Israel intensified its military operations in Gaza's second largest city, forcing tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee and making it more difficult to deliver aid. The UN says nearly 1.9 million people, over 80 percent of Gaza's population, have been displaced by the war. They're now crowded into small areas with the humanitarian situation worsening by the day. Amna Nawaz reports.
《After a report that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he would be willing to assume governance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted -- quote -- "Those who educate their children for terrorism, finance terrorism and support terrorist families will not be able to rule Gaza after eliminating Hamas"; 》

A gunman opened fire at UNLV and shot at least three people, the Justice Department charged four Russians with war crimes against an American living in Ukraine, Republicans are holding their fourth presidential debate and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is leaving Congress by the end of the year.
《President Biden urged Congress today to approve billions of dollars in new military and economic aid to Ukraine. The White House says the money will run out at year's end without congressional action. The president said that would be a gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin and that he would not stop with Ukraine; In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said today his government will boost its own military production and defeat Russia against all odds; The U.S. Justice Department today charged four Russians with war crimes against an American living in Ukraine. They're accused of kidnapping the man from the village where he lived with his Ukrainian wife in the spring of 2022. Then they allegedly tortured him for 10 days. The charges are largely symbolic, since the four defendants are not in U.S. custody; ケビン・マッカーシー前議長、次の選挙に不出馬表明; There's new evidence that 2023 is set to be the warmest year on record. European Union scientists report that November was the sixth month in a row to break heat marks; some of the country's biggest banks appealed to U.S. senators today to head off new regulations. The Biden administration's proposals would force the firms to keep more capital on hand. But CEOs of seven major banks argued it would curtail lending and hurt profits. They also condemned efforts to limit overdraft fees; The banks say they need flexibility in the face of inflation and higher interest rates. Regulators say this year's bank failures call for tougher rules; 》

Days of tension on Capitol Hill culminated Wednesday with Republicans rejecting a measure to move ahead on additional funding for Ukraine and Israel. GOP lawmakers insisted that aid be paired with major changes to border security. Now, the assistance for Ukraine is stalled until Congress finds a way forward. Amna Nawaz discussed the debate with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin.

This week marks the 25th anniversary of when astronauts first entered the beginnings of the International Space Station. A quarter of a century later, the station is manned by seven international crew members and has become an iconic and important part of space history. But the celebration is bittersweet as the ISS is set to be decommissioned. Geoff Bennett discussed more with Miles O’Brien.
《What would you say are the main accomplishments of the International Space Station 25 years later? MILES O'BRIEN: I would say, Geoff, it is not so much the science, as it is the partnership itself; Right now, NASA has committed to flying the station until 2030. The Russians say they want to get out a little bit sooner, but we are in the latter days of the space station era, at least the International Space Station era; One of the companies, Axiom, based in Houston, which has a lot of old NASA space station players involved in it, actually has a docking port on the current International Space Station and aims to launch a module onto the space station to get it sort of up and running; You think of the decision back in 2006, I believe it was, when Congress said NASA should not partner with the Chinese on the space station. The Chinese really wanted in... China has a space station now. It's been up and running, continuously manned now since 2021; Vladimir Putin claims Russia will build another government-run space station that it hopes to have in orbit by 2027. Remains to be seen if that's going to be real; How will NASA ensure that this giant space station doesn't become dangerous space junk and reenter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner? MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, this is the Skylab scenario, 1979. The first U.S. space station fell out of the sky in an uncontrolled manner because it was waiting for the space shuttle to come boosted and it wasn't ready to do that. And so it came down. Most of it landed in the Indian Ocean. Parts of it landed over Western Australia. It was a very controversial thing and had a lot of people scared there for a little while. What they will do in this case is build a giant space tug, maybe turning to SpaceX. We will see. Attach it to the space station, so it can be thrust down in a controlled manner into the Southern Pacific Ocean, where no one gets hurt, hopefully; 》

Just over 15 percent of American adults have gotten the latest COVID booster. Demand for the vaccine has dropped sharply since it was first introduced at the height of the pandemic. That's partly because the government's response to COVID-19 has been so politically charged. Judy Woodruff discussed that with public health experts for her series, America at a Crossroads.
《A poll out this September showed 91 percent of Democratic voters had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 66 percent of Republican voters; multiple studies show more Republican strongholds that resisted public health measures and vaccinations fared worse in terms of infection and mortality rates; there was an entire ecosystem of elected officials on the far right, together with FOX News and other news outlets. It was a predatory, organized, and deliberate disinformation campaign that convinced Americans that the vaccines didn't work or weren't safe, and they believed it, and they paid for it with their lives; Just under 1,900 children have died from COVID in the U.S. since the pandemic began; Dr. Peter Hotez worries that our experience with the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing questioning and even threatening of scientists and public health officials will thwart the U.S. response to the next health emergency; 》

White evangelical voters helped Donald Trump win the White House in 2016 and stuck by him in 2020. Political journalist Tim Alberta sought to find out why, as that support is largely inconsistent with basic Christian values. His new book, “The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory,” offers a view of how GOP politics are transforming and fracturing the church. Alberta discussed more with Geoff Bennett.
《I have talked to evangelical Trump supporters who have compared him to consequential biblical figures like David, Cyrus, Solomon to make the point that he is someone, in their view, who can effect God's will without having to manifest any Christian values whatsoeve; when Donald Trump first came along in 2015 launching his campaign for president, he was mocked widely by evangelicals when he made his famous 2 Corinthians gaffe when he was speaking at Liberty University at the beginning of 2016; You said white evangelical. And I think it's important to sort of hone in on this idea that, for the white Christian in America, they are now losing status in ways that they have never seen before, that, if you look, just statistically and demographically, 50 years ago, during the heyday of the Moral Majority, this was fundamentally a different country then than it is today. We are looking at decades-long downward trajectories in terms of the white percentage of the country, the percentage of the country that identifies as Christian, that identifies as churchgoing. And there is a sense of impending doom for a lot of these people, that the government is coming for them, that Christianity is in the crosshairs, and that we need to fight back; And, in some sense, it takes someone like Donald Trump, who's not a Christian. And because he's not a Christian, he's not beholden to Christian values, and, therefore, it makes him almost this mercenary who's willing to fight on behalf of this beleaguered population who feels under siege, and they have turned to someone like Donald Trump to do the dirty work for them; I think, in many ways, Christian nationalism is revolving around this idea that the Christian nation that we inherited from the founders, that it was an explicitly Christian nation, not just a nation informed by Judeo-Christian principles and values, but explicitly formed to be a Christian nation, that that has to be recovered, that it has to be restored; we are talking in some sense here about the T-word, theocracy. I mean, there are people in this movement, and, I would add, people who hold real power and influence in the Republican Party, people who are close to former President Donald Trump, who would certainly be advising him in a second term, who have no qualms talking about the idea of essentially demolishing the wall between church and state idea of essentially demolishing the wall between church and state; when he (= Trump) talks about how the Christian church is under siege and so is he, when he talks to these evangelical supporters of his and says, really, they, the deep state, the liberals, the secularists, they're coming after you, but first they have to get through me, and that's why I'm being charged with all these indictments. That's why they're trying to take me down, is so that they can get to you; when he pitches himself as a strongman, as a would-be authoritarian, I think in many ways what these people hear is, well, desperate times call for desperate measures, right? In other words -- and there's some polling to back this up. There's some pretty good social science just the last couple of years around this idea that, for many white conservative evangelicals who are supportive of Trump, they would gladly embrace a sort of lurch toward authoritarianism if it meant preserving what they see as a Christian America, rather than lose in a liberal democratic fashion; 》

Norman Lear, the groundbreaking TV producer and writer, died Tuesday at the age of 101. He revolutionized primetime television with a string of hits, dominating the airwaves in the 70s and 80s, and showcased political and social issues of the day in a way not done before. Rob Reiner, one of the stars of "All in the Family," joined Jeffrey Brown to discuss Lear's legacy.
《Norman Lear(1922-2023); you're talking about a man who flew 57 bombing missions over Nazi Germany during World War II. So, the fights that he had with censors and with the executives, that was small potatoes; 》