TV News LIES

Teens in Texas mariachi band released from ICE detention after bipartisan backlas

Two teenage mariachi musicians were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after their detention sparked widespread backlash, including from a Republican congresswoman.

The Democratic representative Joaquin Castro of Texas announced the release of the brothers, Antonio Yesayahu Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar, 14, on Monday afternoon, sharing photos on social media of the family reuniting.

Two teenage mariachi musicians were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after their detention sparked widespread backlash, including from a Republican congresswoman.

The Democratic representative Joaquin Castro of Texas announced the release of the brothers, Antonio Yesayahu Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar, 14, on Monday afternoon, sharing photos on social media of the family reuniting.

The case has drawn national attention because the brothers had travelled to Washington DC last summer after their high school’s mariachi ensemble, Mariachi Ono, won a state mariachi competition. Their congresswoman, Monica De La Cruz, a Republican, had invited them to the House floor, where she celebrated their accomplishment.

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A Maronite parish priest, Father Pierre Al-Rai, was killed and at least five people were injured this afternoon by an Israeli strike on the Christian-majority village of Qlayaa in southern Lebanon. Fr Pierre al-Rahi, had stayed in the village, defying an Israeli order to leave, in order to protect his parishioners.

Three days ago, Father Pierre welcomed the Lebanese government's declaration that any military or security activity outside the authority of the state was illegal - referring to the government's move to ban Hezbollah's armed activity.

In a speech delivered on Friday in front of a church, Fr Pierre said the people of his community defend their land peacefully by remaining on their land. "None of us carries weapons," he said. "The only weapons we carry are peace, love, and prayer."

Today a house in the village was hit by Israeli tank, injuring the husband and wife who lived there. When several neighbours, the Red Cross and Fr Pierre rushed to help them, the house was hit a second time, injuring Fr Pierre and four others. AFP report that the priest died soon afterwards.

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Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed a bill that would have honored the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk on license plates in the Grand Canyon State.

“Charlie Kirk’s assassination is tragic and a horrifying act of violence. In America, we resolve our political differences at the ballot box. No matter who it targets, political violence puts us all in harm’s way and damages our sacred democratic institutions,” Hobbs wrote in her Friday veto letter.

“I will continue working toward solutions that bring people together, but this bill falls short of that standard by inserting politics into a function of government that should remain nonpartisan,” she added.

Legislation honoring Kirk, who lived in Arizona, passed in the state Senate in a 16-2 vote and in the state House in a 31-23 vote. The state House and Senate are controlled by Republicans.

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Nearly three-quarters of respondents to a new Quinnipiac University poll do not support the U.S. sending ground troops into Iran, as the conflict in the Middle East hits 10 days on Monday.

The survey, released Monday, found that 20 percent of respondents support such a move, while 74 percent oppose it. Just 3 percent of Democrats, 19 percent of independents and 37 percent of Republicans support putting boots on the ground.

More than half of surveyed Republicans, in fact, are against such an action. Some members of President Trump’s MAGA base, including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Tucker Carlson, have criticized the president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for launching the war.

Trump has left the door open to putting boots on the ground in Iran, telling reporters Saturday he “possibly” could do so.

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Rep. Kevin Kiley (Calif.) announced Monday that he will formally leave the Republican Party this week to become an independent..

Rep. Kevin Kiley (Calif.) announced Monday that he will formally leave the Republican Party this week to become an independent.

Kiley had previously announced that he will run for reelection in the midterms as an independent. But he accelerated the process on Monday, saying he will file a letter with the House clerk immediately to drop his identification as a Republican for the remainder of the current Congress.

“I will be the sole independent member of the House of Representatives,” Kiley told reporters Monday during a virtual press conference. “We’re going to be submitting the letter to the clerk today.”

Optically, the switch is another setback for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other GOP leaders, who currently have a paper-thin majority and are scrambling to defend it in November’s elections.

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It is near impossible to make sense – at least from the justifications on offer – of what US President Donald Trump really hopes to achieve with his and Israel's blatantly illegal war of aggression on Iran.

Is it to destroy an Iranian nuclear weapons programme for which there has never been any tangible evidence, and which Trump claimed just a few months ago to have "completely and totally obliterated" in an earlier lawbreaking attack?

Or is it intended to force Tehran back to negotiations on its nuclear energy enrichment programme that were brought prematurely to an end when the US launched its unprovoked attack – talks, we should note, that were made necessary because in 2018, during his first term, Trump tore up the original deal with Iran?

Or is the war supposed to browbeat Iran into greater flexibility, even though Trump blew up the talks at the very moment Oman, the chief mediator, insisted that Tehran had capitulated on almost every one of Washington's onerous demands and that a deal was "within our reach"?

Or are the air strikes designed to "liberate" Iranians, even though the early victims included at least 165 civilians in a girls' school, most of them children aged between 7 and 12?

Or is the aim to pressure Iran to give up its ballistic missiles – the only deterrence it has against attack, and which would leave it utterly defenceless against US and Israeli malevolent designs?

Or did Washington believe Tehran was about to strike first, even though Pentagon officials have confided to congressional staff that there was zero intelligence an attack was about to happen?

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Israeli settlers shot and killed three Palestinians in the occupied West Bank over the weekend, amid a surge in attacks since the start of the war on Iran.

A fourth Palestinian died after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli forces during one of the settler assaults.

The first incident took place on Saturday in the Wadi al-Rakhim area of Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, when settlers opened fire at two brothers from close range.

Amir Mohammad Shanaran was killed in the attack, while his brother was critically wounded, according to Palestinian media.

The two men were reportedly shot near their home by settlers from the nearby settlement of Susiya, which is built on Palestinian land.

On Sunday morning, settlers attacked Palestinians in the town of Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, assaulting residents and opening fire.

Two men identified by the Palestinian health ministry as Thaer Farouq Hmayel, 24, and Farea Jawdat Hamayel, 57, were killed by gunfire.

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A new video released by Iranian state media shows what appears to be a U.S. cruise missile striking a compound where around 175 Iranian students and staff were killed at a girl's school a little over a week ago.

The seven-second video was posted by Mehr News, an Iranian state news agency. It shows the missile slamming into a building inside a walled compound – likely a health clinic that was also inside the perimeter of what was at one point an Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval base.

The strike appears to have taken place shortly after the girl's school was hit. In the new video, smoke is already visibly rising from the part of the compound where the school was located. State media reports put the death toll from the bombing at somewhere between 165 and 180, many of them students.

Although the quality of the video makes precisely identifying the munition difficult, the missile appears consistent with a Tomahawk cruise missile, according to Jeffrey Lewis, a professor of global security at Middlebury College. The U.S. is the only country known to have Tomahawk missiles, and U.S. officials say the military was operating in the south of the country at the time of the strike.

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