TV News LIES

Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, is leaving the agency, the department confirmed on Tuesday.

McLaughlin has become the public face and voice defending the Trump administration's mass deportation policy and immigration tactics over the past year.

"McLaughlin started planning to leave in December but pushed back her departure amid the aftermath of the shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers, according to the people briefed on her exit," DHS said in a statement to NPR.

POLITICO first reported her departure. It is not clear where she is going next. McLaughlin in a statement said Lauren Bis, currently her deputy, will replace her as assistant secretary for public affairs, while Katie Zacharia will become deputy assistant secretary.

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An immigration judge has blocked the Trump administration from deporting Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian activist who was arrested by federal agents last year during a US citizenship interview in Vermont.

Lawyers for Mahdawi gave details of the decision in a court filing on Tuesday with a federal appeals court in New York, which had been reviewing a ruling that led to his release from immigration custody in April.

“I am grateful to the court for honoring the rule of law and holding the line against the government’s attempts to trample on due process,” Mahdawi, who is a permanent US resident, or green card holder, said in a statement.

He continued: “This decision is an important step towards upholding what fear tried to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice. Nearly a year ago, I was detained at my citizenship interview not for breaking the law but for speaking against the genocide of Palestinians.”

The judge, Nina Froes, had ruled last Friday that the evidence that the Trump administration had submitted to the court was not admissible, due to an inability to “meet its burden of proving removability”. According to the judge’s order, the government failed to properly authenticate a memorandum purported to be signed by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.

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Millions of files related to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein suggest the existence of a “global criminal enterprise” that carried out acts meeting the legal threshold of crimes against humanity, a panel of independent experts appointed by the United Nations human rights council has said.

The experts said crimes outlined in documents released by the US justice department were committed against a backdrop of supremacist beliefs, racism, corruption and extreme misogyny. The crimes, they said, showed a commodification and dehumanisation of women and girls.

“So grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls, that a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity,” they said in a statement.

The experts said the allegations contained in the files require an independent, thorough and impartial investigation, and said inquiries should also be launched into how it was possible for such crimes to be committed for so long.

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Conservation and historical organizations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over National Park Service policies that the groups say erase history and science from America’s national parks.

A lawsuit filed in Boston says orders by Donald Trump and interior secretary Doug Burgum have forced park service staff to remove or censor exhibits that share factually accurate and relevant US history and scientific knowledge, including about slavery and climate change.

Separately, LGBTQ+ rights advocates and historic preservationists sued the park service on Tuesday for removing a rainbow Pride flag from the Stonewall national monument, the New York site that commemorates a foundational moment in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

The changes at exhibits came in response to a Trump executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks. It directed the interior department to ensure those sites do not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Burgum later directed removal of “improper partisan ideology” from museums, monuments, landmarks and other public exhibits under federal control.

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A special education teacher was killed in a car crash in Savannah, Ga., on Monday morning that involved Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Department of Homeland Security said Linda Davis, 52, died after Oscar Vasquez-Lopez, a 38-year-old man from Guatemala who ICE was trying to arrest, “fled the scene, making a reckless U-turn and running a red light, colliding into a civilian vehicle.”

Although the collision occurred near Herman W. Hesse K-8 School, students were not present as Monday was a federal holiday, the school said.

The Chatham County Police Department said Vasquez-Lopez was in custody and had been charged with reckless driving, driving without a valid license, failure to obey a traffic control device and homicide by vehicle -1st degree.

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It might head out to sea, or it might be a 'blockbuster" late-weekend blizzard for the East Coast.

As of the afternoon of Feb. 17, top computer models continue to pore through weather data to determine the direction and strength of a storm that's still several days away from the East Coast. At the moment, the models don't agree.

"While confidence in a storm is fairly high, the timing, track, and exact ... weather impacts remain highly uncertain," the National Weather Service said in an online forecast discussion posted Feb. 17 at 2:29 p.m EST.

The weather service said that the latest European weather model shows a "farther south track with little to no precipitation for the Mid-Atlantic to the Northeast." However another model, the Europeans' AI model known as the EC-AIFS, "has been consistent in showing a fairly classic nor'easter set up for the region."

One forecaster, Weather Trader meteorologist Ryan Maue, in an email to USA TODAY, said the odds appear to be increasing for a major nor’easter with the potential for "blockbuster snowfall."

"A major storm is likely to develop out of the Southeast U.S. and emerge off the Mid-Atlantic and either head (1) east out to sea or (2) snuggle up nicely off New England," resulting in snow along the I-95 corridor, Maue said.

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Six backcountry skiers were stranded and 10 others were missing on Tuesday, Feb. 17, after an avalanche in Northern California swept through as a powerful winter storm battered the region with heavy snow and high winds.

Search and rescue teams were dispatched at around 11:30 a.m. local time after receiving reports of an avalanche incident involving a group of skiers in steep backcountry terrain in the Castle Peak area, northwest of Lake Tahoe, according to the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office. The group included four mountain guides and 12 skiers.

By 3:45 p.m. local time, the sheriff's office said at least six skiers survived the avalanche and remained at the site, where they were still waiting for rescuers. The other 10 people remained unaccounted for, according to the sheriff's office.

"Highly skilled rescue ski teams have departed from both Boreal Mountain Ski Resort and Tahoe Donner’s Alder Creek Adventure Center to make their way to the six known survivors, who have been directed to shelter in place as best they can in the conditions," the sheriff's office said in a statement.

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Juliette Bryant says she first met Jeffrey Epstein when she was a 20-year-old psychology and philosophy student in Cape Town, South Africa, who modeled part time. 

Her first interaction with the late American sex offender came by chance, when she was approached on a night out by a girl who offered to introduce her to a man who she said was described to her as American royalty. 

"She said she knew a man who was here who was the 'King Of America,' and he was here with Bill Clinton and Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker. She told me that his best friend Leslie Wexner owns Victoria's Secret and it would be a very good idea for me to meet them because it could possibly help with my modeling career," Bryant told CBS News on Sunday. "So we went along to the restaurant where they were having dinner down the road. And sure enough, there they were. Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, Jeffrey Epstein, and a few government officials from South Africa."

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