TV News LIES

The Republican chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services committees issued a joint statement on Wednesday criticizing the idea of the U.S. drastically changing its military combatant command structure, saying they “will not accept” those changes without coordination with Congress and other agencies.

The statement marks one of the first major instances of Republican lawmakers pushing back on President Trump in his second term.

House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) responded to an NBC News article published Tuesday that said the Pentagon is considering giving up its role as NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe, or SACEUR as part of restructuring of commands and headquarters.

“U.S. combatant commands are the tip of the American warfighting spear. Therefore, we are very concerned about reports that claim [the Defense Department] is considering unilateral changes on major strategic issues, including significant reductions to U.S. forces stationed abroad, absent coordination with the White House and Congress,” the two chairs said.

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Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner said Wednesday he will step down immediately after more than four years as head of the U.S. passenger railroad, citing concerns about maintaining the carrier's support from President Donald Trump's administration.

"I am stepping down as CEO to ensure that Amtrak continues to enjoy the full faith and confidence of this administration," Gardner said in a statement.

A White House official told Reuters Gardner had been asked to step down. An Amtrak spokesperson declined to comment on whether he had been asked to leave.

The Justice Department failed Wednesday to provide information a federal judge requested about deportation flights of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act, instead filing a request for a postponement to wait for appeals courts to block what it called a potentially “catastrophic” disclosure.

The filing escalated a legal clash over the deportations that has already led President Donald Trump to call for Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg's impeachment and a rebuke of Trump by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Boasberg demanded information by noon Tuesday about the number of deportation flights on Saturday, the number of passengers and the foreign destinations. He asked for the information as he weighs whether the government defied his oral and written orders to halt the flights and potentially turn around flights in the air.

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President Trump early Wednesday renewed his attacks on a federal judge who ordered the administration to turn around flights carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members, despite pushback from the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

“If a President doesn’t have the right to throw murderers, and other criminals, out of our Country because a Radical Left Lunatic Judge wants to assume the role of President, then our Country is in very big trouble, and destined to fail!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The post was referring to U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who over the weekend ordered flights carrying Venezuelan migrants who were allegedly linked to the Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador to be turned around. The administration has said the flights were already out of U.S. territory at the time, while also suggesting Boasberg did not have the authority to intervene in the matter.

Trump in an interview that aired late Tuesday with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham similarly criticized Boasberg’s decision, saying it was “terrible” and “not for a local judge to be making that determination.”

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The Trump administration on Tuesday released thousands of pages of files concerning the assassination of John F Kennedy, the 35th president who was shot dead in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963.

“So people have been waiting decades for this,” Donald Trump told reporters on Monday while visiting the Kennedy Center, “and I’ve instructed my people that are responsible, lots of different people, put together by [director of national intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard, and that’s going to be released tomorrow.”

Donald Trump has “declared war on the rule of law in America” and is pitching the country into a constitutional crisis, a prominent former conservative federal judge said.

“The president of the United States has essentially declared war on the rule of law in America,” J Michael Luttig told MSNBC. “In the past few weeks … the president himself has led a full-frontal assault on the constitution, the rule of law, the federal judiciary, the American justice system and the nation’s legal profession.

“When the president of the United States wages a war on the rule of law and the federal judiciary alley, America is in a constitutional crisis. The constitutional role of the president is to faithfully execute the laws. Needless to say, the president is doing anything but that at the moment. Most constitutional scholars have long agreed that a constitutional crisis exists at least when the president defies a court order. That’s essentially what the president is doing today and what it appears he intends to do in the future.”

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