Gaza Strip. But it is unclear how Trump will proceed.

Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii said it was “not at all credible” to think the Israeli military — one of the most advanced in the world — is incapable of distributing food aid or performing crowd control.

“They made a choice to establish a new way of doing food distribution,” he said. “And it’s not working at all.”

The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, calls for a “large-scale expansion” of aid into Gaza channeled through organizations experienced in working in the area. It also says efforts for a ceasefire agreement are “as critical and urgent as ever.”

The message was led by four Jewish members of the Democratic Caucus — Sens. Adam Schiff of California, Chuck Schumer of New York, Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Schatz — and also calls for the return of the 50 hostages, 20 believed to be alive, who have been held by Hamas terror group since its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which started the ongoing war.

The signatures from 44 senators — the vast majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus — on the letter show the extent to which Democrats have achieved some unity on a foreign policy issue that deeply divided them while they held the White House last year.

They called for an end to the war that sees Hamas no longer in control of Gaza and a long-term goal of both an Israeli and a Palestinian state, and opposed any permanent displacement of the Palestinian people, which they noted “would be antithetical to international humanitarian law.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are backing Trump’s handling of the situation and supporting Israel. Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was satisfied with Trump trying “to referee that, but the Israelis need to get their hostages back.”

Still, images of the worsening hunger crisis in Gaza seemed to be reaching some Republican members of Congress.

Over the weekend, far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who routinely calls for an end to foreign aid, said on social media “What has been happening to innocent people and children in Gaza is horrific. This war and humanitarian crisis must end!”

For Schatz, it was a sign that many Americans do care about suffering in other parts of the world, even after Trump won the election with “America First” foreign policy goals and kick-started his administration by demolishing US aid programs.

“They are seeing images of chaos, images of suffering that are either caused by the United States or at least could have been prevented by the United States,” Schatz said. “And it is redounding negatively to the president.”

Reports of an increasingly dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip — including growing levels of malnutrition and children dying by starvation — led Israel on Sunday to institute broad pauses in fighting, along with several other changes, to allow for the safe distribution of humanitarian aid.

At the same time, Israel has denied using hunger as a weapon of war and accused the United Nations and other aid agencies of failing to pick up and distribute supplies delivered to Gaza’s border crossing points.