TV News LIES

A federal judge has blocked Voice of America CEO Kari Lake from firing 500 employees and warned in a blistering decision that her agency’s “disrespect” toward the court merited a trial for civil contempt.

Judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote that the only reason he was not initiating contempt proceedings was that the plaintiffs in the case hadn’t asked for them.

The court’s decision not to pursue contempt of its own accord “should not be mistaken for lenience toward the defendants’ egregious erstwhile conduct,” he wrote.

In March, the congressionally established U.S. Agency for Global Media—overseen by Lake, a former anchor for a Fox affiliate in Arizona—moved to fire about 600 of its 1,040 full-time employees and place another 400 on administrative leave.

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A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration’s effort to deport pro-Palestinian academics is a deliberate attack on free speech meant to “strike fear” into non-citizen students and chill campus protests.

“The effect of these targeted deportation proceedings continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day,” U.S. District Judge William Young concluded, in a scathing, 161-page opinion that he described as tYoung, a Reagan appointee based in Boston, did not immediately order changes to administration policies, but said he will hold further proceedings on how to rein in the practices he found to violate First Amendment free-speech rights.

The ruling is the long-awaited result of a lawsuit brought by university professors who say the Trump administration is illegally chilling free speech by targeting prominent pro-Palestinian campus activists — like Mahmoud Khalil — and others who have expressed pro-Palestinian views. It followed a two week trial that featured testimony from top Trump administration officials, who described orchestrating the arrests of these activists and taking cues from an anonymously run website.

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YouTube will pay $24.5 million to President Trump to resolve a 2021 lawsuit that claimed he was the victim of censorship when the site suspended his account following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump's supporters, according to federal court papers filed on Monday.

YouTube parent company Google will dedicate $22 million of the settlement toward the construction of a $200 million Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom in the White House, according to the settlement documents, which state that a nonprofit called the Trust for the National Mall is being tapped to finance the renovations.

It's the latest settlement reached by a tech company sued by Trump in the wake of the Capitol riots. In January, Meta paid the president $25 million over Facebook's and Instagram's decision to suspend Trump after Jan. 6. Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter, paid out $10 million over similar allegations.

The largest event space at the White House now is the East Room, which seats about 200 for dinner. So, for decades, when the White House needed more capacity for a state dinner or other large event, they would take it outdoors, usually putting up large fancy tents, complete with flooring and chandeliers.

Free speech experts have said the trio of suits brought by Trump did not raise credible legal claims, since First Amendment protections typically apply to government officials, not private companies, censoring speech. Yet the tech industry has lined up one by one to make public displays of their eight-digit deals to conclude the litigation.

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ Sept. 28 announcement that he is dropping his bid for reelection raised hopes among conservatives that Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, a socialist state Assembly member, can be stopped by former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani.

Adams, a centrist Democrat like Cuomo, was also making an independent bid after a federal indictment on corruption charges that were dropped by the Justice Department after Trump took office.

But it remains unlikely that Cuomo can surmount Mamdani's commanding lead in recent polls if Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa remains in the race.

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The federal prosecutor for the eastern district of Virginia resigned Friday under intense pressure from Donald Trump, after his office determined there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, a political rival of the president, with a crime.

Erik Siebert told colleagues he was resigning in a letter sent Friday, NBC News reported. Hours earlier, Trump bluntly told reporters in the Oval Office: “I want him out.” The president claimed he soured on Siebert because Virginia’s two Democratic senators had endorsed his nomination, but also claimed that James “is very guilty of something”. ABC News reported earlier on Friday that Trump decided to fire Siebert after he failed to obtain an indictment against James.

In 2024, James filed a civil lawsuit against Trump and his company that resulted in a significant financial penalty. That penalty was thrown out in August by an appeals court that upheld a judge’s finding that Trump had engaged in fraud by exaggerating his wealth for decades.

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A federal judge threw out President Donald Trump's $15 billion libel and defamation lawsuit against the New York Times by ruling that it didn't provide a succinct complaint for the court to consider.

U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday in Florida rejected the complaint but gave Trump 28 days to file another version of the lawsuit. Trump had accused the paper of defaming him with malicious accusations, but the lawsuit lacked "any legitimate legal claims."

"As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective − not a protected platform to rage against an adversary," wrote Merryday, who was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush. "A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner."

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