that's a special report coming up tomorrow. up tomorrow. it's time now for "ac 360." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com tonight on "360," israeli hostage families in angry confrontations with the government that some of them say is putting killing the enemy ahead of saving israelis. also, with their client on the attack, lawyers for donald trump today trying to convince an appeals court that what he is saying about special counsel jack smith and the january 6th case ginagainst him -- and it's lot -- is protected by the first amendment. plus the literally earth shaking -- iceland that could be getting ready to blow. john berman here in for anderson. we begin with israel's war on hamas. the many pieces of it now in play. and the one question that six weeks of fighting has yet to answer, namely how a sometimes divided democracy should fight a ruthless enemy, which hides among palestinian non-combatants and holds hundreds of israeli non-combatants captain. troops reached the heart of gaza city much earlier than hamas expected and are engaging hamas gunmen elsewhere in northern gaza. john kirby said negotiators are, quote, getting close to the end, unquote, in talks on freeing a number of hostages. he did not specify, though, what that number might be. nor would he comment on this cctv video, which is rereleased, reportedly showing hostages being moved through gaza city's al shifa hospital on october 7th. separately the world health organization organization today gave an update on the neonatal batys from al shifa who have been evacuated to egypt. according to the w.h.o., 28 are now in egypt. three others were reunited with families and remain inside gaza. and two others died in gaza over the weekend. also today in israel, hostage families did what some have been wanting to do for weeks now, namely, asking top members of their government top questions with the lives of their loved ones at stake. let's get more on that now from cnn's orrin liebermann. >> reporter: this man waited 45 days for this moment. his sister has been a hostage in gaza since october 7th. and this is the first chance for the families of the hostages to meet with the war cabinet. >> i do expect them to be transparent as much as possible about what can be done, okay? we all want to see everybody back today. >> reporter: frustration boiling over after six weeks and two days of questions. >> translator: it's something very hard, very embarrassing, that i have to stand here facing so many cameras and i have to go to a meeting in order to hear answers. >> reporter: but as the meeting was set to start, not all of the families were allowed in. >> translator: in gaza, there is enough room for the 240 who were kidnapped. and in the defense ministry, there isn't room for 130 families? >> reporter: for weeks, some families have slept outside the defense ministry to remind the war cabinet inside that they will not leave and they will not let up. from hostages square in tel aviv, they march to jerusalem, picking up thousands of supporters around the five-day march to the prime minister's office, a public pressure campaign to force a meeting with israel's leadership. this woman's mornlther-in-law i hostage in gaza. >> we don't have time. we don't have one hour more. we don't know if she is alive. >> reporter: the military says at least two hostages were found dea dead. trying to push a death penalty of terrorists, which the families say endangers their loved ones in captivity. >> translator: maybe instead of talking about the dead, talk about the living. stop talking about killing arabs. talk about saving jews. this is your job. >> and orrin liebermann joins us now. orrin, did the families give you any sense of whether they think the idf military campaign is helping or hurting their chances of getting their loved ones back? >> reporter: well, the families who met with prime minister benjamin netanyahu and other members of the war cabinet had several hours with them. but one of whom we spoke with said he left disappointed, very disappointed. they were looking for new information and they didn't get it. one of the things they heard, according to this member, was they wanted to press the government on whether bringing the hostages back was their number one priority. and they simply didn't hear that. they wanted to hear that above all else, the government was focused on making an exchange, a deal, an arrangement to bring back israeli hostages. instead they heard although it's important, it's not more important, necessarily, than defeating hamas. that's what worries them, especially as the idf says israeli hostages have already been found dead in gaza. >> orrin liebermann for us tonight in tel aviv. orrin, thank you very much. more now on the hostage talks and how the biden administration sees them progressing. mj lee is at the white house tonight. what are you hearing about the negotiations? >> reporter: we are sensing a new level of optimism that an agreement may be near and may even be days away from being announced. we have been covering these negotiations for weeks now and we have heard at various other points that a deal may be close to being announced. the recording for myself and my colleague, alex marquardt, is according to a draft of a potential agreement, what would happen is that hamas would release 50 hostages in exchange for israel pausing the fighting for four to five days. now, the gaps between the parties, we are told, are beginning to close, though there have been deliberations, ongoing deliberations, about how exactly such a deal might be implemented, and some questions about the humanitarian aid that hamas has been demanding from the beginning by the hundreds of truck loads. this is something that is continuing to be deliberated, we are told. now, we have seen and the white house has said that they are really working around the clock to try to get to an agreement. we've seen, for example, brett mcgirk, who is the white house middle east coordinator, really hopscotching the region in the last couple of days. cia director bill burns has also been closely engaged. i think, john, all parties would agree there isn't a deal until a deal is announced and until these hostages are physically out of gaza. >> mj, i know you pressed john kirby the of the national security council about the americans being held hostage. what did he tell you? >> reporter: the white house has been saying for a number of weeks now that they do believe americans are among the hostages in gaza. officials have been very clear all along that ascertaining any kind of information about the hostages, their condition, their whereabouts, has been incredibly challenging. and the information i tried to get from john irkirby today was whether, if there is such a deal announced in the coming daying, what that might mean for the americans that are missing. here's that exchange. >> on the hostages, if women and children end up being released first, which is what it sounds like the situation is probably heading toward, does the u.s. have any sense of how many in that mix might be american citizens? >> i don't want to get ahead of where we are, mj. and, i mean, i know that everybody's interested in the numbers and who they're going to be. we're working that through literally in realtime with both sides. so, i think it's better if i just don't speculate about what that pool is going to look like. obviously we are laser focused on the american citizens that we know are being held hostage, and we want them out, all of them. everybody should be out now. but here we are in a negotiation. and we're getting closer to the end, we believe, of that negotiation. so, again, i'm going to be careful. >> are any of the potential american hostages, is there confidence that they are alive? i know that you addressed the lack of proof of life, the videos and such in the past. >> i would say we have no indication otherwise. >> reporter: and john, just in terms of how tenuous these negotiations have been, sources told me and alex that in recent days hamas had gone dark and put the negotiations on hold. one of their many objections was israel's raid of al shifa hospital. obviously the negotiations did eventually resume. but just an illustration of how incredibly challenging it has been to negotiate with hamas about these hostages. john? >> mj lee at the white house. thank you very much. with me tonight, michael orrin, ambassador to the united states. the deal they're discussing, the parameters seem to be a four or five-day pause in the fighting for the release of hostages. >> you don't have an agreement with hamas and even if you have an agreement, you don't have an agroemt. they don't negotiate in in good faith. they'll say, we want another ceasefire. they've broken every ceasefire in the past. they've never kept a ceasefire. it's very difficult to negotiate with someone who's moving that football constantly. these are a bunch of -- these are violent thugs. and meanwhile you're going to get bodies showing up, like these two women who were executed, according tour friends at "scientist." they were executed. they didn't die in caput tift. they were shot. my sources tell me hamas won't release women who have been raped raped. . a great number have been raped. you're going to have the equivalent of a mafia, sending a poos of a kidnapped person back in order to ramp up all the time, the pressure, for a prolonged and open ended ceasefire because that's what they want. it gets a ceasefire, that means hamas wins. it gets away with murder. >> even four or five days? >> they're going to rearm, reequip, booby trap everything so that when the army starts -- >> rearm from where? >> oh, they have plenty of arms. they have to bring it from different places. and we're going to cost us in terms of our soldiers' lives. we're talking about middle eastern history. in history i don't know a decision as difficult as this one that can be made by any government ever. you have to take a hostage life versus a soldier's life. many cases they're the same age. then you're going to get to questions of, okay, 50 hostages get out out. the families of the hostages that didn't get out are going to start increasing pressure on the israeli government for a ceasefire. it's always going to be about the ceasefire because that's what hamas needs in order to survive. >> i had the opportunity to sit next to you while we were watching orrin liebermann's piece of those frustrated, hurt, devastated families. >> soul crushing. 240 people. children. these are old people. these are infirm people. >> they say the israeli government is not doing enough. >> i think there's an impossible situation here. what does enough mean? if you put pressure on hamas -- notice hamas wasn't willing to negotiate at all before israel went on the ground. now that israel is getting closer, then hamas says, oh, well, maybe we're willing to talk. as this gets closer and closer and closes that noose on hamas, the terms will get better. keep in mind, these are people not negotiating in good faith. they'll always break the ceasefire and they'll break the terms. >> i want to ask you about the cctv video the idf released over the last several days, which israel shows two hostages inside the al shifa hospital. if this video shows what israel says it shows, two hostages there, how many people do you think must have known that they were there between hospital staff, doctors, the security who had access to the cctv video before presumably israel did, perhaps international organizations that operate in and around al shifa. >> it's not that israel claims -- it's a palestinian video. it's the palestinian. it's a hospital video. and of course if you see in the video, just walking around watching this hostage being taken in. and there's guns and rockets throughout the hospital. there's a huge shaft under the hospital. to say that nobody in the hospital knew what was going on is ludacris. of course they knew was going on. hamas kills palestinians too. the head of hamas, yahya sinwar, got his fame by killing what he called collaborators. they live in fear. we can understand that. but you can't reasonably assume they did not know what was going on in that hospital. >> the idf, over the weekend, said they will continue their operations into south. southern gaza is where israel has told people to go inside gaza. so, what happens to the tens of thousands of people who have gone where israel has told them to go, if the idf moves in there? >> which is why hamas is moving to the south too. one sees the population as a human shield wherever it goes. remember, it wants a ceasefire? how does it get a ceasefire? by getting israel to kill, inadvertently, palestinians. that increases international pressure on israel. so, israel to make the ceasefire. israel is going to do its yut most to limit that number in order to keep fighting hamas. you see how difficult this dynamic is. israel will continue to do its best to warn palestinian populations if there's going to be an imminent attack, sending text messages, and other methods to try to get them to move. and as they move, hamas is going to keep on using them as shields. >> isn't that awful? this is the horrible reality of this war. it's not just a story. i'm a dad and a grandad. and it's just heartbreaking. the whole thing. >> ambassador michael warren, we appreciate you being here tonight. have a happy thanksgiving. the gag order aimed at keeping the former president from attacking the court and intimidating witnesses against him versus the first amendment rights we all enjoy. what his lawyers and jack smith's team said about it today and what a federal appeals court made of it and all the politics surrounding it. later what voters in the key swing state of michigan make about president biden and the impact it could make a year from now at the polls. no offers yet tonight from the former president. today in an appeal almost certainly headed for the supreme court, his lawyers argued that the gag order -- january 6th case infringes on his first amendment rights and by extension his campaign. the d.c. circuit appeals court judges, one biden and two obama appointees, were skeptical. >> criminal speech obviously is subject to the descriptions. political speech -- core political speech that's part of campaign speech -- >> i don't -- i think that kind of labelling it core political speech begs the question of whether it is in fact political speech or whether it is political speech aimed at derailing or corrupting the criminal justice process? >> perspective now from cnn legal analyst karen freeman agnifilo. counselor, let me start with you. the appeals court signalled that they're considering narrowing this gag order some to allow trump to talk some about the special counsel jack smith and his legal team. i want to play a little bit more of what they said. >> -- while everyone else is throwing targets at him. >> well, it can't be that he can't mention mr. smith. surely he has thick enough skin. he's on this team. >> all right. so, why include jack smith in the permissible attack column? >> well, i think they think it's fair game because this is a political campaign, where one of the fair things that the o opponents will say is the fact that he's being prosecuted, he's accused of these things. so, he should be able to respond to that, so he says, and call this political prosecution. but i think death threats, which is what happens when he says things about jack smith or jack smith's family, et cetera, i think that takes it a bridge too far. and that's what was going on today with the appeals court was, do we have to wait for something to happen before we limit it? or can we limit it in advance because there have been so many threats to anyone who he targets and puts out there? and there's so much evidence of that in the record? >> do you think it would be a mistake to allow jack smith to be one of those people he can go after? >> look, again, having death threats and having people come and threaten you is terrifying, whether you're a prosecutor or not. so, if it was just speech, i think, yeah, jack smith has thick skin. they can take it. he's not going to do anything differently. but when people show up at your house or you're getting phone calls or things happen to your kids or your family, i think that's a bridge too far. >> congressman, you dealt with donald trump in different ways for a long time, to what extent is this something of a win/win for him? either he is permitted to say more things, in which case, you know he will. or the court imposes some kind of gag order, in which case he'll say he's being silenced here and send out campaign finance notes, which he already is. is this a win/win? >> look, he's a professional victim. he's the best at being a victim of anybody i've ever met. from being the most powerful man in the world at one point, he was the victim of everything that ever came his way. on the political side of things, if he truly is a victim, maybe he's not the strongest person to be president of the united states. yeah, i do think it's a win/win. i also agree with karen. the difference here is this. donald trump has a tendency -- he's very good at saying things in a way that, like, when people hear it, they know he kind of means something else but he can get away with not saying. i'm not saying to go attack them, right? you know. so, this is, kind of, the danger in it. i can tell you from being in congress and having my conversations with people, through all the years of donald trump, peel back the curtain a little bit. when he says something -- so, if he goes after jack smith or says something personal, whatever it is -- that gives license to every other member of congress, every other political leader to then turn around and do the same thing. so, it's not donald trump putting something on his fake twitter. it's something -- it now gives credit and permission to every other republican to say the same thing. and when -- as you saw with dr. anthony fauci, for instance, right, people disagreed with his covid policies. fine. you can disagree with them. but he's gotten a lot of death threats. and donald trump may have never called out and said, go after dr. fauci physically, but his words have that impact on millions of people. >> karen, if a gag order goes back in place, which it seems likely some kind of gag order will go in place, what does judge tanya chutkan do, the judge overseeing the case, if he violates it? what can she do? >> she can do lots of different things. there can be fines. but if there's going to be some kind of put him in jail as a consequence, which can be that way. in federal court they'd have to bring a new action that would trigger a whole new trial, if you will, on whether or not he actually did violate it. so, she can do lots of things. she can fine him. she can sanction him. she can admonish him. but ultimately, she won't do this, i think, at first. but if he keeps continuously violating it, potentially there would be this new contempt action. >> thanks to both of you. have a great thanksgiving. >> you bet. next, why the former president had reason to celebrate his 81st birthday today. in fact, why the current president had reason to celebrate his 81st birthday today, and the joke he just made about it. although new polling shows it's not so funny. and what some key swing state voters think of it. and later, iceland on edge after numerous earthquakes signal h sisignal a posossibility o of a volcano ereruption. ouour fred pleleitgen is t ther the latetest. in order for small businesses to thrive, they need to be smart, efficient, savvy. making the most of every opportunity. that's why comcast business is introducing the small business bonus. for a limited time you can get up to a $1000 prepaid