TV News LIES

Federal agents killed a man at a Memphis motel on Wednesday morning in a Drug Enforcement Administration operation with the Memphis Safe Task Force, the fourth officer-involved death since the anticrime initiative began in September.

Donald Trump established the federal taskforce by executive order last year, amid a surge of troops and federal law enforcement agents to Democratic-run cities that he claimed were overrun with crime. All four of the deaths have occurred in the last two months.

Authorities said agents from the taskforce surrounded an extended-stay motel on Poplar Avenue, about 11 miles (18km) east of downtown Memphis, in support of a DEA operation.

“Federal and local law enforcement officers were attempting to serve a warrant on a wanted fugitive facing felony drug charges out of Shelby county,” said a spokesperson for the US Marshals Service, which is the lead agency for the taskforce. “After issuing numerous verbal commands for the individual to surrender, officers made a forced entry into the building.

More...

Lawyers for Donald Trump have requested more time to pay a $5m civil judgment to magazine columnist E Jean Carroll from 2023, days after the US supreme court declined to hear an appeal.

In a new filing, the president’s attorney said that since his former lead counsel, Justin Smith, took up a position as a federal judge last month (a post he was nominated to by Trump), his new lead counsel, Josh Halpern, needed more time “to become completely familiar with the facts and procedural circumstances” of the case.

A jury awarded Carroll damages after concluding that Trump had sexually abused her in 1996 and then defamed her after she publicly described the attack in 2019. Trump deposited money in an escrow fund to pay the award but is trying to delay the release of an amount that is now nearly $5.8m with interest.

Trump’s attorneys requested that the court extend the deadline for a response to Carroll’s request for payment to 14 July, arguing that the “plaintiff faces no risk of material harm as a result of granting this request”.

More...

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) called on Americans to confront the nation’s flaws rather than ignore them on the eve of the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, framing “righteous dissent” as core to the country’s founding ideals.

“This will be no ordinary day of celebration,” he said. “Two hundred fifty years presents a rare opportunity for more than 340 million people to turn together, both toward one another and toward ourselves, to take measure of who we are as a nation.”

Speaking from former President George Washington’s desk at New York City Hall, the first-term mayor reflected on the resilience of American revolutionaries who sought to free themselves from the British “yoke of oppression” in pursuit of a “grand experiment in self-governance.”

He recounted New York City’s role as the symbolic gateway to the nation, tracing the struggles and triumphs of enslaved Africans through the generations of immigrants who came in search of greater opportunity.

More...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called protesters "ingrates" on Thursday, July 2, as he and other top members of the Trump administration praised the National Guard's work during a D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force event.

“This background noise this morning is perfect; it’s the sound of ingrates, of ingratitude, of people who are so blinded by ideology they can’t see law and order and common sense in front of them,” Hegseth said. “There’s nothing ideological about this group. There’s nothing political about this exercise.”

Apart from Hegseth, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche were also heckled by “Free DC” protesters during an event.

The protesters blew whistles and horns while Trump administration officials touted the National Guard, who have been patrolling Washington, DC, since the president deployed the military branch following a public safety emergency declaration last year, according to reporting from The Hill.

“Thank you for being here, for backing us up along the way. To the entire team, to the soldiers here, thank you for everything you’re doing. Thank you for waiting out here in the sun,” Hegseth said.

More...

Donald Trump raked in more than $1bn from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Monday shows, giving a substantial boost to his annual income.

In his second term, the president and his family have heavily invested in digital money and various crypto businesses with Trump announcing at the start of 2025 that he wanted the US to be the “crypto capital of the world”. Trump’s crypto earnings are in addition to profit from his legal settlements, real estate and royalty deals.

Many of the president’s crypto ventures were mere startups when he took the oath of office, but now have eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took decades to accumulate. This rise has been fueled by billionaire investors and Trump’s move to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.

More...

Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist and first-time candidate, ousted Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado in a primary challenge on Tuesday.

DeGette, a 15-term incumbent first elected in 1996, is the second member of Congress to lose her seat to a younger democratic socialist challenger after Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated Rep. Adriano Espaillait, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in New York's 13th District last week.

Chevalier's and Kiros' challenges came amid widespread discontent and frustration among Democratic voters with party leadership in the wake of President Donald Trump's election. Both Espaillat and DeGette are longtime progressives whom their opponents cast as representatives of a failing Democratic establishment beholden to corporate interests. Chevalier and Kiros both also have a history of pro-Palestine activism and made opposing Israel's war in Gaza central to their campaigns.

More...