TV News LIES

Conservation and historical organizations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over National Park Service policies that the groups say erase history and science from America’s national parks.

A lawsuit filed in Boston says orders by Donald Trump and interior secretary Doug Burgum have forced park service staff to remove or censor exhibits that share factually accurate and relevant US history and scientific knowledge, including about slavery and climate change.

Separately, LGBTQ+ rights advocates and historic preservationists sued the park service on Tuesday for removing a rainbow Pride flag from the Stonewall national monument, the New York site that commemorates a foundational moment in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

The changes at exhibits came in response to a Trump executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks. It directed the interior department to ensure those sites do not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Burgum later directed removal of “improper partisan ideology” from museums, monuments, landmarks and other public exhibits under federal control.

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A special education teacher was killed in a car crash in Savannah, Ga., on Monday morning that involved Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Department of Homeland Security said Linda Davis, 52, died after Oscar Vasquez-Lopez, a 38-year-old man from Guatemala who ICE was trying to arrest, “fled the scene, making a reckless U-turn and running a red light, colliding into a civilian vehicle.”

Although the collision occurred near Herman W. Hesse K-8 School, students were not present as Monday was a federal holiday, the school said.

The Chatham County Police Department said Vasquez-Lopez was in custody and had been charged with reckless driving, driving without a valid license, failure to obey a traffic control device and homicide by vehicle -1st degree.

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Minnesota law enforcement authorities have said the FBI is refusing to share any evidence on its investigation into the death of Alex Pretti, the man killed by federal immigration authorities in late January.

Pretti was shot on 24 January by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials in Minneapolis during the Trump administration’s surge of immigration enforcement operations in the city. His killing came just two weeks after an immigration official shot and killed Renee Good and 10 days after the shooting of Julio C Sosa-Celis.

On Monday, Minnesota’s bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA), a state-level criminal investigative law enforcement agency, said the FBI had formally notified it that it would not share any information or evidence related to Pretti’s shooting.

The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, has demanded an “impartial” investigation into the shootings in Minneapolis.

“Trump’s left hand cannot investigate his right hand,” he said on Monday in response to the FBI’s refusal to share evidence. “The families of the deceased deserve better.”

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A growing number of Olympic athletes competing for the U.S. in this month’s Winter Games are expressing discomfort with representing the country under President Trump’s administration, sparking intense pushback from the president’s supporters and Trump himself. 

Trump attacked U.S. athlete Hunter Hess directly after Hess said he was conflicted about competing for Team USA given the country’s political climate.

“It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now. I think it’s a little hard,” Hess, a freestyle skier, told reporters during a recent press conference. “There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.” 

The president in a Truth Social post hours later called Hess a “real loser” and said it is “very hard to root for someone like this” when watching the games.

Hess’s comments came days after Amber Glenn, an American figure skater, decried the administration’s policies toward people in the LGBTQ community.

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Last week, we learned of the decision of the Texas A&M University board of regents to end women’s and gender studies programs as well as the teaching of “divisive concepts” such as race. A&M was not the first university to do this. Florida’s New College made the move in 2023. Other red state legislatures have passed similar requirements and their public universities (in North Carolina, Ohio and Kansas) have followed suit.

The move to cancel gender studies is explicitly justified as a way to comply with Donald Trump’s executive order of last year titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. That document makes “the biological reality of sex” a matter not of science but of law.

Until this week’s latest dump of the Epstein files by Trump’s justice department, I hadn’t seen the connection between the two. But now it’s as clear as day. The abolition of gender studies is a way of further guaranteeing impunity to the elite men whose contempt for and exploitation of women and girls apparently knew no bounds, whether they actually slept with the women on offer or simply shared Epstein’s fantasies in order to gain influence or funding.

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At least a half-dozen top officials in the current Trump administration have connections to Jeffrey Epstein, according to an NBC News review of some of the over 3 million documents the Justice Department has released.

The degree to which each individual was connected to Epstein varies significantly, from a single email to years of communications. President Donald Trump, who had a lengthy relationship with Epstein, is mentioned thousands of times in the files. Trump has never been accused by authorities of any wrongdoing connected to Epstein, and has said he parted ways with him in the mid-2000s because he was a “creep.” He has also denied any wrongdoing.

During a testy oversight hearing on Wednesday. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi on whether any current administration officials have been questioned by the Justice Department about their ties to Epstein.

"I'm stunned that you want to continue talking about Epstein," Bondi replied while sidestepping the question.

In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump praised Bondi's appearance at the Senate hearing and claimed that the files provide "conclusively" that he "has been 100% exonerated."

Some officials from previous Democratic administrations have appeared in the files — including former President Bill Clinton, his former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and former Obama White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler.

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