TV News LIES

An annual Christmas Eve jazz concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington was canceled because the center’s Donald Trump-appointed board added the president's name to the building last week.

Chuck Redd, the musician who has led the show since 2006, told CNN that he called off the show “when I saw the name change happening last Friday."

The center’s board, which Trump filled with allies who then elected him chair earlier this year, voted to rename the national music, arts, and culture institution after both Trump and Kennedy on Dec. 18.

Democratic lawmakers who hold ex officio board seats due to their roles in Congress argued that the vote, which the administration claimed was unanimous, was conducted improperly. An ex officio board member, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, filed a lawsuit Dec. 22 claiming that the name change is illegal.

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A federal judge on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to block New York’s so-called Green Light Law, which allows the state to issue driver’s licenses to people without requiring proof that they’re in the country legally.

U.S. District Judge Anne Nardacci in Albany ruled that the Trump administration failed to support its claims that certain provisions of the state law are preempted by federal law, impermissibly regulate the federal government, or impermissibly discriminate against the federal government.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit in February, challenging the constitutionality of the state law, saying it violates the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which states federal laws take precedence over state laws, and asking the court to block enforcement of the statute.

The lawsuit named the state of New York, as well as its governor, Kathy Hochul (D), and its attorney general, Letitia James (D), as defendants.

The DOJ, in the lawsuit, challenged three specific provisions of the law, including one that prevented the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) from disclosing an applicant’s records or information to “any agency that primarily enforces immigration law or to any employee or agent of such agency” without a court order or warrant.

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Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian home in the south of the Israeli-occupied West Bank overnight, breaking in and killing sheep, a Palestinian official said Tuesday. It was the latest in a surge of attacks by settlers against Palestinians in the territory in recent months.

Israeli police said they arrested five settlers.

The settlers killed three sheep and injured four more, smashed a door and a window of the home, and fired tear gas inside, sending three Palestinian children under the age of 4 to the hospital, said Amir Dawood, who directs an office documenting such attacks within a Palestinian governmental body called the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.

Police said they arrested the five settlers on suspicion of trespassing onto Palestinian land, damaging property and dispensing pepper spray, not tear gas. They said they are investigating.

CCTV video from the attack in the town of As Samu’, shared by the commission, showed five masked settlers in dark clothing, some with batons, approaching the home and appearing to enter. Sounds of smashing are heard, as well as animal noises. Another video from inside shows masked figures appearing to strike sheep in the stable.

TVNL Comment:  No settler is ever punished.  There is a separate set of rules for Palestinians and settlers determined to force them out of their homes and land.  There is never an 'investigation.' The world turns a blind eye to the daily horrors.

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The United States and Ukraine have reached a consensus on several critical issues aimed at bringing an end to the nearly four-year conflict, but sensitive issues around territorial control in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland, along with the management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, remain unresolved, Ukraine's president said.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke as the U.S. showed the 20-point plan, hammered out after marathon talks in Florida in recent days, to Russian negotiators. A response is expected from Moscow on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said.

The Ukrainian president briefed journalists on each point of the plan on Tuesday. His comments were embargoed until Wednesday morning. The draft proposal, which reflects Ukraine's wishes, intertwines political and commercial interests to safeguard security while boosting economic potential.

At the heart of the negotiations lies the contentious territorial dispute concerning the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, known as the Donbas. This is "the most difficult point," Zelenskyy said. He said these matters will be discussed at the leaders level.

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ust before she boarded her flight at Logan airport on 20 November, she was arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and within 48 hours was deported back to Honduras, a country she left aged seven seeking asylum, with chains on her waist, ankles and wrists.

She told the Globe from her grandparent’s house in San Pedro Sula that her American Dream felt over: “I’m losing everything.”

The east coast US city might be a little short on holiday cheer this year.

Masked men in dark cars roam the streets carrying out immigration raids at traffic stops, supermarkets and courthouses. Fear has emptied some classrooms as teachers report thousands of empty desks because immigrant families fear children targeted as they learn.

An Ecuadorian couple in Boston who suffered human trafficking in the US were arrested by ICE twice in the last four months. In August the 43-year-old mother, who the Guardian is not naming, was detained for two months and 10 days. On 9 December, her husband was also arrested and is currently held in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

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Republicans are attempting to exempt some major polluters from paying for Pfas “forever chemical” cleanup. If successful, it could mark a major setback in US effort to rein in Pfas pollution.

The Republican-led House energy and commerce committee recently held a hearing at which it invited representatives from the water treatment and landfill industries, among others, to make the case about why they should be exempted from rules that hold polluters financially accountable for the cleanup of two types of dangerous Pfas.

Water treatment plants and landfills are major polluters and represent critical points in the effort to curb Pfas water pollution nationwide. Utilities already have to remove hundreds of chemicals, so it is unclear why they are so opposed to removing two types of Pfas, said Scott Faber, vice-president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group non-profit.

“The only real difference is Pfas are more toxic … so the fact that water utilities and landfills are being such crybabies about Pfas says something about how little regard for public health they have,” Faber said.

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A powerful winter storm swept across California on Wednesday, with heavy rain and gusty winds.

The storm led to evacuation warnings for mudslides in the south, near white-out snow conditions in the mountains and hazardous travel for millions of holiday drivers. In addition, a fallen tree killed a man in San Diego Wednesday morning.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday also declared a state of emergency in six counties, including San Diego, to allow state assistance in storm response.

Forecasters said Southern California could see its wettest Christmas in years and warned about flash flooding and mudslides. Areas scorched by January’s wildfires were under evacuation warnings, and Los Angeles County officials said Tuesday they were going door to door to about 380 especially vulnerable homes to order residents to evacuate.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department also issued an evacuation warning Wednesday morning for the community of Wrightwood, a mountain resort town in the San Gabriel Mountains about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, due to potential debris flows from the storm.

Debris and mud were seen rushing down the road leading into Wrightwood in a social media video posted by county fire officials. Crews were working to evacuate some homes, the post said. County officials didn’t immediately return questions about the evacuation.

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President Donald Trump's administration, which failed to meet a deadline to release records related to alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, announced Dec. 24 that the process will take “a few more weeks" after prosecutors found more than a million additional documents,

The Justice Department, via its official X account, said that New York-based federal prosecutors and the FBI "have uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.” The statement did not specify when those documents were discovered.

The department, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, said that despite having lawyers “working around the clock” to remove information that could jeopardize victims and accusers’ privacy, the release "may take a few more weeks."

The administration began releasing files related to criminal investigations of Epstein, the late American financier who was friends with Trump in the 1990s and early 2000s, to comply with a law passed by Congress last month.

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