TV News LIES

A federal judge on Wednesday said she would block Donald Trump’s administration from laying off hundreds of federal employees, the latest legal setback for the president’s efforts to downsize the US government workforce.

US district judge Susan Illston during a hearing in San Francisco said hundreds of layoffs at four agencies were likely not allowed under a law Congress passed last month to end a 43-day government shutdown.

“The chaotic nature of these has been continuing and has affected employees of the government in many ways, including loss of potential alternative jobs and loss of healthcare coverage,” Illston said.

Illston, an appointee of Democratic former president Bill Clinton, said she would block the US state department and education department from laying off about 250 and 150 employees respectively, pending the outcome of a lawsuit by unions.

She also said she intended to order state, the defense department, the General Services Administration, and the Small Business Administration to reinstate roughly 300 people who lost their jobs during the shutdown.

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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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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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The ceasefire in Gaza is broadly holding, with Israeli forces inside the strip having pulled back to the so-called "yellow line."

Nonetheless, sporadic clashes between the Israel Defense Forces and Gaza militants -- plus deadly IDF airstrikes -- continue.

The remains of one deceased hostage are still thought to be in Gaza. Israeli authorities have been releasing Palestinian prisoners and the bodies of deceased Palestinians detainees in exchange for the return of hostage remains.

In a joint press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Jerusalem on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that Israel cannot accept a Palestinian state.

He stressed that Israel will retain full security control from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, rejecting any arrangement that would allow a Palestinian state to threaten its existence.

"The goal of a Palestinian state is to destroy the only Jewish state. They already had a state in Gaza, a de facto state, and it was used to try to destroy the only Jewish state," Netanyahu said.

TVNL Comment: Netanyahu is a liar.  There was never a de facto state in Gaza, which was an open air concentration camp.

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Qatar's prime minister on Saturday said the Gaza ceasefire has reached a "critical moment" as its first phase winds down, with the remains of just one Israeli hostage still held by militants.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told an international conference in the Qatari capital that international mediators, led by the U.S., are working "to force the way forward" to the second phase to cement the deal.

"What we have just done is a pause," he told the Doha Forum. "We cannot consider it yet a ceasefire."

"A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of Israeli forces, there is stability back in Gaza, people can go in and out, which is not the case today," he said.

While the ceasefire halted the heavy fighting of the two-year war, Gaza health officials say that over 360 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the truce took effect in October.

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Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) accused former Vice President Kamala Harris of telling “blatant lies” to write her postcampaign memoir “107 Days” and “cover her a–,” according to a profile about the governor published in The Atlantic on Wednesday.

Reporter Tim Alberta described Shapiro as “between outrage and exasperation as I relayed the excerpts” about him from Harris’s book. She accused Shapiro of taking over the conversation when he was interviewed to be her running mate, allegedly insisting on being “in the room for every decision,” Alberta wrote.

“I mean, she’s trying to sell books and cover her a–,” Shapiro responded before he backtracked and told Alberta, “I shouldn’t say ‘cover her a–.’ I think that’s not appropriate. She’s trying to sell books. Period.”

Harris passed on Shapiro, who was among the names floated to be her potential vice president, and instead chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).

Shapiro also went after the Democratic Party, which lost the swing state he oversees to President Trump. The president won Pennsylvania with just more than 50 percent of the vote, while Harris received nearly 49 percent.

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