TV News LIES

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) went after Hilton Hotels on Monday, accusing it of engaging in an effort to cancel agents’ reservations in Minnesota. The company pushed back on the claim.

“@HiltonHotels has launched a coordinated campaign in Minneapolis to REFUSE service to DHS law enforcement,” the department wrote in a post on the social platform X.

“When officers attempted to book rooms using official government emails and rates, Hilton Hotels maliciously CANCELLED their reservations,” the department added.

In an emailed statement to The Hill, a Hilton spokesperson said the chain’s “hotels serve as welcoming places for all.”

“This hotel is independently owned and operated, and these actions were not reflective of Hilton values,” a Hilton spokesperson said. “We have been in direct contact with the hotel, and they have apologized for the actions of their team, which was not in keeping with their policies. They have taken immediate action to resolve this matter. Hilton’s position is clear: Our properties are open to everyone and we do not tolerate any form of discrimination.”

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A helicopter crash on Jan. 2 claimed the lives of four family members from Oregon in a remote area of Pinal County, Arizona. Officials said the aircraft struck a slackline stretched across a canyon just before 11 a.m. local time.

The helicopter crashed in Telegraph Canyon, south of Superior and about 65 miles east of Phoenix, according to the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office.

Search and rescue teams reached the wreckage later that evening and confirmed four fatalities, according to the Pinal County Sheriff's Office.

The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the crash.

Family members have identified the four passengers as David McCarty, 59, Rachel McCarty, 23, Faith McCarty, 21, and Katelyn Heideman, 22. The identities have not yet been officially released by the Pinal County Sheriff's Office.

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First, New Yorkers saw the elimination of subway token, which lasted for half a century. Now, its successor – the swipeable MetroCard, which lasted barely more than three decades – has seen its demise.

At midnight on 1 January, the flexible credit card-sized pass used by millions of New Yorkers to get through subway turnstiles is being terminated from sale just as a new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, takes office.

The transit system will fully transition to Omny, a contactless payment system that allows riders to tap their credit card, phone or other smart device to pay fares, much as they do for other purchases.

But the end of the MetroCard has brought mixed feelings. The unlimited ride, 30-day option made More....travelers feel like kings or queens of the city, swiping around at will, seemingly free to travel the length and breadth of the metro system, surfacing on a whim.

There were drawbacks – the MetroCard’s notoriously sensitive magnetic strip could fail to read, abruptly halting the progress of the rider into the turnstile gate, forcing them to reverse to try again.

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A gay California man assaulted in what authorities say was a hate crime on Halloween night has died of his injuries. Now his accused attacker is facing a homicide charge.

Sean Wesley Payton Jr., 25, has been held in jail for about two months following the attack in Sacramento around 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 1. Alvin Prasad, the 58-year-old man he's accused of targeting, died of his injuries in the hospital on Sunday, Dec. 28. His daughter, Andrea Prasad, has identified him as gay on the GoFundMe page she created, and Prasad was proudly open in hundreds of social media posts.

Now Payton will be booked on a homicide charge, Sacramento police announced on Monday, Dec. 29.

Prosecutors had not charged Payton with homicide as of Wednesday, Dec. 31, but were "evaluating" doing so in light of Prasad's death, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office told USA TODAY on Wednesday.

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A nonprofit group that advocates for law clerks has taken the rare step of filing a misconduct complaint against a federal appeals court judge, alleging that she bullies and mistreats law clerks and that the courts' process for fielding such claims is broken.

The complaint from the Legal Accountability Project against Judge Sarah Merriam of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit states that it is based on conversations with multiple former law clerks who fear retaliation if they come forward themselves.

"She is a bully, in all the ways one might bully their employees: yelling, berating clerks, sending all-caps unhinged emails," said Aliza Shatzman, president and founder of the Legal Accountability Project.

The Legal Accountability Project complaint, which has not been previously reported, was filed earlier this month and reviewed by NPR. The group says it marks the second publicly known complaint in four years about Merriam. Such complaints are not usually made public. Instead, they tend to be handled internally, by courts that police themselves, in part to protect the judiciary's independence and balance of power.

In a nearly yearlong investigation, NPR found a culture of fear about reporting judges and concluded that the courts' internal system often fails to result in meaningful change.

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Uncle Sam wants you to dress up when heading to the airport, but are people heeding the call?

The request for sartorial seriousness in the skies is part of the "The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You" campaign, which the Department of Transportation says aims to "restore courtesy and class to air travel."

When the campaign launched in November, the DOT cited trends that have festered among travelers for years, including 13,800 unruly passenger incidents since 2021, a 400% increase in inflight outbursts since 2019, and one in five flight attendants experiencing "physical incidents" in 2021.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a BlazeTV interview published Nov. 25 that not dressing "respectfully" can lead to "people not treating each other respectfully."

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