TV News LIES

A judge on Monday granted a temporary reprieve to the leader of an independent federal ethics agency who filed a lawsuit claiming he was illegally fired by President Trump.

The move by Trump was the latest attempted removal of a political appointee that may violate the law.

The Office of Special Counsel investigates and prosecutes violations of "prohibited personnel practices" like whistleblower retaliation, enforces ethics laws like the Hatch Act, and protects employment rights of military veterans.

The office's leader, Hampton Dellinger, filed a lawsuit Monday in Washington, D.C., federal court after receiving a termination email Friday night.

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A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Monday night blocking a new Trump administration policy that would cap an important form of funding for medical research at universities, medical schools, research hospitals and other scientific institutions.

Twenty-two states had filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts seeking to block the move. The case will be heard on Feb. 21.

The new policy would limit National Institutes of Health research funding for "indirect costs" to 15% of grants. That's far below what many institutions have been getting to maintain buildings and equipment and pay support staff and other overhead expenses.

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President Trump has pardoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of corruption-related crimes, including trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat vacated by former President Barack Obama.

Blagojevich served as the state's governor from 2003-'09. It was a political saga toward the end of his time in office.

In 2008, federal prosecutors accused Blagojevich of turning Illinois' government into a moneymaking operation for himself by trying to, among other things, shake down a children's hospital and racetrack owners. When prosecutors charged Blagojevich with corruption over the Senate seat, they presented as evidence a profanity-filled telephone conversation he had that was secretly recorded by the FBI.

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The US military will no longer allow transgender individuals to join the armed forces and will stop performing or facilitating procedures associated with gender transition for service members, according to a memo from defense secretary Pete Hegseth filed in court Monday.

Hegseth’s memo comes after Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that took aim at transgender troops in a personal way. The president’s order had said that a man identifying as a woman was “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member”.

To that end, the memo from Hegseth on Monday – filed with the US district court in Washington DC – said: “Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused.

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Prosecutors began their case against Hadi Matar, the man accused of attacking the author Salman Rushdie, with a vivid and gruesome description of the stabbing they said came perilously close to killing him.

Matar, a 27-year-old Lebanese American, is charged with attempted murder and assault over the stabbing attack on the author on stage at an arts festival in August 2022. The 77-year-old Rushdie was grievously injured in the attack and lost sight in one eye.

In opening statements on Monday, the prosecutor Jason Schmidt told jurors in Chautauqua county court that Matar, from Fairview, New Jersey, had “come dangerously close to committing murder” when he assaulted Rushdie with a knife.

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Nearly half a billion dollars of food aid is at risk of spoilage following the decision of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s “Doge” agency to make cuts to USAid, according to an inspector general (IG) report released on Monday.

Following staff reductions and funding freezes, the US agency responsible for providing humanitarian assistance across the world – including food, water, shelter and emergency healthcare – is struggling to function.

“Recent widespread staffing reductions across the agency … coupled with uncertainty about the scope of foreign assistance waivers and permissible communications with implementers, has degraded USAid’s ability to distribute and safeguard taxpayer-funded humanitarian assistance,” the report said.

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A top Department of Justice (DOJ) official ordered federal prosecutors to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D), who had cozied up with President Trump in recent months as his bribery trial set for April neared.

In a short memo, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said the DOJ reached the decision to dismiss the counts without assessing the strength of the case and indicated that the attorneys who filed the charges did nothing wrong.

However, Bove said the case “improperly interfered” with Adams’s 2025 mayoral campaign and alluded to the Trump administration’s efforts to end “weaponization” in the federal government as a reason to wind down the case.