TV News LIES

The Heritage Foundation, an influential rightwing thinktank currently mired in controversy over its president’s apparent apology for extremism, has appointed as a director the founder of a secretive all-male network of Christian nationalist fraternal lodges.

Scott Yenor, appointed as Heritage’s new director of the B Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies, has also recently offered ultra-conservative opinions on women, marriage and LGBTQ+ rights in recent podcast appearances and speaking engagements.

They have included that there is an association between homosexuality and pedophilia; that adultery, homosexuality, no-fault divorce, and abortion should be outlawed under a regime of “soft patriarchy”; and that elements of the US Civil Rights Act, including its prohibitions against workplace sex discrimination, should be wound back.

Heritage appointed Yenor despite a string of controversies over his reactionary politics, including his resignation in April from the University of Florida’s board of regents after protests and concern from state legislators over his views about women.

Heidi Beirich, chief strategy officer and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said: “It’s just disgraceful that Heritage, especially given all of its recent scandals over providing cover for antisemitism, would hire Yenor, who has long bashed women and has been investigated by his former employer for civil rights violations.”

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Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said her son, a U.S.-born citizen, was targeted by ICE agents on Saturday after he stopped at a Target store.

She said her son was pulled over but then was allowed to move on after he provided his passport.

“Yesterday after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by ICE agents and once he was able to produce his passport ID they did let him go,” she said during an interview on WCCO, CBS’s Minnesota station, on Sunday.

She added that her son regularly brings his passport with him in case he gets pulled over by ICE.

Omar and President Trump have been battling over Minnesota’s population of Somalian immigrants, with Trump calling Somalians “garbage” and increasing ICE agent presence in the state in an operation called “Operation Metro Surge” earlier this month.

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President Donald Trump drew strong bipartisan condemnation for his criticism of acclaimed director and actor Rob Reiner shortly after his death, with Republican lawmakers calling Trump's response "wrong" and "disrespectful."

Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, were killed in their Los Angeles home Dec. 14. Trump responded the next day with a social media post saying Reiner's death was "reportedly due to the anger he caused others through... a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME."

"He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump," the president added.

Trump continued to criticize Reiner during a White House event later in the day, responding to a question about the GOP pushback on his social media post, and whether he stands by it, saying: "I wasn't a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned."

There has been no indication from officials that Reiner's death had anything to do with his political beliefs. Police took Reiner's son, Nick Reiner, into custody, charged him with murder and are holding him on no bail after his initial bail was set at $4 million, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Records reviewed by USA TODAY.

Trump's reaction to Reiner's death was quickly rejected by many on both the left and right.

"Regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered," Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, who has clashed with Trump, said on social media.

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Amid concerns that he has failed to address a worsening affordability crisis, with health insurance premiums about to spike dramatically for over 20 million Americans, Donald Trump revealed on Sunday that his domestic policy chief’s main priority is building a triumphal arch for Washington DC.

Speaking at a White House holiday party, the president praised Vince Haley, his former speechwriter and a longtime aide to Newt Gingrich who now leads the White House Domestic Policy Council.rump

“Vince is unbelievable on policy,” Trump said. “And we have a policy thing that’s going to be unbelievable happening.”

The nature of that policy initiative might indeed be hard to believe for Americans struggling to make ends meet.

“I put Vince in charge of the triumphal arc,” Trump said, using the French word for arch. “We’re building an arc, like the Arc de Triumph,” the president added, mixing English and French, in remarks shared on social media by the White House.

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The Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against four more states as part of the Trump administration's attempt to access sensitive voter data. The DOJ is also suing one Georgia county, seeking records from the 2020 election.

The department has now filed suit against 18 states — mostly Democratic-led, and all states that President Trump lost in the 2020 election — as part of its far-reaching litigation.

For months, the Justice Department has been demanding certain states turn over complete, unredacted copies of their voter registration lists, including any driver's license numbers and parts of voters' Social Security numbers.

In court filings, the DOJ says it wants this personal information to check if states are following federal law on keeping accurate voter rolls.

But most states have refused, citing privacy restrictions.

The latest states to be sued are Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Nevada, the Justice Department announced Friday.

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A federal judge ordered the Justice Department on Friday to return data it seized and obtained in 2017 from a longtime friend of former FBI Director James Comey, concluding that prosecutors had violated law professor Daniel Richman’s constitutional rights and misused his material in their quest to indict Comey.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the material from Richman — an image of his hard drive and files from his iCloud and Columbia University email accounts — was handled with “callous disregard” for Richman’s rights. Prosecutors rummaged through the materials without a warrant as they pursued a slapdash case against Comey, the judge found, calling it a “remarkable breach of protocol.”

However, in a significant concession to prosecutors, Kollar-Kotelly ordered that a copy of all the data the government obtained be deposited with a federal court in Virginia. That provision, the judge said, would ensure that prosecutors could seek to regain access to the materials if they can persuade the court there to do so.

“This Court concludes that although Petitioner Richman is entitled to the return of the improperly seized and searched materials at issue here,” the Clinton-appointed judge wrote, “he is not entitled to an order preventing the Government from ‘using or relying on’ those materials in a separate investigation or proceeding, as long as they are obtained through a valid warrant and judicial order.”

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