TV News LIES

US House speaker Mike Johnson has waded into the Epstein files saga that is roiling Donald Trump’s conservative base – by calling on the justice department to release the Epstein files.

Johnson, a key ally of the US president, was asked about the controversy during an interview for a rightwing podcast. “It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it,” Johnson told Benny Johnson, in comments released on Tuesday. “I agree with the sentiment that we need to put it out there.”

Referring to a comment attorney general Pam Bondi made to Fox News this year that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review”, Johnson said: “She needs to come forward and explain that to everybody.

“We need the DoJ focusing on the major priorities. So let’s get this thing resolved,” the speaker added.

The comments put Johnson at odds with Trump, who has defended Bondi’s handling of the case.

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Los Angeles police discovered American Idol music supervisor Robin Kaye and her husband, musician Thomas Deluca, dead in their Encino home on Monday, in what authorities are investigating as a double homicide.

After responding to the neighborhood for a welfare check, officers told celebrity news site TMZ, which first reported the news, that they found blood outside the couple’s $4.5m home. Inside, police discovered Kaye and Deluca’s bodies, in separate rooms, with gunshot wounds, NBC Los Angeles reports, citing police statements.

Police responded to reports of a burglary at the Encino home, but said in a press release there were “no signs of forced entry or trouble”.

Police added that they had arrested a suspect in connection with the couple’s deaths. On 10 July, officers said, 22-year-old Raymond Boodarian allegedly attempted to burglarize the couple’s home, then shot and killed Kaye and Deluca when the couple walked in on him, the Associated Press reports.

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New York City’s subway system was fully operational for the Tuesday morning commute, however some roads remained closed in sections of New York and New Jersey after heavy rain swept across the U.S. Northeast overnight, causing flash floods.

The region was hit with heavy rain Monday evening, resulting in flash floods that not only impacted roads and air travel, but also the transit system.

Multiple subway lines ran with severe delays in several boroughs, and some were even suspended due to issues caused by the floods.

Video taken by Veronica Zhang shows water spewing across the 28th Street Station in Manhattan as well as flooding at the street level.

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The Trump administration is pulling half of the California National Guard members it deployed to Los Angeles in a major rollback of President Donald Trump's militarized response to protests in Southern California over immigration arrests and raids.

“Thanks to our troops who stepped up to answer the call, the lawlessness in Los Angeles is subsiding," Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a July 15 statement. "As such, the Secretary has ordered the release of 2,000 California National Guardsmen (79th IBCT) from the federal protection mission."

Trump deployed 4,000 California  National Guardsmen on June 7 to respond to protests that racked the southern part of the state after he stepped up immigration raids and arrests, targeting farms, restaurants, and hardware stores across the Los Angeles area. He also ordered 700 Marines to the city that were tasked with guarding federal property.

The deployment was decried by the state's Democratic lawmakers, who have called an overreach of presidential authority and accused Trump of inciting violence. Trump has claimed that the "Los Angeles would be burning right now" if not for the military presence.

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Last Wednesday, 14 Republican and Democratic senators took a chummy photo with Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.

It was just a taste of the hobnobbing the genocidal Israeli leader enjoyed during his third visit to Washington, DC, since Donald Trump’s re-election.Some in the photo shared the image on social media, cheerfully welcoming the chance to spend time with Netanyahu.

Yet, two days later, when Israeli settlers brutalized a 20-year-old American, beating him to death, there was silence.

That 20-year-old was Sayfollah Musallet, a Florida native, who was pronounced dead by the time he arrived at a hospital in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli settlers, alongside Israeli soldiers, had blocked an ambulance from reaching him for hours.

Zeteo reached out asking if they had any response to the killing of an American, or what message they would give to the leader they just took a photo with, they did not respond.

President Trump has also said nothing publicly about the killing. Nor has his vice president, JD Vance.

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A leading scholar of the Holocaust and genocide warned Tuesday the continued "silence" of many in his field of study regarding Israel's massacre of Palestinians in Gaza "has made a mockery of the slogan 'never again''" as he outlined in a New York Times opinion piece how he came to conclude that Israel is committing genocide in the besieged enclave.

At that point, about 1 million Palestinians had been ordered to the so-called "safe zone" of al-Mawasi—which was then targeted in numerous attacks.

Months after one top Israeli official called for the "total annihilation" of Gaza—home to more than 2 million people—Bartov concluded that the government's "actions could be understood only as the implementation of the expressed intent to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population."
"I'm a Genocide Scholar," reads the essay's headline. "I Know It When I See It."

Like a number of other experts who were at first reluctant to designate the assault on Gaza a genocide—the term coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944—Brown University professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies Omer Bartov gradually came to recognize Israel's campaign of targeted starvation, bombings on civilian infrastructure, forced displacement, and other attacks as genocidal violence as he watched the early months of the war in late 2023 and early 2024.

By May 2024, he wrote at the Times, "it appeared no longer possible to deny that the pattern of [Israel Defense Forces] operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders in the days after the Hamas attack," including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's threat to turn Gaza into "rubble" and his call for Israeli citizens to remember "what Amalek did to you"—a reference to the biblical passage calling on the Israelites to "kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings" in their fight against an ancient enemy.

At that point, about 1 million Palestinians had been ordered to the so-called "safe zone" of al-Mawasi—which was then targeted in numerous attacks.

Months after one top Israeli official called for the "total annihilation" of Gaza—home to more than 2 million people—Bartov concluded that the government's "actions could be understood only as the implementation of the expressed intent to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population."

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Ali Awad is tired. The 27-year-old resident of Tuba, one of the dozen or so villages that make up Masafer Yatta in the arid south Hebron hills of the occupied West Bank, had been up all night watching as a masked Israeli settler on horseback circled his family home.

“When we saw the masked settler, we knew he wanted violence,” said Awad, his eyes bloodshot. They were lucky this time: the settler disappeared into the darkness before police could show up.

The men in Masafer Yatta rarely sleep these days. They take turns standing watch at night, fearful that nearby Israeli settlers will attack under the cover of darkness.

Daylight brings little respite. Residents work with an ear pricked up for the sound of approaching vehicles, scanning the horizon for Israeli bulldozers which could signal their homes are next to be demolished.

Israel designated Masafer Yatta a military training zone – named firing zone 918, where no civilians can live – in 1981. It has been working since to push out the roughly 1,200 residents who remain. These residents have been fighting in Israeli courts for more than two decades to stop their expulsion, a battle which has slowed, but not stopped, the demolition of Palestinian homes there.

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After 21 months of Israeli offensive in Gaza, humanitarian agencies are warning of an imminent operational collapse. What little aid is being delivered to those remaining in the strip risks stopping entirely. Meanwhile, the civilian death toll is on the rise. On Sunday, at least 95 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes, including children collecting water and market-goers in Gaza City.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has confirmed the death of yet another malnourished infant, as eight UN agencies signalled that without fuel, their lifesaving work may soon come to a halt. Gaza’s Health Ministry now reports over 58,000 deaths and 138,000 wounded since the war began on the 7th of October 2023.

The high and rising death toll comes as no surprise, given that the Israeli military has intensified its bombardment. As of the morning of Monday, the 14th of July, it claimed more than 100 new air raids in the last 24 hours alone. Ground operations also continue across northern Gaza.

Aid is scarce, and attempts to collect it have proven deadly after two people were killed near an aid centre in Rafah on Sunday, the latest victims of many since the controversial US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation stepped in after other agencies were banned or blocked from entering the Strip.

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