TV News LIES

While the world watched the pomp of Donald Trump’s trip to Beijing, the US was turning up the pressure thousands of miles away. Its oil blockade has plunged Cuba into a humanitarian crisis, sparking nationwide blackouts that have prompted rare protests, closing schools and universities and leaving hospitals battling to treat patients.

Surveillance flights are circling. US media reported this weekend that federal prosecutors are preparing an indictment for Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president and brother of Fidel. Mr Trump has casually observed, while bragging about the kidnapping of Venezuela’s then leader Nicolás Maduro in January, that “Cuba is next”.

A military assault on Havana would be vastly more fraught for the US – even without the war on Iran – and disastrous for Cubans. Washington hopes that threats and privation will be sufficient. UN experts warn that the blockade is unlawful, puts human rights at risk and may amount to collective punishment. The government admitted on Wednesday that fuel oil had run out.

Tourism has collapsed. The Canadian mining company Sherritt pulled out of a joint venture and countries have axed their contracts for Cuban doctors – a vital source of income for the island, and trained medical staff for others. Havana may hope that it can stagger on. But Mr Trump is not patient.

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The shutdown of the Long Island Rail Road, North America’s largest commuter rail system, continued into a second day on Sunday after unionized workers went on strike a day earlier for the first time in three decades.

The railroad, which serves New York City and its eastern suburbs, ceased operations just after midnight Friday after five unions representing about half its workforce walked off the job.

Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, said at a Sunday news conference: “Let me be clear, I did not want a strike.”

Hochul defended the MTA’s negotiations, saying: “The MTA has put fair offers on the table, in fact, many of them. And so, despite that, for the first time in 30 years, hundreds of thousands of people that rely on the LIRR are without service because of a strike.”

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With two days to go before the next big test of Donald Trump’s iron grip over his party, the president went head-to-head on Sunday with his nemesis, Thomas Massie the Kentucky congressman who is in a fight for his political life in Tuesday’s Republican primary.

Over an eight-hour period starting in the early hours of Sunday, Trump took to his bully pulpit on Truth Social to taunt Massie, one of very few senior Republicans who has dared to defy him. Massie is the “worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country”, the rant began, followed by a mid-morning exhortation to Kentucky voters to “vote the bum out on Tuesday”.

Massie has been a consistent thorn in Trump’s side, voting against his signature tax and spending cuts bill, helping to force the justice department to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, and insisting on congressional oversight over the military actions in Venezuela and Iran. Now he faces a bruising primary against his Trump-endorsed challenger, Ed Gallrein.

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Even as Democratic officials fight the effort in court, the Trump administration has run millions of voter registrations through government databases to determine their eligibility in a process that critics worry could end up purging valid voters from the rolls before the November elections.

At least 67 million registrations, primarily from Republican-controlled states, have gone through a beefed-up verification program at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and tens of thousands of those have been flagged as potential noncitizens or people who have died. Some states allow only a month for people to prove their eligibility and others suspend it immediately.

The scanning of state voter rolls at the national level is part of a broader effort by Republican President Donald Trump to federalize certain election functions and promote his messaging that elections are marred by noncitizen voting, even though instances of that are rare. Voting and civil rights advocates say the DHS system is error-prone and can mistakenly flag people who are eligible to vote.

“If a voter is wrongly removed, by the time they learn about it and correct it, they may miss their opportunity to vote in that election,” said Freda Levenson, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. The group is challenging an Ohio law requiring monthly checks with the DHS system.

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Former Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Sunday described Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R-La.) defeat in the Louisiana Republican primary on Saturday as a “loss for the country.”

Cassidy lost the race in Louisiana’s newly closed primary system following years of disagreement with President Trump after Cassidy voted to convict him for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

“The Senate to now lose an exceptionally brilliant and creative mind, an MD who chairs healthcare, and a person of character,” Romney said on the social platform X, referring to Cassidy’s degree as a medical doctor. “Bill Cassidy’s departure is a loss for the country.”

Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming (R) were the top vote-getters Saturday, edging out Cassidy in his toughest race since first winning in 2014. Neither Fleming nor Letlow scored at least half the vote to avoid a June 27 runoff.

“When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to, but you don’t pout, you don’t whine, you don’t claim the election was stolen, you don’t find a reason why you lost,” Cassidy said late Saturday to supporters.

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The Senate parliamentarian late Saturday ruled against the $1 billion provision intended to fund President Trump’s White House ballroom in the budget reconciliation package.

According to Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who serves as the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, the guidance states that “a project as complex and large in scale as Trump’s proposed ballroom necessarily involves the coordination of many government agencies which span the jurisdiction of many Senate committees,” adding that the funding provision is outside the scope of the Judiciary panel.

Earlier this month, the Senate Judiciary Committee — as well as the upper chamber’s Homeland Security Committee — included funding for the new complex in a budget reconciliation bill for federal immigration enforcement.

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An air show at Mountain Home Air Force Base in southwestern Idaho was canceled on Sunday, May 17, after two Navy jets collided midair and crashed during a demonstration, forcing four crew members to eject safely from the aircraft, authorities and base officials said.

The base confirmed to USA TODAY that two U.S. Navy EA-18G Growlers assigned to Electronic Attack Squadron 129 from Whidbey Island, Washington, collided midair while performing an aerial demonstration at the air show. The crash occurred at about 12:10 p.m. local time and involved four aircrew members.

"All four of the air crew successfully ejected and they are being evaluated by medical personnel. First responders are on the scene," the base said in a statement, adding that the incident remains under investigation.

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Anderson Cooper is signing off after 20 years.

The CNN anchor, 58, bid farewell to "60 Minutes" on the newsmagazine show's May 17 episode, his last as a correspondent. After the season finale, which featured a report by Cooper about London's cab industry in the age of autonomous vehicles, CBS News released an extended farewell interview with the journalist.

Cooper grew emotional as he delivered his final "I'm Anderson Cooper." After choking up for several seconds and looking down as he held back tears, he looked straight into the camera and said the line three times, a standard for the show.

In the "overtime" segment, Cooper went down memory lane, recalling the "dangerous" and "dumb" things he's done for the show, such as diving with Nile crocodiles and being "temporarily" blinded after riding a jet ski over massive waves in Portugal.

Though a montage of recognizable faces showed Cooper's interviews with Prince Harry, Lady Gaga, and the late Donald Sutherland, Cooper seemed to fondly look back on impactful sit-down interviews with "compelling characters" who are not household names, such as a Holocaust survivor and people combating child malnutrition in Niger.

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