TV News LIES

A Guardian analysis of government records has found that the vast majority – 77% – of people who entered deportation proceedings for the first time in 2025 had no criminal conviction, exposing a stark gap between the Trump administration’s rhetoric and reality.

Within days of Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) trotted out a phrase that his surrogates would come to use over and over again: “the worst of the worst.”

The term has become a shorthand justification for the administration’s unprecedented overhaul of immigration enforcement – a relentless campaign the administration claims is focused on arresting and deporting violent criminals.

However, a review of records obtained by the Guardian and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against DHS, raises questions about those claims.

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Anderson Cooper decides to walk away from broadcast TV’s most prestigious news show, 60 Minutes. Stephen Colbert takes his interview with a rising Democratic politician to YouTube instead of his own late-night show. The CBS Evening News anchor presents a misleading version of the network’s own exclusive reporting on Ice arrests. And a news producer writes a farewell note to her CBS News colleagues blaming the loss of editorial independence.

If you connect the dots, the picture of what’s happening at CBS becomes all too clear. That picture comes into even sharper focus once you recall an underlying factor: the network’s parent company is trying to get a big commercial deal done and needs the help of the Trump administration to bring it over the finish line.

“Media capture” is the name that University of Pennsylvania scholar Victor Pickard gives to what we’re seeing unfold before our eyes.

What’s happening at CBS and elsewhere “isn’t a singular breakdown”, Pickard writes in a new analysis.

It’s a whole cascade of layers – media ownership, control and market structure – that “endanger our information and communication systems, our First Amendment freedoms, and our democracy”.

In the CBS situation, the immediate motivation is easy to understand. The network’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, wants to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which also owns CNN – one of Donald Trump’s favorite punching bags and a news organization he would love to see take the same rightward turn as CBS.

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Top US trade negotiator Jamieson Greer insisted on Sunday that the Trump administration was set to persist with its tariffs policy, two days after the supreme court declared many of Donald Trump’s tariffs illegal.

The ruling issued on Friday by the highest US court was a sharp rebuke to the Republican president that toppled a key pillar of his aggressive economic agenda – even as it prompted Trump to announce a new global tariff using different statutes, albeit temporary.

“The reality is, we want to maintain the policy we have, have as much continuity as possible, make sure that business understands this is the direction we’ve been going. We’re going to continue going this way,” Greer told the ABC News Sunday politics show This Week.

ABC host Martha Raddatz asked Greer about the government’s persistence despite the unpopularity of the policy with the public, citing an ABC/Washington Post/Ipsos poll that showed 64% of those surveyed in the US disapproved of tariffs as an economic strategy.

“The policy hasn’t changed. The legal tools that implement that may change but the policy hasn’t changed,” he said, arguing that it gives US business “a lot of leverage” in world trade.

Greer also said in a separate interview with CBS that the US will not back out of tariff deals it has already sealed with a number of countries around the world including the UK, the EU, Japan, Switzerland and others, even though the supreme court ruled that tariffs imposed in those deals were illegal.

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In 1850, Andrew Benjamin Tarbutton enslaved 25 people in central Georgia. A year later, he purchased more than a dozen additional people off the docks in Savannah and marched them toward his home, setting the foundation for his family’s generational wealth.

Four generations later, a railroad company owned by one of his descendants is using eminent domain to seize land of poor farmers, including descendants of enslaved people, not too far from where his family’s fortunes started.

In 2024, the Georgia Public Service Commission granted the Tarbutton-owned Sandersville Railroad Co. eminent domain authority, allowing it to seize private property for what they claim is a public use: to build a rail spur to haul gravel from a local quarry. 

The landowners filed a petition for judicial review of the PSC’s decision in Fulton County Superior Court. That appeal has been moving through the courts for the past two years. In February 2025, the Fulton County Superior Court affirmed the PSC’s decision but kept a pause on construction in place while the case proceeded toward further review in the Georgia Court of Appeals.

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Mexican drug lord Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, commonly known as "El Mencho," was killed in a military operation, officials announced on Sunday, Feb. 22, the latest victory in Mexico's war on drug cartels amid U.S. intervention threats.

Mexico's defense ministry said a shootout in Tapalpa, Jalisco, left Oseguera seriously injured, and he died during an air transfer to Mexico City. Six other cartel members were killed and two were arrested in the military operation.

"Various weapons and armored vehicles were seized, including rocket launchers capable of shooting down aircraft and destroying armored vehicles," Mexican officials said, adding that the authorities in the United States provided "complementary information."

A former police officer, Oseguera was the shadowy leader of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, an outfit named for the western state that is home to one of Mexico's biggest cities, Guadalajara. Over a relatively short period of time, the cartel transformed into an international criminal enterprise rivaling former allies in the Sinaloa Cartel, the gang of captured kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, now in a U.S. prison.

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The final day of competition at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics has concluded and the Games have reached their end.

Athletes from more than 90 countries battled in 116 events over 16 days, and USA TODAY tracked each nation's podium finishes. Here's a look at the final medal standings as the Closing Ceremony in Verona begins the countdown for the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps.

USA TODAY Sports has a team of more than a dozen journalists on the ground in Italy to bring you behind the scenes with Team USA and keep you up to date. Get our Chasing Gold newsletter in your inbox every morning and join our WhatsApp channel to get the latest updates right in your texts.

Broadcast coverage of the 2026 Milano Cortino Winter Olympics is airing exclusively airing across NBC's suite of networks with many competitions airing live on its streaming service, Peacock, which you can sign up for here.

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Members of the United Nations Security Council called Wednesday for the Gaza ceasefire deal to become permanent and blasted Israeli efforts to expand control in the West Bank as a threat to prospects of a two-state solution, coming on the eve of President Donald Trump’s first Board of Peace gathering to discuss the future of the Palestinian territories.

The high-level U.N. session in New York was originally scheduled for Thursday but was moved up after Trump announced the board’s meeting for the same day and it became clear that it would complicate travel plans for diplomats planning to attend both. It is a sign of the potential for overlapping and conflicting agendas between the United Nations’ most powerful body and Trump’s new initiative, whose broader ambitions to broker global conflicts have raised concerns in some countries that it may attempt to rival the U.N. Security Council.

Pakistan, the only country on the 15-member council that also accepted an invitation to join the Board of Peace, denounced Israel’s contentious West Bank settlement project during the meeting as “null and void” and said it constitutes a “clear violation of international law.”

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In Sikonga village, Kisii County, a mother's wails fill the house. Dennis Bagaka Ombwori, 39, the second-born son of John and Esther Ombwori, is the latest Kenyan confirmed dead in the Russia–Ukraine war.

Villagers gather outside, offering what little comfort they can, but Esther Ombwori cannot be consoled. Dennis worked as a security officer in Qatar when recruiters approached him with what appeared to be a better offer. But his family says he never knew what the job really was.

His brother, Alfred Morara, said the news had shattered the family.

"They were not told which job they wanted to do. They were taken to Russia." Morara said. "He was recruited as a foreign soldier in Russia. They started fighting for Russia against Ukraine."

Hundreds of miles away in Nairobi, the Ogolla family mourns a similar loss. 32-year-old Oscar Agola Ojiambo vanished shortly after joining the Russian army last June. Months later, his family is still waiting for answers — and for his body.

"The commanders at the war front revealed that my son died on 14 August 2025," says Charles Ojiambo Mutoka, Oscar's father. "That revelation came in January this year, but the Russian government has not disclosed it to next of kin."

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