TV News LIES

The White House awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million for the construction of the East Wing ballroom, with President Donald Trump being directly involved in negotiating some costs, The Washington Post reported, citing a copy of the agreement, related correspondence and records it had obtained.

The contract, awarded to Virginia-based Clark Construction, was ⁠routed ⁠through the Executive Residence, an office that is exempt ​from rules requiring federal agencies to seek competitive bids and make contract details public, according to the June 30 report.

USA TODAY has not seen the agreement. Neither the White House nor Clark Construction immediately responded to USA TODAY’s request for comment.

The project is one of many undertaken by the president as he looks to remake the White House and Washington, D.C., including the Triumphal Arch, rehabilitating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and Lafayette Square Park. Many of these projects have drawn criticism for a variety of reasons, including not seeking congressional approval and awarding no-bid contracts.  An analysis of federal contract data by USA TODAY found that 20 days before Trump first announced the renovation of the reflecting pool, the government had already committed $8.5 million to fix the pool even though the president said it would cost $2 million.

The company charged a ⁠3% profit for its early work on the East Wing, and subsequently projected that it would receive a total of $65 million in combined profit, overhead and daily rates for on-site staff and other costs, according to the new report.

More...

The Supreme Court ruled that all children born in the United States are citizens, upholding what has been one of the country’s bedrock principles for more than 125 years and handing President Donald Trump a loss on one of his top priorities.

Trump signed an executive order the first day of his second term to limit citizenship to children born to citizens or legal permanent residents, rather than tourists or undocumented immigrants. But the high court has interpreted the Constitution’s 14th Amendment – ratified in 1868 and upheld in a ruling in 1898 – as granting citizenship to all babies born in the country, regardless of parentage.

After the ruling, Trump urged Congress to adopt his citizenship restrictions through legislation.

In another decision Tuesday, the court ruled 6-3 to allow West Virginia and Idaho to ban transgender athletes from participating in female sports teams. Trump has been a vocal opponent of transgender athletes.

The conservative majority also sided with Vice President JD Vance and Republicans in striking down a law limiting how much political parties can spend in coordination with an election candidate.

Advocates for the winning side said they were surprised that the Supreme Court did not issue a more lopsided decision in favor of birthright citizenship. Six of nine justices agreed Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship was unlawful, and five of those said the order was unconstitutional.

“It just really shows the more rightward movement that the Supreme Court basically has been,” said Juan Proaño, the CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens. He called the vote count “a powerful statement” that is “very concerning from a long-term perspective.”

More...

The Supreme Court on Thursday restricted the use of a relatively new law enforcement technique that allows police to tap into giant tech-firm databases to see who was near the scene of a crime.

Writing for the 6-3 majority, Justice Elena Kagan said that the technique, known as geofencing, sent the case back to a lower court to determine whether the search was "reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment to the Constihttps://www.npr.org/2026/06/29/nx-s1-5844697/supreme-court-restricts-use-of-geofence-warrantstution.

"The Fourth Amendment must, as ever, protect against unjustified government intrusion on the privacy of the individual," she wrote.

"The Fourth Amendment must, as ever, protect against unjustified government intrusion on the privacy of the individual," she wrote.

Justice Samuel Alito, in his dissent, called the court's opinion an "irresponsible escapade" and accused the court's majority of "striking a pose as a great champion of privacy in the digital age."

More...

The Supreme Court dealt President Donald Trump's agenda major blows June 29 when it comes to regulating the economy and targeting mail-in voting, but also issued a historic decision expanding his control over federal agencies.

In split decisions, the justices blocked Trump from immediately firing Lisa Cook, a governor on the board of the Federal Reserve, and upheld a Mississippi law that allowed mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received and counted later.

The court also rejected Trump's appeal against a $5 million judgment awarded to New York writer E. Jean Carroll after a jury concluded he sexually abused and defamed her – claims he denies.

However, the court also backed Trump's firing of a Democratic appointee to the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter, in a 6-3 decision overturning a 90-year-old legal precedent that limited presidential firing powers.

More...

When Tycen Proper, 19, finished high school, his family gave him at least $3,000 of “graduation money”, according to court documents. Despite the generosity, he seemed content to just live at his parents’ home, in a tiny Ohio town near Amish country, and spend more and more time on the internet.

But Proper did have ambition of a kind, an affidavit says. He quit his job to focus on a special project that he was planning with friends from the internet. His mother saw him studying maps of Washington DC. He also put his graduation money into investments that made his father uneasy: a rifle, a shotgun, body armor, ammunition.

His parents eventually told police that they were scared of what their son was hatching. They were right to be.

Almost two weeks ago, the US Department of Justice announced that it had foiled a plot by Proper and a number of co-conspirators to assassinate Donald Trump and other elected officials at the Ultimate Fighting Championship event recently held at the White House. As of Friday, eight people from around the country are in custody. All appear to be men in their 20s or early 30s.

More...

A series of slickly produced videos show agents clad in suits and sunglasses striding confidently in slow motion. They usher VIPs into armored SUVs, as specially trained dogs sniff out explosives and officers toting assault rifles keep watch.

The scenes evoke Hollywood films about the Secret Service, but the real-life protectees are not the president or the first family: They’re the justices of the Supreme Court, and these videos are part of an aggressive recruitment pitch for officers to defend them.

The staid Supreme Court now has sizzle reels and even a pithy tag line from a dulcet-toned announcer: “The highest court. A higher calling.”

It’s often said that the Supreme Court has no army. Yet, with little fanfare, the size of the Supreme Court’s police force has begun mushrooming. For years, the force sat at fewer than 200 officers, but now officials are aiming to more than double the ranks of the agents and officers who protect the justices and the Supreme Court’s building.

More...