• Italian PM reacts to Gaza peace deal signing
  • Israeli hostage Avinatan Or reunites with family
  • Avinatan Or reunites with girlfriend after release
  • Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or…

Be that!

contact@bethat.ne.com

 

Be That ! Menu   ≡ ╳
  • Home
  • Travel
  • Culture
  • Lifestyle
  • Sport
  • Contact Us
  • Politics Politics
☰

Be that!

Freed Palestinians met by cheering crowds in Gaza

admin - Latest News - October 13, 2025
admin
0 views 26 secs 0 Comments



A group of buses carrying freed Palestinians who were imprisoned by Israel arrived in southern Gaza today to crowds of people awaiting them. Hamas pledged to release the Israeli hostages by today in exchange for 250 prisoners serving life sentences and more than 1,700 Palestinians detained after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack.



Source link

TAGS:
PREVIOUS
'Prayers of millions have finally been answered': Trump praises peace deal
NEXT
Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 13, 2025, 2:00 PM EDTBy Sahil Kapur and Gabrielle KhoriatyWASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., slammed the expiring Obamacare subsidies at the center of the government funding standoff as a “boondoggle” as the shutdown approaches the two-week mark with no end in sight.“The Covid-era Obamacare subsidy that they’re all talking about that’s supposedly the issue of the day doesn’t expire until the end of December. And by the way, it is the Democrats who created that subsidy, who put the expiration date on it,” he told reporters at a press conference Monday, the 13th day of the shutdown.“They put an end date on it because they knew it was supposed to be related to Covid, and it’s become a boondoggle,” Johnson added. “When you subsidize the health care system and you pay insurance companies more, the prices increase.”Johnson’s comments escalate the battle one day before the Senate is slated to return to Washington, albeit with no clear path to end the shutdown. It will test the patience and resolve of both parties as federal employees — including members of law enforcement, air traffic controllers and TSA staff — are slated to miss paychecks Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has maintained that Democrats won’t relent and support a short-term GOP funding bill through Nov. 21 unless it includes their priorities, most notably an extension of the health care funds. The money in question, first passed in 2021, limits premiums of a benchmark insurance plan to 8.5% of the buyer’s income.“Speaker Johnson chose vacation over fixing this healthcare crisis,” Schumer recently wrote on X. “In his own state, 85,000 Louisianans will lose their health insurance and thousands will see their premiums skyrocket. But he’s keeping the government shut down instead of fixing this.”Johnson has kept the Republican-led House out of session since Sept. 19, and he is continuing the recess through this week, drawing heavy criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans who say they want to return to work.The speaker said Monday that at a minimum, “If indeed the subsidy is going to be continued, it needs real reform. But there’s a lot of ideas on the table to do that.”He didn’t get specific, but Republicans have discussed a range of ideas such as an income cap for eligibility, a requirement that every Obamacare enrollee pays something into the system, a phaseout after two or three years and stricter abortion limits.Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., the author of a bill to extend the Obamacare, or Affordable Care Act, funds permanently, said she’s open to a negotiation on the details.“There are a number of changes that can be made to the program to address some of the concerns,” she said. “One of the things, though, I think we need to be very thoughtful about is where you start to make changes that show a dramatic drop-off in numbers of people who are helped. And that needs to be a longer discussion that people need to really look at some data and get the information before making decisions about that.”But Shaheen flatly ruled out stricter abortion restrictions, saying existing law already blocks Obamacare funding for abortion — despite some conservatives wanting to make it more stringent.“That’s a nonstarter,” she said. “It’s not an issue. We already dealt with that issue.”Shaheen, a longtime critic of shutdowns who is standing with Schumer in opposition to the GOP bill, said it’s not viable to wait until the end of the year to act on the Obamacare funding, as insurers are setting rates for 2026 now.“People are getting their premium increases right now, and it’s one more thing on top of the cost of food and electricity and rent and child care and all the other expenses that people are incurring,” she told NBC News.Republicans control the Senate by a margin of 53-47, but they need 60 votes to break a filibuster and pass a funding bill. They are currently five Democratic votes short, and have seen no movement since the shutdown began Oct. 1.In response to Republicans branding it the “Schumer shutdown,” the Democratic leader replied, “Republicans control the Senate, the House, and the White House.”Implied in Schumer’s comments is that Republicans can abolish the 60-vote threshold in order to reopen the government if they refuse to negotiate to get Democratic votes. But GOP party leaders are deeply reluctant to use the “nuclear option” on the legislative filibuster, as that would permanently change the Senate and set a precedent conservatives fear they’ll regret when Democrats return to power.“The super-majority requirement is something that makes the Senate the Senate,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Friday. “And honestly, if we had done that, there’s a whole lot of bad things that could have been done by the other side.”“If the Democrats had won the majority, they probably would have tried to nuke the filibuster, and then you’d have four new United States senators from Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. You’d have a packed Supreme Court,” Thune said. “You’d have abortion on demand.”Johnson also weighed in on growing calls on the right to repeal Obamacare, a long-standing goal of conservatives, and said in a lengthy answer to NBC News that “Obamacare failed the American people” and that the system needs “dramatic reform.”“Can we completely repeal and replace Obamacare? Many of us are skeptical about that now, because the roots are so deep. It was really sinister, the way, in my view, the way it was created,” he said Monday. “I believe Obamacare was created to implode upon itself, to collapse upon itself.”His response came one day after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., posted on X: “House Republicans are now scheming to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And take away healthcare from tens of millions of Americans. How did that work out for the extremists the last time they tried it?”Sahil KapurSahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.Gabrielle KhoriatyGabrielle Khoriaty is a desk assistant in the NBC News Washington bureau.Frank Thorp V contributed.
Related Post
September 22, 2025
Pinduoduo: One of China’s most popular apps has the ability to spy on its users, say experts
September 27, 2025
Sept. 27, 2025, 12:27 PM EDTBy Natasha KoreckiCHICAGO — In the run-up to former FBI Director James Comey’s indictment, there was no question who would step up to represent him.Friend and former colleague Patrick Fitzgerald, who served as U.S. attorney in Chicago for over a decade, would spring from retirement to be his man.Nationally, Fitzgerald is best known for his role as special prosecutor in the investigation into a CIA leak that brought charges against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.But to Chicago, Fitzgerald is something of a legend. The George W. Bush appointee left an indelible legacy as a scrupulous, hard-charging prosecutor who disrupted the kinds of crooked backroom deals that were long a trademark of Illinois politics.Over his nearly 12-year tenure as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, his prosecutions took down the Chicago mob, put two consecutive governors — one Republican, one Democratic — behind bars and won a conviction against a top donor to Barack Obama just as Obama was running for the White House. He jailed longtime “untouchables” in Chicago and Springfield political circles while prosecuting international cases, including a Hamas funding scheme and major terrorism cases.Still in the Chicago area, Fitzgerald retired as a top partner at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom two years ago and was enjoying spending more time with his family while doing some teaching. He’s entering the national spotlight to be Comey’s attorney out of longtime loyalty to a dear friend, those close to him say.But he’s potentially embarking on what could become a political firestorm. President Donald Trump made clear in his own social media post that he wanted his attorney general to bring charges against Comey.“Comey implicitly trusts Pat Fitzgerald. They’ve been best friends, or really good friends, for years,” said Robert Grant, former FBI special agent in charge of the Chicago office at the time Fitzgerald served as U.S. attorney. “They’re that close, and he also has a tremendous amount of respect for Pat.”When Fitzgerald landed in Chicago in 2001, he was dubbed “Eliot Ness with a Harvard Law degree.” But before that, he was the first to bring a case against Osama bin Laden — in 1996 — years before bin Laden masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It was one-term Illinois Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (no relation) who recommended Patrick Fitzgerald for the post, at the time saying he wanted someone to lead the office who was unassailable and unafraid to root out public corruption.“Pat was out of central casting to be the incorruptible guy that was in aggressive pursuit of the facts and dispensing justice and vindicating the public’s right for honest government,” said Patrick Collins, a former federal prosecutor who led the case against former Gov. George Ryan, a Republican.“As a line assistant who was intensely involved in a prosecution and worked in an office that had a reputation for prosecuting without fear or favor, having Pat Fitzgerald as your boss — he had your back,” he added. “We always knew that cases would rise or fall on the facts.”Fitzgerald’s and Comey’s personal styles couldn’t be more different. For years, Comey has publicly clashed with Trump, who fired him during his first White House term. Most controversially, Comey held a news conference days before the 2016 presidential election to disclose new findings of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Comey also frequently posts on social media — including a video on the day of his indictment vowing to take on Trump.Comey responds to indictment saying ‘I’m innocent’00:57For his part, Fitzgerald is unassuming and does not relish being in the limelight, those close to him say. Fitzgerald, an Amherst College and Harvard Law graduate, had “a steel-trap mind” when they worked together, Grant said, describing a photographic memory that would allow him to rattle off cellphone numbers of defendants years after prosecuting a case. But his demeanor was shaped by humble beginnings in Brooklyn, where he grew up the son of a hotel doorman.“There’s a little bit of hubris you see in Comey that you don’t see in Pat,” Grant said. “When you first meet Pat, he’s so down-to-earth that you don’t realize what a brilliant mind there is behind that genial exterior. Whoever that prosecutor is, she’s up against a damn good lawyer.”Lindsey Halligan, the new interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, presented the case to secure Comey’s indictment on her own, according to a source familiar with the grand jury proceedings in Alexandria, Virginia, on Thursday. A senior Justice Department official told NBC News that career prosecutors in Halligan’s office sent her a memo saying they believed probable cause did not exist to secure the indictment.Trump tapped Halligan — who has no prosecutorial experience but was on his defense team in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case — after the previous acting U.S. attorney left the position under pressure from the president to prosecute Comey.When he gained national exposure for prosecuting Libby, Fitzgerald became something of a media darling. He was sometimes referred to jokingly as “prosecutie,” according to one of his friends, and in 2005, much to his dismay at the time, he was named in People magazine’s “sexiest men alive” issue.The straight-laced prosecutor appeared visibly uncomfortable when reporters asked him about the designation at a news conference.“I almost enjoy going back to the leak questions I can’t answer,” he said at the time. “I played a lot of practical jokes on people for a lot of years, and they all got even at once. OK, new topic.”Fitzgerald’s investigations during his time in Chicago broke open a seminal case against the criminal organization known as the Chicago Outfit. Dubbed “Operation Family Secrets,” his office brought sweeping charges against more than a dozen mobsters and exposed evidence of 18 previously unsolved murders dating back decades. He also dug into Chicago City Hall, then under the longtime grip of Mayor Richard M. Daley. A massive investigation into an illicit trucking operation sent dozens to prison and exposed the underbelly of city corruption.Fitzgerald had plenty of detractors.Many of their criticisms stemmed from one of the highest-profile cases to come of his office: the prosecution of then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The yearslong investigation culminated in the stunning 2008 arrest of a sitting governor. Though several of his aides were already convicted of related crimes, Blagojevich, a Democrat, spoke openly on the phone — with the FBI listening — about how he could extract a personal benefit in exchange for naming the successor to what was then Obama’s vacant Senate seat.In one of the best-known lines of the case, Blagojevich was recorded relishing a potential payout from using his power as governor to name the next U.S. senator: “I’ve got this thing, and it’s f—–g golden.”Blagojevich was also later convicted of trying to shake down a children’s hospital executive for a $25,000 campaign contribution in exchange for an increase to pediatric reimbursement rates, as well as holding up action on a horse-racing bill while he illegally sought a $100,000 campaign contribution.In laying out the charges on the day of the governor’s arrest, Fitzgerald declared Blagojevich was on a “public corruption spree” that would make “Lincoln roll over in his grave.”Fitzgerald faced criticism for making extrajudicial remarks and potentially prejudicing a jury. For years, Blagojevich assailed Fitzgerald for bringing the weight of the office against him. Trump first commuted Blagojevich’s sentence, then pardoned him earlier this year.Then there was the Libby case, which involved extensive travel to Washington, D.C., while managing the Chicago office and its myriad blockbuster cases. According to law enforcement officials who worked under him, he never dropped the ball back home. At the same time, Fitzgerald drew national attention as he handled the investigation, which sought to uncover who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA agent.At one point in the case, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to disclose her sources. Fitzgerald took heat from conservatives who called him overzealous in attempting to notch a conviction against Libby, who had served as then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Bush commuted Libby’s 30-month sentence, and in 2017, Trump pardoned him, saying he had heard Libby was treated unfairly.In a statement at the time, Fitzgerald defended the prosecution, saying Libby “lied repeatedly and blatantly about matters at the heart of a criminal investigation concerning the disclosure of a covert intelligence officer’s identity.”Those who worked with Fitzgerald in Chicago defended him as zealously apolitical, noting he served under presidents of both parties. They held up his body of work as evidence he was no friend to those on either side of the aisle.“I worked with him for nine years. I have no idea if he’s a Republican or a Democrat, and it quite frankly never came up. He’s entirely about justice and doing the right thing,” said Eric Sussman, a defense attorney who worked as an assistant U.S. attorney under Fitzgerald.Sussman prosecuted a corruption case against onetime media baron Conrad Black, another high-profile defendant sent to prison in that era after he was convicted of diverting proceeds from his newspaper sales for his personal use. Like with Blagojevich, Trump would eventually pardon Black.“Pat really professionalized the office and made sure that everyone underneath him operated with the same professionalism, integrity and commitment to doing the right thing in Justice,” Sussman added. “That carried over not just to the attorneys in the office, but to how people in Chicago perceived him and perceived the office that he ran.”Natasha KoreckiNatasha Korecki is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
September 30, 2025
J.K. Rowling responds to Emma Watson podcast remarks
September 21, 2025
Gov. Shapiro says Trump is silencing opposing views
Comments are closed.
Scroll To Top
  • Home
  • Travel
  • Culture
  • Lifestyle
  • Sport
  • Contact Us
  • Politics
© Copyright 2025 - Be That ! . All Rights Reserved