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Trump sues CNN for defamation
CBSN
Former President Donald Trump is suing CNN for defamation and asking for compensatory damages in excess of $75,000 and punitive damages of $475 million, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.
He is claiming that the cable news giant has harmed his reputation with "false, defamatory, and inflammatory mischaracterizations of him" and that CNN's conduct "is intended to interfere with [his] political career."
In particular, Trump argues that he's entitled to hundreds of millions of dollars in punitive damages because of CNN's use of the term the "Big Lie" to describe Trump's "stated concerns about the integrity of the election process for the 2020 presidential election." Trump's lawyers say that the "Big Lie" "is a direct reference to a tactic employed by Adolf Hitler and appearing in Hitler's "Mein Kampf."
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More than 2 million federal employees face a looming deadline: By midnight on Thursday, they must decide whether to accept a "deferred resignation" offer from the Trump administration. If workers accept, according to a White House plan, they would continue getting paid through September but would be excused from reporting for duty. But if they opt to keep their jobs, they could get fired.
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More employees of the Environmental Protection Agency were informed Wednesday that their jobs appear in doubt. Senior leadership at the EPA held an all-staff meeting to tell individuals that President Trump's executive order, "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," which was responsible for the closure of the agency's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office, will likely lead to the shuttering of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights as well.
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In her first hours as attorney general, Pam Bondi issued a broad slate of directives that included a Justice Department review of the prosecutions of President Trump, a reorientation of department work to focus on harsher punishments, actions punishing so-called "sanctuary" cities and an end to diversity initiatives at the department.