Republicans in Yet Another Swing State Suffer Massive Election Blow

Republicans in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania have been dealt a significant blow to their dubious voter suppression efforts.

Earlier this month, six Republican congressmen in the state filed a federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania secretary of state alleging that ballots cast by Pennsylvania residents living overseas were fraudulent. The suit claimed that state law makes it possible for ineligible voters to cast ballots without providing any proof of identity, leading to inaccurate results. The lawsuit even claimed that “Iranian nationals” could “easily” take advantage of the system and falsify ballots. 

But on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Charles Conner, a George W. Bush appointee, deemed this all to be nonsense. He dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that the Republican congressmen were relying on “phantom fears of foreign malfeasance to excuse their lack of diligence,” and had “no good excuse for waiting until barely a month before the election to bring this lawsuit.”

Overseas ballots have been under federal jurisdiction for years under the Uniform and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which is mostly associated with military service members stationed abroad. Many Trump supporters, like Elon Musk, have decried this normal law as a fraudulent Democratic plot to steal the 2024 election, and similar lawsuits have been filed in Michigan and North Carolina.

It’s likely that Republicans have realized that overseas voters aren’t all military, pro-GOP people—a shift that could seriously cost them. “Everyone thought overseas meant military. Not true,” Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell told The Washington Post. “Approx 63% of [overseas] ballots in 2020 were nonmilitary.” But rather than looking inward to determine how to appeal to a broader electorate, the GOP has instead chosen to try to stop people from voting. And while this latest effort was defeated in Pennsylvania, the groundwork for claims of another “stolen” election is still being set right in front of us.

Elon Musk admitted that he knows that Donald Trump’s policies would crash the economy if he’s elected president, but thinks that the price is worth it.

The tech CEO and social media mogul on Monday evening replied to a post on X from right-wing influencer FischerKing64, who posted about how Trump’s plans for mass deportations of immigrants combined with Musk’s plans as a White House adviser to cut federal spending would initially crash the economy, before creating a “sounder footing.”

Musk replied, “Sounds about right.”

It’s a telling admission from Musk that crashing the economy is all a part of the plan.  Experts have repeatedly warned that Trump’s mass deportations on their own would cause damage to critical industries in the U.S., including agriculture, construction, and hospitality.

Undocumented immigrants most commonly take jobs with longer hours, lower wages, and dangerous working conditions that native-born citizens don’t want, such as housekeeping cleaners, cooks, construction workers, and farm workers. These jobs also won’t have American workers lining up to fill them.

Trump’s plan to appoint Musk to his administration, possibly to lead a government efficiency task force, could also have negative effects. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, previously said Musk told him that he plans to look at cuts to government programs like Social Security and the Department of Defense.

Judging by what happened after Musk gutted Twitter and laid off many of its workers after he purchased the social media company, there are justifiable fears that he would cripple essential government programs. Social Security, for example, is a lifeline to many older Americans, and in fact needs more funding, not less.

Musk’s status as the world’s richest man, as well as the success of his companies like SpaceX and Tesla, comes from taxpayer funds. When the government isn’t involved in his ventures, they’ve suffered, such as Twitter (now X), which has lost more than a third of its value since he took over the company. Musk’s confession that the economy would initially get worse under Trump is worrying enough, but his idea that it would lead to a rapid recovery should be cause to reject his plans altogether—as well as the administration that would enable them.

Steve Bannon, the engineer behind Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, was fresh out of prison Tuesday and already drumming up hatred and fear ahead of the presidential election next week.

In his first public appearance on his War Room podcast after completing a four-month stint in federal prison, Bannon once again claimed he was a political prisoner and warned that it could happen to others, too.

“Let me say something, if you’re not prepared to be sent to a federal prison as a political prisoner, then you’re not worthy to be in this movement, and to step forward and try to save your country,” he said. “You have to understand: they want to put you in prison and they will put you in prison. If you can’t accept that, then you don’t know what they represent.”

“They talk about President Trump, ‘He’s gonna do this, he’s gonna do this,’ look at what they’ve done,” Bannon continued.

What Bannon failed to elucidate in his cryptic warnings of political imprisonment is that in his unwavering support of Trump, he broke the law. Bannon had defied a federal subpoena issued as part of the congressional investigation into the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. He had refused to sit for a deposition with the House Committee investigating the riot, and refused to hand over documents related to his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Joined by Raheem Kassam, a former editor at Bannon’s propaganda machine Breitbart, the Trump ally also bragged about a “wide swath of African American men and Hispanic men” who would be joining the MAGA movement and help deliver victory for the former president.

Bannon also hit back at the “rhetoric” calling members of the MAGA movement “fascist” and defended Trump’s “fantastic, that amazing rally at Madison Square Garden,” which has been completely overshadowed by racist remarks from its speakers, including comedian Tony Hinchcliffe.

Bannon claimed that the rally’s speakers represented a “broad cross-section of American entrepreneurs,” specifically listing Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy.

After being released, the 70-year-old said he felt “amazing, and more importantly empowered” by his prison sentence.

The Trump campaign is still doing damage control after a comedian at his hate rally in New York City made a wildly racist joke about Puerto Rico.

When asked about the joke on Monday, Vance claimed hadn’t “seen” it, which seems highly unlikely given the moment’s virality and the fact that he is running for vice president.

“I’ve heard about the joke; I haven’t actually seen the joke,” Vance said after being asked if the series of racist jokes was setting the right tone for the campaign just one week out from the election.

“Maybe it’s a stupid, racist joke, as you said; maybe it’s not. I haven’t seen it,” he continued. “I’m not gonna comment on the specificity of the joke … but I think that we have to stop getting offended at every little thing in the United States of America, I’m just so over it.”

The series of jokes from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s rally already looks like it could cost him the election. Hinchcliffe used his stage time to make vulgar statements about Latino immigrant families, said that he carved Halloween watermelons with a Black man, and, most notably, stated that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.”

Vance’s reaction was unwise and hypocritical. This is the same guy who was deeply bothered just by being called “weird” and lied about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets, but it’s the rest of us who need to toughen up. While Trump campaign spokesperson Daniella Alvarez has said the “joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” Vance refused to even acknowledge any issue with the joke. While the actual electoral fallout from these comments is yet to be seen, Vance’s flippancy certainly won’t help the Trump campaign.

Joe Rogan says he is still open to interviewing Kamala Harris—if she’ll drop everything and come to him.

Responding to rumors on both sides of the aisle, the podcast host took to X in the wee hours of Tuesday morning to clear up some confusion about why his proposed interview with the vice president hasn’t materialized. TLDR: He’ll only speak with Harris on his terms.

“For the record the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast. They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin,” wrote Rogan, adding that his “sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being. I really hope we can make it happen.”

With only a week left until Election Day and a packed schedule of rallies, interviews, and campaign events, it seems that Harris may not have Rogan’s audience of mostly Republican and independent young men top of mind. But this lukewarm defense from Rogan makes it clear that he wants to put all the blame on Harris, when really it’s also his stubbornness at fault.

Perhaps Donald Trump set up an impossible standard with his interview for The Joe Rogan Experience, as the Republican nominee backed out of several previously scheduled events to travel to the Austin podcast studio. During his three-hour interview with Trump, Rogan allowed the former president to lie to his millions of viewers about immigration, the economy, and the 2020 election, with Trump stating, “I won that second election so easy.”

With Harris’s tentative cancellation, Rogan’s schedule is wide open, and so the podcaster will now instead interview Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance on Wednesday morning, rather than make any sacrifices to interview the sitting vice president and Democratic nominee for president. Vance will travel to Austin to appear on the show.