TV News LIES

The Senate parliamentarian late Saturday ruled against the $1 billion provision intended to fund President Trump’s White House ballroom in the budget reconciliation package.

According to Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who serves as the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, the guidance states that “a project as complex and large in scale as Trump’s proposed ballroom necessarily involves the coordination of many government agencies which span the jurisdiction of many Senate committees,” adding that the funding provision is outside the scope of the Judiciary panel.

Earlier this month, the Senate Judiciary Committee — as well as the upper chamber’s Homeland Security Committee — included funding for the new complex in a budget reconciliation bill for federal immigration enforcement.

More...

Congress finally ended the historic Department of Homeland Security shutdown, resolving the longest crisis of its kind in American history.

In an abrupt afternoon voice vote on Thursday, April 30, the House of Representatives passed a funding bill for the agency with seemingly unanimous support, sending it to President Donald Trump's desk.

The vote resolved a political showdown that has plagued Capitol Hill and the country for about 75 days. The ordeal, which exposed fierce acrimony between House and Senate Republicans, left thousands of workers without pay, upended air travel and jeopardized Americans' safety. After the White House unilaterally shifted money to pay the agency's workers, it also likely wrought longer-term implications for Congress' authority over federal spending.

The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General says it will audit the department’s compliance with a law mandating the public release of the Epstein files.

The audit, initiated by the acting official running the office, comes amid complaints on both sides of the aisle that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has failed to fully release the files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and improperly concealed the identities of some named in the files.

“The DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is initiating an audit of DOJ’s compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Our preliminary objective is to evaluate the DOJ’s processes for identifying, redacting, and releasing records in its possession as required by the Act,” it said.

The OIG will look at how the DOJ set guidelines for sifting through the 6 million files, the directives it gave staffers over what could be held back or redacted and how the DOJ addressed “post-release publication concerns,” including revealing the names of victims who were slated to be redacted under the law.

More...

Rep. Clay Fuller (R-Ga.), who recently won a special election to replace the departed Marjorie Taylor Greene, seems to have inherited her knack for making news. And not always the good kind. (Watch the video below.)

In a rant (or major trolling job) on X Sunday griping about an air conditioner that shut off at a Maryland hotel while he slept, the Donald Trump-endorsed lawmaker falsely asserted that Georgia is named for George Washington (it’s named for King George II) and that Atlanta Braves star Ronald Acuña Jr. was born there (he’s from Venezuela).

He also erroneously called Maryland “newer to the union” (it’s one of the 13 original colonies) and appeared to taunt the University of Maryland for never winning an SEC title (it’s a member of the Big Ten conference after being in the ACC for many years) and for not having a football team at all (it does).

He also said that if University of Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton were born in Maryland, “he’d play some fake sport like lacrosse.”

Fuller got agitated by waking up in a Maryland hotel room that he said was too hot. He said he was then informed by the front desk that the motion-sensor air conditioning was shut off at night “because of an AOC Green New Deal thing.” While there may be a hotel or regional policy in place, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s environmental initiative was never passed.

More...

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) on Monday introduced an immigration bill he dubbed the “MAMDANI Act.”

The Measures Against Marxism’s Dangerous Adherents and Noxious Islamists Act proposes amending the Immigration and Nationality Act, which dictates federal immigration law, to allow for the deportation, denaturalization, denial of citizenship or entry to any migrant that is a member of a socialist party, communist party, the Chinese Communist Party or Islamic fundamentalist party.

It also proposes imposing such restrictions on any migrant who “advocates” for socialism, communism, Marxism or Islamic fundamentalism, a sweeping term that includes “writing, districting, circulating, printing, displaying, possessing, or publishing any written, electronic, or printed matter” in support of those ideologies, according to the bill’s text.

The acronym for the bill is a reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D), a democratic socialist who was born in Uganda and moved to the city as a child. Mamdani, who is Muslim, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018. 

The Hill has reached out to Mamdani’s office for comment.

More...

House members got their first opportunity Thursday to grill Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as he kicked off a marathon series of seven congressional hearings in seven days with back-to-back hearings in the Ways and Means and Appropriations Committees.

In the two appearances, his first before Congress in 2026, Kennedy defended his record in leading the nation’s health agency as Democrats sought to push back against proposed budget cuts and changes to vaccine policy.

Kennedy faced a very different political environment from the one in which he appeared before Congress seven months ago, when his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement seemed to be at its most politically powerful.

Kennedy and his allies last year overhauled the childhood vaccine schedule to recommend fewer shots while also shaking up key leadership positions across health agencies.

But with an eye on the 2026 midterm elections, the White House wants Kennedy to stop talking about vaccines and focus on other MAHA “wins.”

More...