TV News LIES

The world's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, will arrive in the northern Caribbean on Sunday as tensions with Venezuela grow, according to a U.S. military official. The carrier will join 15,000 service members, including 2,000 Marines aboard an amphibious assault ship.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told NPR the "table is being set" for possible military action. Administration officials are continuing to hold high-level meetings with members of Congress and foreign leaders amid ongoing military exercises.

It remains unclear, however, if President Trump will use military force against Venezuela. The U.S. has conducted 20 strikes on boats in the region so far, saying they were ferrying drugs trafficked from the country. In August, the U.S. government set a $50 million reward for the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

But officials told NPR that the arrival of the USS Gerald Ford, which was pulled from the Mediterranean Sea, could be just another pressure tactic on Maduro, who has put his own forces on high alert.

On Friday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, "I sort of made up my mind" about whether to launch an attack.

"I can't tell you what it is," he said, "but we made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping drugs from pouring in."

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This week several dozen Venezuelan nationals were transferred from a U.S. immigration detention center in south Texas and boarded a deportation flight to their home country.

Among them was 39-year-old Jose Barco, a decorated American soldier who deployed twice to Iraq, saw horrific combat and received a Purple Heart after an explosion tossed him through the air and left him with a traumatic brain injury.

He was just four years old when his family left Venezuela, a country his father fled to after he was being released as a political prisoner in Cuba. Jose Barco's fellow inmates in Texas, most of them much younger, simply call him "Cuba."

How an American veteran, a father of a 15-year-old daughter, found himself inside this sprawling detention center outside Corpus Christi, Texas, waiting for a flight to a country he barely knows is a tortured tale of battlefield trauma, bureaucratic bumbling and eventually, a serious crime.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime Republican ally who previously fiercely defended Donald Trump and his Maga movement, said on Saturday she had been contacted by private security firms “with warnings for my safety” after Trump announced on Friday he was withdrawing his support for and endorsement of the Georgia representative.

In a post on X, Greene said that “a hot bed of threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world”, without referring to Trump by name, adding it was “the man I supported and helped get elected”.

Greene said that “aggressive rhetoric attacking me has historically led to death threats and multiple convictions of men who were radicalized by the same type rhetoric being directed at me right now. This time by the President of the United States.”

Greene did not specify any threats against her that had been received by security firms, but said that “as a woman I take threats from men seriously. I now have a small understanding of the fear and pressure the women, who are victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal, must feel.”

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Alice Wong, a writer and disability rights activist who was born with muscular dystrophy and whose independence and writing inspired others, has died. She was 51.

Wong died Friday at a hospital in San Francisco due to an infection, said Sandy Ho, a close friend who has been in touch with Wong’s family.

Ho called her friend a “luminary of the disability justice movement” who wanted to see a world where people with disabilities, especially those of marginalized demographics who were people of color, LGBTQ+ people and immigrants, could live freely and have full autonomy over their lives and decisions.

The daughter of Hong Kong immigrants, Wong writes about her own story – about growing up with a neuromuscular disease, coming into herself and her activism – and about how US policies and systems fail disabled people, queer people, immigrants and people of color. She used a powered wheelchair and an assistive breathing device and described herself as a “disabled cyborg”.

In her 2022 memoir, Year of the Tiger, Wong tells of the discrimination and bullying she faced growing up in Indiana, which sparked her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism.

Wong founded the Disability Visibility Project in 2014, initially as an oral history project designed to collect the stories of disabled people. She has shared these histories in two books, Disability Visibility and Disability Intimacy.

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President Trump’s supporters are worried he is muddling his populist message as Republicans seek to keep the party base together going into the midterm election year. 

This week, Trump faced an uproar from his most faithful MAGA supporters when he defended the H-1B visas and inviting foreign students to come study in the U.S. Conservative critics including and perhaps most prominently, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) accused the president of contradicting his America First message.

Meanwhile, the president has continued to tout expensive White House renovations, including his long anticipated ballroom addition in place of the East Wing, as he seeks to tackle the issue of affordability. 

Some worry that the moves will depress the president’s base, who have long viewed him as an economic populist fighting for the working class.  

The backlash was fiercest after Fox News host Laura Ingraham, a vocal Trump ally, pressed him over his stances on H-1B visas and his calls for 600,000 Chinese students to study at U.S. higher education institutions. The president argued H-1B visas are necessary because the U.S. needs “certain” talents to carry out specific jobs. On his calls for the 600,000 Chinese students studying in the U.S., Trump argued the move was needed to keep U.S. colleges in business.

“Where is my president?” Trump supporter Kylie Kremer, who played a role in organizing the rally prior to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, posted on X with a clip of the interview. 

Conservative commentator Natalie Winters, who co-hosts Steven Bannon’s War Room podcast, also reposted a clip of the interview in which Trump defends his calls for Chinese students to study in the U.S., calling the remarks “insulting to MAGA’s intelligence.”

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Four law enforcement officers were shot and wounded after they responded to a domestic violence incident at about 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 15 in Kansas, authorities said.

Three Osage County sheriff’s officers and a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper were wounded at a residence just north of 113th and Topeka Boulevard, said Melissa Underwood, communications director for the KBI.

Another man was taken to a hospital, where his condition was considered stable, said Tony Mattivi, director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

The shooting scene is about eight miles south of Topeka.

The names, ages and genders of the six people shot weren’t immediately being released.

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A U.S. proposal to provide a United Nations mandate for an international stabilization force in Gaza is facing opposition from Russia, China and some Arab countries, which have expressed unease about a yet-to-be established board that would temporarily govern the territory and the lack of any transitional role for the Palestinian Authority.

The Chinese and the Russians — two veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council — have called for the “Board of Peace” under President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan to be removed from the resolution entirely, according to four U.N. diplomats briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations.

In the latest draft released late Wednesday and obtained by The Associated Press, the U.S. maintains the language around the board while providing further commitment to Palestinian self-determination. although the language remains weak.

While some of the responses to the U.S. proposal reflect typical negotiations between countries — with detailed back-and-forth and revisions in language — the objection to the transitional board indicates that wide gaps have emerged between some members of the U.N.’s most powerful body and the U.S. following more than two years of war.

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Heavy rain across the Gaza Strip on Friday has drenched many tents where displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

A crew from NHK's Gaza office has found flooded roads in a wide area of Gaza City in the north and muddy water surrounding tents there.

In an area near the central city of Deir al-Balah, residents were using shovels to pile up mounds around their tents to prevent the inflow of rainwater.

As the rainy, cold winter will soon arrive in the enclave, a local NGO has asked Israel to open all crossings to allow the delivery of needed shelter materials.

It says items needed to survive winter are slow in arriving even after the ceasefire took effect last month.

One resident said it is unbearable to see his child freezing due to lack of a blanket and a mattress. The resident called for support with essentials like tarps and blankets.

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