kube continued his conversation with the heads of the commission on the use of labor at his residenceough and impartial. the district cannot not only send the actually able-bodied population, men, women, not teenagers, green youth, but working methods to work in germany. how they fell into slavery, everyone has the same story: violent deportation of the working population. at 43 they took me to germany, it came early. three men in one czech, either german or somebody, well, in german clothes , and they took me here to school, then they brought him, somewhere else, they took me there, there were 500 of them, there was a lot of stuff there, uh-huh, and so on trimali, there the germans were already letting them in one by one , they were amazed, there were police with dogs all around and... that means we are shooting all your families, para-shooting, well, father said, well, we want to live so hard and here we go, this is hell yeah, in captivity people's destinies took shape in different ways, large enterprises became places of hard labor for abducted citizens from belarus in germany. suc

>> courtney kube with that new reporting tonight. courtney, thank you. >>> let's head to israel now a new warning from the military chief that the war against hamas will not end any time soon today, the war's toll came into stark view, as israel steps up its bombing inside of gaza josh lederman has more. >> reporter: tonight, as israel warns the war with hamas will go on for many more months, the world is getting a closer look at the scope of destruction wrought by more than 80 days of war. israel's military saying it's expanding operations in the refugee camps of central gaza, where the hamas-run gaza health ministry says at least 70 were killed on christmas eve. and in southern gaza, where today, volunteers carried out a grim task in gaza's sandy earth. they dug a mass grave and laid to rest 80 palestinians whether they were hamas terrorists, innocent civilians, or a mix of both is unknown, but each shiny blue bag is a life cut short the bodies collected by israeli force during the ground war and returned today to gaza just 25 mile

happened. >> reporter: but he still worries about seeing the next spy balloon early enough courtney kube, nbc news, colorado springs. >>> and when we come back, the surprise thank you that brought this father to tears, a christmas card to remember that's next. >>> finally tonight, a dad's sacrifice for his family and his daughter's surprise thank you this christmas. it was 1990, and navy vet ted lauver was struggling to keep his family afloat. >> my wife and i probably a week before we were just talking about, you know, times are hard >> reporter: he didn't have much, but he did have this, a dan marino rookie card >> that was my absolute favorite card. >> reporter: even at 6 years old, lindsey moore, his daughter, remembers her dad stopping at the comic book store to sell his prize possession for 50 bucks your dad was selling this thing that meant so much to him >> oh, yeah, definitely realized like, okay, like that's a pretty big deal, you know, given his favorite card, his favorite player, selling that so that we could have food or pay bills. >> reporter: lindsey made a promise to hers

courtney kube has rare access inside an alabama facility on the front lines guarding the u.s. against threats from china in orbit >> reporter: growing tensions between the u.s. and china now extending to hundreds of miles above the earth. >> we know when we're threatened we need to be able to counter the threat >> reporter: to get an inside look at some of the latest american technology to counter the chinese threat, we went to united launch alliance's factory in alabama, working on defenses against things like chinese satellites that can use robotic arms to drag other satellites out of orbit, meaning china could disable critical american communication satellites >> they were actually able to grab ahold of one of their defunct gps satellites >> reporter: what is the concern about them having that kind of capability in space? >> anything that can interact with a spacecraft for servicing is inherently capable of interacting with a spacecraft to harm it or to gather intelligence from it >> reporter: and fears tonight that china is moving faster than the u.s. in this new space rac

came under ballistic missile fire from iranian-backed militias we get late details now from courtney kube at the pentagon. >> reporter: tonight the white house pointing the blame squarely at iran after an hours-long drama at sea sunday that saw a u.s. military warship rush to aid three commercial vessels under fire >> that gun, the weapons here are being supplied by iran and iran we believe is the ultimate party responsible for this >> reporter: it began around 9:15 a.m. sunday when a ballistic missile landed near a commercial ship in the red sea. then at noon the "uss carney," a navy destroyer, intercepted the first of three drones fired towards commercial ships and the "carney" itself. ballistic missiles later hitting all three of the cargo ships, one after another. none of the ships suffered major damage or casualties. responding to each distress call, the "carney" found itself directly in the path of houthi attack drones the pentagon says there are no indications the drones were targeting the "carney" but still shot them down the iranian-backed houthi rebels in yemen have targeted isr

>> courtney kube at the pentagon. thank you. >>> tonight the white house is condemning a pro-palestinian protest outside a jewish-owned restaurant in philadelphia as completely unjustifiable and antisemitic. stephanie gosk is there for us tonight. >> reporter: at goldie falafel shop in philadelphia a lunchtime rush. little sign of the scene sunday night where police say 400 to 500 protesters gathered. >> goldie goldie you can't hide. we charge you with genocide! >> reporter: they accused the restaurant co-owned by israeli chef michael solomonov of supporting genocide in gaza. today the white house called the protest antisemitic. pennsylvania's governor said it echoed 1930s germany. >> the purposeful gathering of a mob outside of a restaurant simply because it is owned by a jewish person, well, that's antisemitism, plain and simple. >> reporter: solomonov has multiple restaurants in the area specializing in israeli food. he was born in israel but grew up in pittsburgh. so far the award-winning chef hasn't commented pub

courtney kube has his story. >> reporter: americans got a look at that chinese spy balloon as it flewf miles across the country, but few have ever seen it up close. general glen vanherck is one of them. >> it's really humbling to actually go there and be able to see what so much work and coordination and effort went into it. >> reporter: for eight day, vanherck, the commander of norad, and his team monitored it as it approached alaska flying through canada and across the u.s. before pilots under vanherck's command shot it down over the atlantic. >> it was something that we had not seen before over the homeland. >> reporter: critics say it took too long for the u.s. to act against the chinese threat. >> the response should have been crystal clear. it should have been shot down before it entered our skies. >> it was a bad mistake to let a chinese spy balloon float all across america. >> reporter: following the spy balloon incident, the u.s. shot down three other unidentified objects in three days. one of them may have been a hobby club science project. vanherck told us the balloon revea

kube knows sinwar better than his own mother and describes him as the cruellest man he's ever met knownuse a machete to kill palestinipalestinians. >> i asked him, you are now 28, 29 and how come he's not married? how come he doesn't want family? so he told me the hamas is my wife, the hamas is my child, the hamas for me is everything. >> reporter: sinwar was among more than 1,000 palestinian prisoners. just last year he seemed to warn israel what was coming. >> translator: we will come to you, god willing, in a roaring flood. we will come to you with an endless number of rockets. we will come to you in a flood of soldiers without limit. we will come to you with millions of our nation. >> reporter: analysts say the man who survived an israeli assassination attempt in 2021 won't be easy to kill this time either. >> if there's someone passing on information to the israelis, he knows who they are and he takes them out before the israelis get to him. >> reporter: analyst said when they eliminate sinwar that whoever will try to fill the shoes will be more brutal but if it's someone more mode

so courtney kube, over to you. >> thank you, general. before we begin i want to give grady a few minutes to get some opening remarks but i want -- hear from general jones, popping up on the screen, i'm technologically challenged but easy to use. submit your questions early and often. >> thank you and let me offer my thanks to the atlanta counsel, mike, and general jones, thanks for having me and all of you, appreciate the dialogue we are about to have. an important discussion and look forward to what we are going to talk about. i am the first for whom the vice chairmanship is a four your job and i cannot be the chairman, that is an empowering position to be in and it is a position that i think rests at the intersection of four worlds, the first is policy. i spent a lot of time at the white house as part of the deputy committee shaping policy for the president going forward. there's a requirement process for which i'm the chairman of the joint requirement oversight council. there's acquisition and budgeting. .. my best battle buddy is the

nbc news national security and pentagon correspondent, courtney kube. bennett, co-anchor of "pbs newshour." matt goreman, former communications adviser for tim scott for america and jen psaki host of "inside with jen psaki" and former white house press secretary. thank you all of you for being here. jeff, let me have you kick it off. you heard from those voters in michigan. two of them are undecided. >> yeah. >> how concerned should the biden campaign be? how concerned are they? >> there is legitimate reason for concern. it hinges on his ability to resurrect the electability from 2020. that coalition is softening and in some cases splintering. i think you could make the argument that the biggest hurdle this president faces is that democratic base voters in battleground states give him little marks for his handling of the economy and that's a conundrum, even as the economy gets stronger, historically low unemployment and high consumer confidence and inflation in the country is easing faster than other part of the world, there are other parts of the elect

nbc's courtney kube joins me now from the pentagon. good morning. have been -- you've been reporting on this, more than 70 attacks against american forces in the middle east since mid-october. what happened here? >> at least 76 is what we're up to now. and it is -- there was a pause during that cease-fire, that pause in gaza, in israel. there was a period of several days where there weren't fle any attacks but they started back up. the one you referenced is showing how the military is responding in a more dramatic fashion when they see an attack coming. there were five individuals believed to be militants preparing a drone that the u.s. believes they have some sort of intelligence that it was going to be targeting u.s. military forces near kirkuk. so they sent an aircraft there and they struck the drone at the launch site, killing five of the individuals who were there preparing to launch it. this is according to defense officials. we just heard from sabrina sing here who confirmed a lot of those details. in addition to that, we had this volley of b

we want to bring in pentagon correspondent courtney kube. walk us through more of what we know about these drones and the u.s. military's response? >> yasmin, this was a pretty sustained campaign against commercial shipping in the red sea yesterday by the houthis, more in recent weeks or even months. over the course of about eight hours houthi rebels fired several ballistic missiles, anti-ship ballistic missiles at three commercial vessels in the red sea. in each case, the u.s.s. carney that was in the region on patrol responded to the distress calls from these ships moving closer to them. in each of the three cases, yas, a drone fired from houthi-controlled areas in yemen was heading towards the u.s.s. carney. i use those words careful li. u.s. military officials are careful to say they don't have indications that the drones were directly attacking or targeting the carney but they were on the way or moving in a direct path towards it. in each case, the u.s.s. carney shooting them down. this is another example of increasingly aggressive beha

about shirigesh, and her grandfather back in 1900, where he found strange stones from under mount kubes the arrival of geologists, when the geologists came, they said that our tool, the compass, does not work, that large deposits of ore were found here, the last name was sharagashev, since they changed their eyes in dissonance.

cour courtney kube has the latest >> reporter: tensions flaring in iraq, as the u.s. conducted precision airstrikes against three facilities used by iranian-backed militias. the u.s. military saying they killed multiple fighters defense officials sending a clear message to militia groups and to iran. the u.s. strikes in retaliation for an attack on erbil air base on christmas day militants launched an attack drone that struck the base, injuring three u.s. troops, one in critical but now stable condition and being transferred. in a statement, lloyd austin said these precision strikes are a response to a series of attacks against u.s. personnel in iraq and syria. there have been at least 105 attacks against bases with americans in iraq and syria over the past two months, causing minor injuries these incidents have dramatically increased since the october p m7 hamas attack againt israel, rousing militia groups throughout the region, including the houthi groups in yemen who have assaulted ships u.s. forces shut down a dozen one-way attack droines. while traveling in israe

with us now, nbc news national security and pentagon correspondent, courtney kube. she's in simi valley, california, for this weekend's reagan national defense forum. courtney, what a time to be there. the new york times also publishing just a step by step a blueprint of attack plans which nbc news has not independently confirmed. how does this knowledge of hamas's intentions underscore the intel failure that we've been tracking? >> i mean, look, alicia, this just foot stomps what's been really a jaw-dropping intelligence failure. ever since october 7th. now, you mentioned this fantastic reporting by our colleagues, and inspector and tom winter, and daniel arcing at nbc news. they report that there was actually at least one israeli military official warned of this sort of an attack three months before october 7th. something that hamas was planning to do to try to incite a larger war. and according to the reporting, the individual was dismissed. now, this goes into that new york times reporting which, of course, nbc news has not seen a copy of this report or confirme

elise. >> nbc's courtney kube, thank you so much for your reporting. >>> we move now from the hostilities in the middle east to the war in europe. russia's defense ministry has confirmed at least one person was killed in a strike on a russian war ship this morning on the eastern coast of crimea. the commander of ukraine's air force said his pilots carried out the attack, russia has already withdrawn a significant amount of its black sea forces from its main base in crimea due to attacks on its ship. unverified footage shows a massive explosion there describingly from that vessel. that comes as the ukrainian government announced yesterday that it had also shot down five russian fighter jets over the weekend. these claims have yesterday to be independently verified, but several ukrainian officials and military analysts suggest that western-supplied patriot missile systems were used to target the russian aircraft. this as russia claims it seized full control of the townof marinka on the eastern front, this claim has also not been independently verified nb

let's bring in courtney kube.this story, it was a big one, remind us of jack teixeira. >> it unfolded over months, that was the fact that this young airman, jack teixeira, was accused of leaking a treasure drove of documents over the course of weeks, to the scale that at first we didn't know how much it was, but as you mentioned, we've seen video and still photos of him being taken into custody, he's been indicted on six counts of leaking classified information defense secrets in public forum. what the air force found in their investigation is that he acted alone, and in fact there's no evidence that any of his seniors, any people around him knew that he was leaking this information but they also paint a picture of a command that did not take care with classified information, that there was some sloppy procedures that they detail in this report and as part of that, at least 15 people at that command have been held accountable, some with nonjudicial punishments and others being removed from their jobs, fired from t

i want to bring in nbc news national security correspondent courtney kube at the pentagon.or a long time because since day one of the october 7th attacks, stuff like this has been happening. some of it has been quieter, some of it has been more lethal. and then yesterday, i was looking at the timeline of the attacks that had happened in the red sea. and i was totally fascinated by this thing. what exactly is happening both their, and more broadly in the middle east that is not israel and gaza? >> reporter: you are absolutely right that this uptick. look, there is activity in the region, right? but when we talk about the houthis, they have conducted attacks in the past, even in recent months. but it is really picked up in the last several weeks specifically since october 7th, just as you said, ali. and yesterday was the most notable yet of attacks by they're houthis, and that was because it was a sustained day -long attack against commercial shipping in the red sea. at least three commercial ships were attacked by houthi anti ship ballistic missiles. now, in each case, the u

there are a lot of things that the team, that our national security team, carol lee, courtney kube, youconversation that was described by the white house and the state department in san francisco last month. >> absolutely. this was a blunt but candid conversation, not confrontational, but we are told by three sources, current and former officials who are familiar with this conversation that president xi said to president biden that he does intend to reunify taiwan and that he has not chosen a time line to do that yet. he was also apparently complaining about the elections in taiwan. and prior to this meeting, chinese officials had asked that president biden issue a statement supporting chinese reunification, something that of course the president and the white house did not do. we've just gotten fresh exclusiveeaction from senator lindsey graham to this reporting. i'm going to read y what he says. he calls the story as reported yond unnerving. he goes on to say,quote, i will be working with the democratic two things quickly.tors to do first, cre a robustefse supplemental for taiwan and

here's courtney kube with the reporting from the pentagon. >> reporter: houthi rebels made good on their threat to attack commercial ships launching attacks against at least three ships in the red sea over the weekend. now, in each case, they launched anti-ship ballistic missiles striking the ships but not causing any damage or leading to any injuries among the crew. now, the uss carney a u.s. military warship was in the region at the time, and it responded to each of the three ships' distress calls, and in each case, katy, as the carney moved in, the houthi rebels fired off one-way attack drones in the direction of the carney. it's important to point out defense official says they have no indication or evidence that those drones were directly targeting the carney. but because of the way they were moving in, the speed, the trajectory, as a matter of self-defense, the ship shot down each of those three drones. now, this is another step in the case of the houthi rebels being with this increasingly aggressive behavior that frankly has really stepped up since october 7th. we've seen houthis

. >> kube, we appreciate.n students in burlington, vermont, left the victims and their family shaken. today, an area hospital or saying two of the three victims are in, quote, fair condition but still hospitalized. here is nbc's binkley as someone who spoke to one of the students. >> did you ever think anything like this could happen on american soil? >> i certainly hope not. i had heard of other palestinians being beat up, stabbed, or humiliated but i certainly did not expect to be shot. >> reporter: that is what happened saturday when kinnan abdallah hamid went on a walk with two palestinian friends also of palestinian descent. to the three wore traditional palestinian scarf. they were talking about homework in english and arabic when they saw the alleged gunman. >> as soon as he saw as he ran down the steps, pulled out a pistol, and started shooting. i jumped the fence. i believe that when he shot me. i hit behind the backyard of a random house. i was shaking, i couldn't believe that both of my friends were

thank you so much, courtney kube. that's gonna do it for me on this edition of alex witt reports, we'll do this again tomorrow at one pm eastern. that'll be 10 am pacific, my friend yasmin vossoughian continues our coverage right now. hey, everybody, good to serve you. i'm yasmin vossoughian, the truce is over an israeli offense of his back in full force in gaza. the israeli saying they've launched hundreds of missile attacks. hamas is reporting hundreds killed already. and bombshell new reporting nbc news in the new york times that israelis dismissed warning signs of the october 7th attacks for up to a year ahead of time. the times reported broke that story. we'll also speak with the family of a teenager taken hostage in the october 7th attacks. freed this week. in what is to come. who are following other news this hour as well, former president on the campaign trail right now and iowa after suffering a double dose of defeat to his claim that is one term presidency should be a lifetime get out of jail free card. plus

thank you so much, courtney kube.r me on this edition of alex witt reports, we'll do this again tomorrow at one pm eastern. that'll be 10 am pacific, my friend yasmin vossoughian continues our coverage right now. hey, everybody, good to serve you. i'm yasmin vossoughian, the truce is over an israeli offense of his back in

national security and military correspondent courtney kube. what more do we know about this? >> yeah, i mean, the houthis seem to wage this war against commercial shipping on sunday. i have to say, mika, this is something they have been warning about for the last several weeks. this isn't the first time we've seen them try to fire projectiles at ships in the red sea and up in towards the depth. yesterday morning, sunday local time, houthi rebels began firing missiles at three separate commercial ships. the "uss carney," a u.s. navy warship, was in the region at the time. each time one of these ships was fired on, and as you mention in several cases, even struck by these missiles, the "carney" responded. as they were responding, houthi rebels also fired off what the u.s. military calls one-way attack drones. these are drones generally laden with explosives. the idea is they come in and just strike into any kind of a target. in this case, the "carney" was in the path of these drones in all three cases, and the u.s. military making the decision with their right of self-defense t