TV News LIES

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered that the near shutdown of Voice of America was illegal and has ordered the government to reinstate more than 1,000 people who were placed on leave from the media organization.

The order by District Judge Royce Lamberth amounted to a sharp rebuke to the administration, which has aggressively sought to shrink and remake VOA through Kari Lake, the ally of President Donald Trump who has served as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Lamberth said in a pair of rulings that Lake’s moves to close the agency violated federal administrative law and directed that the employees return to work by March 23. He also ordered a resumption of international broadcasting, which the U.S. has used for decades to promote press freedom around the world.

Beginning in early 2025, hundreds of journalists were placed on administrative leave and then targeted for layoffs, with more than 600 cuts announced by summer and ultimately roughly 85 percent of staff eliminated across the agency. The reductions were so deep that VOA, which once broadcast in nearly 50 languages to hundreds of millions of people, was pared down to a skeleton operation with only a handful of language services still running.

Lamberth issued a scathing review of the government’s “flagrant and nearly year-long refusal” to uphold statutory requirements set by Congress, adding that Lake “thumbed her nose” at the requirements.

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Israel has killed three Palestinians and wounded five others, including a child, in separate attacks targeting areas in eastern Gaza City and the northern Gaza, according to medical sources.

Sources told Anadolu agency that the bodies of three young men were taken to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza City after a drone strike targeted them on Mushtaha Street in the Shujaiya neighbourhood in the east of the city.

The victims were identified as Mahmoud Saher al-Siqli, 17, Younes Saed Ayad, 17, and Abdullah Taysir Shoumer, 20, the sources said.

In a separate attack, four Palestinians were wounded when an Israeli drone dropped a grenade in the Tuffah neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City.

The wounded were taken to the Palestine Red Crescent Society field hospital in Al-Saraya Square in the city centre.

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Teens in Texas mariachi band released from ICE detention after bipartisan backlas

Two teenage mariachi musicians were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after their detention sparked widespread backlash, including from a Republican congresswoman.

The Democratic representative Joaquin Castro of Texas announced the release of the brothers, Antonio Yesayahu Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar, 14, on Monday afternoon, sharing photos on social media of the family reuniting.

Two teenage mariachi musicians were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after their detention sparked widespread backlash, including from a Republican congresswoman.

The Democratic representative Joaquin Castro of Texas announced the release of the brothers, Antonio Yesayahu Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar, 14, on Monday afternoon, sharing photos on social media of the family reuniting.

The case has drawn national attention because the brothers had travelled to Washington DC last summer after their high school’s mariachi ensemble, Mariachi Ono, won a state mariachi competition. Their congresswoman, Monica De La Cruz, a Republican, had invited them to the House floor, where she celebrated their accomplishment.

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A federal judge on Saturday voided layoffs at Voice of America (VOA) while also ruling that the U.S. Agency for Global Media’s (USAGM) acting CEO, Kari Lake, unlawfully ran the independent federal agency.

U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C., Judge Royce Lamberth wrote that Lake oversaw the media agency in violation of the Constitution’s appointments clause and the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

Lamberth’s ruling comes after VOA’s White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara filed the lawsuit last year.

President Trump nominated Lake to be senior adviser to acting CEO Victor Morales in February 2025. Morales dncy during the period relevant to the motions.”9 out of the 22 duties that the CEO assigns,” Lamberth wrote. By July, she was made acting CEO and “exercised control over the agency during the period relevant to the motions.”

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The US justice department abruptly reversed course on Tuesday and decided it would defend executive orders made by Donald Trump to try to penalize law firms that represented clients or causes the president did not like.

On Monday, the department announced in a court filing that it was dropping its appeal against a ruling by a district court judge that blocked Trump’s retaliatory executive actions against four companies that refused to make a deal with him.

Trump’s “capitulation” was celebrated by at least two of the the companies that welcomed the DoJ’s voluntary withdrawal from the legal proceedings.

On Tuesday, however, the government filed a new, single-paragraph request to the US court of appeals for the Columbia circuit, announcing it had changed its mind, and wished “to pursue this appeal”.

It gave no reason for its sudden about-face, and quoted attorneys for the four companies who unanimously opposed “the government’s unexplained request to withdraw yesterday’s voluntary dismissal, to which all parties had agreed”.

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The FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce has been called in to help investigate a deadly mass shooting in downtown Austin, Texas, on Sunday morning in which a gunman opened fire in front of a bar popular with university students, killing two people and injuring 14 others before being fatally shot by police.

An FBI official, Alex Doran, told reporters at a press conference that it was too early to determine the shooter’s motivation. But he added that evidence found on the suspect and in his car indicated a “potential nexus to terrorism”

The Associated Press reported that officials had identified the suspect as Ndiaga Diagne, 53, a US citizen who first came to the US in 2000 from Senegal, married an American six years later and naturalized in 2013. He spent some years in New York before moving to Texas.

Law enforcement sources told Reuters that in addition to investigating potential terrorist motivations, investigators are also looking at the suspect’s previous history of mental health issues.

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