MicroWave

X owner has spent tens of millions to fund conservative causes including anti-immigrant and anti-transgender ads

Elon Musk has given tens of millions of dollars to rightwing groups in recent years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, revealing his backing for Republican groups began earlier than was previously known.

Musk endorsed Trump earlier this year and has been a prolific booster of misinformation in support of the president's re-election bid on X, the website he owns. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that Musk had said he planned to donate $45m each month to a Super Pac backing Trump (Musk has denied the report).

But the Wall Street Journal's reporting on Thursday revealed that Musk has already been spending tens of millions of dollars to back conservative causes. In 2022, he spent more than $50m to fund anti-immigrant and anti-transgender advertisements by a group called Citizens for Sanity. The group's officers are employees of America First Legal, a non-profit led by Stephen Miller, a close former Trump aide.

Musk also has donated millions to another rightwing group, Building America's Future, Reuters reported on Thursday. The outlet reported the timeline and exact amount he has given were not clear.

🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

The death toll from Hurricane Helene has risen to 200 as rescuers continue to search for survivors from the storm that tore across the US south-east.

More than half of the deaths were in North Carolina, where entire communities were uprooted and devastated by the deadliest mainland storm since Katrina in 2005.

Hundreds of people are still missing and nearly a million homes are without power nearly a week after Helene made landfall.

New NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte visited Ukraine on Thursday in his first official trip since taking office and pledging the alliance’s continued support for Kyiv in its war with Russia.

Rutte met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv as air raid sirens twice went off in the Ukrainian capital.

The new head of NATO vowed when he took office on Tuesday to help shore up Western support for Ukraine, which has been fighting Russia's full-scale invasion since February 2022 and has for most of this year been on the defensive due to a relentless Russian army push in the country's eastern regions.

During the vice presidential debate, Vance similarly refused to answer if he would contest this year’s election if Trump loses

Senator JD Vance repeated a tired Republican lie from 2020 — that Donald Trump actually won the election, despite all evidence to the contrary — and then doubled down on it during a recent recorded encounter.

On Thursday, comedian Jason Selvig posted a clip of an interaction he had with Vance on X. During their brief encounter, Selvig repeatedly asked Vance if Trump won in 2020. The settled issue of who won the 2020 election came up again after Vance told viewers who tuned into Tuesday's vice presidential debate that he would have helped Trump carry out his "alternative electors" scheme to maintain power in the White House.

"Who won the 2020 election? Could you just answer? Did Donald Trump win?" Selvig asked.

"Yes," Vance replied.

🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

• Former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for crimes related to a breach of her county's voting system.
• Peters espoused the false conspiracy theory that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden due to ballot fraud.
• She was accused of allowing access to the voting system to an expert affiliated with My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, a leading proponent of the Trump election conspiracy theory.

🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

The Dominican Republic says it plans to deport up to 10,000 undocumented migrants a week to combat uncontrolled migration.

The plan was announced by President Luis Abinader's spokesman, Homero Figueroa, who blamed the international community's slow response to months of gang violence in neighbouring Haiti and its failure to restore stability.

Tens of thousands of Haitians have fled across the border into the Dominican Republic.

Trump is already laying the groundwork to dispute the results of another election, leveling baseless charges of interference as his own federal election interference case progresses.

Former President Donald Trump has never stopped propagating falsehoods that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. But now, he is increasingly turning his attention to pre-emptive claims the 2024 election is being rigged to prevent him from returning to the White House.

This year, Trump and his campaign have cited more than a dozen examples of so-called election interference activities by Americans to claim the coming election is being unfairly manipulated. But as general election voting begins around the country, the campaign has provided no evidence of actual cheating and no specific allegations related to potentially illegal efforts by Americans to tamper with this fall’s election proceedings.

🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

• A federal judge will let expire a temporary restraining order against the Biden administration's sweeping new student loan forgiveness plan, which could deliver relief to tens of millions of Americans.
• The ruling means President Joe Biden may move forward with his administration's student loan forgiveness plan, just weeks before the November election.

🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

The Federal Emergency Management Agency can meet immediate needs but does not have enough funding to make it through the hurricane season, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters Wednesday.

The agency is being stretched as it works with states to assess damage from Hurricane Helene and delivers meals, water, generators and other critical supplies. The storm struck Florida last week, then plowed through several states in the Southeast, flooding towns and killing more than 160 people.

Mayorkas was not specific about how much additional money the agency may need, but his remarks on Air Force One underscored concerns voiced by President Joe Biden and some lawmakers earlier this week that Congress may need to pass a supplemental spending bill this fall to help states with recovery efforts.

It’s official: Donald Trump’s plan for massive deportations would apply to legal immigrants, as well as undocumented immigrants.

During an exclusive interview with NewsNation, Trump said he planned to strip the legal status of the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, who have been granted Temporary Protected Status.

“Springfield is such a beautiful place; have you seen what’s happened to it? It’s been overrun. They have to be removed,” Trump said.

“So you would revoke the Temporary Protected Status?” asked the interviewer.

“Absolutely, I’d revoke it and I’d bring them back to their country,” Trump said.

🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

More than 129,000 voters have registered in Georgia since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, which could be a good sign for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Georgia is among several battleground states that could decide the 2024 election between Harris, the Democratic nominee, and her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump.

Polls show the state has gotten more competitive in the two months since Harris entered the race after Biden dropped his bid for reelection on July 21.

The state has seen at least 120,000 new registrants between July 21 and September 8, according to data compiled by L2 Data that Newsweek has reviewed.

Democrats registered more voters in that period—about 51,000—while Republicans registered 13,000. At least 64,000 of the registrants are unaffiliated voters.

🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

The former GOP congresswoman will join Harris at an event in Ripon, Wis., as the campaign works to win over Republicans who have grown weary of Trump.

Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman and daughter of a former Republican vice president, will join Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday at a campaign event in Ripon, Wisconsin, the city commonly recognized as the birthplace of the Republican Party. 

Cheney's will campaign for Harris for the first time amid a larger effort by the Democratic ticket to capture the support of Republicans disillusioned with former President Donald Trump. 

Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection and led the committee that would ultimately refer Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, endorsed Harris last month in North Carolina.

🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/