TV News LIES

A leading Muslim civil rights group in the US has sued Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, over his order designating it and another organization as a “foreign terrorist organization”, saying the directive was unconstitutional.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, known as Cair, has more than 20 chapters across the United States and its work involves legal actions, advocacy and education outreach.

The lawsuit was filed late Monday by the Cair-Foundation and Cair-Florida, its affiliate in the state. The suit asked a federal judge in Tallahassee to declare DeSantis’s order unlawful and unconstitutional and prevent it from being enforced.

“He has usurped the exclusive authority of the federal government to identify and designate terrorist organizations by baselessly declaring Cair a terrorist organization,” the lawsuit says.

Cair said in the lawsuit that it was targeted by DeSantis for defending the free speech rights of people in cases in which state officials and officials elsewhere had tried to punish or silence those who had expressed support for Palestinian human rights.

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Donald Trump has ordered “a total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, ramping up pressure on the country’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro.

The move comes amid an escalating campaign by the Trump administration against Maduro that has included a ramped-up military presence in the region and more than two dozen military strikes on vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, which have killed dozens of people.

Last week, US forces seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast that was traveling across the Caribbean. The tanker was thought to be loaded with about 2m barrels of Venezuela’s heavy crude, according to the New York Times. The Venezuelan government accused the US of “blatant theft” and described the seizure as “an act of international piracy”, further heightening tensions between the two countries.

In a post on social media on Tuesday night announcing the blockade, Trump alleged Venezuela was using oil to fund drug trafficking and other crimes and vowed to escalate the military buildup.

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WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley said Tuesday he is cutting ties with the professional wrestling organization, citing its close relationship with the Trump administration.

Foley, who’s long been critical of President Trump, said the president’s comments on the death of acclaimed actor-director Rob Reiner were the “final straw” compelling the wrestler to inform WWE he would no longer make public appearances on behalf of the company.

“While I have been concerned about WWE‘s close relationship with Donald Trump for several months — especially in light of his administration’s ongoing cruel and inhumane treatment of immigrants (and pretty much anyone who ‘looks like an immigrant’) — reading the President’s incredibly cruel comments in the wake of Rob Reiner’s death is the final straw for me,” Foley wrote in an Instagram post on Tuesday.

“I no longer wish to represent a company that coddles a man so seemingly void of compassion as he marches our country towards autocracy,” he continued.

Foley said he told WWE talent relations Monday night that he “would not be making any appearances for the company as long as this man remains in office.” He also said he would not re-sign his Legends deal when his contract expires in June.

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President Trump led an effort to close ranks around White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Tuesday, seeking to contain damage of Wiles’s own making.

The furor was kicked off by a move that stunned Washington. 

Wiles — known both for a relative aversion to the spotlight and for imposing some discipline on the chaotic world around Trump — gave 11 interviews to author and journalist Chris Whipple, resulting in a Vanity Fair story published Tuesday morning.

In those interviews, Wiles offered startlingly candid views on a number of people in Trump’s orbit.

She alluded to Elon Musk’s ketamine use and said his assailing of the United States Agency for International Development had at first left her “aghast.” She said Attorney General Pam Bondi had “completely whiffed” in her initial handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. In the process of suggesting Vice President Vance was more attuned to the base’s feelings on the Epstein matter than Bondi was, Wiles called Vance “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.”

As for budget director Russell Vought, he was “a right-wing absolute zealot,” in Wiles’s estimation — though it’s not clear the deeply conservative Wiles meant this as a criticism.

As for the president himself, he as “an alcoholic’s personality,” according to Wiles.

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A top official at the U.S. Department of Education has been keeping a controversial flag linked to Christian nationalism and the Jan. 6 insurrection hung outside his office, according to the agency's union and a department employee who has observed it.

It's the latest in a series of instances in which the flag – which depicts a pine tree and the words "An Appeal to Heaven" – has been associated with agencies and figures at the highest levels of the federal government.

Though long tied to the American Revolution, the banner in more recent years "has been adopted primarily by evangelical Christian nationalist groups," as well as the Proud Boys and certain neo-Nazi groups, according to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, an independent nonprofit organization. It was flown in 2021 by rioters at the U.S. Capitol as they tried to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results.

The symbol's emergence at the agency responsible for overseeing billions of dollars in federal funding for the nation's schools is already raising concerns about the separation of church and state.

Rachel Gittleman, the president of the union for Education Department workers nationwide, said in a statement that the agency "has no place for symbols that were carried by insurrectionists."

“Since January, hardworking public servants at the U.S. Department of Education have been subjected to threats, harassment, and sustained demoralization," she said. "Now, they are being asked to work in an environment where a senior leader is prominently displaying an offensive flag – one that, regardless of its origins in the American Revolution, has come to represent intolerance, hatred, and extremism."

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At dawn on Tuesday, Israeli occupation forces escalated their invasions across multiple areas of the occupied West Bank, deploying reinforcements toward Nablus in the northern West Bank while continuing widespread military operations in refugee camps, towns, and villages.

Troops broke into and ransacked dozens of homes, abducted many Palestinians, and set up military roadblocks, further tightening restrictions on Palestinian movement and daily life.

The soldiers invaded several neighborhoods including al-Makhfiyya and Rafidia, breaking into homes and abducting young men, including Mohyeldin Abdul-Haq, Ali Shami, and Bassem al-Qutub, in addition to three siblings.

In Balata refugee camp east of Nablus, soldiers stormed homes and abducted Semih Thiab as a means of pressuring his brother to surrender.

Troops also invaded residential buildings in Rafidia and advanced into the city from the military roadblocks of Beit Furik and Deir Sharaf.

In Asira al-Shamaliya northwest of Nablus, the soldiers broke into homes and abducted a young woman, Du’a’ Jarar’a.

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Hamas says Israel’s violations risk jeopardising a ceasefire deal in Gaza and the move towards the second and more complicated phase of the fragile agreement.

In a video statement released on Sunday, the group’s Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya, confirmed the killing of senior commander Raed Saad in an Israeli attack in Gaza the previous day.

“The continued Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement … and latest assassinations that targeted Saad and others threaten the viability of the agreement,” al-Hayya said.

He called on mediators – US President Donald Trump in particular – “to work on obliging Israel to respect the ceasefire and commit to it”.

Phase one of the October truce called for a cessation of hostilities, the return of living captives and prisoners and the remains of the dead, and for humanitarian aid to be allowed into the enclave.

Once all of those conditions were fulfilled, phase two, which is to include an Israeli withdrawal, Palestinian disarmament and a formal end to the war, could begin.

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Ukraine has launched a new, previously unreported “Sub Sea Baby” underwater drone and sank a Russian Kilo-class submarine in the Novorossiysk port, according to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

The SBU did not specify the date and time of the attack.

In a Monday press release, the SBU said “a Russian submarine of the class 636.3 ‘Varshavyanka’” was struck and “suffered critical damage and was actually put out of action.”

Footage released with the announcement shows multiple Russian warships docked at Novorossiysk, with the surfaced submarine at the pier as an explosion sends up splashes nearby.

The SBU estimated the submarine’s cost at about $400 million, rising to as much as $500 million to replace due to sanctions, and said it can carry up to four Kalibr cruise missiles used in attacks on Ukrainian cities.

“This class of submarine is also known as the ‘Black Hole’ due to the hull’s ability to absorb sound and remain inaudible to sonar,” the SBU said of the destroyed submarine.

The SBU said it was a joint operation with the Ukrainian Navy.

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