TV News LIES

A House Oversight Committee panel on Tuesday morning will weigh in on the CIA’s former MK-Ultra project — which for two decades used universities to test behavioral drugs and modification theories.

The Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), has amplified her push to uncover more details of the project. Earlier this year, Luna accused the CIA of pulling relevant documents from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which the department denied, and has called for more transparency on the alleged mind-control program.

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House Democratic leadership on Tuesday urged members to vote with their conscience on a controversial amendment to cut U.S. funding for Israel, underscoring deep divisions in the caucus over America’s relations with the Jewish state.

Fiscal hawk Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) sponsored the amendment, seeking to add it to a national security and State Department spending bill that is expected to come up for a vote this week. The text of Massie’s amendment says none of the funds of the act will be made available for Israel and lowers overall spending in the bill by $3.3 billion.

After a Democratic caucus meeting in which Massie’s bill was a focus of debate, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) expressed shock at the fraught conversations around Israel in his conference.

“I’ve been around a long time, I’ve never seen it,” he said. 

Thompson said conversations centered around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership, and noted deeply negative views of the long-time Israeli leader among young, Democratic voters.

Many of these voters have adopted a view that Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, launched after the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack, amounted to a campaign of genocide against Palestinians living there. Congressional Democrats have also raised urgent concern over Israel’s policies towards Palestinians in the West Bank.

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Monday said the Senate will attempt to pass an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) enhanced surveillance powers without the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act attached, rebuffing President Trump’s demand to link the two bills.

Thune, who has repeatedly warned that letting Section 702 of FISA expire poses a risk to national security, said he would try to move an extension of the controversial surveillance law as a stand-alone measure. The provision, which allows the U.S. to spy on foreigners located abroad without a warrant, lapsed over the weekend.

“We will try and move 702 as soon as we feel like we have the votes to do it,” Thune told reporters.

The GOP leader told Punchbowl News on his way into the Capitol earlier Monday that it would be “unrealistic” to get the SAVE America Act passed simply by attaching it to an extension of FISA authorities.

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The White House is pushing Congress to approve a $250 bill bearing Donald Trump’s portrait, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said, which would require changing longstanding federal law that prohibits any living person from appearing on US currency.

Speaking from the White House at a news conference, Bessent said the bill would be in celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary of independence, and that the treasury has already started preparing for the possibility of the new currency.

“As treasury secretary, I have two mandates for US currency at present: that no living person can be on US currency, and the currency must say ‘In God we trust’,” Bessent said. “So, right now, there isproposed legislation in front of the House, in front of the Senate, to change the first requirement, so that a living person – Donald J Trump – could be on the $250 bill.”

The Washington Post reported that two of Trump’s political appointees at the treasury had pushed staff to start preparing prototypes of a $250 bill with Trump’s image, raising concerns that doing so would breach federal law.

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Rep. Clay Fuller (R-Ga.), who recently won a special election to replace the departed Marjorie Taylor Greene, seems to have inherited her knack for making news. And not always the good kind. (Watch the video below.)

In a rant (or major trolling job) on X Sunday griping about an air conditioner that shut off at a Maryland hotel while he slept, the Donald Trump-endorsed lawmaker falsely asserted that Georgia is named for George Washington (it’s named for King George II) and that Atlanta Braves star Ronald Acuña Jr. was born there (he’s from Venezuela).

He also erroneously called Maryland “newer to the union” (it’s one of the 13 original colonies) and appeared to taunt the University of Maryland for never winning an SEC title (it’s a member of the Big Ten conference after being in the ACC for many years) and for not having a football team at all (it does).

He also said that if University of Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton were born in Maryland, “he’d play some fake sport like lacrosse.”

Fuller got agitated by waking up in a Maryland hotel room that he said was too hot. He said he was then informed by the front desk that the motion-sensor air conditioning was shut off at night “because of an AOC Green New Deal thing.” While there may be a hotel or regional policy in place, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s environmental initiative was never passed.

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House members got their first opportunity Thursday to grill Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as he kicked off a marathon series of seven congressional hearings in seven days with back-to-back hearings in the Ways and Means and Appropriations Committees.

In the two appearances, his first before Congress in 2026, Kennedy defended his record in leading the nation’s health agency as Democrats sought to push back against proposed budget cuts and changes to vaccine policy.

Kennedy faced a very different political environment from the one in which he appeared before Congress seven months ago, when his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement seemed to be at its most politically powerful.

Kennedy and his allies last year overhauled the childhood vaccine schedule to recommend fewer shots while also shaking up key leadership positions across health agencies.

But with an eye on the 2026 midterm elections, the White House wants Kennedy to stop talking about vaccines and focus on other MAHA “wins.”

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