TV News LIES

A survivor of Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation said that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche behaved in a "condescending" manner during his meeting with her and other survivors.

The meeting came as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) made meeting with Epstein survivors a prerequisite for his vote to confirm Blanche, the deputy attorney general and President Donald Trump's former personal attorney.

Lara Blume McGee described the meeting to The Independent in a text message on Thursday evening.

"Today, Epstein survivors confronted Todd Blanche — and he treated it like a perfunctory audition for votes, not accountability," Blume McGee said.

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A plurality of House Democrats voted to discontinue sending military aid to Israel in a symbolic vote on Wednesday, showcasing how thoroughly much of the party has turned against the country since its brutal assault on Gaza began nearly three years ago.

The House ultimately rejected the amendment to discontinue aid by a vote of 314–104, with 103 Democrats in favor, 98 against and 10 voting “present.” Even if the measure had passed the House, it would have stood little chance of approval by the Senate.

Still, the vote is a rebuke of Israel’s government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a signal support for the country may no longer be an unquestioned bipartisan proposition. Israel’s assault on Gaza in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel has killed more than 81,000 people and been labeled a genocide by most major human rights organizations.

The vote was on an amendment by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) that would bar aid to Israel, including nonmilitary aid, meaning it went farther than some past proposals to bar only weapons. Massie was the only Republican who voted yes.

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Senate Democrats today blocked the fiscal 2027 defense authorization act from moving to the Senate floor, impeding the trajectory of the typically bipartisan measure, due to opposition to the war in Iran and concerns about the growth in defense spending.

Senators voted 50-46 on party lines, failing to meet the 60-vote threshold needed to bring it to the floor.

Today’s vote marks the second time in two weeks that lawmakers have held up progress on the National Defense Authorization Act, which would greenlight about $1.14 trillion in funding for the Defense Department and make policy changes with implications for troop pay, drone operations and defense contractor earnings.

Another key concern is the high price tag of the FY27 budget request, which — if coupled with a further $350 billion in reconciliation spending requested by the Pentagon — would bring defense spending to a historic height of $1.5 trillion at the same time the Trump administration has made sweeping cuts to other government agencies.

Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said both the war and the budget influenced his vote against proceeding with the NDAA, noting that Congress has yet to come up with a bipartisan deal that sets an agreed upon topline for defense and nondefense spending.

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Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a key member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he is “concerned” about acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s role in crafting a settlement between President Trump, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Justice Department to shield Trump and his family from IRS audits for years to come.

Cornyn said he was disturbed by a federal judge’s scathing order criticizing Blanche’s role in crafting the settlement between Trump and the IRS.

“I’m concerned about that,” Cornyn said on Tuesday, one day before Blanche appears before the Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing to serve as attorney general.

“We’ll be prepared to ask him some questions about not just the weaponization fund but the tax audit issue [and] also whether or not the lawsuit that was brought was a real lawsuit or whether it was, in the words of the federal judge, collusive,” he said.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams questioned on Monday whether Trump filed his lawsuit against the IRS “in bad faith with the improper purpose of dishonestly advancing a political narrative.”

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In the first appearances by members of the Supreme Court before Congress in seven years, Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett testified on Tuesday in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Although the focus of the justices’ testimony was the court’s budget, which Congress appropriates, the two discussed a wide range of issues, from security and enforcement of the court’s ethics code to its emergency (Kagan’s preference) or interim docket.

After beginning her remarks by expressing condolences for the recent death of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Kagan explained that the “recent growth” in the Supreme Court’s budget (which will exceed $220 million in Fiscal Year 2027) was “almost entirely for security expenses.”

When she joined the court in 2010, Kagan noted, it was an “entirely different world” in which she had security only for public events. The court started to focus more on security in 2016, she remarked, when Justice Antonin Scalia died in Texas, and the closest U.S. marshals were two hours away. But the “big ramp-up” came in 2022 with the leak of the court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the court overturned the recognition of a constitutional right to an abortion. At that point, she emphasized, the attention to security “acquired even more urgency.”

Barrett stressed that although statistics about threats to federal judges may “sound abstract,” “being on the receiving end of them is not.” Barrett recounted thttps://www.scotusblog.com/2026/07/justices-kagan-and-barrett-testify-before-congress/he story of bringing home a bulletproof vest because of the threats that she received in the wake of the Dobbs leak and having to explain the vest to her son. Six weeks ago, she continued, she was the victim of a swatting incident; because her Supreme Court police detail was already at her house, they were able to intercept the police and tell them it was a false alarm. And like other judges, she noted, she has received “false deliveries” sent in the name of Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, a federal judge in New Jersey; Anderl was killed in 2020 by a lawyer who had litigated a case before Salas, and the deliveries were intended to intimidate the recipients. “The threat level is really high,” Barrett concluded.

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Ro Khanna accused the Israeli government and military of “lying” on Sunday about the US congressman’s detention by armed settlers and Israeli soldiers during a recent visit to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Khanna – a California Democrat – had posted video evidence on social media of Israeli settlers and soldiers blocking the path of his convoy on Wednesday in the South Hebron hills, near the village of Zanuta, where Israelis have driven Palestinians from their homes in what Amnesty International calls a government-backed “ethnic cleansing campaign”.

During an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday, the California Democrat was asked about the Israeli military’s claim that its soldiers “quickly dispersed” the Israeli civilians and reopened the blocked road.

“The IDF is lying,” Khanna said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. “What happened was unprecedented. They had violent settlers detain American citizens, including an American government official. You had these settlers brandishing M4 [rifles], kicking the tires of our van, laughing at us, mocking at us, videotaping us.

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