TV News LIES

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has replaced the commander of the Joint Forces Command of Ukraine’s military, after a well-known soldier accused the commander of causing mass casualties in the war with Russia.

In his nightly video address on Monday, Zelenskiy said Lt Gen Yuriy Sodol had been replaced by Brig Gen Andriy Hnatov, without giving a reason for the shake up.

Sodol was removed shortly after Bohdan Krotevych, the leader of Ukraine’s revered Azov regiment, accused the general of causing significant military setbacks and major losses in personnel.

Several Louisiana families backed by human rights groups have lodged a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the state’s new law forcing public schools to display the Ten Commandments.

The suit was filed with the US district court in Baton Rouge on Monday at the start of what is expected to be an epic legal battle that could end up before the US supreme court. Christian nationalists have been itching for this fight, hoping to destroy the country’s longstanding separation of church and state.

The new law, HB71, was signed by Louisiana’s hard right governor Jeff Landry last week, making the state the first in the nation to order the Ten Commandments to be displayed in all public school classrooms. The law stipulates that the text must be shown exactly as written in the legislation in a frame that is at least 11in by 14 in, and in “large, easily readable font”.

More...

CNN anchor Kasie Hunt stopped an interview with a top spokesperson for former President Trump’s campaign Monday after she repeatedly attacked two CNN anchors who are slated to host this week’s presidential debate.

Hunt asked Trump national press secretary Karoline Leavitt what Trump “is gonna to do differently on the debate stage this time,” drawing reference to his 2020 clashes with President Biden.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to one felony charge under the Espionage Act in a plea deal that will allow him to go free from prison and bring to an end a years-long legal saga stemming from his role in one of the largest publications of classified information in U.S. history, according to court documents filed Monday.

Assange will plead guilty to conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate national defense information, under the plea deal, which still must be approved by a judge.

Assange is slated to appear in federal court in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific. His plea and sentencing are scheduled for Wednesday morning, after which time he is expected to return to Australia.

Lawyers for Hunter Biden have filed a motion requesting a new trial, arguing that a Delaware court did not have jurisdiction over the case when it proceeded to trial.

Biden, the eldest living son of the US president, was found guilty earlier this month on three felony counts related to a handgun purchase while he was a user of crack cocaine.

Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell, in a court filing on Monday, argued that his client’s “convictions should be vacated” because the judge overseeing the case lacked jurisdiction to hold a trial because of pending rulings in his appeals case.

A federal appeals court had rejected two attempts by Biden’s lawyers to dismiss the gun charges, but Lowell said that the court had not yet issued a formal mandate denying one of those appeals.

More...

Texas lawmakers touted their heartbeat law as an effort to save lives, but the state's near-total ban on abortion appears to have triggered an increase in infant deaths, according to a new study published Monday.

The findings in JAMA Pediatrics show that infant deaths rose after Texas’ Senate Bill 8, which banned all abortion after about six weeks from conception. S.B. 8 became Texas law in September 2021 and U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion just over nine months later, on June 24, 2022. The high court ruling in the Dobbs case prompted more than a dozen states to issue near-total bans on abortion. Observers speculate that evidence will also show increases in infant deaths in those states, akin to what Texas has seen, the study said.

“It just points to some of the devastating consequences of abortion bans that maybe people weren't thinking about when they passed these laws,” Alison Gemmill, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health who authored the study, told USA TODAY. She called the deaths following the Texas heartbeat law its “spillover effects on moms and babies.”

More...

The Supreme Court will wade into the controversial topic of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender people under the age of 18, taking up a case that could be a flashpoint in the fight for LGBTQ rights.

The court agreed Monday to hear the Biden administration's challenge to a Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors, an increasingly potent political issue that has divided lower courts and emerged as a leading front in the battle over LGBTQ issues.

The case will be argued in the next term, which begins in October.

It's the first time the justices will weigh in on the matter, which is being fought by transgender teens and their families.

More...

Gunmen opened fire at places of worship across two cities in Russia's North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Sunday, killing multiple people, including an Orthodox priest and police officers, officials said.

The gunmen opened fire at synagogues, churches and a police post in the cities of Makhachkala and Derbent in the Republic of Dagestan − a predominantly Muslim region along the Caspian Sea, authorities said. The exact number of gunmen and victims involved in the attacks was not immediately clear.

Dagestan's Gov. Sergei Melikov said in a video statement early Monday that six of the gunmen had been “liquidated" in the two cities. The National Anti-Terrorist Committee said five attackers were “eliminated," Russian state news agencies reported.

More...