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Oct. 21, 2025, 1:30 AM EDTBy Arata Yamamoto and Jennifer JettTOKYO — Lawmakers in Japan elected hardline conservative Sanae Takaichi as prime minister on Tuesday, making her the first woman in modern times to lead the key U.S. ally. Takaichi, 64, the new leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was elected by lawmakers in the lower house of parliament by a vote of 237-149 over her closest rival, Yoshihiko Noda, leader of the liberal opposition Constitutional Democratic Party. She was also elected by upper house lawmakers in a second vote of 125-46 after falling one vote shy of a majority in the first round.Though her election is a milestone in a country where women are severely underrepresented in government, Takaichi enters office with a fragile coalition and facing a number of pressing challenges, including a visit next week by President Donald Trump. A protege of assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi advocates a stronger military, tougher immigration policies and the revision of Japan’s pacifist constitution. She is a veteran politician who has served as minister of economic security, internal affairs and gender equality. Earlier this month Takaichi was elected leader of the LDP, which has governed Japan almost uninterrupted since World War II, after running unsuccessfully in 2021 and 2024. Her ascension to prime minister was thrown into doubt, however, after a crucial partner, the centrist party Komeito, left the LDP coalition.To ensure her victory, the LDP signed a deal on Monday with the Osaka-based Japan Innovation Party, or Ishin, that will pull its coalition further to the right.Even with the alliance, Takaichi faces an uphill battle in parliament, where she falls short of a majority in both houses after the LDP suffered major losses in recent elections amid voter anger over party corruption scandals and the rising cost of living.“She emerges from this a diminished leader from the get-go,” said Jeff Kingston, a professor of Asian studies and history at Temple University’s Japan campus.Takaichi also faces an early test next week with the arrival of Trump, who is making his first trip to Asia since returning to office. He is expected to visit Malaysia and Japan before continuing on to South Korea, which is hosting a major summit of Asia-Pacific economies. “She doesn’t have a whole lot of time to get ready for a slew of diplomatic activity,” Kingston said. “But I think job one is the Japanese economy.”Arata Yamamoto reported from Tokyo, and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong.Arata YamamotoArata Yamamoto has been an NBC News producer in Tokyo since 1993.Jennifer JettJennifer Jett is the Asia Digital Editor for NBC News, based in Hong Kong.
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Oct. 21, 2025, 4:40 AM EDTBy Matt BradleyTEL AVIV — Hamas has violently sought to reassert its authority over the Gaza Strip in the wake of the Israel military’s partial withdrawal, but questions remain over the group’s future and efforts to rebuild.Since the ceasefire came into effect a week ago, the militant group has deployed armed police officers on streets from where Israeli forces have withdrawn, clashed with rival clans, directly fired upon and killed Israeli troops in multiple incidents, and staged at least one public execution of suspected collaborators. As Hamas continues to demonstrate its presence, Israeli security officials and experts on Gaza agree it has been badly diminished but not thoroughly destroyed, and will count with new recruits propelled to join after tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli fire. Assessments of Hamas’ strength are crucial to the negotiations around the group’s disarmament — an important stipulation in the American-brokered ceasefire deal that halted the war. So far, the group has refused to give up its weapons.“Hamas was damaged very severely in its military capabilities, but I think it will be fair to say that it wasn’t crushed,” said Shalom Ben Hanan, a fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Israel’s Reichman University and a nearly 30-year veteran of the Israeli Security Agency, also known as Shabak or Shin Bet. “Maybe the threat isn’t in the days to come or the nearest future. But their potential is still there.”Hamas militants with the Qassam Brigades in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, on Monday.Bashar Taleb / AFP via Getty ImagesHanan said the group still commands about 15,000 to 25,000 fighters — an estimate he said was based on his regular briefings from serving Israeli security officials. According to an Israeli military official, who asked for anonymity to speak openly about the Israeli military’s internal assessment, about 10,000 to 20,000 commandos remain at Hamas’ disposal.Giora Eiland, the former director of Israel’s National Security Council and the former head of the planning department of the Israel Defense Forces, said Hamas lost about 20,000 fighters during two years of war — an estimate he also bases on conversations with serving security officials.A Hamas militant stands guard in Khan Younis on Friday, during a search for the bodies of hostages killed after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.ReutersBut the group will have little trouble reconstituting its manpower, Eiland said, and security officials believe Hamas has been recruiting new fighters throughout the war even under fire.“It is easy for Hamas to regain power and it is very easy for them to recruit more and more people to replace those who were killed,” Eiland said.Hamas wrested power from the more secular and internationally recognized Fatah party in 2007 after winning legislative elections the previous year. The Islamist group, which the United States, Israel and many other countries classify as a terrorist group, does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and launched the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in part to stall normalization efforts in the Arab world. Militants in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, in February.Abed Rahim Khatib / dap via APIsrael’s ensuing offensive has flattened much of the enclave, killed tens of thousands of civilians and engendered the kind of anger that could create thousands of potential recruits. “Although we will be speaking about young people with less military experience, they still have no doubt lots of competence and enough personal weapons like small arms and RPGs,” Eiland said, referring to rocket-propelled grenades.Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed and maimed in the war; a United Nations commission said in September that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Famine was officially declared in August in part of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, by the world’s leading authority on hunger. The war has also inflicted significant damage on Hamas’ supplies of its heaviest weapons and its weapons manufacturing capabilities, as well as on its senior leadership.The Israeli military official said that as many as 90% of the group’s rockets have been destroyed, and Israel has succeeded in frustrating Hamas’ ability to rebuild that lost heavy firepower.“Very important is the manufacturing sites, the smuggling routes and so on,” the military official said. “It’s not just taking away the fish, it’s taking away the rod.”All of the experts agreed that Hamas’ vast tunnel system remains its greatest strength and Israel’s greatest challenge.Eiland estimated that 70% to 80% of Hamas’ tunnels remain intact, with much of the surviving network unknown to Israel’s military.In a statement last week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF would turn its attention to destroying the remaining tunnel network as part of the process of disarming Hamas. The IDF said it had been working to dismantle a part of the tunnel network when some of its soldiers came under fire Sunday.A Hamas militant in Gaza City on Wednesday.Ahmad Salem / Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThe group’s political power and popularity — key components in its ability to recruit, rebuild its weapons and suppress its rivals — have been badly damaged. Even if Gazans are enraged at Israel for killing nearly 70,000 Palestinians during the war, Hamas still takes part of the public blame.“Politically is where Hamas is really in shambles,” said Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, head of the Atlantic Council’s Realign for Palestine project, whose family is from the Gaza Strip. “They don’t really have a political program. They don’t really have a compelling agenda in Gaza.”But unlike the Islamic State terrorist group, or ISIS, and Al Qaeda — two terror groups whose power has been checked by the U.S.-led war on terror over the past quarter-century — Hamas presides over a true geographic constituency.“It is not a terrorist organization that came from nowhere and managed to take control over a certain area by spreading fear and terror,” Eiland said. “Hamas is the authentic representative of the people of Gaza.”Outside Gaza, Hamas also takes credit for turning global opinion against Israel, Alkhatib said.“Hamas feels that this shift is something that they alone brought about,” he said. “And Hamas ties that to its strategic picture on the ground.”Matt BradleyMatt Bradley is an international correspondent for NBC News based in Israel.
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November 19, 2025
Nov. 18, 2025, 6:40 PM ESTBy Sahil Kapur, Melanie Zanona and Julie TsirkinWASHINGTON — Inside a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, Rep. Jen Kiggans, a swing district member who is a linchpin of the party’s narrow majority, stood up and made a plea. “Doing nothing on health care is not the right answer,” the Virginia Republican later told NBC News, summing up her message to colleagues. “I would really appreciate if we could have a timeline because we know that the end of the calendar year is coming, and I don’t want to see people’s premiums go up. I don’t want to see people lose their health insurance.”The remarks drew an unspectacular reception.“Average,” Kiggans replied when asked how it was received. “We line up, we have our one minute to state our case. Usual reaction.”Republicans seek an alternative to Obamacare03:33Republicans are careening to a health care cliff with no solution in hand. An estimated 22 million people in the U.S. are about to see their health insurance premiums soar by, in some cases, thousands of dollars per month, as billions in funding for the Affordable Care Act expires on Dec. 31. The expiring funds, costing about $35 billion per year, were first passed during the pandemic to subsidize insurance payments, capping premiums for a “benchmark” ACA, or “Obamacare,” plan to 8.5% of income.Kiggans has offered a bill to extend those funds for one year, as a stopgap option to prevent cost increases while Congress haggles over a longer-term solution.But just 14 Republicans have signed on. And her plea appears to be falling on deaf ears with the rest of the party.President Donald Trump and Republicans have dialed up their attacks on that pot of funding, making increasingly clear they won’t allow an extension in its current form.“It’s going to end,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said Tuesday evening, citing Trump’s opposition as part of the reason.Instead, Republican leaders have deputized committee chairs and rank-and-file members to draft alternative options that would give the funds directly to people, perhaps through tax-advantaged health savings accounts (HSAs), flexible savings accounts (FSAs) or even direct cash payments.“The only healthcare I will support or approve is sending the money directly back to the people,” Trump wrote Tuesday in all caps on social media, saying he won’t accept a continuation of the ACA structure where the funds are provided to insurance companies to keep premiums down. “Congress, do not waste your time and energy on anything else,” Trump added.Party leaders have taken note.House Republican leadership railed against the ACA during a closed-door conference meeting Tuesday and made a forceful case against extending the subsidies, according to two lawmakers in attendance. Instead, Republican leaders presented other potential ideas to help lower health care costs.But at least one House Republican expressed frustration with how little time they have left to write, much less pass, an alternative before the looming ACA cliff. During Tuesday’s meeting, Rep. Nathaniel Moran of Texas stood up and complained that Republicans could have been working on their own health care plan “for months,” the two lawmakers in the room said, instead of six weeks before the tax credits expire.Trump told reporters in West Palm Beach on Sunday that he is talking with Democrats about a direct health care payment plan, saying: “I’ve had personal talks with some Democrats.”But a senior White House official on Tuesday could not identify a single Democrat with whom Trump has discussed the issue. On a call with reporters on Monday, Senate Health Committee Chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., couldn’t name a Democrat who is even open to the idea.“I’ll let Democrats speak for themselves, because I can’t tell you that they’ve all bought in,” he said.Any plan would require 60 votes to advance in the Senate, which means at least seven Democrats would have to support the legislation. Republicans have floated the prospect of using the filibuster-proof reconciliation process to push through a health care solution without Democrats, but a variety of their proposals would be deemed ineligible for that.Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., who narrowly won a competitive district around Scranton, said expiration of the ACA money without a replacement plan would harm his constituents.“My district is especially hit hard on this. Ripping the rug out certainly is not the solution,” Bresnahan said. “So I am in support of extending the ACA, the enhanced premium tax credits, for some period of time.”Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., said he’s certain ACA funds won’t be extended in their current form.“There is no way a clean extension comes to the House floor,” Harris said Tuesday after the GOP meeting, even suggesting that it would spark a revolt. “The business would stop in the House completely if an attempt was made to bring that to the floor.”Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., who represents a competitive district that Democrats are targeting in 2026, blasted the law he called the “Unaffordable Care Act” as a failure. He said the subsidies prove that.“If you have to subsidize something, by definition, it’s not affordable,” Van Orden said, arguing that Democrats don’t “give a s—” about health care beyond their ability to benefit from it politically. “It’s all about their political survival, and it’s, quite frankly, revolting.”Cassidy said it’s “incorrect to assume that a temporary extension” of ACA funds “can be quickly implemented,” suggesting it’s too late because insurers have set rates for 2026. And even if Democrats prefer a short-term extension, he said, “the president’s not going to sign it.”Michael Linden, an economic policy expert who worked in the Biden White House budget office while the enhanced health care tax credits were crafted, said Republicans missed their chance to extend the subsidies earlier this year.“If Republicans in Congress had wanted to avoid big spikes in health care premiums, the logical moment for them to have done so was in the midst of their massive reconciliation bill,” he said.There may yet be an eleventh-hour push if Republicans are sitting on the brink of the new year with no health care plan.Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., a co-sponsor of the Kiggans bill, said he might consider signing a “discharge petition” to end-run party leaders and force the measure to a House vote.“I would only think of it if nothing is done that’s satisfactory, and we just have some concepts, but nothing specific,” he said.Bresnahan didn’t shut the door to supporting a discharge petition but said that one offered by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., to extend the subsidies for three years is “a little bit too long.” He said he’s also open to ideas to reform the existing ACA tax credits.Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., said he supports a one-year extension of ACA subsidies to give his party time to work on “longer-term issues” with the health care plan.“Right now, this should be negotiated between the House and the Senate. That will be the fastest way to get an agreement on this,” he said. “A discharge [petition] may move it out of the House, but if the Senate is not in agreement, it’s not going to go anywhere. The objective here is to get this done before the end of the year.”Sahil KapurSahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.Melanie ZanonaMelanie Zanona is a Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News.Julie TsirkinJulie Tsirkin is a correspondent covering Capitol Hill.Peter Alexander contributed.
October 1, 2025
Oct. 1, 2025, 6:00 AM EDTBy Denise ChowIf an asteroid is on a collision course with the moon, what should humanity do? Try to nudge the space rock out of the way before it strikes? Obliterate it with a nuclear explosion?Those are the questions explored in a recent paper from more than a dozen researchers, including several NASA scientists. And they’re not purely hypothetical: An asteroid known as 2024 YR4 is estimated to have a 4% chance of hitting the moon in 2032.Such a cosmic collision could produce debris “up to 1,000 times above background levels over just a few days, possibly threatening astronauts and spacecraft” in low-Earth orbit, the researchers wrote in the paper, which was uploaded to the preprint website arXiv on Sept. 15 but has yet to be peer-reviewed.To avoid creating that potentially dangerous debris field, one option is to nuke the asteroid, according to the paper — or trigger what the scientists call a “robust disruption” — before it reaches the moon. Cue the “Armageddon” movie references.But using a nuclear explosion to destroy an asteroid has never been tested, so the plan would come with a slew of major risks.Various key characteristics about asteroid 2024 YR4 aren’t known, including its mass, which would be critical in figuring out how to properly “disrupt” it without creating more problems.“If the explosion is not enough, you’re just going to create a debris field anyway,” said Julie Brisset, interim director of the Florida Space Institute, who wasn’t involved with the paper.Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System station in Chile in December. NASA estimates that it measures up to 220 feet across, large enough to be considered a “city killer” because it could be capable of causing severe damage to a city or region on Earth.Experts initially thought there was a small chance the asteroid could hit our planet, and the probability of such an impact was estimated to be as high as 3% earlier this year. But a collision with Earth was later ruled out.With Earth now thought to be in the clear, asteroid 2024 YR4 has an estimated 4.3% chance of smacking into the moon.The authors of the recent paper suggested launching a mission to conduct reconnaissance of the asteroid, including estimating its mass from up close. After that, they proposed, an explosive device could be built, then deployed to the space rock.Alternatively, if destroying the asteroid with a nuclear explosion is too extreme, the researchers detailed how it could be nudged out of the way.NASA has some experience with that: In a first-of-its-kind test in 2022, its DART probe intentionally crashed into a small space rock known as Dimorphos to alter its trajectory. The maneuver was carried out 6.8 million miles from Earth and changed Dimorphos’ path in space, shortening its orbit by 33 minutes, according to NASA.But a successful deflection would also require knowing the mass of asteroid 2024 YR4, Brisset said.In response to an NBC News inquiry to NASA about the recent paper, Kelly Fast, the agency’s acting planetary defense officer, said in a statement that there are no plans to deflect or otherwise interfere with the asteroid.However, she said there are plans to study it early next year using the James Webb Space Telescope. Any findings could provide better insight into its orbital path.“If observed, the additional data could improve our knowledge of where the asteroid will be in December 2032,” Fast said, “and could drop the impact probability to 0%.”Even if space missions like those described in the paper could be carried out, there would be political considerations to navigate.Although no astronauts or long-term habitats are on the moon, that might not always be the case. China, for instance, has said it aims to land its astronauts on the moon by 2030. Chinese officials have also said the country may build a nuclear plant on the lunar surface to power a moon base that it plans to jointly operate with Russia. The United States plans to launch regular missions to the lunar surface before NASA eventually ventures to Mars. But NASA’s future missions and priorities remain in flux amid significant personnel cuts and President Donald Trump’s budget blueprint for NASA, which proposes slashing more than $6 billion from its budget.Detonating a nuclear device in space could also add tension to the burgeoning space race among the United States, China and other spacefaring countries, with potential conflicts over which countries and space agencies would lead or participate in the project, Brisset said.“It would probably be countries that have the technical capability to do it,” she said, “which maybe narrows it down to three or four, but would they want to work together?”Denise ChowDenise Chow is a science and space reporter for NBC News.
October 15, 2025
Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 14, 2025, 5:12 PM EDTBy Angela YangBefore Sebastian Castillo cracks open a book on the bus, he has an intrusive thought: Should he tap the stranger next to him on the shoulder and clarify that yes, he’s starting this book on Page 1, but he has, in fact, read many other books before?Castillo, a novelist and English literature instructor, said he realizes that is extreme. He’d never do that. But the urge reflects a recent anxiety that has burgeoned around the act of reading in public in the digital age, when everything is scrutinized as possibly “performative.”“If you’re on the bus or at the park or at a cafe, nobody really cares about you or what you’re doing,” said Castillo, 37. “And so I think it’s, more than anything, just kind of a silly way to think about how people tend to observe themselves more than how other people observe them.”It’s a feeling that many people have started to put into words.On social media, real and staged videos of people reading at coffee shops, on escalators or at basketball games have become fodder for jokes about “performative reading,” or the idea that people want to look like they’re reading without actually doing so. Some have playfully shared their own lists of books they deem suitable to “read performatively” on public transit. The singer Sombr even poked fun at the concept in the middle of a concert this year.Many of the callouts are simply memes, running jokes for people to get in on. But avid readers say the concept of reading for social points is a very real phenomenon that has unwittingly influenced how people approach books.The discourse around so-called performative reading is the latest iteration of a broader cultural fixation on authenticity in the era of casual social media surveillance — when anything done in public could be farmed for content and people could find themselves going viral at any time.And it’s not just books. “Performative male” contests have also popped up across the United States this year in which people offer their own tongue-in-cheek versions of men who dress and act in ways that come off as socially aware — complete with tote bags, matcha lattes and dog-eared copies of feminist literature under their arms.That idea has particularly resonated in the online book community.On platforms like TikTok, Instagram, X and Goodreads, bookish users often tout images of impressive titles and aesthetically pleasing reading setups or monthly reading lists with dozens of books already checked off.Raol Muong, a creator who shares video essays about internet culture, made a TikTok video analyzing why books have seemingly become the new accessory in public spaces, as well as in literary circles online. “Especially on TikTok and in Instagram Reels, we can see that the algorithm basically rewards what looks good, like the eye-catching cover and the staged coffee shots in a downtown cafe,” said Muong, 17. “They’re focusing on what looks good and not whether the book is being read or not. And I think, because of this, platforms turn books into basically aesthetic props to curate in their Instagram dumps.”Muong said literary classics by the likes of Jane Austen and Joan Didion appear more performative, as it’s tempting to scrutinize whether people are carrying around popularly renowned books to give off an air of intellectualism or good taste.Even some longtime readers say they’ve sometimes been influenced by the pressure to perform.Éva Jéga-Szabó, a book lover since she was a young child, typically reads about 50 books a year. But she said the online culture of judgment around how quickly people read, or even the format in which they read — in some circles, audiobooks don’t count — pushed her to change her habits.“I found myself going for shorter books or novellas rather than what I actually wanted to read. I was pushing for the numbers rather than just engaging with literature the way I wanted. And only recently, when I stopped being attached to the numbers, did I start enjoying it again,” said Jéga-Szabó, 25. “I see this from a lot of people who say that they feel a lot of pressure and shame and they’re going through these reading slogs and they don’t want to read anymore.”Selwa Khan, a recent university graduate who enjoys sharing her reads on social media, said she feels it’s common for many online, including her, to “aestheticize our hobbies” for content. But Khan, 21, said a little bit of performance doesn’t necessarily take away from the authentic joy of reading.“I think social media makes everybody perform, whether they acknowledge it or not,” she said. “We’re all performing, and a lot of us are saying that we’re not performing, but the fact that you’re on a platform at all implies the existence of performance, right?”Khan said she also takes issue with the assumption that any visible reading must be an act, noting that that mindset only reveals the people who can’t imagine themselves genuinely taking pleasure in a book.“I’ve seen for years posts on BookTok, Bookstagram and all these platforms of titles that are ‘performative,’ which always happen to be titles that I really enjoy,” Khan said. “So there’s always this thought in my head of: What makes these performative? Or are people just projecting their own insecurities with reading?”Much of the mockery around performative reading seems to take aim at men. Over time, reading has taken on a reputation of being more of a woman-dominated activity. Many in-person book clubs have also noticed a dearth of male members. To some online, that has led to the perception that heterosexual men are so unlikely to pick up a book that if one is reading, he must be trying to impress a woman.Jafei Pollitt, a frequent reader who has jokingly pushed back against that meme online, said she hopes young men don’t take the trend too seriously or let it discourage them from reading in public.“Even if it is to impress a girl, if they do have a feminist piece of literature in their hand and they are actually reading it, I don’t quite see the harm in that,” said Pollitt, 27. “Because they’re getting some knowledge in their brain, and by the end of it, they might genuinely be like, ‘Oh, this is how to respect women.’”Similarly, Pollitt said, she doesn’t judge anyone who does appear to be reading performatively, because even pretending to read still encourages somebody to actually take in the words.“It’s a little bit of ‘fake until you make it.’ Yes, you can start off wanting to read for the aesthetics, but eventually you might involve yourself in the book, and you actually might like reading,” she said. “So as long as the book is in your hand and you’re reading the book, I don’t know if it totally matters how you got there.”Angela YangAngela Yang is a culture and trends reporter for NBC News.
November 22, 2025
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to resign from Congress next year
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