TV News LIES

Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive candidate for Congress, has been indicted on federal charges related to her participation in protests outside an ICE processing facility near Chicago in September.

The indictment, filed last week, alleges that the 26-year old Palestinian American candidate and five other individuals “physically hindered and impeded” a federal agent who was “forced to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators”.

Abughazaleh, who is running for Illinois’s ninth congressional district to replace the outgoing Democrat Jan Schakowsky, was charged with conspiracy to forcibly impede or injure a federal agent, and assaulting or impeding the agent while they were performing official duties.

According to the indictment, the group “conspired with one another and others, known and unknown, to prevent by force, intimidation, and threat, Agent A, a United States law enforcement officer, from discharging the duties of his office”.

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The Republican-led US Senate has passed a measure that would terminate Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Brazilian imports, including coffee, beef and other products, in a rare bipartisan show of opposition to the president’s trade war.

The vote passed 52-48. The resolution was led by Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat of Virginia, and seeks to overturn the national emergency that Trump has declared to justify the levies.

“Tariffs are a tax on American consumers. Tariffs are a tax on American businesses. And they are a tax that is imposed by a single person: Donald J Trump,” Kaine said in a floor speech.

The US Senate has approved a bipartisan effort to stop Donald Trump’s tariffs on imports from Brazil. In a rare show of working together, senators passed the measure on Tuesday night. But it is certain to stall in the US House – and if the measure were to reach the president’s desk, it would likely meet Trump’s veto.

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Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) filed a lawsuit Tuesday over GOP leaders’ refusal to seat a newly elected Democratic lawmaker.

The suit asks a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to declare Adelita Grijalva a member of the House and allow someone else to administer the oath if Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) won’t do so.

Mayes’s office wrote in the complaint that the case is about whether someone duly elected to the House may be denied their “rightful office,” only because the speaker has decided to keep the chamber out of “regular session.” 

“If the Speaker were granted that authority, he could thwart the peoples’ choice of who should represent them in Congress by denying them representation for a significant portion of the two-year term provided by the Constitution,” the suit reads.

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Most of the effects of the ongoing government shutdown are far-removed from the halls of Congress.

But the situation facing one group of federal employees who are working without pay is difficult for lawmakers to overlook: The Capitol Police officers who protect them every day.

The officers missed their first full paycheck Oct. 10th.

"They're asked to be everything to everybody," said Terry Gainer, a former Capitol Police chief. "You need to be ready at the drop of a hat to take very aggressive enforcement action, but you also have to be a person who will welcome visitors and be a tour guide."

Gesturing toward two officers guarding the ornate Senate Reception Room, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., says she feels for the force's more than 2,000 officers and that Democrats are to blame for the impasse.

Gainer says the job is tougher than ever, as public officials face growing threats and violence.

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As the two parties square off over an imminent government shutdown, Democrats are accusing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of keeping the House of Representatives out of session to delay a vote on the Epstein files.

The House had been scheduled to vote on Monday and Tuesday, but Johnson canceled the votes in order to put more pressure on Senate Democrats to accept a government funding bill Republicans pushed through the House earlier this month.

The canceled votes are also pushing back the swearing-in of Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat who won a special election last week to fill her late father’s Arizona seat. Grijalva would provide the crucial 218th signature on a “discharge petition” forcing a vote on legislation to make the Justice Department release its investigatory files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“Any delay in swearing in Representative-elect Grijalva unnecessarily deprives her constituents of representation and calls into question if the motive behind the delay is to further avoid the release of the Epstein files,” Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the No. 2 Democrat in the House, complained in a letter to Johnson on Monday.

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Fairfax County Supervisor James Walkinshaw (D) on Tuesday won the special election to replace his former boss, the late Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), according to Decision Desk HQ.

Walkinshaw defeated Republican Stewart Whitson, an Army veteran and FBI agent. 

Prior to being elected county supervisor in 2019, Walkinshaw served as Connolly’s chief of staff. 

Connolly’s seat has been vacant since his death in May. Walkinshaw’s win narrows the Republican majority in the House to 219-213.

The vacancies have likely helped Republicans during crucial votes this year, including the vote to pass the GOP spending megabill, also known as President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” in May. The legislation passed by one vote.

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