TV News LIES

The Trump administration on Monday proposed stripping the power of an independent board to review challenges from fired federal workers while barring employees from taking the matter to court.

The new proposed rule would impact federal workers fired through a Reduction in Force (RIF), the process used at 22 different agencies last year as the Trump administration conducted widespread layoffs.

If finalized, any federal worker fired in a future RIF would not be able to plead their case before the quasi-judicial Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which last year found that some agencies had “engaged in a prohibited personnel practice” in firing the workers. 

Instead, any challenges would be reviewed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which last year alongside the Office of Management and Budget instructed agencies to begin RIFs.

“Eliminating independent review of federal RIF actions would not only make it harder for employees to challenge their proposed terminations, but would essentially give the administration free rein to terminate huge swaths of the federal workforce without meaningful independent oversight,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal worker union, said in a statement.

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Billionaire Elon Musk is back in the political fray, giving Republicans a boost in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections. 

The Tesla CEO had injected hundreds of millions into the 2024 election but announced plans last spring to step back from political spending, a potential blow for the GOP ahead of the high-stakes midterms.Less than a year later, Musk had already given $20 million to two top Republican groups by the end of 2025, according to federal filings, and dropped $10 million into the Kentucky Senate race last month — signaling the tech mogul could again play a pivotal role in the fight for Congress this fall.

“Musk as a donor is important [because] money in politics is important, but Musk himself is a politically polarizing figure,” said Cayce Myers, a Virginia Tech public relations professor who has focused on political campaigns.  

“As his money is needed, the fact that he is involved does create a complicated political situation for Republicans.”

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Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said after reviewing the unredacted Epstein files that the Justice Department (DOJ) appears to have flouted the law when concealing various names in documents.

Lawmakers on Monday were permitted for the first time to review the unredacted versions of all DOJ files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Several members of Congress had questioned whether the DOJ had fully complied with a law mandating the public release of the files, which allowed for only narrow redactions.

Raskin on Monday said that in addition to revealing the names of victims that were supposed to be shielded, the files released to the public appear to wrongly conceal those who spent time with Epstein “simply to spare them potential embarrassment, political sensitivity or disgrace of some kind.”

“I was able to determine, at least I believe, that there were tons of completely unnecessary redactions in addition to the failure to redact the names of victims, and so that’s troubling to us,” Raskin said.

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With Israel’s reputation reaching record lows among Democrats, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is resorting to ever more sophisticated methods to support its preferred candidates while cloaking its own involvement.

The amount of money that the premier pro-Israel organization is able to spend in elections is extraordinarily valuable to candidates who would otherwise have little chance of winning. But it now comes with a catch: If voters know the money comes from an organization advocating on behalf of Israel, it can do more harm than good.

AIPAC road-tested its stealth approach in a 2024 House primary in Oregon that pitted Susheela Jayapal, the sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), against physician Maxine Dexter. Dexter raised relatively little money throughout much of her campaign, then saw a last-minute deluge organized by AIPAC coupled with outside spending through super PACs, which themselves turned out to be funded by AIPAC.

The timing of the donations meant that there was no meaningful transparency before voters went to the polls, and Dexter expressed a mixture of ignorance and umbrage when her opponents suggested the money actually came from AIPAC.

The main super PAC in question (named 314 Action) explicitly denied that any funding came from AIPAC—a claim revealed as a flagrant lie once disclosure records finally became public. But by then, Dexter had triumphed and was on her way to Congress.

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Noam Chomsky and his wife, Valeria, made a “grave mistake” and were “careless” not to thoroughly research the background of Jeffrey Epstein, Valeria Chomsky said in a lengthy statement on Saturday, adding also that Epstein had deceived them.

The relationship between Noam Chomsky, the 97-year-old linguist and philosopher, and Epstein has been under scrutiny after documents released by the justice department shed light on their friendship. As Epstein came under scrutiny for sex trafficking allegations in 2019, he asked Chomsky for advice on how to respond. “I’ve watched the horrible way you are being treated in the press and public. It’s painful to say, but I think the best way to proceed is to ignore it,” Chomsky wrote in a message signed “Noam” that Epstein shared in email with an associate.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/08/noam-chomsky-epstein-ties-wife-apology

“What the vultures dearly want is a public response, which then provides a public opening for an onslaught of venomous attacks, many from just publicity seekers or cranks of all sorts,” Noam Chomsky wrote in the message. “That’s particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder.”

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A federal judge has reversed a freeze put on funds by Donald Trump for $16bn in enhanced rail links connecting New York and New Jersey amid reports that the US president wants major travel landmarks named after him in return for continued investment.

The Gateway Project will build a new commuter rail tunnel between Manhattan and New Jersey under the Hudson River on the western side of New York City and repair a century-old tunnel used by more than 200,000 travelers and 425 trains daily.

The existing River tunnel was heavily damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and needs frequent emergency repairs that disrupt travel on the nation’s most heavily used passenger rail line.

The US district judge Jeannette Vargas in New York on Friday handed down the temporary ruling hours after New York and New Jersey authorities said construction would halt for lack of funding.

Vargas said the states were likely to succeed on their claims that a Trump administration directive freezing the funds was arbitrary and ran afoul of legal procedures for making policy changes.

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