TV News LIES

While Donald Trump ponders demolishing the Kennedy Center unless his name is added to the memorial for the slain president, the United States Institute of Peace filed an emergency motion in federal court on Thursday asking a judge to block his administration “from carrying out plans to carve President Trump’s name into the façade of the iconic USIP headquarters building.”

The filing was made in a court battle that began in May 2025, when a federal judge ruled that Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, or US Doge service, illegally took over the the non-profit thinktank created and funded by the US Congress through “blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers from three separate local and federal agencies”.

Musk’s Doge staff fired most USIP employees in a late-night email in March 2025, and then forcefully entered the thinktank’s building after cancelling its contract for private security.

In court, the USIP has maintained the organization is an independent creation of Congress and outside the president’s executive authority. The administration argues it is an executive branch organization, and pushed ahead, last December, with affixing Trump’s name to the exterior of the building, using bolted-on lettering. That change already offended the USIP board members who filed the suit, but carving Trump’s name into the stone, they argued on Thursday, “would cause irreparable harm”.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Christian Castro made his first appearance in state court in Minneapolis today in connection with the shooting of a Venezuelan man last January during a surge that brought thousands of federal agents to the Twin Cities area.

Castro, handcuffed and in an orange jumpsuit, said very little during the hearing. He did, however, sign a pre-waiver of extradition, agreeing to immediately return to Minnesota if he violates his conditions of release.

"The state of Minnesota certainly has an interest in not being back in the frustrating situation we were in last month," Senior Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Joshua Larson said in court Thursday.

Castro had traveled to Minnesota from Texas, where authorities released him from jail in August. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension arrested Castro, 52, Wednesday afternoon in Minneapolis, ending a months-long standoff between the two states. Minnesota authorities charged him with several counts of assault and falsely reporting a crime in connection with the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan immigrant.

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Brooklyn’s Maimonides Medical Center on Thursday cleared a major hurdle to becoming part of the city’s public hospital system, even as the long-discussed merger remains contentious in the surrounding community of Borough Park.

The state’s Public Health and Health Planning Council, which oversees certain healthcare transactions, voted to approve the proposed merger with NYC Health and Hospitals. The merger still requires court approval before it can be finalized.

Maimonides, a 700-bed teaching hospital with roots going back to the early 20th century, has become a centerpiece of Brooklyn’s healthcare system. But at a planning council hearing last month, state Medicaid Director Amir Bassiri emphasized that Maimonides is struggling financially and needs a lifeline. The proposed merger would come with $2.2 billion in funding from the administration of Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Leaders at Maimonides and NYC Health and Hospitals celebrated the planning council’s endorsement. By joining the public hospital system, they said, Maimonides will become eligible for higher reimbursement rates under the Medicaid program.

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A federal judge on Thursday declined Rep. Joyce Beatty’s (D-Ohio) request for an emergency hearing to review the Kennedy Center board’s latest vote to close the building for renovations.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper will, however, require the government to provide at least 30 days’ notice if it intends to demolish the performing arts center in the nation’s capital.

Cooper said his requirement seeks to “avoid any confusion on that score given more recent events.”

The Trump administration has described the Kennedy Center as in a state of decay, saying renovations are needed to conduct repairs.

President Trump has publicly suggested the building could soon be razed if courts don’t allow him to add his name to the facade. The president was seen Wednesday night on Air Force One looking at a placard that appears to depict a potential demolition.

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At least 10 people were injured, including a 10-year-old girl, according to the Kyiv City Military Administration.

The blasts followed warnings of an incoming missile threat.

“An air raid alert has been declared in Kyiv due to the threat of missile strikes. We urge residents to proceed to the nearest shelters,” the Kyiv City Military Administration said.

Damage was reported across at least three districts of the capital.

In the Dniprovskyi district, debris fell at several locations, damaging an office building and residential buildings, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

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Over the past year and a half, Donald Trump and his administration have launched a campaign to censor American history at US national parks and federal lands.

As part of Executive Order 14253, “Restoring truth and sanity to American history”, the Department of Interior (DOI) ordered park rangers to review all signs, brochures, books and films for content that “inappropriately disparages” Americans by suggesting that the United States was “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”. It’s resulted in dozens of sign removals across the US, most of them related to slavery, Indigenous history and the climate crisis.

The DOI also placed notices throughout parks inviting visitors to participate in this history-rewriting campaign, asking them to report, via QR codes, “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features”.

Instead, these QR code entries became a mode of resistance for many park visitors who used them as a way to tell the Trump administration that they don’t agree with how they’re reshaping national parks.

Park visitors submitted more than 35,000 comments between June 2025 and January 2026. The Guardian accessed this trove of responses after groups including the Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association filed a Freedom of Information Act request for it. We analyzed these comments and found that at least 19,000 of them – more than half – expressed support for the parks or opposition to the administration’s censorship campaign.

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The human rights lawyer Noura Erakat was arrested on Tuesday at a Palm Beach county, Florida, budget hearing about the county’s more than $1bn investments in Israeli bonds.

Erakat, a prominent Palestinian-American activist, legal scholar and Guardian contributor, was one of several people in attendance at the public commission hearing who were forcibly removed by local law enforcement. The removal happened when the group attempted to speak out against the county’s investment in the bonds – the largest by a municipal government.

Representatives for Palm Beach county did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a video of Erakat’s arrest posted by Al Jazeera, two law enforcement officers are seen taking her away as she speaks about wanting to exercise “basic free speech”.

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A news helicopter crashed in a Los Angeles neighborhood on Tuesday and burst into flames, killing at least three people while reporters were covering the collision of an SUV and a city bus, officials and the news outlet said.

Colleen Williams, an NBC4 Los Angeles anchor, confirmed during live broadcasts that two people were killed when the chopper went down. At least one other person was killed on the ground, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

"We are going to take a couple of minutes to think about that, process it," Williams said, her voice shaking with emotion. Moments later the coverage cut off.

The helicopter, used by NBC and Telemundo, went down near a large storage facility in the neighborhood of Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley, officials said. News crews were reporting on a collision from earlier in the day, when an SUV slammed into the middle of a city bus, killing at least two people and injuring six others. Photos and videos online showed half the SUV lodged in the side of the bus.

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