TV News LIES

Billionaires raised fortunes against him. The president threatened to strip his citizenship. Mainstream synagogues slandered him as the spawn of Osama bin Laden and Chairman Mao. But today, Zohran Mamdani became the first socialist mayor of New York City.

For all the hysteria, when I look at Mamdani, I didn’t see some radical departure from the past. I see him as the heir to an old and venerable Jewish tradition – that of Yiddish socialism – which helped build New York.

In some cases, the link is direct. Bruce Vladeck, a member of one of Mamdani’s transition committees, is a well-respected expert on Medicare, but for the sake of this article, his credentials matter less than his surname.

Vladeck is the grandson of Baruch Charney Vladeck, a Marxist troublemaker from the Pale of Settlement, a tract of land in the Russian empire where Jews were permitted to live at a time of rampant antisemitic oppression. Baruch showed up in New York after the failed Russian revolution of 1905 with a Cossack’s saber scars all over his face. He later became a socialist alderman and member of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s housing administration. Vladeck was not actually his birth name. It was rather a nom de guerre, adopted when he joined the Jewish Labor Bund, the socialist, secular and defiantly anti-Zionist movement whose slogan, “here where we live is our country,” would make an apt tagline for Mamdani’s New York.

In our city, exiled revolutionaries like Vladeck found fertile ground. At the dawn of the 20th century, New York was home to nearly 600,000 Jews, making it the largest Jewish city on Earth, a title it still holds. They packed 10 to a room, into the squalid tenements of the Lower East Side, where they toiled in garment sweatshops, and where the fires caused by their in-home piecework businesses mirror those caused by the exploding lithium-ion batteries of e-bikes today. They soon transformed into a clamorous, disputatious and utterly radical proletariat – the same sort of constituency that powered Mamdani’s campaign.

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A state law creating the first registry of people convicted of domestic abuse in the US took effect Thursday in Tennessee.

Named after Savanna Puckett, a woman who was shot to death by her ex-boyfriend in January 2022, “Savanna’s law” requires the Tennessee bureau of investigation to maintain a database of people who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to at least two domestic violence offenses.

The database will include the offender’s name, date of birth, and a photo and location of their convictions. It will not include their address.The database can include information about offenders for up to 20 years after their last conviction, although it is not retroactive. People will only be eligible for the database if they plead guilty to or are convicted of offenses after 1 January.

In January 2022, after Puckett failed to appear for work as a sheriff’s deputy in Robertson county in northern Tennessee, a co-worker went to her home and found it in flames. Firefighters later discovered Puckett’s body, which had been shot multiple times. James Jackson Conn, Puckett’s ex-boyfriend, pleaded guilty to a charge of first-degree murder. He is now serving a life sentence.

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The Coast Guard said Friday that it is coordinating the search with multiple vessels, including those from partner nations and commercial fishing boats in the water about 400 nautical miles southwest of Mexico’s border with Guatemala, covering an area spanning more than 1,000 nautical miles. 

“Weather reported in the area was nine-foot seas, and 40-knot winds,” it said in a statement shared with The Hill.

The Coast Guard dispatched its HC-130J Super Hercules, a surveillance aircraft with long-range maritime patrol capability, from Sacramento, Calif., to search the area and sent out an urgent “marine information broadcast” to mariners in the region. 

As of Friday, the Coast Guard said it had spent more than 65 hours in its search efforts for the survivors, who jumped into the water after the U.S. military struck the first of the three alleged drug-smuggling vessels Tuesday. 

It is unclear how many people may have survived the Tuesday attack, but the U.S. has said three were killed.

The U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) said the U.S. military conducted strikes against an alleged drug-smuggling convoy operated by a designated terrorist organization. It is unclear which terrorist group the U.S. military was referring to.

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Outgoing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Friday slammed President Trump’s threat to intervene in Iran as it cracks down on anti-government protests. 

Greene said on the social platform X that Trump’s pledge, along with Israeli billionaire Shlomo Kramer telling CNBC that the federal government should “limit the First Amendment” by cracking down on speech on social media, is “everything we voted against” in 2024.

“The focus should be on tax dollars here at home and defending our God given freedoms and rights,” added Greene, who is departing Congress on Monday after a falling out with Trump.

The president vowed on Truth Social earlier Friday that the U.S. will “rescue” protesters if the Iranian regime takes violent action against them. He also said the U.S. is “locked and loaded and ready to go” if the Islamic Republic’s government kills more demonstrators. 

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, argued on X that the president’s remarks make U.S. troops in the region “legitimate targets” for the Iranian military.

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6.5 magnitude earthquake shook the Mexican state of Guerrero in the southern part of the country on Friday, Jan. 2, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The earthquake saw a depth of 35 km or 21.75 miles, USGS said. However, no serious damage has been reported, Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum said during a press conference aired live on X.

"A 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck southwest of San Marcos, Guerrero at 7:58 a.m. Protocols and patrols have been activated in the area," Sheinbaum told a room of reporters in Spanish. "So far, no damage or deaths have been reported. As of 9 a.m., only small aftershocks have been recorded, the largest being magnitude 4.2."

Sheinbaum was conducting her first press conference of 2026 when the earthquake began, and video shows her calmly leading the evacuation as sirens sound.

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Israel on Tuesday said it had suspended more than two dozen humanitarian organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and CARE, from operating in the Gaza Strip for failing to comply with new registration rules.

Israel says the rules are aimed at preventing Hamas and other militant groups from infiltrating the aid organizations. But the organizations say the rules are arbitrary and warned that the new ban would harm a civilian population desperately in need of humanitarian aid.

Israel has claimed throughout the war that Hamas was siphoning off aid supplies, a charge the U.N. and aid groups have denied. The new rules, announced by Israel early this year, require aid organizations to register the names of their workers and provide details about funding and operations in order to continue working in Gaza.

The new regulations included ideological requirements — including disqualifying organizations that have called for boycotts against Israel, denied the Oct. 7 attack or expressed support for any of the international court cases against Israeli soldiers or leaders.

Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs said more than 30 groups — about 15% of the organizations operating in Gaza — had failed to comply and that their operations would be suspended. It also said that Doctors Without Borders, one of the biggest and best-known groups in Gaza, had failed to respond to Israeli claims that some of its workers were affiliated with Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

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Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) helped Denis Kapustin, the founder of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) who was announced dead last week, to fake his death before claiming the bounty placed on his head by Russian security services, it said on Thursday.

Kapustin, 41, was previously reported killed by a Russian drone whilst carrying out a combat mission in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region overnight on Saturday, Dec. 27.

On Jan. 1, HUR said in a post on Telegram that a Russian special service operation ordering his murder, which had allocated a $500,000 bounty to carry out the crime, had successfully been foiled.

It added that it had procured the sum offered to “liquidate” Kapustin by Russia and this money would be used to strengthen Ukrainian drone capabilities against Russian forces.

HUR said that the murder of Kapustin – considered a “personal enemy” by Russian President Vladimir Putin – had been “commissioned by the special services of the aggressor state Russia, which allocated half a million dollars to carry out the crime.”

It added that a special operation lasting more than a month had successfully duped Russian intelligence services into believing that Kapustin was dead.

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The food pantry at Penn State Harrisburg saw an uptick in students during the fall semester. Aimee Wheeler, who oversees the pantry, says she expects this coming semester to be just as busy.

"I expect to see even more in January and February, because students will be coming back from winter break and be stocking up," Wheeler said.

About a year ago, she said the food pantry might have had about nine visitors in a week. But lately, it's been more like nine visitors in a single day.

"We've seen more students than ever," Wheeler said.

And it's not just Penn State Harrisburg.

"We're hearing that there [is] an uptick, an increase in visits and not enough resources to go around," said Renee Houle Catazano, a vice president at Swipe Out Hunger. The national nonprofit estimates that two in five college students face food insecurity, meaning they lack consistent access to nutritious foods.

Between the uncertainty of SNAP payments due to the government shutdown and the rising cost of living, Houle Catazano said many students feel financially strained.

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