Calls grow for justice department to investigate Elon Musk giving $1m to register voters – live

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Thousands awaiting start of Harris rally in Houston

Thousands of fans waited for hours to attend Kamala Harris’s event in Houston. Inside Shell Energy stadium, the crowd buzzed in anticipation of a performance by Beyoncé in her native Houston. Lots of cowboy boots and cowboy hats. Some wore shirts that said “My president is a Black Woman”. One man wore a sequined white blazer over a “comma la” t-shirt.

It’s been decades since a Democratic presidential nominee stopped in the Lone Star state this close to Election Day and the Democrats here are ecstatic to be on the receiving end of some political love.

The DJ just encouraged the crowd to let loose. “It’s your American right,” he said.

The fifth circuit court of appeals ruled today that Mississippi violated federal law by counting mail ballots that are postmarked by election day, but arrive after that. The ruling, which was issued by a panel of three judges, does not require the state to make any changes before the election.

The court’s decision is a victory for the Republican National Committee, which brought the lawsuit, and a loss for Democrats and voting rights advocates, who worry the case will impact other states. Although the court’s ruling is only binding in three states under the fifth circuit’s jurisdiction (and not in effect for the current election), Democrats fear the decision could impact the outcome of elections in other states that allow ballots to be counted after election day – such as Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Maryland – especially if the election is contested.

Eight Washington Post columnists have issued a response to their paper’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate.

“An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution,” they write.

The letter’s signatories include Perry Bacon Jr, EJ Dionne Jr, David Ignatius, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, Eugene Robinson, Jennifer Rubin and Karen Tumulty.

A San Antonio election clerk was assaulted at a polling site yesterday – in what is believed to be the first instance of violence against an election worker this fall, The Texas Tribune reports. The suspect has been arrested on suspicion of injury to an elderly person, a felony.

According to a Bexar County sheriff’s report, the suspect, 63-year-old Jesse Lutzenberger, entered the polling location wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Displaying political slogans in polling sites is considered electioneering. The poll worker asked Lutzenberger to remove his hat and Lutzenberger proceeded to vote, but put the hat back on after. As the poll worker escorted Lutzenberger out of the building (after he cast his ballot), Sheriff Javier Salazar said a surveillance video showed Lutzenberger throw “several punches right at the face of the victim.”

The poll worker received emergency medical treatment and Lutzenberger was booked into jail before being released on a $30,000 bond today.

“This has been an especially contentious elections cycle,” Salazar said at a Friday briefing. “We’ve had several incidents where people show up wearing inappropriate clothing,” that qualifies as electioneering.

Tim Walz is currently campaigning in Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. The vice presidential nominee has praised Biden, saying “This country owes a huge debt to you and a huge debt to Joe Biden.” Current Guardian polling shows Harris leading Trump by less than a point in the crucial swing state.

Meanwhile, former president Barack Obama is in North Carolina campaigning for Kamala Harris. The Democratic Party has not won the swing state since 2008, when Obama was elected president. Our polling shows Harris trailing Trump by two points in the Tar Heel state.

Another top Democrat is calling for an investigation into Elon Musk – this time for the tech billionaire’s ties to Russia. Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, has called for the defense department to investigate a report that Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Politico reports.

“We should investigate what Elon Musk is up to to make sure that it is not to the detriment of the national security of the United States,” Smith said.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Armed Services Committee, echoed Smith. “Elon Musk—who has billions in contracts that support some of our most sensitive military operations—reportedly has an open line to Putin,” Shaheen said.

Musk’s spacecraft company SpaceX has multiple contracts with the defense department and NASA. According to a Wall Street Journal report published yesterday, the billionaire has had previously unreported discussions with Putin since 2022. Musk has been one of Donald Trump’s greatest supporters this election cycle, donating $118m to his pro-Trump super Pac. Trumphas long been a vocal admirer of Putin’s.

After concluding his remarks in Austin this afternoon, Donald Trump spoke with executives from Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Jeff Bezos. Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, also owns the Washington Post, which announced today that it wouldn’t endorse a candidate for president.

The Washington Post Guild, the union that represents many of the paper’s staffers, said that according to the paper’s reporters and Guild members, the endorsement for Harris was already drafted and the decision not to publish was made by Bezos himself.

According to the Associated Press, Trump spoke briefly with Blue Origin’s CEO, David Limp, and vice-president of government relations, Megan Mitchell, as he left a hangar where he spoke to supporters and journalists at the Austin airport.

Here’s more from the Guardian’s Anna Betts:

Although Donald Trump refused to appear in a CNN townhall alongside Kamala Harrris this week, his running mate JD Vance will appear on the network this weekend. The vice presidential nominee will appear on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, alongside former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, a longtime Republican who has endorsed Harris.

Harris to hold major rally in Houston later this evening

Kamala Harris is expected to discuss the “fundamental fight for the freedom of women to make decisions about their own body” at her Houston rally this evening.

She’ll appear alongside families that have been affected by abortion bans like Texas’ – including Amanda and Josh Zurawski, a Texas couple who sued the state after Amanda was unable to access treatment for a life-threatening pregnancy complication, and Shanette Williams, the mother of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia mother who died from an infection she feared seeking treatment for under the state’s restrictive laws.

“Sadly, the elected leaders of Texas, a lot of them, have made Texas ground zero in this fundamental fight for the freedom of women to make decisions about their own body,” Harris told reporters earlier today. “This is not just some theoretical concept. Real harm has occurred in our country, a real suffering has occurred. People have died.”

At a rally in Austin earlier today, Donald Trump said Harris was only campaigning in Texas in order to “rub shoulders with woke celebrities.”

Excerpts of Harris’ prepared remarks show that the vice-president also intends to criticize Texas attorney general Ken Paxton (who sued the federal government “so that Texas prosecutors can get their hands on the private medical records of women who leave the state to get care”) and Trump (“Donald Trump won’t let anyone see his medical records. But these guys want to get their hands on yours?”). Harris is also expected to argue that no state will be safe if Trump is re-elected and imposes a nationwide abortion ban – a policy Trump has fluctuated on despite nominating three of the conservative supreme court justices who ruled to overturn Roe v Wade.

“What happens in this election will determine the future of reproductive freedom for generations to come,” Harris is expected to say.

Two Senate Democrats have written a letter urging the justice department to investigate, and if necessary prosecute, Elon Musk over his potentially illegal $1m giveaway for registered voters. On Wednesday, the justice department sent a letter to Musk’s America Super Pac warning that a $1m-a-day sweepstake the billionaire and Tesla CEO began last week may violate federal elections law. Despite the warning, Musk has continued the giveaway, naming two winners yesterday.

In their letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, Vermont senator Peter Welch and Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal urge that the justice department to hold Musk accountable:

“Permitting this scheme to proceed without consequences makes a mockery of democracy and the law,” the senators wrote in a letter first obtained by CNN. “We urge you to investigate whether Elon Musk’s cash prizes are prohibited payments for voter registration and take appropriate enforcement action, including prosecution, if his actions prove to be illegal.”

Musk, who has endorsed Trump, has donated more than $118m to his pro-Trump political action committee and has recently begun campaigning for the ex-president in person.

Kamala Harris’s rally this evening with superstar singer Beyoncé will be far from her last appearance alongside a celebrity musician.

On Monday, Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, will campaign in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers. Then, on Wednesday, Harris will rally voters at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, alongside performances by Mumford & Sons, two members of the band the National, Gracie Abrams and Remi Wolf.

The performances come in the final days of a high-stakes election season, as both Democrats and Republicans urge voters to get out to the polls.

Trump doubles down on threats against Jack Smith

In an appearance on the Cats & Cosby podcast, a conservative talk radio show, Donald Trump said special counsel Jack Smith should be deported. Trump made news yesterday when he said he would fire Smith, the justice department official who is prosecuting him for allegedly plotting to overturn the 2020 election and hide classified documents, “within two seconds” of becoming president.

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has more:

Thirteen “lifelong Republican” former Trump administration staffers released a letter today echoing former Trump chief of staff John Kelly’s warnings about the ex-president’s authoritarian tendencies.

Here’s Joanna Walters with more:

A fresh group of “lifelong Republican” former aides to Donald Trump added their voices on Friday to the chorus of criticism of the Republican nominee’s character and fitness for the White House, speaking out in support of John Kelly, who earlier this week called his old boss a fascist.

“The revelations General Kelly brought forward are disturbing and shocking. But because we know Trump and have worked for and alongside him, we were sadly not surprised by what General Kelly had to say,” a letter from more than a dozen staffers who worked in Trump’s administration says, as first reported by Politico.

Interim summary

Here’s a look at where things stand:

• Chinese hackers have targeted phones used by Donald Trump and JD Vance, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. According to the sources, investigators are trying to determine what communication data may have been taken or observed.

• On Friday, Joe Biden formally apologized for the United States government’s role in running at least 523 Indian boarding schools. His remarks were given at the Gila Crossing community school outside Phoenix, Arizona, and marked his first visit to Indian Country as president.

• The new publisher of the Washington Post, controversial British journalist Will Lewis, squashed the paper’s plans to endorse Kamala Harris for the White House in this election, according to a report. The Columbia Journalism Review has just published an article saying that senior figures at the Post had been preparing to publish the announcement that the Post was endorsing Harris, the Democratic nominee for president – but there were delays.

• Senior Democratic figure Susan Rice, who was US ambassador to the United Nations and national security adviser under Barack Obama and then director of the US domestic policy council under Joe Biden, has made a blistering post on X about the Washington Post. “So much for ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’,” she said, referring to the newspaper’s slogan.

Joe Biden has formally apologized for the US government’s role in running more than 500 Indian boarding schools.

The Guardian’s Adria R Walker reports:

On Friday, Joe Biden formally apologized for the United States government’s role in running at least 523 Indian boarding schools. His remarks were given at the Gila Crossing community school outside Phoenix, Arizona, and marked his first visit to Indian Country as president.

“After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program,” Biden said. “But the federal government has never, never formally apologized for what happened – until today. I formally apologize, as president of the United States of America, for what we did. I formally apologize. That’s long overdue.”

“Federal Indian boarding school policy, the pain it has caused, will always be a significant mark of shame, a blot on American history,” he said. “For too long, this all happened with virtually no public attention.”

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