TV News LIES

The Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general in a vote early Saturday morning, cementing President Donald Trump's former personal attorney's command of a Justice Department the Republican president has sought to bend to his will.

The Republican-led Senate voted 50-49 to make Blanche the second confirmed attorney general since Trump returned to the White House last year with a stated desire to use the law enforcement agency to investigate his political enemies. While Blanche has already been leading the department in an acting capacity, his confirmation could free him to pursue the Trump administration's agenda even more aggressively.

Blanche said on social media that he was "deeply honored by the trust and confidence President Trump has placed in me," adding that he was "grateful" to senators for working late to confirm him.

The vote followed a tumultuous confirmation fight that exposed deep concerns — from some Republicans as well as Democrats — about installing Trump's close ally atop a Justice Department that historically prided itself on its independence from the White House.

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A federal prosecutor fired last year over critical comments he had written as a private citizen about Donald Trump sued the justice department on Friday, saying his termination violated his first amendment rights.

Will Rosenzweig was two weeks away from trying a multimillion-dollar Medicare fraud case when a blog he had written years earlier covering a broad range of topics was publicized online by a conservative political commentator who also included a screenshot of Rosenzweig’s LinkedIn account and tagged senior justice department officials for their awareness.

Less than three hours after the post, the lawsuit says, Rosenzweig received an email signed by then attorney general Pam Bondi informing him that he had been fired. The news came as Rosenzweig was out of town with his family observing the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana.

The September 2025 termination was part of a sweeping personnel purge over the last year and a half inside the justice department, which has fired prosecutors who worked on investigations into Trump and others seen as being against the administration’s efforts.

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A US federal appeals court has ordered the Trump administration to halt construction of the US president’s $400m White House ballroom, in a fresh blow to the controversial project.

Donald Trump, who demolished the historic East Wing of the White House last year to make way for planned ballroom, has repeatedly touted it as “a gift” to the US people.

But in a major setback in a case testing ⁠his presidential authority, the Washington-based US ⁠court of ​appeals for the District of Columbia circuit upheld a preliminary injunction in a divided 2-1 order on Friday.

The appeals court put ⁠its ruling on hold for two weeks, allowing the administration to appeal to the ​US supreme court. Writing on social media, Trump described the ruling as “totally wrong” and said an appeal would be filed.

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Tennessee primary voters picked a pair of Memphis-area lawmakers to square off in a dramatically reconfigured US House seat central to Donald Trump’s plan to try to hold on to a slim Republican majority in the midterm congressional elections.

Republicans chose state senator Brent Taylor, who was endorsed by Trump, to be their nominee in the revamped 9th congressional district. Democrats picked state representative Justin Pearson, who gained national prominence three years ago when he was expelled from the Tennessee House for protesting in support of gun control measures.

The previously compact Memphis-based district had a majority Black population, but it was cracked apart by Republican officials this year following a US supreme court ruling that weakened federal Voting Rights Act protection for minorities. Republicans hope the redistricting, which is part of a broader national plan pushed by Trump, could give them a clean sweep of all nine of Tennessee’s seats

The new ninth district stretches about 200 miles (320km) east from Memphis across rural areas before reaching north toward Nashville. It previously favored Democrats but now tilts Republican, with 71% of voters new to the district, according to an Associated Press estimate. Some Memphis voters have raised concerns that their representation has been diminished.

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The US is tracking nearly 54,000 immigrants through GPS-enabled ankle monitors as part of a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) electronic surveillance program, according to private prison corporation The Geo Group. Early last year, just 17,000 immigrants were wearing the devices..

The Geo Group owns BI Inc, the company that runs ICE’s intensive supervision appearance program (ISAP), and reported the numbers in its earnings call on Thursday.

The overall number of immigrants enrolled in the surveillance program remained flat at about 184,000. Geo Group executives said that a large number of participants were shifted from less intensive forms of surveillance, such as phone check-ins, to ankle monitors.

The shift to ankle monitors, which the company pitches as a “high-security level of monitoring”, has increased revenues for Geo Group . Ankle monitors cost ICE more than most of the other surveillance technologies administered by BI Inc. The company charges ICE a little more than $2 a day per monitor, while the SmartLink app – a facial recognition and location tracking smart phone app – costs about $0.96 for each immigrant enrolled, according to publicly available ICE statistics. At last count, more than 127,000 immigrants are required to check in using SmartLink.

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New Mexico filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Justice and the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, on Wednesday for “stonewalling” its criminal investigation into the activities of the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein at a remote ranch in the state.

Raúl Torrez, the New Mexico attorney general, had said he was mulling the possibility of legal action if the justice department did not share with him by 31 July information about the alleged historical abuse of girls and young women at Epstein’s Zorro ranch about 30 miles south of Santa Fe.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/05/new-mexico-sues-doj-epstein-investigation

Wednesday’s filing, seen by the Guardian, delivers on that threat after the justice department appeared to ignore last Friday’s deadline.

The lawsuit, filed in the US district court for the district of Columbia, alleges that Blanche and his department had “stonewalled” the state investigation Torrez reopened in February after the 10,000-acre Zorro property was mentioned thousands of times in recent releases of the so-called Epstein files.

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