TV News LIES

Pack your bags and flee, infidels: New York City has fallen to a cabal of socialist jihadists. With Zohran Mamdani to become the city’s first Muslim mayor, many are celebrating the democratic socialist’s historic win. Billionaires, Islamophobes and Republicans, however, are in the throes of hysteria. But what’s new? The New York mayoral race has been marred by bigotry so unhinged it’s almost impossible to parody.

Far-right activist and unofficial Trump adviser Laura Loomer posted on X, for example, that “there will be another 9/11 in NYC” under Mamdani. New York City councilmember Vickie Paladino called the 34-year-old a “known jihadist terrorist”. Actor Debra Messing, meanwhile, has been having a Mamdani-induced meltdown on Instagram, posting story after story about how the puppy-eyed politician is a threat to civilization. She recently posted: “In Judaism and Christianity, we are commanded to speak the truth. In Islam, they are commanded to lie if it means spreading Islam … Now, take a look at Mamdani … He’s revealing their goal: mass conversion.”

Mamdani’s goal, as he has made almost comically clear, is actually affordable mass transit and housing. One of the reasons his campaign was so successful is that it stayed laser-focused on affordability. However, Mamdani has addressed the attacks against him on a number of occasions, noting how common it is for Muslims to be branded as terrorists. And, it’s not just Muslims, I should note. Islamophobes don’t tend to differentiate between a Muslim of Indian descent who was born in Uganda, like Mamdani, and a Palestinian atheist like me. They don’t care if you’re a Christian Arab or even a Sikh. We’re all the same to them: brown barbarians.

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A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to release full funding for November food stamps by Friday.

The oral order Thursday comes as nearly 42 million Americans have lost access to benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the record-breaking government shutdown. The Trump administration previously agreed to pay for partial SNAP benefits using emergency money but said that doing so would result in weeks, if not months, of delays.

“Last weekend, SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation’s history. This is a problem that could have and should have been avoided,” said U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr., an Obama appointee. The government “knew there would be a long delay in paying [partial] SNAP benefits and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”

McConnell also noted that President Donald Trump’s post on social media that benefits wouldn’t be funded until the government reopened “stated his intent to defy the court order.”

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The man who slung a sandwich at a federal agent in Washington, D.C., and was unwittingly transformed into an opposition symbol of President Trump’s local crime crackdown has been found not guilty of misdemeanor assault after a trial.  

A jury handed down the not guilty verdict Thursday against Sean Dunn, a former Department of Justice (DOJ) employee who hurled a hoagie after confronting a group of officers patrolling a popular nightlife area of the nation’s capital.

The acquittal marks an embarrassing loss for federal prosecutors, who pursued the misdemeanor charge after a grand jury refused to return an indictment on the felony assault count they initially sought.  

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, the Trump appointed judge overseeing the case, said he expected the trial to last no more than two days and called it “the simplest case in the world.” 

But the trial dragged on three days, and the jury deliberated for part of both Wednesday and Thursday before Dunn was ultimately acquitted.

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In a possible reprieve for millions of families on the brink of losing food aid, two federal judges have ruled the Trump administration cannot stop funding for SNAP benefits amid a protracted government shutdown. 

Regular funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits was due to run out on Saturday, Nov. 1. “The well has run dry,” the Agriculture Department said. 

But rulings by judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, issued within minutes of each other on Oct. 31, ordered the department to use $5.25 billion in contingency funds to continue SNAP.

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Christine Faltz Grassman was stunned when she received a layoff notice from the Department of Education on Oct. 11, 10 days after being furloughed due to the government shutdown.

Grassman, who is blind, helps oversee a federal program that offers government contracting opportunities to blind vendors. She wondered how she would cover her mortgage and bills — and who would make sure the government is following a New Deal-era law meant to boost employment among blind Americans.

Her shock quickly turned to anger as she thought about the Trump administration’s treatment of workers with disabilities.

“The mentality of these people is if we have a disability and we have a job, we’re taking it away from an able-bodied person,” said Grassman, 56. “It’s not enough that I went to an Ivy League school, that I went to law school and can run circles around half the Cabinet… It doesn’t matter, because we’re blind.”

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The White House has fired six members of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the independent federal agency that advises the president and Congress on design plans for monuments, memorials, coins and federal buildings. The seven member commission is made up of experts in architecture, art, urban and landscape design. Since its creation in 1910, the commission has reviewed plans for everything from Arlington National Cemetery to Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

As first reported by The Washington Post, the commissioners who were terminated are Bruce Redman Becker, Peter D. Cook, Lisa E. Delplace, William J. Lenihan, Justin Garrett Moore and vice chair Hazel Ruth Edwards. The chair position, now vacant, was held by Billie Tsien, one of the architects working on the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Lenihan confirmed in an email to NPR the six were terminated "effective immediately."

In an email to NPR, the White House said it is "preparing to appoint a new slate of members to the commission that are more aligned with President Trump's America First Policies."

The commissioners would have advised President Trump on his anticipated White House ballroom and his plans for a monument similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which he says will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. In an email to NPR, architect Bruce Redman Becker, one of the commissioners who was fired, wrote that "Neither project has been submitted for review yet."

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