TV News LIES

The Senate judiciary committee has postponed a vote, scheduled for Thursday, on the nomination of Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, to be attorney general.

Blanche, who holds the role on an acting basis, apparently lacks the votes of two Republican senators who want him to confirm in writing that the Department of Justice will not proceed with a $1.776bn fund to compensate Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6 2021, or a pledge to forever bar the IRS from investigating the tax returns of the president and his family.

The two senators, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, both lost their re-election bids this year in Republican primaries in which Trump backed their opponents.

A spokesperson for the committee, which is chaired by Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley said in a statement:

“Chairman Grassley works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure."

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Just one day before his funeral is set to take place in Washington, DC, video footage has emerged showing a gleeful Senator Lindsey Graham rejoicing at the launch of the US-Israeli war on Iran, and even single-handedly offering US military involvement to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his war on Lebanon.

The clips are from British filmmaker Alex Holder, who has been following Graham for the last three years for a documentary on his relationship with President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Holder appears to have been granted access to staff meetings on Capitol Hill as well as discussions Graham had with national and foreign leaders, including the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. 

"I almost cried. How long have we been pushing this?" Graham is seen asking members of his office in one clip, as he watched Trump give remarks to the press five days into the launch of the war on Iran.

"[Trump] loves blowing stuff up," Graham said.

"There are a lot of people inside that didn't want to do it. So I've had my challenges. President Trump, when he gets into the zone, he listens, asks good questions. You know, no tweeting... He's been a great wartime president," he added.

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Washington has reimposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports after the collapse of a planned peace deal to end the US-Israeli war on Iran. 

For decades, the US has tried to isolate Iran, holder of the world’s third largest proven oil reserves, from the global shipping industry with a range of sanctions.

However, the Islamic Republic has been able to maintain some revenue through a network of rickety tankers often described as its “shadow fleet”, which occupy a legal grey zone and use subterfuge to skirt the US measures.

How do shadow fleets work?

Shadow tankers, also known as “dark fleets” or “ghost fleets”, are ships that operate on the fringes of the global shipping industry to transport oil and other commodities from countries facing western sanctions.

Many are ageing vessels that evade detection on marine traffic databases by turning off their mandatory tracking signals or broadcasting false locations. 

Iran is not the only country involved in such operations: Russia, which is also subject to oil sanctions, likewise operates a shadow fleet. Venezuela did so until the US attack on the country earlier this year and the seizure of many of its tankers.

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The sky outside is hazy orange, and my five-year-old son is screaming bloody murder. “Sorry, buddy, we have to stay inside,” I say. “It’s not safe to breathe out there.” I had told him we’d be going to the beach today. Something inside me tears a little as I wonder how many promises he’ll see similarly broken in the coming years.

Far too many parents were forced to have some version of this conversation with their children this month, as smoke from record-breaking wildfires poured across the midwest and north-east. Some of them already had to tell their kids that their Fourth of July festivities were canceled because of the lethal heatwave that caused numerous mass casualty events earlier this month.

According to scientists, these extreme weather events are not “natural” disasters. A team of researchers already published a study finding that the Fourth of July heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” but for the climate crisis. Other studies – using methods recently validated by the National Academy of Sciences, the country’s top scientific advisory body – found that the pollution from individual big oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP made some past climate-exacerbated heatwaves at least 10,000 times more likely compared with preindustrial levels.

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The US Senate voted to confirm Jay Clayton as the director of national intelligence on Tuesday, giving Trump another key ally directing the nation’s intelligence apparatus.

The tally, 51-47, fell along party lines, with all Republicans supporting his nomination and all Democrats opposing it.

Clayton, currently the US attorney for the southern district of New York, will replace Bill Pulte, a staunch Trump loyalist who had been temporarily serving in the role since June. Trump’s first director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, resigned earlier this year. Clayton served as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during Trump’s first term.

During his confirmation hearing on 15 July, Clayton sidestepped several questions about the 2020 election and declined to say that Trump lost it.

During an interview on CNBC in June, Clayton also suggested there was something amiss about the long period California takes to count ballots. “We had a problem, a deep problem with voting in America,” he said on the network. “On the integrity side, we’re doing an absolutely terrible job, and the American people are right to question it.” Clayton also would not say during his confirmation hearing whether voter fraud was a problem in American elections, even though several studies have shown it is exceedingly rare.

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As munitions streaked through the night sky, a plaintive cry like a whale song echoed in the darkness. U.S. troops grabbed their gear and headed for shelter as the warning sirens rang out, a leaked video shows.

The military personnel, clad in a mix of combat fatigues and gym attire, piled into a bunker, huddling in the darkness. “Guys, off the walls if we can,” a woman, likely a medic, advised, warning about the danger of traumatic brain injuries.

The footage, reportedly from Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, where three U.S. troops were killed during Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks on July 17 and 18, offers a glimpse of the dangers faced by U.S. forces across the Middle East.

The attacks are continued demonstrations of Iran’s ability to target U.S. bases across the Middle East and kill U.S. troops, despite months of claims by President Donald Trump and self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth that Iran’s military was annihilated. As this fiction has collapsed, U.S. Central Command has refused to discuss the number and scale of the strikes. “I have nothing for you on that,” Maj. Emma Thompson, the command’s media operations chief, told The Intercept.

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The Atlantic is asking a judge to toss a lawsuit brought by FBI Director Kash Patel against the outlet over its reporting alleging excessive drinking and questioning his performance in the job.

The lawsuit, filed by Patel in April, alleges the magazine defamed him and relied on sources who were “not in a position to know the facts” and were part of an orchestrated smear campaign against him.

The Atlantic, in a statement on Monday, called Patel’s suit “meritless” and said it was asking the court to permit it to begin seeking factual discovery from the FBI and the Department of Justice — including documents and depositions of key individuals, which it called “appropriate given the allegations in this matter.”

“If Director Patel did not want to face this process, he should not have filed this suit,” the outlet’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, said. “These legal filings are consistent with the promise I made to our staff and to our readers in May: we will defend The Atlantic and its staff vigorously.”

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Within months of being soaked with a glyphosate herbicide while working on a cell tower maintenance crew, Tennessee teenager Arden Allison developed a tumor that grew into what he described as “this massive alien sucking the life off of me.”

Arden was 17 when he landed a job maintaining cell towers across the Midwest. According to his mother, Serene Allison, writing in RealClear Health, his duties included spraying weeds around tower sites with Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide first made by Monsanto, now owned by Bayer.

“I didn’t realize the danger,” Arden said in a recent interview on CHD.TV. During the two months he spent “mowing, weedeating and spraying around all the cell towers and access roads,” he said he experienced “several different big exposures of glyphosate.”

The worst came when a backpack sprayer malfunctioned. After Arden climbed over a fence, “the lid popped off” the sprayer. He was “completely doused … with glyphosate,” he said. The chemical soaked his neck, shoulders and upper body.

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