Elon Musk Faces Uproar After Seizing Key Handle on X to Help Trump

Elon Musk and his super PAC, America PAC, have taken over the @America handle on X to promote their mission to elect Donald Trump.

Musk appeared to acquire the handle over the weekend as he spoke on stage with Trump at his Butler, Pennsylvania, rally. “Read @America to understand why I’m supporting Trump for President,” read Musk’s new bio that Saturday.

Following the acquisition, the pro-Trump super PAC made a big announcement: They’ll be paying for personal information of swing-state voters.

The American PAC is offering the public a $47 referral fee for each registered swing-state voter who signs an online petition in support of the First and Second Amendments. The petition requires signers to submit their personal contact information in the process. Presumably, they will be targeted by the PAC in its quest to elect Trump.

While it is a federal crime to pay someone to vote or to register to vote, Musk’s group is skirting the law given that it’s not illegal to pay voters to sign a petition (or to pay the third party referrers in this case). But earlier this year, the super PAC was under fire by multiple states for election interference for a different data-collection scheme.

Musk’s PAC says its goal “is to get 1 million registered voters in swing states to sign in support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms,” which means Musk may have to pay up to $47 million to Trump supporters.

X users were annoyed but not surprised over the billionaire’s recent moves.

As of Monday, it’s unclear how the PAC will deliver the cash.

On the one year anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, and the ensuing one year of Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza, Donald Trump took the opportunity to attack Jewish people for not supporting him enough, and to wonder aloud about developing Gaza’s real estate.

Trump called into the New York radio show Sid & Friends Monday morning, bragging that “nobody’s done more for the Jewish people than I have.”

“No person has ever been better to the Jewish people, probably no person, period, to the Jewish people and Israel,” Trump said.

The former president was on the same tack on conservative Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, talking about how much, in his eyes, he did for Israel during his four years as president.

“I think Israel has to do one thing: They have to get smart about Trump,” he said. “I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not a reciprocal, as they say. Not reciprocal.”

As one might expect, his comments didn’t go over well on social media.

Also on the podcast, Hewitt asked Trump if Gaza, which has been devastated by a brutal Israeli assault on the territory that has completely wiped out its infrastructure and claimed at least 41,000 Palestinian lives, could be “Monaco if it was rebuilt the right way.”

Trump answered the absurd question by claiming, “It could be better than Monaco, it has the best location in the Middle East, that best water, the best everything it’s got. It is the best.”

“They never took advantage of it as a developer. It could be the most beautiful place, the weather, the water, the whole thing, that climate. It could be so beautiful. It could be the best thing in the Middle East, but it could be one of the best places in the world,” Trump added.

Trump’s own son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has spoken openly about the redevelopment prospects of “waterfront property” in Gaza, so perhaps Trump has discussed the idea with him. However, it’s quite callous to minimize the conflict as a mere real estate issue, after a year in which 1.9 million Palestinians (nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s population) have been driven from their homes and 66 percent of the territory’s buildings have been destroyed.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s alleged pursuit of being apolitical has veered straight into the hyper political.

The Republican governor has reportedly been avoiding calls from Vice President Kamala Harris in the wake of Hurricane Helene on the basis that the emergency relief calls “seemed political,” according to an aide close to DeSantis that spoke with NBC News.

“Kamala was trying to reach out, and we didn’t answer,” the unidentified source told NBC News.

The same aide told the outlet that they were not aware of any direct communication between DeSantis and President Joe Biden. Instead, DeSantis has been in contact with Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, Director Deanne Criswell.

When asked whether the White House believed that politics were seeping into the storm response, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told NBC News that it was “for the governor to speak to,” adding that the executive office had invited DeSantis to survey the damage from Hurricane Helene alongside Biden last week.

“It was his decision … to not attend or not be there with the president.... It is up to him,” Jean-Pierre said. “We are doing our part, in the Biden-Harris administration, working—obviously FEMA is work—is on the ground, all hands on deck, whole of government. Robust approach here. And so, again, that’s for Governor DeSantis to speak to.”

Across the six states that the Category 4 storm hit, at least 231 people have been reported dead, making Helene one of the deadliest recorded storms in U.S. history. Overall, Helene has been described by weather forecast offices as “one of the most significant weather events” to hit the area “in the modern era.”

But in the aftermath of that storm, another potentially devastating hurricane looms on the horizon: Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm scheduled to hit the west coast of the Sunshine State by Wednesday evening. In light of the imminent catastrophe, DeSantis has taken another suspiciously politicized route, opting not to alter the state’s voting procedures, refusing to extend the deadline for voter registration and instead curtly offering that fleeing or bunkering denizens should spend their time applying to vote now.

Extreme weather is already wreaking havoc on voting ahead of the election. Hurricane Helene upended postal service in North Carolina, potentially delaying early and mail-in voting in the crucial swing state.

Meanwhile, Republicans across the country have elevated false claims launched by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, insisting that the Biden administration diverted emergency relief funds from FEMA to aid immigration efforts.

FEMA has roundly rejected those charges, stating that the MAGA-launched rumor is “frankly ridiculous and just plain false.”

“This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” Criswell said on Sunday. “It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people.”

In an unfortunate back and forth, the Georgia Supreme Court has reinstated a law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. The ban will remain in place as the high court reviews the state’s appeal against a lower court ruling striking the law.

The Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, or the LIFE Act, will take effect again at 5 p.m. Monday, making abortion illegal after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they are pregnant.

This decision comes just one week after a Fulton County Superior Judge overturned the Georgia law, arguing that it was unconstitutional and issuing a dire warning on how the ban could set up a dystopian world similar to the one portrayed in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Last week, Judge Robert McBurney wrote that: “It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could—or should—force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.”

The lower judge’s ruling allowed abortion until 22 weeks, as was legal before the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, giving clinics a chance to expand their abortion options for the past week.

“We know that several providers in Georgia were able to resume abortion care really quickly,” Brittany Fonteno, the president and chief executive of the National Abortion Federation, told The New York Times. “It speaks to the resilience of the providers in Georgia. They were really overwhelmed by the amount of people who immediately came to them for care.”

The constant back and forth in the courts is sure to fuel confusion in the state about what is and isn’t legal.

Meanwhile, JD Vance is playing dumb about reproductive rights in Georgia, saying he doesn’t know which side he is on.

Donald Trump went beyond his usual racism and seemed to embrace eugenics Monday morning.

Speaking on conservative Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, Trump ranted against Kamala Harris, claiming that “she wants to go into a Communist Party–type system.” He then attacked her for supposedly allowing serial murderers into America through open borders, “now happily living in the United States.” But Trump didn’t stop there.

“You know now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes, and we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” Trump told Hewitt.

Attaching genetics to crime is another way for Trump to make racist claims about immigrants to the United States, implying that some ethnicities are predisposed to killing. It fits into what he’s said about different populations in the past, such as in 2018, when he referred to immigrants from Haiti and African nations as “people from shithole countries.”

Trump began his political career by complaining that Mexico was “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” And earlier this year, Trump complained to wealthy donors at a fundraiser in Florida that immigrants weren’t coming from “nice” countries “like Denmark,” in effect saying that he’d prefer only white immigrants in the United States.

The former president has spread racist lies against immigrants during his current campaign, in particular against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania. He has said that he wants to institute “bloody” mass deportations of immigrants if he returns to the White House. But blaming their “genes” is new, and is a reminder that he doesn’t seem to think being compared to Adolf Hitler, the most infamous eugenicist, is a bad thing. Was his latest remark inspired by the long list of things he likes about Hitler?

Another massive hurricane is barrelling toward Florida’s coastline, but that doesn’t mean the state is shifting its standards to help its denizens prepare for Election Day.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will reportedly not be extending the Sunshine State’s deadline for registering to vote, according to the Orlando Sentinel’s Jeffrey Schweers, despite the fact that much of the state is preparing for or fleeing the imminent Category 5 storm due to hit its west coast this week.

“There is nothing inhibiting people from registering today,” DeSantis told the publication.

Last week, DeSantis issued an executive order allowing local election officials to change early voting sites and set up consolidated voting centers in areas ravaged by the last major weather event to rip through Florida, Hurricane Helene, which displaced thousands of voters and poll workers late last month. The executive order also loosened restrictions on mail-in ballot requests and allowed state employees to take paid leave to work as poll workers on Election Day, according to CBS News.

But DeSantis’s rigidity on the threat posed by the oncoming hurricane doesn’t come from a place of ignorance. So far, the Republican governor has issued a state of emergency for 51 of Florida’s 67 counties. “A major hurricane is the most likely outcome,” DeSantis said on Sunday while expanding the ordinance. “This is not a good track for the state of Florida.”

The brunt of Hurricane Milton is scheduled to slam the west side of the state by Wednesday evening, but the rain has already begun. Rainfall could reach totals of five to 10 inches, with localized totals adding up to 15 inches across regions of the Florida peninsula and the Florida Keys, threatening minor to moderate river flooding, hurricane center specialist Eric Blake told USA Today.

“Regardless of the details, there is increasing confidence that a powerful hurricane with life-threatening hazards will be affecting portions of the Florida west coast around the middle of this week,” the hurricane center said Sunday.

Extreme weather is already wreaking havoc on voting ahead of the election. Hurricane Helene has upended postal service in North Carolina, potentially delaying early and mail-in voting in the crucial swing state.

The Supreme Court refused Monday to hear an appeal from Elon Musk’s X Corp. on the company’s claim that special counsel Jack Smith took an unlawful deep dive into Donald Trump’s social media account without notifying the former president.

X Corp. begged the Supreme Court in July to determine under what circumstances a tech company can be compelled to turn over information on its users, while being prevented from alerting those users that they’re being investigated.

The court did not publish a comment Monday, and there were no dissents.

Last year, Smith’s team was able to use a “nondisclosure order” to prevent X Corp. from notifying Trump that prosecutors were using a search warrant to obtain private communications from Trump’s X (formerly Twitter) account, including direct messages, location data, and his drafts from the weeks leading up to the January 6 insurrection.

When X Corp. challenged the order, it was found in contempt and fined $350,000. Prosecutors argued that notifying Trump of the search would endanger the evidence.

Last week, an unsealed filing from Smith’s team showed precisely how the prosecution in Trump’s January 6 trial intended to use tweets from the Republican nominee’s personal X account to demonstrate his alleged election interference.

Trump’s tweets cast doubt on the integrity of the 2020 election results, spread false claims of voter fraud, attacked those trying to share accurate information about the election, cheered on those traveling to Washington for the rally that would become the riot, and helped the former president conduct a pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence.

At 2:24 p.m. on January 6, 2021, as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

This tweet was then read out to the crowd at the Capitol, who later chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” Moments after Trump tweeted, Pence had to be ushered to a secure location, according to the filing. When Trump heard that Pence had been taken to safety, he reportedly responded, “So what?”

JD Vance’s supporters are seeking revenge against the consulting firm Deloitte after an employee shared personal messages from the Ohio senator in which he criticized Donald Trump’s record.

Donald Trump Jr. and other Republicans are accusing Deloitte consultant Kevin Gallagher of interfering with the election and are asking Speaker Mike Johnson to punish the company for its employee’s action.

“An executive at @Deloitte named Kevin Gallagher decided to interfere in the election & leak private convos with JD Vance to help Kamala Harris,” wrote Trump Jr. “Deloitte also gets $2B in govt contracts. Maybe it’s time for the GOP to end Deloitte’s taxpayer funded gravy train?”

In September, The Washington Post published messages shared by Gallagher where Vance admitted in 2020 that Trump had “thoroughly failed to deliver” on his economic plans and that he would most likely lose to Joe Biden. The consultant and Vance communicated for 11 months after Vance contacted Gallagher via Twitter about an essay regarding Catholicism and politics.

Trump Jr. continues to argue that Deloitte’s $3 billion in annual government contracts should be canceled due to Gallagher sharing his own personal communications, accusing the consulting firm of “conspiring with the Washington Post to help Kamala Harris.”

“This individual shared private personal messages on his own volition without the knowledge of Deloitte, which is a non-partisan firm,” said Deloitte in a statement. But that distinction doesn’t matter to MAGA.

“Kevin Gallagher FAFO!” wrote senior Trump adviser Jason Miller. “This is outrageous and @Deloitte should immediately and publicly respond to this scandal,” said Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt.

Vance’s communications director, William Martin, told the Post that Vance “has no opinion on the issue,” but Martin himself retweeted Trump Jr.’s attacks on Gallagher.

“The moment Kevin Gallagher chose to leak his private communications to The Washington Post, he went from a private citizen to a willing participant in the political arena,” Martin said. “When he made that decision, he dragged Deloitte Consulting into the political arena with him.”

Donald Trump’s disastrous speech on Sunday perfectly demonstrated the cognitive decline that attendees at his rallies have been witnessing for months.

The New York Times published a report Sunday analyzing Trump’s recent rally speeches, finding them longer, more rambling, and more extreme than ever before. That same day, during a rally in Juneau, Wisconsin, Trump embarked on a nearly two-hour speech filled to the brim with misinformation, random grievances, and incoherent gaffes.

Trump slurred his words as he rambled about the federal response to Hurricane Helene, calling it “probably worse than Katrina.”

“If you want someone who steals your wealth and abandons your family when the floods waters rise, those… flood… waters rise. And they were gone,” Trump ranted. “They haven’t seen anybody from the federal government yet.”

Trump has spent the last week spewing misinformation about the federal response to Hurricane Helene. He falsely claimed that Democrats were preventing aid from reaching Republican areas (something he actually once considered after the California wildfires), and lied that there had been “no helicopters, no rescue” efforts at all in North Carolina.

During his speech, Trump also gushed over Elon Musk, who, between running a pro-Trump super PAC and spreading election misinformation, has apparently provided “big doses of” Starlink to some affected by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina per Trump’s request. If “doses” seems like the wrong word to describe internet connection, that’s because it is. Even Trump admitted that he doesn’t “know what the hell” Starlink is.

Trump then made a particularly grim remark when asking if there were any people in the audience planning to vote for “Lyin’ Kamala.”

“Please raise your hand. Please raise your… actually I should say don’t raise your hand. It would be very dangerous,” Trump said, laughing. “We don’t want to see anyone get hurt. Please don’t raise your hand.”

At one point, Trump became increasingly distracted by a fly, calling it a “very aggressive sucker.”

“This one, this one in particular is very aggressive… like, I’m going to be aggressive for our country. You can probably say that,” Trump joked to uproarious applause.

Trump also whined about his canceled interview with 60 Minutes. Trump had decided not to go through with the interview, CBS announced last week. The Trump campaign has since claimed that CBS “begged” for an interview but wouldn’t agree not to fact-check the Republican nominee.

On stage, Trump insisted instead that it was because he had not received an apology for his last appearance on the show in 2020, where he had thrown a fit about how inappropriate it was to be asked “tough questions” before cutting the interview short. Trump said he’d ended the interview after he was incorrectly fact-checked about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“Ah, it’s terrible. So we’re waiting for an apology, they want to do it again,” Trump said.

“I’ll do it again, but they gotta apol—don’t you think I should make them apologize?”

In addition to repeatedly garbling his words, saying “Midworsten” and “Evan juggles” (Evangelicals), the Republican nominee made a number of outlandish lies. He attempted to take credit for the recent record highs in the stock market, claiming that “the market goes up every time I get a good poll number,” while also promising a “1929 depression” if Harris were elected (he said the exact same thing about Biden in 2020). He attempted to walk back his own remarks that voters would only need to vote one more time, and promised again to be a dictator “for one day.”

A new Supreme Court decision effectively means that Texas women will never be able to receive abortion care—even if their lives depend on it.

On Monday, the Supreme Court let stand a ruling that emergency abortions violate the Lone Star State’s already draconian abortion laws, upholding a ban on the life-saving procedure even in emergency circumstances.

The Biden administration had asked the justices to throw out the lower court ruling, citing the Supreme Court’s decision in June to punt a challenge to a similarly restrictive medical emergency abortion clause in Idaho. That decision temporarily allowed emergency abortions to continue while a lower appeals court retried the case.

The administration also pointed to federal mandate, reminding the court that hospitals must provide life-saving emergency medical care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). The government further noted that legal precedents set by the Texas Supreme Court mean doctors within the state do not have to wait until a woman’s life is in immediate danger to provide the critical care required to save her.

Yet none of that seemed to matter to the ultra-conservative bench, who ruled in favor of heightened restrictions without detailed reasoning, reported the Associated Press.*

Texas had asked the Supreme Court to leave the order in place, arguing that their law left exceptions in place that prioritized the health of pregnant patients. But accessing Texas’s emergency abortion clause loophole isn’t cut and dry. Some women in the state, such as Kate Cox, have been forced to flee for care after failing to legally obtain access to abortions under the state’s emergency clause.

Cox’s case was the first such lawsuit since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Despite her apparent eligibility—and a court decision allowing her to receive the critical care—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stepped in, promising to prosecute doctors with felony charges if they were caught performing the procedure.

Doctors argue that the medical exemptions in the state are unclear, leaving them in legal jeopardy and effectively stalling access to abortions in Texas by proxy.

* This article originally misstated the justices’ vote breakdown.