TV News LIES

A federal appeals panel has reversed a lower court decision ordering the release of pro-Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi, opening the door to the re-arrest of a student protest organizer whom the Trump administration has spent more than a year trying to deport.

Tuesday’s ruling from the second US circuit court of appeals in New York City overturns a previous decision by a federal judge in Vermont, which likened the government’s efforts to expel him and other activists to McCarthyist repression.

In their unanimous decision, the panel found that the judge had overstepped his authority by intervening in Mahdawi’s case before it had moved fully through the immigration court system.

The ruling mirrors a separate appellate panel’s decision earlier this year against Mahmoud Khalil, a former classmate of Mahdawi’s at Columbia University.

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Donald Trump announced a new package of tariffs on Tuesday, this time on generic drugs made overseas, to begin in 2028.

The announcement, in a social media post, came just three months after the president issued a proclamation saying that generic pharmaceuticals “are not subject to tariffs at this time” but that decision “will be reassessed in one year.”

Trump’s latest head-spinning reversal on tariff policy means, he said, that generic drugs will continue to be imported tariff-free until 1 August 2028, when a 100% tariff would be imposed “for a one year period of time, and 200% thereafter.” The goal of the policy, Trump said, was to coerce drug makers into building plants in the United States.

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A federal appeals court in Washington, DC, on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro's attempt to overturn his contempt of Congress felony conviction.

The unanimous opinion of three judges on the DC US Circuit Court of Appeals marks the latest failure of Trump advisers to unwind legal fallout over their actions around the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot.

The decision also leans heavily into Navarro's failures to prove in court that Trump wanted to shield him from congressional testimony.

Navarro was found guilty in 2023 of defying congressional subpoenas related his public claims of plotting to block Congress from certifying Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election. The House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot sought both records Navarro had and his testimony, but he refused.

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Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) pushed back this week against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s new proposal to add testosterone screenings to service members’ periodic health assessments.

“The U.S. military does not need more testosterone; it needs better leadership,” Kelly said on MS NOW’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki” on Monday.

This new standard would require testosterone screening for all service members age 30 or above. The military will provide optional testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) for those flagged for deficiencies in this hormone on their screening tests, according to Hegseth.

“The president should fire Pete Hegseth,” said Kelly, a former U.S. Navy captain. “He’s making awful decisions, is putting service members at risks that I would not have expected when I served that a secretary of defense would make these sort of decisions, nor a president.”

A group of Democratic senators expressed “serious concerns” about this screening change in a Monday letter to the defense secretary, citing “longstanding medical guidance” opposing routine population-wide testosterone screenings.

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A federal prosecutor in Seattle who was sacked by President Trump last week after barely an hour on the job is challenging his removal in court, setting the stage for an unprecedented legal battle that could determine who has the power to fire court-appointed U.S. attorneys.

As the top prosecutor for the Western District of Washington last Wednesday, after he was unanimously appointed by federal judges to fill a vacancy in the U.S. attorney’s office.

News of his dismissal came in an email from the White House Presidential Personnel Office less than an hour after he was sworn in, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The complaint, which names Trump and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, argues Rogoff’s firing was unlawful because the president does not have the authority to “nullify the district’s court’s appointment power” granted by the Appointments Clause.

It also argues that the Trump administration has violated a federal statute governing how vacancies are filled and asks a federal judge to reinstate him as the “validly appointed” pick until a successor is chosen through the presidential nomination and Senate confirmation process.

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During the U.S.-Iran talks in Lake Lucerne, Switzerland in late June, Iranian negotiators sent a private message to Vice President JD Vance through an intermediary. The Iranians warned Vance that the continued presence of President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner would undermine the chance of turning the June 17 framework into an enduring deal, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site.

The Iranian official spoke to Drop Site on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly. In the message, according to the official, Iran conveyed to Vance that the pair were more interested in exploiting insider knowledge of the negotiations to profit in financial markets than they were in reaching a deal. Iranian negotiators also expressed concern about repeated leaks from Kushner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (A U.S. official told Axios that since the negotiations began, Witkoff and Kushner “talk almost every day to Netanyahu” and the head of Mossad.)

In the weeks leading up to the signing of the memorandum of understanding, the official said, Iran presented written documentation to mediators of what it characterized as evidence that “individuals close to President Trump” were abusing the Iran war and diplomatic developments to manipulate financial markets. “Even before the Islamabad talks kicked off [in April], we had already sent multiple messages to Trump through the Pakistanis, warning them about [Witkoff’s] overall destructive role in the previous negotiation,” the Iranian official said.

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Hamas has elected Khalil al-Hayya as the new head of its political bureau, placing one of the movement’s most experienced negotiators at the centre of its leadership during a period where Gaza is still facing Israeli genocide and the region faces a renewed war.

The movement announced the result on Monday after an internal ballot of the leadership in which Hayya secured 35 votes, narrowly defeating Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas abroad and a former political bureau chief, who received 34, according to Al Jazeera Arabic Palestine bureau chief, Walid Al Omari.

The vote completed a leadership process that began in May after Hamas failed to settle the contest in its first round.

Hayya, who is based in Qatar, succeeds Yahya Sinwar, who took charge after Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024. Israeli forces killed Sinwar during fighting in Rafah three months later.

In the months that followed, Hamas relied on a five-member interim council led by Mohammed Darwish, the head of its Shura Council, to manage its political affairs and oversee negotiations.

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A former United Nations investigations chief has accused the International Criminal Court’s executive body of subjecting Prosecutor Karim Khan to a “stitch-up” in their decision to suspend him from office over misconduct allegations.

Ben Swanson is a former UN assistant secretary-general and deputy head of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), and has previously served as director of the OIOS Investigations Division. 

Over the past year, he has submitted four expert's opinions commissioned by Khan's legal team to the 21-member bureau of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), criticising the manner in which the investigation into misconduct allegations facing the prosecutor was conducted, and the subsequent handling of the process by the bureau.

In his latest submission on 28 June, obtained by Middle East Eye through independent sources, Swanson denounced the 8 June decision by the bureau, which suspended the prosecutor after concluding by a majority that he committed “serious misconduct”. 

The bureau’s decision departed from the unanimous conclusion of a panel of three judges it appointed, which in March concluded that the facts presented in the UN investigation "do not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant framework".

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