TV News LIES

American retailer Tractor Supply Co. has eliminated its diversity, equity and inclusion roles and goals following weeks of conservative criticism online.

The home improvement and agriculture chain released a statement Thursday addressing the criticism and announcing the change.

“We have heard from customers that we have disappointed them,” read the statement posted on X. “We have taken this feedback to heart.”

When Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch voted Friday to decisively end the deference courts have given federal regulators of environmental, labor and other laws, he helped overturn a 40-year-old doctrine his own mom helped create.

Anne Gorsuch, the justice’s mother, had a rocky ride as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

The Denver corporate lawyer’s nearly two years at the EPA were marked by high-level resignations, a shoot-from-the-hip style and accusations the nation’s top environmental official was a willing patsy for polluters.

"Nobody can be that wrong, all that much, all the time," Anne Gorsuch told a 1983 Senate hearing as senators from both parties attacked her leadership. "Personally, I have to finally judge that a great deal of it is political harassment…The thing that makes me very upset is that this type of harassment will probably impede our progress in our goal of cleaning up America."

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The Supreme Court ordered a new review of the law behind obstruction charges filed against hundreds of defendants in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021 − including former President Donald Trump.

The 6-3 decision in Fischer v United States was highly anticipated because one-fourth of the defendants – 350 of the first 1,350 people prosecuted in the riot – were charged with obstruction. Two of four charges against Trump in his federal election interference case are based on the law.

The high court sent the case back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had ruled that the obstruction law did apply to Jan. 6, to review it again.

"Prosecutors have to prove that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects or other things used in an office proceeding, or attempted to do so,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

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Family members bid tearful goodbyes to 21 critically ill children who were evacuated from the Gaza Strip as part of a secret mission to get them the badly needed medical help that's been in short supply since the Israelis invaded the Palestinian territory.

The deal to allow the children to leave was brokered by the World Health Organization and American charities, according to a doctor involved with the operation. And it was put into motion with the help of the U.S. government, Israel, Egypt and other nations in the region.

CNN is coming under heavy criticism after two of its top anchors failed to offer real-time fact checks of false statements made by former President Trump and President Biden as they moderated Thursday night’s presidential debate.

During the highly-anticipated and nationally televised clash, both Trump and Biden made a number of misleading or false statements about topics ranging from crime to immigration to the economy.

Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash on multiple occasions offered follow up questions when a candidate had not used up all of their allotted speaking time or had not answered a question directly.

But neither, however, offered any fact checks to the two men’s assertions during the 90-minute broadcast.

“CNN’s decision to abrogate its journalistic responsibilities by not fact checking Trump’s firehose of lies is unforgivable,” wrote former cable news host Keith Olbermann in one social media post.

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Accusations of child molestation from decades ago have brought down a pastor who founded one of the largest megachurches in the U.S. and once served as an evangelical adviser to former President Donald Trump.

Texas pastor Robert Morris recently admitted to "inappropriate sexual behavior" with a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s and stepped down from his post at Gateway Church based in Dallas. The allegations were first published on June 14 by The Wartburg Watch, a blog dedicated to examining abuse and other issues in the church. The blog shared the account of Cindy Clemishire, who accused Morris of molesting her for several years, beginning when she was 12.

Now, the church's board of elders is scrambling to respond to Clemishire's account. It addressed the congregation during church services this past weekend and said in an additional statement that it has taken a series of steps to respond to the fallout.

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• Russia is considering a possible downgrading of relations with the west due to the deeper involvement of the US and its allies in the Ukraine war, but no decision had yet been taken, the Kremlin said on Thursday. A downgrading of relations – or even breaking them off – would illustrate the gravity of the confrontation between Russia and the west over Ukraine after an escalation in tensions over the war in recent months. Relations were maintained even during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the cold war is thought to have come closest to nuclear war.

• Ukraine’s military said on Thursday its forces had forced Russian troops out of a district in the town of Chasiv Yar on the war’s eastern front seen as Moscow’s next target in its slow advance through the area. Nazar Voloshyn, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern group of forces, told the Ukrinform news agency that Russian forces had moved out of Chasiv Yar’s “Kanal” district along the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas canal that runs along the town’s eastern edge. However, a Russian report said Moscow’s forces had destroyed a communications tower near the town and made further headway. It was not possible to independently verify either report.

• The Ukrainian president met the European Union’s 27 leaders in Brussels to sign a security pact, two days after his country began formal membership talks to join the bloc – a historic step that was unthinkable before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the EU-Ukraine security agreement would “enshrine the commitment of all 27 member states to provide Ukraine with extensive support, regardless of any internal institutional changes”.

A defunct Russian satellite has broken up into more than 100 pieces of debris in orbit, forcing astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter for about an hour and adding to the mass of space junk already in orbit, US space agencies said.

There were no immediate details on what caused the breakup of the Resurs-P1 Russian Earth observation satellite, which Russia declared dead in 2022.

US Space Command, tracking the debris swarm, said there was no immediate threat to other satellites.

The event took place at around 10am mountain time (1600 GMT) on Wednesday, Space Command said. It occurred in an orbit near the space station, prompting US astronauts onboard to shelter in their spacecraft for roughly an hour, Nasa’s Space Station office said.

Russian space agency Roscosmos, which operated the satellite, did not respond to a request for comment or publicly acknowledge the event on its social media channels.

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