TV News LIES

Pennsylvania Democrats are projected to win two special elections for state House, keeping their majority intact, according to Decision Desk HQ. 

Democrats Ana Tiburcio and Jennifer Mazzocco won their Tuesday elections to represent  Pennsylvania House Districts 22 in Lehigh County and 42 in Allegheny County, respectively.

The seats were vacated after former state Rep. Josh Siegel (D) was elected as Lehigh County executive and  ex-state Rep. Dan Miller (D) won a spot on the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. 

Democrats were expected to keep both blue-leaning seats. But the party risked a tied 100-100 state House if they were to have come up short, which would have complicated Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D) ability to pass his legislative priorities in the Keystone State.

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The United States has announced it will soon provide in-person passport services at an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

The US Embassy in Jerusalem said it would start providing the service for Efrat, located between the Palestinian towns of Bethlehem and Hebron, on February 27.

It will be the first time the US has “provided consular services to a settlement in the West Bank”, according to a US embassy spokesperson quoted by the Reuters news agency.

The embassy said it would plan similar on-site services in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, the illegal Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit near Bethlehem, and in cities within Israel, such ⁠as Haifa.

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Israeli settlers vandalized a mosque in the Israeli-occupied West Bank early Monday, spray-painting offensive phrases and setting a fire, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Worshippers arriving for the day’s first prayers found the damage and a smoldering fire that spewed black smoke across the entrance of the Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Mosque in the town of Tell, near Nablus, and stained the ornate doorway.

“I was shocked when I opened the door,” said Munir Ramdan, who lives nearby. “The fire had been burning here in the area, the glass was broken here and the door was broken.”

Security camera footage showed two people walking toward the mosque carrying gasoline and a can of spray paint, and running away a few minutes later, Ramdan said.

The attackers spray-painted graffiti denigrating the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the words “revenge” and “price tag.” In “price tag” attacks, hard-line Israeli nationalists attack Palestinians and vandalize their property in response to Palestinian militant attacks or perceived efforts by Israeli authorities to limit settlement activity.

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The U.S. and Iran are headed to a new round of talks in Geneva aimed at averting a conflict this week—as the U.S. continues to surge military forces to the region in its largest military buildup since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Although talks are scheduled for Thursday, the prospects for a deal that would halt the U.S. drive to war remain fragile. The U.S. has demanded sweeping concessions, including the cessation of all nuclear enrichment on Iranian soil, the end of Iranian support for regional armed resistance movements, and strict limits on the Iranian ballistic missile program—the only meaningful deterrent that Iran was able to employ during its conflict with Israel last year.

In a post on Truth Social on Monday, President Donald Trump wrote, “I am the one that makes the decision, I would rather have a Deal than not but, if we don’t make a Deal, it will be a very bad day for that Country and, very sadly, its people, because they are great and wonderful, and something like this should never have happened to them.”

An Iranian official told Drop Site that Tehran understands the erratic nature of the Trump administration, but believes the position its diplomats are outlining to U.S. negotiators represents an unprecedented effort by Iran aimed at preventing a regional war. The official said Iran is directly addressing U.S. concerns on the nuclear issue with concrete proposals, and asserting a willingness to expand talks to other issues once a deal to avert imminent conflict has been concluded.

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An explosion struck a police patrol car near Moscow’s Savelovsky Station Square around midnight on Tuesday morning, according to local authorities.

Russia’s interior ministry said one police officer was killed and two others injured after an unknown individual approached their vehicle, where an explosion ensued.

“Today, at approximately 12:05 a.m., an unknown individual approached traffic police officers from the North-Eastern District of Moscow’s Internal Affairs Directorate, who were patrolling in a service vehicle near Savelovsky Station Square,” the ministry said in a statement, as reported by Russia’s independent outlet Astra.

In a video shared by Astra showing the aftermath, the car’s windows were shattered, the trunk was open, and dents were visible on the doors. The vehicle, however, was not burned in the explosion.

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The Food and Drug Administration Monday unveiled the details of a new policy designed to make it easier and quicker for patients with very rare diseases to get cutting-edge treatments.

The new guidance would enable the agency to approve new treatments for rare diseases based on evidence for a "plausible mechanism" for how the treatment would work. The policy aims to speed the use of state-of-the-art technologies like gene-editing to create treatments tailored to individual patients suffering from diseases that are so rare that it would be difficult if not impossible to conduct a traditional study first.

"For decades families heard the same thing: There are not enough patients. The approval will take too long. You just have to wait for the science to catch up with your child, " Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a briefing announcing the proposed new policy. "That ends today. Individualized medicine is no longer theoretical."

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Last month, Colleen Fagan was observing an immigration enforcement operation at an apartment complex in Portland, Maine, when federal agents scanned her face with a smartphone and appeared to record her car license plate number.

In a social media video she recorded, Fagan can be heard asking why the agent was taking her information. What the agent said next made the video go viral.

"Cause we have a nice little database," the masked agent said. "And now you're considered a domestic terrorist."

Fagan, who is a social worker, has now joined a federal class action lawsuit that argues the Department of Homeland Security and a number of its sub-agencies are violating the First Amendment and are taking actions "designed to chill, suppress, and control speech that they do not like."

"A federal agent called me a domestic terrorist just because I recorded agents operating in public in my community. But I have a right to do that, and so do others," Fagan said in a statement. "I want people to know how important it is to use our First Amendment rights to observe and document what is happening. Peaceful dissent is not a crime."

Though Fagan's video went viral, her full name had not been widely publicized until this lawsuit.

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Donald Trump’s decision to order airstrikes against Iran will hinge in part on the judgment of Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, about whether Tehran is stalling over a deal to relinquish its capacity to produce nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the matter.

The president has not made a final determination on any strikes, as the administration prepares for Iran to send its latest proposal this week, ahead of what officials have described as a last-ditch round of negotiations scheduled for Thursday in Geneva.

Donald Trump’s decision to order airstrikes against Iran will hinge in part on the judgment of Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, about whether Tehran is stalling over a deal to relinquish its capacity to produce nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the matter.

The president has not made a final determination on any strikes, as the administration prepares for Iran to send its latest proposal this week, ahead of what officials have described as a last-ditch round of negotiations scheduled for Thursday in Geneva.

Those talks will be led by Witkoff and Kushner, whose assessment on the likelihood of a deal will shape Trump’s calculus. If there is no deal, Trump has told advisers he is considering limited strikes to pressure Iran and, failing that, a far larger attack to force regime change.

A US official said on Monday that Witkoff was part of the group advising Trump on his decision about how to proceed with Iran and had been involved in all meetings related to the matter.

Trump has received multiple briefings on military options, the people said, including most recently on Wednesday in the White House Situation Room. He has also solicited views from a broad range of officials in the West Wing in recent weeks on what he should do with Iran.

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