TV News LIES

The White House threatened to withhold federal funding from the Smithsonian Institution if the prestigious museum system does not submit additional documentation for the Trump administration’s sweeping content review.

In a Thursday letter to Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie Bunch, Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley and White House budget director Russell Vought outlined the material they said still must be submitted, noting the Smithsonian’s earlier submission “fell far short of what was requested, and the overwhelming majority of requested items remain outstanding.”

The Trump administration, in August, launched a review of eight Smithsonian museums aimed at ensuring “alignment” with President Trump’s executive order “to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”

In the Thursday letter, White House officials said funding for the Smithsonian museums is conditioned on adherence to Trump’s executive order and on compliance with the review process.

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Israeli occupation forces and illegal paramilitary Israeli colonizers carried out widespread violations across the occupied West Bank on Saturday, including home invasions, abductions, shootings, among them the killing of two Palestinians, including a child, road attacks, and coordinated colonizer assaults on Palestinian towns and villages.

The incidents were concentrated in the governorates of Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Hebron, Jerusalem, and Salfit, reflecting a continued escalation in military operation and colonizers’ violations.

Ramallah: Road Attacks and Village Invasions:

In the central West Bank, Israeli forces shot and seriously wounded a Palestinian young man before dawn Saturday, in the village of Qarawat Bani Zeid, northwest of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.

illegal Israeli paramilitary colonizers accompanied by Israeli soldiers invaded the main road near Ein Yabrud, east of Ramallah, attacking Palestinian vehicles, damaging property, and obstructing traffic.

Israeli forces shot and seriously wounded a Palestinian young man before dawn Saturday,

Later in the day, armed colonizers invaded Shuqba, northwest of Ramallah, reaching the northern edge of the village.

During the invasion, they broke into a home and a playground, tampered with their contents, and withdrew under military protection.

Israeli forces also abducted several Palestinians in Silwad and nearby towns, stopping vehicles at checkpoints and detaining passengers.

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Here are the major developments of the day:

The Israeli army has confirmed it was responsible for a strike on a shelter for displaced Palestinians that killed at least six people, but said it was firing on “suspects”. Gruesome videos from the scene showed terrified civilians carrying several wounded people away.

Top UN agencies warned that hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza could quickly slide back into famine if Israel does not allow in enough aid.

US State Secretary Marco Rubio has said Hamas must no longer pose a threat to Israel when asked whether the group can undergo partial disarmament and hold onto its light weapons.

The United Nations has condemned Washington for imposing sanctions on two more International Criminal Court judges over their investigation of Israel.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the Houthis’ detention of another 10 UN personnel in ⁠Yemen, taking the total to ​69.

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Sven Lilienström, founder of the Faces of Democracy initiative, spoke via Zoom with Ukrainian human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk (42) about the humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine, the red lines in peace negotiations, and whether a world led predominantly by women would be a better one.

Ms. Matviichuk, democracy is facing a crisis of credibility and trust. How would you personally speak up for democracy? And what do democracy and democratic values mean to you?

Let me explain this with something concrete, because when we speak about values, it is very difficult to talk about abstract things.

Twelve years ago, millions of people in Ukraine raised their voices against the corrupt and authoritarian Russian-backed government. They demonstrated peacefully for the chance to build a country with a European future. In response, the authoritarian government launched large-scale and systematic persecutions.

It was tough. At that time, I was the coordinator of the civil initiative Euromaidan SOS. Every day we provided support to hundreds of people throughout the country who had been beaten, arrested, tortured, or charged with fabricated criminal cases.

When journalists or sociologists asked these people why and for what they were fighting, they used the language of values to explain it. Ordinary people have no detailed knowledge of how the European Union functions, what the mandate of the European Parliament is, or what the role of the Council of Ministers is. But they used the language of values to say: we are peacefully fighting for a chance to build a country where everyone’s rights are protected, where the government is accountable, the judiciary is independent, and the police do not beat students who are peacefully demonstrating.

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On Thursday evening, as rumors about the Brown University gunman swirled, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, but her words rang true to me. The network is one of the outlets where you can find reality-based and largely dependable reporting – especially in breaking news situations like the one that was developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.

But CNN, now 45 years old, is in a precarious situation as two huge media conglomerates vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.

America’s media system isn’t set up for that lofty goal. It’s set up for corporate profitability, for shareholder gain, for ever-increasing size and ever-decreasing competition.

“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of Democracy Without Journalism? and a University of Pennsylvania media policy professor.

The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.

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Dollar General, the retail giant that promises “convenience, quality brands and low prices”, has agreed to pay at least $15m to settle claims that it overcharged customers at many of its 20,000 US stores.

The settlement resolves lawsuits in multiple states alleging that shoppers at the dollar-store chain often see one price on the shelf but pay a higher price at the register. Customers anywhere in the US may be eligible for repayments.

It is the second settlement Dollar General has signed this month. The company also agreed to pay the state of Pennsylvania $1.55m to resolve similar allegations.

The claims in the consumer lawsuits and the state investigation mirrored the findings of a 3 December Guardian investigation, which revealed that Dollar General stores have failed more than 4,300 government price-accuracy inspections in 23 states since January 2022. Many of the stores are located in rural towns and low-income urban neighborhoods with limited retail.

The five lawsuits that sparked the national settlement targeted the company’s operations in New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and South Carolina. They include two cases in New Jersey, one in state court and one in federal court. The suit involving the company’s practices in South Carolina was filed in Tennessee, where Dollar General is headquartered.

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Representatives for victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein condemned the US Department of Justice on Friday for only partially releasing investigative documents while at least one survivor said she felt “redeemed” by the documents.

The documents were released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated the disclosures by 19 December. The law allows for records to be withheld if they threaten current investigations, disrupt national security or identify Epstein’s victims.

The initial disclosure, however, did not appear to be in keeping with this law. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said the justice department would not release all its files on Friday, despite the deadline and the files published on Friday afternoon did not appear to be comprehensive. “I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks,” Blanche said in an Fox News interview.

Top lawmakers responded by threatening legal action “in the face of this violation of federal law”.

Spencer Kuvin, an attorney representing Epstein survivors, said in a statement after the release that it was “no great surprise” the justice department was failing to meet the deadline.

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The United States interdicted a tanker off the coast of Venezuela, two sources familiar with the raid told USA TODAY on Dec. 20, just days after President Donald Trump announced a "blockade" of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

The sources identified the vessel as the Centuries, which maritime records show is a Panama-flagged oil tanker. The ship is not under U.S. sanctions, the sources said. Marine traffic trackers showed the Centuries was off the coast of Venezuela in the waters of Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island.

The Centuries is a 333-meter-long oil tanker that last docked in Singapore in October, according to vessel tracker Maritime Optima. Its reported seizure would mark the second time in recent weeks that the United States has seized a tanker near Venezuela and comes amid a large U.S. military build-up in the region. The seizure was first reported by Reuters.

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