TV News LIES

President Donald Trump has terminated two of the federal Election Assistance Commission's three members, eliminating the panel's ability to help local election officials prepare for the 2026 midterms.

The two commissioners selected by congressional Democrats, Chairman Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, each received an email dismissing them on July 9. USA TODAY has reviewed a copy of that email.

Christy McCormick, the commission's vice chair who was selected by congressional Republicans, resigned June 9.

“These removals leave the agency without leadership and unable to carry out its major responsibilities,” Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said in a statement.

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An Israeli strike on Tuesday killed Mohamed Fawaz al-Wahidi, the public relations director for the Egyptian Relief Committee in Gaza.

The attack, which targeted a civilian vehicle in Gaza City’s al-Sabra neighbourhood, killed two others alongside Wahidi, including a child, and left several people wounded, according to reports by the Palestinian Information Center and Arabi Post.

It came just hours before a World Cup match between Egypt and Argentina, which Wahidi's committee had been planning to screen publicly in Gaza City.

According to a spokesperson for the Egyptian Relief Committee, Wahidi also served as the director of the Office of Mukhtars and Community Elders at the committee's Gaza City headquarters.

He had been attending a neighbourhood reconciliation meeting just before the strike hit the vehicle he was in near the governorate building in Sabra.

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The Irish parliament on Tuesday approved legislation to prohibit the import of products from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Named the Israeli Settlements (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill, the draft legislation aims to restrict goods originating from “certain Israeli settlements” that lie outside of Israel’s internationally recognised borders.

The proposed law states that it is designed to abide by Ireland’s “international legal obligation, as identified by the International Court of Justice [ICJ] in its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024”.

That refers to the ICJ finding upheld by the UN General Assembly, which described Israel’s rule of Palestinian territory outside of the 1967 borders as “unlawful” and obligated all nations to end complicity with the illegal occupation.

In keeping with this advice, the Irish government coalition endorsing the bill intends to “take steps to prevent trade relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.

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Federal agents killed a man at a Memphis motel on Wednesday morning in a Drug Enforcement Administration operation with the Memphis Safe Task Force, the fourth officer-involved death since the anticrime initiative began in September.

Donald Trump established the federal taskforce by executive order last year, amid a surge of troops and federal law enforcement agents to Democratic-run cities that he claimed were overrun with crime. All four of the deaths have occurred in the last two months.

Authorities said agents from the taskforce surrounded an extended-stay motel on Poplar Avenue, about 11 miles (18km) east of downtown Memphis, in support of a DEA operation.

“Federal and local law enforcement officers were attempting to serve a warrant on a wanted fugitive facing felony drug charges out of Shelby county,” said a spokesperson for the US Marshals Service, which is the lead agency for the taskforce. “After issuing numerous verbal commands for the individual to surrender, officers made a forced entry into the building.

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A Manhattan federal court judge on Wednesday ordered the release of the more than $5m Donald Trump owes E Jean Carroll following her successful 2023 sexual abuse and defamation trial against him. Less than an hour after the judge issued his order, Trump filed paperwork indicating he was appealing the decision.

Trump had deposited this $5m jury award, as well as 11% interest, into a court-held account some six weeks after Carroll’s courtroom victory. Judge Lewis Kaplan’s order directs the disbursement of these court controlled funds, which now total some $5.8m due to interest accrual.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/08/trump-e-jean-carroll-settlement

“The Clerk is respectfully directed to disburse … the value of the principle Judgment, which amounts to $5,000,000.00,” Kaplan’s order stated. “The Clerk is further respectfully directed to disburse … the value of the post-judgment interest.”

Kaplan’s decision comes more than three years after Carroll bested Trump in her bombshell civil case; jurors determined that he sexually abused the former Elle writer and unlawfully impugned her reputation with false, vitriolic denials. Trump denied all wrongdoing.

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The senior legal counsel to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine is stepping down nearly a year ahead of schedule — the latest top official to leave or be pushed out of the Pentagon since the start of the second Trump administration.

Brig. Gen. Eric Widmar told ProPublica he was leaving “for personal reasons” after serving in the role since 2024.

“Earlier this year, my wife and I reflected on the demands of this role, which have required me to live apart from my wife for the past two years and created additional challenges for me and my family,” he said in a statement to the outlet. “After careful consideration, I decided it was time to place my family at the center of my life and focus on our next chapter together.”

Widmar joins a long line of top military officials to exit the Pentagon in the past 18 months, following Gen. Chris Donahue, the head of Army forces in Europe and Africa who was reportedly pushed out by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth halfway through his tenure and relinquished his command last week.

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Graham Platner, the oyster farmer whose populist platform took Maine by storm, dropped his Senate bid Wednesday night as controversies over his past stacked up, leaving Democrats without a nominee to take on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) this fall.

“We’re suspending campaign operations,” Platner told his supporters in a lengthy video posted on social media Wednesday evening, at times growing emotional.

“I intend to file my paperwork to withdraw,” he added. “The process needs to assure that what comes next is reflective of the Mainers, who on June 9 turned out and showed that they are desperate for a different kind of politics.”

Platner’s decision comes after he easily won the Democratic primary last month despite a growing list of scandals, including revelations around a sexting scandal, since-deleted social media posts downplaying sexual assault and criticizing law enforcement and reports of problematic behavior with former romantic partners.

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President Donald Trump mistakenly said the "Islamic Republic of Japan" fired 111 missiles at a U.S. aircraft carrier "a few months ago."

He made the comments July 8 while speaking to the press alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.

"We have an aircraft carrier which is one of the most beautiful in the world, it's one of the biggest, the (USS) Abraham Lincoln," Trump said. "And a few months ago, we had, I told this story yesterday, we had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan."

The president went on to say the missiles were shot at the aircraft carrier over the course of an hour and they were all intercepted.

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