TV News LIES

The John F Kennedy Center, a world-class venue for the performing arts in Washington DC, will halt entertainment events for two years starting on 4 July during renovations, Donald Trump posted on Sunday on Truth Social.

The Kennedy Center, which has seen a wave of performers cancel events in recent months as well as the lowest ticket sales in years, has been in turmoil since the president orchestrated a leadership overhaul in the beginning of his term.

In his Truth Social post, Trump claimed he had been reviewing the venue for one year to decide between a full closure and reopening or partial closure during its reconstruction.

“Based on these findings, and totally subject to Board approval, I have determined that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur, is to cease Entertainment Operations for an approximately two year period of time, with a scheduled Grand Reopening that will rival and surpass anything that has taken place with respect to such a Facility before,” Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social.

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The mayor of Portland, Oregon, demanded US Immigration and Customs Enforcement leave his city after federal agents launched teargas at a crowd of demonstrators – including young children – outside an ICE facility during a weekend protest that he and others characterized as peaceful.

Witnesses said agents deployed teargas, pepper balls and rubber bullets as thousands of marchers arrived at the South Waterfront facility on Saturday. Erin Hoover Barnett, a former OregonLive reporter who joined the protest, said she was about 100 yards (91 metres) from the building when “what looked like two guys with rocket launchers” started dousing the crowd with ga

“To be among parents frantically trying to tend to little children in strollers, people using motorized carts trying to navigate as the rest of us staggered in retreat, unsure of how to get to safety, was terrifying,” Barnett wrote in an email to OregonLive.

Portland mayor Keith Wilson said the daytime demonstration was peaceful, “where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat and posed no danger” to federal agents.

“To those who continue to work for ICE: resign. To those who control this facility: leave,” Wilson wrote in a statement on Saturday night. “Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame.”

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An 18-year-old Northern Arizona University student died after an off-campus "rush" event, and three members of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity were arrested on suspicion of hazing, according to Flagstaff police.

The name of the student who died was not released by authorities.

The death stunned the university, which has about 20,000 students on its Flagstaff campus. "This is a devastating loss, and our hearts are with his family, friends and all members of our community who are grieving," the university said in an unsigned statement.

Police were called at 8:44 a.m. Jan. 31 to a house on South Pinegrove Road, where the 18-year-old was found unresponsive. Police and later paramedics tried lifesaving efforts, but he was pronounced dead at the house, Flagstaff police spokesperson Sgt. Jerry Rintala said.

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A federal appeals court judge has dismissed a judicial misconduct complaint by U.S. Justice Department against a judge who clashed with President Donald Trump’s administration over its move to deport several Venezuelans to El Salvador.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi took the rare step in July of announcing the complaint against Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., alleging he made improper comments about Trump during a meeting of the judiciary’s policymaking body, the Judicial Conference.

Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in a newly-released order dated December 19 said the alleged statements, even if true, would not violate judicial ethics rules.

The Justice Department did not respond on Saturday to requests for comment. Boasberg, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, declined to comment.

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Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns said the American Revolution has been “sanitized,” calling the war “dark and bloody.”

More...“I think we have sanitized the war. And I — I think it’s out of an understandable fear that if somehow we reveal how dark and bloody it is, that it will somehow diminish those big ideas in Philadelphia in [1776] and then 11 years later in [1787], when they do the Constitution,” Burns told NBC News’s Kristen Welker in an interview that aired Sunday.

“It doesn’t. They’re made — those ideas are made even more impressive because of the improbability of the struggle, the odds against success, the time it took to do it, the — all of the problems, the winters at Valley Forge and Morristown in which people are dying of disease,” he added.

Burns’s comments come amid heated debates about how American history should be presented, with mMore...any pushing for American history’s darker aspects, including slavery and the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans, to be highlighted more often.

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Democrat Christian Menefee won a Texas U.S. House seat in a special election Saturday that will narrow Republicans' already-slim majority, telling President Trump that the Democratic district "topples corrupt presidencies." Menefee, the Harris County attorney, prevailed in a runoff against Amanda Edwards, a former Houston City Council member. He will replace the late Rep. Sylvester Turner, a former Houston mayor, who died in March 2025.

In addition to the Houston-area race, there was a special election in North Texas' Tarrant County for a state senate seat. In a major political upset, Democrat Taylor Rehmet defehttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/democrat-christian-menefee-wins-special-election-u-s-house-in-texas/ated Republican Leigh Wambsganss in that race in Tarrant County, the largest Republican county in the nation, according to complete but unofficial returns. 

The seat representing the heavily Democratic Houston-based district has been vacant for nearly a year.

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Several regions of Ukraine are out of power suddenly at 12:00 on Jan. 30.

Several sources among local authorities and energy companies confirmed to Kyiv Post that the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Zhytomyr and Odesa regions are without electricity.

According to sources, the energy grid is overloaded due to the low temperature extremes (down to -15°C). And this overload is extremely bad after the system was seriously damaged by the last russian missile strikes.

Minister of Energy Denys Shmyhal wrote in his Telegram that the automatic system stopped the power because of sudden stop of the wo energy lines that connect Moldova and Ukraine and western regions and central regions of Ukraine. What the cause of this was is still unclear.

Meanwhile, the state agency “Ukrenergo” promises that the power will be restored in several hours

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Hospitals in Gaza said Israeli strikes killed at least 23 Palestinians Saturday, one of the highest tolls since the October ceasefire aimed at stopping the fighting.

A day after Israel accused Hamas of new ceasefire violations, strikes hit locations throughout Gaza, including lethal ones on an apartment building in Gaza City and a tent camp in Khan Younis, officials at hospitals that received the bodies said. The casualties included two women and six children from two different families. An airstrike also hit a police station in Gaza City, killing at least 11 and wounding others, Shifa Hospital director Mohamed Abu Selmiya said.

The series of strikes also came a day before the Rafah crossing along the border with Egypt is set to open in Gaza's southernmost city. All of the territory's border crossings have been closed throughout almost the entire war. Palestinians see Rafah as a lifeline for the tens of thousands in need of treatment outside the territory, where the majority of medical infrastructure has been destroyed.

The crossing's opening, limited at first, marks the first major step in the second phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire. Reopening borders is among the challenging issues on the agenda for the phase now underway, which also include demilitarizing the strip after nearly two decades of Hamas rule and installing a new government to oversee reconstruction.

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