TV News LIES

Pack your bags and flee, infidels: New York City has fallen to a cabal of socialist jihadists. With Zohran Mamdani to become the city’s first Muslim mayor, many are celebrating the democratic socialist’s historic win. Billionaires, Islamophobes and Republicans, however, are in the throes of hysteria. But what’s new? The New York mayoral race has been marred by bigotry so unhinged it’s almost impossible to parody.

Far-right activist and unofficial Trump adviser Laura Loomer posted on X, for example, that “there will be another 9/11 in NYC” under Mamdani. New York City councilmember Vickie Paladino called the 34-year-old a “known jihadist terrorist”. Actor Debra Messing, meanwhile, has been having a Mamdani-induced meltdown on Instagram, posting story after story about how the puppy-eyed politician is a threat to civilization. She recently posted: “In Judaism and Christianity, we are commanded to speak the truth. In Islam, they are commanded to lie if it means spreading Islam … Now, take a look at Mamdani … He’s revealing their goal: mass conversion.”

Mamdani’s goal, as he has made almost comically clear, is actually affordable mass transit and housing. One of the reasons his campaign was so successful is that it stayed laser-focused on affordability. However, Mamdani has addressed the attacks against him on a number of occasions, noting how common it is for Muslims to be branded as terrorists. And, it’s not just Muslims, I should note. Islamophobes don’t tend to differentiate between a Muslim of Indian descent who was born in Uganda, like Mamdani, and a Palestinian atheist like me. They don’t care if you’re a Christian Arab or even a Sikh. We’re all the same to them: brown barbarians.

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What future is there for Palestinians in Gaza? The announcement of the ceasefire brought profound relief, shaded by an equally deep sense of trepidation. Almost a month later, the picture looks bleaker. The Israeli offensive abated, Hamas has returned the surviving hostages and the remains of some of those who have died, and Israel has released some Palestinian detainees and the remains of others.

But more than 200 Palestinians, including children, have reportedly died in strikes that Israel says are in response to Hamas attacks. Thousands of bodies are still believed to be trapped beneath the ruins ­– debris which, it is estimated, would take a fleet of more than a hundred lorries seven years to shift. Aid is flowing again, but remains wholly inadequate, with NGOs warning that Israel’s new registration system is obstructing delivery. Israeli demolitions continue in the half of Gaza that its forces still hold. Unicef warned this week that the education system – in so far as it survives after two years of war and the destruction of more than 90% of school and university buildings – is on the brink of collapse. New babies are born literally in the rubble, to mothers who have neither homes nor working hospitals.

Fears about maintaining the ceasefire have not disappeared. Mediators are discussing a potential deal to give Hamas fighters safe passage out of Israeli-held Rafah if they surrender their arms, in the hope of resolving a possible flashpoint. But a senior Qatari diplomat, Majed al-Ansari, pointed to a deeper risk when he spoke to the Guardian last week: that Gaza slides towards a limbo of “no war, no peace”, in which deaths continue and reconstruction cannot occur.

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Nancy Pelosi, a California Democratic representative and the first woman to serve as speaker, announced on Thursday she will retire from Congress, two years after stepping down from House leadership.

Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco in Congress for nearly 40 years, said in a video address to her constituents that she would “not be seeking re-election”. Smiling as the music swelled over footage of a storied 20-term congressional career that saw Pelosi rise to the apex of American politics, she said she would finish out her final year in office.

“I was able to represent our city and our country around the world with patriotism and pride,” she said. “I say to my colleagues in the House all the time, no matter what title they have bestowed upon me, there has been no greater honor for me than to stand on the House floor and say, ‘I speak for the people of San Francisco.’”

A force on Capitol Hill for decades, Pelosi will leave Washington as one of the most consequential figures in modern congressional history and as a trailblazer who expanded the boundaries of power for women in US politics. As speaker, she shepherded the major legislative accomplishments of Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s presidencies.

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A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to release full funding for November food stamps by Friday.

The oral order Thursday comes as nearly 42 million Americans have lost access to benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the record-breaking government shutdown. The Trump administration previously agreed to pay for partial SNAP benefits using emergency money but said that doing so would result in weeks, if not months, of delays.

“Last weekend, SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation’s history. This is a problem that could have and should have been avoided,” said U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr., an Obama appointee. The government “knew there would be a long delay in paying [partial] SNAP benefits and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”

McConnell also noted that President Donald Trump’s post on social media that benefits wouldn’t be funded until the government reopened “stated his intent to defy the court order.”

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The man who slung a sandwich at a federal agent in Washington, D.C., and was unwittingly transformed into an opposition symbol of President Trump’s local crime crackdown has been found not guilty of misdemeanor assault after a trial.  

A jury handed down the not guilty verdict Thursday against Sean Dunn, a former Department of Justice (DOJ) employee who hurled a hoagie after confronting a group of officers patrolling a popular nightlife area of the nation’s capital.

The acquittal marks an embarrassing loss for federal prosecutors, who pursued the misdemeanor charge after a grand jury refused to return an indictment on the felony assault count they initially sought.  

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, the Trump appointed judge overseeing the case, said he expected the trial to last no more than two days and called it “the simplest case in the world.” 

But the trial dragged on three days, and the jury deliberated for part of both Wednesday and Thursday before Dunn was ultimately acquitted.

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The Supreme Court on Nov. 6 put back in place the Trump administration’s requirement that passports identify someone by their biological sex at birth, another ruling for President Donald Trump’s policies that stem from his assertion that someone’s sex cannot be changed.

Over the objections of the cohurt's three liberals, a majority of the justices paused a lower court’s ruling blocking Trump’s passport policy for transgender and nonbinary people while it’s being challnged in court.

The high court previously allowed Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military to go into effect before courts have decided if it’s legal.

On Trump's first day back in office, he issued an executive order requiring the federal government to only “recognize two sexes, male and female,” declaring “these sexes are not changeable.” 

The president required the State Department to issue passports that “accurately reflect the holder’s sex” based on that definition.

The Biden administration had allowed people to choose a nonbinary “X” identification marker and eliminated a medical documentation requirement for requests to change a gender marker.

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The UN humanitarian relief chief, Tom Fletcher, has sounded the alarm over rising violence in the occupied West Bank, where attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and their property continue to escalate.

“Many of these attacks are linked to Palestinians’ attempts to harvest their olive crops,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Palestinians have been killed and injured. Their homes and property damaged. Their livestock attacked.”

Mr. Fletcher said that more trees have been damaged, and more communities affected this year than in the previous six years combined.

“The failure to prevent or punish such attacks is inconsistent with international law,” he warned. “Palestinians must be protected. Impunity cannot prevail. Perpetrators must be held accountable.”

His remarks follow warnings from the UN Spokesperson’s Office last week that violence by Israeli settlers has surged across the West Bank, often under the watch of Israeli security forces.

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The Israeli army has continued to attack various areas across the Gaza Strip, as troops carry out demolitions of buildings despite the lack of shelters amid dropping temperatures.

Israeli aerial strikes and artillery fire have been ongoing since Sunday night, particularly in Khan Younis, south of the besieged enclave, and Gaza City, killing and injuring a number of civilians. 

Israeli aircraft launched several air strikes on Monday morning on the eastern areas of Khan Younis, coinciding with heavy artillery shelling that targeted al-Khansaa School and its surroundings in the town of Abasan al-Kabira, east of the city.

Israel also launched attacks on the southern city of Rafah on early Monday, killing at least two Palestinians.

Meanwhile, explosions could be heard in Gaza City due to the ongoing demolitions by Israeli troops.

Local media reported the targeting of residential neighbourhoods and shelters where many Palestinians have sought refuge amid the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

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