TV News LIES

A new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) finds hard-right groups have increasingly expanded their influence across the US government, which is pursuing a federal fraud case into the civil rights organization.

Tuesday’s report – which identified 1,263 hate and anti-government groups in operation throughout 2025 – comes less than two months after it was indicted by the government it says the hard right has infiltrated.

According to the SPLC’s annual Year in Hate and Extremism report, Donald Trump’s administration has “radically transformed government policy in favor of far-right interests and individuals” since the start of his second presidency in early 2025.

In addition to the administration’s “full, complete and unconditional” presidential pardons of approximately 1,500 people involved in the January 6 Capitol attack in 2021, the report cited the administration’s shifting the focus of federal law enforcement from combating violent crime to conducting immigration raids against marginalized communities.

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Graham Platner, a progressive oyster farmer and political newcomer whose campaign has been wrought with controversies, will face off this fall against Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, Decision Desk HQ projects.

Collins, who is seeking a sixth term, was unchallenged on Tuesday, while Platner easily advanced from the Democratic primary despite questions about whether he’s become a liability for the party in the must-win race.

Democrats are eyeing a rare pickup opportunity in the Pine Tree State, where Collins has held onto her Senate seat despite its blue leanings. It’s one of just a handful of races in the upper chamber considered toss-ups this cycle, and it could be pivotal to Democrats’ hopes of taking back the Senate in the midterms.

Platner’s campaign, however, has faced growing scrutiny that sparked Democratic anxieties about his candidacy ahead of Tuesday’s primary.

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Nithya Raman, a progressive Los Angeles city council member, has advanced to the November runoff for LA mayor, edging out former reality TV villain Spencer Pratt for the chance to face incumbent mayor Karen Bass.

Pratt, who decided to run for mayor after his Pacific Palisades home burned down in the 2025 wildfires, held a lead over Raman for days. But as ballot processing from last week’s election continued, the city councillor pulled ahead.

Bass, who is seeking another term leading America’s second largest city,learned on 2 June’s primary election night she had secured enough votes to make it to the November election, but the race for second remained close for nearly a week.

Bass’s campaign released a statement on Monday night after hearing of Raman advancing. “A campaign against Nithya Raman, who allows encampments near schools and cuts the police force, is one Mayor Bass looks forward to winning,” said Douglas Herman, a strategist.

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A federal judge on Monday threatened to sanction President Donald Trump's personal attorneys after they missed a court deadline in his sprawling $10 billion libel lawsuit against the BBC — and tried to cover their tracks with a pair of last-minute procedural filings.

U.S. District Judge Roy Altman, a Trump appointee, ordered the president's legal team to explain by June 10 why he shouldn't penalize them for what he called their "apparent disregard of court deadlines." Trump's lawyers had been due to respond to the BBC's motion to dismiss the case by June 5. Instead of filing that response, they submitted two eleventh-hour motions — one seeking leave to file excess pages, another seeking to file under seal — neither of which asked the court to extend the deadline.

Altman also asked whether the BBC's motion to dismiss should be considered unopposed.

The lawsuit, filed in December in the Southern District of Florida, accuses the BBC of defaming Trump by splicing together two portions of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech — made nearly 55 minutes apart — to make it appear he had urged supporters to march on the Capitol and "fight like hell." The BBC has apologized for the edit but is fighting the suit, arguing the Florida court lacks jurisdiction over a documentary that never aired in the United States.

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A federal judge over the weekend struck down a Trump administration effort to restrict tax credits for wind and solar energy.

While the ruling is a win for renewable energy supporters, it comes less than a month before a key deadline to phase out the credits entirely under Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill,” so it’s unclear how wide-reaching the decision will be.

Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act phased out tax credits for solar and wind energy, saying projects can only get them if they start construction before July 5, 2026 or are placed in service before 2028.

At issue in the case is the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) definition of starting construction. 

D.C. federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote that since 2013, the IRS has recognized two ways that projects can begin: by starting “physical work of a significant nature” or by incurring costs of five percent or more of a project’s total cost.

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A U.S. District Court judge on Monday, June 8, struck down President Donald Trump's policy imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas, popular among the tech sector and universities to hire foreign skilled workers.

Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the ruling in a lawsuit filed by nearly two dozen Democratic state attorneys general, finding it constituted an unlawful tax Congress never authorized.

The states' top prosecutors, 20 in all, had challenged the fee Trump announced in September that dramatically raised the cost of obtaining the specialized visas.

Trump’s fees were part of a broader strategy to favor U.S. citizens over foreign workers, USA TODAY previously reported. The higher visa costs came amid the Trump administration's central immigration reforms and deportation crackdown, which were also the centerpieces of the president's 2024 campaign.

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