Homan unsure of status of the eight men deported to South Sudan | The Conversation
Border czar Tom Homan says 'no amnesty' for undocumented farmworkers | The Conversation
Democrat Josh Cowen is launching a bid by highlighting education and affordability issues in what is already becoming a crowded primary in a tossup Michigan district.
Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University, singled out the school choice and voucher programs pushed by Michigan Republicans like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as part of what inspired him to run for Michigan's 7th Congressional District in the central part of the state.
“I'm a teacher, and I have been fighting Betsy DeVos across the country on a specific issue, and that's privatizing public schools,” Cowen said in an interview. “She's been trying to disinvest, defund commitments to kids and families all over the place, and that's actually the same fight as everything that's going on right now — trying to protect investing in health care through Medicaid and other systems — protect jobs.”
Several Democrats have already announced bids against Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who flipped the seat last cycle after Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) vacated it to run for Senate. He could be a tough incumbent for Democrats to dislodge and reported raising over $1 million last quarter.
Still, Democrats see the narrowly divided seat as a top pickup opportunity next year, with former Ukraine Ambassador Bridget Brink and retired Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam among the field of candidates running. Cowen brushed off concerns about a contested primary, saying, “They're going to run their campaigns. I'm going to run mine.”
“I am going to be running really hard on the fact that I am in this community. I've been here for 12 years. My kids went to public schools here. My youngest is still there,” he added.
Ukraine News: Russlands Verkehrsminister nach Entlassung tot gefunden
Warum Roman Starowoit von Kremlchef Putin entlassen wurde, ist nicht öffentlich bekannt. Der Tod werde untersucht.Julia Bergmann (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
USA News: Trump: Höhere Zölle treten vom 1. August an in Kraft
Der US-Präsident droht zudem Ländern, die sich der seiner Auffassung nach „antiamerikanischen Politik“ der Brics-Staaten anschließen. Sie sollen zusätzliche Strafzölle zahlen müssen.Kassian Stroh (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Hamas übermittelt „positive Antwort“ zu Feuerpause
Die islamistische Organisation will einer Mitteilung zufolge über den amerikanischen Vorschlag für eine Waffenruhe im Gazastreifen verhandeln.Julia Bergmann (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Elon Musk declared the launch of his new political party on Saturday, a project he has repeatedly floated in the weeks since his explosive breakup with President Donald Trump — but provided no details as to how he planned to jump through the hoops necessary to establish a viable alternative.
The billionaire entrepreneur and onetime Republican megadonor — who mere months ago appeared as the president’s right-hand man in the Oval Office after pouring millions into his campaign — has for weeks publicly contemplated starting a new third party to disrupt the current system.
Musk on Saturday appeared to confirm his intention to launch his “America Party,” after posting a poll to his X account the prior day asking followers whether or not he should create the new party.
“By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it! When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” he wrote. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”
Musk’s third-party musings began in earnest after last month’s massive meltdown between the president and his former adviser over the “big beautiful bill,” which the former DOGE head has decried as wasteful.
As Trump on Thursday flaunted his successful push to muscle the Republican megabill through Congress this week, Musk sought to drum up support for his potential third party launch, positing that his new party would target a handful of vulnerable swing seats to leverage political power.
“Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people,” he wrote.
While Musk may have the millions to pour into backing certain candidates — which he has already promised to do, pledging to support Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) reelection campaign amid targeting from Trump — establishing a third party involves a series of thorny obstacles including navigating complex state laws, ballot access regulations and other legal hoops.
So far, the billionaire would-be party founder has yet to outline a concrete plan forward. Just two months ago, Musk had vowed to cut back on political spending, saying he had “done enough.”
Democrats believe President Donald Trump’s tax-and-spend megabill gives them a heavy cudgel ahead of the 2026 midterms. Now they have to effectively wield it as they try to reclaim the House.
Ad-makers have quickly prepped attack ads to air as soon as the holiday weekend is over, including in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. House Democrats are plotting to turn the August recess into the opening salvo of the midterms, including through town halls and organizing programs.
And Democrats see an opportunity to expand the battleground, going on offense into red areas across the country. The bill that passed Thursday has already triggered a spike in candidate interest deep into Trump territory, House Majority PAC said. Separately, Democrats are digging into a round of candidate recruitment targeting a half-dozen House districts Trump won by high single or double digits, according to a person directly familiar with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s plan and granted anonymity to describe private conversations. They’re recruiting Democrats to challenge Reps. Ann Wagner of Missouri, Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Kevin Kiley of California, Nick LaLota of New York and Jeff Crank of Colorado
“There's almost nothing about this bill that I'm going [to] have a hard time explaining to the district,” said Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who represents a district Trump won by 9 points. “This is a giant tax giveaway to wealthy people. Everyone fucking knows it.”
Democrats’ renewed bravado comes after months in the political wilderness, following sweeping losses across the country last year. And it’s not just the megabill’s consequences that give them electoral hope.
Leading to Thursday’s vote was a series of moves they believe portend success: North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who criticized the bill for its steep Medicaid cuts before voting against it, announced his plans to not seek reelection last weekend. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who represents one of the three GOP-held districts that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, also announced his plans to not run for reelection. That opened up two top midterm battleground races in one weekend.
Democrats have also been far more in sync with their pushback in recent days after months of struggling to unify around a coherent message during Trump’s second term. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ record-setting speech on the House floor Thursday morning mirrored those of several Democratic candidates who mentioned Medicaid cuts in their campaign launches this week.
Next they have to spread the message farther, as polling shows many Americans aren’t yet aware of the megabill and its $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs. And Democrats privately acknowledge that as voters learn more, the party needs to stretch its House battlefield to chart a path back to power.
“No Democrat is going to nationally define this bill in six weeks, so we have to build a drumbeat. You do that by having 70 to 75 campaigns, because then you’re localizing the attack across the country,” the person directly familiar with the DCCC’s plans said. “We don’t have that yet. In reality, there are maybe 24 to 30 districts with good campaigns going right now.”
Tina Shah, a doctor who launched her bid against Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.) this week, attacked Republicans for “gut[ting] Medicaid,” and Matt Maasdam, a former Navy SEAL who is challenging Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), said “the price of healthcare is gonna go up … all to line the pocketbooks of billionaires.”
Some Democratic strategists are urging the party to capitalize on this momentum even more aggressively.
“We need to be doing early, paid communications on this — not just the same old cable buys, token digital buys in swing districts and press conferences,” said Ian Russell, a Democratic consultant who served as the DCCC’s political director in 2014 and 2016. “Democrats need to take some risks here, mobilize early, spend money they may not have because voters' views harden over time, and this is when we can shape it.”
In 2024, Democrats failed to break through with their message after President Joe Biden dug the party into a hole with voters on the economy. Trump successfully cast himself as focused on bringing down costs while painting Kamala Harris as overly obsessed with social issues like protecting transgender people. Harris, for her part, ran a scatter-shot, three-month messaging blitz that jumped from cost-of-living to abortion rights to Trump’s threats to democracy, which ultimately didn’t move voters.
Republicans, for their part, plan to emphasize the megabill’s tax cuts, especially those on tips and overtime, and increased funding for border security. On Medicaid cuts, they hope to neutralize Democrats’ attacks by casting them as reforms: tightened work requirements and efforts to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, a pair of Medicaid-related changes that generally polls well among voters.
“This vote cemented House Democrats’ image as elitist, disconnected, snobby, unconcerned with the problems Americans face in their daily lives, and most of all — out of touch,” said NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella in a statement. “House Republicans will be relentless in making this vote the defining issue of 2026, and we will use every tool to show voters that Republicans stood with them while House Democrats sold them out.”
But as Republicans look to sell their bill, public polling on it is bleak. Most Americans disapprove of it, in some polls by a two-to-one margin, according to surveys conducted by Quinnipiac University, The Washington Post, Pew Research and Fox News.
Meanwhile a pair of Democratic groups, Priorities USA and Navigator Research, released surveys this week showing majorities of voters aren’t fully aware of the megabill. Nearly half of Americans said they hadn’t heard anything about the bill, according to Priorities USA, a major Democratic super PAC. Of those who had heard about it, only 8 percent said they knew Medicaid cuts were included in the legislation.
Two-thirds of survey respondents who self-identified as passive or avoidant news consumers, the kinds of tuned out and low-information voters Democrats failed to win in 2024, said they knew nothing about the bill.
“We have a lot more work to do as a party to communicate the impacts of this bill to voters who are tuning out politics,” said Danielle Butterfield, Priorities USA executive director.
Butterfield urged Democrats to “get beyond the stats” and “start collecting storytellers.” Then, start putting ads online, particularly on YouTube, not just traditional TV ads.
“We need to put a face on this as soon as possible,” she said.
Among those potential faces is Nathan Sage, a first-time candidate and Iraq War veteran who is challenging Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst. Sage grew up occasionally relying on food assistance, another program that will be cut in the GOP bill, and has said he’s already hearing from Iowans who “feel that they were duped into believing the Republican agenda when it first came out, because they were talking about no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime. That's things that working class people want.”
“Until they start hearing [how it] is actually going to affect them, when they do hear that, that's when the outrage happens,” Sage said in an interview.
Iowa, once a perennial battleground, is now solidly red, as Democrats have consistently lost white, working class voters there. Sage and Democratic pollster Brian Stryker argued the megabill opens a path to winning them back
The Medicaid cuts “enable us to have an issue that’s salient, substantive that’s on the side of working class people,” Stryker said. In 2024, 49 percent of Medicaid recipients voted for Trump, while 47 percent backed Harris, according to polling from Morning Consult.
“I hope that this does wake up the working class, does wake up people to understand — listen, they don't care about us,” Sage said, “and the only way that we are ever going to get out of the situation is to elect working class candidates to represent us, to fight for us, because they are us.”
Andrew Howard contributed reporting.
Brian Fitzpatrick’s survival mechanism as a battleground House Republican entails occasionally distancing himself from his own MAGA-controlled party.
On Thursday he took that to the next level by voting against President Donald Trump’s megabill amid an unrelenting pressure campaign from the White House.
The head-turning move made Fitzpatrick one of just two House Republicans to buck the party on the president’s signature domestic policy legislation that some in the GOP fear is worsening their political outlook ahead of the 2026 midterms. Over the past few days, two congressional Republicans in swing seats announced they were not running for reelection. Fitzpatrick belongs to a GOP trio representing districts that former Vice President Kamala Harris captured, and Democrats are once again eyeing him as a top target next year when they try to reclaim the House.
Fitzpatrick’s break with Trump over his key legislation also carries major risks of intra-party backlash. On Thursday, some MAGA influencers were already threatening a primary challenge.
“He has now gained the ability to say, ‘I am not a rubber stamp to Trump. I will vote against his agenda when I believe it’s the right thing to do,” said Mike Conallen, Fitzpatrick’s former chief of staff. “But given the inclination of the president and his supporters to basically go after anybody who doesn’t support them, you’ve now become potentially the lighting rod for all those MAGA individuals and the president himself.”
Fitzpatrick attributed his vote to changes made by the Senate, which deepened the cuts included in initial bill language he had backed.
“I voted to strengthen Medicaid protections, to permanently extend middle-class tax cuts, for enhanced small business tax relief, and for historic investments in our border security and our military,” he said in a statement. “However, it was the Senate’s amendments to Medicaid, in addition to several other Senate provisions, that altered the analysis.”
It was a shocking move even for Fitzpatrick.
First elected in 2016, he has cultivated a brand as a moderate Republican who supported former President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package, won the endorsement of a major gun-control group, and regularly visited mosques in his district. He has at times even downplayed his affiliation with the Republican Party, calling himself “a fiercely independent voice.” His X header reads, “Defend Democracy. Vote Bipartisan.”
Still, many Republicans were shocked Wednesday night when he broke with the party on a procedural vote to move the legislation to a final vote, particularly because he had backed the earlier version of it weeks prior. They said he had not explained his opposition to them, even as other initially resistant Republicans went public with their concerns.
“I was surprised,” Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.) said. “And I do not know what his objection was.”
Some speculated his stance might be related to a letter he wrote to Trump this week opposing the administration’s halt of some weapons to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Fitzpatrick’s curveball briefly set off a scramble to find him, with the congressman reportedly bolting from the chamber and House Speaker Mike Johnson appearing to tell Fox News he was looking for him. Even some of Fitzpatrick’s fellow members of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation were taken aback by his decision.
“You’ll have to ask him,” Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.), who is eyeing a gubernatorial run, said in response to a question about the vote.
A Democrat hasn’t held Fitzpatrick’s prized Bucks County-based seat since his late brother, Mike Fitzpatrick, reclaimed it from then-Rep. Patrick Murphy in 2010. In the past, Democrats have fielded candidates who lacked electoral experience or were an otherwise imperfect fit to take on this durable incumbent. But they believe they have finally recruited a top contender to run against Fitzpatrick in a county commissioner named Bob Harvie, who has shown the ability to win the battleground county, which comprises most of the district.
“They’re scared. They know this bill is unpopular,” Harvie said of Republicans, arguing Fitzpatrick’s vote was “too little, too late” and “the only reason it got to the Senate is because he voted for it.”
A pro-Fitzpatrick super PAC, Defending America PAC, quickly released a statement Thursday casting the vote as proof of his bipartisan leanings and touting his record of “winning a seat for Republicans in a district carried by Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton,” and slamming Harvie for "bitching and moaning with no solutions of his own."
Even for Fitzpatrick, though, his vote was particularly a lonely one.
Only he and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a longtime gadfly for Trump, voted against the megabill on Thursday. And Fitzpatrick was the sole Republican who did not support clearing Wednesday night’s procedural hurdle to advance the bill and didn’t back down under pressure. A handful of other Republicans initially cast votes against it, but switched them at the last minute.
Fitzpatrick’s allies said he’s proven adept at navigating the complicated political cross-currents in his swing district. And sometimes, they said, that means upsetting his party.
“Working with Brian over the years, he’s very aware of his district,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.). “And he’s very aware of where he should be when he’s representing them.”
Kelly said Thursday he has not spoken with Fitzpatrick about his vote but has “no problem” with it.
Some MAGA activists weren’t as forgiving.
Conservative influencer Nick Sortor posted on the social media platform X on Wednesday, “ATTENTION PEOPLE OF PENNSYLVANIA’S 1ST DISTRICT: Your Congressman @RepBrianFitz SOLD YOU OUT.”
Pro-Trump activist Scott Presler likewise wrote on X, “Yes, I am aware that Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA01) voted NO to the Big Beautiful Bill. Message received. CC: Bucks County.”
Democrats would be delighted if Fitzpatrick faced a messy, expensive primary.
Fitzpatrick has easily fended off challenges from Republicans running to his right. But they have lacked institutional support — namely Trump’s endorsement. Trump and his operation backing a primary opponent would present a new challenge for Fitzpatrick.
For weeks Trump has attacked Massie and promised to try to oust him, while his team launched a super PAC to unseat him.
The criticism from the White House was relatively tame in the hours after Fitzpatrick’s dissent. Trump told reporters that he was “disappointed” by the lawmaker's vote, but declined to immediately call for a primary challenge. A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
And Republican House leaders appear to be sticking by Fitzpatrick. After eventually finding him, Johnson told reporters he had spoken with him “at length” and “he just has convictions about certain provisions of the bill — he’s entitled to that.”
But Fitzpatrick’s opposition extends beyond his usual maneuvers, thus presenting a test for the modern-day GOP: Can a party that demands total loyalty to Trump stomach someone who occasionally defies the president in order to keep their congressional majority?
More often than not in recent years, the answer to that question has been no.
Rep. Don Bacon, a frequent Trump critic who represents another Harris district in Nebraska, announced this week that he would not run for reelection. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina also said Sunday he'd step down after Trump vowed to back a primary challenger against him because he opposed the megabill.
90 Prozent weniger Emissionen bis 2040: EU verwässert Ambitionen beim Klimaschutz
Der Ausstoß von Treibhausgasen soll bis 2040 um 90 Prozent sinken, gesetzlich vorgeschrieben. Doch unter politischem Druck macht die EU-Kommission das Ziel weicher, als es Wissenschaftler empfehlen.Jan Diesteldorf (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
News zu Nahost: Iran setzt Zusammenarbeit mit IAEA aus
Das Land will Präsident Peseschkian zufolge vorerst nicht mehr mit der Internationalen Atomenergiebehörde kooperieren.Julia Bergmann (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
US-Vizepräsident J.D. Vance gibt in der mehr als 24-stündigen Sitzung die entscheidende Stimme ab. Zuvor hatten Donald Trump und Elon Musk öffentlich über die Änderungen gestritten.
Vizepräsident Vance gibt die entscheidende Stimme ab. Nun muss das Gesetz wegen der vorherigen Änderungen noch einmal zurück ins Repräsentantenhaus. Die Republikaner hatten zuvor über eine Liste von Änderungsanträgen abgestimmt.#USA #US-Wahl #DonaldTrump #US-Präsident #DemokratischePartei #RepublikanischePartei #ElonMusk #US-Regierung #JDVance #Repräsentantenhaus #US-Kongress #US-Senat #Ausland #Leserdiskussion #Politik #SüddeutscheZeitung
USA News: Trumps Steuergesetz vor entscheidender Abstimmung
Donald Trumps Steuergesetz steht heute noch zur Abstimmung im Repräsentantenhaus. Da die Mehrheit der Republikaner aber knapp ist, könnte es durchfallen.Kassian Stroh (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Deutschland: Ehemaliger Finanzstaatssekretär wird neuer Botschafter in der Ukraine
Das ist ein Teil eines Personalpakets, über das das Kabinett an diesem Mittwoch nach Informationen aus Regierungskreisen entscheidet.Dimitri Taube (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
VW-Dieselaffäre: Landgericht stoppt Verfahren gegen Martin Winterkorn
Wegen seiner Erkrankung gelte der ehemalige Konzernchef von VW derzeit als verhandlungsunfähig.Philipp Saul (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Polen führt von Montag an Kontrollen an der Grenze zu Deutschland ein
Genau wie die deutsche Bundesregierung will nun auch Polens Regierungschef Personen an den Grenzen kontrollieren.Süddeutsche Zeitung
Der dänische Staatsangehörige steht im Verdacht, im Auftrag der Quds-Brigade gehandelt zu haben. Die Bundesanwaltschaft lässt ihn festnehmen.
Die Bundesanwaltschaft hat in Dänemark einen mutmaßlichen Spion festnehmen lassen, der im Auftrag Irans jüdische Einrichtungen und Personen in Deutschland ausgespäht haben soll.#Israel #Palästina #Westjordanland #Gazastreifen #Gaza #Hamas #Hisbollah #BenjaminNetanjahu #Nahostkonflikt #KrieginNahost #ProtestezumNahostkonflikt #Libanon #Iran #Syrien #NaherOsten #Leserdiskussion #Politik #SüddeutscheZeitung
An ally of President Donald Trump and former Department of Government Efficiency adviser James Fishback on Tuesday is launching a super PAC called FSD PAC designed to blunt Elon Musk’s political ambitions.
FSD PAC, a play on Tesla’s “full self-driving,” stands for Full Support for Donald.
Its strategy is to be a bulwark against Musk’s threats — real or perceived, and comes as multiple Republicans shrug off the latest social media spat as little to worry about in a world where Trump so thoroughly commands the loyalty of the GOP base.
The PAC will spend money in any race where Musk follows through on his plan to bankroll a third-party hopeful, or where he backs a Democrat or a Republican primary challenge against a Trump-endorsed incumbent. The goal: ensure that Musk’s deep pockets don’t undermine Trump’s grip on the GOP.“There's real frustration in our movement with Elon and his antics,” said Fishback, who stepped away from DOGE last month after Musk lashed out at Trump. “I'm a big believer in what he's doing in the private sector. But when it comes to politics, he's dead wrong on this.”
Fishback, who is represented by Lex Politica, the same firm that represents Musk and his SuperPAC AmericaPAC, is putting $1 million of his own money into his PAC.
FSD PAC’s formation comes amid an intensifying standoff between the world’s wealthiest man and the Republican party. Musk, the GOP’s largest individual donor, has publicly threatened to start his own party, the “America Party,” if Congress passes Trump’s sweeping domestic policy package, known as the Big Beautiful Bill.
The Senate passed that bill on Tuesday and it could land on the president’s desk this week.Trump on Tuesday, said he wasn’t concerned Republicans would be swayed by Musk or his money. “I don't think he should be playing that game with me,” the president said.A Trump ally added that he was not too concerned about Musk’s threats, noting his lackluster track record of political endorsements.
“A guy named Elon Musk tried to play Kingmaker in the 2024 Republican primary by backing Ron DeSanctimonious,” said the person who was granted anonymity to speak freely. Musk also spent millions to sway a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, including handing out million-dollar checks to two Wisconsin voters, but the Democrat won handily anyway.“For it to have any impact, you’d have to have Republicans leaving the Republican Party of President Trump and joining a new party just so they can take a check from Elon,” said a Republican strategist granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking. “I just don’t see that happening.”
And FSD is just one of several pro-Trump organizations ready to attack Republicans deemed disloyal. Just last week, another pro-Trump group, MAGA Kentucky, aired a TV ad against Rep. Thomas Massie, one of only two House Republicans who voted against the president’s marquee legislation. The 30-second spot targets Massie for voting against legislation that cuts taxes and funds border security, and puts him alongside Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
Musk has been criticizing the legislation for weeks but his attacks have ramped up over the past few days as the legislation gets closer to the finish line. The owner of Tesla and X said that conservative lawmakers who support the bill “will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth” and said he “will” support Massie.
Trump escalated the rhetoric on Tuesday morning, telling reporters that his administration “will have to take a look” at deporting Musk, a South African native and naturalized U.S. citizen. “We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said, referring to the agency at the center of his government-shrinking agenda.
Musk, for his part, responded on X: “So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now.”
Irie Sentner contributed to this report.
Deutschland: Merz reagiert zurückhaltend auf Spahns Vorstoß zu Atomwaffen
In der Debatte über einen europäischen nuklearen Schutzschirm spricht der Bundeskanzler von einer Aufgabe, „die sich allenfalls in der sehr, sehr langen Perspektive“ stelle.Dimitri Taube (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
News zu Nahost: Iranischer Spion soll israelische Ziele in Deutschland ausgespäht haben
Die Bundesanwaltschaft hat in Dänemark einen mutmaßlichen Spion festnehmen lassen, der im Auftrag Irans jüdische Einrichtungen und Personen in Deutschland ausgespäht haben soll.Julia Bergmann (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Der frühere Vorsitzende des Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes wurde 73 Jahre alt.
Der ehemalige DGB-Chef Michael Sommer ist im Alter von 73 Jahren verstorben. Er war von 2002 bis 2014 Vorsitzender in Berlin.#ArbeitundSoziales #DGB #Arbeit #Gewerkschaften #Leserdiskussion #Wirtschaft #SüddeutscheZeitung
Former Rep. Colin Allred is jumping back into the Texas Senate race, after losing to Ted Cruz eight months ago.
In a video released Tuesday, Allred, who flipped a red-leaning district in 2018, pledged to take on “politicians like [Texas Sen.] John Cornyn and [Attorney General] Ken Paxton,” who “are too corrupt to care about us and too weak to fight for us,” while pledging to run on an “anti-corruption plan.”
Democrats are hopeful that a messy Republican primary — pitting Cornyn against Paxton, who has weathered multiple scandals in office and leads in current polling — could yield an opening for a party in search of offensive opportunities. But unlike in 2024, when Allred ran largely unopposed in the Senate Democratic primary, Democrats are poised to have a more serious and crowded primary field, which could complicate their shot at flipping the reliably red state.
Former astronaut Terry Virts announced his bid last week, when he took a swing at both parties in his announcement video. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) has voiced interest, while former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018 and 2022, has been headlining packed town halls. State Rep. James Talarico told POLITICO he’s “having conversations about how I can best serve Texas.”
Allred, a former NFL player turned congressman, leaned heavily into his biography for his launch video. He retold the story of buying his mom a house once he turned pro, but said, “you shouldn’t have to have a son in the NFL to own a home.”
“Folks who play by the rules and keep the faith just can’t seem to get ahead. But the folks who cut corners and cut deals — well, they’re doing just fine,” Allred continued. “I know Washington is broken. The system is rigged. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In six years in Congress, I never took a dime of corporate PAC money, never traded a single stock.”
Turning Texas blue has long been a dream for Democrats, who argued the state’s increasing diversity will help them eventually flip it. But Trump’s significant inroads with Latino voters in Texas, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley, may impede those hopes. Of the 10 counties that shifted the farthest right from the 2012 to 2024 presidential elections, seven are in Texas, according to a New York Times analysis, including double-digit improvements in seven heavily Latino districts.
Early polling has found Allred leading Paxton by one percentage point in a head-to-head contest — though he trailed Cornyn by six points. The polling, commissioned by Senate Leadership Fund, the GOP leadership-aligned super PAC that supports Cornyn, underscored Paxton’s general election weakness while showing Cornyn losing to Paxton in the GOP primary.
Sachsen-Anhalt: Früherer Ministerpräsident Wolfgang Böhmer, ist tot
Der CDU-Politiker wurde 89 Jahre alt.Kassian Stroh (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Megadeal im deutschen TV-Markt: RTL kauft Sky Deutschland
RTL will das Pay-TV-Unternehmen Sky Deutschland übernehmen. Damit will die Kölner Sender-Gruppe zu Netflix und Amazon Prime aufschließen.Caspar Busse (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Rutte über Trump: „Ich habe ihn nicht ‚Daddy‘ genannt“
Generalsekretär Rutte hat Trump beim Nato-Gipfel bei Laune gehalten. Etwas will er dann aber noch klarstellen.Kassian Stroh (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Steuerhinterziehung: DFB muss in Sommermärchen-Affäre Geldstrafe zahlen
In der Affäre um die dubiosen Zahlungsflüsse rund um die WM 2006 gibt es ein Urteil. Der DFB muss eine Strafe zahlen.Süddeutsche Zeitung
SAN FRANCISCO — A former longtime friend of Elon Musk has a word of caution for President Donald Trump about the tech mogul: He doesn’t really move on.
Philip Low, an award-winning neuroscientist who partnered with the late, legendary cosmologist Stephen Hawking as a test subject, learned that the hard way in 2021 when he fired Musk, one of his early investors, from the advisory board of the Silicon Valley startup he founded.
Over an hour-long interview, Low weaved something of a psychological portrait of his former adviser, casting him as obsessive, prone to seeking revenge, power hungry and in constant search of dominance. He suggested Musk aims to explore every available avenue to establish competition with and ultimately overshadow bitter rivals. Low has known him for 14 years but doesn’t believe Musk has matured over time, and he’s convinced he never will.
Though the two continued to speak for years after Low fired him, Low felt that Musk carried a grudge and their bond was permanently altered. It finally snapped in January when Low joined other critics in accusing the billionaire on social media of performing Nazi salutes at Trump’s inaugural rally. Musk brushed off the public backlash as “sooo” tired.
“I’ve had my share of blowouts with Elon over the years,” Low told POLITICO in a rare interview since Musk’s ugly spat with Trump. “Knowing Elon the way I know him, I do think he's going to do everything to damage the president.”
Musk did not respond to multiple requests for comment directed to him and his businesses X, Tesla and SpaceX. A spokesperson for his super PAC, America PAC, declined to comment.
Musk and Trump’s made-for-TV breakup erupted earlier this month over the president’s megabill that is still moving through Congress. Complete with threats, nonstop X posts and conspiracy-laced insults, their feud hit a peak after Trump mused about canceling the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s government contracts.
In response, Musk unloaded on the social media platform he owns by trashing the president’s megabill, floating support of a third party, chiding him for “ingratitude,” taking credit for his election win and even insinuating in a now-deleted post that records of the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein "have not been made public" because Trump is in them.
(While it has long been public that Trump and other prominent figures are referenced in documents released in cases surrounding Epstein, Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing linked to Epstein.)
Both sides now say tensions have cooled. The White House is eager to move on, with Trump telling reporters he’ll keep Starlink internet and wishing Musk well. Musk, for his part, admitted some of his posts got out of hand and offered an apology a week later.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement, “Politico’s fixation on another palace intrigue non-story is laughable and fundamentally unserious. The President is focused on Making America Great Again by securing our border, turning the economy around, and pursuing peace around the globe.”
But Low, who considers himself a political independent, said that Trump and the American public shouldn’t be fooled. Simply put: Any reconciliation with Musk will be “purely cosmetic” and transactional.
“He has been humiliated,” Low, 45, said of his old friend. “The whole idea that Elon is going to be on his side and help woo Congress and invest in election campaigns for right-wing judges — Elon might do all of that, but deep down, it's over.”
Low has observed that Trump, on the other hand, “tends to make up with his former sparring partners like [Steve] Bannon a bit more easily than Elon does,” though the president is known for returning to his grievances as well.
As he tells it, Musk and Low became fast friends after first meeting in 2011 at a social occasion in Paris. Their relationship deepened over late nights in Los Angeles — where Musk lived at the time — spent hanging out, attending each other’s parties, texting frequently and trading stories about personal struggles.
Musk asked to invest in the company Low built around a non-invasive brain monitoring device used to detect conditions like sleep apnea and neurological disorders. He participated in NeuroVigil’s 2015 funding round and joined its advisory board. Low had already gained attention as a young innovator, launched a NASA satellite lab and demoed how his technology could translate Hawking's brain waves into speech.
Musk gave Low some pointers as the neuroscientist was preparing to visit the White House for the first time, as a guest of former President Barack Obama. “He said ‘he’s a human being like anybody else,’” Low recounted. “He views Trump sort of the same way, just a human being.”
During Trump’s first term, as Musk was also grappling with how to balance Tesla’s business interests against policy disagreements with the administration, Low returned the advice and recommended he step away from White House advisory councils he served on to protect the automaker’s brand. Musk ultimately did in 2017 after Trump ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
A few years later, in 2021, Musk was looking to pull out of another business arrangement. He wanted off NeuroVigil’s advisory board. Instead of letting him resign, Low said he fired Musk, which prevented him from exercising his stock options to hurt NeuroVigil.
“Let’s cut ties here,” Low wrote in an email message to Musk at the time, viewed by POLITICO. Musk by then had launched his brain implant company Neuralink and had long been dreaming of colonizing Mars. “Good luck with your implants, all of them, and with building Pottersville on Mars. Seriously, don’t fuck with me,” Low wrote.
Musk, of course, went on to donate $288 million during the 2024 election, which cemented his place in MAGA politics and status as the largest and most prominent individual political donor in the country. His America PAC once vowed to “keep grinding” at an even more audacious political playbook ahead of the midterms. But Musk scaled back his 2026 ambitions, promising to do “a lot less” campaign spending in the future, shortly before his public clash with Trump.
With Musk’s allegiance to MAGA called into question, Low predicted he could seek revenge behind the scenes — “it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when” — a possibility Trump has openly pondered.
The president warned of “serious consequences” if Musk funds Democratic challengers against Republicans who back his “big, beautiful bill”— the legislation that would enact Trump’s domestic policy agenda, but that Musk has scorned as wasteful pork-barrel spending.
However, if there was any lingering notion that Musk would completely retreat from politics, he dispelled it on Saturday by renewing his attacks on the bill ahead of a critical vote.
The takedown
Unlike his old pal, Low prefers to keep a lower profile. The Canadian neuroscientist wore aviator sunglasses indoors throughout the interview. When POLITICO first reached out, an automated reply from Low’s email robot came back, noting that he was “completely off the grid” and providing a math puzzle to solve to get on his calendar. POLITICO didn’t solve the problem, perhaps because it's not solvable, but he replied anyway.
Low spoke to the press infrequently between the early 2010s, when his company partnered with Hawking, and when he posted the takedown that ended any remaining friendship with Musk earlier this year. One of the rare exceptions was a 2013 fireside chat where Low, in an “Occupy Mars” shirt, spoke next to Musk at the Canadian Consul General’s Residence in Los Angeles.
Low sees little daylight between the Elon he knew before and the one who fractured his relationship with the president.
“A lot of people close to him will say that he changed. I don't believe that to be true,” he said. “I've seen this side of Elon over the years, but I just think that over time, he got cozy with the idea of showing more of that, and now it seems to have affected him.”
When Musk came under fire for his salutes at Trump’s post-inauguration rally, Low, the son of a Holocaust survivor, said he first confronted his former friend with a private message. He said in the email viewed by POLITICO: “I am so glad I fired your dumb ass” and warned him to learn from the fate of Rodion Raskolnikov, the central character in “Crime and Punishment,” who convinces himself that extraordinary men are justified in committing crimes if they serve a higher goal.
Four days passed without a reply, and Low proceeded to cut contact before letting it rip in a nearly 2,000-word open letter that went viral on Facebook and LinkedIn.
“I made my displeasure known to him as one of his closest former friends at that point, and I blocked him,” he said.
That’s a diplomatic description. Low in his letter delivered a blistering portrait of Musk as a narcissist whose “lust for power” keeps driving him to undermine the very organizations that challenge his hold on it. Musk didn’t respond publicly.
According to Low, those tendencies put Musk “in a league of his own” in Silicon Valley — where he locked into power struggles with many a co-founder, from PayPal’s Peter Thiel to Tesla’s Martin Eberhard to OpenAI’s Sam Altman. And the predictable playbook followed him to Trump’s side as first buddy, a role Low dubbed his former friend’s greatest investment.
“Elon has his own pattern of trying to destabilize companies. He wants to take over, and if he can't take them over, then he tries to create a rival entity to compete,” Low said. “They were absolutely on a collision course, and I think that Trump tried to gloss over it by making it look as if he wanted Elon to be as aggressive as he was.”
‘Playing defense’
Musk is back in industry mode, for now. Earlier this month, he addressed an artificial intelligence boot camp hosted by the startup accelerator Y Combinator in San Francisco, downplaying the importance of the Department of Government Efficiency by comparing his work on the commission to cleaning up beaches.
“Imagine you’re cleaning a beach, which has a few needles, trash and is dirty. And there’s a 1,000-foot tsunami, which is AI, that’s about to hit. You’re not going to focus on cleaning the beach,” Musk told the crowd of students and recent graduates of why he ultimately left.
His attention has since shifted to Austin, Texas, where Tesla heavily promoted and launched its long-hyped robotaxi service last weekend. Of companies within Musk’s business empire, the automaker took the hardest hit from his political entanglements, battered by consumer protests, tariffs, declining sales and dips in its stock price that allowed SpaceX to overtake it as his most valuable asset.
Low looks back at the Tesla Takedown protests that sprung up in the months following his letter with satisfaction. It was proof, in his mind, that the message struck a chord: “The audience was the world, and it worked.”
While few peers in Silicon Valley have called out Musk to the same degree, Low added that several reacted positively to him in private for taking those criticisms public.
“Many of these people happen to have investors on their boards, who made money with Elon, so they felt that they were putting themselves at risk if they spoke out,” he said. “A number of people did reach out and thank me, and they were in violent agreement.”
Low said he had “an armada” of lawyers at the ready in case Musk went after him. That possibility hasn’t yet panned out.
Although they no longer speak, Low still follows Musk’s activities. He said he was busy during the Trump feud and had to catch up later. But during the interview with POLITICO, he would reference the occasional X post from Musk, including a recent one where he shared negative drug test results to dispute reports of his alleged ketamine use.
To Low, the post was a sign the rift hasn’t been fully smoothed over and that Musk is “playing defense.” Bannon has called for a federal investigation into New York Times reporting that claimed Musk took large amounts of ketamine and other drugs while campaigning for Trump. POLITICO has not independently verified the allegations.
“The way I read that is that he is concerned that some government contracts could be canceled and that the drug use could be used against him, so he's trying to already build a moat,” Low said.
As for Trump, Low has some advice for handling a potentially resentful Musk: “Abide by the constitution,” and perhaps, listen to some of the tech titan’s policy preferences.
Low was especially outspoken against the administration’s ICE raids and efforts to limit immigration, arguing they will cost America its advantage in technologies like AI by sapping Silicon Valley of the global talent that allows it to compete. Many in tech circles had hoped Musk’s seat at the table would help the industry loosen barriers for high-skilled workers, a cause he once vowed to “go to war” with MAGA Republicans over.
That's something that Low, given his experience with Musk, thinks Trump should take seriously.
“Elon has wooed enough of Trump's supporters to be an actual threat politically,” Low said, arguing that Trump would better insulate himself by moderating his agenda. “He doesn't realize the battle that he has on his hands, and one way to cut the support away from Elon is to actually adopt some of the things he is for.”