TV News LIES

The U.S. Department of Education fired nearly everyone in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in a wave of new layoffs that began Friday, according to the union representing the agency's employees.

Without an official estimate from the agency, it wasn't immediately clear how many people in the division were fired. Yet based on reports from staff and their managers, most employees below the leadership level were part of the workforce reduction, said Rachel Gittleman, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252.

Separately, employees involved in the college access program known as TRIO, which is located in a different office, were also let go, she said

The firings, which the union has challenged in court, "double down on the harm to K-12 students and schools across the country," Gittleman told USA TODAY.

More...

Arizona’s Democratic senators pressed Mike Johnson on Wednesday to swear in their state’s newest representative, Adelita Grijalva, but the Republican House speaker refused to budge until funding for the government was restored.

Grijalva, a Democrat, last month won a special election to replace her late father, Raúl M Grijalva, in a southern Arizona House district. However, she has been unable to assume her new role because Johnson has not administered the oath of office.

On Wednesday afternoon, Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, Arizona’s two Democratic senators, gathered to take questions from the press in front of the speaker’s office in the Capitol. Johnson soon arrived, and the Democrats pressed him on when Grijalva would be sworn in.

“We’re going to do that as soon as we get back to work, but we need the lights turned back on, so we encourage both of you to go open the government,” the speaker replied, according to video of the exchange.

More...

The federal government has shut down after lawmakers in Congress failed to reach an agreement on how to extend funding.

While it's not clear how long this government shutdown might last, we're beginning to see the impacts across the country.

Reporters from the NPR Network are digging into the ways the government shutdown is playing out in their region.

Here's what they found so far.

(Jump to state-specific impacts.)

More...

As the two parties square off over an imminent government shutdown, Democrats are accusing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of keeping the House of Representatives out of session to delay a vote on the Epstein files.

The House had been scheduled to vote on Monday and Tuesday, but Johnson canceled the votes in order to put more pressure on Senate Democrats to accept a government funding bill Republicans pushed through the House earlier this month.

The canceled votes are also pushing back the swearing-in of Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat who won a special election last week to fill her late father’s Arizona seat. Grijalva would provide the crucial 218th signature on a “discharge petition” forcing a vote on legislation to make the Justice Department release its investigatory files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“Any delay in swearing in Representative-elect Grijalva unnecessarily deprives her constituents of representation and calls into question if the motive behind the delay is to further avoid the release of the Epstein files,” Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the No. 2 Democrat in the House, complained in a letter to Johnson on Monday.

More...

Senate Democrats on Friday blocked a House-passed bill to fund federal departments and agencies for seven weeks, putting Washington on the path to an Oct. 1 government shutdown.

Democrats came together in near unison to defeat the measure on a 44-48 vote, with only Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (D) voting for the Republican-drafted proposal, which passed the House earlier Friday by a 217-212 vote.

Two Republicans voted against the House-passed continuing resolution: Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), an outspoken fiscal hawk who argued it would prolong Biden-era spending levels, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), a centrist who has voiced grave concerns about the Medicaid cuts Trump signed into law earlier this year.

Democrats blocked the resolution, which would fund government until Nov. 21, after Republicans defeated an alternative Democratic proposal to fund government until Oct. 31, extend health insurance subsidies and restore nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid funding cuts.

The two failed votes leave Republican and Democratic leaders at loggerheads over how to avoid a government shutdown in only 11 days.

More...

The Senate has confirmed 48 of President Donald Trump’s nominees at once, voting for the first time under new rules to begin clearing a backlog of executive branch positions that had been delayed by Democrats.

Frustrated by the stalling tactics, Senate Republicans moved last week to make it easier to confirm large groups of lower-level, non-judicial nominations. Democrats had forced multiple votes on almost every one of Trump’s picks, infuriating the president and tying up the Senate floor.

The new rules allow Senate Republicans to move multiple nominees with a simple majority vote — a process that would have previously been blocked with just one objection. The rules don’t apply to judicial nominations or high-level Cabinet posts.

“Republicans have fixed a broken process,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said ahead of the vote.

More...