TV News LIES

The attorney general, Pam Bondi, professed ignorance of reports of immigration officials hiding their faces with masks during roundups of undocumented people, despite widespread video evidence and reports that they are instilling pervasive fear and panic.

Challenged at a Wednesday Capitol Hill subcommittee hearing by Gary Peters, a Democratic senator for Michigan, Bondi, who as the country’s top law officer has a prominent role in the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy, implied she was unaware of plain-clothed agents concealing their faces while carrying out arrests but suggested it was for self-protection.

“I do know they are being doxxed … they’re being threatened,” she told Peters. “Their families are being threatened.”

Bondi’s protestations appeared to strain credibility given the attention the masked raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents have attracted on social media and elsewhere.

More...

A man who was in prison for almost three decades is going home after a judge vacated a first-degree murder conviction as part of a plea deal, according to a Duke University School of Law Wrongful Convictions Clinic news release.

Benjamin Cole, 47, was convicted of the 1998 murder of Calvin Jenkins, who was shot in his Greensboro apartment during a robbery. Cole has always maintained his innocence and said he was in Ohio at the time of the murder.

“I’m innocent, and I just want to be home,” he said.

That happened Wednesday as a judge vacated his first-degree murder conviction, and Cole pleaded guilty to a lesser second-degree murder charge on an Alford plea. An Alford plea is a guilty plea that lets a defendant maintain their innocence.

Cole left a Guilford County, North Carolina courtroom on Wednesday and was reunited with his mother.

More...

In a remarkable upset, 33-year-old state Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani has outperformed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June 24 Democratic New York City primary for mayor. Mamdani leads Cuomo 44% to 36% among first-place votes with 96% of ballots counted.

While the outcome won't be official until the instant runoff conducted with ballots that rank up to five choices is announed in July, Cuomo conceded the nomination less than 90 minutes after polls closed at 9 p.m.

“Tonight is his night. He deserved it. He won," Cuomo said.

Mamdani's lead is likely to grow in the instant runoff, because in polls he had far more lower-ranked votes than Cuomo from supporters of New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who came in third with 11% of first-place votes.

The Democratic nominee will begin the general election as the favorite in the eDemocratic city.

More...

A 68-year-old Mexican-born man has become the first Ice detainee in at least a decade to die while being transported from a local jail to a federal detention center, and experts have warned there will likely be more such deaths amid the current administration’s “mass deportation” push across the US.

Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado’s exact cause of death remains under investigation, according to Ice, but the Guardian’s reporting reveals a confusing and at times contradictory series of events surrounding the incident.

The death occurred as private companies with little to no oversight are increasingly tasked with transporting more immigration detainees across the US, in pursuit of the Trump administration’s recently-announced target of arresting 3,000 people a day.

More...

Texas will require all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments under a new law that will make the state the nation’s largest to attempt to impose such a mandate.

The bill, which was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott, is expected to draw a legal challenge from critics who consider it an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state.

A similar law in Louisiana was blocked when a federal appeals court ruled Friday that it was unconstitutional. Arkansas also has a similar law that has been challenged in federal court.

The Texas measure easily passed in the Republican-controlled state House and Senate in the legislative session that ended on 2 June.

More...