TV News LIES

David Richardson, who headed up the Federal Emergency Management Agency as acting chief for almost seven months, resigned on Monday, Nov. 17.

The agency has repeatedly drawn concern from members of Congress and others this year about its ability to respond to disasters after more than a third of its staff was removed by the Trump administration amid its efforts to slash the size of the federal government. The agency had been under fire from President Donald Trump even before the election last fall.

Richardson was the second person to step into the post this year. The first, acting chief Cameron Hamilton, was ousted by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after saying in a congressional hearing that he did not support the administration's proposal to eliminate the agency.

Karen Evans, FEMA's chief of staff, will move into the acting chief role on Dec. 1, Dhttps://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/11/17/david-richardson-fema-chief-resigns/87320836007/HS confirmed.

Criticism is not new for the agency. As the lead organization responsible for coordinating federal disaster assistance, it has often drawn the ire of disaster victims and politicians. But a USA TODAY/Ipsos poll conducted earlier this year found that FEMA still receives broad support from the public.

Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an order to create a FEMA review council. Noem has overseen the group, which is assigned to advise the administration on recommended changes to the emergency organization. The panel's final report to the president is due this week.

The report will "inform this Administration’s ongoing efforts to fundamentally restructure FEMA, transforming it from its current form into a streamlined, mission-focused disaster-response force," DHS said.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is wading into a handful of Senate races as the progressive wing of the Democratic Party looks to assert its influence. 

Sanders has endorsed three Senate candidates so far: Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D) in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.); oyster farmer Graham Platner in Maine; and Abdul El-Sayed, a former local health director in Michigan.

His endorsements come as Democrats grapple with competing visions over the party’s future ahead of both the midterms and the 2028 presidential race. 

“We’re in the midst of a political realignment,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the Sanders organization Our Revolution. 

“I think it remains to be seen — is it the populist right or the populist left that ultimately prevails?”

Sanders announced his latest political endorsement this week, weighing in on the Democratic primary for Smith’s seat next year and backing Flanagan over centrist Rep. Angie Craig (D-

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This week several dozen Venezuelan nationals were transferred from a U.S. immigration detention center in south Texas and boarded a deportation flight to their home country.

Among them was 39-year-old Jose Barco, a decorated American soldier who deployed twice to Iraq, saw horrific combat and received a Purple Heart after an explosion tossed him through the air and left him with a traumatic brain injury.

He was just four years old when his family left Venezuela, a country his father fled to after he was being released as a political prisoner in Cuba. Jose Barco's fellow inmates in Texas, most of them much younger, simply call him "Cuba."

How an American veteran, a father of a 15-year-old daughter, found himself inside this sprawling detention center outside Corpus Christi, Texas, waiting for a flight to a country he barely knows is a tortured tale of battlefield trauma, bureaucratic bumbling and eventually, a serious crime.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime Republican ally who previously fiercely defended Donald Trump and his Maga movement, said on Saturday she had been contacted by private security firms “with warnings for my safety” after Trump announced on Friday he was withdrawing his support for and endorsement of the Georgia representative.

In a post on X, Greene said that “a hot bed of threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world”, without referring to Trump by name, adding it was “the man I supported and helped get elected”.

Greene said that “aggressive rhetoric attacking me has historically led to death threats and multiple convictions of men who were radicalized by the same type rhetoric being directed at me right now. This time by the President of the United States.”

Greene did not specify any threats against her that had been received by security firms, but said that “as a woman I take threats from men seriously. I now have a small understanding of the fear and pressure the women, who are victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal, must feel.”

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President Trump’s supporters are worried he is muddling his populist message as Republicans seek to keep the party base together going into the midterm election year. 

This week, Trump faced an uproar from his most faithful MAGA supporters when he defended the H-1B visas and inviting foreign students to come study in the U.S. Conservative critics including and perhaps most prominently, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) accused the president of contradicting his America First message.

Meanwhile, the president has continued to tout expensive White House renovations, including his long anticipated ballroom addition in place of the East Wing, as he seeks to tackle the issue of affordability. 

Some worry that the moves will depress the president’s base, who have long viewed him as an economic populist fighting for the working class.  

The backlash was fiercest after Fox News host Laura Ingraham, a vocal Trump ally, pressed him over his stances on H-1B visas and his calls for 600,000 Chinese students to study at U.S. higher education institutions. The president argued H-1B visas are necessary because the U.S. needs “certain” talents to carry out specific jobs. On his calls for the 600,000 Chinese students studying in the U.S., Trump argued the move was needed to keep U.S. colleges in business.

“Where is my president?” Trump supporter Kylie Kremer, who played a role in organizing the rally prior to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, posted on X with a clip of the interview. 

Conservative commentator Natalie Winters, who co-hosts Steven Bannon’s War Room podcast, also reposted a clip of the interview in which Trump defends his calls for Chinese students to study in the U.S., calling the remarks “insulting to MAGA’s intelligence.”

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The Trump administration cannot immediately cut federal funding to the University of California or issue fines against the school system over claims it allows antisemitism and other forms of discrimination, a federal judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction sought by labor unions and other groups representing UC faculty, students and employees.

Messages sent to the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice were not immediately returned.

The unions argue in a lawsuit that the administration is using funding cuts, and the threat of cuts, to silence opposing viewpoints at UC in violation of the Constitution and federal law. President Donald Trump has decried elite colleges as overrun by liberalism and antisemitism.

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