TV News LIES

The Justice Department (DOJ) on Thursday defended renewed plans to inscribe President Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center, insisting it does not run afoul of previous court rulings that found the change was unlawful.  

A DOJ lawyer told U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper during a nearly two-hour hearing that the renowned performing arts center was in “structural and financial disarray” and the inscriptions only sought to recognize Trump’s role in helping restore it.

“We think it’s quite clear that there’s no renaming here,”Brantley Mayers said, claiming the Kennedy Center board’s decision does not violate a federal law that establishes the institution as a “living memorial” to former President John F. Kennedy Jr.

The hearing came in a challenge brought by Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and ex officio board member who has been suing to halt the changes. The congresswoman was present in the courtroom.

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President Trump is escalating his ongoing dispute with Canada over tariffs with a new executive order renaming Lake Ontario, which sits between New York and Canada, to Lake America.

The order, which Trump signed Thursday, directs the federal government to rename the smallest of the great lakes "effective immediately." However, the order also outlines administrative steps that must occur first. He made a similar move last year renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.

"We have a gulf, and we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean," Trump told reporters at the Oval Office signing.

He went to blame Canada for the renaming.

"We deal with a lot of people, and people oftentimes they'll ask me, 'Who's the worst to deal with on trade?' And I said, 'That's easy, Canada. They are the worst to trade, and they they feel entitled, and just we can't have that,'" Trump explained.

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A Florida grand jury has found that the administration of the governor, Ron DeSantis, “misappropriated” $10m in taxpayer money from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity with ties to DeSantis’s wife, before the money was reportedly “funneled” into “two political action committees”.

In the grand jury report, which remains sealed but was obtained and published by CBS News Miami on Wednesday, the grand jurors wrote that “we conclude that these funds were misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” but said that they found “insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally”.

The grand jury report, dated 28 January 2026, states that in 2024, the Hope Florida Foundation received $10m from a Medicaid settlement between the state and Centene, a contractor for the government health insurance program for low-income Americans and children.

The report goes on to say that after the money was transferred to Hope Florida, it was “quickly funneled” from there into two political action committees, and that the money was then reportedly used to lobby against a ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana in Florida, and was sent to the Republican party of Florida.

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An Israeli court has acquitted Yona Schreiber, a Jewish settler from the occupied West Bank settlement of Peduel, over a violent assault on a French Catholic nun near Jerusalem’s Old City earlier this year.

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court acquitted Schreiber on Wednesday on the grounds of "mental illness".

Following the ruling, Schreiber’s lawyer, Idan Gamliel, described the attack as an “unfortunate incident” and said the defence took “note” of the nun’s “difficult feelings” over the assault.

Schreiber attacked the 48-year-old nun in April outside the Cenacle on Mount Zion, a site regarded as holy by Christians and Jews.

The nun, a researcher at Jerusalem’s French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research, required medical treatment after Schreiber pushed her to the ground and kicked her in the head.

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Ahmed Zeidat was tending his olive trees in the occupied West Bank when a group of Israeli settlers came charging towards him.

They punched him in the face and stomach. Zeidat fled on his tractor, with the settlers in pursuit.

Israeli soldiers eventually intervened, removing the settlers - and detaining Zeidat.

His offence, he was told, was being on his own land.

“When I asked the officer why I was being detained, he told me I was on private land that I wasn’t allowed to access,” the Palestinian farmer told Middle East Eye.

Bemused, Zeidat said: “This land is mine. How did it become private, and who does it belong to?”

The soldier, according to Zeidat, replied: “It belongs to us, and you’re not allowed to enter it.”

After a brief detention, Zeidat was released and ordered not to return.

“My land, the fruit of my labour and toil, is forbidden to me,” he said.

“It used to give me 600 kilos of pure olive oil. Now I look at it from afar. I can’t even look, because my heart aches.”

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Russia is preparing to escalate attacks on Kyiv, including the center of the capital, after reportedly concluding that peace negotiations have “reached a dead end.”

According to Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources close to the Kremlin, Moscow is also considering intensifying conventional ballistic missiles attacks on other infrastructure targets across Ukraine.

According to the sources, all attempts at negotiations have effectively collapsed, leaving Ukraine and Russia back at square one.

Moscow increasingly sees Ukrainian strikes as attacks by NATO, because alliance members are supplying Kyiv with weapons and intelligence, Bloomberg’s sources said.

“The current stage of hostilities isn’t the peak of military escalation,” according to the sources.

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A federal judge has, for a second time, struck down a Texas state law banning drag performances in settings where children may be present.

In a ruling issued on Tuesday, US district judge David Hittner said Texas cannot enforce its drag show ban. He said that the measure improperly restricts speech and violates the first amendment of the US constitution.

The Texas ban, known as Senate bill 12, was passed in March 2023 and bans drag performers from dancing suggestively or wearing certain prosthetics on public property or in front of children, or “sexually-oriented performance” presented on the premises in the presence of an individual younger than 18 years of age.

Advocacy groups sued the state after the bill’s passage, arguing the ban on “sexually oriented performance” infringed on constitutional rights. Texas’s move was just one across several states in 2023, driven by a right-wing backlash to increasing queer and transgender rights and equality. Hittner initially declared the ban unconstitutional in September 2023, but it was unblocked by the 5th US circuit court of appeals in 2025, which returned the case to the judge.

That allowed Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, who is locked in a race for a US Senate seat against Democrat James Talarico, to resume enforcing the law earlier this year.

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Former JPMorgan Chase executive Jes Staley told US lawmakers he repeatedly shared confidential and market-sensitive bank ⁠information with Jeffrey Epstein and ⁠was at one ​point named as a trustee of his estate, according to a transcript released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday.

These admissions come as lawmakers investigate the late convicted ⁠sex offender’s ties with political and business elites. Staley appeared before the committee in July as part of its investigation into Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Transcripts ⁠from the meeting were released on Wednesday.

In the closed-door, voluntary interview conducted on 24 July, Staley said he divulged to ​Epstein the bank’s communications with the Federal Reserve during the ‌2008 financial crisis, a figure of $44bn in private bank inflows over two weeks and details of pending deals. Staley also admitted to ‌sharing other confidential information about JPMorgan with Epstein, according to the transcript.

Lawmakers also questioned him about communications in which he discussed matters including his compensation, client relationships and developments related to his eventual move to Barclays.

Staley defended the exchanges, saying he believed he had the authority to share information when he considered it appropriate. He has maintained he had a close professional relationship with Epstein, but was unaware of his crimes.

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