TV News LIES

Democratic state representatives in Minnesota began a sit-in in their house chamber on Thursday night after the Republican speaker failed to put a gun violence prevention bill up for a vote.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported the sit-in began at about 9pm local time.

Samantha Sencer-Mura, a Democratic representative from Minneapolis, first announced the plan on Wednesday from the floor of the state’s house of representatives, giving speaker Lisa Demuth, a candidate for governor, 24 hours to give the bill a vote before the sit-in would start.

The Minnesota senate, controlled by Democrats, narrowly passed the gun violence prevention omnibus earlier this month. The house, where there is a 67-67 vote tie and a Republican speaker in charge, has so far not taken up the bill.

The push for new gun laws came after a school shooting at Annunciation Catholic church last August, where two students were killed and others injured during a school-wide mass. Minnesota also saw the killings of state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the shootings of state lawmaker John Hoffman and his wife, last summer.

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) torched CBS News Editor-In-Chief Bari Weiss on Thursday after reports surfaced that she allegedly let Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu select his interviewer for last weekend’s “60 Minutes” segment.

Speaking with reporters outside the Capitol, Ocasio-Cortez called into question Weiss’s journalistic integrity while saying she couldn’t think of any other foreign leader with this level of influence over American media.

“That CBS situation is just a violation, I think, of any journalistic standards,” Ocasio-Cortez told Drop Site News reporter Julian Andreone. “So it doesn’t surprise me that Bari Weiss is letting elected officials, who should be held accountable by journalists and the free media, instead she’s doing things the other way around and letting her friends pick their interviewer.”

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Chinese President Xi Jinping is using the issue of Taiwan to exert power over President Trump as the two leaders seek to tackle a number of hot button issues during this week’s high stakes summit in Beijing.

During their bilateral meeting on Thursday, Xi told Trump the “entire relationship” between Washington and Beijing would be put in jeopardy if the “Taiwan question” is not handled well, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

Additionally, China referred to Taiwan as “the most important issue in China-U.S. relations” in a readout following the meeting.

The White House, on the other hand, did not mention Taiwan once in its readout of the meeting, and Trump notably did not respond to questions from reporters on the topic when he was greeted by Xi.

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The United States is moving to indict Raúl Castro, the former Cuban president, two sources familiar with the matter told USA TODAY.

The possible charges are related to a 30-year-old case that involved the Cuban government shooting down two planes operated by a humanitarian group in 1996, the people familiar said. The indictment would have to be approved by a grand jury.

News that the U.S. was looking to indict Castro came hours after CIA Director John Ratcliffe led a delegation to Havana on May 14 to deliver a message from President Donald Trump to Cuban officials and Raúl "Raulito" Guillermo Rodriguez Castro. Raulito is the elder Castro's grandson.

The potential indictment for former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, now 94, and the charges were first reported by CBS News.

The 1996 shootdown of two civilian planes operated by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue remains one of the most politically charged episodes in modern U.S.-Cuba relations – and one in which some U.S. officials are still pressing for criminal accountability three decades later.

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What’s most shocking about the latest accounts of sexual torture of Palestinians in Israeli custody is not just their inherent horror. It is that despite so much evidence being so visible for so long, the machinery of abuse and denial continues to deepen.

Nicholas Kristof’s recent reporting on the issue in the New York Times brought important public attention to the issue. But abuses in Israeli custody have long been reported by former detainees, lawyers, doctors and journalists, and documented by human rights organizations. Since October 2023, this body of evidence has revealed a horrific reality: Israel’s prison system has been transformed into a criminal network of torture camps.

In his reporting, Kristof documented harrowing testimonies from Palestinian men, women and children describing widespread sexual abuse, rape and humiliation by Israeli soldiers, prison guards, settlers and interrogators. Israel’s response to the reporting followed a familiar script: deny the abuse, lash out at those who document it, and protect the system that made it possible. The ministry of foreign affairs dismissed the New York Times piece as “Hamas propaganda” and has gone so far as to declare that Israel will sue the New York Times.

Other officials and commentators reached for the familiar charge of “blood libel”, called for the New York Times to be shut down, and broadly did everything in their power to delegitimize not only the work of Kristof, a world-renowned journalist who has covered sexual abuse in conflicts across the globe, but that of anyone trying to bring this abuse to light.

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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was urged by the top Justice Department ethics lawyer to recuse himself from any legal cases connected to his former client, President Donald Trump, according to a new CNN report on Thursday.

Just after Blanche took on the role of deputy attorney general in March 2025, Joseph Tirrell gave Blanche and Emil Bove, his then top-deputy, "a printed PowerPoint presentation on ethics," a former senior DOJ ethics official told CNN.

This was the first time that Blanche was formally told he would need to remove himself from Trump-related cases — something that has not been reported before.

"Around the same time, the department’s top career lawyer advised that Bove potentially had a conflict of interest by being involved in firings of DOJ lawyers," CNN reported.

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Mustafa Badaha drove along the edge of his land, past rows of olive trees he could no longer access. A red string put up by Israeli settlers demarcated the border of what was stolen from him in Deir Ammar, a Palestinian town around 17 kilometers northwest of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. The settlers had recently established a new outpost in the area named Ramataim Zofim.

“Everything is legal—I have permits—but it makes no difference. A settler comes and simply says, ‘This is my land. You have no place here,’” Badaha told Drop Site. For years, he cultivated the land, building a small summer home where his family would gather. “Now, no one can go there—if we try, we are attacked,” he said. “What was once my joy is now my greatest fear.”

Settlers began routinely attacking Palestinians in the area back in August 2025. “They came here armed, created problems with the youth and the families, and even fired live ammunition,” Badaha said. He contacted the Palestinian Authority, who reached out to Israeli authorities. “The attacks kept increasing day after day. At first, the settlers were about 500 meters away, then gradually they kept getting closer until they reached the houses,” he said. “Every day there are provocations. They block the road, and with the youth we reopened it several times. Recently, there was another major attack and they blocked the road again.” After contacting the Israeli police, the Israeli military eventually arrived and detained Palestinians from the community instead of the settlers.

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The remains of the second U.S. Army soldier who went missing during military exercises in Morocco have been recovered, the Army said Wednesday, ending a multinational search operation that deployed air, naval and artificial intelligence assets.

The soldier was identified as Spc. Mariyah Symone Collington of Taveres, Fla., the U.S. military Europe and Africa said in a statement. She was 19 years old.

"Royal Moroccan Armed Forces transported the Soldier's remains by a Moroccan helicopter to the morgue of Moulay El Hassan Military Hospital in Guelmim, Morocco," the statement said.

Collington served as an air and missile defense crewmember and was assigned to Charlie Battery, 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, U.S. Army Europe and Africa said.

Collington entered the Regular Army's Delayed Entry Program in 2023 before beginning active-duty service in 2024. She completed Basic Combat Training and Advanced Individual Training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, as a 14P air and missile defense crewmember. She reported to Charlie Battery, 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, in Ansbach, Germany, in February 2025 and was promoted to specialist on May 1, 2026.

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