The newspaper reported that as early as the fall of 2022, Musk poured over $50 million into Citizens for Sanity, a group spearheaded by employees of Miller’s nonprofit, America First Legal. The funds were largely spent on aggressive ad campaigns targeting Democrats on hot-button issues like immigration and transgender rights in key battleground states just days before the midterm elections of that year.

While Musk appeared to shift politically only recently, publicly proclaiming his support for Trump’s 2024 presidential election bid, the report shows he was, in fact, a significant behind-the-scenes figure for GOP causes long before creating a super PAC to support the Republican nominee.

Musk’s donations make him one of the largest contributors to conservative efforts.

“More than half of the money ended up in the coffers of a pro-DeSantis political-action committee,” reported WSJ.

Musk contributed $10 million to support Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s 2024 presidential bid, a donation that had not been previously reported. Despite DeSantis’s early exit from the race, Musk’s financial support further cemented his status as a major GOP backer.

Political observers and experts are raising alarms about the International Longshoreman's Association union strike, which has seen dockworkers suspend their duties unloading cargo at ports along the East and Gulf Coasts — speculating whether the head of the union is attempting economic sabotage in favor of former President Donald Trump.

USMX, the key guild of maritime employers, offered the ILA upwards of 60 percent salary increases in their new contracts. The ILA, however, is demanding even higher increases, as well as the continuation of exorbitant fees to handle shipping containers — a practice so expensive, according to maritime journalist John Konrad, that U.S. ports frequently ship freight over roads hundreds of miles at ten times the expense to consumers rather than transport containers onto secondary barges at a fraction of the price to consumers — as well as a total ban on any new technology to automate ports, which industry experts have warned could destroy the competitiveness of U.S. shipping.

The extreme nature of the demands has caused speculation among observers that the whole thing might be a ploy to get Trump elected.

Audio of Steve Bannon explaining the plan

It says that Trump told three advisers before Election Day that, if he had an early lead in the vote count on election night due to slower counting of mail-in ballots—which were expected to favor Biden—he would “simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.”

Smith’s filing also cites audio from October 31, 2020, first revealed by Mother Jones. In it, Trump strategist Steve Bannon said that on election night, “Trump is gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just gonna say he’s the winner.” Trump “did exactly that” on election night, the brief notes, claiming that he should have won but was a victim of voter fraud.

Smith’s brief reveals that shortly after the election, a Trump aide gave the president an “honest assessment” that his fraud claims would fail in court. “The details don’t matter,” Trump responded.

But on Thursday, Vice President Harris will be holding an event in Ripon, Wisc. — home to the Little White Schoolhouse, where an 1854 meeting led to the formation of the Republican Party.

Harris will be joined in Ripon by former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, who endorsed her last month. Harris’ campaign says they will speak about the history of the GOP and appeal to Republicans and independent voters disillusioned with her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump.

"I will always put country above party, and I will be a president for all Americans,” Harris said at a rally in Charlotte, N.C., last month, noting that more than 200 prominent Republicans had backed her campaign.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed charges against Amazon, alleging that the e-commerce giant has illegally refused to bargain with a union representing drivers who are frustrated by what they claim are low wages and dangerous working conditions.

Back in August, drivers celebrated what they considered a major win when the NLRB found that Amazon was a joint employer of sub-contracted drivers, cheering "We are Amazon workers!" At that time, Amazon seemed to be downplaying the designation, telling Ars that the union was trying to "misrepresent" a merit determination that the NLRB confirmed was only "the first step in the NLRB’s General Counsel litigating the allegations after investigating an unfair labor practice charge."

But this week, the NLRB took the next step, signing charges soon after Amazon began facing intensifying worker backlash, not just from drivers but also from disgruntled office and fulfillment workers. According to Reuters, the NLRB accused Amazon of "a series of illegal tactics to discourage union activities" organized by drivers in a Palmdale, California, facility.

Bannon—who was working for Guo at the time—said he could have the lawsuit shelved. But Bannon wanted something in return: Nunberg would have to appear in a video with Guo and claim that Nunberg had learned that three other men had conspired to fabricate a rape allegation against Guo made by a former personal assistant—an allegation that had resulted in a criminal case in China and a lawsuit in New York, both begun in 2017.

Further, Bannon wanted Nunberg to say that the same three supposed accomplices—a Chinese entrepreneur named Bruno Wu, casino mogul Steve Wynn, and GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy—were involved in the issuing of a “red notice” by Interpol seeking the arrest of Guo for alleged financial crimes in China, Nunberg recalled.

Elon Musk has been ordered by a federal court to answer further questions from lawyers about his takeover of Twitter - now called X - on Thursday. And the financial world has one question: Will he be there?

Last month, he was a no-show for a court ordered appearance at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) office in Los Angeles.

Thursday's planned interview is part of a high-level investigation into whether Mr Musk waited too long to disclose he was building up a stake in Twitter before acquiring the social media platform in 2022.

The billionaire has previously said this delay was a mistake But in a court filing, SEC lawyer Robin Andrews asked US District Judge Jacqueline Corley to take a hard line against the billionaire.

"The Court must make clear that gamesmanship and delay tactics must cease," Mr Andrews wrote.

Just 13% of the defendants — a little over two dozen — have been accused of the sort of violent crimes that lawmakers cited when arguing for the legislation, such as rape, armed robbery and murder. Prosecutors were able to move such cases to adult court even before the law was changed.

The larger group of lesser offenses includes damaging property, trespassing, theft under $1,000, disturbing the peace, marijuana possession, illegal carrying of weapons and burglary. They also include offenses that involve the use of force, such as simple battery, but those are not listed in state law as violent crimes either, and they can be prosecuted as misdemeanors depending on the circumstances.

Louisiana is the only state to have passed and then fully reversed Raise the Age legislation. It’s one of four states, along with Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin, that automatically prosecute all 17-year-olds as adults. In other states, 17-year-olds can be prosecuted as adults only in special circumstances, such as when they are charged with a serious, violent crime like murder.

Document in an easy to read format: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258148/gov.uscourts.dcd.258148.252.0.pdf

Privately, the defendant told advisors--included [redacted] Campaign personnel, [redacted] (a White House staffer and Campaign volunteer), and [redacted] (the Vice President's Chief of Staff) that in such a scenario, he would simply declare victory before all ballots were counted and any winner was projected. Publicly, the defendant began to plant the seeds of that false declaration. In the months leading up to the election, he refused to say whether he would accept the election results, insisted that he could lose the election only because of fraud, falsely claimed that mail-in ballots were inherently fraudulent, and asserted that only votes counted by election day were valid.

For instance:

• In an interview on July 19, 2020, when asked repeatedly if he would accept the results of the election, the defendant said he would “have to see” and “it depends.” 5
• On July 30, despite having voted by mail himself earlier that year, the defendant suggested that widespread mail-in voting provided cause for delaying the election, tweeting, “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” 6
• In an interview on August 2, the defendant claimed, without any basis, that “[t]here is no way you can go through a mail-in vote without massive cheating.” 7
• At a campaign event in Wisconsin on August 17, the defendant told his supporters,“[t]he only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged, remember that. It’s the only way we’re going to lose this election, so we have to be very careful.” 8
• In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on August 24, the defendant said that “[t]he only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.” 9
• On October 27, during remarks regarding his campaign, the defendant said, “[i]t would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3rd, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate, and I don’t believe that that’s by our laws. I don’t believe that. So we’ll see what happens.” 10
• The defendant said this despite—or perhaps because—his private advisors had informed him that it was unlikely that the winner of the election would be declared on November 3.

Note: Any typos are my own, I had to retype half of it.

The exchange unfolded after the CBS News moderators asked Vance if he would try to challenge the results of November's election, even if every US state governor certified them - as was the case in 2020.

Vance did not directly answer, instead saying he was "focused on the future".

He sought to defend Trump over the riot during which President Trump's supporters attacked the US Capitol building in an effort to stop Joe Biden becoming president.

Vance said Trump had simply spoken of "problems" in 2020, and insisted that Trump had only said that "protesters ought to protest peacefully".

Turning to the outcome of the 2024 vote, he said: "If Tim Walz is the next vice-president, he'll have my prayers, he'll have my best wishes, and he'll have my help whenever he wants it."

But Walz persisted with the events of 2020 - challenging Vance to answer whether Trump had lost the poll. When Vance again sought to change the topic, Walz said: "That is a damning non-answer."

With Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his allies attempting to sow doubt over the 2024 election results if he loses, more than four dozen watchdogs and advocacy groups on Monday wrote to every member of Congress, demanding lawmakers' commitment to ensuring the peaceful transfer of power in January 2025.

Organized by the group Courage for America, which advocates against "an extremist agenda that puts money and power over the freedoms of our families and communities," the letter notes that there are less than 100 days until January 6, 2025, the day Congress is scheduled to certify the 2024 election results.

But getting out the vote is only part of the strategy. As independent journalist Judd Legum reported, Wallnau’s rally with Vance in Pennsylvania also featured Joshua Standifer, founder of the Christian political activism group Lion of Judah. Standifer described what he called a “Trojan horse” strategy: having evangelicals sign up to become poll workers. A guide that can be downloaded for free at the Lion of Judah’s website tells readers that by becoming poll workers, they can “bring light into darkness and influence the communities around them by running for office and actively seeking to bring Jesus’ Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

In reality, Rogers had disappointed two men: Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, billionaires who have made their fortunes in the oil industry. Over the past decade, the pair have built the most powerful political machine in Texas — a network of think tanks, media organizations, political action committees and nonprofits that work in lock step to purge the Legislature of Republicans whose votes they can’t rely on. Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days. Brandon Darby, the editor of Breitbart Texas, is one of several conservatives who has compared Dunn and Wilks to Russian oligarchs. “They go into other communities and unseat people unwilling to do their bidding,” he says. “You kiss the ring or you’re out.”

Wearing a blue suit, striped tie and glasses, Frank Artiles sits behind the counsel table, looking straight ahead with mute expression on his face.

Former Florida state Sen. Frank Artiles listens to testimony at his Miami trial on Friday, September 27.Pedro Portal/El Nuevo Herald/ZUMA Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

This story was reported by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.

Former Florida state Sen. Frank Artiles was convicted by a Miami-Dade Circuit Court jury Monday evening, the latest fallout from the state’s 2020 “ghost candidates” scandal.

Artiles was convicted on three felony counts related to $44,000 in payments he made to Alex Rodriguez, a no-party candidate whose role was to siphon votes from Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, the Democratic incumbent. The six-member jury deliberated for seven hours before reaching its verdict. Artiles was acquitted on a fourth count of aiding and abetting a false voter registration. Artiles sat stone-faced as the guilty verdicts were read.

“They won. They were successful. They beat JJR,” public corruption prosecutor Tim VanderGiesen said in his opening argument. “They beat the incumbent named Rodriguez.”

The couple added that they were “horrified” that a large corporation like Uber could “avoid being sued in a court of law by injured consumers because of contractual language buried in a dozen-page-long user agreement concerning services unrelated to the one that caused the consumers’ injuries.”

After several days and countless news stories surrounding Disney’s bid to use Disney+ terms to shield itself from a lawsuit tied to Disney World, the Hollywood giant later backtracked and dropped the legal claim, allowing the matter to proceed in court instead of through arbitration.

The committee alleges that de la Torre and Steward executives reaped millions in personal profits by hollowing out the health care facilities, even selling the land out from under them. The mismanagement left them so financially burdened that one doctor in a Steward-owned hospital in Louisiana said they were forced to perform "third-world medicine." A lawmaker in that state who investigated the conditions at the hospital described Steward executives as "health care terrorists."

Further, the financial strain on the hospitals is alleged to have led to the preventable deaths of 15 patients and put more than 2,000 other patients in "immediate peril." As hospitals cut services, closed wards, or shuttered entirely, hundreds of health care workers were laid off, and communities were left without access to care. Nurses who remained in faltering facilities testified of harrowing conditions, including running out of basic supplies like beds. In one Massachusetts hospital, nurses were forced to place the remains of newborns in cardboard shipping boxes because Steward failed to pay a vendor for bereavement boxes.

In the lawsuit filed today, de la Torre argues that the senators are attempting to punish him for invoking his constitutional rights and that the hearing "was simply a device for the Committee to attack [him] and try to publicly humiliate and condemn him."

Rachel Maddow looks at the conservative history of attacking universities for exposing students to ideas that conservatives don't like, and highlights JD Vance in his own words discussing ideas for punishing universities and well as businesses that he sees as being on the wrong side of the culture war he is waging.

Part 2: The real agenda

Nearly 75 percent of Georgians—including 62 percent of Republicans—don't want to see abortion criminalized before viability.Krisztian Elek/SOPA/Sipa/AP Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Two weeks after the deaths of two Georgia women highlighted the very real risks to maternal health posed by the state’s six-week abortion ban, a judge has thrown out that draconian law, declaring it unconstitutional in a remarkable ruling that drips with sarcasm and rage. It’s a resounding legal victory in a key swing state that is likely to reverberate throughout the South—at least temporarily.

“A review of our higher courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty’ demonstrates that liberty in Georgia includes…the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her health care choices,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in a 26-page order issued Monday. “When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then—and only then—may society intervene,” he added.

“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” McBurney writes. “Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have.”

Meanwhile, here are some other things Trump said at the rally, which you had to read Rupar’s X feed to know about.

“These people are animals” (referring to migrants).

“I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members. We’re going to liberate our country.”

“You gotta get these people back where they came from. You have no choice. You’re gonna lose your culture.”

And, finally, this gem: “They will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat.”

Although the drugs are typically used in US medication abortions, they are also regularly used in an array of other circumstances, such as to help with miscarriage management, treat ulcers and soften the cervix during labor and other procedures.

Normally, at the Louisiana hospital where OB-GYN Dr Nicole Freehill works, misoprostol is kept in so-called hemorrhage carts, which can be easily wheeled into the rooms where patients deliver babies and which carry medications normally used to treat hemorrhaging, including misoprostol. It takes about 15 seconds to pull the misoprostol out of the cart, Freehill said.

Biden also said Monday he plans to go to North Carolina as soon as Wednesday to access the storm damage, stressing that he doesn’t want to go too quickly and disrupt relief efforts.

“I told the governor of North Carolina I’d go down. I expect to be down there by Wednesday or Thursday,” Biden said. “You know there’s an entourage, it can be disruptive.”

The president said he has been in touch with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R). FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell is on the ground in Asheville, N.C., Biden noted, and 3,600 federal personnel have been deployed to impacted areas.

Schools had received inspections, but they were mostly surface level and sparse in detail, primarily focused on clear worker safety issues rather than an exhaustive facilities review. For example, Becca visited a Boundary County school where she saw buckets taped to pipes to catch leaks and heard that the maintenance director had to blow snow off the roof to prevent it from collapsing again. In comparison, the inspection report’s only reference to the roof was linking to a federal alert about preventing injury during snow removal. It also didn’t show the impact on students and staff.

The strike was expected to involve 25,000 workers, according to USMX, and close 14 ports: Baltimore; Boston; Charleston, South Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; Miami; Houston; Mobile, Alabama; New Orleans; New York/New Jersey; Norfolk, Virginia; Philadelphia; Savannah, Georgia; Tampa, Florida; and Wilmington, Delaware.

"USMX brought on this strike when they decided to hold firm to foreign owned Ocean Carriers earning billion-dollar profits at United States ports, but not compensate the American ILA longshore workers who perform the labor that brings them their wealth," ILA President Harold Daggett said in a statement posted on social media. "We are prepared to fight as long as necessary, to stay out on strike for whatever period of time it takes, to get the wages and protections against automation our ILA members deserve."

According to the letter, recipients would supposedly be paid an $80 stipend for food costs and be provided with “government-approved” bunks. The letter was written on official-looking state letterhead and stamped with a fake Pennsylvania seal.

“Thank you for your dedication to the health and safety of these future Americans!” the letter concluded.

Warren, who quickly realized the letter she received was fake, said it was clearly written to scare recipients and meant to threaten recipients.

“I could definitely see, even for me reading this letter, it felt threatening even though I’m very pro-immigrant because it felt like something that was being imposed on me,” she said.