TV News LIES

John Roberts Jr used his position as the US supreme court’s chief justice to urge his colleagues to rule quickly – and in favor – of Donald Trump ahead of the decision that granted him and other presidents immunity for official acts, according to a New York Times investigation published on Sunday.

The new report provides details about what was happening behind the scenes in the country’s highest court during the three recent supreme court decisions centering on – and generally favoring – the Republican former president.

Based on leaked memos, documentation of the proceedings, and interviews with court insiders, the Times report suggests that Roberts – who was appointed to the supreme court during Republican George W Bush’s presidency – took an unusually active role in the three cases in question. And he wrote the majority opinions on all three.

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In a stunning admission, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he was willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio.

Vance’s remarks came during an appearance on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, where he said he felt the need “to create stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”.

Asked by the CNN host Dana Bash whether the false rumors centering on Springfield, Ohio, were “a story that you created”, Vance replied, “Yes!” He then said the claims were rooted in “accounts from … constituents” and that he as well as the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, had spoken publicly about them to draw attention to Springfield’s relatively large Haitian population.

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Two hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, were sent into lockdown after bomb threats, police said Saturday, marking the fourth such case in as many days that appears linked to false claims circulating among the far right that Haitian immigrants there are eating domestic pets and wildlife.

Saturday’s threats came even after the woman who started the rumors acknowledged to NBC News that they were unfounded and publicly apologized.

Kettering Health Springfield was one of the medical facilities targeted, with officials later saying they found nothing suspicious during a search. Another hospital, Mercy Health’s Springfield regional medical center, received a similar threat.

A spokesperson with Mercy Health said the hospital has continued to operate and thanked Springfield police as well as hospital staff “for their swift, efficient and caring response”.

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The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Friday that mail-in ballots with incorrect dates will not be counted in November, reversing a previous ruling from a lower court in the battleground state.

The decision from last month named only Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, which the state’s Supreme Court argued the lower ruling lacked jurisdiction.

“HUGE election integrity win in Pennsylvania,” GOP Chairman Michael Whatley said in a post on X.

The court’s reversal is a win for the Republicans, but received some backlash from the state’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which labeled misdated ballots a “common trivial error on the external envelopes” in a press release on Friday.

A US appeals court late on Thursday declined to interfere with a lower court decision to keep Donald Trump’s already-decided criminal case, over hush money paid to an adult film star, in state court, dealing another blow to the former US president’s bid to move the case to federal court.

On 29 August, nearly three months after he was convicted in the first-ever criminal trial of a US president, Trump asked US district judge Alvin Hellerstein to move the case from New York state court in Manhattan to federal court, arguing the trial violated his constitutional rights.

Trump, the Republican nominee for president in the 5 November election, said that if the case were moved, he would ask the federal court to dismiss it altogether because jurors at trial saw evidence of his official acts as president.

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Two elementary schools were evacuated, and a middle school was closed Friday morning in the Ohio city of Springfield − the target of false election-year rumors about Haitian migrants − "based on information received from the Springfield Police Division," school officials said.

Springfield, located north of Dayton, vaulted to national prominence after former President Donald Trump announced during Tuesday's presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that, "In Springfield they are eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there."

The claim has led to threatening calls and bomb threats.

Perrin Woods Elementary School and Snowhill Elementary School students were evacuated from their buildings Friday morning and moved to an "alternate district location," according to a school district news release. The district is currently dismissing students to their parents.

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