TV News LIES

A federal judge has ordered the National Park Service not to interfere with a liberal organization’s display of an “86-47” flag at its ongoing demonstration near the National Mall, rejecting the contention that the phrase was meant as a coded call for violence against President Donald Trump.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss issued a two-week restraining order Monday at the request of Accountability Now USA, which has been protesting Trump for months at a site in front of the federal courthouse on Constitution Avenue.

Moss concluded that the group intended to advocate for Trump’s removal from office via impeachment, and that “86” is not an unambiguous call to political violence — and certainly not the kind of “imminent” violence that would be necessary to justify restrictions on speech.

“The Court does not doubt that political violence is on the rise and that it poses a grave threat not just to the targets of the threats but to the country as a whole.re But the enormity of that problem does not change the meaning of Plaintiff’s speech, which by any reasonable measure merely advocated for the President’s impeachment and removal from office — that is, ‘to throw [him] out,’” Moss wrote.

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Settlements totaling more than $1.5 million have been reached so far with people who lost their jobs over social media posts that were critical of prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination.

The free-speech cases in Florida, Tennessee and Indiana highlight a growing debate surrounding the First Amendment, political discourse and social media.

It’s “not surprising to see this flurry of settlements,” Aaron Terr, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s director of public advocacy, told USA TODAY. “I think the size and frequency of these settlements shows that violating the First Amendment is expensive.”

USA TODAY reported a little more than two weeks after Kirk was killed, at least 50 people had lost their jobs in the education sector alone. A Reuters investigation also found that 600 people were fired across the private sector for posts they shared about Kirk.

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The Trump administration signaled it is retreating from a heavily criticized $1.766 billion "anti-weaponization" fund that was designed to compensate Americans who said they were unfairly prosecuted during the Biden and Obama presidencies.

The Justice Department on June 1 said it would stop working on the fund after a federal judge temporarily blocked its creation.

Slammed by critics as "slush fund" for President Donald Trump's allies, the effort faced bipartisan opposition in Congress and became an obstacle for Republican leaders to pass a bill aimed at boosting immigration enforcement.

A federal judge in Virginia on Friday, May 29 temporarily ordered the Trump administration not to take further action creating or operating the fund, including transferring any federal dollars or considering any claims. A court hearing is set for June 12 in a case brought by opponents, including a prosecutor who tried cases against people who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

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Knocking on strangers’ doors on a warm May afternoon in Trenton, New Jersey, Adam Hamawy did not seem fazed when more than a few went unanswered.

It’s his first time running for office, but this is an area where he has experience. After returning from a medical mission in Gaza in 2024, Hamawy went to Washington to describe the crisis – which he viewed as a US-funded genocide – to lawmakers, only to encounter “too many doors that were closed, that didn’t even want to listen”.

“I could only define it as a genocide, because I saw the bodies of the people that came in,” the veteran army trauma surgeon and political newcomer reflected, while walking between houses. “And it wasn’t an accident. You can’t have an accident, every single day for three years.”

“When the hospital shakes and I see the bodies come in, I’m paying for it with my tax dollars,” he said. “I don’t want my tax dollars doing that.”

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Congress could soon be more polarized than it already is. And primary elections are a big reason why.

Some lawmakers have begun to speak out against closed, single-party primaries, which they see as part of a system that limits voter choice and incentivizes elected officials to prioritize party loyalty over their own political judgment.

It's a case long made by advocates of primary reform.

"There has been a ratcheting up, a ramping up of both the willingness and the ability of both the Democrats and the Republicans to shape outcomes before the voters get a chance to have a say," John Opdycke, founder and president of the group Open Primaries, told NPR. "And that's really devastating."

In just the past several weeks, GOP primary voters in places like Indiana, Kentucky and Louisiana have forced out state and federal lawmakers who crossed President Trump, including on redistricting.

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In a spree of posts made to his Truth Social account on Saturday, Donald Trump lauded his administration’s efforts to turn the National Mall’s reflecting pool blue, denounced a judge’s ruling removing his name from the Kennedy Center and announced he will hold an “America Is Back” rally next month to replace a concert series after a number of performers backed out.

After arriving at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, at 11.08am, Trump posted to his social media platform 25 times in the next two hours. The president’s posts included a series of apparently AI-generated images, including one of him playing for the New York Knicks and dunking over New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul; another of him riding a horse alongside George Washington and a Trump-branded race car tearing up the White House lawn; and one depicting the “Obama presidential library” as a huge garbage can holding a giant trash bag.

In two lengthy posts, Trump decried the musical artists who backed out of a summer concert series planned to celebrate the United States’s 250th anniversary, and a judge’s ruling finding that the Kennedy Center memorial cannot be renamed for Trump without an act of Congress.

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