TV News LIES

A federal judge declined Saturday to toss out former President Trump’s federal election subversion case over his assertion that he’s being unfairly and singularly prosecuted.

In a 16-page order, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote that, at the outset of the trial process, the court must assume the allegations against Trump are truthful — and the “improper reframing of the allegations against him” he has presented so far cannot support dismissal.

“At this stage, the court cannot accept Defendant’s alternate narrative,” Chutkan wrote.

The case was put back in Chutkan’s hands just Friday, after a federal appeals court remanded the matter to the trial court shortly after the case was returned from the Supreme Court following its 6-3 decision last month granting former presidents at least presumptive immunity for official acts.

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The mayor of a Louisiana city near the state’s border with Texas abruptly resigned from her post days before authorities jailed her on suspicion of raping a boy while she served in office.

Misty Roberts became the first woman to be elected as mayor of DeRidder in 2018, and she was well into her second term in the position when she handed in her resignation – with immediate effect – to the local city council on Saturday.

The letter did not provide a reason for Roberts’s decision. But the day before, Louisiana state police had begun investigating an allegation that Roberts engaged in “sexual relations” with a minor who was too young to be able to legally provide consent, according to a news release from the agency.

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An American-Israeli man deployed in Gaza with a combat engineering unit of Israel’s armed forces posted videos online that show indiscriminate fire at a destroyed building and the detonation of homes and a mosque.

One video posted by the man, Bram Settenbrino, and filmed from the shooter’s viewpoint, shows dozens of rounds being fired into the ruins of a building. Another video shows what appears to be an armored vehicle’s fire-control system trained on a mosque before it is razed to the ground. Others depict the detonation of several homes as soldiers cheer.

It is not clear whether Settenbrino personally filmed the videos or was involved in the acts depicted in them, but the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Settenbrino did not dispute the videos’ authenticity. The videos recently went viral on X, drawing accusations that they showed “war crimes”. Settenbrino wrote in a message to the Guardian that the videos were “taken out of context” but declined to elaborate. “I have not committed any war crimes whatsoever,” he added.

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If you want to understand the complicated situation in the Middle East, you need to start with two basic sets of facts, which are the foundation for everything else.

The first is that Israelis are civilized people, just like westerners. You should believe whatever the Israeli government says, because they are obviously not going to lie. If an Israeli soldier or settler commits a terrible act, they’re not considered a reflection on the state as a whole; they’re a bad apple who will be held accountable. Even if the data shows they are rarely held accountable. The bottom line: Israelis are good people who want peace; any violence they commit is justified because they have an absolute right to self-defense.

Palestinians, meanwhile, and Arabs more generally, are seen as barbarians. Barely human. Not even mammals: more like wasps, caterpillars and spiders – to borrow an analogy from the celebrated New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. You can’t trust a word they say. If a Palestinian does something terrible they are not a “bad apple”, they’re an example of how all Palestinians are rotten to the core. One shouldn’t think of any Palestinian as an innocent civilian – they are all terrorists, even the children. The bottom line: Palestinians are bad people who want war; nothing they do can be justified because they have no right to self-defense.

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Late Friday, the Pentagon announced that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group in the region as well as additional ballistic missile defense warships, according to Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secertary.

Austin also ordered the deployment of an additional fighter squadron to the Middle East, Singh said in a statement. A Defense official identified those warplanes as F-22s, the Air Force's most sophisticated warplanes. An attack by Iran or its proxies on Israel is expected, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

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The KP.3.1.1 COVID-19 variant is the dominant strain of the virus, the latest projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show.

The agency's Nowcast data tracker, which displays COVID-19 estimates and projections for two-week periods, projects the KP.3.1.1 variant accounting for 27.8% of positive infections, followed by KP.3 at 20.1% in the two-week stretch starting July 21 and ending Aug. 3.

"The KP.3.1.1 variant is very similar to other circulating variants in the United States. All current lineages are descendants of JN.1, which emerged in late 2023," Rosa Norman, a spokesperson at the CDC, previously told USA TODAY.

"At this time, we anticipate that COVID-19 treatments and vaccines will continue to work against all circulating variants. CDC will continue to monitor the severity of variants and will monitor vaccine effectiveness."

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• The Ukrainian first lady, Olena Zelenska, has attended in Turkey the launch of the Hetman Ivan Vyhovskyi, an anti-submarine warship newly built for Ukraine.

• Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said: “Corvettes Hetman Ivan Vyhovskyi and [previously launched] Hetman Ivan Mazepa, which were built in Turkey due to Russian aggression, are equipped with cutting-edge weapons and will become a significant addition to our fleet … Ukraine has already broken the dominance of the Russian fleet at sea, destroying dozens of shipse are actively expanding the capabilities of the Ukrainian navy in the Black and Azov seas.” It is unclear when either warship will be able to reach Ukraine, because the Montreux convention generally prohibits warring parties’ battleships from entering or exiting the Black Sea via the Bosphorus, which Turkey controls.

• Russian-occupied Crimea came under attack from missiles and drones on Friday morning, according to reports. The Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said debris fell on the city. Explosions were heard in Saki where there is an airbase and in Yevpatoria, according to news sources including Crimean Wind, a Telegram channel that reliably reports on military activities on the peninsula. Kursk oblast inside Russia also came under air attack, said the governor, Alexey Smirno.

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Bush, of St. Louis, has been a vocal critic of how Israel responded when attacked by Hamas in October, calling the Israeli retaliation an “ethnic cleansing campaign,” and she was among the few House members who opposed a resolution supporting Israel. She boycotted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress last week, calling him a “war criminal.”

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super political action committee, United Democracy Project, has spent more than $8.4 million to unseat Bush in her Aug. 6 Democratic primary against St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, according to federal campaign finance records.

TVNL Comment: AIPAC is a foreign agent.  It works for the interest of Israel.  It is outrageous that AIPAC can control the outcome of US elections.

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