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Israel celebrates ceasefire deal ahead of Trump visit

admin - Latest News - October 12, 2025
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President Trump departed for the Middle East ahead of the release of 20 living hostages held in Gaza. NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, reports from Tel Aviv on the Israeli reaction to the ceasefire deal.



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Oct. 12, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Lawrence HurleyWASHINGTON — The way Louisiana’s Republican leaders put it, the pervasive racial discrimination in elections that led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is all in the past.That is why they are now urging the Supreme Court, in a case being argued on Wednesday, to bar states from using any consideration of race when drawing legislative districts, gutting a key plank of the law that was designed to ensure Black voters would have a chance of electing their preferred candidates.Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told NBC News that the Voting Rights Act was designed to address blatantly discriminatory policies and practices that prevented Black people and other minorities from voting decades ago.“I think the question now is, have we gotten to a point where those obstacles really don’t exist anymore?” she said. “I don’t think they exist in Louisiana,” she added.At issue is a congressional district map that Louisiana grudgingly redrew last year after being sued under the Voting Rights Act to ensure that there were two majority-Black districts. The original map only had one in a state where a third of the population is Black, according to the U.S. census.The state’s new legal argument, which may appeal to a conservative-majority Supreme Court, is that drawing a map to ensure majority-Black districts violates the Constitution’s 14th and 15th Amendments, which were both enacted after the Civil War to ensure former slaves had equal rights under the law, including the right to vote.Supreme Court appears skeptical of LGBTQ conversion therapy bans04:02Conservatives say those amendments bar any consideration of race at any time, and the Supreme Court has previously embraced this “colorblind” interpretation of the Constitution.Civil rights activists say that approach makes a mockery of both the post-Civil War amendments and the Voting Rights Act, not to mention their experience on the ground in Louisiana.Press Robinson, who is one of the plaintiffs who challenged Louisiana’s original congressional map, said he had to sue in 1974 just so he could take his place as an elected official on the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board.“Has Louisiana really changed? I don’t see it,” he told reporters on a recent call.The issue reaches the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, just two years after it surprisingly rejected a similar bid to weaken the Voting Rights Act in another redistricting case.The court, however, has struck blows against the law in other rulings in 2013 and 2021.In the 2023 case, the court rejected a Republican-drawn congressional map in Alabama on the grounds that it discriminated against Black voters, leading to a new map being drawn that included two majority-Black districts.The vote was 5-4, with two conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joining the court’s three liberals in the majority. Four other conservatives dissented.In Wednesday’s oral argument, Kavanaugh will be a focus of attention, in part because of what he said in his separate concurring opinion in the Alabama case.Although Kavanaugh voted with the majority, he expressed some sympathy for the argument that even if race could at one point be considered as a factor in ensuring compliance with the Voting Rights Act, it no longer can be.But, he added, “Alabama did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time.”Now, piggybacking on Kavanaugh’s opinion, Louisiana’s lawyers eagerly embrace the argument Alabama did not make.Among other things, Louisiana points to the court’s 2023 ruling that ended the consideration of race in college admissions, which was issued just three weeks after the Alabama voting rights ruling.Chris Kieser, a lawyer at the right-leaning Pacific Legal Foundation, which supports Louisiana in the case, said in an interview that the upshot of a ruling in the state’s favor is that there could be no obligation to ever intentionally draw majority-Black districts.“Districts should not be drawn based on the expected race of the — whoever is going to be the member of Congress representing it,” he said.That could lead to a decline in the number of legislators at the national and state level who are Black or Latino.In that scenario, minority voters would still be able to bring separate racial gerrymandering claims under the Constitution if there is obvious racial discrimination, Kieser argued, although such cases are difficult to win.Depending on what the court does, the provision of the Voting Rights Act in question, known as Section 2, could survive in limited form.A ruling that leads to a reduction in majority-Black and other minority districts would have a partisan impact that could favor Republicans, as Black voters historically favor Democrats. If the court rules quickly, there is even a chance that new maps could be drawn ahead of the hotly contested 2026 midterm elections.The case has a convoluted history, arising from litigation over the earlier map drawn by the state Legislature after the 2020 census that included one Black-majority district out of the state’s six districts.The state drew the current map in order to comply with that ruling, but was then sued by a group of self-identified “non-African American” voters who argued that in seeking to comply with the Voting Rights Act, the state had violated the Constitution.The Supreme Court originally heard the current case earlier this year on a narrower set of legal issues but, in an unusual move, asked in June for the parties to reargue it. Over the summer, the court then raised the stakes by asking the lawyers to focus on the constitutional issue.As a result of that complicated background, the various briefs filed in the case — including one submitted by the Trump administration in support of Louisiana — make a number of different legal arguments.That makes it difficult to know ahead of Wednesday’s oral argument what the justices will focus on, said Sophia Lin Lakin, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union who is part of the legal team defending the latest Louisiana map.“It is so strange. Normally, we would always understand the question we are trying to answer,” she said.Lin Lakin does not think the case should be used as the vehicle for a “full-on assault” on the Voting Rights Act.But, she conceded, “there is some risk the way that’s being presented that the court may be interested in that bigger question.”Lawrence HurleyLawrence Hurley is a senior Supreme Court reporter for NBC News.
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Nov. 29, 2025, 7:42 AM EST / Updated Nov. 29, 2025, 2:57 PM ESTBy Freddie ClaytonJust as peace talks were gaining traction, Ukraine has lost its lead negotiator.Andriy Yermak, an ever-present figure at President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s side throughout the war with Russia, resigned as chief of staff on Friday after an anti-corruption raid at his home, injecting fresh uncertainty for Ukraine’s leadership.The exit leaves a vacuum around Zelenskyy as talks accelerate, isolating the Ukrainian president at a critical moment and creating an opening Moscow may try to exploit, analysts say.Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and his chief of staff Andriy Yermak in Madrid on Nov. 18.Oscar Del Pozo / AFP – Getty ImagesThe development capped a dramatic week, which began with Kyiv under intense pressure from President Donald Trump to endorse a plan that aligned with Moscow’s hard-line demands. An initial deadline of Thursday, imposed by the White House, passed without any announcement as Ukraine and its allies pushed back against calls for the country to cede territory.Ukrainian negotiators, led by Yermak, secured changes, and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will now head to Moscow for talks next week with Russian President Vladimir Putin.Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that Russia still wants to move toward peace despite its belief that Zelenskyy was not a legitimate leader.Putin says he’s ready for ‘serious’ talks to end war in Ukraine00:29But analysts warn that Yermak’s departure leaves Kyiv navigating unfamiliar waters, as Zelenskyy is forced to steer Ukraine through high-stakes negotiations without his most trusted aide.Yermak’s resignation comes at a “very bad time, because we’re really at a possible tipping point where you know what Ukraine is demanding may not be granted or taken into consideration,” Michael Bociurkiw, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, told NBC News by phone on Saturday.“None of us really know what Zelenskyy is like operating solo, because he never has,” he said, adding that Yermak has “basically stood in” for Zelenskyy at times.Rustem Umerov, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, will lead Ukraine’s delegation for a round of talks in the U.S. on Sunday, Zelenskyy said in a post on X. Umerov has also been mentioned by anti-corruption investigators. Neither he nor Yermak have faced charges.Bociurkiw added that Yermak’s departure would be unlikely to change Ukraine’s firm stance on territorial concessions, but that Russia “will try to manipulate and take advantage of this vacuum.”Secretary Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner will attend Sunday talks, a U.S. official tells NBC News. Michael A. Horowitz, a Jerusalem-based geopolitical consultant, echoed Bociurkiw’s concerns, saying that Yermak’s resignation, just days before major U.S.-Ukraine-Russia talks and a potential Trump-Putin summit, “disrupts Kyiv’s preparations and invites counterparts to probe whether Ukraine’s red lines on territory and NATO can be eased during the transition.”But in the long term, Horowitz told NBC News on Saturday, Yermak’s departure could even be a positive.Critics have said for years that Yermak had accumulated too much power and wielded excessive influence over Zelenskyy. A constant presence by the president’s side through the ups and downs of the war, Yermak had emerged as one of the few men that the Ukrainian leader appeared to really trust.Zelenskyy has previously railed against corrupt officials, but signs that a corruption scandal may have stretched into his inner circle may provide more ammunition to critics of further support for Ukraine. Trump-aligned figures, including Vice President JD Vance, have previously criticized Ukraine for its issues with corruption.Yermak’s departure may “reinforce skepticism within the Trump administration” about Zelenskyy’s inner circle, giving them further reasons to push for concessions, said Natia Seskuria, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.But Horowitz said the resignation “removes a lightning rod for controversy and gives Kyiv a cleaner, more collective mandate to say no to an unfair and unsustainable peace,” adding: “Zelenskyy is getting his house in order.”When it comes to how the rule of law is being enforced in Ukraine, “generally this is a good sign,” said Moritz Brake, a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies.“Of course, it’s bad enough that these accusations existed in the first place,” he added, but “even those in the highest places are prosecuted when suspicions arise.”Zelenskyy said in a video statement on Friday that he was looking for Yermak’s replacement. “Russia really wants Ukraine to make mistakes,” he said. “There will be no mistakes on our part.”Losing unity could mean losing the country and its future, he added.But Bociurkiw said time is “not on Ukraine’s side right now.”If you’re Ukraine at the moment, he added, “you need not only a physical army, but an army of diplomats and advocates.”Freddie ClaytonFreddie Clayton is a freelance journalist based in London. 
October 6, 2025
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Oct. 2, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Berkeley Lovelace Jr.Your Medicare, Medicaid or Affordable Care Act coverage won’t vanish during the government shutdown, but changes to some benefits and fewer government workers to help could still disrupt care for millions.At the heart of the shutdown fight is whether Republican leaders accept a demand from Democrats to extend Obamacare subsidies before they expire at the end of the year and premiums start skyrocketing. Democrats also sought to undo President Donald Trump’s Medicaid cuts, but the GOP has shown no interest.Fortunately for everyday people, core programs like Medicare and Medicaid will keep running because their funding is built into law. But a popular Medicare benefit — telehealth — has already ended for many, and so-called discretionary programs, such as Community Health Centers (CHCs), may be at risk unless Congress acts soon.More than 167 million people — roughly half the U.S. population, according to data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — are covered by the programs.Here’s what the shutdown means for health care coverage:Medicare and telehealth One of the first casualties of the shutdown are telehealth services offered to people on Medicare. A pandemic-era rule that let Medicare patients see doctors from home — not just rural clinics — and expanded which providers were covered expired Tuesday, cutting off access to many homebound seniors. The service will remain expired unless Congress includes funding in a coming spending bill. That means telehealth coverage will revert to pre-pandemic rules, under which it was largely limited to people living in rural areas, said Alex Cottrill, a senior policy analyst at KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group. The policy had a few exceptions, which allowed coverage for people on home dialysis or those who experienced strokes.More than 6.7 million older adults got care through telehealth services last year.Joseph Furtado, the president of the Arizona Association for Home Care, which advocates for telehealth, said he will continue to see patients for now, with the risk of not getting reimbursed if Congress decides not to extend funding. Other providers may not take that risk and turn patients away, he said.“Telehealth is not a convenience thing,” he said. “This is Grandma can’t get out of the house. This is Grandma just came home from the hospital and she can’t get out to see her doctor. You don’t want to go to the doctor when you come home, and it’s dangerous sometimes to do that.” In the near term, Medicare coverage more broadly will continue during the shutdown, meaning patients will be able to see their doctors and other health care providers — albeit most likely in person, Cottrill said. “Because Medicare is categorized as a mandatory program, its funding doesn’t require annual approval from Congress, and Medicare-covered services will still be available during the shutdown,” he said.Patients may have longer wait times when they call Medicare, Cottrill said, and providers might experience some delays in payments due to some agency workers’ being furloughed.MedicaidCoverage for people enrolled in Medicaid — which is jointly funded by states and the federal government — will also continue throughout the rest of this year and some of next year, according to CMS.In a statement on its website, CMS said it “will have sufficient funding for Medicaid to fund the first quarter of FY [fiscal year] 2026.”Art Caplan, the head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, said it’s very likely that the agency will get additional funding by then.It’s slim chances the shutdown “would last that long,” he said. Coverage for the Children’s Health Insurance Program — which provides health care coverage to children and pregnant women in families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid — will also remain. “CMS will maintain the staff necessary to make payments to eligible states for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP),” the agency said. Obamacare subsidiesPeople will still be able to get coverage through their ACA plans, too. But there could be consequences, Caplan said, if Congress decides not to extend the ACA enhanced subsidies in the coming bill, the sticking point for Democrats who want to see the subsidies continue.The enhanced subsidies were enacted in the 2021 American Rescue Plan, which made ACA plans affordable for many middle-class families. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 extended the subsidies through 2025. Without the subsidies, out-of-pocket premiums could grow by as much as 114% next year, according to a KFF analysis.When ACA open enrollment begins Nov. 1, families could face sticker shock, Caplan said. And even if Congress restores the subsidies later in the year, some people may decide not to sign up, believing costs will stay high. “If they don’t do something in 30 days, people are going to see big jumps in their health insurance,” Caplan said.There could be a major political risk to Republicans and Trump if they don’t extend them, he added.“These are not people desperately poor. These are often people who are in the working class, who use the subsidy to get access to health care when it doesn’t come through their job,” he said. “I think they’ve been somewhat supportive of Trump and MAGA, and they will not be happy to see that jump.”Local health clinics The effects on public health will be “substantial” if the shutdown lasts several weeks, said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.“Many functions of CDC will be affected, such as disease surveillance and funding for states and local health departments,” Gostin said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides support for tracking respiratory diseases, like Covid and the flu, and provides grants to states, including for chronic disease prevention and vaccine programs. Funding for federal qualified health centers has already expired with the shutdown. But the clinics are unlikely to be affected, at least for the time being, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers.Those centers “should not experience an immediate disruption in funding,” Amy Simmons, an NACHC spokeswoman, wrote in an email. Simmons said the group has been in contact with the Health Resources and Services Administration, where officials said there is enough money set aside “to maintain CHC operations and staffing while government services are paused.” The number of people seeking care at community health centers has reached its highest in decades, Simmons said, at up to 52 million.Emergency services such as those provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency may be reduced or delayed, Gostin said, as well as funds for ongoing and new biomedical research.“The longer the shutdown goes on, the greater the risks to public health,” he said. “The shutdown has lifesaving impacts on America’s most vulnerable citizens.”Berkeley Lovelace Jr.Berkeley Lovelace Jr. is a health and medical reporter for NBC News. He covers the Food and Drug Administration, with a special focus on Covid vaccines, prescription drug pricing and health care. He previously covered the biotech and pharmaceutical industry with CNBC.Erika Edwards contributed.
November 8, 2025
Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleNov. 8, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Mithil AggarwalNEW DELHI — When the weight loss drug Mounjaro came on the market in India earlier this year, Shyamanthak Kiran was one of the first patients to try it.Kiran, a 27-year-old financial trader who has struggled with hypothyroidism, said he “did not have a lot of expectations” when it came to losing weight. But “luck turned out in my favor,” he said, and in six months he lost all of the 60-plus pounds he had gained a few years earlier.“It was a two-year struggle that came to an end, and I couldn’t be happier,” he told NBC News.Indians trying to lose weight are embracing drugs such as Mounjaro, which is also used to treat diabetes in a country that has been called the world’s diabetes capital. The injectable medication from American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly has become India’s most popular drug by value since being approved in March, with over $11 million in sales in October, pharmaceutical market research firm Pharmarack said Friday.Mounjaro is an injectable medication used to treat diabetes. Saumya Khandelwal for NBC NewsEven before India’s more recent approval of Ozempic, another drug that is widely used for weight loss in the United States and other countries, there was already surging demand in the country for semaglutide, its active ingredient.Ozempic’s Danish drugmaker, Novo Nordisk, says it is “actively working” to widen the availability of the drug, which Indian regulators have approved for diabetes but not obesity. The company also makes other semaglutide drugs that are already used for weight loss in India, including Wegovy, an injectable, and Rybelsus, which is taken orally.Demand could grow even further when the patent for Ozempic’s active ingredient, semaglutide, expires next March in India, a pharmaceutical manufacturing giant where companies are eager to produce cheaper generic versions of the lucrative weight-loss drugs.The exploding popularity of the drugs has taken aback some doctors and officials, with Jitendra Singh, a government minister and physician, warning in August against the “unchecked spread of disinformation” through “fad regimens” and emphasizing the importance of lifestyle interventions such as regular yoga practice.Semaglutide and tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Mounjaro, are GLP-1 agonists that were first developed to treat diabetes and have also been approved in many countries for the treatment of obesity. They regulate blood sugar and help slow how quickly food passes through the stomach, curbing hunger as a result.India, the world’s most populous country, has over 100 million people with diabetes, or nearly 10% of its adult population, according to a 2023 study by the Indian Council of Medical Research. An additional 135 million people are prediabetic, the study found.Diabetes information displayed on the walls of a clinic in New Delhi last month.Saumya Khandelwal for NBC NewsDoctors say the situation is worsening as India’s burgeoning middle class adopts a more Western lifestyle, eating more high-fat, high-sugar foods and exercising less.“Compared to, say, a decade ago, there are more people now in their late 20s and early 30s who are being diagnosed with diabetes, as compared to the elderly population,” said Dr. Saurav Shishir Agrawal, an endocrinologist in Noida, which is part of Delhi’s capital region.“They ask us to just give them pills,” Agrawal said, “but these medicines work better only when you are clubbing them with lifestyle changes.”Agrawal practices at the newly built Medanta Hospital, where staff greet patients with a gentle “Namaste.” It is an example of the growing number of modern and high-end hospitals popping up around increasingly dense megacities such as Delhi, home to 33 million people, where diabetes has a greater hold.Saurav Agrawal, an endocrinologist at Medanta Hospital in Noida, India.Saumya Khandelwal for NBC NewsA monthly course of Mounjaro can cost as much as $250, the average monthly salary in many parts of India. But for more affluent Indians, a bigger deterrent is the idea of injecting themselves, said Dr. Tribhuvan Gulati, an endocrinologist.“People get scared whenever you tell them that they’re going to be on an injectable,” said Gulati, who has a clinic in central Delhi.Gulati keeps a demo pen of Mounjaro in a drawer to show how easy it is to use the medicine, which just needs to be refrigerated before use.But the ease of use is also what worries Gulati and other doctors, who say many patients fail to overhaul the lifestyle and dietary habits causing or contributing to their health issues in the first place.“If you look at the causes of obesity in India, it is 90% lifestyle and 10% anything else,” said Dr. Anoop Misra, chairman of the Fortis Centre for Diabetes, Obesity and Cholesterol and head of India’s National Diabetes Obesity and Cholesterol Foundation.“The diet now is totally imbalanced because of free availability of food everywhere,” he said.The potential gastrointestinal and other side effects from the weight-loss drugs, which in the U.S. have prompted multiple lawsuits against GLP-1 makers, give some patients pause, Gulati said. But others “are OK with continuing it throughout their life because they know that they won’t be able to control themselves.”A handbook about managing diabetes at a clinic in New Delhi.Saumya Khandelwal for NBC NewsDiabetic patients such as Moinak Pal, who has high insulin resistance, say that GLP-1 drugs have been the easiest way to lose weight.“I have been fat-shamed since I was a child,” said Pal, 34, a Noida-based journalist. He said he has been losing about 3 pounds a week since he started taking Mounjaro.It was “extremely difficult for me to lose weight by conventional means,” he said.Part of the problem, Misra said, is the lifestyle in India’s sprawling and congested urban areas, where commutes can last as long as four hours round-trip. When workers get home, apps can deliver everything from food to clothes to their doorsteps in minutes.“They want quick fixes that don’t involve going on a restrictive diet or daily exercise of an hour and so on,” he said of some of his patients. “As a result, diabetes is everywhere. Every day I see patients who are young, who have uncontrolled Type 2 diabetes.”Rajendra Nath Dixit blames nobody but himself for his health problems. The retired banker had heart bypass surgery earlier this year, and before that had been spending almost 8,000 rupees ($90) a month just on his insulin.“I was fond of taking the typical Indian oily foods, samosas, chole bhature, and in the evening I would take five or six rotis,” said Dixit, 66. “Every bad habit was there.”In the five months since his surgery, Dixit has switched over completely to the oral semaglutide Rybelsus, is exercising more and is consuming less fat and sugar. He is spending 11,000 rupees ($125) a month on Rybelsus, but has been able to stop using insulin.“I’m feeling very good, very light,” he said. “My confidence has gone up, and my life has totally changed.”Mithil AggarwalMithil Aggarwal is a Hong Kong-based reporter/producer for NBC News.
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