TV News LIES

Two federal immigration agents involved in the shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis last month appear to have lied about the details of the incident, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.

The agents have been placed on administrative leave after "a joint review by ICE and the Department of Justice of video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements," the spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said.

The rare acknowledgment of potential missteps by ICE agents comes after the agency's acting director, Todd Lyons, told Congress on Thursday that ICE has conducted 37 investigations into officers' use of force over the past year. He didn't say whether anyone has been fired.

McLaughlin said the agency is investigating the January 14 shooting of the Venezuelan immigrant, and the officers involved could be fired or criminally prosecuted for any violations.

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A passerby jumped into a frigid Florida pond to save a pregnant woman from her sinking car recently – giving her the opportunity to safely birth her baby hours later, according to authorities and those at the center of the riveting rescue story.

As she told it to local news outlet WPTV, Shedly Apollon of Florida’s Port St Lucie community was 34 weeks pregnant, with pre-eclampsia, and driving to a prenatal massage arranged for her by her fiance on the morning of 6 February when she began feeling dizzy. Apollon, who was also celebrating her birthday that day, stopped to try to let it pass before resuming her trip. When she realized she wasn’t feeling better, she attempted to pull over again.

Only that time she inadvertently plunged headlong into a pond.

“I started to feel some water on my feet, so I started to panic a little,” Apollon said to WPTV of the moments when her vehicle started sinking into the pond.

Fortunately for her, Logan Hayes, of nearby Sebastian, was running errands in that area at the time. He saw Apollon’s car barrel into the pond and – despite temperatures in the low 40s fahrenheit as well as an active cold weather advisory – he instinctively dove into the water.

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A bitter dispute between Europe and the US over the future of Gaza has broken out into the open, with the EU’s head of foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, warning that Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” was a personal vehicle for the US president that removed any accountability to Palestinians or the United Nations.

Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, also accused Trump of trying to bypass the original UN mandate for the board, and said Europe, one of the chief funders of the Palestinian Authority, had been excluded from the process.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Kallas said the original purpose of the UN resolution and mandate had been to help Gaza through a Board of Peace, but this had been subverted since the board’s charter now made no reference to Gaza or to the UN.

She said it was true that the UN security council resolution “provided for a Board of Peace for Gaza, but it also provided for it to be limited in time until 2027, it provided for the Palestinians to have a say, and it referred to Gaza, whereas the statute of the Board of Peace makes no reference to any of these things”.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused Donald Trump of tearing apart the transatlantic alliance with Europe and of seeking to introduce an “age of authoritarianism”, as she condemned his administration’s foreign policy in front of its allies’ top policymakers at the Munich security conference.

Speaking at a panel on populism on Friday, the New York representative outlined what she called an “alternative vision” for a leftwing US foreign policy, challenging the Trump administration’s shift to the right in front an audience of US allies who have grown increasingly wary of the US’s increasingly nationalist – and militaristic – global posture.

She also condemned the US capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Trump’s threats to annex Greenland and the US’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

“I think that, personally, the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense,” Ocasio-Cortez said during another panel discussion. “I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza, and I think that we have thousands of women and children dead … that was completely avoidable.”

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As Donald Trump seemed to endorse regime change in Iran, embracing a long-term goal of his ally, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Reuters reports that the US military “is preparing for the possibility of sustained, weeks-long operations” against Iran’s theocratic government.

When Trump was asked on Friday: “Do you want regime change in Iran?” the president replied: “Well, it seems like that would be the best thing that could happen.”

Trump then pointed out that the US had deployed a large force to the region. “We have tremendous power has arrived, and additional power, as you know, another carrier is going out shortly, “ he said.

“If we could get it settled for once and for all, that’d be good,” the president said, after describing casualties Iran’s government was responsible for, without saying where.

Asked, “Who would you want to take over?” Trump said: “I don’t want to talk about that.”

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The Trump administration cannot proceed with plans to rescind $602 million in public health grants from four Democratic-led states, a federal judge in Illinois ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Manish S. Shah determined the four states — Colorado, Illinois, California and Minnesota — were likely to succeed in their claim that the government’s desired termination of the grants was based on “arbitrary, capricious, or unconstitutional rationales.”

Shah, an appointee of former President Obama, blocked the administration from taking any action for 14 days while litigation is ongoing.

The states’ attorneys general sued several Trump officials on Wednesday, about a week after the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced it had ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to claw back millions in funding from blue states.

Those cuts were targeted at “states fraught with waste and mismanagement,” according to an OMB spokesperson.

The states framed the administration’s directive as “part of their ongoing campaign to punish Plaintiff States using the tool of federal funding for partisan political purposes,” arguing that it would harm “essential public health infrastructure” as well as the testing and treatment of deadly diseases.

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President Donald Trump insisted in a Truth Social post on Feb. 13 that voter identification would be required for the upcoming midterm elections, even if it is not approved by Congress. He said he would "shortly" lay out the legal reasons for it "in the form of an Executive Order."

"The Democrats refuse to vote for Voter I.D., or Citizenship. The reason is very simple — They want to continue to cheat in Elections. This was not what our Founders desired," he wrote. "There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not! Also, the People of our Country are insisting on Citizenship, and No Mail-In Ballots, with exceptions for Military, Disability,

House Republicans passed legislation on Feb. 11 that would require proof of U.S. citizenship for voters ahead of the midterm elections. But the measure is expected to face major pushback in the Senate.

Previous versions of the bill failed to gain traction in both chambers last year. This latest iteration, which builds on the 2024 version by adding a voter ID provision, must get 60 votes to pass.

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New Jersey progressive candidate is the projected winner of the Democratic nomination in the race for Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s (D) former House seat, Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) announced Friday.

Her closest rival, former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), conceded the race on Tuesday.

Mejia declared victory hours later, thanking supporters and pledging to represent her district’s interests in Congress if she sails through the general election in April.

“People will say that this district is not the kind of district in which a progressive or a lefty could win. But it’s not about left-right. It’s about right and wrong,” she told supporters. The director of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance, Mejia was the most high-profile progressive candidate in the race, having scored endorsements from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

Her apparent victory in the primary sets her up as the favored candidate in the April general election in a district that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris by 9 points in 2024. It’s the latest boost for the party’s left flank and represents a stunning upset against Malinowski, who outraised her and had a higher name ID in the state by virtue of his previous two terms in Congress, ending in 2023.

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