TV News LIES

When Donald Trump met President Zelensky in New York last September, the then US presidential candidate exuded confidence he could bring the war in Ukraine to an early end. "If we win, I think we're going to get it resolved very quickly," he said.

How quickly he meant varied over time. In a TV debate a few days earlier, Mr Trump had promised he would "get it settled before I even become president". This was an escalation on his previous commitment in May 2023 to stop the fighting in the first 24 hours of his presidency.

Mr Trump has now been in office for more than two months and the penny may be beginning to drop in the White House that trying to end a conflict as bitter and complex as this may take time.

The Department of Homeland Security said on Friday that it would revoke the temporary legal status of more than 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans welcomed into the US under a Biden-era sponsorship process, according to a notice posted to the Federal Register and signed by the homeland security chief Kristi Noem.

The order cuts short a two-year “parole” program – known as CHNV – under Joe Biden that allowed 532,000 people who had arrived in the US since October 2022 with financial sponsors to obtain two-year work permits to live and work in the US. Noem’s notice said they will lose their legal status on 24 April.

Nasa has dropped its longstanding public commitment to land the first woman and person of color on the moon, in response to Donald Trump’s directives to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices at federal agencies.

The promise was a central plank of the space agency’s Artemis program, which is scheduled to return humans to the lunar surface in 2027 for the first time since the final Apollo mission in December 1972.

The Artemis landing page of Nasa’s website previously included the words: “Nasa will land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.”

TVNL Comment: Trump is dragging the US into depths not seen anywhere in the world since 1932.  Shame on Nasa for giving in.  Shame.

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The Department of Homeland Security on Friday eliminated numerous civil rights offices, ending oversight of its immigration policies and avenues for public complaints.

The department said it was conducting wide scale layoffs at DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which ensures the agency protects “individual liberty, fairness, and equality under the law” in its policies and actions.

DHS also fired staff for the offices of two major ombudsmen, which hear complaints and work to resolve disputes within the immigration system.

The Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman provides a platform for those to bring concerns about the immigration process, while the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman is a route for the public to flag issues about the problems facing those held in immigration detention.

The DHS confirmed the move, accusing both entities of obstructing the department’s mission.

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Elon Musk’s visit to the Pentagon on Friday will focus on the threat China presents to the region but won’t include classified war plans, according to an official with knowledge of the plans.

The meeting, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Indo-Pacific commander Adm. Sam Paparo — who will attend virtually from Hawaii — shows the extraordinary level of access Musk, a defense contractor with billions of dollars in government contracts, holds over the administration.

The New York Times initially reported Thursday night that the meeting would include classified plans. But the official said Friday that the conversation would focus exclusively on China as the United States’ primary military challenge. It also comes just two days before Hegseth is set to leave on a weeklong trip to Asia with stops in Japan, Philippines, Guam and Hawaii.

The official did not say whether Musk was originally going to receive a classified briefing.

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President Donald Trump’s executive order singling out transgender service members wasn’t a shock to Lt. Cmdr. Geirid Morgan and her family. Nor was the Pentagon’s accompanying policy to remove trans troops from the force, released about a month after Trump’s order.

“The first feelings I had really were just, concerned for my fellow transgender service members, concerned for their families, concerned for the service members that service under them,” she said.

Morgan has spent 14 years moving up the ranks in the U.S. Navy. Long-serving trans service members, like Morgan, are now plaintiffs in legal challenges against Trump’s ban. To the trans troops suing the government — among them, an Air Force staff sergeant with 16 years of service, a Navy commander with 19, an Army sergeant first class with 20 — the ban is poised not only to harm them, but also drain experience and expertise from the military.

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