TV News LIES

The Atlantic on Saturday republished a JD Vance essay that dismissed Donald Trump as “cultural heroin” exactly 10 years earlier, bringing back to the fore his evolving from a critic of the president to his vice-president.

In an editor’s note, the magazine said it was republishing the essay on the occasion of its 10th anniversary – and the US’s semiquincentennial – “so that our readers can judge for themselves how well his assessment [of Trump] … has stood the test of time”.

The original essay was published during Trump’s first victorious presidential run, when Mike Pence was his running mate and before Vance entered politics. He worked at Mithril Capital Management, Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm, at the time and had just published Hillbilly Elegy, a bestselling memoir of his upbringing in the Rust belt that also served as a social commentary on the white working class.

In the essay, Vance said many Americans turned to Trump as a “pain reliever” in the midst of a social crisis in which mounting distrust in the government and economic decline were coming to a head. He invoked the phrase “cultural heroin” to describe Trump’s political appeal at the time – and said his supporters would eventually realize he was not the answer to their problems.

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The lawyer for a prominent Palestinian doctor who was seized by Israeli forces 18 months ago said his client has been abused in captivity and is in critical condition, according to the human rights group representing him.

Hussam Abu Safiya who served as director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, became the face of health workers struggling to treat patients throughout the Israel-Hamas war.

He led the facility through an 85-day siege by the Israeli military, releasing videos in which he pleaded for help before he was arrested in December 2024. He has not been charged.

The Israeli military said Abu Safiya, 53, was being investigated on suspicion of cooperating with or working for Hamas. Staff and international aid groups that worked with him deny the claims.

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President Trump reportedly called FIFA President Gianni Infantino to discuss the red card given to Team USA’s Folarin Balogun during Wednesday night’s game against Bosnia and Herzegovina, two outlets have reported on Sunday. Trump later cheered the reversal, calling it an “injustice.”

FIFA said its independent panel overturned the red card suspension for Monday’s game.

The president on July Fourth marked the nation’s 250th birthday with a late Saturday night speech that blended the championing of American achievements with partisan rhetoric. His address lasted about 30 minutes — not as long as he promised days before extreme heat and weather impacted the celebrations in Washington.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5953858-live-updates-trump-fourth-of-july-speech-aftermath/After the president warned that the “evil of communism” is among the threats he believes the country is facing, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Sunday that “there are many Mamdanis popping up,” referring to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) in talking about democratic socialists winning recent Democratic state primaries. Democratic socialists are not communists.

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Once again, the United Nations reminds us that genocide is taking place in the Gaza Strip.

A report issued on 23 June 2026 by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory documented what Israel has committed against the Palestinian people, especially children.

This followed an earlier report from the same commission on 16 September 2025, which found that genocide was taking place, as well as the report of the UN special rapporteur issued on 20 October 2025.

But what can meticulously documented international reports do in the face of those who have insisted on averting their eyes from declared Israeli intentions to commit genocide, ethnic cleansing, comprehensive destruction and horrific starvation - not to mention the torrent of live images transmitted around the clock to mobile devices from the field of atrocities over the course of two full years?

Specialised UN reports, testimonies by international rapporteurs and experts, assessments by the most prominent global human rights organisations, and even Israeli testimonies have followed one another, all confirming the reality of the genocide committed by Israel under the eyes of the world since October 2023.

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The verse was Al Imran 3:13, the passage describing the Battle of Badr, where a vastly outnumbered and poorly equipped Muslim force routed a much larger army “by the will of God”. It was a clear reference to what many are increasingly calling Iran’s victory over the US and Israel in their war on the country.

Badr was fought in what is today Saudi Arabia in 624 CE. The question is whether the recitation was a compliment, a taunt, or both - but it was unlikely to have been random.

Read generously, the verse gestures at one of Islam’s first victories and a shared civilisational memory between Tehran and Riyadh.

But Iran has not only survived the war but arguably, it may have emerged from it stronger, with control of the Strait of Hormuz now tantalisingly close to becoming a fait accompli.

When the Saudi delegation stepped forward to pay respects at the coffin of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran’s Grand Mosalla, the Quran recitation that followed did not go unnoticed.

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Nearly a year after floodwaters destroyed their home along the Upper Guadalupe River, Juliet and Scott Welden watched construction crews build a new one on the same property.

This time, the house was elevated 8 feet above the ground in hopes that it can withstand another catastrophic flood.

“We watched the water enter our home, and the floors buckled,” Juliet Welden said. “The furniture floated. Rooms began collapsing, and the water kept rising.”

The force of the current pushed the couple out of their house. They survived by clinging to a large bush as the flood tore through their neighborhood.

At least 130 people died along the Upper Guadalupe River after torrential rain struck the Texas Hill Country during the Fourth of July holiday. The Weldens’ rebuilding effort has been supported by federal disaster assistance and contributions from churches, foundations and other community organizations.

“The local community — there’s a lot of love, compassion, kindness, generosity,” she said, adding that churches and private groups often provided the most immediate assistance.

The Weldens expect to move into their new home in October.

Less than 100 miles away, survivors along Sandy Creek describe a much different recovery.

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New York City health officials are investigating a cluster of 10 Legionnaires’ disease cases on the Upper East Side, the city health department said.

Officials confirmed the first two cases on Thursday. By Friday night, the count had grown to 10, all concentrated in the Carnegie Hill and Yorkville neighborhoods, officials said.

All cooling towers in the area are being tested, according to the department. The cluster, officials said, was not connected to plumbing and residents in the affected ZIP codes — 10028 and 10128 —  could safely drink tap water, shower, cook and run air conditioners.

Past outbreaks, including a deadly one last summer, have been the result of the Legionella bacteria spreading through the air from mist let off by cooling towers.

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Lawyers for Donald Trump have requested more time to pay a $5m civil judgment to magazine columnist E Jean Carroll from 2023, days after the US supreme court declined to hear an appeal.

In a new filing, the president’s attorney said that since his former lead counsel, Justin Smith, took up a position as a federal judge last month (a post he was nominated to by Trump), his new lead counsel, Josh Halpern, needed more time “to become completely familiar with the facts and procedural circumstances” of the case.

A jury awarded Carroll damages after concluding that Trump had sexually abused her in 1996 and then defamed her after she publicly described the attack in 2019. Trump deposited money in an escrow fund to pay the award but is trying to delay the release of an amount that is now nearly $5.8m with interest.

Trump’s attorneys requested that the court extend the deadline for a response to Carroll’s request for payment to 14 July, arguing that the “plaintiff faces no risk of material harm as a result of granting this request”.

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