Week of 02/05: FREECABLE TV’s Top 10 Stories

Russia Advises Against Sending Weapons To Ukraine

KCRA - The speaker of the lower house of Russia's parliament warned this week that countries supplying Ukraine with more powerful weapons risked their own destruction. “Supplies of offensive weapons to the Kyiv regime would lead to a global catastrophe,” State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said. “If Washington and NATO supply weapons that would be used for striking peaceful cities and making attempts to seize our territory as they threaten to do, it would trigger a retaliation with more powerful weapons.”

Watch more: https://youtu.be/kt4dMWDHc08

Covid Conspiracist Appointed To Investigate Pandemic Origins

RollingStone - Georgia Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene was appointed this week to a new congressional select subcommittee tasked with investigating the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This new committee is speculated to be a clear signal of the House GOP’s assertive strategy to investigate Democratic policies under their own terms. “The Members selected to serve,” will, “finally get answers to the Covid origins and the federal government’s gain of function research that contributed to the pandemic.” wrote House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Watch more: https://youtu.be/JWykD8d3rFk

90 Seconds Until Doomsday

Reuters - Atomic scientists have set the "Doomsday Clock" to 90 seconds before midnight, a point which marks the theoretical point of annihilation on this planet, saying threats of nuclear war, disease, and climate volatility have been exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, putting humanity at greater risk of annihilation. "Russia's thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict by accident, intention or miscalculation is a terrible risk. The possibilities that the conflict could spin out of anyone's control remains high," Rachel Bronson, the bulletin's president and CEO told a news conference.

Watch more: https://youtu.be/luvLGmOmvW0

Covid Will No Longer Be A Public Health Emergency

CNBC - The White House, in a statement this week, stated it will be ending the Covid public health and national emergencies that the Trump administration first declared in 2020 on May 11, 2023. With this move, the administration is hoping the U.S. can begin to steer away from responding to the pandemic as a national crisis and instead manage the virus more like a seasonal respiratory disease. Additionally, the White House is also planning to transition the Covid vaccines to the private market in the near future, though the exact timing remains unclear at this time of writing.

Watch more: https://youtu.be/F1N0YZZFGmA

Trump Invokes The 5th Amendment 400 Times

CNN - Video of the August deposition the New York Attorney General’s office took of former President Donald Trump, in which Trump repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions, has since been released to the public this week. “Anyone in my position not taking the Fifth Amendment would be a fool – an absolute fool,” Trump said at the beginning of the deposition. On that note, the former president reportedly invoked the Fifth more than 400 times during the deposition, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Trump said he had “no choice” but to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

Watch more: https://youtu.be/RcPm2E4LRwg

Kamala Harris Pays Her Respects At Tyre Nichols’ Funeral

PBS - Vice President Kamala Harris, alongside Rev. Al Sharpton, delivered an impassioned speech at Tyre Nichols' funeral this week, calling on Congress to approve the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a broad package of police reforms that includes a national registry for police officers disciplined for misconduct, a ban on no-knock warrants, as well as other measures. “It was not in the interest of keeping the public safe, because one must ask, was not it in the interest of keeping the public safe that Tyre Nichols would be with us today? Was he not also entitled to the right to be safe? So when we talk about public safety, let us understand what it means in its truest form. Tyre Nichols should have been safe.”

Watch more: https://youtu.be/KjVVKfu48j4

Ilhan Omar Voted Off Foreign Affairs Committee

CBS - The House this week has voted to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar from her seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee over her past controversial comments about Israel. The resolution to remove Omar cited tweets and comments she made in 2019 and 2021 in which she invoked antisemitic tropes, including criticism of pro-Israel politicians as being "all about the Benjamins," and compared the U.S. and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban. "Representative Omar, by her own words, has disqualified herself from serving on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, a panel that is viewed by nations around the world as speaking for Congress on matters of international importance and national security," the resolution said, adding that her comments "have brought dishonor to the House of Representatives."

Watch more: https://youtu.be/GtXZLbrvYCE

Trying To Reclaim The Billions Lost To Covid Relief Fraud

NBC - House Republicans are now taking aim at the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars lost to fraud among the $5 trillion in Covid relief funds distributed by both the Trump and Biden administrations. “I think that some of these pandemic programs could go down in history as the largest transfer of wealth from the government to the rich in American history,” the new chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky.,told NBC News, noting that cyber criminals — many of whom are overseas — fared well from the fraud. “And every American should be outraged, and they should demand that Congress do something about it.”

Watch more: https://youtu.be/fQXWnMZsDxE

DeSantis Claps Back To Trump's Latest Attacks

TheHill - When asked during a news conference about Trump’s criticism over the weekend of his approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, DeSantis responded with a reminder that he won reelection last year by the largest margin of any Republican Florida governor in the state’s modern history. This has been widely speculated as a clear shot at Trump who lost his reelection bid in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. “When you’re an elected executive, you have to make all kinds of decisions. You got to steer that ship. And the good thing is, is that the people are able to render a judgment on that — whether they reelect you or not,” DeSantis said. “And I’m happy to say, you know, in my case, not only did we win reelection. We won with the highest percentage of the vote that any Republican governor candidate has in the history of the state of Florida.”

Watch more: https://youtu.be/qHZRszfkcPQ

Speculated Chinese Spy Balloon Finally Comes Down

FOX - The U.S. military has just shot down the widely speculated Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin, III said in a statement after the balloon was shot down that "President Biden gave his authorization to take down the surveillance balloon as soon as the mission could be accomplished without undue risk to American lives under the balloon’s path," and that, "today’s deliberate and lawful action demonstrates that President Biden and his national security team will always put the safety and security of the American people first while responding effectively to the PRC’s unacceptable violation of our sovereignty."