TV News LIES

Late-night show hosts including Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and David Letterman have rallied behind Jimmy Kimmel following ABC’s decision to indefinitely suspend his popular late-night show after his comments about the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.

In his opening monologue on Thursday night, Stephen Colbert mocked executives at Disney, ABC’s parent company, for caving to threats from Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman, when they pulled Kimmel off the air.

In an excerpt posted on Instagram before broadcast, Colbert also scolded Carr for calling Kimmel’s commentary on the rush to politicize Kirk’s murder an affront to community values. “Well, you know what my community values are, Buster?” Colbert asked. “Freedom of speech.”

“People across the country are shocked by this blatant assault on the freedom of speech,” Colbert added.

Colbert went on to poke fun at Disney executives, saying: “As one source at ABC put it, they were pissing themselves all day” over the threat of Trump’s administration’s retaliation against the network. “On the bright side, that proves Disney is No 1 in streaming,” he joked.

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Paul Nguyen faced up to eight years in prison for allegedly assaulting a Department of Homeland Security agent during President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of policing in Washington, D.C.

But like so many other felony assault cases recently brought by Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host turned U.S. attorney for D.C., the charge against Nguyen crumbled in less than a month.

A prosecutor from Pirro’s office told a magistrate judge on Tuesday The Maryland resident said he won’t forget the four nights he spent in D.C. Jail, all for a charge that would soon be dropped.the office no longer plans to pursue any charges “based on current evidence,” a strong indication that, after reviewing body cam footage and any witness statements, it doesn’t believe it has a case. Nguyen had been accused of injuring the DHS agent during an early-morning scuffle along one of the city’s nightlife strips.

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The Senate has confirmed 48 of President Donald Trump’s nominees at once, voting for the first time under new rules to begin clearing a backlog of executive branch positions that had been delayed by Democrats.

Frustrated by the stalling tactics, Senate Republicans moved last week to make it easier to confirm large groups of lower-level, non-judicial nominations. Democrats had forced multiple votes on almost every one of Trump’s picks, infuriating the president and tying up the Senate floor.

The new rules allow Senate Republicans to move multiple nominees with a simple majority vote — a process that would have previously been blocked with just one objection. The rules don’t apply to judicial nominations or high-level Cabinet posts.

“Republicans have fixed a broken process,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said ahead of the vote.

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More than a dozen elected officials were arrested Thursday while protesting conditions at a New York City immigration holding facility where a federal judge this week extended a court order requiring the government to shape up its treatment of detainees.

The officials — including the city’s fiscal watchdog and state lawmakers — were among 77 people detained during protests at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. The government building, home to immigration court, the FBI‘s New York field office and other federal offices, has become a hotbed of arrests and detention amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Eleven officials were arrested inside the building while attempting to inspect holding rooms on the 10th floor that are the subject of ongoing litigation alleging squalid conditions and overcrowding, according to a coalition of politicians, advocates and faith leaders involved in the protest. They were given summonses and released. The building was later locked down because of a telephoned bomb threat, authorities said.

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The Trump administration has been handed a double defeat by judges in immigration cases, barring the executive branch from deporting a group of Guatemalan children and from slashing protections for many Venezuelans in the US.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the administration to refrain from deporting Guatemalan unaccompanied immigrant children with active immigration cases while a legal challenge plays out.

Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee based in Washington DC, kept in place an earlier judicial block on the policy, sharply criticizing the administration’s unproven assertion that the children’s parents wanted them deported.

The administration attempted to deport 76 Guatemalan minors being held in US custody in a surprise move in the early morning on 31 August, sparking a lawsuit and emergency hearing that temporarily halted the move.

The Department of Justice lawyer Drew Ensign initially said that the children’s parents had requested they be returned home, but the department later withdrew that claim. Reuters published a Guatemalan government report saying that most parents of the roughly 600 Guatemalan children in US custody could not be contacted and of those who could, many did not want their children forced back to the country.

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An immigration judge in the US state of Louisiana has ordered the deportation of pro-Palestinian protest leader Mahmoud Khalil to Algeria or Syria, ruling that he failed to disclose information on his green card application, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.

Khalil’s lawyers said they intended to appeal against the deportation order, and that a federal district court’s separate orders remain in effect prohibiting the government from immediately deporting or detaining him as his federal court case proceeds. The lawyers submitted a letter to the federal court in New Jersey overseeing his civil rights case and said he will challenge the decision.

Khalil, in a statement to the American Civil Liberties Union, said in response to the order: “It is no surprise that the Trump administration continues to retaliate against me for my exercise of free speech. Their latest attempt, through a kangaroo immigration court, exposes their true colors once again.”

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The Israeli military began a ground offensive in Gaza City, the Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday, with two IDF divisions moving toward the city. A third was expected to join them.

In images taken from the Israel-Gaza border on Tuesday, plumes of smoke could be seen rising above the city, which is the largest in the Gaza Strip. It was not immediately clear how many people remained on Tuesday in the city.

Qatar’s minister of state visited the International Criminal Court in the Hague “as part of the work of the team tasked with exploring legal avenues to respond,” to Israel’s strike on Doha, Qatar, earlier this month, the minister said in a post on X Wednesday.

“During the two meetings, I reaffirmed Qatar’s commitment to supporting the path of international justice and to ensuring accountability for perpetrators of crimes under international law—including wars crimes and acts of aggression —so as to prevent them from escaping punishment within the framework of international criminal law,” the minister said in the post.

Israel’s culture minister, Miki Zohar, has announced that funding for the Ophirs, the country’s national film awards, would be cancelled after The Sea, a film about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, won the best feature film prize.

In a statement on X, translated by Israeli news media, Zohar said: “There is no greater slap in the face of Israeli citizens than the embarrassing and detached annual Ophir awards ceremony. Starting with the 2026 budget, this pathetic ceremony will no longer be funded by taxpayers’ money. Under my watch, Israeli citizens will not pay from their pockets for a ceremony that spits in the faces of our heroic soldiers.”

The Sea, which automatically becomes Israel’s entry for the best international film Oscar, was written and directed by Shai Carmeli-Pollak. It stars Muhammad Gazawi as Khaled, a Palestinian boy who goes on a school trip to Tel Aviv to visit the beach for the first time but is denied entry at the border and embarks on a dangerous journey to sneak into the country. Gazawi, 13, won the Ophir for best actor, while co-star Khalifa Natour won best supporting actor. The awards are voted for by members of the Israeli Academy of Film and Television.

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