TV News LIES

A leading historic preservation group has called on the Trump administration to halt the bulldozers tearing down the White House’s East Wing to make way for a massive ballroom.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings, said Tuesday that the 90,000-square-foot, $250 million event space would “overwhelm the White House itself,” which is about 55,000 square feet.

The intervention follows the furor sparked by images of a demolition crew tearing through the East Wing’s facade on Monday.

“Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough said Trump had taken a “wrecking ball” to the historic building and called the spectacle “just grotesque.”

But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back at the “fake outrage,” as officials argued the East Wing, which was added in 1902, has been altered many times before.

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The House voted Tuesday to end a nearly four-day partial government shutdown, approving spending through September for previously shuttered departments and providing 10 more days of funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

The 217-214 final vote to send the funding package to President Trump’s desk was close — but bipartisan, with 21 Republicans voting against it and just 21 Democrats voting for it. Democratic leadership voted against the package.

Trump swiftly signed the legislation Tuesday afternoon, ending the partial government shutdown, but a fight is likely to continue over the issue that triggered it: what policy reforms should be implemented for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The bipartisan vote came only after a dramatic procedural vote earlier in the day in which House Republican leaders worked to wrangle a handful of holdouts making demands on separate legislation affecting voting in elections.

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The Timbisha Shoshone exhibit at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center in Death Valley is currently under review after the Trump administration advised National Park Service officials to remove certain language from a display.

The review came after the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe worked with the National Park Service to add language and materials to the exhibit to mark the 25th anniversary of the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act, which formally recognized the tribe’s ancestral connection to Death Valley, granted a permanent land base to the tribe, and established co-management of much of the park.

The phrases in question “We are still here” and “This is our Homeland” have been a part of the exhibit since it was created, but came under review after the Park Service submitted plans to add a medallion and earrings to the Timbisha exhibit as part of a public ceremony for the act’s anniversary.

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President Donald Trump said Republicans should "nationalize" the voting process as he continues to level unfounded claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, more than five years after losing to Joe Biden.

Trump called for Republicans at the federal level to seize control of elections from states during an appearance on the podcast of Dan Bongino, who returned to his show on Feb. 2 after resigning in January as FBI deputy director in the Trump administration.

"The Republicans should say, 'We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least ‒ many, 15 places.'" Trump said. "The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that are so crooked."

The Constitution gives authority to states ‒ not the federal government ‒ to set "the times, places and manner" of holding federal elections, but it empowers Congress to "make or alter" rules.

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Immediately after a US border patrol agent shot two people in Oregon last month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the targets were “vicious” gang members connected to a prior shooting and alleged they had “attempted to run over” officers with their vehicle.

In the weeks since, key parts of the federal government’s narrative have fallen apart.

The events took place on the afternoon of 8 January, one day after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.

According to a DHS press release and social media posts issued the following day, border patrol agents were conducting a “targeted” stop of a vehicle in Portland occupied by two members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang. Yorlenys Zambrano-Contreras, a woman in the passenger seat, had been “involved” in a Portland shooting last year, the agency wrote.

During the border patrol stop, the driver, Luis Niño-Moncada, “weaponized their vehicle against” officers, DHS said, prompting an agent “to defend himself and others” by shooting the occupants. Zambrano-Contreras was hit in the chest, Niño-Moncada was hit in the arm and both were hospitalized, then taken into federal custody, DHS noted. The agents were uninjured.

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Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said President Trump’s Make American Great Again slogan was a “lie,” saying his first year back in office was focused on obliging wealthy supporters.

“I think people are realizing it was all a lie. It was a big lie for the people. What MAGA is really serving in this administration, who they’re serving, is their big donors,” Greene said in a Wednesday interview with radio personality Kim Iversen.

“The big, big donors that donated all the money and continue to donate to the president’s PACs and donate to the 250th anniversary and are donating to the big ballroom,” she added.

The former Georgia representative recently resigned from Congress, after airing concerns over the future of health care premiums and the war in Gaza, citing fractures within the GOP and falling out with Trump and MAGA, despite years of loyal support for the president.

On Wednesday, she said the people who truly benefit from backing Trump are financial benefactors, telling Iversen: “Those are the people that get the special favors. They get the government contracts, they get the pardons, or somebody they love or one of their friends gets a pardon.”

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