TV News LIES

President Trump on Wednesday weakened vehicle mileage rules for the auto industry, loosening pollution restrictions.

The proposal reduces fuel economy requirements set by former President Biden. The administration claimed the reversal would boost access to and the affordability of gasoline vehicles.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) warned that Republicans will face political “headwinds” ahead of the 2026 elections after the GOP won a closer-than-expected Tennessee special election.

“The opposition party tends to be more motivated, their voters are motivated. So in a special election or off-year elections the turnout models are significantly different than they would be in an even-numbered year. You probably saw that in Tennessee,” Thune told reporters.

And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remains under scrutiny as Republican lawmakers wrestle over how to respond to allegations the defense secretary committed a war crime with a deadly boat strike in the Caribbean. The military struck the alleged drug-trafficking boat four times.

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President Donald Trump on Wednesday, Dec. 3, announced he had pardoned Texas embattled Congressman Henry Cuellar.

Considered among the most conservative Democrats in the U.S. House, Cuellar won an 11th term in November 2024 despite facing a federal indictment over charges he took foreign bribes.

"For years, the Biden Administrhttps://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/12/03/trump-pardons-congressman-henry-cuellar-texas-wife/87584777007/ation weaponized the Justice System against their Political Opponents, and anyone who disagreed with them," Trump posted on Truth Social. "The Radical Left Democrats are a complete and total threat to Democracy! They will attack, rob, lie, cheat, destroy, and decimate anyone who dares to oppose their Far Left Agenda, an Agenda that, if left unchecked, will obliterate our magnificent Country."

"Because of these facts, and others, I am hereby announcing my full and unconditional PARDON of beloved Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar, and Imelda," Trump wrote. "Henry, I don’t know you, but you can sleep well tonight — Your nightmare is finally over!"

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The fear is palpable in this Palestinian village. It’s clear in how farmers gather their harvests quickly, how they scan the valley for movement, how they dare not stray past certain roads. At any time, they say, armed Israeli settlers could descend.

“In a matter of minutes, they get on their phones. They gather themselves, and they surprise you,” said Yasser Alkam, a Palestinian-American lawyer and farmer from the village of Turmus Ayya. “They hide between the trees. They ambush people and beat them up severely.”

In recent months, Alkam says Turmus Ayya has weathered near-daily attacks by settlers, especially after they set up an outpost that the anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now says is on his village’s land.

Alkam says he can’t reach hMore...is own fields for fear of being assaulted. In a particularly gruesome attack, he watched a settler beat a Palestinian woman unconscious with a spiky club.

The fear is shared throughout the West Bank. During October’s olive harvest, settlers across the territory launched an average of eight attacks daily, according to the United Nations humanitarian office, the most since it began collecting data in 2006. The attacks continued in November, with the U.N. recording at least 136 more by Nov. 24.

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Costco is now one of the largest companies to sue the Trump administration over tariffs, hoping to secure a refund if the Supreme Court declares the new import duties illegal.

The Supreme Court is weighing the future of President Trump's tariffs on nearly all imports. Justices seemed skeptical about the tariffs' legality during last month's oral arguments. Lower courts had previously found that Trump had improperly used emergency economic powers to set most of the new levies.

Dozens of companies across industries have filed lawsuits to seek refunds in the event that the Supreme Court finds Trump's tariffs illegal. The list includes makeup giant Revlon, canned-foods maker Bumble Bee and Kawasaki, which makes motorcycles and more. Now Costco has joined the queue.

"This is the first time we're seeing big companies take their heads out of the sand publicly," said Marc Busch, a trade law expert at Georgetown University. For the most part, small companies have been leading the legal action against tariffs, he said, adding, "It's nice to finally see some heavyweights joining in the fray."

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President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday called for a complete end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – not just a pause in the fighting that has raged since February 2022 – ahead of US-Russia talks in Moscow centering on a peace plan aimed at ending Europe’s deadliest war since World War II.

Zelensk is seeking support from European allies, who fear the US plan – which is rumored to have been drafted in Mosclw – reads like a wishlist for Putin.

“Our common task is to end the war, not just to achieve a pause in hostilities. A dignified peace is needed. For this to truly happen, everyone must be on the side of peace,” he said at a joint press conference with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin during his official visit to Ireland.

Earlier on Tuesday, following his arrival in Ireland, Zelensky received a detailed briefing on recent US-Ukraine negotiations in Miami, Florida, where Ukraine’s negotiators reported “significant progress” in revising the initial plan, but noted that challenging issues remain.

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Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, told soldiers under his command in Iraq to ignore legal advice about when they were permitted to kill enemy combatants under their rules of engagement.

The anecdote is contained in a book Hegseth wrote last year in which he also repeatedly railed against the constraints placed on “American warfighters” by the laws of war and the Geneva conventions.

Hegseth is currently under scrutiny for a 2 September attack on a boat purportedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, where survivors of a first strike on the vessel were reportedly killed in a second strike following a verbal order from Hegseth to “kill everybody”.

Hegseth has denied giving the order and retained the support of Donald Trump. The US president said Hegseth told him “he did not say that, and I believe him, 100%”. But some US senators have raised the possibility that the US war secretary committed a war crime.

In the book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth relates a story about a legal briefing at the beginning of his service in Iraq, in which he told the men under his command to ignore guidance from a military judge advocate general’s (JAG) attorney’s guidance about the rules of engagement in the conflict.

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The allegations carry a familiar ring: Fox News aired outrageous lies that an election software company rigged votes in the 2020 presidential elections for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Behind the scenes, Fox News' controlling owners, executives and biggest stars didn't believe the wild claims from President Trump and his allies. Nonetheless, the voting tech company's officials received death threats. Its reputation and financial prospects were badly damaged.https://www.npr.org/2025/12/02/nx-s1-5627506/fox-news-smartmatic-lawsuit-election-claims-trial

These claims are contained in legal filings at the heart of a hearing that will take place in a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday afternoon over whether a multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuit against Fox News should be allowed to proceed to a full jury trial.

The lawsuit is being brought by Smartmatic, a London-based voting technology firm that played a limited role in the 2020 race but was, nonetheless, accused on Fox shows of taking votes away from Trump and throwing them to Biden. Smartmatic is suing for $2.7 billion.

The reason these allegations are so familiar is that the company's claims closely echo those from a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox News stars and their on-air guests also blamed that company for Trump's loss, as they served up a stew of baseless conspiracy theories about the election.

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The Pentagon on Tuesday scapegoated a navy admiral for the extrajudicial double-tap strike that killed survivors of a 2 September attack on an alleged drug boat and vowed to continue operations, even as lawmakers investigate whether the attack constituted a war crime.

At a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday, Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary said that the decision to re-strike the “narco terrorist vessel” was made by Adm Frank M Bradley, “operating under clear and long standing authorities to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States was eliminated”. Wilson added that Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon secretary, “stands behind Admiral Bradley, 100%”.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, on Monday explicitly named Bradley as the officer who “directed the engagement”, distancing Hegseth from accountability despite a Washington Post report that he ordered the deaths of everyone on the boat.

Wilson dismissed critical reporting of the incident as “fake news”.

During a cabinet meeting alongside Donald Trump on Tuesday, Hegseth said: “We’ve only just begun striking narco boats and putting narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean.” He defended Bradley, who is set to provide a classified briefing to lawmakers overseeing the military on Thursday, saying Trump “always has our back” and that “we always have the back of our commanders who are making decisions in difficult situations”.

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