TV News LIES

Transgender Kansas residents have begun receiving letters from the state’s department of motor vehicles notifying them that their driver’s licenses will be invalid beginning Thursday, as a new law goes into effect that demands that forms of identification must now reflect the credential holder’s “sex at birth”.

The bill, known as SB 244, also bans transgender people from using bathrooms in public buildings that match their gender identity, and creates a sort of bounty hunter system, in which citizens can sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for $1,000 in damages.

The state law was rushed through the state legislature using an expedited procedure known as “gut and go”. This means the text of one bill can be taken out and substituted for entirely new language or provisions, bypassing standard committee vetting and speeding through the voting process, which is legal in Kansas.

Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, arguing that SB 244 was “poorly drafted legislation”, but her veto was overridden by the state legislature’s Republican supermajority.

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Newly released records show a US citizen was shot and killed in Texas by a federal immigration agent last year during a late-night traffic encounter that was not publicly disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security.

The death of Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, would mark the earliest of at least six deadly shootings by federal officers since the start of a nationwide immigration crackdown in Donald Trump’s second term. On Friday, DHS said the shooting on South Padre Island last March occurred after the driver intentionally struck an agent.

The records are part of a tranche of heavily redacted internal documents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the non-profit obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Though Martinez’s death on 15 March 2025 was reported by local ough Martinez’s death on 15 March 2025 was reported by local media outlets at the time, federal and state authorities did not disclose that the shooting involved the team from HSI. In a statement Friday, DHS said the driver who was killed “intentionally ran over a Homeland Security Investigation special agent”, resulting in another agent firing “defensive shots to protect himself, his fellow agents, and the general public”.media outlets at the time, federal and state authorities did not disclose that the shooting involved the team from HSI.

In a statement Friday, DHS said the driver who was killed “intentionally ran over a Homeland Security Investigation special agent”, resulting in another agent firing “defensive shots to protect himself, his fellow agents, and the general public”.

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Venezuela's acting president on Thursday signed into law an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of politicians, activists, lawyers and many others, effectively acknowledging that the government has held hundreds of people in prison for political motivations.

The approval marks a stark turn for the South American nation, whose authorities have for decades denied holding any political prisoners. It is the latest policy reversal following last month's stunning U.S. military raid in the country's capital, Caracas, to capture then-President Nicolás Maduro.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who proposed the bill late last month, signed the measure into law hours after it was approved by the country's legislature.

She said during the signing that it showed that the country's political leaders were "letting go of a little intolre into law hours after it was approved by the country's legislature.

She said during the signing that it showre into law hours after it was approved by the country's legislature.

She said during the signing that it showed that the country's political leaders were "letting go of a little intolerance and opening new avenues for politics in Venezuela."ed that the country's political leaders were "letting go of a little intolerance and opening new avenues for politics in Venezuela."erance and opening new avenues for politics in Venezuela."

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In a statement, the Egyptian government called it a "dangerous escalation aimed at consolidating Israeli control over the occupied Palestinian territories."

Qatar's foreign ministry condemned the "decision to convert West Bank lands into so-called 'state property'," saying it would "deprive the Palestinian people of their rights."

Jordan's foreign ministry said in a statement that the country "strongly condemns the actions of the Israeli government targeting the annexation of occupied Palestinian land, most recently the illegitimate Israeli government decision converting lands in the West Bank into so-called 'state property.' This constitutes a blatant violation of international law and international humanitarian law, underminesthe inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and obstructs the establishment of their independent sovereign state ."

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority called for international intervention to prevent the "de facto beginning of the annexation process and the undermining of the foundations of the Palestinian state."

Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now called the measure a "mega land grab."

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Chris Tackett started tracking extremism in Texas politics about a decade ago, whenever his schedule as a Little League coach and school board member would allow. At the time, he lived in Granbury, 40 minutes west of Fort Worth. He’d noticed that a local member of the state legislature, Mike Lang, had become a vocal advocate for using public money for private schools – despite the fact that Lang campaigned as a supporter of public education.

With a little research, Tackett found that Lang had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the Wilks brothers and Tim Dunn, billionaire megadonors whose deep pockets and Christian nationalist views have consumed the Texas GOP. Tackett published his findings on social media, and soon enough, people started asking him to create pie charts of their representatives’ campaign funds. These charts evolved into the organisation See It. Name It. Fight It.

“There’s so many people out there that are so busy with their daily lives, they’re walking past and not even seeing some of these bad things going on,” he says. “So that’s the first step: you have to see this thing.”

Tackett and his wife Mendi, the organisation’s sole members, now live in Fort Worth, where they’re part of a scrappy community of progressives and anti-extremist organizers who are building momentum amid their town’s deeply embedded Christian nationalism. Tarrant county, in which Fort Worth is the largest city, provided a chilling preview of Texas’s gerrymandering efforts, and the county is widely regarded as a hotbed for far-right actors. But most recently, the county was the site of a Democratic victory that sent the Texas Republican party reeling.

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Over the span of four years, 50-year-old Fidda Mohammad Naasan and her family have been violently uprooted from their homes and lands in the occupied West Bank, not once but twice. Now, after relocating for a second time they continue to face relentless, daily attacks and abuse from Israeli settlers and soldiers determined to force them off their lands yet again.

The most recent large-scale attack on Naasan’s family took place on December 7. Israelis raided Naasan’s current home in the al-Khalayel area on the edges of al-Mghayyer village in the central West Bank.

“I was sleeping in my room with my 13-year-old grandson next to me. At 1:30 a.m., a group of five settlers raided my room, all masked, carrying pipes. They beat me on my forehead until I lost consciousness,” Naasan told Drop Site News.

Naasan was hospitalized for two days and was forced to undergo cardiac catheterization surgery following heart complications and a severe rise in her blood pressure. Her nephew also suffered cuts to his head and required six stitches.

“While he was beating me, the settler kept shouting: ‘Don’t you want to leave? If you don’t leave we will kill you,’” she recalled. “I lied and told him I would leave just so he would stop beating me.”

Naasan and her family once lived on their ancestral lands in the Wadi Daliyeh area south of Fasayil village in the central Jordan Valley. With a water spring and vast grazing lands, the area is ideal for Palestinian Bedouins who depend on livestock for income. From there, they were driven off their land by settlers to an area near the village of Turmusayya in the central West Bank where they spent the next two years.

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