Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been ordered to attend a hearing Thursday after a Pennsylvania prosecutor sued to block the billionaire's $1 million-a-day giveaway to registered voters in swing states.
Progressive Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner claims that Musk's America PAC is engaged in an "illegal lottery scheme to influence voters."
Musk, who supports Trump, has promised to give away $1 million a day randomly to registered voters in swing states who sign a petition that pledges to support free speech and gun rights. Eligible voters must reside in one of seven key battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.
An attendee at an Oct. 19 rally hosted by America PAC in Harrisburg was the first recipient of Musk's million-dollar pay day.
Krasner filed a lawsuit to stop the payments on Oct. 28, a little more than a week before Election Day on Nov. 5. Prosecutors claim the giveaway is essentially an illegal lottery unsanctioned by the state, which has the sole authority to regulate them. The suit also says it violates consumer protection laws by "deploying deceptive, vague or misleading statements" about its rules, Reuters reported.
"Running an illegal lottery and violating consumer protections is ample basis for an injunction and concluding that America PAC and Musk must be stopped, immediately, before the upcoming Presidential Election on November 5," the suit said.
Reuters contributed to this update.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has indicated that former President Donald Trump plans to give him "control" over the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Kennedy indicated that Trump "promised" him "control" over "public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others," plus the USDA.
He made the comments in a video clip that has been circulating online.
The New York Times reported that Kennedy noted via text that the video was a recording from an internal talk with campaign workers regarding get-out-the-vote efforts for Trump.
"I stand ready to help him rid the public health agencies of their pervasive conflicts and corruption and restore their tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science," Kennedy said in a statement, according to the outlet.
The HHS secretary and USDA secretary posts are both cabinet-level positions.
"No formal decisions about Cabinet and personnel have been made, however, President Trump has said he will work alongside passionate voices like RFK Jr. to Make America Healthy Again by providing families with safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic plaguing our children," Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, according to reports.
This is an excerpt from an article by Alex Nitzberg.
A Fox News focus group of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents gave their real-time reactions to President Biden’s recent comments seeming to call supporters of former President Trump "garbage," with the latter two groups registering a strongly negative impression of the president’s words.
The groups recently participated in a dial test while watching Biden’s controversial statements that he made during a virtual Harris campaign call with Latino voters on Tuesday evening. The test allowed viewers to input their reactions while watching the moment in real time. These reactions showed up as a moving line on a graph indicating whether they were reacting positively, neutrally, or negatively to Biden’s words as he spoke them.
The test revealed that, while Democratic participants remained somewhat positive about Biden’s anti-Trump statements – including when he appeared to call Trump supporters "garbage" – Republicans and Independents sharply dipped into negative reactions as he made them.
Though Republican watchers’ reactions appeared to be the most negative, with the red line representing them veering down well below the neutral line for most of Biden’s 49-second statement, the yellow line representing independents also dipped low into negative response for the majority of the clip as well.
While never registering as intensely negative as the red line, the yellow line sharply dropped off the neutral plane as Biden declared that Trump "doesn’t care about the Latino community" and that he’s a "failed businessman."
The Independent line stayed low until it briefly ticked up (while still in the negative) when Biden mentioned Trump wanting to end "birthright citizenship."
Once Biden appeared to say, "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters," the yellow line took a notable downturn again, getting close to the Republican reaction line that was at its lowest point.
Meanwhile, the blue Democrat line represented the inverse reaction to both Independents and Republicans, traveling well above the neutral reaction line and gradually climbing as Biden made the "garbage" remarks.
This is an excerpt from an article by Gabriel Hays.
{{#rendered}}Vice President Kamala Harris has gone 102 days as the presumptive, and now, official Democratic nominee for president without holding an official press conference.
Trump has held at least six news conferences where he took questions from the media since the beginning of August. Harris has done brief, informal press gaggles this week with the media while on the campaign trail, including on Monday when she criticized the tone and rhetoric at Trump's rally in New York City over the weekend.
She gave a speech on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., outlining her path forward for the United States and how she differs from what she calls Trump's radical, dark vision.
Harris also ended her streak of not appearing on Fox News earlier this month, sitting for an interview in Pennsylvania with chief political anchor Bret Baier. She also did a CNN town hall and interviews last week with NBC News, Telemundo and CBS, as well as several podcasts and local news stations this week.
Harris has stepped up her interviews in recent weeks, including doing radio hits, friendly appearances with "The View," Stephen Colbert and Howard Stern and other media appearances.
But as for when she'll actually do a formal press conference as a candidate, that day appears like it won't come, at least while she's still a candidate.
This is an excerpt from an article by Brian Flood and David Rutz.
Vice President Harris on Wednesday picked up endorsements from three longtime Republican leaders in New Hampshire who supported former President Trump's rival Nikki Haley in the Republican primary.
Former U.S. Senator Gordon Humphrey, former U.S. Congressman and former New Hampshire Supreme Court Justice Chuck Douglas and former New Hampshire Attorney General Thomas Rath condemned Trump as a divisive and unstable candidate in statements declaring their support for Harris. Her campaign said the endorsements reflect growing enthusiasm for the vice president among registered Republicans both in the Granite State and the rest of the nation.
"I voted Republican for fifty years, but I’m voting against Donald Trump and I plead with all Republicans to do the same," Humphrey said in a statement. "As a father, a grandfather, a veteran, and a former United States Senator, I cannot vote for Trump. He’s dangerous to our democracy."
Douglas said that Trump "believes in himself over service" and views the election "as the change to jail his political opponents." Harris would be a "steady hand at the ship of state" in contrast to Trump's "fragile mental state and anger," according to the former lawmaker.
Rath likewise condemned Trump's "campaign of division, anger, thinly veiled prejudice, and rejection of our core values as a nation."
The Harris-Walz campaign welcomed their support and noted that hundreds of current and former Republicans across the country have backed Harris, including former GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Former President Trump reiterated his plans to "make America great again" as the 2024 race enters its final days.
Trump sat down with Fox News host Sean Hannity at Mar-a-Lago and repeated the same campaign promises he’s made on the trail, vowing to secure the border, fix the economy and immigration system and utilize tariffs against foreign countries.
The 2024 GOP presidential nominee said a potential second administration of his would be different because, now, he knows "everybody in Washington."
"I didn't know anybody [during his first term]. I was not a Washington person. I was rarely there," Trump said Wednesday on "Hannity." "I know everybody [now]. I know the good, the strong, the weak, the stupid. I know the -- I know everybody. And we're going to make this country great again, and we have to save our country."
He rallied against the Biden-Harris administration for its handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, record border crossings and weak foreign policy, pointing to Russia’s war against Ukraine and Israel’s war against Hamas, once again claiming they both would never have started had he been in the White House.
"We're going to be respected again. We're going to make America great again. And there's nothing in the world I'd rather be doing. I don't want to be on some beautiful beach. I don't want to be sitting in some faraway hotel where it's very nice and watching television or doing something. I want to be doing what I'm doing," Trump said. "It's so incredible."
This is an excerpt from an article by Ashley Carnahan.
{{#rendered}}President Biden was photographed playfully biting at least two babies dressed in Halloween costumes at the White House trick-or-treat event on Wednesday evening.
Both children were carried by their mothers to visit the 81-year-old commander-in-chief, who didn't seem to mind the interaction.
One baby who was dressed as a chicken even giggled after Biden took a faux nibble of his or her leg. The president then engaged in some easy banter with the baby's mother.
The White House event will be the last Halloween-themed celebration of Biden's term in office. Biden, who dropped out of the 2024 election, will leave office in January.
First lady Jill Biden added an educational theme to the event and named it “Hallo-Read” to help encourage reading. She has been a teacher for 40 years. Earlier Wednesday, she read a short story about spooky pumpkins to a group of costumed children gathered on the lawn.
She and the president later ventured outside at sunset and spent about an hour handing out treats. Biden, in a suit and tie, dropped boxes of White House Hershey's Kisses chocolates in the kids' tote bags while the first lady handed out copies of “10 Spooky Pumpkins.”
As many as 8,000 people, including students and children, were expected to attend the White House event, according to the Associated Press.
Fox News Digital's Jasmine Baehr The Associated Press contributed to this update.
The vast majority of Americans report being "anxious and frustrated" rather than "excited" regarding the upcoming election, according to a Thursday poll from the Associated Press.
The poll found that 7 in 10 Americans reported feeling frustrated about the election, while just under a third say they are excited. The AP-NORC poll comes as the presidential race between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris remains neck-and-neck.
The poll found that Democrats in particular are feeling more anxious than usual. Roughly 8 in 10 Democrats said they have negative feelings about the upcoming election, compared to just 7 in 10 in the last election.
Independents are the most even keeled, however, with roughly half of the group saying they are anxious and the other half saying they are excited.
The poll of 1,233 adults was conducted Oct. 24-29, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
This is an excerpt from an article by Anders Hagstrom.
A recent Pew Research Poll gives former President Trump the lead with veterans nationwide over Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of Tuesday's presidential election.
The poll, conducted with 876 veteran registered voters, gave Trump or "Leans Trump" 61% of the key demographic's support. Just 37% of the veterans polled responded that they support Harris.
Veterans make up around 6% of the country, according to the Census Bureau, or about 16 million people per 2022 numbers. The number of veterans nationwide is steadily dwindling, with around 18% of the American population being veterans in 1980.
Veterans 4 America First Institute, a nonprofit, reacted to the recent poll showing overwhelming support for Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election in an interview with Fox News Digital.
"The reason veterans are sticking with Trump, despite all the fake news, all the lies about Trump, is because veterans care about two things: results, and their pension," Darin Selnick, an Air Force veteran and founder of Veterans 4 America First Institute, told Fox News Digital.
"And so with the VA, you know, veterans all over the country saying, ‘We want Trump back’ because the VA has gone downhill. We're not getting our choice of staff or not being accountable," said Selnick.
The Mission Act and the Accountability Acts passed under former President Trump allowed for veterans to seek private providers outside the VA as well as hold poorly performing VA staff accountable.
This is an excerpt from an article by Jasmine Baehr.
{{#rendered}}Election Day is less than a week away and voters are already heading to the polls and mailing in their ballots, and betting markets have weighed in on whether Republicans or Democrats are favored to win control of Congress.
Control of both the House of Representatives and Senate have been closely contested in recent years, with the last two Congresses having historically thin majorities in both the House and Senate. The GOP controlled a narrow 222-213 majority in the House at the outset of the current 118th Congress, after Democrats began the prior Congress with a majority of the same margin.
In the Senate, Democrats currently have a 51-49 majority when including independent senators who caucus with the Democratic Party. During the previous Congress, the Senate had a 50-50 split with Democrats controlling the majority by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris' tiebreaking vote.
Traders on Polymarket see the trend of relatively narrow majorities continuing in the next Congress after this election. While the platform currently sees an 83% chance of a GOP majority in the Senate, bettors are also anticipating that it will be by a relatively small margin.
Since early September, Polymarket traders have seen a 52-seat GOP majority as the likeliest outcome, which peaked at a 52% chance in early October but has since ebbed to a 25% chance. A slightly smaller 51-seat GOP majority is the next most likely outcome according to Polymarket bettors, with a 16% chance.
Bettors see an 11% chance that Republicans will end up with 49 or fewer Senate seats — which would give Democrats a narrow majority. They also see a 9% chance of a 50-50 bipartisan split, which would give the majority to the party that wins the White House and has a vice president who can cast tiebreaking votes in the Senate.
Polymarket's traders see the battle for control of the House of Representatives as a virtual toss-up, with House Democrats having a roughly 50% chance of winning a majority over the past week.
However, a separate market on the platform suggests that House Republicans are more likely to attain a larger majority than what has occurred in recent years, as it sees a 29% chance there will be 230 or more GOP seats in the House in the next Congress. It also shows a 15% chance the GOP ends up with fewer than 200 seats — which would leave Democrats with a majority of more than 235 seats.
BetUS' odds see control of the House of Representatives as a toss-up with Democrats and Republicans having equal odds. It also has Republicans as the heavy favorites to win control of the Senate.
This is an excerpt from an article by Eric Revell.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre faced immediate backlash Wednesday after she denied that President Biden had referred to Trump supporters as "garbage."
"Just to clarify, he was not calling Trump supporters garbage," Jean-Pierre told reporters at the daily White House press briefing, reiterating the statement Biden put out to clean up his remarks.
"He does not view Trump supporters or anybody who supports Trump as garbage," she said, adding that Biden has said numerous times that he is a "president for all," including those who did not vote for him in red states and blue states.
But commentators argued this may say more about Jean-Pierre's estimation of the American public than Biden's actual statement.
"Breaking wind from BSNBC!" former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee wrote. "5 Alarm fire at the WH when KJP's pants catch fire in spontaneous combustion after she claims Joe didn't really call Trump supporters ‘garbage.’ She does know that we can see the video for ourselves? That we aren't as clueless as her boss is?"
Tarrant County GOP chairman Bo French commented, "It amazes me more people aren't appalled by the outright lies these people tell. We watched the video. He clearly called us garbage. I have a feeling the swing voters are done with this kind of BS."
"JUST IN: Karine Jean-Pierre, while dressed as a piece of Laffy Taffy, says Biden ‘was not calling Trump supporters garbage.’ … even though it’s LITERALLY ON VIDEO Again, these people think you’re stupid," videojournalist Nick Sortor wrote. "Vote accordingly."
This is an excerpt from an article by Alexander Hall.
Jennifer Aniston announced Wednesday that she voted for Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be the next president and vice president of the United States of America.
"Today not only did I vote for access to health care, for reproductive freedom, for equal rights, for safe schools, and for a fair economy, but also for SANITY and HUMAN DECENCY," Aniston wrote in a social media post.
She encouraged others to vote as well and pleaded for Americans to "end this era of fear, chaos and the attacks on our democracy."
"I very proudly voted for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz," she wrote.
"We are so lucky we get to VOTE and this election is in our hands! We only have one week until Election Day so talk to your friends, your family, your neighbors and let's find our way back to each other with respect, common cause, and Love."
{{#rendered}}
Former President Trump said the Biden-Harris administration has treated the American people and "our whole country like garbage," claiming that it's now clear what President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris "really think of our supporters."
Trump held a rally Wednesday afternoon in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, just a day after Harris made her final pitch to voters in a speech from Washington, D.C.
The vice president’s address was quickly overshadowed by Biden’s remarks during a Zoom call with Voto Latino on Tuesday.
During the call with the group, which is one of the largest Latino voter and civic outreach organizations in the U.S., Biden was asked about a comment made Sunday during a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in which comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage."
Biden replied: "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters."
The White House has since denied that Biden called Trump supporters "garbage" and claimed the comment was taken out of context.
During the rally Wednesday, Trump said Harris has been "comparing her political opponents to the most evil mass murderers in history, and now, speaking on a call for her campaign last night, Joe Biden finally said what he and Kamala really think of our supporters."
"He called them garbage — and they mean it, even though, without question, my supporters are far higher quality than Crooked Joe and Lyin’ Kamala," Trump told supporters.
But Trump said he had a response for the president and vice president.
"My response to Joe and Kamala is very simple: You can’t lead America if you don’t love Americans," Trump declared. "And you can’t be president if you hate the American people, and there’s a lot of hatred there."
This is an excerpt from an article by Brooke Singman.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said Democrats are playing a "dangerous game" by using divisive language about former President Donald Trump during an appearance on "Jesse Watters Primetime" Wednesday night.
DeSantis criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for likening Trump to a "fascist leader" during her Monday campaign rally in Wisconsin and condemned the Hitler comparisons from other Democrat leaders and media pundits.
"He was president for four years, guys. People can watch and see what happened. I didn't see that happen in those four years," he said, adding that such language is "stirring up a lot of division in this country."
"If they are convincing you as a voter that American democracy will end if Donald Trump is president, you can see why you have some of the problems that we have and some of the things that have been stirred up amongst the populous," DeSantis added.
The Florida governor said he believes the rhetoric "is born out of desperation" and doesn't think it will ultimately work.
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