TV News LIES

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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Paramount's owners were planning to have secured firm control of Hollywood rival Warner Bros. Discovery by the end of this week in a blockbuster deal that has the blessing of President Trump's Justice Department.

A federal judge has instead ground the process to a halt, at least for now. And her ruling on Monday in response to a lawsuit filed a week ago by a dozen states suggests Paramount may have some tough sledding ahead in order to get the deal through.

In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted a 14-day temporary restraining order to pause the acquisition. The Democratic attorneys general allege that Paramount's purchase of Warner Bros. would reduce competition, hurting filmgoers along with TV and news consumers and especially those who create entertainment programming and the news content that the public relies on.

The $111 billion deal would put under the same corporate roof Paramount's and Warner's movie and television studios, streamers Paramount+ and HBO Max, Paramount's CBS (the nation's most watched broadcast outlet), and 50 cable TV channels, not to mention both CBS News and CNN.

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New visa restrictions could make it harder for international students to study in the U.S., in another example of how the Trump administration's goals for cutting immigration are at odds with the aims of American higher education.

The Department of Homeland Security says it's cracking down on foreign students who intentionally take a long time to earn their degrees. It's adding strict time limits to student visas and restricting how international students transfer schools or change their study plans.

The rule announced last week could have a big impact on college campuses, where international students can make up as much as a fifth of the student body. Foreign students bring diversity and alternative worldviews, and they contribute heavily to colleges' financial health — they don't qualify for federal aid, so many pay full tuition. They also help fuel American innovation in a countless number of fields, in graduate programs, Ph.D. programs and research positions.

"What is at stake is frankly the preeminence of American higher education," says Fanta Aw, the executive director and CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators. She called the move misguided and unnecessary bureaucracy. "At a time when there's increased competition, we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot every single time."

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The last time I saw Laura Grego was in a tent in a baking field on the Welsh borders in May. The conversation on stage ranged from the dangers of space debris to how the law of the sea might pertain to outer space; from our sense of the sacred to our interplanetary futures. At one point Grego, a physicist, said intently, “People have to be aware of what is happening in space. Public knowledge has to catch up.” Three weeks later, SpaceX launched on the stock exchange, temporarily making Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

So, I ask her now, what is it that we should all know? Well, she says, the average person’s experience of space is about to change. If, so far, that has been “looking at the stars and being full of wonder, full of connection with the universe”, perhaps noticing the occasional streaking object that was not a shooting star, now “there are plans for tens of thousands more satellites, which would really change your relationship with what you see in the sky”. SpaceX, specifically, has just applied to a federal regulator for permission to launch up to 1m of them.

Grego, who is now back in the US and speaking to me on screen from Cambridge, Massachusetts, has an unforced warmth and urgency, and a lack of self-aggrandisement in striking contrast to the gung-ho attitude that seems to accompany so much discussion of space. She became a physicist when she arrived at university and looked for the hardest thing she could find to study, so as to get her time’s worth (“a very midwestern perspective”). Then she became an observational cosmologist, which she found she loved. This merged with her other life as an activist (“anti-war, workers’ rights, racial justice – all the things important for a better society”) when she became research director of the Global Security programme at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

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Tropical Storm Bertha formed Monday evening in the Gulf of Mexico south of the Florida Panhandle as it drifts erratically toward populated coastal areas, bringing a threat of heavy rain, storm surge and damaging wind gusts.

Meanwhile, in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Hurricane Fausto formed far from Mexico’s Baja California peninsula and posed no threat to land Monday night.

The center of Bertha was located about 110 miles (180 km) south of Panama City, Florida. Maximum sustained winds were around 40 mph, according to an evening advisory from the Miami-based National Hurricane Center.

The slow-moving storm has been drifting erratically, but is expected to stay near or along the northern Gulf coast early this week, bringing heavy rainfall to areas of northern Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana as it pushes westward toward Texas. Forecasters said some additional strengthening is expected in the coming hours.

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