In today's newsletter: A guide on the 98th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Meet Ukraine's "Witches of Bucha" — the all-female fire teams who are guarding the skies from Russian drones. And what's getting the buzz so far for the 2025 Oscars.

Here's what to know today.

Happy Thanksgiving! Today is for spending time with loved ones, eating good food — and watching a bunch of TV, starting with the 98th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. 

NBC’s “TODAY” show stars Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb and Al Roker will host this year’s show, which includes 22 big balloons, 34 fabulous floats, seven wheeled “balloonicles” and more. In between, expect to see dozens of performers, including Jennifer Hudson, T-Pain, Idina Menzel, The Temptations and more. And don’t forget about the 11 marching bands and 28 clown crews.

The parade will air on NBC and simulcast on Peacock from 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET, and will replay at 2 p.m. We’ll also be following the action and sharing big moments and photos along the way.

Follow our live blog for the latest. 

Once the parade ends, there won’t be much of a “paws” in the action. The 23rd annual National Dog Show Presented by Purina will see over 205 different breeds compete for the prestigious “Best in Show” title. Here’s how to watch the show, which is scheduled for noon.

And don’t forget about all the sport. The Chicago Bears take on the Detroit Lions at 12:30 p.m. as Bears quarterback Caleb Williams tries to extend his hot streak. The New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys face off at 4:30 p.m. in a game that our sports reporter called “the kind of matchup only a mother could love.” And during primetime, the Miami Dolphins face a major test against the Green Bay Packers. 

Read more about the holiday matchups.

More on Thanksgiving:

RFK Jr. likened vaccinating children to sex abuse by the Catholic Church

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has a dark view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which sits under HHS. In 2019, he called the federal agency’s vaccine division a fascist enterprise and accused it of knowingly hurting children. He also compared what he saw as a widespread conspiracy to hide harms from the child vaccination program to the cover-up of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

Kennedy made the remarks and others — most previously unreported — over years of appearances at AutismOne, a parent-run autism conference. The comments, dating back to 2013, include claims that the CDC is a “cesspool of corruption,” filled with profiteers, harming children in a way he also likened to “Nazi death camps.”

Brandy Zadrozny reports on the extreme language and metaphors Kennedy has used when speaking about vaccines, which offer new insight into what Kennedy might do with the CDC if the Senate confirms him, from disbanding panels that study vaccine safety to misrepresenting government data in a way that decreases public trust or causes manufacturers to pull vaccines from the market.

Read more:

Ukraine’s ‘Witches of Bucha’ volunteer to take down Russian drones 

A volunteer civil defense force in Ukraine made up of 90% women, has been tasked with helping to defend the country from a constant bombardment of Russian missiles and drones. They call themselves the “Witches of Bucha.”

The group is already going on patrols, but like so many others in Ukraine, they expect that the fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces may soon be on hold, though not done for good.

Many of the women are from the city of Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, where some of the worst atrocities took place in the early days of the war, including the execution of civilians in the street. One woman in the volunteer group told NBC News that her husband and her brother have both been killed in the war, and the group gives her an outlet to channel her rage.

As Ukraine’s military struggles with battlefield setbacks and dwindling morale, the specter of a peace deal promised by President-elect Donald Trump has added another layer of uncertainty.

Hear that? It’s the hum of early Oscars buzz 

The presidential election may be over, but campaign season is just getting started in Hollywood. The 97th annual Academy Awards are scheduled for March 2, which means a slew of film industry publicists and executives will be mobilizing to gain support from the nearly 10,000 members who vote on the Oscars. (Cue the “For Your Consideration” ads all over Los Angeles).

This year, the best picture race lacks a clear front-runner — unlike the previous two Oscar cycles, when “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Oppenheimer” established clear and early advantages. A handful of films are in the 2025 Oscars conversation, leaving a “wide-open field” for things to change in the coming months, according to an awards prediction expert. Maybe “Anora,” the Sean Baker-directed film about a Brooklyn stripper who marries the spoiled heir of a Russian oligarch, will go all the way. Or sci-fi blockbuster "Dune: Part Two" could build on the success of the first installment of the series, which took home six awards in 2022.

Take a lookat some of the leading contenders and why they have so much buzz before the first ballots are even cast.

Tomorrow is Black Friday, but tons of sales from your favorite retailers are already happening. NBC Select's editors rounded up the best early Black Friday deals to shop:

A $6 million apology

Palm Springs is one of Los Angeles’ weekend playgrounds, a desert oasis, chock full of mid-century architecture, golf courses, quirky shops and hip restaurants. But to make way for these attractions, over a period of several years in the late 1950s, the city government directed the bulldozing and burning of the one neighborhood where Black people were allowed to live. Lucille McFarland, now 101 years old, was a resident of the area dubbed Section 14. She’d moved west from Mississippi assuming the racial terror that characterized her upbringing would be less of a constant threat. Her son remembers that "traumatizing" moment when their family was told they had the weekend to pack up and move out.

This is the remarkable story of a California city's assault on its Black residents and how, earlier this month, it attempted to make amends.

— Michelle Garcia, NBC BLK editorial director

Thanks for reading the Morning Rundown. Today's newsletter was curated for you by Elizabeth Both. 

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