Supporters react as they listen to Donald Trump’s speech live on the radio outside of Drake Enterprises, an automotive supplier in Clinton Township in Macomb County.
Macomb County, a hotbed of Trump supporters who often decry voter fraud, has found itself at the center of a real voter fraud case.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Friday announced felony charges against three assistant clerks and four St. Clair Shores residents who are accused of illegally double voting in the 2024 August primary election.
While Trumpers have long claimed without evidence that voter fraud is rampant, it turns out this case of actual fraud happened right in the heart of Macomb County, a former Democratic stronghold where white angst has spawned a conservative, pro-Trump movement.
Nessel filed the charges after Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido, among the staunchest and most vocal Trump supporters in Michigan, decided not to in August.
The charges stem from allegations that the residents voted twice, and the assistant clerks illegally altered voter records to cover it up.
The four residents — Frank Prezzato, 68; Stacy Kramer, 56; Douglas Kempkins, Jr., 44; and Geneva O’Day, 62 — face charges of voting both absentee and in-person, which is a violation of state election laws. Each resident has been charged with one count of voting absentee and in-person, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison, and one count of offering to vote more than once, which carries a maximum penalty of four years.
The three assistant clerks — Patricia Guciardo, 73; Emily McClintock, 42; and Molly Brasure, 31 — are accused of altering the State Qualified Voter File to show that the absentee ballots cast by the four residents were rejected, even though the ballots had been received and counted. This falsification allowed the four residents to cast in-person ballots, which were also counted, resulting in double votes. The assistant clerks face multiple felony charges, including falsifying election returns or records, voting absentee and in-person, and offering to vote more than once.
“Despite common talking points by those who seek to instill doubt in our electoral process, double voting in Michigan is extremely rare,” Nessel, a Democrat, said. “There are procedures in place to ensure this does not happen and that is why it so rarely does. It took a confluence of events and decisions to allow these four people to double vote. Nevertheless, the fact that four incidents occurred in a municipality of this size raised significant concerns and is simply unheard of.”
The alleged fraud came to light when the four residents appeared at polling locations in St. Clair Shores and were informed that their absentee ballots had already been received. Despite warnings in the electronic poll book, which tracks voter data, poll workers were allegedly instructed by the assistant clerks to override the system warnings and issue in-person ballots. Both absentee and in-person ballots were ultimately counted, leading to double voting.
The suspected fraud was reported after the primary election by St. Clair Shores Clerk Abrial Barret, who raised concerns with Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini, the St. Clair Shores Police Department, and the state Bureau of Elections.
Nessel said the charges are a reminder of the importance of safeguarding election integrity.
“My office has been committed to pursuing, investigating and, when necessary, charging, cases of election fraud, and have done so when the evidence provides for criminal charges,” Nessel said. “Election integrity matters, and we must take these violations seriously in order to ensure we can trust the results on the other end.”
The defendants have been charged in the 40th District Court in St. Clair Shores, and arraignment dates have yet to be set.
This case marks a rare instance of election fraud involving both voters and election officials in Michigan.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson applauded the charges.
“Voting more than once is illegal,” Benson, a Democrat, said. “Anyone who tries to vote multiple times in an election will get caught and they will be charged.”
With a little over a month until Election Day, the race to represent Silicon Valley in the California State Assembly is heating up over a row between the local Planned Parenthood and one of the candidates whom they accuse of misleading voters.
Tara Sreekrishnan, a candidate for California’s 26th assembly district, has been touting her 100% rating from Planned Parenthood Advocates Mar Monte as an endorsement in recent mailers. But the reproductive rights organization is backing her opponent instead and has told her she cannot refer to the rating in her campaign materials — a demand Sreekrishnan plans to defy.
In order to be considered for an endorsement from Planned Parenthood Advocates Mar Monte — the local advocacy chapter that covers 43 counties across California and northern Nevada — candidates are required to have a 100% rating on the group’s questionnaire, which asks about topics such as abortion rights and sexual health education. The rating indicates support for reproductive health and access issues, according to the organization.
Both Sreekrishnan and her opponent, Patrick Ahrens, received perfect marks, but Planned Parenthood opted to endorse Ahrens. The two candidates are running for Assemblymember Evan Low’s open seat, and both currently work in the state legislature. Sreekrishnan is Sen. Dave Cortese’s deputy chief of staff, and Ahrens is Low’s district director.
Candidates who receive the 100% rating but not the endorsement are allowed to advertise it — and many do. But Planned Parenthood said that Sreekrishnan is using it incorrectly and told her that she can’t use it on any paid campaign materials moving forward.
Despite the request, Sreekrishnan’s campaign said that it plans to continue using the rating.
“It doesn’t matter to me if there is some personal politics influencing the local Planned Parenthood endorsement,” Sreekrishnan said in a statement. “I will always endorse Planned Parenthood, because as a woman who survived ovarian cancer, I know firsthand how critical fighting for women’s health is.”
In a recent mailer reviewed by this news organization, Sreekrishnan used the rating, which says “Rated 100% by Planned Parenthood Advocates Mar Monte,” under bold capitalized font that says “Endorsed by.” Two other endorsements from the California Nurses Association and the California Democratic Legislative Women’s Caucus are next to it.
California Assembly candidate Tara Sreekrishnan has been using her 100% rating from Planned Parenthood Mar Monte as an endorsement on mailers. The organization, though, has endorsed her opponent.
After reviewing the mailer, Ann Ravel, the former Federal Election Commission chair, agrees with Planned Parenthood’s point of view.
“The assumption from looking at this is I think Planned Parenthood has every right to be concerned if they’re not endorsing her,” she said.
Ravel, who also served on the California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, said there’s nothing in the Political Reform Act — the state’s political ethics law — that deals with issues around endorsements.
Sreekrishnan’s ballot statement, which is on her website and is included in Santa Clara County’s voter guide, also lists the Planned Parenthood rating in a list of endorsements.
Lauren Babb, the vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood Advocates Mar Monte, said they’ve received multiple complaints about how Sreekrishnan is using her rating. The group has had multiple conversations with her campaign about its use, but Babb said they’ve been unable to “come to an agreement.”
“We are not in a place that the rating is being used appropriately, and we are seeking options so voters know who the endorsed candidate is in the race,” Babb said.
Other non-endorsed candidates across Silicon Valley have put their 100% rating under the endorsements section on their website. But Babb said that’s allowed because they don’t expect candidates to have a separate section of their website for the rating.
“What other candidates are not doing is saying they’re endorsed by us in paid mailers,” she said.
The Democratic Legislative Women’s Caucus has come to Sreekrishnan’s defense in the dispute. In a statement, Sen. Nancy Skinner, who serves as the chair of the caucus, called her a “steadfast supporter of Planned Parenthood and a fighter on behalf of defending reproductive justice and the right to an abortion.”
“Tara’s experience as a cancer survivor has given her a unique commitment to ensuring that no woman faces the same challenges alone,” Skinner said. “As women, we must continue to fight for the health care we deserve, and we’re proud to stand with Tara Sreekrishnan in this fight.”
LOS ANGELES – As the world gets a little warmer and we settle into the Spring season, the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation is proud to announce the return of our Youth Baseball and Softball Leagues for the Spring 2023 season.
BASEBALL & SOFTBALL ARE BACK!
Sign up for our Spring Sports Leagues, Coming to an LA County Parks Near You!
Baseball season is right around the corner, now’s the perfect time to sign up your young athletes for our Youth Baseball Leagues! Our Baseball Leagues will provide an emphasis on learning fundamentals of Baseball, skill development, sportsmanship, teamwork, and fun. League will run for 10 weeks and consist of one weekday practice and one game every Saturday. Game score and league standing will be kept. Rules will be enforced. Registration fee will include uniform, award, and umpire. Qualifying teams will advance and participate in the playoffs.
Girl’s Softball League will provide an emphasis on learning fundamentals of Softball, skill development, sportsmanship, teamwork, and fun. League will run for 10 weeks and consist of one weekday practice and one game every Saturday. Game score and league standing will be kept. Softball rules will be enforced. Registration fee will include uniform, award, and umpire. Qualifying teams will be advance and participate in the playoffs.
Divisions & Dates
D3 – D6: April 15 – June 12
AVAILABLE AT THE FOLLOWING PARKS DIVISIONS 3 – 6
NORTH AGENCY
George Lane Park: 5520 W. Avenue, L-8, Quartz Hill, 93534 | (661) 722 7780
Through an exciting partnership with the Dodgers Foundation, Dodgers Dreamteam (formerly Dodgers RBI) brings the sport of Baseball and Softball at a lower price! The goal of DDT is to provide an inclusive, barrier-free sports-based youth development program for communities that have historically been left out of consideration.
Divisions & Dates:
April 15 – June 12
Divisions 3 – 6
AVAILABLE AT THE FOLLOWING PARKS
EAST AGENCY
Belvedere Park: 4914 E. Cesar Chavez Ave. Los Angeles, 90022 | (323) 260 2342
Obregon Park: 4021 E. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90063 | (323) 260 2344
Behizy’s post caught the attention of some big names in the world of voting machine conspiracies. Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who was named in a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting on account of lies he spread about their machines following the 2020 election, amplified Behizy’s post. Trump’s former national security adviser and election conspiracist Michael Flynn reposted Behizy’s post about the hack: “Our election system is vulnerable to nefarious actors,” Flynn wrote. “We MUST get rid of the machines! Total BS that we continue using them.” Right-wing influencer Phillip Buchanan, known online as Catturd, also reposted Behizy’s post along with a pithy statement to his millions of followers: “Imagine that!”
The clip of the successful hacking—minus key context—also spread across fringe news sites and platforms. Right-wing commentator Vigilant Fox, who runs Vigilant News, flagged the podcast clip to their 1.3 million followers on X as an “important story” that the media “hid from you today.” On Truth Social, the news was distributed via links across fringe sites such as Slay News, and shared by Freedom Force Battalion, a QAnon account.
“I haven’t listened to the whole interview yet, to be fair,” one poster on Truth Social wrote, while sharing the short clip and claiming that all voting machines are compromised.
Voting machines have long been a target of election conspiracies. But in 2020, with the help of GOP members of Congress, right-wing sheriffs, conservative pundits, and Trump, those narratives exploded into the mainstream.
At the same time, officials in the US government and agencies charged with running and defending elections in the US called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”
Well-intentioned cybersecurity experts and hackers, like Hursti, are often tapped by state and federal agencies to probe election infrastructure for security vulnerability to make elections even safer. This August, like every year, hackers at Defcon’s “Voting Village”—led by Hursti—identified some minor weaknesses in the machines. Politico reported that while it was unlikely any of those weaknesses could disrupt the election, some experts were concerned about election conspiracy theorists weaponizing the results to advance their own narratives about the system.
Throughout his podcast episode, Bet-David repeatedly tries to push conspiratorial claims about why voting machines are so insecure, suggesting that an unnamed “they” are purposely trying to keep the system insecure.
Hursti continuously pushes back, pointing out that computers by their very nature are vulnerable and that instead of trying to create a perfect system, officials are working to mitigate risks where possible.
“Every computer in the world can be hacked if you have access and no mitigation,” Hursti said. “When we’ve hacked machines, it is for the purpose that we can improve, and if you cannot improve the system, then you have to improve everything around the system, have a mitigation strategy, how you defend the system.”
Citing the vulnerabilities that Hursti has revealed in dozens of voting machines in recent years, Bet-David pushed the well-known conspiracy that in 2020 “the winners were flipped because somebody got into” the machines.
But the Finnish hacker pushed back, dismissing the suggestion and pointing out that without proper regulations in place to ensure voting machines meet basic security standards, the idea that elections were vulnerable to cyberattacks was enough to damage democracy.
“The [worry] here is to deny the result or make a false allegation,” Hursti said. “This is very dangerous because it is feeding the distrust of the public and, in democracy, any distrust is damaging the participation, and democracy is all about participation. Distrust is causing apathy. Apathy is something which is detrimental for functioning democracies.”
JD Vance outright lied about his calls for a national abortion ban during Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate, falsely declaring he “never supported a national ban.” That is categorically untrue and yet another reason why no one should believe him or Donald Trump when they make promises about reproductive rights, which they will absolutely shred given the opportunity.
But, first, a quick fact-check regarding Vance’s debate claim. In 2022, while running for Senate in Ohio, Vance said on a podcast, “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” During that same campaign, he stated on his website for all the world to see that he was “100 percent pro-life” and that he was in favor of “eliminating abortion.” In fact, those words were on Vance’s website until July of this year, when Trump announced the senator as his running mate.
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Then there’s Trump, who all caps screamed to his followers on social media last night: “EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT, BECAUSE IT IS UP TO THE STATES TO DECIDE BASED ON THE WILL OF THEIR VOTERS (THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!). LIKE RONALD REAGAN BEFORE ME, I FULLY SUPPORT THE THREE EXCEPTIONS FOR RAPE, INCEST, AND THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER.”
There are many reasons that no one should ever believe anything Trump says, including the fact that he is an incorrigibleliar. On abortion specifically, a heaping dose of skepticism would be wise given that the man regularlybragsabout killing Roe v. Wade, which should inspire absolutely zero confidence in his alleged plans to veto a federal abortion ban.
But there’s also the matter of the very sneaky way Trump, Vance, and other Republicans have taken to talking about abortion bans. As abortion rights advocate Jessica Valenti has written, “Republicans know abortion bans are deeply unpopular, so they’ve come up with this cheap rhetorical trick to fool voters,” wherein they claim not to support bans but “minimum standards.“ In this context, “ban” means no abortions at any time for any reason, whereas the latter could mean something like no abortions after six weeks—which, of course, would effectively be a ban on abortion. For instance, when asked during an interview about Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed 15-week abortion ban, Vance insisted it was not a ban at all but a “federal minimum standard.” As Valenti wrote following the debate: “Vance has adopted the anti-abortion redefinition of ‘ban’ that says the word means a prohibition on abortion in all cases, even when a woman’s life is at risk. Under this definition, there are no abortion bans in America! That switch up provides Republicans a lot of political cover: When Donald Trump says, for example, that he would veto a federal abortion ban, it simply means that he would veto a ban that has no exceptions for women’s lives.”
Leah Feiger: I think it adds to it. It’s this, it’s stolen valor. Even when you’re actually parsing through the specifics of it, is it that terrible?
Tim Marchman: I don’t think he came off great. I don’t think it’s …
Leah Feiger: Yeah, he came off not well in the fact that he called himself a knucklehead. That was tough to see. That was definitely a JD Vance smirking moment. I just couldn’t stop watching him that entire time.
Tim Marchman: Yeah, and it’s something you’d really … If the guy was gilding the lily a bit, everyone gilds the lily a bit, at least at this level of politics, and you really should have a comeback for that. I think there was a little bit of confusion. I was in the region during that period, I wasn’t in Hong Kong at the time of those specific protests. I wasn’t in Tiananmen Square when the man was standing down the tank, but I was there at that time. It was a time of great change, as we all remember, the Berlin Wall. There’s a way to do that. He seemed completely flat-footed, which was just bizarre.
Leah Feiger: Obviously, we should point out, and perhaps our lovely moderators could have as well, that Trump is a serial liar, and compared to his many, many, many whoppers over the years, I could have seen a funny turning point of Walz going, “This is nothing. Let’s talk about some greatest hits.” For a campaign that is so focused on the meme-able moment, on the pivot to social, on the pivot to TikTok, they did not manage to grab a lot out of this. Of course, we’re not even talking about Springfield. JD Vance was one of the big, big instigators of the whole Haitian immigrants, Haitian illegal immigrants are eating your friendly neighborhood pets. They’re eating your dogs and cats. When Springfield came up in the debate, this was such an opportunity for Walz to go in, and he did. He did mention that some of this rhetoric had led to schools having to have a lot of extra security, or having to have all these additional drills, but he didn’t go after Vance specifically. He barely went after Trump specifically.
Makena Kelly: This would’ve been a turn too for Walz to be like, “OK, let’s talk about lying and fibbing. You’re the person who literally went on the news last week or whatever week it was, saying that we can embellish these stories to really get everything across that’s happening to rural America right now because of immigration.” That would’ve been an awesome pivot point, and of course, it just didn’t happen.
Tim Marchman: He also had the opportunity to say that what Vance was saying was still just flatly false. Vance, as he did throughout the debate, basically took this rhetorical position, kind of distancing himself from Trump, or treating Trump as like a crazy uncle who, “Eh, we all know what he says, but let’s not worry about that. He says a lot of stuff.” He backed off the claims that Haitian illegal immigrants are kidnapping people’s pets and barbecuing them, but he presented it as his attempt to bring attention to the serious problem of immigrants flooding into Springfield and overwhelming the hospital systems, overwhelming the school systems, something of which there’s literally no evidence. People have looked at mortality rates, they’ve looked at 911 waiting times, all these different metrics. There’s no evidence that the migrants are overwhelming the hospital system. The school system, they need more ESL teachers, they need things like that. Those are legitimate issues to bring up. There’s a very easy way to bring up those issues without getting into blood libel. Walz missed the opportunity to go on offense with that when this whole issue came up, affirmatively defending these people and saying, “These are people who are here legally, who are in this town because the town has jobs, and they don’t have people to do them, period.” He was very forceful in making the point that Trump and Vance’s rhetoric has led to bomb threats and all sorts of horrible stuff, but it was, again, to me, an example of him just kind of ceding the premise a little bit. This is not a problem. Really, this is not a problem. He allowed it, I thought, to be presented as a huge existential problem for the country in a way that was just pretty ridiculous.
After Donald Trump’s ill-fated debate against Kamala Harris where vigorously defended his crowd sizes and lied about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio eating pets, the bar was relatively low for J.D. Vance during Tuesday’s debate with Tim Walz. However, he not only exceeded it but surpassed it among Republican operatives I spoke with. One in Vance’s orbit texted a GIF of a baseball player hitting a home run when asked for an assessment of the debate shortly after it ended.
Other operatives from across the party kvelled about the Ohio senator’s performance, which they thought seemed particularly outstanding when compared to an at times stumbling performance from his Democratic rival, the Minnesota governor. Some couldn’t help but spent the aftermath of the debate glued to their social media feeds and CNN, reveling in what they perceived as Democratic bedwetting
Another Republican in Vance world said simply “We killed it.” The one moment Democrats celebrated during the debate was Vance’s refusal to answer a question about whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Republicans brushed that off. “They will make it all about Jan 6. But that doesn’t move the needle.”
Walz was surprisingly underwhelming on the debate stage—-particularly his rambling answer when asked about his repeated statements that he had been in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in 1989. Walz initially described himself as a “knucklehead” before eventually conceding that he misspoke at times.
One establishment Republican hoped Vance’s performance would boost Trump among wavering voters. “I do think there are people who aren’t psyched about Trump’s performance or the idea of voting for him who will like what they saw tonight,” they said. After all, Vance’s rollout as Trump’s running mate had been notoriously bumpy as he was forced to defend a series of inflammatory comments that he had made on right wing podcasts over the years including one in 2021 when he complained about the influence of “childless cat ladies” running the country.
The Ohio senator’s image hasn’t notably softened since then as he has adopted the traditional role of running mate as an attack dog. However, on Tuesday, he was the one that pulled his punches—-at least compared to Trump who was repeatedly deriding Walz as “Tampon Tim” on social media. Instead, he came across as “exceptionally competent and conspicuously congenial,” in the words of the establishment Republican, especially compared to the public perception of him prior to the debate when he was viewed less favorably than any other candidate on a national ticket.
There is uncertainty though whether any of this mattered. It is a vice presidential debate and voters don’t vote for the number two on the ticket. Traditionally, vice presidential debates have almost no impact on the presidential election. After all, the most memorable moment in any vice presidential debate was Lloyd Bentsen’s withering putdown of Dan Quayle in 1988 where he mocked Quayle’s comparison of himself to John F. Kennedy. “I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy,” said Bentsen. The moment has gone down in history but Bentsen, and his running mate, Michael Dukakis, lost the election by a hefty margin.”
As one senior Capitol Hill Republican pointed out “One can debate without any proof as to whether or not the needle moved tonight. What is clear is that this was a best case scenario for Trump and a worst case scenario for Harris.”
“We want reading, writing and arithmetic,” Trump said in a conversation about his plans for education reform if he wins the election next month. “Right now, you have mostly transgender. Everything’s transgender.”
“Some of these school programs, I looked at it the other night ― they’re destroying our country,” the former president added.
Trump prefaced his outrageous assertion ― yet another salvo in the culture wars ― by alluding to his plan to close the Department of Education and turn over education completely to the states. “And they’ll do great,” he said.
The Republican nominee noted that the U.S. spends more money per pupil than any other developed nation ― a claim that the data somewhat supports ― and yet is underperforming globally.
“We want school choice, but we have to get out of this Washington thing,” he said. “We’re gonna move it back to the states.”
The president has leaned on transphobia to characterize public schools as a breeding ground for extreme ideology on gender ― and his online plan for education reflects that.
Cutting federal funding “for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children” is the top priority listed on that page.
The plan also lists “Keep men out of women’s sports” as a priority, another sign of the campaign’s embrace of transphobia.
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The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. We hope you’ll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.
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Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.
The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. Would you consider becoming a regular HuffPost contributor?
Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.
The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. We hope you’ll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.
Donald Trump has preemptively declared that Tuesday night’s VP debate will be “rigged” against JD Vance,a baseless claim that he has made before every debate during this election cycle. Which doesn’t say much about his confidence in his running mate!
In a Fox Nation interview that was, for some reason, conducted by former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, the ex-president said that he would personally “love to have two or three more debates” against Kamala Harris but “they’re so rigged and so stacked. You’ll see it tomorrow with JD. It’ll be stacked.”
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There is, of course, no evidence whatsoever that any of the debates that Trump has participated in have been rigged against him, nor any evidence that tonight’s proceedings will be “stacked” against Vance. Rather, Trump has made these claims about previous debates because he’s incapable of admitting when he’s lost. Following his debate last month versus Harris, the former president whined about being fact-checked by the moderators and declared “everybody at ABC” should be fired. He also absurdly floated the idea that Harris received the debate questions ahead of time (which ABC News denied) and that her earrings were actually listening devices, saying, “I hear she got the questions, and I also heard she had something in the ear.”
At the same time, Trump also embarrassingly claimed he “won” the event, when he quite obviously did not. That probably had something to do with the fact that he spent the debate bragging about his relationship with right-wing authoritarians; refused to admit he lost the election; claimed—for not the first time—that Democrats think it’s okay to “execute” babies; rambled incoherently about “transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison”; and now famously declared, of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio: “They’re eating the dogs…they’re eating the cats.”
One of the most absurd lies promulgated by MAGA Republicans is the idea that Donald Trump does not regularly endorse violence. They did it during his time in office, they did it after January 6, and they did it, most recently, following two attempts on his life—while claiming it was actually Democratic rhetoric that led to two men allegedly trying to assassinate him. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, and the latest example tearing their claims to shreds would be Trump’s call over the weekend for the police to violently assault Americans en masse in order to stop crime.
Speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania, the ex-president said the key to preventing crimes like shoplifting is state-sanctioned police beatings, which he lamented the “left” does not allow. “You see these guys walking out with air conditioners, with refrigerators on their back. The craziest thing,” Trump said. “And the police aren’t allowed to do their job. They’re told, if you do anything, you’re gonna lose your pension…. They’re not allowed to do it because the liberal left won’t let ’em do it. The liberal left wants to destroy them, and they want to destroy our country.” Then he unveiled his big idea: “If you had one really violent day…one rough hour, and I mean real rough, the word will get out and it will end immediately.”
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During his remarks, Trump also falsely claimed one can steal up to $950 worth of goods with no consequences in California, which appeared to be both a reference to Proposition 47—which downgraded some theft offenses to misdemeanors from felonies—and an attempt to tie the law to then California attorney general Kamala Harris. But as Politico notes, while Harris was in office when the ballot initiative was approved, “she remained neutral on the matter.” Meanwhile, “the dollar threshold Trump referenced actually became law four years earlier, signed by then governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.”
Following Trump’s remarks in Pennsylvania, a spokesperson for his campaign absurdly claimed he was “clearly just floating [police beatings] in jest,” adding: “President Trump has always been the law and order President and he continues to reiterate the importance of enforcing existing laws. Otherwise, it’s all-out anarchy, which is what Kamala Harris has created in some of these communities across America, especially during her time as attorney general when she emboldened criminals.”
Trump, of course, is the only person currently running for president who is a convicted felon. Meanwhile, the notion that he is all about “law and order” is fully laughable given that (1) he has called for defunding the DOJ and FBI and (2) prosecutors say January 6 was “the largest single-day, mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history.” As for the idea that he was totally just joking about that “one really violent day,” well, that is not exactly believable given his long history of calling for violence, a rap sheet that includes:
Telling a crowd at one of his rallies, “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, okay. Just knock the hell—I promise you I will pay for the legal fees, I promise”
Whipping his supporters into a violent frenzy with months of lies concerning the 2020 election, which led to a violent attack on the Capitol that left numerous people dead, and which he tried to justify by saying: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
Defending his supporters’ decision to chant, “hang Mike Pence”
The world’s richest man stood steps away from the US-Mexico border, adjusting the brim of his black cowboy hat.
“As an immigrant to the United States, I am extremely pro-immigrant,” Elon Musk said, “and I believe that we need a greatly expanded legal immigration system, and that we should let anyone in the country who is hardworking and honest and will be a contributor to the United States.”
But in the September 2023 video from Eagle Pass, Texas, Musk said limits are needed, too.
“By the same token, we should also not be allowing people in the country if they’re breaking the law,” he said. “That doesn’t make sense. The law’s there for a reason.”
Since that border visit a year ago, Musk’s critiques of illegal immigration have become a prominent part of his online presence. And he’s an increasingly powerful force shaping and amplifying conversations around the issue — especially since his 2022 takeover of Twitter, now known as X, and given his huge audience on the platform.
Immigration is a top topic on voters’ minds heading into the 2024 presidential election, and it was a major focal point of the August 12 conversation Musk hosted on X with former President Donald Trump.
The tech magnate’s more than 195 million followers on X frequently see him sharing posts endorsing conspiracy theories that claim the Biden administration has deliberately allowed undocumented immigrants to cross the border to gain political advantage. It’s also common to see posts referring to his own background as an immigrant and advocating for increased legal immigration to the US.
But it’s far less common to hear Musk talking about a chapter of his family’s immigration story that’s been described by his younger brother in several interviews — an anecdote that raises questions about the billionaire tech tycoon’s own immigration status when he was starting his first company in the United States.
Kimbal Musk: ‘We were illegal immigrants’
Elon Musk, 53, was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and moved to Canada shortly before his 18th birthday, acquiring citizenship there through his mother, a Canadian citizen. According to numerous biographies and profiles of him published in recent years, he had an enterprising spirit from a young age and his sights set on immigrating to the United States.
It’s been more than three decades since Musk came to the US in 1992 for his junior year as a transfer student at the University of Pennsylvania. Since then, he’s founded several high-profile Silicon Valley startups. And today he’s the CEO of Tesla Motors, the CEO of SpaceX and the chairman and chief technology officer of X. Forbes estimates his net worth at nearly $270 billion, placing him atop the magazine’s real-time billionaires list.
But his first company’s origins were humble.
He’s described its early days in numerous speeches and interviews — as has his younger brother, Kimbal Musk, a cofounder of the startup that set them both on a path to success in the United States.
In 1995, Musk moved to Palo Alto, California, where he planned to begin a Ph.D. program at Stanford. But shortly after the school year started, according to Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography, Musk decided he’d rather capitalize on the emerging dotcom market and focus on founding a company with Kimbal.
During 2013 remarks at the Milken Institute Global Conference, an annual gathering of business executives and thought leaders, the brothers described details they’ve often shared about how they kept living expenses low by eating at Jack in the Box — and by living at their office.
“It was cheaper to rent the office than to rent an apartment. So we just rented the office, and slept in the office, and showered at the YMCA,” Elon Musk recalled, drawing laughs from the crowd.
At the 2013 event, the brothers also touched on a topic they’ve discussed less frequently in public: their immigration status during the company’s founding.
In early 1996, their startup, an early online city guide and mapping tool, got a $3 million infusion from venture capitalists. The investors soon found themselves surprised, according to Kimbal Musk’s account captured in a video of the 2013 event posted on the Milken Institute’s YouTube page.
“When they did fund us,” Kimbal Musk recalled, “they realized that we were illegal immigrants.”
“Well…” Elon Musk interjected.
“Yes, we were,” Kimbal Musk pushed back.
Video of the remarks shows Elon Musk laughing as he jumped in with a different interpretation: “I’d say it was a gray area.”
He didn’t elaborate, and it’s unclear what Elon Musk meant by that characterization. The Musk brothers haven’t responded to CNN’s requests for comment on the exchange, nor to reports earlier this year quoting it on the tech website Gizmodo and in The Los Angeles Times.
Other accounts they’ve shared in public, and descriptions in biographies of the billionaire entrepreneur, don’t specify what kind of visas they had when founding the company or at later points — key details that would reveal what requirements they would have needed to meet to maintain a legal status in the US.
Two biographies of Musk, Isaacson’s eponymous tome and Ashlee Vance’s 2015 “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” state that investors in the startup went on to help both brothers obtain visas.
It’s unclear what kind of visa Elon Musk had when the brothers and their friend Greg Kouri started the company eventually dubbed Zip2, and what path he went on to take to become a legal resident and citizen of the United States.
How experts interpret Elon Musk’s ‘gray area’ description
According to Isaacson’s biography and an Esquire magazine profile of Musk, he became a US citizen in 2002 — 10 years after he arrived in the country — in a ceremony at the Los Angeles County fairgrounds.
But exactly what steps he took to reach that point after his years as a student are unclear.
In response to questions from CNN, US Citizenship and Immigration Services says the agency can’t “share, confirm, or deny immigration information about specific individuals” due to privacy considerations.
Elon Musk has not responded to CNN’s questions about his immigration journey, but he’s referenced it in multiple online posts.
But why did he describe his prior immigration status as a “gray area” back in 2013?
A 2016 Snopes article found “little evidence that he was ever in the U.S. without documentation,” citing previous articles about the tech tycoon and a 2007 PBS interview where he described himself as a legal immigrant.
But immigration experts who spoke with CNN said the way Elon Musk responded when the issue was brought up publicly in 2013 suggests another possibility.
“Actually, there are no gray areas in immigration,” says Charles Kuck, an Atlanta immigration attorney. Instead, Kuck says, there are people who get caught for violations, and people who don’t.
Jennifer Minear, an immigration attorney who focuses on employment issues, points out that given that Musk is now a US citizen, “obviously he did something to regularize his status.”
“But that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a period of time that he was without (legal) status. … It sounds like there was a little bit of wonkiness in his past with immigration,” says Minear, a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
That’s not uncommon, Kuck says.
“Our immigration laws are so strict that, regardless of how perfect you try to be, many people would find themselves in this same gray area, in the context of, you probably did something that would make you deportable at some point during your immigration journey,” he says.
That assessment, he says, is based on the law at the time and the law today.
“I will tell you, as somebody who’s done immigration law for 35 years, that a lot of immigrants leave their immigration history behind, right? They want to move on to their new life,” Kuck says. “But when you speak out against other people’s immigration journey, then yours becomes subject to scrutiny. … If you live in a glass house, you shouldn’t throw stones.”
Student visas come with strict requirements about work
The 2013 Milken Institute event isn’t the only time the brothers’ early immigration status in the US has come up.
“America forces you to be illegal if you want to start a company as an immigrant. I know. That’s how I did it,” Kimbal Musk wrote on Twitter, now X, in 2017.
In addition to that post, the younger Musk, who’s now a SpaceX and Tesla board member and also an entrepreneur behind a number of restaurants and food-related ventures, also brought up the issue during a 2020 appearance on Third Row Tesla, a podcast created by fans of the electric vehicle company.
In the interview, Kimbal Musk again recalled the early days of their startup.
“I don’t know if you were, but I was not legally in America. So I was illegally there,” he said, looking across the table at his brother.
“I was legally there,” Elon Musk responded, “but I was meant to be doing student work.”
A few moments later, describing early conversations with the venture capitalists who helped fund Zip2, Kimbal Musk reiterated details he’d shared in his 2013 remarks: “We had to break the news to them that … we don’t have a car, and we don’t have an apartment, and we are illegal.”
This time, Elon Musk denied the description applied to him.
“You’re illegal,” he said, eliciting laughs from the Tesla fans sitting beside him. “I was legal, but my visa was going to run out in two years.”
During the interview, Elon Musk said that at the time he had a “student work visa.” He also noted that he had decided to defer his Stanford enrollment that year “a couple days into the semester.”
The Musk brothers haven’t responded to CNN’s requests for comment on this exchange either.
Experts who spoke with CNN say these descriptions of what occurred also raise questions about what kind of work authorization Elon Musk had and which institution helped him get it. The description “student work visa” could be referring to various programs, they said, but it’s not an official term. Student visas are generally strict about how much off-campus work is permitted, and that work authorization is directly tied to the academic institution where a student is enrolled.
The complexities are something today’s international students, and the administrators who advise them, follow closely, according to Hunter Swanson, associate director of the Center for International Education at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.
A work permit for optional practical training connected to a student’s areas of academic focus can be granted after graduation, or possibly before graduation if the student is maintaining a full course of study. It’s also possible during an academic program to get permission to work for course credit. Grace periods after graduation allow someone to stay in the United States for a period of time, but no work is allowed in that window.
A foreign student failing to follow these rules today runs the risk of jeopardizing their future in the United States, Swanson says.
“Most international students are very conscientious. They ask people in my position a lot of questions before they do things like accept a job…or even an unpaid internship,” he says. “They’re scared to death of losing their visa status.”
Swanson, who also helps with training as an e-learning dean for an association that represents international educators, says it’s likely regulations weren’t enforced as strictly during Elon Musk’s time as a student. Enforcement of student visa restrictions, and the systems officials use to monitor compliance, intensified dramatically after the September 11 terror attacks, Swanson says. That was years after Elon Musk’s college graduation.
Without more information about what visas and work authorization he had — and when he had them — it’s impossible to draw conclusions about Elon Musk’s immigration journey, Swanson says. “It’s very unclear.”
“It does raise questions,” Swanson says, “but it doesn’t mean what he did wasn’t legal.”
Minear, the former American Immigration Lawyers Association president, also says it’s impossible to know Elon Musk’s immigration path without access to the paper trail in his government file. It’s possible he followed the requirements of his student visa, or that he was granted an exception allowing him to work.
Which institution was connected to his student visa, and when, are key details we don’t know, she said.
If his student visa was tied to a graduate program at Stanford, Minear said, he would have to be actively studying there to remain in status.
And if his work authorization was a form of optional practical training tied to his undergraduate studies at Penn, Minear says that typically would have required him to have graduated — something that Vance’s biography indicates Elon Musk did not do until 1997, well after Zip2 had been established. It would also require Musk to work in a field connected with his degrees, according to Minear.
University of Pennsylvania spokesman Ron Ozio confirmed to CNN that Musk officially graduated in 1997 with degrees in economics and physics.
In Vance’s biography, Musk is quoted stating he didn’t graduate in 1995 due to English and History coursework requirements he hadn’t completed. His degrees, he told Vance, were ultimately granted in 1997 because the requirements had changed.
Asked about reports that Musk deferred his Stanford enrollment days into the fall 1995 semester or dropped out of the school, an official at the university told CNN there’s no record he ever enrolled.
“We can confirm that Mr. Musk applied and was accepted to Stanford’s Materials Science and Engineering graduate program,” Stanford Engineering Associate Dean of Communications and Alumni Affairs Julie Greicius wrote in an email, “but we don’t have any record of him enrolling.”
‘What if Elon Musk had to go through the regular channel?’
Looking at the bigger picture, experts who spoke with CNN also noted that Elon Musk’s story is a telling example of the value immigrants bring to the country.
“The fact that he had any difficulty at all in getting to where he is because of immigration barriers, or (the possibility) that he was out of status at any time and unable to pursue his entrepreneurial goals…is a poor reflection on our current system and speaks to the need for it to be updated and changed,” Minear says.
It’s common for foreign students who dream of becoming entrepreneurs to face immigration hurdles, according to Rajshree Agarwal, director of the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at the University of Maryland. Many are forced to pursue paths that require them to continue their studies or work in a lower-level position rather than striking out early on their own, she says.
Musk’s investors reportedly helping him obtain a visa “made him unconstrained from immigration much earlier than is the norm,” Agarwal says. His swift success shows how valuable such support can be, she says, and raises questions about what might have happened if he hadn’t gotten it.
Agarwal says based on her research and observations during her 30-year career as a professor, it’s typical for foreign students to face delays of up to 10 years between when they graduate and when they get a green card, the legal step that allows them to start a new venture. Exactly how much time the process can take varies depending on factors like caps on the number of visas issued and country of origin, she says.
“What if Elon Musk had to go through the regular channel and wait the average of 8 to 10 years … as opposed to being a founder that’s able to make decisions and get right to stakeholders already? Zip2 would not have been created. … What would have been the loss to this country?” she says.
Or, Agarwal asks, what would have happened if Musk had been deported or forced to return to Canada or South Africa?
He wasn’t, and in 1999, Compaq purchased Zip2 for more than $300 million in cash — a deal that provided Elon Musk with more than $20 million and a launch pad for his next entrepreneurial venture. Later that year, he became a cofounder of the online banking system that eventually became PayPal.
How Elon Musk’s views on immigration are shaping the conversation
His business successes since then are well documented — as are his increasingly pointed opinions about immigration.
A CNN analysis of Elon Musk’s posts on X found a marked increase in the number and frequency of his immigration-related posts starting around the time of his border visit last year. This year alone, he’s authored at least 150 immigration-related posts.
That tally, based on a search of immigration-related terms, doesn’t reflect times when Musk has simply shared others’ immigration-related posts or responded to them without directly mentioning words related to the topic — a common approach for Musk, according to Mert Can Bayar, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington who studies conspiracy theories and misinformation.
Immigration-related posts from Musk in the past month include a question about whether Arizona is refusing to remove undocumented voters from its rolls, a message slamming unchecked illegal immigration as “civilizational suicide” and multiple posts arguing Democrats are deliberately importing migrants and pushing to legalize their status in order to secure political control.
But that hasn’t stopped Musk from focusing on the issue. And his posts have a particularly wide reach, Bayar says.
“He’s the most followed account on X. Every post he does gets millions of views. … When he points out something, it’s a disproportionate number of views, and a disproportionate amount of attention,” says Bayar, who’s traced Elon Musk’s role in spreading a resurgent rumor and a misleading video about non-citizens voting in US elections.
Zachary Mueller, senior research director for the immigrant advocacy organization America’s Voice, says Musk’s posts frequently echo the “great replacement theory,” which argues that elites are intentionally facilitating an invasion of non-White migrants to replace the power of White people.
“He’s amplifying it to a new level, and he becomes part of the problem,” Mueller says.
Musk has denied that he’s pushing the racist theory with his posts.
“I don’t subscribe to that. I’m simply saying there is an incentive here. … The more that come into the country, the more they’re likely to vote in that direction. It is, in my view, a simple incentive to increase Democratic voters,” he told Don Lemon earlier this year after the former CNN anchor pointed out that only US citizens can vote in federal elections.
But Mueller says there’s a dehumanizing and racist undertone to many of Musk’s immigration-related posts that shouldn’t be overlooked.
He called Musk’s recent remarks during a live conversation on X with Trump “quite disgustingly notable,” pointing out that Musk compared migrants at the border to a “World War Z zombie apocalypse.”
While some have downplayed the significance of Musk’s intensified focus on immigration, the entrepreneur’s frequent posts about the issue have caught the attention of policy experts like David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian CATO Institute.
When Musk shared a post earlier this year stating that Democrats would not deport migrants because “every illegal is a highly likely vote at some point,” Bier responded with links to numerous articles refuting the claim. “This couldn’t be more wrong,” he wrote, pointing out not only the federal law establishing that only US citizens can vote in federal elections, but that most naturalized citizens don’t vote and that most formerly undocumented immigrants who received amnesty in the 1980s didn’t become citizens for decades, even though they were eligible.
Bier told CNN he felt like he had to chime in. Musk’s inaccurate political framing of the issue, he argues, overlooks the clear reality that economic forces are driving most migration.
“You can’t just totally ignore what he’s saying, because so many people are going to see everything he says,” Bier says. “And he’s a world-renowned entrepreneur. He does have some more clout, I think, than just a politician, who people are kind of more skeptical of.”
Beyond social media, there are signs Musk’s views on immigration and other issues are becoming more influential in the halls of power, too.
Trump has said that if he’s reelected, Musk could play a role in his next administration, as an advisor or in a Cabinet position helping improve government efficiency.
Rep. Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, cited Musk in March remarks on the House floor.
“Yesterday Elon Musk shocked America,” Wilson began. He went on to quote one of Musk’s posts on X, which warned “it is highly probable that the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11. Just a matter of time.” The post included a link to an article describing flights of migrants into the US. Neither the article nor Musk’s post mentioned the flights were part of a government program that aims to create more pathways for migrants to enter the US legally and reduce pressure at the border.
Recent posts focus on pioneering space exploration — and more earthly concerns
A SpaceX rocket successfully launched into orbit for the first time on September 28, 2008 — the first time a privately funded rocket had done so. That achievement, and the intense fact-based research and development process at the company, were documented in a glowing GQ profile of Musk that year. The magazine noted that Musk’s companies were trying to find solutions — with solar power, space travel and electric cars — to what he saw as the major challenges of our time.
But on the 15th anniversary of that rocket launch — a major milestone in Musk’s entrepreneurial life — the billionaire was a world away from the SpaceX conference room where GQ had marveled at his ambitions.
On September 28, 2023, Elon Musk’s focus was decidedly earthbound, as he stood beside officials at the US-Mexico border and held his phone in the air.
“We’re just going to go around and talk to the major officials and law enforcement and whatnot that are here, and just kind of eyeball the situation, and get a sense of what’s going on, so you can get kind of, like, the real story,” he said in the live video he shared on X.
Critics argued Musk’s September 2023 border visit, while billed as unfiltered reality, only showed one, slanted side of the issue. But officials who spoke with Musk that day praised him.
“At least he showed up. … You’re talking about a person that can put out the truth and touch the world. I think that’s what Elon did whenever he visited the border, and we appreciate that,” Medina County Sheriff Randy Brown told Fox News.
Elon Musk hasn’t responded to questions from CNN about what he hopes others will see in his immigration story, or why he’s become increasingly focused on immigration.
A year later, there’s no sign Musk’s gaze has shifted.
As SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission began earlier this month, he posted frequently on X, touting the company’s space exploration efforts. But between posts about pioneering missions to the stars, he’s shared just as many messages about immigration and the US border.
Regardless of his motivations or the path he took to get here, it’s clear Elon Musk has added another item to his list of the world’s biggest challenges.
In a Saturday speech that Donald Trumpcalled “dark,” the Republican presidential nominee again hurled personal attacks toward his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. This time, he called her “very dumb,” claimed only a “mentally disabled” person could have done her job the way she has, and said she was born “mentally impaired.”
“Joe Biden became mentally impaired, Kamala was born that way,” Trump said during a rally in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. The crowd could be heard responding with laughs and cheers.
The backlash was swift, with some Republicans urging Trump to focus on the issues.
On CNN’s State of the Union, South Carolina senator and Trump ally Lindsey Grahamsaid that while he believes Harris to be “crazy liberal,” he thinks “the better course to take is to prosecute the case that her policies are destroying the country.” When pressed during an interview with ABC’s This Week, US Representative Tom Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, said, “I think we should stick to the issues. The issues are, Donald Trump fixed it once. They broke it. He’s going to fix it again. Those are the issues.”
Former governor and frequent Trump critic Larry Hogan of Maryland, also a Republican who is in a tight race for the Senate there, was more direct when addressing the nominee’s comments.
“I think that’s insulting not only to the vice president, but to people that actually do have mental disabilities,” Hogan said. “Trump’s divisive rhetoric is something we can do without.”
“Trump made a great deal of the cognitive abilities of Joe Biden,” Eric Holder, the former attorney general who served in the Obama administration, said on MSNBC. He added, referring to the former president’s cognitive state, “If this is where he is now, where is he going to be three and four years from now?”
Following Saturday’s speech, Sarafina Chitika, a Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson, said in a statement that “Donald Trump is finally telling the truth to voters: He’s got nothing ‘inspiring’ to offer the American people, just darkness.”
Disability rights advocates were also quick to denounce Trump’s remarks.
“Trump holds the ableist, false belief that if a person has a disability, they are less human and less worthy of dignity,” Maria Town, CEO and president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “These perceptions are incorrect, and are harmful to people with disabilities.”
Trump’s comments, Town noted, “say far more about him and his inaccurate, hateful biases against disabled people than it does about Vice President Harris, or any person with a disability.”
Since Trump had to pivot from running against President Joe Biden to combating an energized Harris bid, his advisors and some Republicans have urged the former president to veer away from personal attacks, like those about her gender and race. He, to put it briefly, hasn’t listened.
In an August speech, Trump went after Harris’s appearance, saying, “I’m much better looking than her. Much better. Much better. I’m a better looking person than Kamala,” and he’s taken a liking to calling Harris a “bitch,” per reporting from the New York Times based on two people who heard the remark on different occasions.
On Truth Social, the former president amplified a false claim that Harris used sexual acts to get ahead, reposting a photo of her and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which included the text, “Funny how blowjobs impacted both careers differently…”
Back in July, during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump lied about how Harris has portrayed her racial identity.
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said of the vice president. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black.”
The center of the political universe this month has been in Omaha, Nebraska.
It’s not that the blue-collar workers in Rust Belt Pennsylvania or soccer moms in suburban Georgia have lost any of their importance in what is shaping up to be a close election, but Omaha is the only place where control of both the White House and the House of Representatives could be decided on November 5. That’s because Nebraska is one of two states that apportions its electoral votes by congressional district (the other is Maine). One of the state’s five electoral votes belongs to its second district, which includes Omaha and its surrounding suburbs and is perhaps the archetypal swing area. There are the blue-collar Catholic Democrats who have recently swung to the right and the country-club Republicans who have swung to the left; majority-minority neighborhoods in North Omaha; farms outside the rural county seat of Wahoo; Offutt Air Force Base, one of the Air Force’s key installations; and major college campuses such as the University of Nebraska Omaha and Creighton University.
The district has swung back and forth in recent presidential elections, but this year its importance has become magnified. If Kamala Harris wins the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin but loses all the remaining swing states, she would be stuck at 269 electoral votes — one shy of victory. This means that the lone vote from the Omaha area could decide the presidency. Donald Trump’s allies in recent weeks tried to get the Nebraska legislature to change state law to return the state to rewarding electoral votes on a statewide basis in an attempt to deny Harris this likely vote. Trump himself angrily posted about the situation, and Lindsey Graham, of all people, traveled to Nebraska to try to woo lawmakers. It didn’t work.
The district’s single electoral vote has been trending toward Harris, even before the failed effort to change the law. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Saturday morning showed her leading Trump 53-43. As Ian Russell, a veteran Democratic operative who has worked in Nebraska, described it, “The national trends of Democrats being a lot more competitive in suburbia and higher-educated areas are seen to a larger degree in Omaha. It has an educated population, and it has always had a more politically moderate and independent sensibility, and now it has really moved against Republicans.” The respective spending from the two presidential campaigns shows how the district has swung to the left. Nearly $15 million has been, or will be, spent on Omaha’s airwaves on behalf of the Democratic presidential ticket, while less than $200,000 has been spent or booked so far on Trump’s behalf.
The pro-Trump plot’s failure wasn’t all bad news for Republicans. One plugged-in Republican operative argued that the setback saved the district’s congressman, Don Bacon, from certain defeat. A moderate, he’s been a perpetual target for Democrats since he first won the seat in 2016 and has always managed to somehow hang on. Nothing would have done more to rile up Democrats and leave Republicans complacent than a last-minute switcheroo. National Republicans have also marveled that Bacon is the rare member of Congress who has his own political identity in his district and has taken pains to present himself as a centrist. However, that task has become slightly more difficult for the anti-abortion Bacon since the Dobbs decision. His Democratic opponent, State Senator Tony Vargas, has not hesitated to attack Bacon over the issue.
In a closely divided House, Bacon’s seat is considered a toss-up by outside analysts and has seen millions of dollars spent on television by both candidates as it is a top target from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He held on in 2020 thanks to ticket-splitting Biden-Bacon voters, and they’ll need to become Harris-Bacon voters in 2024 for him to survive.
J.L. Spray, one of the state’s RNC members, described the district as “a purple dot” in a state that no Democratic presidential nominee has won since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Although it might not necessarily be that purple anymore. One of the biggest trends among Omaha liberals in recent weeks is a simple yard sign with just a blue dot painted on, which is an effort to raise awareness of just how much the votes of local progressives matter — even if they do live in a red state.
Donald Trump supporters rallied in Detroit in November 2020, falsely claiming widespread election fraud.
A nonprofit watchdog group is raising alarms about the potential for election deniers to disrupt Michigan’s upcoming presidential election, warning that some local officials may try to subvert election processes and perpetuate false narratives about voter fraud.
Informing Democracy published a report Friday that highlights concerns that election deniers, including county clerks and members of county boards of canvassers, could undermine Michigan’s strong election laws by acting in bad faith.
“Because Michigan election law itself is strong, many of the election vulnerabilities in Michigan are created and sustained by bad faith actors violating settled law,” the report states. “After 2020, Michigan remains a target for those seeking to perpetuate election conspiracies, and as a result, the state’s elections remain vulnerable to the threats posed by such conspiracies.”
The report uncovered troubling trends about the actions and statements of some county clerks and members of the state’s 407 boards of canvassers. Of the officials reviewed, 51 — more than 12% — were flagged for raising concerns, either through promoting election conspiracies, denying the results of the 2020 election, or showing a willingness to subvert the administration of an election.
Wayne and Macomb counties were identified as having unsettling vulnerabilities. Members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers include Robert Boyd, who previously said he would not have certified the 2020 election, and Katherine Riley, who led election denial training sessions.
In Macomb County, Clerk Anthony Forlini pursued a forensic audit of the 2020 election, which was embraced by election conspiracy theorists. He also hired an election denier who attended the Jan. 6th riot to train poll workers.
In all, 13 counties were identified as having officials with concerning records, raising fears about potential disruption during the vote certification process. In Wayne, Alcona, and Macomb counties, members of the Boards of Canvassers have publicly shared election conspiracy theories, creating doubts about whether these officials will follow the law when certifying future elections.
The report also noted the possibility of deadlocked votes on certification in several counties where more than one member of the board of canvassers holds views denying the legitimacy of past election results.
Beyond election officials of concern, the report highlighted a coordinated movement of election-denying groups that are targeting the state and working to discredit the election system through recounts and audits. Several election officials, including Riley, have ties to these groups.
In some cases, officials who embraced conspiracy theories have also shown support for extremist movements. Calhoun County Board of Canvassers member Ginger Kamps shared content related to the Three Percenters, a far-right anti-government group, while others expressed support for efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Michigan’s decentralized election system, which is spread across 1,603 county and local offices, offers some safeguards, but Informing Democracy warns that this structure also creates multiple points of vulnerability for bad actors to exploit. This decentralization, combined with organized efforts from election deniers, could present serious challenges in administering free and fair elections in the state, according to the report.
Of particular concern is the potential for split votes on certification and delays resulting from recounts or other legal challenges.
The report also cautions about the possibility of threats to election workers.
“In Michigan, threats against election workers and officials are real and remain a top concern,” the report states.
Informing Democracy emphasized the need for ongoing vigilance to protect the election system.
For months, speculation has raged in Washington over the future of Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission chair and face of the Biden administration’s crusade against monopoly power. Overturning decades of antitrust norms, charged by Khan with failing to curb extreme concentrations of corporate power, the administration has routinely scrutinized major acquisitions traditionally ignored by Khan’s predecessors, forcing companies like Lockheed Martin and Nvidia to abandon multibillion-dollar deals in court.
Opponents of Khan—who is often described as a legal “wunderkind” or “prodigy,” though invariably as “young”—include a number of powerful investors and CEOs known as prominent backers of the Democratic Party; billionaires with ties to businesses long under the FTC’s microscope.
The donors, which include LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and media mogul Barry Diller, have openly urged Kamala Harris to replace Khan in the event she wins in November, a move that would likely spell disaster for president Joe Biden’s antitrust revolution.
Diller, for his part, laid into Khan publicly in July, calling her a “dope” on national television, a remark that he later walked back, calling her “smart,” but “disrupting sensible business combinations.” To the ire of many of Khan’s supporters, the Harris campaign has remained silent on her future.
Neither the Harris campaign nor the FTC responded to a request for comment. Diller did not immediately respond. Hoffman declined to comment.
Roughly 80 percent of Democrats feel that the government should be doing more to take on corporate monopolies, compared to only 3 percent who say it should be doing less, according to new polling. Nearly 90 percent of Democrats, meanwhile, feel that lobbyists and corporate executives hold too much power over the government.
The same poll, commissioned by the Tech Oversight Project, found that more than three-fourths of Democrats feel Big Tech wields monopoly power in ways that harm consumers and small businesses. Only 7 percent said the companies should face no repercussions, since they have continued to innovate.
“Democratic voters want to build on the Biden-Harris administration’s record of protecting competition, holding monopolies accountable for breaking the law, and lowering the cost of living for everyday families,” says Sacha Haworth, the project’s executive director, who favors Khan as the “natural favorite” to carry on this campaign.
Due perhaps in part to polling like this, there are strong indications that the billionaires are wasting their breath when it comes to the ousting of Khan. Last month, the Democratic Party adopted a platform that celebrated Khan’s crackdown on “corporate greed,” while calling for further investigations into the “potentially harmful effects of corporate consolidation” in Big Pharma and across the media industry. While Khan gave no speeches at the convention, the party’s promise to rid America of “monopolies that crush workers and small businesses and startups” was delivered—perhaps even more potently—by Biden’s secretary of commerce, Gina Raimondo, a consummate corporate advocate.
Khan supporters, alarmed that Harris has yet to rally to the legal star’s side, erected a mock website this month, labeling her “Bad for Billionaires,” while satirizing some of the Democrats’ biggest donors, Hoffman and Diller among them. “Lina Khan must be fired,” the page declares, “so we can continue our untrammeled profiteering!”
“Janet Jackson saved my life” is a far cry from some of the other digs lobbed at the singer this past week, after an interview conducted by Nosheen Iqbal for The Guardian, published on September 21st, revealed Jackson to be skeptical of presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ Blackness. It was Eve whose statements about Jackson’s saintliness somewhat counteracted the backlash/“sinner” narrative surrounding the Queen of R&B (but not Pop) for her ignorant and hurtful comments that seemed to be in line with those of a MAGA supporter. Eve’s quote comes from her new memoir, Who’s That Girl? (again trying to co-opt that title from Madonna, who will always have the monopoly on it, and is supposedly calling her forthcoming biopic as such, repurposing the name of her 1987 movie and accompanying lead single from the soundtrack).
But before the excerpt from Eve’s book started widely circulating in time to vaguely mitigate Jackson’s unexpected comments about Harris, Jackson’s rhetoric had already resulted in a major backlash from fans and ordinary observers alike. Especially considering Jackson’s unique responsibility as a highly influential Black woman. Alas, she seems to be one of those Black women who deems certain other Black people not “Black enough” (sometimes known as: colorism). Except that Jackson continued to double down on her comments that Harris isn’t Black at all, just Indian. So vehement about her stance, apparently, that she was sure to have her “actual” team publicly decry the apology issued by a man claiming to be her manager, Mo Elmasri. In the aftermath, Jackson opted to skip issuing a “real” apology of her own, which of course speaks volumes.
Whoever he really is, Elmasri’s statement attempted to do damage control, while Jackson sought to undermine his mea culpa by speaking out against the false apology. Meanwhile, fellow famous Black entertainers like D.L. Hughley lashed out at Jackson by saying, “Janet Jackson’s interview sounded like a Trump rally! FYI!! It’s a little ironic to question whether someone is black while you’re breathing through the nose of a white woman!” This jibe at her plastic surgery also harkens back to her brother, Michael, who seemed to spend the majority of his adult life trying to turn completely white (oh the fucked-up psychology this racist society can wreak).
As for the exchange that has so many people (Black and otherwise) enraged with Janet, it went as follows:
“America could be on the verge of voting in its first black female president, Kamala Harris. ‘Well, you know what they supposedly said?’ she asks me. ‘She’s not black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.’ She looks at me expectantly, perhaps assuming that I have Indian heritage. ‘Well, she’s both,’ I offer. ‘Her father’s white. That’s what I was told. I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days,’ she coughs. ‘I was told that they discovered her father was white.’ I’m floored at this point. It’s well known that Harris’s father is a Jamaican economist, a Stanford professor who split from her Indian mother when she was five. ‘My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters,’ Harris wrote in her book, The Truths We Hold. The people who are most vocal in questioning the facts of Harris’ identity tend to be hardcore QAnon-adjacent, Trump-loving conspiracy theorists. I don’t think Jackson falls into that camp, but I do wonder what the algorithms are serving her. I start again. Harris has dual heritage, I say, and, given this moment, does Jackson think America is ready for her—if we agree she’s Black? Or, okay, a woman of color? ‘I don’t know,’ Jackson stage whispers. ‘Honestly, I don’t want to answer that because I really, truthfully, don’t know. I think either way it goes is going to be mayhem.’”
That last statement is the only one Jackson made that had any sense to it. For she’s not wrong that America’s political and racial divide is so intense that there will be bedlam no matter who wins. And let’s not kid ourselves that the extremist white supremacists won’t come out of the woodwork to cause a stir if Harris does win. Or kid ourselves that Trump doesn’t still have an eerily good chance of keeping her from the presidency. Despite his own racist comments at the National Association of Black Journalists convention during which he indicated that he felt Harris suddenly “became Black” for more political clout and appeal. Though, if he knew anything about what it is to be Black in America, he might understand that such a characteristic isn’t usually touted for benefit in a The System setting.
One person who holds no ill will toward from something that happened back in the 2000s is Eve, who rehashed the miraculous way in which Jackson came to her aid on the night of the 2007 VMAs (you know, the one best known for Britney Spears’ trainwreck performance of “Gimme More”). This from an excerpt from her new memoir that’s been making the rounds. In it, she recalls how she had the misfortune of drinking a drugged beverage (maybe it was Diddy who was responsible) at an afterparty and how “Missy [Elliott] came in to check on me, but I was just unable to collect myself. Then who walks in, Janet Jackson. I had never met her before, and so her first introduction to me was seeing me hysterical. None of that mattered to Janet; she actually just sprang into action and told people to get aspirin, water, hot sauce and a piece of white bread. That concoction knocked me right out of my hysteria. So basically Janet Jackson saved my life.”
A declaration that many others would probably echo…up until her Harris comments. Because there’s no doubt that the racist whites will glom onto them so that they can say, “See? Even a real Black person knows that Kamala isn’t Black, just pretending to be.” And yes, Jackson’s controversial comments with regard to this election are far more offensive than Chappell Roan’s (though, in her case, “offensive” should be put in quotes). Nonetheless, it would be nice to think of Jackson in the same “saintly,” “angel from above” way that Eve did in ’07. But it’s going to be hard to if she continues to repeat these false claims about Harris’ ethnicity.
Some of Donald Trump’s closest allies would reportedly love it if he could cool it with the unhinged conspiracy theories, antisemitic attacks, misogynistic outbursts, and otherwise insane remarks that regularly come out of his mouth. It’s an extremely big ask, given that unhinged conspiracy theories, antisemitic attacks, misogynistic outbursts, and otherwise insane remarks have long made up about 98% of the things he says. Asking him to dial those things back would be like asking Jeffrey Dahmer to take a break from eating people. But, they’re trying!
Politico reports that earlier this month, GOP mega-donor Steve Wynn, a longtime friend of the ex-president, told Trump his recent talking points—which have included patently false allegations that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio—have been hugely unhelpful and that Trump would be better off focusing on actual policy issues, according to people familiar with the conversation. Wynn’s view is said to be echoed by more than a dozen Trump allies who, per Politico, have “described the former president as reaching a crossroads—faced with the choice of continuing with the missteps that have overtaken the past several weeks of his campaign or embracing a more calculated approach aimed at appealing to a small subset of undecided voters who are likely to sway the outcome of the election.” (In a text message to the outlet, Wynn claimed the description of his chat with Trump was “inaccurate,” though he did not respond to additional requests for comment.)
Ridiculous conspiracy theories concerning immigrants abducting and eating people’s cats and dogs are, of course, not the only offensive, unfocused comments that have come out of Trump’s mouth of late. In response to Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, he took to Truth Social and wrote, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”—sounding more like a hormonal tweenager than someone who wants to be leader of the free world. He’s also come under immense fire for palling around with far-right activist Laura Loomer—who recently wrote on X that a win by Harris, who is partly of Indian descent, would lead to the White House smelling “like curry” and White House speeches being “facilitated via a call center.” (Not helping matters: Trump’s decision to include Loomer in his entourage during 9/11 events, despite the fact that she once claimed the terrorist attack was an “inside job.”) And, never one to pass up an opportunity for an antisemitic tirade, the ex-president declared last week—at an event about combating antisemitism—that if he loses in November, Jews will be to blame.
“Trump is strongest when he is talking about what people care about the most: the economy, immigration, crime, trade, the Trump core messages,” Republican strategist David Urban told Politico. “When he gets distracted and goes in different directions, it’s less helpful. Every day we’re not talking about those issues, we’re letting Harris go untouched.”
Donald Trump, attempting to make inroads with women who are deeply concerned about how he’ll further decimate reproductive rights in a second term, claimed this week that he is their “protector” and that on his watch, they “will no longer be thinking about abortion anymore.” Which somehow managed to be creepy, infantilizing, and a uniquely stupid take on abortion. A real trifecta!
Speaking at a rally on Monday night in Pennsylvania, Trump told the crowd, “I always thought women liked me. I never thought I had a problem. But the fake news keeps saying women don’t like me. I don’t believe it. You know why? They like to have strong borders. They like to have safety.” Shortly after, he told the women present, “You’re not going to be in danger any longer. You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today. You will be protected and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
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There is so much to unpack here, starting with the idea that women will be “free” if the guy who took away the federal right to an abortion returns to power. Then there’s the claim that women will be “protected” by a guy who was found liable last year for sexually abusing and defaming a woman, and has a long history of disparaging women. (Remember when his response to Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris was to declare “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” to his legions of followers? You should because it happened less than two weeks ago.)
But mostly, there’s the bizarre assertion that women will “no longer be thinking about abortion” when he’s president, because what the actual fuck does that mean? It presumably has to do with Trump’s attempt to tie immigration to rape—as hehas donefor years—and to somehow suggest that under his draconian immigration policies, rape and pregnancies resulting from rape will no longer happen. Which, once again, shows just how little he knows about women and why the right to abortion is important.
As people who are not Trump know, there are many, many reasons a person might “be thinking about abortion”—reasons that have nothing to do with rape* by the people he claims are destroying this country. Is Trump going to stop ectopic pregnancies from happening? Is he going to find cure for fatal fetal abnormalities? Is he going to ensure childcare is affordable so that a person who already has children can afford to have more?** Is he going to eliminate rape not just by the immigrants he demonizes but by people born in this country? Is he going to single-handedly stop all sperm from fertilizing eggs that don’t want to be fertilized?
In a statement published by The New York Times, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign said, of Trump’s claims, “women know better. He tries to tell us what to think and what we care about. We will vote like our lives depend on it this November.”
When Grace Carter heard from The Right Stuff’s account on Instagram, the person controlling the account introduced himself as John. He also offered a phone number with a Southern California area code—a number that a WIRED reporter has used in the past to contact McEntee.
There was no obvious reason why he would have reached out to her in particular. At the time he contacted her, Carter had about 17,000 followers on TikTok, she says, and still has only a modest 1,500 on Instagram. “I actually have no idea how he found me,” she says. “Based on the other accounts I follow and things I post, it’s very leftist. So I was surprised when he found me.”
Carter says she never used McEntee’s phone number, though she did accept his offer of a free branded hoodie. While messages viewed by WIRED indicate that Carter sparsely responded to McEntee, he repeatedly offered to fly her and a girlfriend to Los Angeles. “My treat,” he wrote.
“I remember I told my boyfriend about it, and I was joking that he was going to be the other girl,” says Carter, who says that she continued to talk to McEntee as a kind of “trolling.” “I was like, I could use a free trip, that’s initially why I kept the conversation going.”
In messages seen by WIRED, McEntee says to Carter, “I think you’re a liberal” but tells her, “as long as you’ll be fun I don’t care.” The conversation, she says, died out after Carter declined to visit McEntee over her winter break.
“I would have been uncomfortable with him in person,” she says.
Following the presidential debate on September 10, McEntee posted a video saying, “Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned? Don’t hold your breath.” The comments section of that video were soon flooded with women across the country sharing their experiences.
It was this post that Carter says made her feel like it was important to share her experience. “That video he made about abortions really upset me,” she says. “And I was just like, it needs to be called out.” Carter posted a video on TikTok sharing her messages with McEntee and says that she has received messages from several other young women who allege similar experiences.
One of those women, who spoke to WIRED and asked to remain anonymous because she’s concerned about her security, says that she connected with McEntee on The Right Stuff dating app before moving to texting him. The number provided matched the one given to Carter and the one used previously by a WIRED reporter; messages reviewed by WIRED also included selfies that clearly appear to be of McEntee. Like Carter, she was 18 at the time.
“I would label myself as semi-conservative,” the young woman says. Unlike Carter, she knew who McEntee was and at first thought his profile on the app was an example for users, as opposed to his actual account. (Last year, a series of TikTok videos showed McEntee going on first dates with women he matched with on the app in various cities.) “I had seen him on TikTok. I’d see him on the news. My family is quite conservative, so I had seen him before.”
A man who claims to be Janet Jackson’s former manager said the pop star and her brother, Randy Jackson, fired him because he tried to clean up her P.R. mess after she was quoted in an interview with the Guardian asserting that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is “not Black.”
“Janet Jackson fired me due to disagreements between me, her, and Randy, after her meeting with the Guardian and her unbalanced statements,” Mo Elmasri told the Daily Beast in an emailed statement.
“That’s all I can say,” Elmasri added, saying he could not talk by phone due to “the large number of calls” coming in. But Elmasri added to the Daily Beast: “All support to Kamala Harris.”
Elmasri’s statement to the Daily Beast comes after Jackson’s official rep issued a statement to the media Sunday, saying that the “apology” made on behalf of Jackson from “manager” Elmasri was not authorized by her at all. In fact, this Jackson rep told People magazine and other outlets that Elmasri is not her manager, nor is he affiliated with her camp. The rep said that Randy Jackson is the singer’s manager.
Jackson, 58, sparked online fury Saturday after her interview with The Guardian went viral. In the interview with the U.K. outlet, Jackson repeated a debunked right-wing conspiracy theory, promulgated by Donald Trump, that the Oakland-born, Berkeley-reared vice president is “not Black.”
During the interview, Jackson was asked what she thought of Harris potentially becoming the first Black woman to be elected president. In response, Janet said: “Well, you know what they supposedly said?”
“She’s not Black,” Jackson continued. “That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.” When the reporter responded that Harris has dual heritage, Jackson falsely claimed, “Her father’s White. That’s what I was told. I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days.”
Harris is both the first Black and Asian-American vice president. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India, while her father, Donald J. Harris, was born in Jamaica.
After Jackson’s comments left the reporter “floored,” the singer backtracked a bit, by saying in a whisper: “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t want to answer that because I really, truthfully, don’t know. I think either way it goes is going to be mayhem.”
While the reporter said she didn’t think Jackson falls into “the hardcore QAnon-adjacent, Trump-loving conspiracy theorist” camp, her remarks echoed false and controversial statements Trump made during an interview in July at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago.
“She was always of Indian heritage and she was promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said at the convention. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?”
The drama surrounding Jackson’s incendiary statements about Harris grew more complicated when Buzzfeed News reported that the singer had issued an apparent apology, according to the Daily Beast. The statement, attributed to Elmasri, said that “Janet Jackson would like to clarify her recent comments,” explaining that she spoke “based on misinformation” about the Democratic presidential nominee’s family and ethnicity.
The statement continued: “She recognizes that her statements regarding Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity were based on misinformation. Janet respects Harris’ dual heritage as both Black and Indian and apologizes for any confusion caused. She values the diversity Harris represents and understands the importance of celebrating that in today’s society. Janet remains committed to promoting unity and understanding.”
But Elmasri’s claims to represent Jackson were subsequently be called into question, first by Variety, which reported that she is in fact managed by her brother Randy. Jackson’s team also told TMZ that Elmasri doesn’t represent the singer. Meanwhile, Jackson herself has yet to weigh in on the drama over Elmasri or whether she’d like to apologize for her Harris comments, the Daily Beast said.
Deadline reported that Elmasri is listed as Jackson’s manager on her IMDb page, though it is widely known that Randy Jackson is her longtime manager. Elmasri is also listed on another industry site, Celebrity Service, as her manager, the Daily Beast said. The site says his status was last verified Sept. 22.
Elmasri’s personal IMDb page cited himself as an Egyptian filmmaker who “now works as a creative consultant for many global superstars, including Janet Jackson,” the Daily Beast said.
