TV News LIES

The Trump administration on Monday proposed stripping the power of an independent board to review challenges from fired federal workers while barring employees from taking the matter to court.

The new proposed rule would impact federal workers fired through a Reduction in Force (RIF), the process used at 22 different agencies last year as the Trump administration conducted widespread layoffs.

If finalized, any federal worker fired in a future RIF would not be able to plead their case before the quasi-judicial Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which last year found that some agencies had “engaged in a prohibited personnel practice” in firing the workers. 

Instead, any challenges would be reviewed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which last year alongside the Office of Management and Budget instructed agencies to begin RIFs.

“Eliminating independent review of federal RIF actions would not only make it harder for employees to challenge their proposed terminations, but would essentially give the administration free rein to terminate huge swaths of the federal workforce without meaningful independent oversight,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal worker union, said in a statement.

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Billionaire Elon Musk is back in the political fray, giving Republicans a boost in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections. 

The Tesla CEO had injected hundreds of millions into the 2024 election but announced plans last spring to step back from political spending, a potential blow for the GOP ahead of the high-stakes midterms.Less than a year later, Musk had already given $20 million to two top Republican groups by the end of 2025, according to federal filings, and dropped $10 million into the Kentucky Senate race last month — signaling the tech mogul could again play a pivotal role in the fight for Congress this fall.

“Musk as a donor is important [because] money in politics is important, but Musk himself is a politically polarizing figure,” said Cayce Myers, a Virginia Tech public relations professor who has focused on political campaigns.  

“As his money is needed, the fact that he is involved does create a complicated political situation for Republicans.”

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Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said after reviewing the unredacted Epstein files that the Justice Department (DOJ) appears to have flouted the law when concealing various names in documents.

Lawmakers on Monday were permitted for the first time to review the unredacted versions of all DOJ files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Several members of Congress had questioned whether the DOJ had fully complied with a law mandating the public release of the files, which allowed for only narrow redactions.

Raskin on Monday said that in addition to revealing the names of victims that were supposed to be shielded, the files released to the public appear to wrongly conceal those who spent time with Epstein “simply to spare them potential embarrassment, political sensitivity or disgrace of some kind.”

“I was able to determine, at least I believe, that there were tons of completely unnecessary redactions in addition to the failure to redact the names of victims, and so that’s troubling to us,” Raskin said.

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Israel ’s security cabinet on Sunday approved measures that aim to deepen Israeli control over the occupied West Bank and weaken the already limited powers of the Palestinian Authority.

The office of far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in a statement announced the decisions that would make it easier for Jewish settlers to force Palestinians to give up land, adding that “we will continue to bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”

Yonatan Mizrachi, a researcher with the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now, called the decision “very significant.” He said the decision still requires approval by Israel’s top commander for the West Bank.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a statement called the decision “dangerous” and an “open Israeli attempt to legalize settlement expansion” and land confiscation. He called for the United States and U.N. Security Council to intervene immediately.

Jordan’s foreign ministry condemned the decision, which it said was “aimed at imposing illegal Israeli sovereignty” and entrenching settlements. The Hamas militant group called on Palestinians in the West Bank to “intensify the confrontation with the occupation and its settlers.”

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With Israel’s reputation reaching record lows among Democrats, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is resorting to ever more sophisticated methods to support its preferred candidates while cloaking its own involvement.

The amount of money that the premier pro-Israel organization is able to spend in elections is extraordinarily valuable to candidates who would otherwise have little chance of winning. But it now comes with a catch: If voters know the money comes from an organization advocating on behalf of Israel, it can do more harm than good.

AIPAC road-tested its stealth approach in a 2024 House primary in Oregon that pitted Susheela Jayapal, the sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), against physician Maxine Dexter. Dexter raised relatively little money throughout much of her campaign, then saw a last-minute deluge organized by AIPAC coupled with outside spending through super PACs, which themselves turned out to be funded by AIPAC.

The timing of the donations meant that there was no meaningful transparency before voters went to the polls, and Dexter expressed a mixture of ignorance and umbrage when her opponents suggested the money actually came from AIPAC.

The main super PAC in question (named 314 Action) explicitly denied that any funding came from AIPAC—a claim revealed as a flagrant lie once disclosure records finally became public. But by then, Dexter had triumphed and was on her way to Congress.

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The U.S. has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal to end the nearly four‑year war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters, as Russian strikes on energy infrastructure forced nuclear power plants to cut output on Saturday.

If the June deadline is not met, the Trump administration will likely put pressure on both sides to meet it, he added.

"The Americans are proposing the parties end the war by the beginning of this summer and will probably put pressure on the parties precisely according to this schedule," Zelenskyy said, speaking to reporters on Friday. Zelenskyy's comments were embargoed until Saturday morning.

"And they say that they want to do everything by June. And they will do everything to end the war. And they want a clear schedule of all events," he said.

He said the U.S. proposed holding the next round of trilateral talks next week in their country for the first time, likely in Miami, Zelenskyy said. "We confirmed our participation," he added.

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When New Yorkers finally emerge from the freakish cold of recent weeks, they’ll face another outsize side effect of the wild weather: their utility bills.

Residents typically see bills spike in January and February — but this has been no ordinary January or start of February. The record-breaking cold of this past week hasn’t registered on many bills yet.

In emails and letters to customers, both ConEdison and National Grid are trying to emotionally prepare customers for a big hit.

“We’ve experienced the coldest start to winter in more than a decade,” an email from ConEdison read. “Your next energy bill may be more than you’re used to seeing.”

“Colder weather plays a large role in raising winter energy bills,” National Grid wrote to customers. “When temperatures drop, homes use more energy to stay warm and that increased usage shows up on your bill.”

National Grid warned customers of a close to a 10% bump in their bills following the storm and arctic temperatures. Con Edison didn’t cite a specific number.

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Alberto Castañeda Mondragón says his memory was so jumbled after a beating by immigration officers that he initially could not remember he had a daughter and still struggles to recall treasured moments like the night he taught her to dance.

But the violence he endured last month in Minnesota while being detained is seared into his battered brain.

He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend's car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center and throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, then punching him and striking his head with a steel baton. He remembers being dragged into an SUV and taken to a detention facility, where he said he was beaten again.

He also remembers the emergency room and the intense pain from eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages.

"They started beating me right away when they arrested me," the Mexican immigrant recounted this week to The Associated Press, which recently reported on how his case contributed to mounting friction between federal immigration agents and a Minneapolis hospital.

Castañeda Mondragón, 31, is one of an unknown number of immigration detainees who, despite avoiding deportation during the Trump administration's enforcement crackdown, have been left with lasting injuries following violent encounters with ICE officers. His case is one of the excessive-force claims the federal government has thus far declined to investigate.

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