TV News LIES

After threatening to sever ties with Scouting America and kick the youth group off military bases worldwide, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday gave a six-month reprieve to the organization formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America.

Hegseth made the announcement in a video posted to X, framing it as an ultimatum to Scouting to conform to the Trump administration's anti-DEI agenda. He detailed his many criticisms of the group, saying Scouts had "lost their way" by changing the organization's name and "watering down" what he called "the focus on God as the ruler of the universe."

He accused the Scouts of promoting "an insidious, radical, woke ideology that is anti-America and anti-American."

Hegseth also made clear he thinks the organization should go back to being exclusively male. " Ideally, I believe the Boy Scouts should go back to being the Boy Scouts as originally founded, a group that develops boys into men," he said. "Maybe someday."

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Donald Trump has suggested the US could carry out a “friendly takeover” of Cuba as tensions between Washington and Havana reach a new high after the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

As he left the White House for a campaigning event in Texas on Friday, Trump said: “The Cuban government is talking with us. They’re in a big deal of trouble.”

Although he gave no further details, it has been widely reported that US officials had met with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of 94-year-old Raúl Castro, on the sidelines of the Caribbean leaders summit, Caricom, as part of negotiations on opening up the island.

Trump said on Friday: “They have no money, they have no anything right now. But they’re talking with us and maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover of Cuba.”

The president’s comments come as relations between the two countries have sunk to one of their lowest points in an often bitter 67-year history. The US has cranked up pressure on Cuba’s struggling regime after its successful abduction of Venezuelan president and Cuba ally Nicolás Maduro in January.

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President Trump on Friday directed federal agencies to “immediately cease” using Anthropic technology amid an escalating feud between the AI company and the Pentagon.

“THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” he continued. “Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.”

“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” he added.  

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also announced Friday afternoon that the Pentagon would label Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security. The designation bans any contractor, supplier, or partner of the U.S. military from any commercial activity with Anthropic.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the cancellation of members of the military attending some of the country’s top-ranked colleges and universities on Friday, beginning academic year 2026-27, arguing the schools are teaching the “enemy’s wicked ideologies” to service members. 

Hegseth, who attended Harvard University for postgraduate studies, said the move would affect institutions like Princeton University, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Yale University and “others.”

“We demand that senior service colleges work to sharpen our war fighters on genuine national security issues, not social justice activism. We demand curriculums grounded in the founding principles of this republic, principles that champion the enduring ideals of peace through strength and putting American interests first,” Hegseth said in a video posted on social platform X.

“We demand universities that invest back into our nation’s prosperity rather than our greatest adversaries,” the Pentagon chief said in the four-minute clip. “It’s common sense.”

Earlier this month, Hegseth announced the Pentagon would cut all academic ties with Harvard starting in the 2026-27 school year, contending the country’s oldest university is “one of the red-hot centers of hate-America activism.”

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Former President Bill Clinton denied wrongdoing in his relationship with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as House Republicans grilled him on Feb. 27 about the late financier's fundraising, numerous visits to the White House and pictures in Justice Department files.

Clinton, the first former president forced to testify before Congress, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in his opening statement he “had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing.” He dismissed the 20-year-old pictures from the department’s files and Epstein's estate.

“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” Clinton said. “As someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, not only would I not have flown on his plane if I had any inkling of what he was doing – I would have turned him in myself and led the call for justice for his crimes, not sweetheart deals.”

Upon exiting the session, Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky said questioning the former president was "very productive" while declining to elaborate.

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Just hours after Netflix ceded the fight for Warner Bros. to Paramount, CNN‘s CEO Mark Thompson tried to alleviate anxieties over the pending new owners in a staff memo: “Despite all the speculation you’ve read during this process, I’d suggest that you don’t jump to conclusions about the future until we know more.”

Newsrooms, though, are notoriously made up of skeptics, for good reason in an environment of layoffs and buyouts, and, more recently, corporate efforts to woo President Donald Trump. Despite Thompson’s message, the mood among many at the cable news network on Friday was “beyond bleak,” per one source.

Paramount has yet to comment on its specific plans for the network after emerging as the winner for WBD, but in the months since Warner Bros Discovery put itself up for sale, there has been rampant speculation about what life will look like if the David Ellison-led company owned CNN.

Fears only accelerated after the Wall Street Journal reported in December that Ellison made assurances to Trump that he would make major changes to the network, long a target of the president’s. Ellison’s appearance at Trump’s State of the Union address, as a guest of one of his most stalwart congressional supporters, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), probably didn’t help soothe fears of the network’s future editorial direction.

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Neil Sedaka, the legendary singer-songwriter behind tracks like "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" and "Oh! Carol," has died at 86, his representative Victoria Varela confirmed to USA TODAY.

"Our family is devastated by the sudden passing of our beloved husband, father and grandfather, Neil Sedaka," the family said in a statement to USA TODAY. "A true rock and roll legend, an inspiration to millions, but most importantly, at least to those of us who were lucky enough to know him, an incredible human being who will be deeply missed."

Varela said no additional details could be shared at this time.

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The Brooklyn native grew up to become a beloved pop and rock musician with long-lasting, recognizable hits, including "Laughter in the Rain" and “Calendar Girl."

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Legal experts have documented almost 1,000 incidents in which pro-Palestine voices have been allegedly targeted in the United Kingdom, data that they say represents a “systematic effort” to repress the country’s solidarity movement.

The European Legal Support Center (ELSC) said on Wednesday that it has verified 964 cases of “anti-Palestinian repression” from January 2019 until August 2025, including students being investigated over their solidarity, activists being arrested, employees facing disciplinary procedures and artists having their events cancelled.

The findings of the study, carried out in collaboration with researchers at Forensic Architecture, are a “sample indicative of a far wider and deeper pattern”, said the group comprising lawyers and legal officers.

The ELSC pitched the report as an Index of Repression, a database that is open to the public.

“We’re launching this database to show that repression of the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain is pervasive,” Amira Abdelhamid, ELSC’s director of research and monitoring, told Al Jazeera.

One documented case involves a University of Warwick student who was reported to police by their university for carrying a sign that drew parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany during a campus rally in November 2023.

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