TV News LIES

Dozens of young children, including one who wore a pink shirt and spoke in a sing-song voice, appeared virtually in a Downtown Manhattan immigration court on Wednesday morning. Most lacked attorneys and were facing government lawyers alone as their ability to remain in the United States hung in the balance.

Immigration Judge Lisa Ling admonished one girl for failing to provide a completed asylum application, which the judge said was the third time that important task had been left undone. Without a completed asylum appliImmigration Judge Lisa Ling admonished one girl for failing to provide a completed asylum application, which the judge said was the third time that important task had been left undone. Without a completed asylum application or another form of immigration relief, Ling explained, she could order the child to be deported.

"> The day before yesterday I was going to get in touch with an attorney, but they didn’t call me,” the girl said in Spanish through an interpreter.

Ling replied, “I understand it’s difficult. But with or without an attorney, you need to fill out that application in English.”

The Trump administration allowed a $200 million federal contract providing lawyers for over 24,000 unaccompanied minors across the country to expire on Friday. On Tuesday, the officials announced that a new $150 million contract had been reached — but it won’t start until Aug. 15, leaving untold numbers of children across the country to potentially fend for themselves before immigration judges — as was the case during the virtual proceedings in Manhattan.

More...

Respiratory therapist Marcy Freeman doesn't need a research study to confirm for her a return to the dark days of coal mining. She finds evidence in a stack of more than 150 funeral programs, all for former patients at her pulmonary rehabilitation clinic in Norton, Virginia.

"Each one of these represents a life that's gone because of black lung," Freeman explained as she flipped through the programs, recognizing names and images.

"These are husbands. These are brothers. … These men were just hardworking men, and the only thing they did was go to work and provide for their families. And it cost them everything. … This is the aftermath of black lung."

This aftermath is more dire than even black lung clinicians and researchers expected, according to new data published Wednesday in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

More...

The White House and Pentagon have pushed back on a slate of recent reports indicating that supplies of both offensive and defensive weapons have dropped dangerously low after five months of war on Iran.

Experts have said that low supplies of air defence interceptors, particularly those used in Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) air defence systems, may pose a particular threat to US forces, with knock-on effects for allies in the region and beyond.

But in a statement provided to Al Jazeera on Tuesday by the White House, President Donald Trump pushed back on claims the US faced deficiencies in its current supply.

“We have far more munitions than anyone in the world, and far more than we need, despite the fact that an unprecedented amount was given away by Crooked Joe Biden and the Biden Administration to Ukraine and Europe at no cost, in one of many of their extremely dumb moves,” Trump said. He was referencing the Patriot interceptor transfers to Ukraine under former President Joe Biden following Russia’s invasion.

More...

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic party upstart who just won a contentious primary in Michigan, says that if not for an "accident of history," he would have become a cab driver in Egypt like others in his family.

Instead, the 41-year-old Michigander is a Senate nominee after winning an Aug. 4 primary race against U.S. Rep Haley Stevens, an establishment Democrat pick who was backed by tens of millions of dollars from pro-Israel lobbyists. The race was closely watched around the nation as it is seen as a bellwether for where the Democratic Party is headed.

El-Sayed, a former public health official turned politician, offered up a vision of that direction in an Aug. 5 victory speech, where he reflected on the luck of his upbringing in suburban Detroit and what it means for his goals.

"But for an accident of history that allows my dad to immigrate to Detroit to go to Wayne State University, I would have been a cab driver in Egypt like my cousins," El-Sayed said in Detroit shortly after the primary race was called in his favor. "Except for I got to be born in America."

More...

Palestinians on Tuesday buried 112 members of a single clan killed in Israeli air strikes in November 2023, after their remains were recovered from beneath the rubble last month.

Relatives of the Abu Shari'a and al-Hasayna family gathered in Gaza City to bid a final farewell to their loved ones, whose bodies lay in rows draped in Palestinian flags.

For many, it was a moment of both relief and renewed grief after nearly 1,000 days of waiting to recover the bodies of their relatives.

"There is a feeling of both pain and joy," Amer Abu Shari'a, who lost relatives in the attack, told Middle East Eye.

"Joy because we will bury and honour these martyrs after three years. But the sorrow has returned, as if the massacre happened today."

The strike on the Sabra neighbourhood was one of the deadliest single-strike casualty events of the two-year genocide.

Israeli warplanes flattened an entire residential block where hundreds of members of the Abu Shari'a and al-Hasayna clan had been living and sheltering.

More...

An attorney for the former Olympic canoeist who was charged with vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool has said that “all options are on table” for legal recourse after prosecutors recently abandoned the case abruptly.

David Hearn “has a number of potential remedies” after being prosecuted in connection with pool damage now attributed to faulty work by a contractor, attorney Steven Levin said in a statement. Levin added that those could include “civil suits, bar referrals for the prosecutors involved, request for sanctions, andAn attorney for the former Olympic canoeist who was charged with vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool has said that “all options are on table” for legal recourse after prosecutors recently abandoned the case abruptly. reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and expenses”, and requests for investigations by various government entities, including Congress.

Hearn, 67, was arrested on 19 June and faced one felony count of property destruction – a charge that could have resulted in a 10-year prison sentence and a $1,000 fine – which he denied.

The charge came after the Trump administration spent $14m to change the reflecting pool’s color. A new pool liner almost immediately began to peel off, and the president blamed vandals. Four people were arrested, but only Hearn was charged with a felony.

More...

Construction crews building a border wall in New Mexico were ordered to stop drilling new wells after ranchers said that pumping groundwater to produce concrete could threaten their livestock amid a severe drought.

The order comes as crews across the southern border race to complete one of Donald Trump’s key domestic priorities – barriers that span four states and received over $46bn in federal funding. Controversies have sprouted up in Texas and California, and border-town residents and environmentalists have reported a wide variety of issues with construction.

At a public meeting in July, ranchers said they were noticing unmonitored tapping of border aquifers that threatened the water for those nearby.

“It would put us in an immediate catastrophe and having to do something with our livestock. I mean, it could potentially put some people out of business, us included,” said Russell Johnson, a cattle rancher whose property runs along the border.

More...

We are constitutional law, civil rights and human rights scholars and practitioners who have spent decades litigating government abuse cases in the United States. Despite the US legal system’s flaws, our work – from securing a record civil settlement for George Floyd’s family to holding Bolivia’s ex-president accountable in US federal court for the massacre of Indigenous protesters – has demonstrated that US courts can rein in state power and provide a path to accountability. But this pathway is narrowing.

As Donald Trump attacks the courts, weaponizes the Department of Justice, and targets attorneys who challenge his administration, we have been forced to seek justice beyond our borders.

Earlier this year, we requested a thematic hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on the United States’s violent suppression of protests against federal immigration policies. Never before had the commission granted such a hearing, but the extraordinary nature of the Trump administration’s actions – including allegations of excessive and lethal force against peaceful protesters, attacks on journalists and legal observers, and racial profiling and surveillance – warrants international scrutiny. On 4 August, the commission will hold that hearing.

The IACHR is unfamiliar to most Americans. Together with the inter-American court of human rights, the commission is the bedrock of the hemisphere’s human rights system. For decades, it has served as a safeguard against authoritarianism and state repression in the region, providing an avenue for victims when domestic institutions have failed. While the United States claims it is not bound by the inter-American system’s norms, it remains subject to the commission’s oversight under the American declaration of the rights and duties of man. Condemnation by the commission has directly led to policy changes by countries, including the United States.

More...