Treasurer pushes back on claims PM alone made calls on ATO credit card drama
Jim Chalmers isn’t letting the Prime Minister take sole credit for the ATO about-face after a late-night boast about the decision.
Stalin Boys is a short documentary about a Joseph Stalin-obsessed middle-schooler from a tiny Texas town who writes a play about the Soviet dictator and enlists his three friends to stage it for the Texas State History Fair. Free to watch online.
Watch Footage of the Flock Search a Judge Ruled Unconstitutional
404 Media: “Body camera footage obtained by 404 Media reveals the first Flock camera searches ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, and highlights how the system has turned otherwise mundane traffic stops into interrogations for drivers.
On Friday, we reported that a federal judge ruled the use of license plate reader systems in the arrest of a woman named Melissa Kyle to be an “unconstitutional warrantless search,” “indiscriminate mass surveillance,” and a violation of the driver’s Fourth Amendment rights.
The judge in that case ruled that, even though Kyle had more than 91 pounds of meth in her vehicle, the police had no justifiable reason to search Flock for her license plate and no reason to suspect that her travel as shown on Flock’s system was suspicious. Therefore, all of the evidence from Flock and the search of her vehicle must be thrown out…”
Elon Musk’s America PAC Is Spending Big on the Midterms. We’re Tracking It Daily
Wired: “To follow Elon Musk’s America PAC money, WIRED created a live-updating tracker that highlights the trillionaire’s overall influence on November’s elections. Elon Musk’s political operation is focused on the most consequential races of the midterm elections, according to a WIRED analysis of federal campaign finance data. As of October 6, America PAC, the main Musk-affiliated super PAC, had deployed $21 million of the $26.7 million it has spent on this year’s races into seven key US Senate contests that are widely seen as close—if not toss-ups—and represent a path for Democrats to take control of the chamber this November.
To monitor America PAC’s spending in the midterms, WIRED has created a live tracker that updates daily and highlights where America PAC is putting money into the midterms, from individual races to Musk’s overall influence on the election season. It draws on America PAC’s filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which the agency processes daily and which lists all the payments America PAC has made for ads, mailers, and texts…”
Hegseth – potential 2028 candidate, installs Musk as key Pentagon advisor
Oligarch Watch: “By choosing Elon Musk to co-lead the Pentagon’s “Future of Warfare” project, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a potential 2028 Republican presidential candidate, has secured a close working relationship with his party’s single largest political donor.
Last week, with Musk seated in the audience, Hegseth called the SpaceX and Tesla CEO one of “our nation’s best minds” while announcing the creation of “Project Meridian” at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. “Project Meridian will ruthlessly map the trajectory of war’s domains and technologies to ensure this War Department, your War Department, dominates the future,” he said during a speech that he described as the first of many “State of the Force” addresses.
Hegseth added that Musk and the project’s other co-leaders — Palmer Luckey, who leads the killer drone company Anduril, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — will help the Pentagon choose “the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in their lifetimes, without any creative limitations or restrictions.” Whatever recommendations they decide on will be released by late January via a public report and “a classified annex,” per Hegseth. As Musk returns to an official role within the federal government, the appointment raises fresh conflict-of-interest concerns regarding his relationship with the Trump administration.
SpaceX, his rocket, satellite, and AI company, has billions of dollars’ worth of military contracts alone. Last year, Musk and his companies benefited in numerous ways as he led the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) austerity project — a period that concluded with his bitter but temporary feud with President Trump…”
