TV News LIES

Eileen Schoch traveled to her mother's funeral in Asheville, N.C. and found the hotel room — the one she'd called about in advance — wasn't accessible as promised.

Schoch, who uses a wheelchair after two strokes, couldn't use the room's toilet without assistance from her husband or daughter. The grab bars were in the wrong place. She couldn't get into the shower because it had a door too narrow for her wheelchair. She got sponge baths for three days.

Nor could she reach the tall bed from her wheelchair. The hotel gave her an uncomfortable cot, instead.

"You feel that you're treated as a second-class citizen. And you don't count," says Schoch, a retired educator from Schenectady, N.Y.. "And it's not a nice feeling."

Schoch said she considered switching hotels, but she wanted to be close to other family members. After all, they'd picked that hotel because she'd chosen it first. The family brought business to the hotel, booking four rooms for three days.

Schoch asks: "After that experience, who would want to travel?"

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A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce federal homeland security funding, including for disasters, for states that do not comply with immigration enforcement policies.

US district judge Mary McElroy of Rhode Island, a 2018 Trump appointee, ruled on Monday that the latest case was “another example” of the Trump administration tying state and local government assistance to its immigration crackdown.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) cut more than $230m in federal grants for Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and the District of Columbia. The grants were a part of $1b in annual funds given to states and local governments for counter-terrorism efforts.

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Donald Trump has said the US carried out airstrikes against Islamic State militants in north-west Nigeria on Thursday, after spending weeks decrying the group for targeting Christians.

The president said in a post on his Truth Social platform: “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!

“I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was. The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.”

The US military’s Africa Command said the strike was conducted at the request of Nigerian authorities and killed multiple militants. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said he was “grateful for Nigerian government support + cooperation”.

Nigeria’s foreign ministry said the strikes were carried out as part of ongoing security cooperation with the US, involving intelligence sharing and strategic coordination to target militant groups. “This has led to precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by air strikes in the North West,” the ministry said in a post on X.

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The EU could “respond swiftly and decisively” against the “unjustified” US visa bans on five Europeans involved in combating online hate and disinformation, a European Commission spokesperson has said.

European leaders including Emmanuel Macron accused Washington of “coercion and intimidation”, after the visa ban on the figures who have been at the heart of campaigns to introduce laws regulating American tech companies.

Justifying the visa bans, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, wrote on X: “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organised efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.

European leaders condemn US visa bans as row over ‘censorship’ escalates.

Germany, Spain, the UK and a chorus of EU officials joined the French president in condemning the move.

The visa bans were imposed on Tuesday on Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner and one of the architects of the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, including two in Germany and two in the UK.

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on Wednesday shot a migrant who drove a van toward them while fleeing an immigration enforcement operation, resulting in a crash that injured his passenger, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The DHS said in a statement that ICE officers were conducting a targeted operation in the Baltimore suburb of Glen Burnie, Md., when they approached a van and asked the driver, whom they identified as Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins, to turn off the engine.

“The driver refused and attempted to flee, then weaponized his vehicle and began ramming his van into several ICE vehicles. He then drove his van directly at ICE officers, attempting to run them over,” the agency added in the statement.

“Fearing for their lives and public safety, the ICE officers defensively fired their service weapons, striking the driver. Sousa-Martins then wrecked his van between two buildings, injuring the passenger,” the statement continued.

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An annual Christmas Eve jazz concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington was canceled because the center’s Donald Trump-appointed board added the president's name to the building last week.

Chuck Redd, the musician who has led the show since 2006, told CNN that he called off the show “when I saw the name change happening last Friday."

The center’s board, which Trump filled with allies who then elected him chair earlier this year, voted to rename the national music, arts, and culture institution after both Trump and Kennedy on Dec. 18.

Democratic lawmakers who hold ex officio board seats due to their roles in Congress argued that the vote, which the administration claimed was unanimous, was conducted improperly. An ex officio board member, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, filed a lawsuit Dec. 22 claiming that the name change is illegal.

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A federal judge on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to block New York’s so-called Green Light Law, which allows the state to issue driver’s licenses to people without requiring proof that they’re in the country legally.

U.S. District Judge Anne Nardacci in Albany ruled that the Trump administration failed to support its claims that certain provisions of the state law are preempted by federal law, impermissibly regulate the federal government, or impermissibly discriminate against the federal government.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit in February, challenging the constitutionality of the state law, saying it violates the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which states federal laws take precedence over state laws, and asking the court to block enforcement of the statute.

The lawsuit named the state of New York, as well as its governor, Kathy Hochul (D), and its attorney general, Letitia James (D), as defendants.

The DOJ, in the lawsuit, challenged three specific provisions of the law, including one that prevented the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) from disclosing an applicant’s records or information to “any agency that primarily enforces immigration law or to any employee or agent of such agency” without a court order or warrant.

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Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian home in the south of the Israeli-occupied West Bank overnight, breaking in and killing sheep, a Palestinian official said Tuesday. It was the latest in a surge of attacks by settlers against Palestinians in the territory in recent months.

Israeli police said they arrested five settlers.

The settlers killed three sheep and injured four more, smashed a door and a window of the home, and fired tear gas inside, sending three Palestinian children under the age of 4 to the hospital, said Amir Dawood, who directs an office documenting such attacks within a Palestinian governmental body called the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.

Police said they arrested the five settlers on suspicion of trespassing onto Palestinian land, damaging property and dispensing pepper spray, not tear gas. They said they are investigating.

CCTV video from the attack in the town of As Samu’, shared by the commission, showed five masked settlers in dark clothing, some with batons, approaching the home and appearing to enter. Sounds of smashing are heard, as well as animal noises. Another video from inside shows masked figures appearing to strike sheep in the stable.

TVNL Comment:  No settler is ever punished.  There is a separate set of rules for Palestinians and settlers determined to force them out of their homes and land.  There is never an 'investigation.' The world turns a blind eye to the daily horrors.

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