TV News LIES

A divided US appeals court on Tuesday allowed US Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat, to resume her role at the agency, as Donald Trump tries to remove her from office.

In a 2-1 decision, the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals allowed a lower court decision in favor of Slaughter to take effect, rejecting the Trump administration’s request to delay the ruling during its appeal.

The court said that FTC commissioners may not be fired by a president without cause, saying that the law on this point has been clear for nearly a century.

“The government is not likely to succeed on appeal because any ruling in its favor from this court would have to defy binding, on-point, and repeatedly preserved supreme court precedent,” two judges wrote in the majority opinion.

A third judge, Trump appointee Neomi Rao, dissented, saying that federal courts likely have no authority “to order the reinstatement of an officer removed by the president”.

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The mayor of Chicago has signed an executive order outlining how the city will attempt to resist Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Brandon Johnson pushed back on Saturday against what he called the “out-of-control” Trump administration’s plan to deploy large numbers of federal officers into the country’s third-largest city, which could take place within days.

The Chicago police department will be barred from helping federal authorities with civil immigration enforcement or any related patrols, traffic stops and checkpoints during the surge, according to the executive order Johnson signed.

The mayor directed all city departments to guard the constitutional rights of Chicago residents “amidst the possibility of imminent militarized immigration or national guard deployment by the federal government”.

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A conservative justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Friday that she will not seek reelection, creating an open race for a seat on the court that’s controlled 4-3 by liberals.

Justice Rebecca Bradley's decision not to run for a second full term comes after conservative candidates for the highest court in the battleground state have lost each of the past two elections by double-digit margins. Both of those races broke national spending records and the liberal won in April despite heavy spending by billionaire Elon Musk.

Liberal state Supreme Court candidates have won four of the past five races, resulting in them taking over the majority in 2023, breaking a 15-year run of conservative control. Regardless of who wins the April election, liberals will maintain their 4-3 court majority until at least 2028. If they can win next year, their majority would increase to 5-2.

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President Trump revoked the Secret Service protection provided to former Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday, a spokesperson for Harris and a senior White House official confirmed.

The protection for Harris, who ran against Trump in the 2024 presidential election, was canceled through a letter titled “Memorandum for the Secretary of Homeland Security” that Trump dated for Thursday, CNN reported.

She received six months of Secret Service protection after the Biden administration ended in January, but that was extended for another year through a directive former President Biden signed before leaving office, according to CNN. Only former presidents receive Secret Service protection for life.

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In a private group chat in June, dozens of Democratic political influencers discussed whether to take advantage of an enticing opportunity. They were being offered $8,000 per month to take part in a secretive program aimed at bolstering Democratic messaging on the internet.

But the contract sent to them from Chorus, the nonprofit arm of a liberal influencer marketing platform, came with some strings. Among other issues, it mandated extensive secrecy about disclosing their payments and had restrictions on what sort of political content the creators could produce.

“Should we send a joint email (with all of our email addresses) … or, are we just going to send things separately and hope they change everything for everyone?” Laurenzo, a nonbinary creator in Columbus, Ohio, with over 884,000 TikTok followers, asked the group. Some joked about collective bargaining. “Any Newsies fans here?” Eliza Orlins, a public defender and reality TV star known for her appearances on Survivor, posted in the group. “‘We’re a union just by sayin’ so!’”

The influencers in the chat collectively had at least 13 million followers across social platforms. They represented some of the most well-known voices online posting in support of Democrats, and they’re key to wherever the party moves next. But ultimately, the group didn’t make much progress.

“Reading through this revised Chorus contract like: you win some, you lose some,” a reproductive justice influencer named Pari, who posts under the handle @womeninamerica, responded later in the thread. “I also think there’s at least 4 other things that should change ????but the vibe I got from their email was that there would be minimal, if any, changes.” (Laurenzo, Orlins, and Pari did not reply to requests for comment.)

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A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from removing Michael Abramowitz as director of Voice of America, the government-run news outlet that the White House has targeted for deep staffing cuts.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President Ronald Reagan, ruled that Abramowitz cannot be removed from his position without the approval of the majority of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board.

In June, layoff notices were sent to more than 600 employn June, layoff notices were sent to more than 600 employees of Voice of America and the government agency that oversees it. Abramowitz was placed on administrative leave along with almost the entire Voice of America staff. He was told he would be fired effective Aug. 31.

Lamberth concluded that firing Abramowitz would be “plainly contrary to law.”

“The defendants' own representations, in and out of court, indicate that they have already effectively removed Abramowitz from his role as director,” the judge wrote.

Kari Lake, whom President Donald Trump named as a senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, told a congressional panel that the agency is “rotten to the core.” The agency also houses Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba.

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The Democratic Party has been struggling to unify itself and get energized in the aftermath of its devastating loss to President Trump in the 2024 presidential election and other key races last November. 

But even amid voter dissatisfaction with party leaders and disapproval with the party brand as a whole, one positive sign for Democrats has been the multiple victories they have achieved in the handful of elections this year.

Democrat Catelin Drey’s win in Iowa Senate District 1 by more than 10 points, as of the latest vote count, over Republican Christopher Prosch is just the latest in a string of Democratic electoral successes this year that is likely to give the party hope heading into the midterms.

The first one came in January in a neighboring state Senate district in Iowa, when Democrats flipped that seat from red to blue, just after Trump took office. They did the same in an equally Trump-friendly state Senate district in Pennsylvania in March.

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Since the White House press office selected reporters from five pro-Trump, partisan news outlets to ask the president questions during his televised cabinet meeting on Tuesday, readers will not be shocked to learn that they largely avoided subjects he would prefer not to talk about.

In fact, two of them went even further than that, using the opportunity to help Trump make his point about crime in Washington DC by sharing their own stories of being assaulted or harassed.

The first to speak, in what was obviously a pre-planned moment, was Iris Tao of the conspiratorial Epoch Times.

Tao’s outlet, which was founded by Chinese exiles affiliated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement that is repressed as a cult in China, has heavily promoted Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that China was responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I want to mention, you know about crime… we have a young lady here, Iris of Epoch Times,” Trump said, looked down at his briefing notes, where her name was written in large letters. “I heard you were very savagely mugged. Would you like to mention what happened?” he asked.

Tao then described the harrowing experience of being mugged at gunpoint outside her apartment building in January 2023, and struck in the face with a pistol by her attacker when she refused to hand over her phone.

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