TV News LIES

President Donald Trump and Senate Democrats struck a deal to avert a prolonged shutdown for most of the federal government, according to the president and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office.

The agreement will fund all of the government except for the Department of Homeland Security through next September. DHS will operate on a short-term funding bill for two weeks while lawmakers negotiate changes after public outrage over the Minneapolis shootings, sources said.

The Senate is aiming to vote today. The House, which returns to Washington on Monday, would then need to pass the legislation and send it to Trump’s desk for his signature.

Until the deal is finalized by both chambers, funding will temporarily lapse for multiple agencies starting tomorrow. The impact is expected to be minimal since most federal employees don’t work on the weekend.

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Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor said Friday that a judge lacks the authority to appoint a neutral expert to oversee the public release of documents in the sex trafficking probe of financier Jeffrey Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer was told in a letter signed by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton that he must reject a request this week by the congressional cosponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act to appoint a neutral expert.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, say they have “urgent and grave concerns” about the slow release of only a small number of millions of documents that began last month.

In a filing to the judge they said they believed “criminal violations have taken place” in the release process.

Clayton, though, said Khanna and Massie do not have standing with the court that would allow them to seek the “extraordinary” relief of the appointment of a special master and independent monitor.

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The Department of Homeland Security blocked federal lawmakers from visiting an immigration detention facility in Minneapolis this weekend under a new visitation policy from the head of the department.

Under federal law, members of Congress have the right to make unannounced visits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities. A D.C. federal court ruling affirmed this last month, saying it applies to facilities that are funded by regular congressional appropriations.

But in a Jan. 8 memo from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem obtained by NPR, Noem instructs her staff that visits should be requested at least seven days in advance. She said the detention facilities are run with money from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a different bucket of federal funds, and therefore the policy on unannounced visits doesn't apply to them.

The new policy seemed to have been cited on Saturday to block the visit of three Minnesota congresswomen to an ICE detention facility in Minneapolis.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a reconciliation measure that Congress passed last summer with only Republican support, allocated some $45 billion for immigration detention centers as many were operating over their capacity. It also provided about $30 billion to hire more ICE personnel, for transportation costs, and to maintain ICE facilities, among other spending.

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Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) was hospitalized on Thursday after suffering facial injuries from a fall during a walk near his home in Western Pennsylvania.

According to a Fetterman spokesperson, the Pennsylvania Democrat was transported to a Pittsburgh hospital “out of an abundance of caution.”

“During an early morning walk, Senator Fetterman sustained a fall near his home in Braddock,” the spokesperson said.

“Upon evaluation, it was established he had a ventricular fibrillation flare-up that led to Senator Fetterman feeling light-headed, falling to the ground and hitting his face with minor injuries,” the spokesperson added. “He is doing well and receiving routine observation at the hospital. He has opted to stay so doctors can fine-tune his medication regimen.”

The spokesperson also noted that Fetterman made a self-deprecating joke about his face following the fall.

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Senate Democrats are furious that the Trump administration held a briefing for lawmakers on Wednesday about U.S. military strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and only invited Republican senators to attend.

“What the administration did in the last 24 hours is corrosive not only to our democracy but downright dangerous for our national security,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Thursday, warning that the move set a “troubling precedent” that had trampled on the longheld bipartisan tradition of bipartisan briefings of Congress on U.S. military activities abroad.

“They know they screwed up,” Warner added of Trump’s White House. “And where in the hell were my Republican senators, whom we have worked on everything [with] in a bipartisan fashion? Why didn’t they say, ‘Isn’t this a little bit weird they don’t have any Democrats in the room?’”

The U.S. military killed 14 people in missile strikes against alleged drug cartel boats in the Eastern Pacific earlier this week, part of nearly a dozen attacks on vessels off the coast of Venezuela in recent months. Critics have called the use of force unconstitutional since it lacks congressional authorization. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have pressed for more information about the strikes, including their legal justification.

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As the two parties square off over an imminent government shutdown, Democrats are accusing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of keeping the House of Representatives out of session to delay a vote on the Epstein files.

The House had been scheduled to vote on Monday and Tuesday, but Johnson canceled the votes in order to put more pressure on Senate Democrats to accept a government funding bill Republicans pushed through the House earlier this month.

The canceled votes are also pushing back the swearing-in of Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat who won a special election last week to fill her late father’s Arizona seat. Grijalva would provide the crucial 218th signature on a “discharge petition” forcing a vote on legislation to make the Justice Department release its investigatory files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“Any delay in swearing in Representative-elect Grijalva unnecessarily deprives her constituents of representation and calls into question if the motive behind the delay is to further avoid the release of the Epstein files,” Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the No. 2 Democrat in the House, complained in a letter to Johnson on Monday.

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