TV News LIES

A senior Democratic lawmaker accused Donald Trump of “surrendering to the Russians” on Sunday, as Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff said talks between the US and Russia over Ukraine was “the only way to end the carnage”.

In an interview on ABC News’ This Week, Democratic senator Jack Reed, a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, hit out at Trump’s recent verbal attacks on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and increased alignment with Russia.

“Essentially, this is President Trump surrendering to the Russians,” Reed said. “This is not a statesman or a diplomat. This is just someone who admires Putin, does not believe in the struggle of the Ukrainians and is committed to cozying up to an autocrat.”

But senior administration officials sought to side-step accusations that Trump’s re-positioning of US policies on Ukraine, including a possible deal for Ukraine to repay US military and financial support with rare-earth materials, amounted to a capitulation to the Russian position on the war.

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The measles outbreak in Texas has grown to at least 90 cases, reaching historic levels, according to officials.

Since late January, 90 cases of measles have been identified in the South Plains region, the state’s department of state health services (DSHS) reported Friday. At least 16 patients have been hospitalized as a result.

The majority of reported measles cases were in children and teenagers; minors between the ages of five and 17 accounted for 51 cases. Children under four made up 26 cases. Most patients’ parents either had chosen to not immunize them against the highly contagious illness through vaccines meant to prevent the potentially deadly illness and its spread, or their vaccination status was unknown.

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Israel and Hamas completed the sixth exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners on Saturday with just over two weeks remaining in their fragile Gaza ceasefire’s initial phase, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio landed in Israel to begin a Mideast tour.

Israelis expressed relief as the three hostages — Argentinian-Israeli Iair Horn, 46; American-Israeli Sagui Dekel Chen, 36; and Russian-Israeli Alexander Troufanov, 29 — seemed in better condition than the emaciated ones freed a week ago.

Troufanov was informed of his father’s death in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the 16-month war. Chen was meeting his youngest daughter for the first time. Horn’s brother, Eitan, remains in captivity.

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The top federal prosecutor in New York and two senior federal prosecutors in Washington have resigned after refusing to follow a Justice Department order to drop the corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams, multiple officials said Thursday.

The resignations amount to a stunning public rebuke of the new Justice Department leadership under the Trump administration in one of the country's most high-profile criminal cases.

The departures come after Emil Bove, the acting U.S. deputy attorney general, issued a memo Monday ordering federal prosecutors in New York to drop the case against Adams arguing, in part, that it hampered his ability to tackle “illegal immigration and violent crime."

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The US military will no longer allow transgender individuals to join the armed forces and will stop performing or facilitating procedures associated with gender transition for service members, according to a memo from defense secretary Pete Hegseth filed in court Monday.

Hegseth’s memo comes after Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that took aim at transgender troops in a personal way. The president’s order had said that a man identifying as a woman was “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member”.

To that end, the memo from Hegseth on Monday – filed with the US district court in Washington DC – said: “Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused.

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President Trump has spoken to Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the phone to try to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war, he told The Post in an exclusive interview aboard Air Force One Friday.

“I’d better not say,” said Trump when asked how many times the two leaders have spoken.

But he believes Putin “does care” about the killing on the battlefield.“He wants to see people stop dying,” said Trump.

“All those dead people. Young, young, beautiful people. They’re like your kids, two million of them – and for no reason.”

The three-year-old war “never would have happened” if he had been president in 2022, Trump asserted.

“I always had a good relationship with Putin,” he said, unlike his predecessor.

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Friday made a significant reduction in grants reserved for research institutions, a decision that may significantly impact American higher education.

The NIH said it provided over $35 billion in grants to more than 2,500 institutions in 2023, announcing that it will now limit the amount granted for “indirect funding” to 15 percent. This funding helps cover universities’ overhead and administrative expenses and previously averaged nearly 30 percent, with some universities charging over 60 percent.

The change will take effect on Monday, and will save roughly $4 billion annually, per the NIH.