TV News LIES

Early this month, a single pen stroke effectively ended representative Steve Cohen’s career in Congress. The man who has represented Memphis for 19 years will turn 77 later this month, but he wasn’t planning on retiring. He hadn’t lost any primary. The reason was that his district had been erased around him.

A new electoral map, passed by the Republican-led state legislature and signed by Bill Lee, the governor, divides the ninth district three ways. “Last week Tennessee Republicans silenced the Black vote here in Memphis to make Republican victories likely,” Cohen said in his statement. That’s succinct and accurate.

The new map folds a significant portion of Cohen’s Black constituents into Williamson county, which sits south of Nashville and was, until recently, the subject of a different fight.

To this day, the Williamson county seal depicts a Confederate battle flag draped over a cannon. It was adopted in 1968, at the height of the civil rights movement. A Tennessee court ruled in 2024 that the county could remove it. The state legislature responded the following year by passing a new law specifically designed to keep the flag on the seal. The vote was 70-24 in the House and 27-6 in the Senate, with no Democrats voting in favor. Lee, who is from Williamson county, signed it.

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Congressman Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat from California thought to be considering a run for the presidency in 2028, joined the criticism of the Democratic National Committee’s reluctantly released, incomplete postmortem on the party’s disastrous 2024 election defeat.

In a social media video, Khanna said: “There’s not a single mention of Gaza in the 192-page DNC autopsy report that was just released today. As someone who campaigned in Michigan and Wisconsin, let me tell you: one of the reasons we lost is our blank check to Israel and Netanyahu while they committed genocide in Gaza. We must speak and confront hard truths if this party is to win in 2028.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York many progressives want to run for the presidency in 2028, told reporters she too was stunned by the omission of any mention of Gaza, Israel or the Uncommitted movement in the report.

“I think it’s pretty unbelievable that Gaza would not be mentioned once in the autopsy report,” the congresswoman said. “I think it was very clearly a major dynamic and a major thread that was happening in 2024. Regardless of how one feels about that issue, the fact that it’s not even addressed, I think, is a major oversight.”

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President Donald Trump's long-running explanation for not releasing his tax returns was upended on May 19 when acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a Justice Department document that effectively shut down any existing Internal Revenue Service audits, investigations and enforcement actions against Trump, his family and his sprawling business empire.

Since his 2016 campaign, Trump has declined to follow the tradition of U.S. presidents releasing tax returns, saying he couldn't do so because of ongoing IRS audits.

“I may even release my current returns,” Trump told reporters May 20 when stepping off Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland when asked about the agreement between the president and his own administration.

Meghan Faulkner, communications director for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called on Trump to release his taxes now that the audits have shut down.

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Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said Thursday the U.S. is pausing a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan because of the Trump administration’s war with Iran.

Speaking during a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing, Cao insisted the U.S. still had “plenty” of missiles and interceptors, even as scrutiny grows over America’s dwindling munitions stockpiles.

“Right now we’re doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury — which we have plenty,” Cao told Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “We’re just making sure we have everything, but then the foreign military sales will continue when the administration deems necessary.”

Asked by McConnell if he expects the sale to be approved at some point, Cao said that it would be up to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

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Germany on Wednesday criticized Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich over remarks that he would push for the eviction of the West Bank community of Khan al-Ahmar following reports of an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant request.

“We have, of course, taken note of these statements with the utmost concern, and we firmly reject them. We have also spoken out on this issue on several occasions in the past. There must be no expulsions. We call on the Israeli government to abandon these plans,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Josef Hinterseher told journalists in Berlin.

He stressed that the German government’s position was “clear and unchanged,” adding: “Unilateral measures -- as part of a broader intensification of settlement policy, into which the entire situation in the West Bank is embedded -- violate international law, pose a risk of further instability in the region and in the West Bank itself, and significantly stand in the way of a two-state solution.”

British news outlet Middle East Eye reported Monday that a request had been submitted to the ICC seeking secret arrest warrants against Smotrich and Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on charges of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

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Hezbollah’s drone capabilities are limiting 80 percent of Israeli assaults on southern Lebanon, according to a report by Israel’s public broadcaster Kan.

On Monday, Kan reported that the Israeli military had estimated that drones fired by Hezbollah had severely restricted Israeli troop movements in Lebanon, and contributed to battlefield losses.

The report stated that anti-drone systems were being distributed to only a limited number of Israeli troops due to supply shortages, and that some military operations were not being carried out in daylight hours over fears of drone attacks. 

These drones have increasingly become a problem for Israel’s government, which has reportedly created a specialist task force, composed of military, defence and civilian experts, to develop systems to counter the threat. 

Israeli military intelligence sources told Kan that Hezbollah had moved away from a command and control structure, and was now operating guerrilla-style warfare.

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Irish author Sally Rooney, whose stance in support of Palestine has earned international attention, has confirmed that her latest book Intermezzo will be published in Hebrew, causing mixed reactions on social media.

A supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for several years, Rooney first gained attention for her stance to join the cultural boycott of Israeli institutions after turning down an offer from Israeli publisher Modan to have her third book translated into Hebrew in 2021.

In collaboration with Israeli publishing house November Books and Local Call, +972 Magazine announced on Tuesday that after five years of communicating with the author to ensure a translation could be published "in a way that honors the principles of the boycott and stands in solidarity with the Palestinian demand for freedom, equality, and justice", a Hebrew translation of the novel will soon be available in Israel and Palestine.

In an interview with the Guardian published to time with the announcement, Rooney said: “Though my refusal to work with complicit Israeli publishing houses made the contractual side of things more complex, I was, of course, never boycotting the Hebrew language or any language. I’m very pleased that Intermezzo will soon be available in Hebrew with November Books.”

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The images coming out of Moscow in recent days speak for themselves: Ukrainian drone strikes on targets in Moscow have brought the war to the heart of state power and exposed the limits of Russia’s air defenses.

The Kremlin’s narrative of a controlled “special military operation” has been significantly undermined. President Volodymyr Zelensky describes the strikes as an “absolutely fair response.”

But are these developments more than symbolic? Is the war at a turning point? Political scientist Gustav Gressel is cautious on this point.

Are the strikes something new?

Gustav Gressel: The attack is clearly a signal to Moscow – and that was its purpose. Before May 9, Russia issued strong threats about any disruption to its Victory Day parade, even warning it could destroy Kyiv. The message was: “We can do this, you can’t.”

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