TV News LIES

Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump talked again, this time without the fanfare of their first meeting.

Mamdani, New York’s incoming democratic socialist mayor, spoke briefly over the phone with the Republican president before the end of November. Their call, first disclosed by Mamdani on Spectrum News NY1 on Dec. 2, occurred less than two weeks after their surprisingly chummy Nov. 21 Oval Office meeting.

“I’ve always kept it a conversation that’s focused on the welfare of New Yorkers,” Mamdani said on NY1's "Inside City Hall." “And the fact that New Yorkers are still struggling under a cost of living crisis.”

Mamdani, who takes office Jan. 1, didn't specify when the call took place, though he said they spoke prior to a clash between protesters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on Nov. 29 in lower Manhattan. A spokesperson for Mamdani said they talked before Thanksgiving.

Mamdani said he gave condolences to Trump about the two National Guard members shot in Washington, DC, on Nov. 26, including one soldier who died.

In addition, Mamdani said they discussed building housing and the importance of helping New Yorkers being pricing out of the city.

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During the over two years of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, there has also been violence in the other Palestinian Territory— the West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation for decades.

There have been waves of attacks by Israeli settlers, some of which have been deadly. And arrests of residents, which Israel says is for its own security.

Israel has also been quietly redistricting the land. It’s the same land Palestinians want for a future state and they fear it is being annexed by Israel. We go there to see what it means on the ground.

TVNL Comment: Listen to the NPR report here.

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Israel said it launched an airstrike on a Hamas militant in southern Gaza late Wednesday in retaliation for an attack earlier in the day that wounded five Israeli soldiers.

The strike was the latest test for a fragile ceasefire that has mostly held up since early October, despite claims of violations by both Israel and Hamas. Hamas put out a statement condemning the Israeli strike in Khan Younis.

Earlier Wednesday, Israel received remains of what could be one of the last hostages in Gaza and said it would begin allowing Palestinians to leave the territory through a border crossing with Egypt.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas violated the ceasefire Wednesday when, according to the army, militants emerged from a tunnel and attacked Israeli soldiers in an area under their control.

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The Department of Homeland Security is further clamping down on processing immigration applications after two National Guard members were shot by an Afghan national.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, in a memo on Tuesday said it would pause reviewing all pending applications for green cards, citizenship, or asylum from immigrants from 19 countries listed in a previous travel ban.

President Trump in June announced the travel ban against 12 countries, and partial restrictions against seven others, after a firebombing attack in Colorado.

The citizenship and immigration agency also plans to re-review and re-interview immigrants from these countries, potentially going as far back as 2021, amid sharper scrutiny of those who have followed the legal steps to seek permanent status in the U.S.

"The Trump Administration is making every effort to ensure individuals becoming citizens are the best of the best. Citizenship is a privilege, not a right," a DHS spokesperson told NPR in a statement. "We will take no chances when the future of our nation is at stake. The Trump Administration is reviewing all immigration benefits granted by the Biden administration to aliens from Countries of Concern."

The travel ban applies to citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen and added restricted access applied to people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. Migrants from all 19 countries are impacted by the pauses of pending applications and review of previously approved ones.

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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to add a requirement that people videotape their requests for physician-assisted deaths, one of several conditions she’s put forward to sign the hotly debated Medical Aid in Dying Act.

The Democratic governor proposed the amendments to the Legislature late last month, according to two people briefed on the negotiations but not authorized to speak publicly about them. Talks are ongoing, the people said.

The amendments are Hochul’s first foray into the wrenching debate over the topic, which has prompted lawmakers to share personal stories that touch on religious faith, individual liberty and their own experience caring for dying loved ones.

“I hear from a lot of people on that issue,” Hochul told reporters recently. “There are strong views on both sides of the spectrum — intense views on this. And I’m conscious of that, and it’s going to be a very weighty decision on me.”

Hochul is also pushing to create a seven-day waiting period for terminally ill patients who seek life-ending drugs from physicians. Another proposed provision would require all patients who ask doctors to help end their lives to undergo a mental health evaluation by a psychiatrist.

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Alexander Prokhanov — the aging ultranationalist novelist, editor, and chief ideologue of Russian imperial mysticism — has seen his latest book, Lemner, abruptly vanish from store shelves. It was printed, advertised, distributed across Russia, and then suddenly recalled. Bookstores received quiet instructions to return all copies. State television, which once glorified him, now pretends he doesn’t exist.

The reason is both banal and profound: Prokhanov’s fictionalized portrayal of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Kremlin elite revealed power as grotesque, delusional, and decaying. Even without naming names, everyone recognized the shadows behind the characters — and in one of them, the unmistakable reflection of dictator Vladimir Putin himself.

The self-drawn illustrations in Lemner are no less disturbing than the text itself. Cartoonish soldiers with haunted eyes, flaming skies, and surreal machinery create an apocalyptic parody of the very ideology Prokhanov once glorified.

The loyal mythmaker had spoken too clearly. And in doing so, he exposed something larger than a literary scandal: the beginning of the end of Russia’s ideological universe.

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A federal judge late on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from making widespread immigration arrests in the nation’s capital without warrants or probable cause that the person would be an imminent flight risk.

The US district judge Beryl Howell in Washington granted a preliminary injunction sought by civil liberties and immigrants’ rights groups in a lawsuit against the US Department of Homeland Security.

The lawsuit alleged that since Donald Trump declared an emergency in Washington in August, there has been a pattern of widespread, unlawful immigration arrests. Community members have reported living in fear of being stopped while driving or walking through their neighborhoods and many have avoided going to work, walking children to school or other daily activities in an attempt to avoid checkpoints and immigration enforcement agents.

Officers making civil immigration arrests generally have to have an administrative warrant. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, they may make arrests without a warrant only if they have probable cause to believe the person is in the US illegally and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained, according to Howell’s ruling.

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Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) accused former Vice President Kamala Harris of telling “blatant lies” to write her postcampaign memoir “107 Days” and “cover her a–,” according to a profile about the governor published in The Atlantic on Wednesday.

Reporter Tim Alberta described Shapiro as “between outrage and exasperation as I relayed the excerpts” about him from Harris’s book. She accused Shapiro of taking over the conversation when he was interviewed to be her running mate, allegedly insisting on being “in the room for every decision,” Alberta wrote.

“I mean, she’s trying to sell books and cover her a–,” Shapiro responded before he backtracked and told Alberta, “I shouldn’t say ‘cover her a–.’ I think that’s not appropriate. She’s trying to sell books. Period.”

Harris passed on Shapiro, who was among the names floated to be her potential vice president, and instead chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).

Shapiro also went after the Democratic Party, which lost the swing state he oversees to President Trump. The president won Pennsylvania with just more than 50 percent of the vote, while Harris received nearly 49 percent.

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