TV News LIES

Charlie Kirk rejected an offer earlier this year from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to arrange a massive new infusion of Zionist money into his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) organization, America’s largest conservative youth association, according to a longtime friend of the slain commentator speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The source told The Grayzone that the late pro-Trump influencer believed Netanyahu was trying to cow him into silence as he began to publicly question Israel’s overwhelming influence in Washington and demanded more space to criticize it.

In the weeks leading up to his September 10 assassination, Kirk had come to loathe the Israeli leader, regarding him as a “bully,” the source said. Kirk was disgusted by what he witnessed inside the Trump administration, where Netanyahu sought to personally dictate the president’s personnel decisions, and weaponized Israeli assets like billionaire donor Miriam Adelson to keep the White House firmly under its thumb.

According to Kirk’s friend, who also enjoyed access to President Donald Trump and his inner circle, Kirk strongly warned Trump last June against bombing Iran on Israel’s behalf. “Charlie was the only person who did that,” they said, recalling how Trump “barked at him” in response and angrily shut down the conversation. The source believes the incident confirmed in Kirk’s mind that the president of the United States had fallen under the control of a malign foreign power, and was leading his own country into a series of disastrous conflicts.

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Zohran Mamdani continues to hold a commanding lead in the race for New York City mayor, with a new poll released on Wednesday showing the Democratic nominee 15 points ahead of former governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent candidate.

The new poll, conducted by Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill, shows Mamdani with 43% support among New York City registered voters, compared with 28% for Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has triggered excitement among many progressives and leftists in the Democratic party and unease with some centrist party leaders. His leftwing populist agenda propelled him to a shock win in the party primary, creating global headlines.

In the Emerson poll, the Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa, received 10% support, while the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, who is also running as an independent, polled at 8%. Nine per cent of respondents said they were still undecided.

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Conditions in overcrowded coastal encampments for displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are so desperate that some people who fled Israel's new offensive on famine-struck Gaza City in recent days are heading back toward the falling bombs, they said.

Those fleeing are mainly seeking shelter either in the area by the sea immediately west of Gaza City or in Mawasi, a sprawling tent camp along beaches and farmland in the south that Israel has designated a humanitarian zone, aid agencies said.

Many of them are arriving to find no space for shelter, few tents, inadequate water supply and restricted health care, according to over a dozen Palestinians who had made the difficult trip with their families and who, along with UNICEF and the Hamas-run Gaza government, were interviewed for this story.

"I have been in the sun for two days looking for a place and could not find any. Now I had to take my belongings and go back to Gaza City," said Mohammed al-Sherif, 35, who left the Sabra district of Gaza City along with his family and those of his two brothers on Monday after Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets on the area warning all civilians to get out.

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The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has fired another staffer: Kevin Struthers, a senior director of music programming who had been at the D.C. arts institution for 30 years. Struthers confirmed his termination to NPR on Thursday.

His dismissal is the latest upset in a line of firings and resignations at the Kennedy Center since President Trump became its chair in February and appointed Richard Grennell its new president. The Kennedy Center and NPR co-present the annual concert A Jazz Piano Christmas.

Their firings were first reported by The Washington Post on Thursday.

Struthers had been the administrative director of the Kennedy Center's jazz programming. Previously, the Kennedy Center had been celebrated for inviting a vibrant roster of established and emerging jazz artists. The only mainstage jazz performance still on the Kennedy Center's schedule is anOctober performance by The Glenn Miller Orchestra, a group which began recording in 1939.

Ukraine reclaimed 62sq km (24sq miles) of territory last month, its commander in chief revealed on Monday, contradicting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent claim to be advancing “in all directions”.

“The month in which the occupiers hoped for their breakthroughs and made maximum efforts for this became the month with comparatively the smallest territorial gains by the enemy in recent times,” Oleksandr Syrskii, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, claimed on his Telegram messaging service channel.

Most of the gains were in Donetsk, Ukraine’s eastern region, where fighting has been intense for most of the war.

Russian forces there have been gunning for the towns of Dobropillia and Pokrovsk, but lost ground in both directions.

Towards Dobropillia, Russia captured 13.5sq km (5.21sq miles), but lost 25.5sq km (10sq miles), said Syrskii. “In the Pokrovsk direction, their gain was 5sq km (1.9sq miles), while our troops regained control over 26sq km (10sq miles),” Syrskii said.

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Why does the PM insist on blowing up any deal that comes close?” despaired the mother of a hostage held in Gaza, following Israel’s airstrike in Qatar on Tuesday. For anyone who doubted Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to the forever war he unleashed after 7 October, the attempt to wipe out Hamas’s ceasefire negotiation team in Doha offered grim confirmation that peace – and the return of Israeli hostages – is low on Mr Netanyahu’s list of current priorities.

Just how close Hamas’s leadership was to endorsing ceasefire proposals backed by Donald Trump – which were being discussed in the capital of an established US ally – is unclear. However, Mr Netanyahu’s strike has ensured that its negotiators will not agree to sit round a table again anytime soon.

Israel swiftly stated that the attack was in response to the Hamas-claimed shooting in Jerusalem on Monday, in which six people died. But it also occurred as the Israeli military ordered the complete evacuation of Gaza City, ahead of a full-scale invasion that will bring further death and destruction to a starving, traumatised population.

It could not be plainer that ending the suffering is not compatible with the goals of Mr Netanyahu, and the far-right allies on which his government depends. But faced with such contemptuous intransigence – and growing evidence that those goals include establishing a “Greater Israel” stretching beyond 1967 borders – the west’s response is pusillanimous and painfully inadequate.

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The Trump administration can go ahead and purge more than 1,600 research grants issued by National Science Foundation (NSF) worth more than $1bn, after a judge declined to grant a preliminary injunction in a case brought by a coalition of organizations representing thousands of scientists.

The NSF is the premier federal investor in basic and cutting-edge science and engineering, which until Trump’s second term enjoyed bipartisan support, with the agency’s independent review process revered globally as the gold standard.

Shortly after the president’s inauguration, the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) led by the billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk was given free rein to overhaul the NSF to comply with what the administration said were its “changing priorities”.

Doge inflicted widespread and chaotic cuts to NSF staff, programs and research grants – particularly targeting grants that complied with congressional mandates to improve participation by women, people of color and people with disabilities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem).

The congressional push to improve diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in science and engineering was designed to nurture and attract untapped talent in marginalized communities, in order to boost American innovation, the economy and national defense.

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Two Democratic senators claim they have reached the “inescapable conclusion” that Israel is acting on a systematic plan to destroy and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza to force locals to leave, and they say the US is complicit.

Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, both members of the Senate foreign relations committee, released their findings in a report on Thursday after returning from a congressional delegation to the Middle East where, they note, the destruction goes beyond bombs and bullets. They say they also found a systematic campaign to strangle humanitarian aid, which they call “using food as a weapon of war”.

“The Netanyahu government has gone far beyond targeting Hamas to imposing collective punishment on all the people of Gaza,” Van Hollen said at a Thursday press conference. “What they’re doing, and what we witnessed, is putting those goals into action.”

At least one hundred people have died from famine in Gaza, the United Nations said this week, citing the Gaza health ministry.

The senators, who visited Egypt, Israel, the occupied West Bank and Jordan, argue that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a deliberate strategy to ethnically cleanse the local population rather than collateral damage from the war against Hamas. Their report is titled The Netanyahu Government Is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians. America is Complicit. The World Must Stop It.

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