TV News LIES

The Department of Health and Human Services is freezing all childcare payments to all states, an official for Donald Trump’s administration told ABC News in a report published Wednesday. States’ funds will be released “only when states prove they are being spent legitimately”.

The report came a day after Jim O’Neill, the HHS deputy secretary, and Alex Adams, an HHS assistant secretary who oversees the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), appeared in a Tuesday evening video message. O’Neill declared that the department had “activated our defend-the-spend system for all ACF childcare payments across America” and would now require “justification, receipt or photo evidence before we make a payment”.

Originally, O’Neill and Adams’s message was interpreted as an announcement that HHS would stop childcare funding in Minnesota, not all 50 states. However, the Associated Press reported late Wednesday that the freeze would apply to every state and that all states would need to provide more documentation about their childcare programs before receiving federal money

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Nineteen states will raise their minimum wages to ring in the new year for 2026, with most of them reaching a rate of $15 per hour or higher.

Another 49 cities and counties across the country will also be hiking their wage floors on Jan. 1, according to a breakdown by the National Employment Law Project.

Even though the federal minimum wage remains just $7.25 per hour, a majority of states now require employers to pay a higher rate. New Year’s Day is the most common time for states to implement scheduled increases to their minimum wages, thanks to cost-of-living adjustments written into state laws.

The highest state minimums will come to Washington State, at $17.13 per hour; New York, which will mandate $17 in the New York City metro area; and New Jersey, which will require $18.92 for long-term care workers.

Alaska and Florida are scheduled to raise their wage floors later in 2026, to $14 and $15, respectively. Oregon will also hike its minimum wage next summer to a rate still to be determined.

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The U.S. military said Wednesday it struck three more boats that were allegedly smuggling drugs, killing three people while others jumped overboard and may have survived.

The statement by U.S. Southern Command, which oversees South America, did not reveal where the attacks occurred. Previous attacks have been in the Caribbean Sea and in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

A video posted by Southern Command on social media shows the boats traveling in a close formation, which is unusual, and the military said they were in a convoy along known narco-trafficking routes and “had transferred narcotics between the three vessels prior to the strikes.” The military did not provide evidence to back up the claim.

The military said three people were killed when the first boat was struck, while people in the other two boats jumped overboard and distanced themselves from the vessels before they were attacked. Southern Command said it immediately notified the U.S. Coast Guard to activate search and rescue efforts.

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Former special counsel Jack Smith was still contemplating whether to charge President Trump’s co-conspirators in the Jan. 6, 2021, case when the president won the election, he revealed to the House in a closed-door deposition released Wednesday.

Smith also told investigators he was preparing to rely on a number of Trump allies who agreed to testify against the president that “what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal.” He also said the violence of Jan. 6 was “foreseeable” to Trump.More...

“Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party,” Smith told the panel’s team over the course of a more than seven-hour interview on Dec. 17.

The Justice Department prohibited Smith from talking about not-yet-public information related to his investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. He was also more broadly prohibited from speaking about aspects of either case against Trump still covered by grand jury secrecy rules.

But the 255-page transcript offers new insights into Smith’s approach to the case, a rare window into the mind of a prosecutor prohibited from making bombshell statements about the case and who has been little heard from since a brief press conference in 2022 announcing he would oversee the investigations.

Smith told investigators that he met with many of Trump’s allies in the case — saying he found a level of cooperation with some of the six co-conspirators they accused of working alongside the president to block the peaceful transfer of power.

“Some of the co-conspirators met with us in proffers and did interviews with us,” Smith said.

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MAGA Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) has taken a rare swipe at President Trump for using the first veto of his second term to reject a unanimously approved bill she co-sponsored to bring more water to rural communities in her home state.

The firebrand congresswoman expressed concern that Trump’s veto was motivated by “political retribution,” with some of the president’s critics citing a local 2020 case of alleged election fraud that hasn’t gone to his liking and Boebert’s tough stance on the Jeffrey Epstein files.

“President Trump decided to veto a completely non-controversial, bipartisan bill that passed both the House and Senate unanimously. Why?” Boebert vented in a statement Tuesday, the day after the veto.

“I must have missed the rally where he stood in Colorado and promised to personally derail critical water infrastructure projects. My bad, I thought the campaign was about lowering costs and cutting red tape.”

The bill in question, the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, had cleared both the House and Senate unanimously.

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A gay California man assaulted in what authorities say was a hate crime on Halloween night has died of his injuries. Now his accused attacker is facing a homicide charge.

Sean Wesley Payton Jr., 25, has been held in jail for about two months following the attack in Sacramento around 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 1. Alvin Prasad, the 58-year-old man he's accused of targeting, died of his injuries in the hospital on Sunday, Dec. 28. His daughter, Andrea Prasad, has identified him as gay on the GoFundMe page she created, and Prasad was proudly open in hundreds of social media posts.

Now Payton will be booked on a homicide charge, Sacramento police announced on Monday, Dec. 29.

Prosecutors had not charged Payton with homicide as of Wednesday, Dec. 31, but were "evaluating" doing so in light of Prasad's death, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office told USA TODAY on Wednesday.

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President Donald Trump said in a social media post on Wednesday, Dec. 31, he is clawing back National Guard troops he deployed to Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland.

"We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact," Trump wrote in the post.

The president added that federal forces will "come back" if crime rates go up.

The move comes a week after the Supreme Court weighed in on the president's controversial use of militder the control of governors, can be called into federal service by the president only under certain circumstances.ary troops to enforce immigration laws and fight crime in cities led by Democrats. The Dec. 23 decision blocked deployments from moving forward in Chicago.

The National Guard, which typically operates under the control of governors, can be called into federal service by the president only under certain circumstances.

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As the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip stretches on, more and more reports have emerged of growing strains between US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Axios last week indicated that Trump’s top aides believe that Netanyahu is sabotaging the ceasefire process. According to the report, Trump’s team is convinced that Netanyahu is delaying progress toward the second phase of the president’s Gaza plan, and could ultimately resume the war against Hamas. Trump, meanwhile, wants to unveil the new technocratic government for Gaza, backed by the international peacekeeping force, and to convene the Board of Peace.

There were disagreements over Syria reported in the news as well. According to the Kan public broadcaster, Netanyahu asked Trump to retain some American sanctions on Syria as he prepared to repeal them last week, in the hope that they could be used as a bargaining chip in future negotiations, but the request was refused.

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