By MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — While President Donald Trump has struggled to settle on a way to address Americans’ concerns about high costs, Vice President JD Vance on Thursday offered a more direct and empathetic message, saying, “We hear you” and “there’s a lot more work to do.”

But the American people need to have “a little bit of patience,” Vance said in remarks at an event hosted by Breitbart News.

The vice president’s remarks come as the White House grapples with how to speak to voters about the cost of living, an issue that emerged as a vulnerability for Republicans in this month’s off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races.

Vance said the Trump administration has “made incredible progress” in tackling cost-of-living concerns as they worked to undo policies from former President Joe Biden.

“As much progress as we’ve made, it’s going to take a little bit of time for every American to feel that economic boom, which we really do believe is coming. We believe that we’re on the front end of it,” Vance said.

Trump, whose tariffs have contributed to higher prices for many goods, has insisted that prices are down, pointing to gas and egg prices specifically. The president has said Democrats’ arguments about affordability during the election were “a con job,” and saying “I don’t want to hear about the affordability, because right now, we’re much less.” However, in recent days he has shifted his response, acknowledging that there is room for consumer prices to drop further.

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Vance addresses Republican infighting

Vance was asked about recent high-profile rifts within Trump’s Make America Great Again coalition. Trump broke with one of his most loyal backers, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, over her complaints he was spending too much time on foreign policy and had dragged his feet on releasing files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump also has been reluctant to disavow white nationalist Nick Fuentes and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who recently hosted Fuentes for a friendly interview, touching off turmoil on the right.

Vance did not directly address the recent infighting, but said he thinks the debates within the party are healthy. “It’s totally reasonable for the people who make up this coalition to argue,” about issues, said Vance, who often publicly engages in online debates on his X account.

But Trump’s MAGA coalition needs to remember, “that we have a lot more in common than we do not in common” and that supporters are up against “a radical leftist movement.”

“Have our debates — but focus on the enemy, so that we can win victories that matter for the American people,” Vance said.

The vice president and former senator said Republicans have to keep their coalition united, especially heading into next year’s midterm elections that determine control of Congress.

He said the working class voters who elected Trump to the White House don’t necessarily turn out to vote in midterm elections and said Republicans need to motivate them.

“I think that’s one of the lessons that we learned in Virginia and New Jersey is that when Donald Trump is not on the ballot, you’ve got to give people something to actually believe in, something to be inspired by, to get out there and vote,” Vance said. “They’re not going to vote just because you have an ‘R’ next to your name.”

By WAFAA SHURAFA

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (AP) — A pair of Israeli strikes in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis early Thursday killed five people, hospital officials said, bringing the death toll from airstrikes in the Palestinian territory over a roughly 12-hour period to 33. The strikes have been some of the deadliest since Oct. 10 when a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect.

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The renewed escalation came after Israel said that its soldiers had come under fire in Khan Younis on Wednesday. Israel said that no soldiers were killed and that the military responded with strikes.

Four Israeli airstrikes on tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis late Wednesday and early Thursday killed 17 people, including five women and five children, according to officials at Nasser Hospital.

In Gaza City, two airstrikes on a building killed 16 people, including seven children and three women, according to officials at the Al-Shifa hospital in the northern part of the city where the bodies were taken.

Hamas condemned the Israeli strikes as a “shocking massacre.” In a statement, Hamas denied firing toward Israeli troops.

Palestinians mourn loved ones

At Nasser Hospital, scores of people gathered to offer funeral prayers for those who were killed in the Israeli strikes. Women wailed in mourning over the bodies of loved ones wrapped in white burial shrouds.

Among the mourners was Abir Abu Moustapha, who lost her three children, ages 1, 11 and 12, and her husband in an Israeli strike on Wednesday that hit their tent. She squatted beside their bodies as they were prepared for burial.

Sabri Abu Sabt bids farewell to his granddaughter, Ayloul, who was killed in an Israeli army strike, during her funeral at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

“My children are gone. What can I say? And my husband, my most precious. May God have mercy on them,” Abu Moustapha said. “How was it my children’s fault that they had to die? Why was it their fault that they died in front of my eyes?”

Ceasefire again under pressure

Hospital officials said that the bodies came from both sides of a line established in last month’s ceasefire. The boundary splits Gaza in two, leaving the border zone under Israeli military control while the area beyond it is meant to serve as a safe zone.

The strikes came shortly after the U.N. Security Council gave its backing to U.S. President Donald Trump’s blueprint to secure and govern Gaza. The plan empowers an international force to provide security in Gaza, approves a transitional authority and envisions a possible future path to an independent Palestinian state.

But there are still questions over how the plan will be implemented, especially after Hamas rejected it. The group said that the force’s mandate. which includes disarmament, “strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation.”

Palestinians inspect the ruins a day after an Israeli strike on a building in Gaza City, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Israeli strikes have decreased since the ceasefire agreement took effect, though they haven’t stopped entirely.

Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, reported more than 300 deaths since the truce began. Each side has accused the other of violating its terms, which include increasing the flow of aid into Gaza and returning hostages — dead or alive — to Israel.

The deaths are among the more than 69,000 Palestinians killed since Israel launched its sweeping offensive more than two years ago in response to Hamas killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 people in the attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the war. Gaza’s Health Ministry, part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, maintains detailed records seen as a reliable estimate by the U.N. and many independent experts.

Mourners pray over the bodies Palestinians killed in an Israeli army strike, during their funeral at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

The remains of 25 hostages have been returned to Israel since the ceasefire began. There are still three more in Gaza that need to be recovered and handed over. Hamas returned 20 living hostages to Israel on Oct. 13.

Israel targets Hezbollah

The Gaza strikes coincided with a barrage of Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday on what the Israeli military said said were Hezbollah sites in the country, including weapons storage facilities. A day earlier, an Israeli airstrike killed 13 people in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh, the deadliest of Israeli attacks on Lebanon since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war a year ago.

The Israeli military said that Hezbollah was working to reestablish itself and rebuild its capacity in southern Lebanon, without providing evidence. It said that the weapons’ facilities targeted were embedded among civilians and violated understandings between Israel and Lebanon. Israel agreed to a ceasefire and withdrew from southern Lebanon last year and Lebanon agreed to quell Hezbollah activity in the area.

Palestinians inspect the ruins a day after an Israeli strike on a building in Gaza City, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Earlier Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike on a car in the southern Lebanese village of Tiri killed one person and wounded 11, including students aboard a nearby bus, the Lebanese Health Ministry and state media said. The state-run National News Agency said that the school bus happened to be passing near the car that was hit.

Israel’s military later said that it killed a Hezbollah operative in the drone strike.

Find more of AP’s Israel-Hamas coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

By STEPHANIE LIECHTENSTEIN

VIENNA (AP) — The U.N. atomic watchdog on Thursday demanded that Iran fully cooperate with the agency and provide “precise information” about its stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium, as well as grant its inspectors access to Iranian nuclear sites.

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The development sets the stage for a likely further escalation between the U.N. nuclear agency and Iran, which has reacted strongly to similar moves by the watchdog in the past.

Nineteen countries on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-member board of governors voted for the resolution at the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the outcome of the closed-doors vote.

Russia, China and Niger opposed it, while 12 countries abstained and one did not vote.

The resolution — put forward by France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States — says Iran must provide the IAEA with the latest information on its nuclear stockpile, “without delay.” A draft was seen by The Associated Press.

After the strikes in June

Since Israel and the United States struck Iran’s nuclear sites during the 12-day war in June, Iran has not given IAEA inspectors access to nuclear sites that were affected by the strikes — even though Tehran is legally obliged to cooperate with the watchdog under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The agency also has been unable to verify the status of the stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium since the June bombing, according to a confidential IAEA report seen by the AP last week.

According to the IAEA, Iran maintains a stockpile of 972 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program, IAEA director general Rafael Grossi warned in a recent interview with the AP. He added that it doesn’t mean that Iran has such a weapon.

Such highly enriched nuclear material should normally be verified every month, according to the IAEA’s guidelines.

Iran slams the decision

Talking to reporters outside the IAEA boardroom, Iran’s Ambassador to the IAEA Reza Najafi denounced Thursday’s resolution and said that it was designed to “exert undue pressure on Iran” and propagate a “false and misleading narrative of the present situation.”

FILE -A national flag of Iran waves in front of the building of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, in Vienna, Austria, Dec. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Gruber, File)

He described the authors of the resolution as “deaf and visionless” and said that they maintain “an arrogant and self-assured posture” by presuming that Iran is “obliged to continue its routine cooperation with the agency even under bombardment.”

Najafi said that Iran considers the current situation “far from normal,” given that safeguarded facilities in Iran that contain “dangerous nuclear material” have been attacked.

Najafi said that Iran is “fully prepared for meaningful and constructive engagement” but at present, “the authors of resolutions have chosen a different course, under the mistaken belief that the pressure and threat will yield results.”

Responding to questions from journalist, Najafi said Iran will announce its response at a later stage.

Cutting ties

Iran suspended all cooperation with the IAEA after the war with Israel. Grossi then reached an agreement with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Cairo in early September to resume inspections.

But later that month, the U.N. reimposed crushing sanctions on Iran via the so-called snapback mechanism contained in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, drawing an angry response from Tehran and leading it to halt implementation of the Cairo agreement.

The snapback mechanism reactivated six U.N. Security Council resolutions that address Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program, reinstate economic sanctions against Iran and contain other restrictions, such as halting all uranium enrichment.

Thursday’s resolution instructed Grossi to report on the implementation of the reinstated restrictions. It also requested that he ensure his reporting “includes information on the verification of Iran’s uranium stockpile, including the locations, quantities, chemical forms, and enrichment levels, and the inventories of centrifuges and related equipment.”

Iran has long insisted its program is peaceful, but the IAEA and Western nations say Tehran had an organized nuclear weapons program up until 2003.

Thursday’s resolution demanded that Iran “acts strictly in accordance” with the so-called Additional Protocol that it signed in 2003 but never ratified.

That protocol grants more powers and oversight to the IAEA, especially when it comes to conducting snap inspections at undeclared nuclear sites.

Iran suspended its implementation of the Additional Protocol in 2021 in response to the United States’ withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal that lifted economic sanctions in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program.

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. ___ Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/

By JACK BROOK and SARA CLINE, Associated Press/Report for America

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans, the laid-back city known as the Big Easy and the birthplace of jazz, where lavish parades, bead-throwing debauchery and Creole cuisine attract tourists from around the globe, is about to become the next staging ground for the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.

Operation “Swamp Sweep,” an expansive, monthslong immigration crackdown, is expected to launch in southeast Louisiana Dec. 1, but Democrat-run New Orleans is anticipating the arrival of as many as 250 federal troops as soon as Friday, all with the backing of the state’s Republican governor.

Governor Jeff Landry has sought to align New Orleans with federal immigration enforcement efforts through legislation and legal challenges, and the Border Patrol deployment is just the latest drive to ramp up that pressure. And with the New Orleans Police Department being released from a federal reform pact Wednesday, its officers have lost a legal mechanism that has long-shielded them from having to participate in immigration enforcement.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security operation will be led by Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who has already overseen aggressive campaigns in Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina.

A gung-ho Republican governor

Landry, who has close ties to the nation’s top immigration officials, has made immigration enforcement a priority.

Louisiana does not share a border with another country, yet it has become one of the nation’s largest detention hubs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with a capacity upward of 6,000 detainees. In September, the Bayou State opened the “Louisiana Lockup” inside a notorious state prison to hold immigrants whom federal officials consider dangerous.

The governor has also highlighted crimes in which the suspect’s immigration status is in question, such as the killing of a French Quarter tour guide by a group that included a Honduran man who entered the country illegally.

New Orleans’ deep-rooted immigrant communities

New Orleans’ Democratic leaders frequently butt heads with Landry and other state officials who accuse the city of lax law enforcement and have pushed for collaboration with the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown.

Mayor-elect Helena Moreno, a Mexican-American immigrant, told The Associated Press there is “a lot of fear” in her city and that she is working to ensure those who could be targeted by federal agents know their rights.

“I’m very concerned about due process being violated, I’m very concerned about racial profiling,” Moreno said.

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New Orleans is known for its rich blend of French, Spanish, African and Native American cultures. It is home to more than 10,000 ethnic Vietnamese who arrived after the Vietnam War. A city monument recognizes the thousands of Latino workers who helped rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. South Louisiana’s distinctive Cajun heritage emerged from French-speaking colonists exiled there in the 18th century.

In September, Landry requested a National Guard deployment to New Orleans, citing rising violent crime, even though city police say crime is down and its elected leaders say federal troops are unnecessary. Landry told Newsmax on Wednesday that the “Swamp Sweep” operation is focused on “taking dangerous criminals off the street.”

A Landry spokesperson declined to comment to the AP on Border Patrol operations.

Rachel Taber, an organizer with the New Orleans-based advocacy group Union Migrante, said the influx of federal agents would have far-reaching negative impacts.

“The same people pushing for this attack on immigrants benefit from immigrant labor and the exploitation of immigrants,” Taber said. “Who do they think is going to clean the hotels from Mardi Gras or clean up after their fancy Mardi Gras parade?”

Conflict over the city’s immigration policies

In August, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell saying the city “engages in sanctuary policies and practices that thwart federal immigration enforcement.” The city has been barred from receiving certain federal law enforcement grants, according to Jim Craft, executive director of the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement, which distributes federal funds. Cantrell did not respond to a request for comment.

Under Landry, the GOP-dominated Louisiana Legislature has targeted New Orleans’ immigration policies, including by passing a law threatening jail time for law enforcement officials who delay or ignore federal enforcement efforts. Another measure directs state agencies to verify, track and report anyone illegally in the U.S. who is receiving state services, and one more bans city policies that prohibit cooperation with federal immigration agencies.

“Their enforcement of laws is indiscriminate at best, corrupt at worst,” said Republican state Sen. Jay Morris, who was behind the law punishing obstruction of immigration enforcement. “Apparently we have to have a law to tell people not to break the law.”

Federal oversight of local law enforcement

The Orleans Parish Sheriff’s office and the New Orleans Police Department have been subject to longstanding federal oversight that barred them from engaging in immigration enforcement.

The police oversight ended Wednesday, leaving officers in an uncertain legal position if they receive conflicting directives from city and state leaders, according to the city’s Independent Police Monitor Stella Cziment.

Moreno, set to take office as mayor on Jan. 12, said the city’s police will follow state law, but that department policy viewed immigration enforcement as a civil matter outside its jurisdiction. New Orleans Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said department policies barring immigration enforcement “are not in conflict” with state laws.

Kirkpatrick said she met with ICE officials this week and her department will work with federal agents to ensure public safety.

“Our support is to make sure they are not going to get hurt and that our community is not in danger,” she said.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, backed by the Department of Justice, has requested an end to federal oversight of the sheriff’s office, saying it impedes the state’s ability to enforce immigration law.

The sheriff’s office, which operates the city’s jail, has a policy under federal mandate to not hold people for ICE unless they have committed a serious crime. Court filings show the U.S. government says that since 2022, the jail has only complied with two of its 170 detainer requests. Sheriff-elect Michelle Woodfork told AP she will comply with state law if federal oversight ends.

Cline reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.