TV News LIES

While Donald Trump ponders demolishing the Kennedy Center unless his name is added to the memorial for the slain president, the United States Institute of Peace filed an emergency motion in federal court on Thursday asking a judge to block his administration “from carrying out plans to carve President Trump’s name into the façade of the iconic USIP headquarters building.”

The filing was made in a court battle that began in May 2025, when a federal judge ruled that Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, or US Doge service, illegally took over the the non-profit thinktank created and funded by the US Congress through “blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers from three separate local and federal agencies”.

Musk’s Doge staff fired most USIP employees in a late-night email in March 2025, and then forcefully entered the thinktank’s building after cancelling its contract for private security.

In court, the USIP has maintained the organization is an independent creation of Congress and outside the president’s executive authority. The administration argues it is an executive branch organization, and pushed ahead, last December, with affixing Trump’s name to the exterior of the building, using bolted-on lettering. That change already offended the USIP board members who filed the suit, but carving Trump’s name into the stone, they argued on Thursday, “would cause irreparable harm”.

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A federal judge on Thursday declined Rep. Joyce Beatty’s (D-Ohio) request for an emergency hearing to review the Kennedy Center board’s latest vote to close the building for renovations.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper will, however, require the government to provide at least 30 days’ notice if it intends to demolish the performing arts center in the nation’s capital.

Cooper said his requirement seeks to “avoid any confusion on that score given more recent events.”

The Trump administration has described the Kennedy Center as in a state of decay, saying renovations are needed to conduct repairs.

President Trump has publicly suggested the building could soon be razed if courts don’t allow him to add his name to the facade. The president was seen Wednesday night on Air Force One looking at a placard that appears to depict a potential demolition.

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Over the past year and a half, Donald Trump and his administration have launched a campaign to censor American history at US national parks and federal lands.

As part of Executive Order 14253, “Restoring truth and sanity to American history”, the Department of Interior (DOI) ordered park rangers to review all signs, brochures, books and films for content that “inappropriately disparages” Americans by suggesting that the United States was “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”. It’s resulted in dozens of sign removals across the US, most of them related to slavery, Indigenous history and the climate crisis.

The DOI also placed notices throughout parks inviting visitors to participate in this history-rewriting campaign, asking them to report, via QR codes, “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features”.

Instead, these QR code entries became a mode of resistance for many park visitors who used them as a way to tell the Trump administration that they don’t agree with how they’re reshaping national parks.

Park visitors submitted more than 35,000 comments between June 2025 and January 2026. The Guardian accessed this trove of responses after groups including the Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association filed a Freedom of Information Act request for it. We analyzed these comments and found that at least 19,000 of them – more than half – expressed support for the parks or opposition to the administration’s censorship campaign.

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After a brief reprieve earlier in the week, President Donald Trump’s approval rating resumed its decline, falling to a new second-term low in the latest Marquette University Law School poll.

The poll, released Tuesday, Sept. 15, found that 37% of Americans approved of Trump’s job performance, down three percentage points from Marquette’s July poll.

The president’s approval rating in Tuesday’s poll marks his lowest in Marquette University’s tracking since his return to the White House in early 2025. Before Sept. 15, Trump’s previous low was in June, when the poll recorded a 38% approval rating.

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The artist Finneas and three other supporting acts quit Ed Sheeran's tour on Tuesday, after the US rapper Macklemore was removed for his pro-Palestine comments on stage.

Finneas, Irish acts Aaron Rowe and Beoga, and Lukas Graham of Denmark all posted statements announcing they were quitting Sheeran's "Loop Tour" in solidarity with the rapper and Palestinian people.

"Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed,” Finneas said in a statement on social media.

His statement came after Irish singer Aaron Rowe published a statement, announcing that he had decided to withdraw as a support act for the British singer.

"Ed has been a friend to me and has changed my life," he said. "But as Irish people we know all too well about genocide, forced famine and violent occupation. I cannot stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence the rightful voices of those who speak up against Israeli genocide and who highlight the savage murder of children."

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In a statement shared on Instagram, US rapper Macklemore confirmed that “Ed Sheeran and his team” had dropped him from the tour after he said “Free Palestine”.

The campaign to remove Macklemore from the tour was driven by billionaire Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, who threatened to block Sheeran and his team from using his stadium.

Kraft also rallied other stadium owners across the country to stop the tour from proceeding.

“Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium,” Macklemore wrote.

“Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: 'If Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.'”

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