TV News LIES

A federal judge on Thursday halted for now Donald Trump’s deployment of national guard troops to Washington DC, dealing the president a temporary legal setback to his efforts to send the military to US cities over the objections of local leaders.

US district judge Jia Cobb, an appointee of former president Joe Biden, temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying national guard troops to enforce the law in the nation’s capital without approval from its mayor.

Cobb paused her ruling until 11 December to allow the Trump administration to appeal.

The legal fight is playing out alongside several others across the country as Trump presses against longstanding but rarely tested constraints on presidents using troops to enforce domestic law.

The DC attorney general, Brian Schwalb, an elected Democrat, sued on 4 September after Trump announced the deployment on 11 August.

The lawsuit accused Trump of unlawfully usurping control of the city’s law enforcement and violating a law prohibiting troops from performing domestic police work.

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The U.S. Coast Guard will reportedly no longer consider swastikas, nooses, or the Confederate flag to be hate symbols, according to forthcoming guidelines obtained by The Washington Post, though the service branch denies changing its stance towards such imagery.

Under the guidelines obtained by the paper, these symbols will instead be considered “potentially divisive” imagery, though flying the Confederate flag will remain banned.“We don’t deserve the trust of the nation if we’re unclear about the divisiveness of swastikas,” an anonymous Coast Guard official who has seen the alleged guidelines told the paper.

The Coast Guard strongly disputed it was softening its policy towards these symbols.

“The claims that the U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses or other extremist imagery as prohibited symbols are categorically false,” Admiral Kevin Lunday, Acting Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, said in a statement to The Independent. “These symbols have been and remain prohibited in the Coast Guard per policy. Any display, use or promotion of such symbols, as always, will be thoroughly investigated and severely punished.”

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday that President Trump does not want to execute members of Congress who urged the military not to follow unlawful orders, but that he wants to see them “held accountable.”

Trump earlier Thursday responded to a video made by six Democrats with military and intelligence backgrounds, calling it “seditious behavior from traitors” and later posting “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

“No,” Leavitt said. “Many in this room want to talk about the president’s response, but not what brought the president to responding in this way.”

Leavitt disputed that the president had given any illegal orders and accused the lawmakers of inciting violence.

“To suggest and encourage that active duty service members defy the chain of command is a very dangerous thing for sitting members of Congress to do,” Leavitt added. “And they should be held accountable. And that’s what the president wants to see.”

The video featured Sens. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Mark Kelly (Ariz.), and Reps. Jason Crow (Colo.), Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.), Chris Deluzio (Pa.) and Maggie Goodlander (N.H.), all of whom have served in the military or as intelligence officers.

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Again and again, President Trump's efforts to send National Guard troops to U.S. cities have been met with resistance in the courts.

In his second term, Trump has continued to push the boundaries of military involvement in domestic matters, whether it comes to addressing public safety, quelling protests or safeguarding federal buildings and personnel, including ICE agents.

In response, local and state Democratic leaders have forcefully pushed back and made strides in the courts, where judges have deemed the use of military force as unnecessary or unlawful. Some judges have also expressed wariness around having the military get involved in civilian affairs.

"This principle has been foundational to the safeguarding of our fundamental liberties under the Constitution," U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut wrote in her ruling freezing Trump's deployment to Portland, Ore. earlier this month.

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A group of 17 transgender US air force members has sued the Trump administration for denying them early retirement pensions and benefits.

The complaint, submitted in federal court, describes the government’s move against them as “unlawful and invalid”.

The legal action follows the air force’s confirmation it would deny early retirement benefits to all transgender service members with 15 to 18 years of military experience, a decision that effectively pushes them out of the military with no retirement support at all.

“The Air Force’s own retirement instruction provides that retirement orders may only be rescinded under very limited circumstances, none of which were present here,” the lawsuit says.

Among the named plaintiffs are Logan Ireland, Ashley Davis, Kira Brimhall and Lindell Walley.

Glad Law, one of the advocacy groups behind the lawsuit who is representing the affected service members, said the revocation of early retirement support had ripped away financial support and benefits these families were counting on after long years of excellent service to their country.

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In a social media post, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, just announced “Operation Southern Spear”, a new military mission apparently signaling that the war on drugs could soon be an actual war.

“President Trump ordered action — and the Department of War is delivering. Today, I’m announcing Operation SOUTHERN SPEAR. Led by Joint Task Force Southern Spear and [US Southern Command],” Hegseth wrote on X.

This mission, he added, “defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people. The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood – and we will protect it.”

He offered no other details, as strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and a massing of forces in the region have prompted widespread speculation that US military strikes on Venezuela are imminent.

The US Southern Command (Southcom) is the US military’s combatant command that encompasses 31 countries through South and Central America and the Caribbean.

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