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Welcome to the online edition of From the Politics Desk, an evening email that provides you with the most recent coverage and commentary from the campaign trail, Capitol Hill, and the White House by the NBC News Politics team. In today's broadcast, a veteran national political reporter discusses the mistakes made by Democrats in the 2024 election with the newly appointed 35-year-old chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Jonathan Allen, a senior national political writer, also explains why Pete Hegseth has a very difficult road ahead of him in his bid to become the next defense secretary. Register here to get this newsletter delivered to your inbox each daily. Where House progressives new leader thinks Democrats went wrong By Sahil Kapur Rep. Greg Casar of Texas, the rec...

WASHINGTON — On Thursday, members of the House are scheduled to vote on whether to require the Ethics Committee to make public the findings of a thorough, multi-year investigation into former Representative Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. For the second time, the bipartisan Ethics panel convened in secret on Thursday to debate whether to release the findings on Gaetz's alleged sexual misbehavior with a 17-year-old girl, illegal drug usage, obstruction of the House investigation, and other charges. However, the panel could not seem to reach a consensus, stating in a post-meeting statement that it is "continuing to discuss the matter." Some Senate Republicans privately stated that they would not vote to approve Gaetz as President-elect Donald Trump's attorney general because he refuted the accusations. O...

Jerusalem Many Israelis are not surprised that the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbolla in Lebanon appeared to be about to end this week. The ceasefire agreement from last week was allegedly broken by both parties. At least ten people were killed by Israeli strikes on two villages in southern Lebanon on Monday night, according to the country's Health Ministry. That followed an earlier attack by Hezbollah on Israeli military installations in the contested Shebaa Farms, which the terrorist organization claimed was a retribution for many violations of the ceasefire. Although Israel claims to have succeeded in its military objectives of weakening Hezbollah, the ceasefire that went into effect on November 27 did not, in its opinion, address a significant systemic problem: How to ensure that ...

Washington Conservative activist Vivek Ramaswamy and tech billionaire Elon Musk started discussing ways to cut federal spending and regulations once President-elect Donald Trump takes office in person with congressional Republicans on Thursday. Trump has given Musk and Ramaswamy the responsibility of making recommendations to restructure the federal budget and bureaucracy. While many Republicans claim to support this objective, presidents and congresses of both parties, as well as divided government, have consistently fallen short of it. Musk and Ramaswamy visited Capitol Hill to speak with members of the House and Senate. Since Trump appointed them as outside advisers to lead a commission known as the Department of Government Efficiency, this was their first trip of this kind. DOGE is a...

The goal of this tracker is to continuously identify and contextualize shootings in all kinds of schools across the United States, from kindergarten to college. The part of planned school shootings where an active shooter intentionally kills, maims, or injures at least one student or faculty member during class or at a school function is the focus of the tracker.See below for the FBI's definition of an active shooter as well as the complete NBC News criteria for school shootings. Why we are doing this In the immediate aftermath of any significant school shooting in the United States, the national discourse recounts the number of similar instances that had occurred in the same year. Depending on the news outlet and how it defines a school shooting, the terrifying figures that are dissemi...

The Summary NASA's next Artemis mission, which will send four astronauts around the moon, is delayed until 2026, the agency announced. The delay also pushes back the expected timeline of a subsequent Artemis mission to land astronauts on the lunar surface. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that under the new timeline, the U.S. will still be on track to put astronauts on the moon before China does. In a program that is already years behind schedule and billions over budget, NASA announced Thursday that the next Artemis mission, which would send four humans on a journey around the moon, will be postponed until 2026. NASA said in January that the Artemis II mission would launch in September 2025 rather than late 2024. The space agency now claims that in order to give itsel...

When it comes to selecting socks, I usually take a Goldilocks-esque approach. I wear crew socks almost exclusively, and they must all fit certain requirements. They can't be too thick or too thin, or they can't have that painful, bumpy seam at the end around the toes that some socks always have. Additionally, they must endure several washings, just like the majority of clothing. This indicates almost no tearing, warping, or pilling around the big toe region. The answer for me has always been Uniqlo's Colorful 50 Socks, or at least for the past five years. Even though I'm often tempted to check out more expensive options from companies like BombasorSmartwool, I always end up going back to Uniqlo since their socks are so reasonably priced, very comfy, and remarkably soft. They're also almost...

In protest of a proposed rule that would forbid the nation's first openly trans member of Congress from using the women's toilets in the Capitol, more than two dozen transgender individuals and their supporters conducted a sit-in at a lavatory on Thursday. According to Brianna Burch, a spokesman for the U.S. Capitol Police, roughly 15 of the 25 protesters were arrested for unlawfully demonstrating within a government building in violation of a statute governing crowding and obstruction in Washington, D.C. In protest of House Speaker Mike Johnson's support for a policy introduced last month by Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., that advocates claim was meant to prevent Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, D-Del., from using the Capitol's women's restrooms, activists staged a sit-in protest both inside and outsi...

In what at least one scholar is describing as a concerning indication of radicalization among certain elements of the American populace, tens of thousands of people have shown support or sympathy for the death of UnitedHealthcare's CEO on social media. People sometimes question why we want these execs dead, because they wroteA few hours after the CEO, 50-year-old Brian Thompson, was shot dead in Manhattan by a man brandishing a silenced pistol, Taylor Lorenz, a former journalist for the New York Times and Washington Post, wrote a post on BlueSky. Lorenz later added, "No, that doesn't mean people should murder them," in response to criticism. Within hours following the murder, Rutgers University's Network Contagion Research Institute found thousands of posts that were identical. More than 8...

When the Los Angeles Lakers signed former shooter J.J. Redick as their new coach in the offseason, there was optimism that he would be able to maximize the worth of a group that was mismatched and only advanced five games in the previous season's playoffs. The Lakers were apparently counting on Redick to boost a club that hasn't won a conference finals game since 2020, the last time it seemed like Los Angeles was a real title threat, following a quiet summer in terms of deals and signings. Rather, following Wednesday's 134-93 thrashing at the hands of the Miami Heat, the Lakers appear to be as far from a title as they were under the previous administration, with about a quarter of the NBA season left. And one of these issues is particularly startling. Los Angeles finished the previous seas...