TV News LIES

The wife of a US soldier who was detained last week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at her husband’s Louisiana military base was released from federal custody on Tuesday.

The wife of a US soldier who was detained last week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at her husband’s Louisiana military base was released from federal custody on Tuesday.

“All I have ever wanted is to live with dignity in the country I have called home since I was a baby,” Annie Ramos said in a statement following her release.

Ramos, a Honduran immigrant, arrived in America as a toddler. In 2005, after her family missed an immigration hearing, a removal order was issued for her, the New York Times reported.

In early April, Ramos, who is now 22, was detained days after her nuptials to Matthew Blank, 23, a US army staff sergeant who is preparing to train for deployment.

The pair had previously tapped a lawyer to aid Ramos in her path to citizenship, according to the Times. She had applied for protection from deportation in 2020 under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), but her application was not processed.

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A former US air force master sergeant who nicknamed himself “Al Capone” has pleaded guilty to defrauding the military branch out of $37m by inflating the cost of IT contracts – and giving some of the extra money to an individual he called “Godfather”.

Alan Hayward James, from Texas, ran a nine-year scam, beginning in April 2016, which also saw him funnel excess funds to himself, his family and his co-conspirators.

James, 51, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, bribery and conspiracy to rig bids for the US Pacific air forces based in Hawaii. In a plea agreement, James admitted conspiring with multiple competitors to rig bids for IT contracts with the US defense department

He “knowingly conspired” with co-conspirators and companies in a manner which “falsely inflated” the value of contracts, the justice department said. James encouraged some companies to overbid and others to underbid for services. In one instance, he told a company to submit a bid for an IT contract that was “low and stupid”, which effectively led to a co-conspirator company winning the contract at an inflated rate.

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More than 10,000 veterans lost their homes to foreclosure since May of last year, when the Trump administration shut down a key safety net in the VA home loan program, according to the latest industry data. That is the highest pace of foreclosures for VA loans in a decade.

Another 90,000 vets are heading toward foreclosure. This comes after a years-long debacle inside the Department of Veterans Affairs has whiplashed thousands of vets between various enacted and canceled programs and left many of them on the brink of losing their homes — often through no fault of their own.

A loan backed by the VA is considered one of the most valuable benefits for military service members and has helped millions achieve homeownership. But for nearly a year now, vets have had worse protections and options than most other homeowners if they fall behind.

" We should have something in place to try to stem people from losing their homes," said Steve Sharpe, an attorney with the nonprofit National Consumer Law Center.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, to step down from the post and retire immediately, a Pentagon official told The Hill on Thursday.

The Army did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.

The Pentagon confirmed George’s retirement, who served as the Army’s 41st chief of staff.

“The Department of War is grateful for General George’s decades of service to our nation. We wish him well in his retirement,” Pentagon chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a statement.

The Army’s current vice chief of staff is Lt. Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who was previously Hegseth’s military aide, will serve as the acting chief of staff, a Pentagon official told The Hill.

“General LaNeve — a generational leader — will help ensure the Army revives the warrior ethos, rebuilds for the modern battlefield and deters our enemies around the world,” Hegseth said of LaNeve in January.

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During his briefing on the Iran war last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested that Americans take a knee and pray to Jesus for the success of U.S. forces in the Middle East. A few days later, he read out a sermon praying that “wicked souls” be “delivered to the eternal damnation” in the fight against Iran.

The Defense secretary has increasingly used his bully pulpit to promote his combative, controversial brand of Christianity. While the Pentagon says Hegseth is embracing America’s proud history as a Christian nation, some experts and veterans worry that Hegseth’s move to inject the military with more explicitly religious sentiments threatens to divide America’s forces.

“The ideological consolidation of the military is something that we have historically not wanted. We want the military to be diverse. We want the military representative of the American people,” he added.

“I think it’s extremely concerning the way that he is operating. It’s concerning to me as a Christian, and it’s concerning to me as an American,” said Matthew Taylor, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.

Hegseth, who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan before becoming a Fox News host, has presided over prayer services in the building led by controversial Christian pastors and revamped the military’s Chaplain Corps, and official Defense Department social media posts often amplify ultraconservative Christian views.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reportedly blocked the promotion of two Black and two female Army officers to be one-star generals.

The New York Times reported Friday that Hegseth for months pressed senior Army leaders, including Secretary Dan Driscoll, to remove the officers’ names but was repeatedly refused. Then earlier this month, Hegseth struck the names from the list, which is being reviewed by the White House before being sent to the Senate for final approval.

Asked about the report, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell called it “full of fake news from anonymous sources who have no idea what they’re talking about and are far removed from actual decision-makers within the Pentagon.”

He did not address Hegseth’s decision to pull the four officers from the promotion list, only saying that promotions “are given to those who have earned them.”

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