Elon Musk Deletes Post About Another Lottery Scheme to Buy Election

Elon Musk deleted an X post made early Friday morning offering two $1 million checks to Wisconsin voters attending a “talk” that he is giving in the state on Sunday amid a special election for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court.

The post is a reminder that Musk pushed a similar scheme ahead of the 2024 presidential election in battleground states, where he gave away $1 million each day to registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin, from early October until Election Day in November. The plan was met with a legal challenge in Pennsylvania but was ultimately allowed to continue.

This time around, after facing criticism that his post may have violated election laws against paying people to vote, Musk deleted it. In a follow-up post, he sought to backtrack, saying he is offering two $1 million checks to two people attending the talk to be “spokesmen” for a petition against activist judges that he is touting. Only people who have signed the petition are allowed to attend the event.

The petition sparked legal controversy when Musk announced it last week, as signatories in Wisconsin are being paid $100 each to sign it and effectively hand over their personal information to Musk. The tech oligarch and fascism enthusiast has already spent $20 million to back conservative candidate Brad Schimel in the election.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is set to weigh in on several issues with national implications, including the use of voter drop boxes in elections, abortion access, and redrawing congressional maps, and a Republican majority on the court would strengthen Trump and the MAGA agenda. Musk’s cash handouts are another brazen attempt by the billionaire to buy an election, and his deep pockets will probably insulate him from the possibility of any consequences.

President Trump on Thursday pardoned Trevor Milton, the founder of the bankrupt electric truck company Nikola who was sentenced to four years in prison for securities and wire fraud charges in 2023—right before he had to pay millions in restitution.

Milton famously exaggerated the green tech of his hydrogen trucking start-up, defrauding investors.

“Oh my gosh, oh, you won’t believe just what happened,” Milton said in a video he posted on Instagram. “I just got a call from the president of the United States, on my phone, and he signed my full and unconditional pardon of innocence. I am free,” he said. “The prosecutors can no longer hurt me,” he said. “They can’t destroy my family, they can’t rip everything away from me, they can’t ruin my life.”

When Milton was first indicted in 2021, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office noted that his investors “suffered tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses, including, in certain cases, the loss of their retirement savings or funds that they had borrowed to invest in Nikola.”

This pardon conveniently nullifies the $680 million Milton owed to Nikola shareholders and the $15.2 million to Peter Hicks, one of his wire fraud victims.

Milton emphasized what he saw as “striking similarities” between his case and the four criminal cases against President Donald Trump, who also maintains his victimhood. Milton has been an ardent supporter of Trump and donated $920,000 to the Trump 47 Committee and $750,000 in September to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA Alliance political action committee after his sentencing.

The country isn’t so confident that Donald Trump’s economic policies are making America great again.

A chart shared Friday by The Washington Post’s economics columnist Heather Long hinted at bad news for the economy, with U.S. households growing increasingly concerned that they’ll be financially worse off a year into the future than they are now. The chart was released by the University of Michigan as part of its consumer sentiment surveys.

“This is one of the scariest charts I’ve seen in awhile,” Long said in an X post. “In the ‘vibe-cession’ under Biden, people gave the economy poor grades. But they were generally optimistic about their personal finances (esp the rich).

“Under Trump 2025, people at all income levels are worried they will be worse off in a year. This is the type of situation that causes people to really pull back on spending. This is what is different than 2023 or 2024.”

That sentiment could convince people to hold onto their dollars as fears of a recession intensify.

A report by the University of Michigan’s survey of consumers in February forecast similarly bad news for the American economy. Last month, inflation expectations jumped an entire percentage point, from 3.3 percent in January to 4.3 percent in February, marking the second consecutive month of “unusually large increases,” according to the university report.

Polled consumers “expressed unease” about several economic factors, including unemployment as well as Trump’s aggressive economic policies.

More than half of the surveyed respondents expected unemployment to rise over the next 12 months—the most people to believe so since 2020—while 40 percent of consumers “spontaneously mentioned” Trump’s tariffs “generally unfavorably,” according to the report.

“While consumers appear relatively secure about their own incomes, with most expecting gains in the year ahead, only 16% expect their income gains to outpace inflation,” the report reads. “This is yet another sign that consumers are worried about the trajectory of prices.”

“Overall, inflation expectations are trending in an unfavorable direction,” the report noted, adding that “expectations matter because consumers have shown that they will act upon them.”

Donald Trump pulled a 180-degree turn Friday when speaking about Canada, after Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that the country’s relationship with the U.S. was “over.”

In a post on Truth Social Friday morning, Trump dropped his stupid schtick of calling Canada’s leader its “governor,” as part of his ongoing campaign to have it become the “fifty-first state.” Instead, he issued a surprisingly deferential statement about our northern neighbors.

“I just finished speaking with Prime Minister Mark Carney, of Canada. It was an extremely productive call, we agree on many things, and will be meeting immediately after Canada’s upcoming Election to work on elements of Politics, Business, and all other factors that will end up being great for both the United States of America and Canada,” Trump wrote.

On Wednesday, Trump levied a new round of “permanent” 25 percent tariffs on all imported vehicles and autoparts—a move sure to have a large impact in Canada, where many U.S. cars are assembled. Trump had threatened the European Union, warning it against working “with Canada in order to do economic harm” to the U.S. unless it too wanted to be hit with steep tariffs, a blatant attempt to back Canada into a corner.

Carney called the new tariffs on vehicles a “direct attack” on Canadian autoworkers and said that his country would make preparations to “dramatically reduce” its reliance on the U.S. The next day, the two leaders had their first conversation since Carney became prime minister earlier this month after Justin Trudeau stepped down. After being appointed, Carney triggered a parliamentary election to be held on April 28.

Earlier this month, Trump imposed a separate 25 percent tariff on all imports from Canada, with a lower 10 percent tariff on energy and some exemptions for goods covered by the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. Increasingly, it seems that Trump’s trade war with Canada could potentially devastate states along America’s northern border.

The Trump administration’s abrupt street arrests of legal immigrants, who subsequently disappear into government detention, should be a huge scandal met with swift action by Democrats in Congress.

But for some reason, just 34 Democrats in the Senate and the House have signed on to a letter demanding answers about the arrest of Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk in Massachusetts and other international students who have had their legal immigration status swiftly revoked without due process and now face deportation.

The letter calls for “answers about this case and about ICE’s policy that has led to the identification and arrest of university students with valid legal status,” and was sent Thursday to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

On Thursday, Rubio boasted that he had revoked the visas of “more than 300 at this point” while failing to mention a specific reason why Ozturk’s visa was revoked. No justification has been provided for University of Alabama doctoral student Alireza Doroudi’s arrest and detention, either, and his whereabouts are unknown.

The 34 Democrats who signed the letter to Trump administration officials are below:

• Representative Yassamin Ansari—Arizona
• Senator Adam Schiff—California
• Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton—District of Columbia (nonvoting delegate)
• Representative Hank Johnson—Georgia
• Representative Delia Ramirez—Illinois
• ​​Representative André Carson—Indiana
• Senator Brian Schatz—Hawaii
• Representative Jill Tokuda—Hawaii
• Senator Chris Van Hollen—Maryland
• Senator Elizabeth Warren—Massachusetts
• Senator Edward Markey—Massachusetts
• Representative Ayanna Pressley—Massachusetts
• Representative Lori Trahan—Massachusetts
• Representative Katherine Clark—Massachusetts
• Representative Stephen Lynch—Massachusetts
• Representative Seth Moulton—Massachusetts
• Representative James McGovern—Massachusetts
• Representative Jake Auchincloss—Massachusetts
• Representative Rashida Tlaib—Michigan
• Representative Ilhan Omar—Minnesota
• Senator Tina Smith—Minnesota
• Senator Andy Kim—New Jersey
• Representative LaMonica McIver—New Jersey
• Representative Bonne Watson Coleman—New Jersey
• Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—New York
• Senator Jeff Merkley—Oregon
• Representative Summer Lee—Pennsylvania
• Representative Greg Casar—Texas
• Representative Lloyd Doggett—Texas
• Senator Bernie Sanders—Vermont (independent who caucuses with Democrats)
• Senator Peter Welch—Vermont
• Senator Tim Kaine—Virginia
• Representative Donald S. Beyer Jr.—Virginia
• Representative Mark Pocan—Wisconsin