TV News LIES

Donald Trump kept up the pressure on Ukraine to move ahead with a peace deal as signals emerged that the Kremlin would be willing to accept a temporary truce under certain conditions. As the American president pursues an agreement to end the war triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion of its neighbor three years ago, he's reversed years of US support for Kyiv, instead courting Moscow.

"We're doing very well with Russia," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday. "I'm finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine."

Trump's advisers are already sketching out how they might ease the sanctions imposed on Russia because of the war, including a cap imposed on prices for its oil sales, according to people familiar with the discussions.

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What happens when a whistleblower claims wrongdoing in the federal government?

Who investigates those allegations and who protects those federal employees?

The answer is an independent watchdog agency called the Office of Special Counsel.

Shortly after taking office, President Trump fired the head of that office — Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger. Since then, Dellinger has been locked in a legal fight with the administration. A fight that he gave up on Thursday.

Dellinger was appointed by former President Joe Biden and has led the Office of Special Counsel since March 2024. He sued Trump over the legality of his firing last month, because the law states that special counsels can only be removed by the president for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."

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Republican lawmakers in Montana voted en masse to help defeat two extreme anti-trans bills in an unprecedented move on Thursday, after powerful speeches from two trans representatives imploring them to reject the latest intent to criminalize gender nonconformity.

State representative Zooey Zephyr spoke out against a bill that sought to ban drag performances and Pride parades in Montana, introduced by a Republican member of of the house who has referred to transgenderism as a “fetish based on crossdressing”.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is planning a large study into potential connections between vaccines and autism, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, despite extensive scientific research that has disproved or failed to find evidence of such links.

It is unclear whether the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has long promoted anti-vaccine views, is involved in the planned CDC study or how it would be carried out. The CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services were not immediately available for comment.

The CDC’s move comes amid one of the largest measles outbreaks the US has seen in the past decade, with more than 150 cases and two deaths in Texas and New Mexico. The outbreak has been fueled by declining vaccination rates in parts of the United States where parents have been falsely persuaded that such shots do more harm than good.

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Donald Trump plans to today sign an executive order barring government and non-profit employees from a student loan forgiveness program if they engage in “improper activities”.

The order affects the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, under which employees of those organizations can have their federal student debt forgiven if they meet certain criteria. White House staff secretary Will Scharf said that the order will target employees of non-governmental organizations “that engage in illegal, or what we would consider to be improper activities, supporting, for example, illegal immigration or foreign terrorist organizations or otherwise law-breaking activities”.

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The Trump administration is pulling about $400 million in federal funds from Columbia University, citing the school's "continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students," the Department of Education and other agencies announced Friday.

Columbia has been at the center of college protests in which demonstrators demanded an end to U.S. support for Israel because of the civilian deaths and humanitarian crisis in the Israel-Hamas war.

There have been allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia in protests and counterprotests. Columbia has said it has been fighting antisemitism.

MAGA activists have turned against one of President Donald Trump's own appointees to the Supreme Court: Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Appointed by Trump in 2020, Barrett is a staunch conservative who has joined major rulings in which the court has moved U.S. law to the right, including on abortion and affirmative action.

But that's not enough for some of Trump's most aggressive supporters, who think the former Notre Dame Law School professor has been a disappointment. MAGA supporters see what some call an independent streak as a sign she isn't sufficiently aligned with or loyal to Trump.

"She is a rattled law professor with her head up her a--," said Mike Davis, who once clerked at the Supreme Court for Justice Neil Gorsuch and described Barrett as "weak and timid."

Barrett defenders have dismissed the attacks, scoffing at the idea that the justice’s conservatism is defined by how her decisions align with Trump and insisting Barrett won’t be affected by outside criticism. Barrett, reached via the Supreme Court, did not respond to a request for comment.

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