TV News LIES

The US military launched a strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific on Friday, killing three men in its second strike this week.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” US Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, said on Twitter/X.

No US military forces were harmed, according to Southern Command, which is now led by Gen Francis Donovan.

Friday’s strike brought the total number of people killed in US strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats since September to at least 148. Earlier this week, another US military strike killed 11 people, making it one of the deadliest attacks this year.

A 16-second clip posted by the Southern Command on Friday shows a single strike being launched at the boA 16-second clip posted by the Southern Command on Friday shows a single strike being launched at the boat, which later burst into flames.at, which later burst into flames.

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Newly released records show a US citizen was shot and killed in Texas by a federal immigration agent last year during a late-night traffic encounter that was not publicly disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security.

The death of Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, would mark the earliest of at least six deadly shootings by federal officers since the start of a nationwide immigration crackdown in Donald Trump’s second term. On Friday, DHS said the shooting on South Padre Island last March occurred after the driver intentionally struck an agent.

The records are part of a tranche of heavily redacted internal documents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the non-profit obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Though Martinez’s death on 15 March 2025 was reported by local ough Martinez’s death on 15 March 2025 was reported by local media outlets at the time, federal and state authorities did not disclose that the shooting involved the team from HSI. In a statement Friday, DHS said the driver who was killed “intentionally ran over a Homeland Security Investigation special agent”, resulting in another agent firing “defensive shots to protect himself, his fellow agents, and the general public”.media outlets at the time, federal and state authorities did not disclose that the shooting involved the team from HSI.

In a statement Friday, DHS said the driver who was killed “intentionally ran over a Homeland Security Investigation special agent”, resulting in another agent firing “defensive shots to protect himself, his fellow agents, and the general public”.

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The US’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has contended to the podcaster Tucker Carlson that Israel has a biblical right to take over the entire Middle East – or at least the lion’s share of it.

“It would be fine if they took it all,” Huckabee said to Carlson during an interview posted on Friday. The Trump administration appointee and former Arkansas governor discussed with Carlson interpretations of Old Testament scripture within the US Christian nationalist movement.

Carlson – who recently made disputed claims that he was detained at Tel Aviv airport in Israel – asked Huckabee about a biblical verse in which God promises Abraham that his descendants will receive land “from the wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites”.

Carlson pointed out that this area in modern geography would include “like, basically the entire Middle East”.

“The Levant … Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon – it’d also be big parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq,” Carlson said.

Huckabee said: “I’m not sure it would go that far, but it would be a big piece of land.”

He continued: “Israel is a land that God gave, through Abraham, to a people that he chose. It was a people, a place and a purpose.”

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The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) this week abruptly reversed course on a new rule requiring veterans’ disability ratings to be calculated by how well they function on medication and not on the underlying condition or injury itself, a stance that was quickly condemned.

“Effective immediately, VA is halting enforcement of the interim final rule, ‘Evaluative Rating: Impact of Medication,’” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement posted to social media Thursday afternoon.

“VA issued the rule to clarify existing policy and protect Veterans’ benefits in the wake of an ongoing court action. But many interpreted the rule as something that could result in adverse consequences,” Collins said.

The federal rule, which went into effect Tuesday with no warning, drew swift outrage from major veterans groups that argued it could lower disability compensation for millions of veterans who suffer from physical ailments, such as bone or muscle injuries and hypertension or mental health issues.

Chief among the concerns was that the change could lead to veterans choosing not to take medication to be rated higher and receive larger compensation.

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At least one Republican lawmaker is formally pushing back on President Trump’s effort to boost a controversial herbicide, glyphosate, that’s reviled by supporters of the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement.

Trump this week stoked MAHA fury by issuing an executive order that seeks to “ensure an adequate supply” of glyphosate as a national security issue and grant “immunity” to makers of the pesticide under the Defense Production Act.

In response, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) drafted legislation to prevent the order’s implementation. Massie’s legislation also seeks to explicitly allow citizens to bring lawsuits related to exposure to glyphosate, the key ingredient in the frequently litigated Roundup weedkiller.

“This week I will introduce the ‘No Immunity for Glyphosate Act’ to undo the recent Executive Order which promotes glyphosate (Round-Up) and insulates manufacturers from liability,” Massie, who has broken with Trump on multiple issues, wrote on the social platform X.

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A federal judge rejected Tesla’s request to overturn a $243 million jury verdict over the 2019 crash of an Autopilot-equipped Model S, which killed a 22-year-old woman and severely injured her boyfriend.

In a decision made public on Friday, U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said the evidence at trial “more than supports” the August 2025 verdict, and Tesla raised no new arguments to set the verdict aside.

Tesla, led by Elon Musk, is expected to appeal. Neither Tesla nor its lawyers immediately responded to requests for comment.

The case arose from an April 25, 2019, incident in Key Largo, Florida, in which George McGee drove his 2019 Model S through an intersection at about 62 mph (100 kph) while he bent to look for his phone, which he had dropped.

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Three Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian have filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s planned triumphal arch outside Arlington National Cemetery, arguing the colossal structure is being built without congressional approval and that it would obstruct the layout of other monuments.

The lawsuit filed Thursday accuses Trump’s “Independence Arch” of being unlawful with its planned position in the traffic circle in front of the historic military cemetery.

At 250 feet tall, the statue would be “more than double the size of the Lincoln Memorial and the equivalent of a twenty-five-story office building,” states the suit, which was filed on behalf of the veterans and historian by the government watchdog group Public Citizen.

“Its location on Memorial Circle would situate the monument on an axis between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, obstructing a line of sight that was designed to represent the unification of the Nation following the Civil War and that has existed for nearly a century,” it goes on.

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The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump's economic agenda, ruling that he does not have the authority to impose sweeping tariffs at the stroke of a pen.

The court on Feb. 20 tossed the tariffs that are the centerpiece of his economic policy and a major foreign policy tool – but that have also raised costs for consumers and businesses. The 6-3 decision from the conservative court was its first major ruling against Trump's controversial expansive view of presidential power.

“The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.”

Trump, Roberts concluded, cannot.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, the first of three conservatives Trump appointed to the court, wrote a separate opinion stressing the importance of major policies like taxes and tariffs going through Congress.

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