TV News LIES

Dr. Kade Goepferd watched the Trump administration's moves on Thursday to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth with "a mix of sadness and frustration."

Goepferd, who is the founder of Children's Minnesota Gender Health Program, says that for the medical community, nothing has changed about the evidence supporting gender-affirming care that could justify the government's actions.

"There's a massive propaganda and disinformation campaign that is selectively targeting this small population of already vulnerable kids and their families," Goepferd says.

Federal health officials said many times at Thursday's announcement that their actions were driven by science and evidence, not politics or ideology. They frequently praised a report published by the Department of Health and Human Services in November. It concluded that clinicians who provide medical care to help youth transition have failed their patients and emphasized the benefits of psychotherapy as an alternative.

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TikTok has signed a deal to spin-off its U.S. operations to a group controlled by mostly American investors, including software giant Oracle, a company run by billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison.

TikTok's hyper-engaging algorithm and the massive amount of data the app has collected on millions of Americans is set to be overseen by the new U.S. firm. According to the agreement, TikTok's U.S. algorithm will be retrained with only Americans' data. Content moderation rules around what is permitted and what is not will be set by the new investor-controlled entity.

Yet the underlying algorithm will still be owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, with the blessing of American auditors, according to an internal TikTok memo reviewed by NPR and two sources familiar with the deal who were not authorized to speak publicly.

"With an American majority running the content moderation, concerns about foreign propaganda seem to have been alleviated," said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University who studies the regulation of new technology. "But it is possible that the American TikTok might end up censoring or hiding speech that is permissible on the global TikTok platform. I would hope that the U.S. content moderation team would allow speech that the American owners might dislike."

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The US military carried out a lethal strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing four people, according to defense secretary Pete Hegseth.

In a post on Twitter/X, Hegseth wrote: “Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters. Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations. A total of four male narco-terrorists were killed, and no US military forces were harmed.”

The announcement comes a day after Donald Trump announced a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. In announcing the blockade on social media, the US president accused Venezuela of using oil to fund drug trafficking and other crimes and vowed to escalate the military buildup.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon said it had carried out strikes on three boats it accused of trafficking drugs in the Pacific, killing eight people. Since 2 September, more than 20 strikes have killed at least 99 people, most off the coast of Venezuela.

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A federal judge on Wednesday said she would block Donald Trump’s administration from laying off hundreds of federal employees, the latest legal setback for the president’s efforts to downsize the US government workforce.

US district judge Susan Illston during a hearing in San Francisco said hundreds of layoffs at four agencies were likely not allowed under a law Congress passed last month to end a 43-day government shutdown.

“The chaotic nature of these has been continuing and has affected employees of the government in many ways, including loss of potential alternative jobs and loss of healthcare coverage,” Illston said.

Illston, an appointee of Democratic former president Bill Clinton, said she would block the US state department and education department from laying off about 250 and 150 employees respectively, pending the outcome of a lawsuit by unions.

She also said she intended to order state, the defense department, the General Services Administration, and the Small Business Administration to reinstate roughly 300 people who lost their jobs during the shutdown.

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FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said Wednesday that he will resign from the bureau next month, ending a brief and tumultuous tenure in which he clashed with the Justice Department over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and was forced to reconcile the realities of his law enforcement job with provocative claims he made in his prior role as a popular podcast host.

The departure would be among the highest-profile resignations of the Trump administration, coming as the firing of career agents has contributed to upheaval at the FBI and as Director Kash Patel faces continued criticism over his use of a government plane for personal purposes and social media posts about active investigations.

Bongino announced his departure, which had been expected, in a post on X in which he said he was grateful for the “opportunity to serve with purpose.” He did not say precisely when in January he would leave or reveal his future plans, but President Donald Trump, in response to a question earlier in the day about Bongino’s fate, said: “Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show.”

Bongino was always an unconventional pick for the No. 2 job at the FBI, a position that historically has entailed oversight of the bureau’s day-to-day operations and has been typically held by a career agent. Though he had previously worked as a New York City police officer and Secret Service agent, neither he nor Patel had any experience at the FBI before being picked for their jobs. But both came in pledging overhauls to an FBI they insisted had been weaponized against Trum

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Jack Smith, the former DOJ special counsel, claimed in closed-door congressional testimony on Wednesday that investigators had proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump “criminally” conspired to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Smith made the remarks in his opening statement to lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

“I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 election,” Smith said in his opening statement, which was obtained in advance by the Associated Press. “We took actions based on what the facts and the law required — the very lesson I learned early in my career as a prosecutor.

Rob and Michele Reiner's children are breaking their silence following the couple's killing.

The acclaimed "Princess Bride" director and his producer wife were found dead in their Southern California home on Sunday, Dec. 14. On Tuesday, prosecutors filed criminal charges against their son, Nick Reiner, who is accused of "fatally stabbing" his parents.

"Words cannot even begin to describe the unimaginable pain we are experiencing every moment of the day," Jake and Romy Reiner said in a statement to TMZ and People released Wednesday. "The horrific and devastating loss of our parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, is something that no one should ever experience. They weren't just our parents; they were our best friends."

USA TODAY has reached out to representatives for Rob, Michele, Romy and Jake Reiner for comment.

Nick Reiner has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder with a special circumstance of multiple murders, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced during a Tuesday press conference. The 32-year-old screenwriter also faces a special allegation that he used a dangerous and deadly weapon, namely a knife, in the killing of his parents.

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