TV News LIES

Americans who receive Social Security checks could see benefit checks cut by $500 a month on average if the program is allowed to hit its projected “go-broke” date in late 2032, according to a new analysis.

That amount represents the 24% benefit cut that would be necessary to allow Social Security Administration (SSA) payments after the retirement fund is exhausted, according to fiscal policy think tank Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).

“Applying this projected reduction to current state-level data, we estimate an across-the-board monthly cut would range from $459 to $556 across the 50 states and the District of Columbia,” the report says.

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Pro-Palestinian activists have launched a new campaign at the port of Gioia Tauro in southern Italy aimed at disrupting military supplies involved in the Gaza genocide.

The new action dubbed “Global Intifada Disarm” was launched during a maritime and land demonstration at the port as five boats from the Thousand Madleens to Gaza initiative approached the Calabrian port in a symbolic protest against Italy’s war economy and supply chains.

The 29 May mobilisation, called by grassroots trade unions and the Movement of Young Palestinians in Italy, saw demonstrations across the country, from ports and logistics hubs to factories identified by campaigners as being linked to military production and supply chains connected to Israel.

In Calabria, the focus was Gioia Tauro, one of the Mediterranean’s most important ports.

The maritime component began the day before, when vessels departed from the nearby port of Cetraro and sailed towards Gioia Tauro.

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Veteran anchor Scott Pelley was fired by CBS News on Tuesday, a day after his explosive meeting with new 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton.

Bilton announced Pelley’s termination in a letter addressed to the longtime 60 Minutes correspondent, obtained by Mediaite.

“Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” wrote Bilton. “Yesterday’s performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress.”

The move from the new EP comes just a day after his first meeting with 60 Minutes staff was hijacked by Pelley, who demanded to know more details on Thursday’s firings, which included Bilton’s predecessor, Tanya Simon, correspondent Cecilia Vega, and the show’s long-time Executive Editor Draggan Mihailovich.

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Alabama Republicans to remove the state’s second majority-Black congressional district for the midterms, handing the party a pickup opportunity in an apparent 6-3 vote.

Alabama chastised a lower court for keeping its map blocked, insisting it should move ahead in the wake of the Supreme Court narrowing the Voting Rights Act.

The justices’ emergency order allows Republicans to do so over the objections of Black voters and other challengers, who contended the design should be halted for an independent reason and it was too late for the Supreme Court to intervene, anyways.“While federal courts should not impose changes close to an election,” the justices wrote in their unsigned ruling, “States are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests.”

“Now the Court is squarely faced with a record of the turmoil it has caused and the harm it has wrought,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

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President Donald Trump has signed an executive order directing the Treasury Department to shut down bank accounts used to support illegal immigration.

Trump announced the order in a June 2 Truth Social post, saying it targets the banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions that criminals use to move money tied to human smuggling, drug trafficking, illegal immigration, and cartels.

"Illegal Immigrants and Foreign Fraudsters steal BILLIONS every year from the American Taxpayer." posted President Donald Trump, Truth Social, June 2.

Under the order, Trump said, accounts used to support illegal immigration or to hold government benefits paid to undocumented immigrants could be closed, seized, or forfeited.

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Increasingly outspoken "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley apparently has harsh words for his new CBS bosses.

The anchor, during a reported staff meeting, accused network Editor in Chief Bari Weiss of "murdering" the news institution, according to a recording obtained by The New York Times and reported Monday,

USA TODAY has reached out to CBS for comment.

The outlets report that the meeting was to serve as an introduction to Bilton, a former Times technology columnist and investigative journalist, who was selected to lead "60 Minutes" in late May.

In a tense reported exchange during the meeting, in which The New York Times reports Pelley called Bilton's qualifications "slender," the broadcast journalist questioned Weiss' commitment to the prosperity of the news program.

Bilton's career, which includes investigative work at Vanity Fair as well as writing and producing documentaries, has largely existed in print. He has not worked in broadcast journalism, nor led a newsroom.

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When Leen Ezzeddine stood before her classmates at Harvard Medical School, the moment could have been framed as a familiar story of immigrant success: a Lebanese woman graduating as a doctor from one of the world’s most prestigious institutions.

But Ezzeddine chose to tell a different story.

In her graduation speech last week, she spoke of circumstance, borders, luck and the thin line separating her life from the lives of medical students in Lebanon and Palestine who share the same ambition but are made to study under drones, bombardment and displacement.

That line, for her, was not abstract. While she was pursuing her studies at Harvard, a US missile launched by Israel levelled her family home in Arab Salim, her mother’s village in southern Lebanon, in October 2024.

It was the village where she used to spend her summers, surrounded by cousins, relatives, and her grandparents, Hayat Chamseddine and Ali Zayour, who were later forced to leave and relocate to Beirut after their house was destroyed.

The contrast was stark: she was standing in Harvard as a new doctor, while the village that helped shape her childhood and family memories was being attacked.

That contradiction became the emotional and political centre of her intervention.

Her speech was not only about Gaza, or Lebanon, or the violence of war. It was about what it means to become a doctor inside an elite institution while entire communities are being denied the basic conditions of life.

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Journalists may no longer enter the Pentagon’s press office, which has been designated as a classified space amid growing moves to restrict press access to the defense department.

"This is the most transparent war department in history. No amount of spin from the Fake News media will change that,” Jose Valdez, the acting defense department press secretary, said in a social media post. “The Pentagon Press Office has been redesignated as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility due to speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War sharing the facility.”

Valdez added that, because speechwriters handle classified material, “journalists will no longer be permitted to enter the office space”.

The move was first reported by the Washington Post, and later confirmed by Valdez on social media.

The defense department, which the Trump administration prefers to call the war department, began rolling out new restrictions to press access in September, when the military demanded journalists pledge not to gather any information – including unclassified documents – that had not been authorized for release or else risk revocation of their press passes.

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