Knicks hit Mamdani-backed state candidate with cease & desist on campaign ad: ‘False advertising’

 The Knicks have fired off a “cease and desist” letter to America-hating state Senate candidate Aber Kawas, threatening to slap her with a lawsuit for ripping a page out of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s playbook and using the NBA champs’ iconic logo to boost her campaign, The Post has learned.

Kawas – a Mamdani-backed, Democratic Socialist of America member who once described 9/11 as a terror attack that a “couple people did” – tried to win over voters by using a doctored version of the Knicks logo on social media posts and campaign stickers throughout her primary run, which ended with her clinching the Democratic nomination for a Queens state Senate seat on Tuesday.

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“I Voted for Aber Kawas” stickers feature the same font, orange-and-blue colors, and basketball as the Knicks logo.Instagram/Aber Kawas

Brian N. Warner, senior vice president and head of legal for Madison Square Garden Sports, sent the letter to Kawas’ campaign Friday night “demand[ing]” it “immediately remove all promotional materials incorporating Knicks Intellectual Property, including but not limited to the unauthorized Advertisements, and cease any further use of Knicks Intellectual Property.”

“Neither the Knicks nor NBA [Properties] have authorized the Campaign to use Knicks Intellectual Property in any way, including the Unauthorized Advertisements, which are likely to mislead the public into believing that the Campaign is affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by, or in some way connected with the Knicks,” he wrote in the letter exclusively obtained by The Post.

“The Campaign’s activities in this regard constitute, among other things, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, false advertising, false association, and unfair competition.”

Kawas’ shameless bid to use the Knicks success and popularity for her own benefit includes a June 20 campaign message on X – posted a week after the Knicks won their first NBA Finals championship in 53 years.

It uses a logo with the slogan “I Voted for Aber Kawas” that features the same font, orange-and-blue colors, and iconic basketball as the Knicks logo — but replaces the team’s name with “Kawas.”

“Head to the polls to claim your “I Voted for Aber Kawas” champion sticker,” the post also says, while featuring a basketball emoji. “Earn bragging rights, make your friends jealous, and let everyone know that you’re part of our movement to fight for the world in the world’s borough.

Mamdani tried to pull the same slick trick in October while campaigning for mayor, airing an ad during the team’s season opener that featured an altered logo replacing the word “Knicks” with “Zohran.”

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Aber Kawas – a Mamdani-backed, Democratic Socialist of America member – tried to win over voters by using a version of the Knicks logo on social media posts and campaign stickers.Instagram/Aber Kawas

Mamdani pulled the ad after the team slammed him with a “cease and desist” letter and stressed it wasn’t making any endorsements in the race.

Billionaire Knicks and MSG owner James Dolan — a longtime friend of President Trump — got into a public feud earlier this month with the Mamdani administration over cancelled fan watch parties outside MSG during the NBA Finals due to city-imposed security measures.

The tension spilled over into awkward public exchanges by both sides during the team’s June 18 victory parade and City Hall ceremony honoring the Knicks, which Mamdani hosted and Dolan attended.

Kawas is a former intern for the Council on American-Islamic Relations who has remained affiliated with the controversial Muslim charity through her activism for more than a decade.

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Brian N. Warner, senior vice president and head of legal for Madison Square Garden Sports, wrote a letter to Kawas’ campaign, “demand[ing]” it “immediately remove all promotional materials incorporating Knicks Intellectual Property.Instagram/Zohran Mamdani

She has come under fire for incendiary comments about 9/11, which resurfaced on X last year after news of Mamdani’s reported support for her campaign came to light.

“The system of capitalism and racism and white supremacy et cetera — and Islamophobia — have all been used, you know, to colonize lands, to take resources from other people, and so this is a long trajectory and we are just seeing the manifestations of that continuation … with 9/11,” she said in an unearthed video segment posted by Australian political activist Drew Pavlou.

“The idea we have to apologize for like a terror attack that like a couple of people did and then there is no apology or reparations for genocides and for slavery, et cetera — is something I find reprehensible,” she added. 

The far left pol also believes federal holidays are no cause for celebration, The Post reported in December.

“Whether it is July 4th, Thanksgiving, Veterans, Columbus or now Labor Day, we enjoy days off that are supposed to be victories for people, when they truly represent the silencing & destruction of our movements,” the  longtime Palestinian-American activist wrote in an online journal posted on Sept. 7, 2015 — Labor Day.

“Today I do not celebrate a day off, I only recommit myself to a global movement that fights against the death, displacement, and exploitation of people for capital.”1

Kawas campaign did not immediately return messages. 

A MSG rep said the letter speaks for itself and declined further comment.

https://nypost.com/2026/06/27/us-news/knicks-slap-mamdani-backed-ny-senate-candidate-aber-kawas-with-cease-and-desist-letter-over-campaign-ad-false-advertising/

Alito Offers Unusual Response To Sotomayor's Dissent In Immigration Case

 by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

At a recent Supreme Court sitting, Justice Samuel Alito took the unusual step of responding from the bench to Justice Sonia Sotomayor's spoken dissent from an immigration-related opinion he wrote.

The June 25 incident took place in the final days of the current court's session, as the justices try to issue opinions in remaining cases before the court's summer recess, which typically begins before the Fourth of July.

Alito read aloud a summary of the majority opinion in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado. The 6-3 decision ruled that the government can turn away asylum-seekers at the border, clarifying a law that requires individuals to be inspected when they arrive in the United States.

Sotomayor followed, reading a summary of her dissenting opinion aloud.

Sotomayor said many asylum seekers face a challenging journey and recounted that after the United States and other countries turned back a ship full of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany in 1939, about 250 of those passengers died later in the Holocaust.

Sotomayor said the majority's opinion here would allow the Trump administration to prevent people from applying for asylum at the border, and that this would lead to more deaths. The decision "regrettably and tragically extinguishes the light of the torch of the Statue of Liberty," she said.

In her written dissent, Sotomayor stated, "more people will be forced to walk along the U.S.-Mexico border in dangerous conditions, trying to find a port that will inspect them."

Sotomayor's spoken dissent seemed to come as a surprise for Alito, who responded extemporaneously to it. He appeared frustrated, saying he would have said more during the court sitting and provided more details if he had known she planned to speak.

For the court's majority, Alito said, the case was about whether border officials can delay asylum seekers' entry into the United States "until they can be processed in a safe and orderly way."

The justice said that the policy at the center of the case had been used under both the Obama and Trump administrations. "I won't add anything more to that," he said.

A group of 13 asylum-seekers, led by immigrants' rights group Al Otro Lado, or To the Other Side, had filed suit in 2017 against the government's "metering" policy. That policy let border agents - usually at U.S. ports of entry - turn away asylum-seekers to avoid overcrowding of border facilities.

A federal law says that "any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States ... may apply for asylum," regardless of legal status.

In the majority opinion, Alito wrote: "This case presents a straightforward question: whether an alien who seeks to enter the United States from Mexico 'arrives in the United States' when he or she is still in Mexico.

"In the decision below, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit answered 'yes.' That is wrong."

Tensions in Public View

This was not the first time tensions between Supreme Court justices have been on public display.

In March, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly clashed over the court's various emergency orders that have allowed President Donald Trump to pursue his policy agenda.

Lower courts have stifled Trump's policies by issuing orders blocking some of them. The Supreme Court has often provided emergency relief by lifting those orders.

Jackson said the Supreme Court is "creating a kind of warped" legal process by intervening at an early stage of a case and basically predicting the outcome before the arguments are developed fully.

"The administration is making new policy ... and then insisting the new policy take effect immediately, before the challenge is decided," Jackson said. "This uptick in the court's willingness to get involved in cases on the emergency docket is a real unfortunate problem."

Kavanaugh said the Supreme Court is only doing its job by addressing the emergency applications filed.

The Department of Justice's rush to the Supreme Court didn't begin during the Trump administration, the justice said. He said that as it becomes more difficult to enact legislation through Congress, administrations "push the envelope in regulations."

"Some are lawful, some are not," he said.

Sotomayor also made a rare public apology in April to Kavanaugh for making what she called "hurtful comments."

She had previously said during a speech at a law school that a colleague "probably doesn't really know any person who works by the hour."

Culture of Collegiality

Supreme Court justices have publicly stated that members of the nation's highest court are friendly and civil in their dealings with each other and have eschewed partisanship.

Chief Justice John Roberts said in May 2023 that "there has never been a voice raised in anger in our conference room," referring to the chamber in which justices discuss and vote on pending cases.

"Our court consists of nine appointees by four presidents. We deal with some of the most controversial issues in the country, yet we maintain collegial relations with each other," he said.

Sotomayor and Justice Amy Coney Barrett attempted to distance themselves from political parties and particular presidents in February of this year, with Sotomayor calling parties "the worst thing" to happen to the judiciary.

"They began to adopt our buzzwords as buzzwords - some of the discussions we were having like on originalism and plain text and things like that," Sotomayor said. "But instead of discussing those terms with respect to approaches that made sense and why - with all the nuances that those approaches contain - they just began to label people according to the buzzwords."

Barrett said, "We're not Obama judges and Trump judges, but we're also not Democratic judges or Republican judges."

"We don't sit on opposite sides of the aisle," she said. "We all wear the same color of black robe ... our loyalty lies all to the Constitution and to the court."

Barrett said even though the court is often described as "deeply divided," the vast majority of cases lead to unanimous or close-to-unanimous decisions.

Barrett likened the court to a "family" in which the justices offer small acts of kindness to promote a culture of collegiality.

She said it is a Supreme Court tradition for the second most junior justice to throw a party for the new justice who is entering. Kavanaugh, she said, threw a party for her, while she threw one for Jackson.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/supreme-courts-alito-offers-unusual-response-sotomayors-dissent-immigration-case

New Charter Unveiled for CDC's Influential Vaccine Committee

 'Changes to rules governing ACIP could inject more politicization, advocates warn'

A new charter calls on the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to consider "non-vaccine interventions" and changes the focus, membership structure, and rules that govern the influential panel.

Societies led by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) warned the updates could threaten access to immunizations and erode trust in U.S. vaccine policy.

"The new charter inappropriately emphasizes potential gaps or limitations in vaccine data, which could be used to delay, rescind, or refuse to make evidence-based vaccine recommendations," the groups said in a statement.

They also said the "governance of the committee would be the responsibility of the CDC director instead of members with deep expertise on immunization, which would intensify politicization of the ACIP."

While the panel's 2024 charter had the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases supporting ACIP, the new charter puts ACIP's support in the hands of the CDC Office of the Chief of Staff and other agency components, as directed by the CDC director.

"That is a meaningful governance change that signals greater political involvement," said Richard Hughes IV, in emailed remarks. Hughes is lead counsel on the American Academy of Pediatrics' lawsuit that halted some of the drastic changes made by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to ACIP and the childhood immunization schedule.

Dorit Reiss, PhD, a law professor at the University of California San Francisco, pointed out that the new charter fails to require three meetings a year. The new language instead says "meetings will be held at the discretion of the ACIP Designated Federal Officer in consultation with the Chair."

Dropping the three-meeting requirement will make meetings less predictable, give HHS and CDC more discretion over timing, and could affect the pace of vaccine guidance, cautioned Hughes.

The charter also "adds four problematic organizations with anti-vaccine leanings to the liaison representatives," noted Reiss, including the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the Independent Medical Alliance, the Medical Academy of Pediatrics and Special Needs, and Physicians for Informed Consent.

Yet not on the list of ACIP's 33 nonvoting liaison organizations is the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which withdrew as a liaison organization in February and recently released its own vaccine guidance for pregnant women.

That's not good, Reiss told MedPage Today.

IDSA and the other societies -- which include the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists -- also highlighted that the charter softens requirements about the "publication of vaccine recommendations and their use for informing insurance coverage."

Taken together, Hughes said, "these changes suggest HHS is reshaping ACIP's structure, membership environment, and operating framework while reducing the charter's explicit acknowledgement of the legal consequences that make ACIP so important."

The new charter comes after a federal judge ruled in March that Kennedy likely violated federal procedures when he ousted all of ACIP's members last year, replacing them with members that lacked the requisite experience and included vaccine skeptics.

Reiss said the new charter is an improvement over a prior attempt released in April that put greater emphasis on potential vaccine harms and was pulled by HHS about a month later.

That earlier charter tried to legitimate Kennedy's panel changes and the new charter "is a retreat from that," said Reiss.

First, the new charter provides a thorough and well-organized section on ACIP's functions that's in line with the committee's traditional roles, she noted. It also emphasizes the need for a transparent and evidence-based decision-making process, and the relevance of scientific, clinical, and public health expertise among panel members, in line with the committee's mission.

Finally, it pulls back from the April version's language about vaccine adverse events and safety research gaps, cumulative exposure to vaccines and vaccine components, and mRNA platforms.

Still, "that does not cure the underlying legal concerns -- it appears to revise the paper trail while preserving many of the structural changes," cautioned Hughes.

The new charter has language calling for the panel membership to include "a person(s) knowledgeable about consumer perspectives and/or social and community aspects of immunization programs," but no longer has language from the April version that said members could have expertise in toxicology and pediatric neurodevelopment or on "recovery from serious vaccine injuries."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/vaccines/121960

'Recommending Blood Tests for CRC Without Guardrails Risks Confusion'

 The American Cancer Society's (ACS) recent update on colorectal cancer screening aims to strike a careful balance on blood-based screening tests. On the one hand, it appropriately calls them non-preferred options. On the other, it now includes them among acceptable screening choices for average-risk adults under limited circumstances.

That combination is likely to create more confusion than clarity. The document contains appropriate scientific caution, but insufficient implementation discipline. It recognizes the limitations of blood-based tests yet does not give clinicians or health systems the tools needed to prevent those tests from drifting into routine first line use.

The problem is not subtle. Once a screening test appears in a major guideline, patients, clinicians, health systems, payers, and the media often interpret that inclusion as endorsement. In practice, many will not distinguish between "listed as an option" and "recommended on equal footing." That is why it is not enough for a guideline to say blood-based tests are non-preferred. If those tests are added to the screening menu, there must also be a practical framework for implementation that makes their role unmistakable.

Without that framework, the guideline risks being read as a green light. That would be especially concerning given the evidence summarized in the guideline itself. Blood-based colorectal cancer screening tests are included only because of their potential appeal to people who otherwise remain unscreened. But the same guideline makes clear that they perform less well than preferred options, especially where it matters most: detection of advanced precancerous lesions. Their sensitivity for advanced adenomas is far lower than stool-based tests and dramatically below colonoscopy. That limitation is not a technical footnote. It gets to the very purpose of colorectal cancer screening.

The most effective colorectal cancer screening strategies do more than detect existing cancer. They prevent cancer by identifying precursor lesions before malignancy develops. A test that performs poorly at finding those lesions is not simply a weaker version of screening; it delivers less of the preventive benefit that makes screening so valuable in the first place.

The ACS acknowledges this, noting that blood-based tests are expected to reduce colorectal cancer incidence and mortality less effectively than established options. That should have led to a stronger implementation message. Instead, the update leaves a large operational gap. It says these tests should be used only for patients who decline or do not complete preferred screening.

But what does that mean in practice? How many outreach attempts should occur first? Which preferred tests should be offered before blood testing is introduced? How should informed consent be structured so patients understand that blood tests are fallback options, not equivalent substitutes? What electronic health record (EHR) safeguards should prevent them from becoming first-line orders? The guideline offers little direction.

And in the absence of a framework, convenience tends to win. That is predictable. A blood draw feels easier than a stool test and far easier than colonoscopy. Clinicians under time pressure may offer it early. Health systems seeking higher screening uptake may integrate it into routine workflows. Patients may choose it because it sounds modern, simple, and less unpleasant. Administrators and payers may see it as scalable.

But if blood-based testing begins to substitute for more effective screening rather than rescue those who would otherwise remain unscreened, then its inclusion may ultimately weaken screening outcomes rather than improve them. That is the central concern. The issue is not whether blood-based testing should ever be used. It may have a role. The issue is that adding it to guidelines without operational guardrails makes misuse likely.

What would responsible implementation look like?

First, health systems could adopt a sequential offering framework. Under this model, blood-based screening should not sit in the same order set as stool test or colonoscopy. Average-risk patients should initially be offered only preferred screening options. Blood-based testing would enter the conversation only after the patient declines preferred options or fails to complete them after a defined outreach process.

Second, systems could require a documented informed-declination process before a blood test is ordered. Clinicians should document that the patient was offered preferred screening, informed that blood-based testing is less effective at detecting advanced precancerous lesions, and told that a positive result still requires diagnostic colonoscopy. This should not be left to variable clinician phrasing. It should be embedded in standardized scripts, decision aids, and EHR templates. If a guideline truly intends a test to be secondary, the ordering infrastructure should reflect that.

Third, institutions could build electronic ordering restrictions that reinforce the non-preferred status of these tests and only allow certain clinician or care team champions to enter orders for blood test.

Finally, any program using blood-based screening should include closed-loop colonoscopy follow-up tracking. A positive blood test without timely colonoscopy is not meaningful screening. Systems should measure positive test follow-up rates, time to diagnostic colonoscopy, and completion within a defined interval (e.g. 6 months). If these downstream processes are weak, then expanding blood-based screening may create false reassurance rather than cancer prevention.

These kinds of frameworks are not merely academic exercises; they are what determine whether a non-preferred test remains truly non-preferred in the real world. Guidelines shape care far beyond the exam room. They influence news coverage, payer decisions, quality measures, order sets, outreach campaigns, and patient perception. That is why language alone is not enough.

In the current environment, where novel blood tests receive outsized attention and enthusiasm, merely labeling them "non-preferred" will not reliably constrain their use. For many audiences, inclusion itself will read as validation. If blood-based colorectal cancer screening is to be included in recommendations at all, it should be accompanied by explicit guardrails. Otherwise, a guideline intended to preserve high-quality screening may instead create the impression that easier but less effective screening is good enough. And for colorectal cancer prevention, "good enough" is not a standard we should be normalizing.

Aasma Shaukat, MD, MPH, is practicing gastroenterologist and researcher in colon cancer screening, and a member of the MedPage Today editorial board.

Disclosures

Shaukat disclosed a consulting relationship with Iterative Health, Freenome Inc, UniversalDx, and Motus GI.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/121946

Senior US officials frustrated by Machado bid to return to Venezuela after quakes

 A renewed push by Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado for U.S. help to return home following devastating earthquakes in the South American country is frustrating senior officials in Washington, a White House official said on Saturday.

Machado has reached out in recent days to several U.S. administration officials, including at the White House, the State Department, and several members of Congress, asking for help facilitating her return to Venezuela, the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Twin earthquakes struck Venezuela this week, killing more than 900 people. Machado left Venezuela in December, defying a decade-long travel ban to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, after mainly living in hiding for more than a year following disputed elections in 2024.

"We support her returning to Venezuela, but does it have to be 24 hours after a massive humanitarian catastrophe where the death toll continues to climb?” the White House official said.

A spokesperson for Machado did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. captured former President Nicolas Maduro in January, raising hopes among some of his opponents that Machado, 58, would play a central role in running the country.

However, U.S. President Donald Trump instead backed ​Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro's former deputy, saying Machado did not have the support needed to run the country in the short term. 

Machado has been calling for free and fair elections and, before the earthquakes this week, said she expects to return to her homeland by the end of this year. Since leaving Venezuela, Machado has mainly been based in the U.S. 

The United States has mounted a recovery effort for Venezuela in the wake of the earthquakes. 

A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. has mobilized search and rescue teams, is coordinating deliveries of medical supplies, and unlocked $150 million in humanitarian aid.

https://www.aol.com/articles/senior-us-officials-frustrated-machado-160505000.html

Alaska judge puts the other Dan Sullivan back on US Senate ballot

 An Alaska judge has ruled that Dan J. Sullivan can join Republican U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan on the state's August 18 primary ballot, overturning a state election official's earlier decision to remove the challenger as an ineligible candidate.

The unelected Sullivan, a former U.S. Forest Service worker and elementary school teacher, was removed from the ballot last week by Carol Beecher, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, after Republican Party officials complained that his candidacy would mislead voters.

Republicans including Senator Sullivan have also accused Democrats of recruiting the challenger to cause confusion and aid Senate Democratic candidate Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman.

In a late Friday ruling, Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews said the decision to remove the unelected Sullivan had been undertaken on "good-faith criteria" that are not found in the Constitution or Alaska election laws. "Mr. Dan Sullivan is declared to be an eligible candidate," the judge concluded.

Local media reports said the Matthews ruling was expected to be appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court ahead of a Tuesday deadline for state election officials to begin printing ballots.

All candidates, regardless of party affiliation, appear on the ballot for the state's nonpartisan primary, with the four top vote-getters advancing to the November general election. 

Senator Sullivan's campaign did not immediately respond to a Reuters query seeking comment. Nor did the Alaska Democratic Party or the Peltola campaign. Dan J. Sullivan's campaign was not available for comment.

https://www.aol.com/articles/alaska-judge-puts-other-dan-170633000.html

United Airlines flight almost hit drone ‘100 feet below us’ in near-collision at Newark

 A  United Airlines jet nearly smashed into a drone as it was landing on the Newark runway Friday, officials said.

The crew narrowly avoided the unmanned aircraft during its descent around 4:20 p.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

“We almost hit a drone,” the pilot can be heard saying in air traffic control audio verified by CNN.

The circular and three-foot-wide device was only “about 100 feet below us.”

Another pilot flying into Newark on a separate plane also reported seeing the drone at roughly 2,000 feet, additional audio shows.

The United Airlines Boeing 737 was carrying 106 passengers and 5 crew members from Key West, Florida.

“United flight 1513 reported a potential drone sighting prior to arriving in Newark. The flight landed safely, and customers deplaned normally at the gate,” United said in a statement.

The FAA is investigating the incident.

The federal agency receives more than 100 drone-sighting reports near airports each month, which can cause dangerous consequences.

Unauthorized operators are subject to fines and criminal charges, including possible jail time, the FAA warned.

https://nypost.com/2026/06/27/us-news/united-airlines-flight-almost-hit-drone-at-newark-airport/