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Trump’s new warning to Hamas to disarm

admin - Latest News - October 15, 2025
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Families of hostages released as part of President Trump’s peace deal described torture and starvation at the hands of their Hamas captors. NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas reports. 



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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.
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November 9, 2025
Nov. 9, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Jonathan AllenIt’s not in President Donald Trump’s nature to accentuate the negative — at least not when it comes to his own performance or plans — and in the current moment, that has put him at risk of sounding out of touch with Americans who are struggling to make ends meet.“We had the greatest economy in the history of our country,” Trump said of his first term in an interview with Norah O’Donnell for CBS’ “60 Minutes” a week ago. “But my second term is blowing it away.”Two days later, voters blew away Republican candidates up and down the ballot in Virginia and New Jersey, results that reinforced NBC News polling showing that the vast majority of voters — about two-thirds — think the president hasn’t lived up to his promises to curb inflation and improve the economy. The common watchword for Democratic candidates who won on Tuesday — both progressives and centrists — was “affordability.”Look no further than Trump’s predecessor to see the peril for the president. Early in his single term, President Joe Biden ignored inflation, then his administration dismissed it as a “transitory” effect of government spending during the Covid-19 pandemic, before scrambling to minimize the political fallout of losing trust with the public.For Trump, who has described himself as a “cheerleader” for the country, his handling of the substance and messaging around affordability amounts to a bet that he’s on the right track — and can prove it quickly — even if most American voters don’t see it that way right now. Biden thought the same.“Trump has an enormous gamble,” said Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and a Trump ally. He is betting that his economic policies — including tariffs, tax cuts and investments in the U.S. — will combine to create a “boom of extraordinary proportions” by next summer, Gingrich said in an interview.“If that’s true, Republicans are going to have a very good 2026,” Gingrich said of next year’s midterm elections. “If it’s not true, Republicans are going to have a very tough 2026.”Like Trump, Biden argued that the broader economy was strong, even as taxpayers suffered. And like Trump, Biden watched his party’s fortunes change at the ballot box a year after his own election.“As our economy has come roaring back, we’ve seen some price increases,” Biden said in July 2021. “Some folks have raised worries that this could be a sign of persistent inflation. But that is not our view. Our experts believe, and the data shows, that most of the price increases we’ve seen are expected to be temporary.”Trump hosts Gatsby-inspired Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago00:33In November of that year, 12 months after Biden won Virginia over Trump by 10 percentage points, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the state’s governorship by 2 percentage points. On Tuesday, Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, won Virginia by about 15 percentage points. NBC News exit polls showed that the economy was the top issue for 48% of voters — more than double the 21% who picked health care, which was the second-highest-ranking topic.Trump, who is collecting hundreds of millions of private dollars to build a White House ballroom and who hosted a “Great Gatsby”-themed Halloween party in the middle of the ongoing government shutdown, said this week that the costs of everyday life are not something he wants to address.“The reason I don’t want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was under ‘Sleepy Joe Biden,’ and the prices are way down,” he said of his predecessor in remarks to reporters last week.Trump is frustrated because he doesn’t believe he’s getting the credit he deserves for efforts to bring down prices, said one senior White House official who conceded that the administration is not doing a good enough job of communicating on affordability.Kornacki: How Mikie Sherrill swept New Jersey despite Trump’s 2024 gains15:16It’s clear that other Republicans are taking a cue from voters. In announcing her bid for governor of New York on Friday, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik put the issue of affordability front and center. Rather than blame Trump, with whom she is close, Stefanik drew a bead on Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is seeking re-election.“The No. 1 issue is affordability,” Stefanik said in an interview with WHAM radio’s Bob Lonsberry. “New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation because of Kathy Hochul’s leadership.”And even if Trump won’t acknowledge it, his aides say that the White House is paying attention to the squeeze that families across the country say they’re feeling.“The president is very keyed in to what’s going on, and he recognizes, like anybody, that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there, and I think you’ll see him be very, very focused on prices and cost of living,” White House deputy chief of staff James Blair told Politico.But that, too, presents a messaging challenge for Trump, who is presiding over consumer prices that rose 3% in the 12 months ending at the close of September. He has the biggest megaphone in the country, and his own words — which sound a lot like Biden’s — may drown out anything his aides say.Many Democrats who served in the Biden White House remember a president who disagreed with voters on the strength of the economy and paid a price for failing to acknowledge the sentiments of the electorate.“The economic statistics may be great, and in President Biden’s case they were,” Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod said in an exchange of text messages. “But when prices are too high and the messenger keeps saying ‘No, you’re wrong, the economy is actually fantastic,’ the messenger starts to lose credibility with voters.”Elrod, who worked for Biden on the campaign trail and in the White House, said Trump is making the same mistakes as Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who took his place at the top of the Democratic ticket in 2024.“You have to meet the voters where they are — never forget President Clinton’s effective use of the line ‘I feel your pain,’” she said. “Our failure to do that in 2024 is ultimately one of the reasons we lost the presidential election, and Trump’s failure to do that now is one of the reasons he is perpetually under water with voters on the economy.”Jonathan AllenJonathan Allen is a senior national politics reporter for NBC News. Peter Nicholas and Monica Alba contributed.
November 26, 2025
Nov. 25, 2025, 11:10 PM ESTBy Gary Grumbach and Raquel Coronell UribeThe Justice Department said Tuesday that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was the Trump administration official behind the decision not to comply with a federal judge’s order to halt the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.In a court filing, the Justice Department said administration officials conveyed U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s March 15 oral order to return alleged Venezuelan members of the Tren de Aragua gang to the United States, as well as the subsequent written order the same day that blocked the federal government from removing members subject to the Alien Enemies Act under President Donald Trump’s invocation of the 18th century law.The filing said Justice Department officials relayed the order and provided legal advice to the acting general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, who conveyed that advice, as well as his own, to Noem. Noem then decided that detainees under the Alien Enemies Act who were removed from the United States before the court’s order could be transferred to El Salvador.A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Justice Department filing Tuesday night.Judge finds probable cause to hold Trump administration in contempt over deportation flights03:29The filing, which came 255 days after 261 people were loaded onto three planes in the United States bound for El Salvador, reveals for the first time who in the Trump administration was responsible for making the final decision. It comes as Boasberg said he wanted to revive criminal contempt proceedings against administration officials who authorized the deportation flights.The Justice Department’s disclosure is an attempt to provide Boasberg with information he has requested for months in an effort to avoid high-ranking officials’ being ordered to publicly testify about their actions that day.Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 3.Saul Loeb / AFP – Getty Images fileBoasberg barred the administration from deporting alleged Tren de Aragua members using the wartime Alien Enemies Act in March, saying the deportees most likely did not receive due process. The administration executed flights carrying deportees under the act anyway.The Justice Department has argued that Boasberg’s written injunction halting the deportations had no bearing on those already removed from the country. In the filing Tuesday, the administration maintained that its decision was “lawful” and “consistent with a reasonable interpretation of the court’s order.”The decision to authorize the flights came amid the administration’s early showdown with judges who ruled against some of Trump’s policies and tactics.In April, the Supreme Court threw out Boasberg’s decision while still saying detainees must receive due process. That approach to due process has continued in other courts.A whistleblower alleged in June that former Principal Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove — who the court said Tuesday was one of the Justice Department officials who provided DHS with legal advice — had told subordinates they would need to consider ignoring court orders. Bove denied the accusations during Senate confirmation hearings for his nomination to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order,” he said.The whistleblower is one of the people Boasberg indicated he intends to hear testimony from in any contempt proceedings.The Trump administration is seeking a final ruling from Boasberg on the issue, and it could appeal after that. But Boasberg is pushing to get to the bottom of what happened on March 15 and why his orders weren’t followed. An appeals court allowed him to continue with contempt proceedings this month.Plaintiffs want to put at least nine past or present Trump administration officials on the witness stand for a contempt hearing.The list of potential witnesses includes Bove, a 3rd Circuit appeals judge; whistleblower Erez Reuveni, formerly acting deputy director of the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation; and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign, whom the Justice Department filing pointed to Tuesday as having conveyed Boasberg’s oral and written orders to DHS.Gary GrumbachGary Grumbach is an NBC News legal affairs reporter, based in Washington, D.C.Raquel Coronell UribeRaquel Coronell Uribe is a breaking news reporter. 
September 26, 2025
Sept. 26, 2025, 5:43 AM EDTBy Chantal Da SilvaIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will make his case to the world on Friday, addressing an international community from which his country faces mounting pressure and isolation over its devastating assault on Gaza.Netanyahu took an unusual route to his annual speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, his flight path appearing to avoid countries that could enforce an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Gaza. He is also expected to meet with President Donald Trump, who on Thursday said he would not allow the close U.S. ally to annex the already occupied West Bank in retaliation for the wave of countries that have recognized a Palestinian state.Palestinians flee south on Thursday, amid Israel’s intensified attacks on the Gaza Strip.Ali Jadallah / Anadolu via Getty ImagesNetanyahu said he planned to “speak our truth — the truth about the citizens of Israel, the truth about our IDF soldiers and the truth about our country,” The Times of Israel reported.He said he also planned to “denounce” the growing list of Western countries that have officially recognized Palestine as a state in response to his intensifying military campaign. Israeli forces have ramped up their assault on famine-stricken Gaza City, forcing the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people while others stay put under near-daily deadly strikes. Israeli soldiers work on a self-propelled artillery Howitzer at the border with Gaza.Jack Guez / AFP via Getty ImagesAn Israeli soldier watches as Palestinian schoolgirls make their way to school in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, on Sept. 8.Hazek Bader / AFP via Getty ImagesIt also comes after Trump issued a firm warning that he would not allow the Israeli leader’s government to annex the West Bank if it tried to push ahead with a plan that would draw new global outrage. “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. No, I will not allow it. It’s not going to happen,” Trump told reporters, having earlier privately assured Arab leaders on the subject.Asked whether he had discussed the issue with Netanyahu, Trump said, “Whether I spoke to him or not, I did, but I’m not allowing Israel to annex the West Bank.””There’s been enough. It’s time to stop now,” he said. ‘A glimmer of hope’: Palestinians react to statehood recognition01:34Trump issued the rare admonishment after far-right members of Netanyahu’s fragile government coalition called for the move.Palestinians envision the West Bank as a key territory for an internationally recognized Palestinian state, alongside Gaza and east Jerusalem. Annexation of the territory, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967, would further imperil that cause.Trump also presented his 21-point plan for peace to Arab leaders, with his special envoy Steve Witkoff saying the meeting was “productive” and that a breakthrough could be imminent. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was also among the leaders to address UNGA, though he was forced to deliver his address by video after the U.S. last month revoked his visa, along with those of other Palestinian Authority officials.Smoke rises following Israeli attacks on the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City, on Thursday.Khames Alrefi / Anadolu via Getty ImagesIn his video address, Abbas said Palestinians in Gaza “have been facing a war of genocide, destruction, starvation and displacement” by Israel, adding that “despite all what our people have suffered, we reject what Hamas carried out on the 7th of October.”Abbas said Hamas would have “no role to play in governance” in the future he envisioned for Gaza. That future is at stake in peace talks, and Netanyahu will address world leaders while under pressure not just from his closest ally and his ministers but from the families of hostages still held in Gaza. The Israeli leader has thus far defied their protests calling for him to strike a deal to end the war and free their loved ones.Chantal Da SilvaChantal Da Silva reports on world news for NBC News Digital and is based in London.
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