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    Packed Pacs: how billionaires in the US are bankrolling Republicans at the state level

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    Billionaires are increasingly bankrolling Republican candidates in state legislative races across the US to push a rightwing agenda and gain long-term hegemony.The concerted effort shows that Donald Trump ally Elon Musk, currently throwing his weight behind a candidate for Wisconsin’s state supreme court, is far from alone in seeking to build influence at the grassroots.According to a research document obtained by the Guardian, the contributions are not limited to federal elections but extend to state-level campaigns and aim to influence policy at the state level. Priorities include dismantling government, targeting “culture war” issues – particularly abortion – and advancing school privatisation.In Virginia, for example, donors Thomas Peterffy and Jeff Yass contributed significantly to Governor Glenn Youngkin’s political action committee (Pac) Spirit of Virginia. Peterffy gave $3m while Yass added $2m. Spirit of Virginia spent more than $8m supporting Republican candidates in the 2023 Virginia general assembly elections.Democratic state house leader Don Scott was quoted by the Axios website as saying that Republicans were relying on “nameless, faceless, out-of-state mega-donors who have been pouring millions into the Commonwealth to push right-wing policies with no regard to what Virginians actually want”.In Michigan, the DeVos family, including former education secretary Betsy DeVos, donated more than $4.4m to state Republican candidates and causes in 2024. More than $1m combined went to the Michigan house and senate Republican Pacs.The DeVos family is known for promoting “school-choice policies”, specifically the expansion of charter schools. The Bridge Michigan news site reported “no individual has shaped school policy as much as Betsy DeVos”, contributing to Michigan having “some of the nation’s highest concentrations of charter schools run by for-profit companies”.In Wisconsin, Diane Hendricks and Elizabeth Uihlein contributed a combined $7m to Republican legislative campaign committees in 2024. Hendricks has a long history of influencing Wisconsin politics, including pushing for “right-to-work” legislation. The Uihleins have backed efforts to make it harder to receive unemployment benefits, oppose Medicaid expansion and create barriers to voting.In Pennsylvania, Yass, who is the state’s wealthiest billionaire, funded Pacs that reportedly spent nearly $4.4m to unseat Pennsylvania house Democrats. Yass-affiliated Pacs supported candidates who sponsored a near-total abortion ban. Since the 2018 cycle, these Pacs gave “$370,000 to bill sponsors and cosponsors” of such legislation.Yass also prioritises spending public funds on private education and is Pennsylvania’s biggest “school choice” donor. He told Philadelphia Magazine last year that it would be a “good thing” if public schools “shut down”, adding: “There is no possible way a government monopoly could be a better approach to schools than market competition.”Republicans in Pennsylvania pushed a constitutional amendment to ban abortion in 2021 and 2022 but without success.In Arizona, Earl “Ken” Kendrick (owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team) and his family contributed more than $200,000 to Republican legislative candidates and Pacs during the 2024 cycle. The Kendrick family supported the retention of far-right, anti-choice judges on the state’s supreme court. Legislative Republicans referred a proposal to the ballot to attempt to make these positions lifetime appointments.State legislative chambers, once regarded as sleepy backwaters, have become partisan battlegrounds in recent years as they have a huge impact on issues ranging from book banks to transgender rights to voting laws.On an otherwise disastrous election night last November, Democrats held their own at state level, emerging with more legislative majorities than they managed in 2016 or 2020. In Pennsylvania, for example, they held off a red wave to defend a one-seat majority in the state house.But that appears to be spurring on a small group of super-rich donors aiming to reshape state-level politics with a focus on issues including abortion, education and labour rights. Critics say such contributions raise questions about the role of money in politics and the influence of billionaires on the democratic process.Bernie Sanders, an independent senator currently on a “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” across the country, told last year’s Democratic national convention in Chicago: “Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections, including primary elections. For the sake of our democracy we must overturn the disastrous Citizens United supreme court decision and move toward public funding of elections.” More

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      Trump’s effort to curtail birthright citizenship suffers yet another setback

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      Donald Trump’s effort to curtail automatic birthright citizenship nationwide as part of his hardline immigration crackdown suffered another legal setback on Friday when a second federal appeals court declined to lift one of the court orders blocking the Republican president’s executive order.The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US circuit court of appeals on a 2-1 vote rejected the Trump administration’s request for an order putting on hold a nationwide injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland who concluded the order was unconstitutional.“For well over a century, the federal government has recognized the birthright citizenship of children born in this country to undocumented or non-permanent immigrants,” the appeals court’s majority said.It said it was “hard to overstate the confusion and upheaval” that would result from allowing Trump’s order to take effect, as it challenged long-standing legal interpretations and practice in ways that could cause “chaos”.The panel’s majority included the US circuit judges Roger Gregory and Pamela Harris, both appointees of Democratic presidents. The US circuit judge Paul Niemeyer, an appointee of Republican former president George HW Bush, dissented, saying a nationwide injunction was “inappropriate”.It was the second time an appellate court had taken up Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, whose fate may ultimately be decided by the US supreme court.Another appeals court last week declined to lift a similar injunction issued by a judge in Seattle. Other judges in Massachusetts and New Hampshire have likewise enjoined the order, finding it violates the US constitution. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.Trump’s order, signed on his first day back in the White House on 20 January, directed US agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither their mother nor father was a US citizen or lawful permanent resident.That order was to apply to children born after 19 February, but implementation has been repeatedly blocked by judges at the urging of immigrant rights groups and Democratic state attorneys general. It has also been rejected by the supreme court in the past. More

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      ‘I became collateral damage’: the trans pilot falsely targeted over Washington DC crash

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      Jo Ellis is alive.It was a non-controversial, irrefutable fact – until she was accused of piloting the military helicopter that collided with a commercial airplane in Washington DC on 29 January, killing all involved.After the crash, before valid explanations began to surface, Donald Trump blamed diversity. There is no evidence that diversity initiatives played any role in the crash, but that didn’t matter.Ellis, 34, wasn’t involved in the crash in any way. But she is a Black Hawk pilot in the Virginia national guard. And she’s transgender.In the immediate aftermath of the crash, two of the helicopter pilots killed were named, but the family of the third pilot initially elected to keep her name private, though she was later identified. Ellis was misidentified as the pilot in the in-between.On Friday morning, Ellis got a text from a close friend at about 4.30am telling her a random account was commenting on all of his public Facebook posts asking if he was friends with Ellis, “the one that killed those people in the crash”. She thought it was maybe a bot and discounted it.Ellis, who has been in the Virginia national guard since 2009 and has deployed to Iraq and Kuwait, had written for the news website Smerconish.com about being trans in the military on 28 January and then spoken to the commentator Michael Smerconish for an interview. She thought the attention was because of her article.In the article, she wrote that she grew up in a religious and conservative home with a history of military service, but that she knew she had gender dysphoria since she was five years old. She tried to be “more religious, more successful, more manly” in hopes it would “cure” her.“I got married, bought a house, helped raise a stepdaughter, played drums in the church band, and adopted a dog,” she wrote. “All the things I believed a good man should do. And I really wanted to do those things, but I also secretly hoped it would fix me. It didn’t work.”She realized during the pandemic that she was at a point where she could begin to address her gender dysphoria. She notified her command in 2023 that she would begin transitioning and came out to her unit in 2024 and got “overwhelming support”, she wrote. She paid for all of her trans-related care out of pocket.Ellis said she believed she was targeted because she’s a trans woman.“Once I put that article out, I became collateral damage, just like so many other trans people that are being unnecessarily targeted.”Later, on the Friday morning after the crash, another friend sent her screenshots of an article on a Pakistani website that included Ellis’s photo and claimed she was the third pilot. (This article, which says Ellis was “rumored to be” the unnamed pilot, is still uncorrected.)“Then the Daily Mail called my personal cellphone and asked if I was alive,” Ellis said. “And that’s when it kind of sunk in. And I was like, oh, this is big. This is not some corner of the internet saying something ridiculous.”She discovered that her name was trending on X, with some posts getting hundreds of thousands of views. “Why is this only on Twitter?” rightwing commentator Ann Coulter wrote on X, sharing a post about Ellis being the pilot. One account said the crash could be “another trans terror attack”.People opined that she hated Trump and was motivated by that hatred to act, killing herself and dozens of others to make a point. Trump issued an executive order banning trans people from joining or serving openly in the military, though it did not immediately kick trans people out. A group of trans military members have sued over the order.Ellis says she’s a political moderate and has voted red more than blue. “I didn’t say anything negative about Trump. I just said I want to keep serving.”Ellis posted on Facebook on Friday morning to try to quash the rumors, asking people to report any posts naming her as the pilot. But she soon realized that wouldn’t suffice, so she made a video. Proof of life.“Interesting morning,” she starts in the video. “It is insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda. They don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve this. And I hope that you all know that I am alive and well, and this should be sufficient for you all to end all the rumors.”She went quiet from there, packed some bags, and left her home for the night after arranging armed security and arming herself. She worried someone might use public records to find her home and try to hurt her family.The response to her video was overwhelmingly, though not uniformly, positive. Some people messaged her to say said she should have been on the helicopter instead, or that it’s nice she was alive but she shouldn’t be in the military because she’s mentally ill. Others shared anti-trans and antisemitic (she had said in the Smerconish interview that she was exploring the faith) comments on social media.But she said the video ultimately worked, due in large part to the misinformation being easy to debunk. “All I had to do was say I’m alive, and that kind of broke the whole rumor,” she said.She watched as people started correcting the rumor. She saw some veteran, pro-Trump accounts telling others they shouldn’t be going after a member of the military like this. Two days after the rumors reached a fever pitch, it appeared, she said, as if the misinformation was stopped in its tracks.She has tried unsuccessfully to report some remaining social media posts that falsely claim she was a pilot. “Calling me a murderer is apparently not a violation of X rules,” she said.She said she was not deterred from speaking out again, though. Her guard supported her throughout the ordeal, and it affirmed she wants to continue serving in the military.“I know not everyone loves me back, and that’s OK, but I want to serve everyone,” she said. “I want to use this incident somehow as a form of good. I don’t know what that looks like yet, but I really want to turn this into something that does good for the world.“I don’t want to make it about me,” she added. “I don’t want to be the victim or the martyr. I want to show people that being strong and standing up to this hate, that hopefully something good can come from it.” More

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      Sharath Jois, Heir to Founder of Ashtanga Yoga, Dies at 53

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      He became one of the world’s most sought-after teachers of a style of yoga that his grandfather helped turn into a popular form of exercise worldwide.Sharath Jois, the yoga master who garnered legions of followers by teaching Ashtanga, the popular style of yoga founded by his grandfather, died on Monday in Virginia. He was 53.His death was confirmed by his sister, Sharmila Mahesh, and John Bultman, the yoga program manager at the University of Virginia. Mr. Bultman said that Mr. Jois had died after suffering a heart attack on a hiking trail near the university’s campus in Charlottesville, where he was visiting.Mr. Jois’s workshops, in his hometown in India and worldwide, were attended by thousands of disciples seeking a direct experience with the leader of the Ashtanga yoga tradition, which involves a demanding series of postures and dynamic movements. Rooted in Sanskrit and Hindu rituals, Ashtanga yoga is widely viewed today as one of the most accessible forms of exercise.His grandfather, Krishna Pattabhi Jois, helped lift yoga to soaring levels of popularity in the 1990s, drawing a global following that included celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna. Ashtanga, which is more physically arduous than other forms of yoga, later came into vogue in India with the arrival of modern fitness culture there.After inheriting his grandfather’s practice, Mr. Jois began calling himself the “Paramaguru,” which translates to “lineage holder,” on Instagram. In Mysore, a city in southern India known as the home of Ashtanga, he was referred to simply as the “boss,” and the workshops he taught there filled up within moments of opening, Kino MacGregor, one of his most prominent students, wrote in an essay published in 2016.“The crowd was growing every year,” Isha Singh Sawhney, a student of Mr. Jois’s who cowrote his 2018 book “Ageless,” said in an interview. “He was an excellent yoga teacher, one of the best.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The final countdown of a historic US election campaign – podcast

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      Trump and Harris Focus on Economy as They Campaign in Southern States

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      The candidates outlined vastly different messages in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, with Donald J. Trump exaggerating how bad the recent jobs report was and Kamala Harris promising to bring down costs.Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump swept through Southern states on Saturday, outlining sharply divergent economic messages for voters in top battlegrounds and, in Mr. Trump’s case, solidly blue Virginia.Mr. Trump, after a week in which controversies often overshadowed his closing argument, traveled to North Carolina and Virginia, where he gave rambling speeches in which he tried to turn the race back toward immigration, the economy and transgender issues.Ms. Harris began her day at a rally in Atlanta, where she focused on her plans to bolster the economy, an approach that her advisers say has been intentional in the last days of a coin-flip race.At an event that featured food trucks and a performance by the Georgia-born rapper 2 Chainz, she said her first goal as president would be “to bring down the cost of living for you” through tax cuts and measures like expanding Medicare to help cover home care. She emphasized that message soon after at a rally in Charlotte, N.C., saying that Mr. Trump would fight for “billionaires and big corporations.”Mr. Trump, in his speeches at an airport in Gastonia, N.C. and an arena in Salem, Va., pounced on Friday’s labor report showing that employers added just 12,000 jobs last month.“These are depression numbers, I hate to tell you,” he said in Gastonia, wildly distorting the picture of what is actually a healthy economy and leaving out that the latest figures were driven down by hurricanes and a labor strike.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Las razones detrás de las visitas de Trump a Nuevo México y Virginia

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      Incluso si es improbable que el expresidente gane en estos estados, ofrecen la posibilidad de que nuevas audiencias aporten más votos republicanos al recuento popular.El jueves, el expresidente Donald Trump utilizó uno de sus últimos viajes antes de las elecciones para visitar Nuevo México, al tiempo que tiene un viaje de fin de semana programado para Virginia.Los dos estados han votado mayoritariamente por el candidato demócrata durante las últimas elecciones presidenciales. Entonces, ¿por qué Trump pasa tiempo allí?En un comunicado, Karoline Leavitt, una portavoz de Trump, dijo que el expresidente estaba “a la ofensiva en estados históricamente demócratas como Nuevo México y Virginia”, asegurando que Kamala Harris “sigue a la defensiva, destinando más recursos para captar el voto en las comunidades negras y enviando a Bill Clinton a Nuevo Hampshire”.Pero hay otras razones para las visitas.Algunos en el equipo de Trump creen que los dos estados representan oportunidades de repunte para el candidato republicano si hay un auge de la participación en todo el país para él. Así que no hay razón, en su opinión, para no invertir algo de tiempo allí. Especialmente en Nuevo México, existe la sensación de que el arco de apoyo que el equipo de Trump cree estar viendo en la votación anticipada y en las encuestas podría ayudarle en el recuento de votos en ese estado.El equipo de Trump ha estado trabajando para aumentar su apoyo en el recuento del voto popular y los mítines en lugares como California, Nueva York y Nueva Jersey han funcionado hacia ese objetivo. Estos nuevos mítines podrían hacer lo mismo.Considerando que sus actos son casi exclusivamente mítines a gran escala, Trump tiene un límite en la cantidad de veces que puede volver a visitar algunos de los estados más disputados. En Georgia, cientos de asistentes a uno de sus mítines empezaron a marcharse mucho antes de que este terminara.Nuevo México y Virginia son territorio nuevo, donde más gente probablemente no haya visto antes a Trump en un mitin. Eso ofrece al equipo de Trump la garantía de conseguir grandes multitudes. Y en una carrera nacionalizada, donde los mítines se emiten por televisión y son cubiertos por los medios locales, las imágenes lucen mejor. More

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      Mystery artist leaves neo-Nazi tiki torch ‘tribute’ to Trump near White House

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      The unknown artist or artists who fashioned a swirled bronze piece of feces on a replica of the former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk – and placed it on the National Mall recently – appear to have struck again.This time, the artistic-political commentary is focused not on the 6 January 2021 US Capitol attack carried out by Donald Trump supporters, when a participant did indeed defecate on Pelosi’s desk. Instead, the display satirically evokes the notorious white nationalist Unite the Right tiki torch parade through Charlottesville’s University of Virginia campus in August 2017, with some marchers chanting: “Jews will not replace us”.A tiki torch statue titled The Donald J Trump Enduring Flame was placed on display in Washington DC’s Freedom Plaza, a few blocks from the White House, on Monday. The plaque beneath the piece alludes to how the former president referred to “some very fine people on both sides” at the rally, which led to the murder of a counterprotestor demonstrating against white supremacy.“This monument pays tribute to President Donald Trump and the ‘very fine people’ he boldly stood to defend when they marched in Charlottesville, Virginia,” the plaque reads.Alluding to remarks from Trump at the time that the media had treated people at the rally “absolutely unfairly”, the plaque adds: “While many have called them white supremacists and neo-Nazis, President Trump’s voice rang out above the rest to remind all that they were ‘treated absolutely unfairly’. This monument stands as an everlasting reminder of that bold proclamation.”View image in fullscreenThe timing and placement of the scatological and torch works come as artists have sought ways to interpret the moment through satire. In September, a vast model of a naked Trump was placed on a highway outside Las Vegas, prompting complaints from local Republican officials supporting his second run for the presidency in the 5 November election against Kamala Harris.But the tiki torch is a more direct commentary on political undercurrents that have resurfaced in the closing days of the 2024 election, with the vice-president and her Democratic allies warning that a return to the White House for Trump risks a slide into authoritarianism.Torchlight parades were a feature of German national socialism in the 1930s. After a spell that returned the tiki to non-political purposes, including lighting summer barbecues and repelling mosquitoes, the Charlottesville rally reimbued them with sinister connotations.After the deadly Unite the Right rally, Tiki Brand Products of Wisconsin put out a statement that the brand “was not in any way associated with the events that took place in Charlottesville and … deeply saddened and disappointed.“We do not support their message or the use of our products in this way,” the company added.Civic Crafted LLC, the maker of the desk and tiki torch pieces, was granted a temporary license for display by the US park service. The agency said last week that when issuing permits it “does not consider the content of the message to be presented”.Vandals removed Pelosi’s name from the desk and poop piece soon after it was installed and drew crowds. An inscription on the piece said it was meant to honor “the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election” that Trump lost to Joe Biden.For its part, the 9ft tiki torch went largely unnoticed after it was put up, according to the Washington Post.“I think it’s a perfect piece of satirical sculpture in its placement, in its timing, in its execution,” Eric Brewer, 56, told the Post. “It may be a warning sign of what could be to come.”The park service permit allows the tiki torch work to remain in place until Thursday. More

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      Republican Legal Challenges to Voting Rules Hit a Rough Patch

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      The legal wars over election rules are raging even as voters around the country cast ballots. And several recent efforts by groups aligned with former President Donald J. Trump to challenge voting rules have been coming up short in federal and state courts.Judges in a number of political battlegrounds and other states have rejected legal challenges this month to voter rolls and procedures by Republicans and their allies.The Nebraska State Supreme Court ruled that election officials cannot bar people with felony convictions from voting after their sentences are served.A Michigan state judge rejected a Republican attempt to prevent certain citizens living abroad, including military members, from being eligible to cast an absentee ballot in that swing state.And a federal judge in Arizona rejected a last-minute push by a conservative group to run citizenship checks on tens of thousands of voters.“They are hitting quite a losing streak,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who advises both Democratic and Republican election officials on rules and procedures and has been tracking election-related litigation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More