TV News LIES

Twitter has suspended a network of accounts claiming to be owned by Black supporters of Donald Trump and his re-election campaign due to spam and platform manipulation, it said Tuesday.

The company is investigating the activity and may suspend additional similar accounts if they are found to be violating its policies, a spokesperson said.

The Washington Post first reported on the investigation, citing more than a dozen accounts using identical, inauthentic language including the phrase: “YES IM BLACK AND IM VOTING FOR TRUMP!!!”

A review of some of the suspended accounts shows they often used stolen images to appear real. The accounts sometimes claimed to be owned by military veterans or members of law enforcement.

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A group of 25 state attorneys general oppose a settlement of U.S. opioid probes being negotiated with Purdue Pharma LP and members of the wealthy Sackler family who own it, arguing the deal would improperly entangle state and local officials with future sales of the company’s addictive pain drug OxyContin.

In a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr, the state attorneys general take issue with the Justice Department’s condition that Purdue transform into a “public benefit company” that would be run on behalf of thousands of U.S. communities suing the drugmaker and Sackler family members. The letter cited a previous Reuters report detailing discussions to resolve the investigations.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday stopped the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident from continuing through the end of October.

President Donald Trump’s administration had asked the nation’s high court to suspend a district court’s order permitting the 2020 census to continue through the end of the month. The Trump administration argued that the head count needed to end immediately so the U.S. Census Bureau had enough time to crunch the numbers before a congressionally mandated year-end deadline for turning in figures used for deciding how many congressional seats each state gets.

A coalition of local governments and civil rights groups had sued the Trump administration, arguing that minorities and others in hard-to-count communities would be missed if the count ended early. They said the census schedule was cut short to accommodate a July order from Trump that would exclude people in the country illegally from the numbers used to decide how many congressional seats each state gets.

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The suspects accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also talked about "taking" Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam out of anger about the leader's lockdown order during the COVID-19 pandemic, an FBI agent testified Tuesday.

Special FBI agent Richard Trask disclosed this detail during a preliminary examination in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where five suspects have bond hearings scheduled for Tuesday to determine if they should be released or remain jailed pending the outcomes of their cases.

Prior to the bond hearings, Trask outlined the FBI's case against the men, alleging they are part of a larger group of self-titled militia members from multiple states who met online earlier this year and discussed attacking government officials.

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Roberta McCain, whose son, Senator John McCain of Arizona, said she had inspired his will to survive as a prisoner of war in Vietnam — and who at 96 campaigned spiritedly in his losing bid for the presidency against Barack Obama in 2008 — died on Monday at her home in Washington. She was 108.

Her death was announced on Twitter by her daughter-in-law, Cindy McCain.

An adventurous world traveler who took frequent home dislocations in stride and wartime family perils with outward calm, Mrs. McCain was Navy through and through — the wife and daughter-in-law of admirals and the mother of the naval aviator who was shot down over Hanoi in 1967 and who, for five and a half years, was America’s most famous prisoner of the Vietnam War.

COVID-19 cases in Arizona spiked 151% after a statewide stay-at-home order expired and dropped 75% following local mask mandates, a new report says.

The report, published this week by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was authored by officials with the Arizona Department of Health Services, including director Dr. Cara Christ.

A stay-at-home order in Arizona expired May 15 and two weeks later — between June 1 and June 15 — the daily average number of COVID-19 cases jumped by 151%, the report says. The incubation period for a person exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus to develop COVID-19 is approximately two days to two weeks.

The spike in cases ended up overwhelming the state's health care system with a surge of extremely ill COVID-19 patients needing care.

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