TV News LIES

The Biden administration withheld data from the public on the risks of myocarditis from the Covid vaccine, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary claimed Thursday — a bold accusation that clashes with years of public statements from federal health officials.

“We have done more to study myocarditis and to go back and look at deaths of people, of children from the Covid vaccine,” Makary told NBC News in an interview. “Internal data submitted on myocarditis, we found that the Biden administration was sitting on data on myocarditis in young people, and it was not made public.”

Makary’s claim comes less than a week after Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, told agency staff in a memo that an internal review found that at least 10 children died “after and because of receiving” the Covid shot. Prasad suggested — without evidence to support his claim — that the child deaths were tied to myocarditis.

Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, is a known — but small — risk of the mRNA Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, information that federal agencies have discussed openly since 2021.

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A federal judge has ordered the release of grand jury transcripts from the abandoned Jeffrey Epstein investigation that took place between 2005 and 2007.

The Dec. 5 order states that while the government's previous attempts to release the grand jury transcripts were denied, U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith was ordering their release in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was passed in November.

The law requires the attorney general to make publicly available “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice” related to Epstein, the disgraced financier and accused sex trafficker who died by suicide in 2019.

The Justice Department has until Dec. 19 − 30 days after President Donald Trump signed the bill − to release the information it has, which is expected to go beyond the files Smith has released.

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Donald Trump has replaced the architect originally selected to oversee his $300m planned gilded ballroom.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the news on Thursday and cited three people familiar with the matter, architect James McCrery II and his boutique firm had been leading the project for more than three months, up until late October.

The president and McCrery disagreed at times, particularly over Trump’s interest in expanding the 90,000-sq-ft ballroom’s size, the Washington Post reported. However, it was ultimately the firm’s limited staff and missed deadlines that prompted the change, one person said.

It is unclear whether McCrery chose to step aside voluntarily. However, one source noted that he and Trump parted on good terms.

Trump has now selected Shalom Baranes as the project’s new architect, which the White House confirmed. Baranes, whose previous work includes significant federal projects such as the main Treasury building near the White House, received strong praise in a written statement from the White House spokesperson David Ingle.

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Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk has some thoughts on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the type of people who voted for him.

“You know, it’s so interesting, because I lived in Manhattan for a while, and I loved this city,” Kirk told The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin at the Dealbook Summit on Wednesday.

Sorkin had pointed out that Mamdani, a democratic socialist and the city’s first Muslim mayor, was someone who had “captured younger voters” but was on the “complete opposite end” of where Kirk’s late husband, right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, would have stood politically. He then asked Kirk for her take on the new mayor.

Kirk answered that she wanted to approach the question “as a female voter,” due to the large number of women who voted for Mamdani.

“I think there’s a tendency, especially when you live in a city like Manhattan, where, again, you are so career-driven, and you almost look to the government as a form of replacement for certain things, relationship-wise, even,” she said. “You see things a little bit differently.”

“What I don’t want to have happen is women, young women, in the city look to the government as a solution,” she said. “To put off having a family or a marriage, because you’re relying on the government to support you, instead of being united with a husband, where you can support yourself and your husband can support [you], and you guys can all combine together.”

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The Supreme Court on Thursday came to the rescue of Texas Republicans, allowing next year’s elections to be held under the state’s congressional redistricting plan favorable to the GOP and pushed by President Donald Trump despite a lower-court ruling that the map likely discriminates on the basis of race.

The justices acted on an emergency request from Texas for quick action because qualifying in the new districts already has begun, with primary elections in March.

The Supreme Court’s order puts the 2-1 ruling blocking the map on hold at least until after the high court issues a final decision in the case. Justice Samuel Alito had previously temporarily blocked the order while the full court considered the Texas appeal.

The justices have blocked past lower-court rulings in congressional redistricting cases, most recently in Alabama and Louisiana, that came several months before elections.

The Texas congressional map enacted last summer at Trump’s urging was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats.

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The Justice Department on Thursday failed to secure an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James, a person familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The presentation to the grand jury came less than two weeks after the original criminal case against her was dismissed.

James, a frequent political target of President Donald Trump’s who had successfully brought a fraud lawsuit against him, had previously been indicted by a grand jury on one charge of bank fraud and another of making false statements to a financial institution.

James has denied any wrongdoing.

Lindsey Halligan, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and a former personal attorney to Trump with no prior prosecutorial experience, presented the case to a grand jury on her own in the first go-round — and that case was declared void on Nov. 24 when a judge found Halligan’s appointment was unlawful.

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