TV News LIES

Construction on the nation’s largest infrastructure project can resume after a court ordered the Trump administration to release funding it had withheld to gain leverage over congressional Democrats from New York.

On Feb. 18, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the U.S. Department of Transportation released nearly $130 million in funding for the $16 billion Gateway tunnel project in an ongoing lawsuit. The rail tunnel project, under the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York, is meant to bolster tunnels along the Northeast Corridor, the busiest passenger rail line in the United States.

The funding resuming is a blow to President Donald Trump, who had vowed to terminate the project in a budget fight with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York.

"This funding freeze was unlawful from the start," James, who has herself been targeted for legal retribution by Trump, said in a statement. "We took swift action in court, and now every dollar that was illegally withheld has been released."

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Sen. Lindsey Graham has been accused of derailing a diplomatic meeting in Munich with an expletive-laden rant and sexist insult leveled at Denmark’s prime minister.

The close ally of President Donald Trump, himself no stranger to vicious verbal attacks against women, is said to have called Mette Frederiksen “little lady” as he looked her “straight in the eye” and “sneered” during the exchange at a Munich Hotel on Saturday, Danish newspaper Berlingske reports.

Graham had been meeting with Frederiksen to discuss Trump’s threats earlier this year to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO ally.

Also in attendance at the meeting, held on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, were several members of the House and Senate along with Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.

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In a statement, the Egyptian government called it a "dangerous escalation aimed at consolidating Israeli control over the occupied Palestinian territories."

Qatar's foreign ministry condemned the "decision to convert West Bank lands into so-called 'state property'," saying it would "deprive the Palestinian people of their rights."

Jordan's foreign ministry said in a statement that the country "strongly condemns the actions of the Israeli government targeting the annexation of occupied Palestinian land, most recently the illegitimate Israeli government decision converting lands in the West Bank into so-called 'state property.' This constitutes a blatant violation of international law and international humanitarian law, underminesthe inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and obstructs the establishment of their independent sovereign state ."

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority called for international intervention to prevent the "de facto beginning of the annexation process and the undermining of the foundations of the Palestinian state."

Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now called the measure a "mega land grab."

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Two thousand Ukrainian children have successfully been recovered from Russian control as part of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday.

In a statement posted to Telegram, the Ukrainian leader commended government officials, civil society groups and international partners for their role in securing each child’s return, but stressed that the effort is far from over.

“Today we have an important result – 2,000 Ukrainian children who were successfully returned home from Russian control as part of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative,” Zelensky said.

However, he cautioned: “We still have a long and difficult road ahead of us. Thousands of Ukrainian children still remain hostages of Russia, becoming victims of its crimes every day.”

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Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, is leaving the agency, the department confirmed on Tuesday.

McLaughlin has become the public face and voice defending the Trump administration's mass deportation policy and immigration tactics over the past year.

"McLaughlin started planning to leave in December but pushed back her departure amid the aftermath of the shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers, according to the people briefed on her exit," DHS said in a statement to NPR.

POLITICO first reported her departure. It is not clear where she is going next. McLaughlin in a statement said Lauren Bis, currently her deputy, will replace her as assistant secretary for public affairs, while Katie Zacharia will become deputy assistant secretary.

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An immigration judge has blocked the Trump administration from deporting Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian activist who was arrested by federal agents last year during a US citizenship interview in Vermont.

Lawyers for Mahdawi gave details of the decision in a court filing on Tuesday with a federal appeals court in New York, which had been reviewing a ruling that led to his release from immigration custody in April.

“I am grateful to the court for honoring the rule of law and holding the line against the government’s attempts to trample on due process,” Mahdawi, who is a permanent US resident, or green card holder, said in a statement.

He continued: “This decision is an important step towards upholding what fear tried to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice. Nearly a year ago, I was detained at my citizenship interview not for breaking the law but for speaking against the genocide of Palestinians.”

The judge, Nina Froes, had ruled last Friday that the evidence that the Trump administration had submitted to the court was not admissible, due to an inability to “meet its burden of proving removability”. According to the judge’s order, the government failed to properly authenticate a memorandum purported to be signed by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.

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Millions of files related to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein suggest the existence of a “global criminal enterprise” that carried out acts meeting the legal threshold of crimes against humanity, a panel of independent experts appointed by the United Nations human rights council has said.

The experts said crimes outlined in documents released by the US justice department were committed against a backdrop of supremacist beliefs, racism, corruption and extreme misogyny. The crimes, they said, showed a commodification and dehumanisation of women and girls.

“So grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls, that a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity,” they said in a statement.

The experts said the allegations contained in the files require an independent, thorough and impartial investigation, and said inquiries should also be launched into how it was possible for such crimes to be committed for so long.

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Conservation and historical organizations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over National Park Service policies that the groups say erase history and science from America’s national parks.

A lawsuit filed in Boston says orders by Donald Trump and interior secretary Doug Burgum have forced park service staff to remove or censor exhibits that share factually accurate and relevant US history and scientific knowledge, including about slavery and climate change.

Separately, LGBTQ+ rights advocates and historic preservationists sued the park service on Tuesday for removing a rainbow Pride flag from the Stonewall national monument, the New York site that commemorates a foundational moment in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

The changes at exhibits came in response to a Trump executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks. It directed the interior department to ensure those sites do not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Burgum later directed removal of “improper partisan ideology” from museums, monuments, landmarks and other public exhibits under federal control.

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