TV News LIES

In the desert, he realized Humvees don’t uphold the Constitution: People do.

Twenty years later, Iraq War veteran Aaron Hughes continues spreading his realization that soldiers can better champion American ideals by following their conscience over orders. 

The 42-year-old is sharing the message more vociferously than ever as President Donald Trump moves to deploy troops to cities around the U.S. in what the president says is an effort to fight crime and support immigration enforcement.

"When people withdraw themselves from the gears of the machine, that’s power, and service members need to know they have power to withdraw their consent," said the Chicago-area native.

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Hamas says that it accepts several parts of US President Donald Trump’s plan for a ceasefire in Israel’s nearly two-year war on Gaza, but that some elements of the proposal require further negotiations.

The armed group handed over its response to Trump’s 20-point plan to halt the war on Friday, an informed source told Al Jazeera, hours after Trump gave the group until Sunday to respond to the proposal.

Trump’s 20-point plan included demands for an immediate ceasefire, an exchange of all remaining 48 Israeli captives – 20 are believed to be alive – for Palestinian prisoners, the introduction of a transitional government led by an international body, and the disarmament of Hamas.

The group’s response, which did not address the issue of disarmament, stated that it had agreed “to release all occupation captives – both living and the remains – according to the exchange formula outlined in President Trump’s proposal, with the provision of field conditions necessary for the exchange”.

It added that it was ready to “immediately enter negotiations through mediators to discuss the details” of the exchange.

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US Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a veteran voice in Republican foreign policy, has seized on the government shutdown crisis – now in its fourth day – to demand that Congress pass a serious, full-year defense appropriations bill, arguing that failure to unlock a sweeping “Trump buildup” of the military would undermine deterrence against global adversaries and jeopardize sustained support for Ukraine.

Speaking from the Senate floor on Friday, McConnell, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, delivered a sharp critique of the ongoing funding deadlock – which he squarely blamed on Democrats – warning that repeated stopgap funding measures were “devastating to US military readiness”.

Prioritizing the war in Ukraine, McConnell stressed that continued security cooperation was being monitored closely by US rivals. He directly challenged officials within the administration he suggested were seeking to curtail assistance to Kyiv.

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A statue of President Trump skipping hand-in-hand with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has returned to D.C.'s National Mall, over a week after it was abruptly removed in the pre-dawn hours.

The bronze-painted statue, originally titled Best Friends Forever but since renamed Why Can't We Be Friends?, turned heads when it appeared in front of the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 23. Its plaque celebrates "the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his 'closest friend,' Jeffrey Epstein."

Trump has sought to downplay his friendship with the disgraced financier, who died in jail in August 2019. He maintains they had a falling out sometime before Epstein was indicted for soliciting prostitution in 2006, at least in part due to Epstein poaching employees — including young women — who worked at Trump's Mar-a-Lago spa.

Last week, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told NPR in a statement that "it's not news that Epstein knew Donald Trump, because Donald Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for being a creep."

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More than 800,000 ride-hailing drivers in California will soon be able to join a union and negotiate for higher wages and better benefits under a measure signed Friday by the governor, Gavin Newsom.

Supporters said the new law will open a path for the largest expansion of private-sector collective bargaining rights in the state’s history. The legislation is a significant compromise in the years-long battle between labor unions and tech companies.

California is the second state where Uber and Lyft drivers can unionize as independent contractors; Massachusetts voters passed a ballot referendum in November allowing unionization, while drivers in Illinois and Minnesota are pushing for similar rights.

“Donald Trump is holding the government hostage and stripping away worker protections,” Newsom said in a statement, referring to the estimated 750,000 federal employees who are furloughed as a result of the first federal government shutdown since 2018, with the administration planning to implement another sweeping wave of cuts.

“In California, we’re doing the opposite: proving government can deliver – giving drivers the power to unionize while we continue our work to lower costs for families. That’s the difference between chaos and competence,” he added.

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A white Kansas sheriff’s deputy charged with murder in the death of an incarcerated Black person shoved his knee into the cuffed man’s back for 1 minute and 26 seconds after he was wheeled back to his cell from the infirmary, newly released court records show.

Richard Fatherly was charged last month with second-degree murder and an alternative count of involuntary manslaughter in Charles Adair’s 5 July death in the Wyandotte county detention center in Kansas City, Kansas. Adair had been arrested one day before his death on misdemeanor warrants for failure to appear on multiple traffic violations.

“The newly released affidavit confirms that Charles Adair was handcuffed, lying on his stomach with a severely injured leg, and posed no threat when a deputy pressed a knee into his back, resulting in his death,” Ben Crump, an attorney who is representing the family, said in a news release on Friday.

Fatherly has received a summons calling for him to appear in court next month but has not been booked into jail. His attorney has said he acted reasonably and will pursue an acquittal.

At the time, Adair’s leg needed to be amputated and was so badly infected that he was taken straight to the hospital, a Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent wrote in the affidavit. The court records were released this week following a request from the Associated Press and other news outlets.

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A group of 25 House Democratic veterans sent a letter Thursday to President Trump, calling his remarks to military leaders earlier this week “un-American.”

The letter, authored by Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) and signed by 24 other Democratic veterans, specifically criticized the president saying U.S. cities should be “training grounds” for the military Tuesday.

“They’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump told more than 800 admirals and generals in Quantico, Va. “And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.”

The Democratic veterans, blasting Trump’s speech as “overtly partisan,” said the president’s suggestion is “so deeply un-American it may break the fabric of our democracy and the bedrock of an apolitical military that this country was founded on.”

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