Trump nominates 4 to Tennessee Valley Authority board after firing Biden picks
TVA is the nation's largest public utility and provides power to more than 10 million people across seven southern states.
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Bloomberg
22 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump Weighing Federal Takeover of Washington, DC
President Donald Trump said his administration is weighing whether to take control of the city of Washington, DC, to help combat crime, in a move that would represent a dramatic upheaval to the capital's half-century of home rule. 'We could run DC. I mean, we're looking at DC,' Trump said during a cabinet meeting Tuesday, where he was holding court at length in front of cameras. 'We're thinking about doing it, to be honest with you. We want a capital that's run flawlessly.' (Source: Bloomberg)
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fact check: Debunking 11 of Trump's false claims at Cabinet meeting
President Donald Trump again turned a Cabinet meeting into a wide-ranging conversation with reporters – and again uttered a whole bunch of false claims in the process. Trump's Tuesday remarks at the White House included inaccurate assertions about inflation, immigration, his tariff policy, the massive domestic policy bill he signed last week, China's use of wind energy, US and European aid to Ukraine, the US relationship with South Korea, and other subjects. Here is a fact check of 11 of the president's false claims. This is not a comprehensive list. Inflation: As he has repeatedly, Trump falsely claimed Tuesday, 'We have no inflation.' The US does have inflation – an annual inflation rate of 2.4% in May, an uptick from a 2.3% annual rate in April. That April rate was the lowest since early 2021, and lower than some economists expected for April after Trump imposed significant new tariffs, but it's not 'no inflation' whatsoever. (And on a month-to-month basis, US consumer prices increased 0.1% in May and 0.2% in April.) Tax on Social Security: Touting the new domestic policy legislation, Trump repeated his false claim that it achieves his campaign promise of 'no tax on Social Security.' It does not. The legislation does create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more), but the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged that millions of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will continue to pay taxes on their benefits – and that new deduction, which expires in 2028, doesn't even apply to the Social Security recipients who are younger than 65. Trump's tariff letters: Trump spoke of the letters he sent to various foreign leaders announcing the tariff rates he plans to impose on their countries beginning in August – and said, 'I just want you to know - a letter means a deal.' That's just not true. Multiple letters the White House revealed on Monday announced tariff rates Trump said he plans to unilaterally place on imports from foreign countries; those letters did not describe negotiated deals. Who pays tariffs: Trump repeatedly spoke of how his new tariffs mean other countries will have to 'pay' the US for the privilege of doing business in the US. Contrary to Trump's frequent assertions, it is the US importers who buy foreign products, not foreign countries themselves, who make the tariff payments to the US government. Tariff history: Trump repeated his regular false claim that the US was 'proportionately' at its 'wealthiest' between 1870 and 1913, when tariff revenue made up a much larger share of federal revenue before the reintroduction of the income tax. Trump didn't explain what he meant by 'proportionately' or 'the wealthiest,' but economists say that by any standard measure, the US is far wealthier today than it was in the early 20th century and prior; per capita gross domestic product is now many times higher than it was then. China and wind power: Trump, asserting that 'smart countries' don't use wind and solar energy, repeated his recent false claim that China, the world's biggest manufacturer of wind turbines, barely uses such equipment itself - wrongly saying, 'They don't have a lot of wind farms, I'll tell you; very, very few.' In reality, China is the world leader in the generation of wind power and has massive wind farms onshore and offshore; it continues to install additional wind capacity much faster than the US. California and energy: Trump, reviving a previous inaccurate complaint about California's use of renewable energy sources, falsely claimed: 'They have blackouts and brownouts every week.' The state simply does not; its power system has improved significantly since the rolling blackouts of a 2020 heat wave. Daniel Villasenor, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said in a Tuesday email that Trump is again 'lying about California.' Villasenor wrote: 'The state has not experienced any rotating outages since 2020 – and in the last three years, no Flex Alert calling to conserve power has even been issued. Not only has our grid been increasingly resilient, it's also cleaner than ever – clean energy provided for 100% of demand on our grid for at least some part of the day 167 out of the first 180 days of the year.' US and European aid to Ukraine: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that the US has provided 'far more' wartime aid to Ukraine that Europe has, saying the US is 'in there for over $300 billion; Europe's in there for over $100 billion.' Those numbers are not close to accurate. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks international aid to Ukraine, the US had committed about $139 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine from late January 2022, just prior to Russia's full-scale invasion, through April 2025 – well short of about $298 billion committed by European countries and the European Union. The gap was much narrower in terms of aid actually allocated through April 2025 – about $183 billion for Europe to about $134 billion for the US – but even those figures clearly disprove Trump's claim. South Korea's military cost-sharing: Trump repeated his false claim that South Korea convinced former President Joe Biden to let it stop making payments to help cover the cost of the US military presence in South Korea, saying Biden 'cut it down to nothing.' In fact, Biden's administration signed two cost-sharing agreements with South Korea, one in 2021 and one in 2024, that included South Korean spending increases – meaning South Korea agreed to pay more than it did during Trump's first term. US troops in South Korea: Trump again exaggerated the US troop presence in South Korea, falsely saying, 'You know, we have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea.' Official Defense Department data, published online, says the US had 26,206 military personnel in South Korea as of March 31, 2025, with 22,844 on active duty. Migration and mental health: Trump falsely claimed that unnamed foreign countries 'released their insane asylum – the insane asylum population into our country.' Even Trump's own presidential campaign could not produce any evidence for his frequent claims, which he has repeated for more than two years, that foreign countries deliberately emptied their mental health facilities to somehow get patients to migrate to the United States.
New York Times
24 minutes ago
- New York Times
Mayor and Police Chiefs Let Corruption Fester at N.Y.P.D., Suits Charge
Four former high-ranking police officers are suing Mayor Eric Adams of New York, accusing him of enabling corruption in the Police Department, an agency where they said anyone who spoke out faced retaliation and humiliation. The separate lawsuits filed on Monday in New York Supreme Court come as Mr. Adams, a former police captain, is running for re-election and using falling crime numbers to bolster his campaign. But the allegations from the former officers, who each spent decades in the department and helped lead bureaus like Internal Affairs and Professional Standards, could revive accusations that he presided over a law enforcement agency where chaos and cronyism reigned. One of the former officers, James Essig, who served more than 40 years, was chief of detectives until August 2023. He said in the suit that Edward Caban, the commissioner at the time, had forced him to resign after he objected to the promotions of unqualified officers to elite detective roles and specialized units. Mr. Essig's lawsuit, which names Mr. Caban, Mr. Adams and Jeffrey Maddrey, the former chief of department, accused Mr. Caban of selling promotions in exchange for $15,000. Instead of relying on a list of candidates recommended by supervisors, Mr. Caban and Mr. Maddrey often picked 'friends and cronies' of theirs and Mr. Adams, according to the suit. In an interview, Mr. Essig, 63, said he wanted 'accountability' for former leaders whose decisions 'killed morale' and hurt the careers of dozens of police officers who were forced out or left the department because they were troubled about its direction. The lawsuits are about exposing the wrongdoing of 'people who were in there who didn't do the right thing,' he said. 'They used the Police Department as their own little playground.' Kayla Mamelak Altus, a spokeswoman for Mr. Adams, said the administration would review the lawsuits. 'The Adams administration holds all city employees — including leadership at the N.Y.P.D. — to the highest standards,' she said in a statement. 'Our work at the department speaks for itself: Crime continues to topple month after month both above and below ground.' 'That is no coincidence,' Ms. Mamelak Altus added. 'It's thanks to the Adams administration's laser focus on public safety.' The Police Department declined to comment. Lawyers for Mr. Caban, who resigned amid a federal probe into several members of the Adams administration, said he would 'vigorously defend' himself. 'There is no merit to the allegations raised in these complaints, including the unsupported and reckless suggestion that former Commissioner Caban accepted anything of value in connection with promotions,' said his lawyers, Russell Capone and Rebekah Donaleski. Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer for Philip Banks III, the former deputy mayor for public safety who is named as a co-defendant in one of the lawsuits, said in a statement that his client had done 'absolutely nothing wrong.' Mr. Maddrey's lawyer, Lambros Lambrou, said he had not seen the lawsuit yet. Mr. Maddrey resigned in December after he was accused by a lieutenant of coercing her into sex in exchange for overtime opportunities. Mr. Maddrey, who has denied the allegations, is also under federal investigation. Last November, Mayor Adams appointed Jessica Tisch as police commissioner and she has since overhauled the executive staff, replacing the head of internal affairs and other key positions as she works to bring stability back to the department. Ms. Tisch has also restored the department's longstanding promotion system, in which candidates are recommended and vetted by supervisors, according to several people familiar with the changes. Since then, Mr. Adams has stood alongside Ms. Tisch at news conferences where he has touted the drop in crime. However, the complaints filed on Monday threaten to cast a shadow on those achievements, recalling the scandals that forced out Mr. Caban and Mr. Maddrey, who were allies of the mayor. Mr. Adams promoted Mr. Caban to commissioner in July 2023, following the abrupt resignation of Keechant Sewell, who had left after only 18 months, frustrated over her inability to run the department as she saw fit. She felt stymied by members of the Adams administration and could not make discretionary promotions even at the lower levels of the agency without getting clearance from City Hall, according to people close to her. Mr. Caban himself resigned in September 2024 after federal agents seized his phone as part of a criminal investigation into the administration. Federal authorities were investigating Mr. Caban and his twin brother, a former police officer who was fired from the department in 2001 and had been working in nightclub security. The investigation involved possible payments made in exchange for favors to nightclubs. The authorities also sought records of promotions and transfers. The other former officers suing the city and the Police Department include: Christopher McCormack, who was the assistant chief of the Criminal Task Force Division; Matthew Pontillo, the chief of professional standards; and Joseph Veneziano, who was once second in command at the Internal Affairs Bureau. Each had a rank of either two or three stars and had spent 30 to 40 years in the department. The lawyer representing all the officers, Sarena Townsend, described them as 'high-level, integrity-driven professionals' who had been replaced with friends of the mayor or his allies in the department. In his lawsuit, Mr. Pontillo said he had been forced out after he criticized Mr. Maddrey for his support of 'unrestricted' high-speed pursuits and after he issued an audit that said officers from the Community Response Team, a unit created by John Chell, then the chief of patrol, had been turning off their body-worn cameras during stops. Their behavior 'indicated a pattern of unconstitutional stops and searches that the C.R.T. officers were attempting to hide,' according to Mr. Pontillo's complaint. Chief Chell, whom Commissioner Tisch promoted to chief of department, is named in Mr. Pontillo's lawsuit. He did not respond to a message for comment. In his complaint, Mr. Veneziano said that Mr. Maddrey and Mr. Caban had retaliated after Mr. Veneziano disciplined an inspector who was friends with Mr. Maddrey. The inspector, who was not named, had claimed to be working when he was not, according to the suit. In 2021, the inspector lost 60 vacation days and was forced to retire, but when Mr. Maddrey was promoted to chief of the department a year later, he reinstated the inspector and later promoted him to deputy chief in his office. Mr. Veneziano said he was later transferred to the 'inferior' Transit Bureau, where he was given an office far from other executives in the unit and ostracized from high-level meetings. He resigned in November 2023. In his complaint, Mr. McCormack said that as commander of the Criminal Task Force Division he was supposed to act as a 'gatekeeper' for personnel. But when he rejected candidates pushed by Mr. Maddrey, he was given a humiliating choice: resign or face demotion to captain. After Mr. McCormack left, Mr. Maddrey appointed more than 30 unqualified or incompetent people to the division, according to the suit. One officer who remained in an elite unit was a candidate pushed by Mr. Banks. The officer had wanted to join a division charged with investigating money laundering, known as the El Dorado unit. The officer had no experience in accounting or finances, like other members of the unit, and also had a criminal history. According to the suit, the candidate wanted to be part of the unit because the name 'sounded cool.' Maia Coleman contributed reporting.
