TV News LIES

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has ended his reelection bid amid mounting pressure over a fraud scandal that has engulfed his administration in recent weeks.

The move comes days after a handful of Republican state lawmakers asked Walz to leave office, citing reports from a U.S. attorney that at least half of the $18 billion paid through Minnesota's 14 Medicaid waiver programs since 2018 could be fraudulent and after Republicans in Congress called on Walz to testify about his failure to address the scandal.

Walz, the former vice presidential candidate on Kamala Harris' 2024 presidential campaign, spoke about his decision at a news conference Jan. 5, citing the growing pressure as one of the reasons for his decision to leave the race and pushing back on claims that his administration failed to combat fraud.

"As I reflected on this moment with my family and my team over the holidays, I came to the conclusion that I can’t give a political campaign my all," he said, reading from a previously published statement. "I’ve decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work."

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A Wisconsin judge has resigned in the wake of her conviction in an obstruction case involving an immigrant, The Associated Press reported.

Judge Hannah Dugan on Saturday sent Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) a resignation letter, according to the AP, and a spokesperson for the governor told the outlet that Dugan’s letter had reached their office.

“As you know, I am the subject of unprecedented federal legal proceedings, which are far from concluded but which present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary. I am pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary,” Dugan wrote, the AP reported.

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In mid-December, Dugan was found guilty of obstruction charges centered on her providing assistance to a Mexican immigrant in avoiding authorities after learning about an impending arrest.

Dugan’s resignation letter came amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, which has drawn widespread criticism from those on the left.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, blasted President Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela and removal of its leader, President Nicolás Maduro, describing it as a sharp departure from his "America first" campaign promise.

Greene, who earlier this year had a public falling out with Trump, criticized the military move as unaligned with Trump’s vow during the 2024 presidential election to end the United States' involvement in foreign conflicts.

While Greene said she didn’t support Maduro’s leadership and was "happy" for the people of Venezuela, she expressed doubt that Maduro’s capture was related to narco-terrorism and the flow of drugs, as Trump has suggested.

Speaking to NBC’s "Meet the Press," Greene argued that if Trump cared about drug trafficking, he’d be focusing on other entities, including Mexican cartels.

"This is the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of that doesn't serve the American people, that actually serves the big corporations, the banks, and the oil executives," Greene said on "Meet the Press". "My understanding of America first is strictly for the American people."

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It’s not quite a new year resolution, and it’s certainly not a prediction. Think of it instead as a hope or even a plea for the next 12 months. May the coming year see those leaders who have done so much damage to their own countries, and far beyond, at last be called to account. Let 2026 be a year of reckoning.

Start with the man whose reach is longest, by dint of the mighty power he wields. Such is the nature of the US electoral system that Donald Trump, who returned to power less than a year ago, will face the judgment of voters in 10 months’ time. His name will not be on the ballot but, make no mistake, the midterm elections of 3 November will deliver a verdict on the second Trump presidency.

A slew of congressional defeats for his party would be satisfying in itself, wounding that gargantuan ego of his, but it would also have practical significance. Few predict the Republicans losing control of the Senate, where Democrats would have to flip at least four seats to take charge – near-impossible given the geography of the 35 seats up for grabs in November. But, in normal circumstances, it should be the safest of political bets that the House of Representatives will no longer be in Republican hands a year from now.

Such a reverse would dispel the aura of indomitability that has enveloped Trump since he beat Kamala Harris, allowing him to bully and intimidate multiple US institutions, including much of its media, into ceding to him far more power than is rightfully his. It would render him a lame duck, incapable of passing new laws through a hostile chamber.

Above all, it would see Trump confronted at last with a body both eager and able to hold him to account: a Democratic House would have the appetite and the muscle for serious scrutiny. Armed with subpoena power, it could investigate everything from the cost of Trump’s tariffs for US taxpayers to the astonishingly brazen pattern of corruption and pocket-lining that has characterised this administration. And up its sleeve would be the constant threat of a third impeachment trial.

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The journey that brought Kaohly Her to St. Paul’s mayor’s office started in a bamboo hut some 8,000 miles from Minnesota's capital city.

Her, 52, was born in the mountains of Laos. When she was still young, her family fled war, ending up in the United States as refugees, first in Illinois and Wisconsin and later Minnesota.

On Friday afternoon at St. Catherine University, Her was sworn in as the 56th mayor of St. Paul, becoming the first woman and first person of Hmong ancestry to hold the title.

With her hand on the family Bible and her husband, father and children by her side, she took the oath of office in a ceremony led by the Rev. Daniel Johnson of Park Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis, a family friend.

After she was sworn in, she was greeted by other community leaders and six other “firsts,” including Debbie Montgomery, the first woman to become a St Paul police offer and the first Black woman elected to St. Paul City Council and Choua Lee, the first person of Hmong ancestry elected to a school board seat in the United States.

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Billionaires raised fortunes against him. The president threatened to strip his citizenship. Mainstream synagogues slandered him as the spawn of Osama bin Laden and Chairman Mao. But today, Zohran Mamdani became the first socialist mayor of New York City.

For all the hysteria, when I look at Mamdani, I didn’t see some radical departure from the past. I see him as the heir to an old and venerable Jewish tradition – that of Yiddish socialism – which helped build New York.

In some cases, the link is direct. Bruce Vladeck, a member of one of Mamdani’s transition committees, is a well-respected expert on Medicare, but for the sake of this article, his credentials matter less than his surname.

Vladeck is the grandson of Baruch Charney Vladeck, a Marxist troublemaker from the Pale of Settlement, a tract of land in the Russian empire where Jews were permitted to live at a time of rampant antisemitic oppression. Baruch showed up in New York after the failed Russian revolution of 1905 with a Cossack’s saber scars all over his face. He later became a socialist alderman and member of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s housing administration. Vladeck was not actually his birth name. It was rather a nom de guerre, adopted when he joined the Jewish Labor Bund, the socialist, secular and defiantly anti-Zionist movement whose slogan, “here where we live is our country,” would make an apt tagline for Mamdani’s New York.

In our city, exiled revolutionaries like Vladeck found fertile ground. At the dawn of the 20th century, New York was home to nearly 600,000 Jews, making it the largest Jewish city on Earth, a title it still holds. They packed 10 to a room, into the squalid tenements of the Lower East Side, where they toiled in garment sweatshops, and where the fires caused by their in-home piecework businesses mirror those caused by the exploding lithium-ion batteries of e-bikes today. They soon transformed into a clamorous, disputatious and utterly radical proletariat – the same sort of constituency that powered Mamdani’s campaign.

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