US News

Faced with new damaging headlines, the Department of Homeland Security put out a news release Wednesday trying to "fact-check" claims made by The New York Times about wrongful arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — but found themselves on the receiving end of a fact-check of their own.

In particular, DHS went after several claims made in a Times report about U.S. citizens being caught up in arrests — something that has been widely reported around the country, with a lawsuit in Alabama even alleging immigration agents refused to accept a man's documentation proving he was a citizen.

The director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, announced that the office will withhold significant funds from blue states, which would impact a substantial portion of the United States population.

"The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA," will be the ones that are canceled, Vought said.

A lesser-noticed part of President Donald Trump's controversial, rambling speech to a crowd of generals at Quantico this week got a brutal fact-check on Wednesday, as he made several incorrect claims about a district court ruling that went against him, but that he claimed was in fact a win.

The case stemmed from his exclusion of The Associated Press from White House events due to their refusal to abide by his executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden blocked this ruling, calling it a "brazen" violation of the First Amendment — but that isn't how Trump described what happened in his speech.

President Donald Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth didn't mention it in their speeches before the generals, but thousands of military personnel will soon be required to take random polygraphs.

The Washington Post cited two sources in a Wednesday report saying the Pentagon "plans to impose strict nondisclosure agreements and random polygraph testing for scores of people in its headquarters, including many top officials."

A colleague of photographer L. Vural Elibol called out immigration agents who slammed Elibol to the floor, seriously injuring him enough that emergency responders were called.

On Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents grabbed or shoved several media members at a New York courthouse, and it was all captured on video by Getty photographer Stephanie Keith.

U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan has granted a restraining order preventing the Trump administration from withholding counterterrorism funds from New York City's Subway system.

In a ruling on Wednesday, Kaplan sided with New York Attorney General Letitia James, noting that "3,000 people died within sight of this courthouse" during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

President Donald Trump defended his decision to deploy National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon.

Around 200 troops will patrol the city, which Trump has described in apocalyptic terms after viewing what Gov. Tina Kotek and Mayor Keith Wilson say is years-old footage of protests shown on Fox News. Still, the president justified the move as both necessary and lawful.

The White House budget chief said he would cancel funding for green energy projects in 16 blue states in an apparent response to the government shutdown.

"Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda is being cancelled," Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought revealed in a Wednesday afternoon post on X.

Vice President JD Vance made an unusual promise while speaking at a White House presser on Wednesday that if Democrats compromise with Republicans to reopen the government, President Donald Trump’s deepfake video mocking House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) “will stop.”

Vance held the news conference amid the ongoing government shutdown, which kicked off at midnight Wednesday after Democrats refused to go along with a Republican-proposed temporary spending measure, a move sparked by Republicans’ own refusal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies.