Tragedy is a powerful shaper of narratives. In the aftermath of the horrific assassination of MAGA champion Charlie Kirk, a husband and father of two, it was natural that his allies, including President Trump, lionized him as a patriot, free-speech advocate, and activist. And political opponents somberly denounced the terrible killing, as they should, with some hailing Kirk’s devotion to public debate. There’s a tendency in such a moment to look for the best in people or, at least, to not dwell on the negatives. That can be a good thing. Yet as Kirk is quickly canonized by Trump and his movement—on Friday Trump announced he would bestow upon Kirk a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom—a full depiction of his impact on American politics is largely being sidestepped. In promoting a story on the murder of Kirk—headlined “Charlie Kirk killing deepens America’s violent spiral”—Axios described him as a “fierce champion of the right to free expression” whose “voice was silenced by an assassin’s bullet.” New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein, wrote, “You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion.” Klein added that he “envied” the political movement Kirk built and praised “his moxie and fearlessness.” > Kirk’s advocacy of vigorous debate ought not be separated from what he said > while jousting in the public square. Here’s the problem: Kirk built that movement with falsehoods. And his advocacy was laced with racist and bigoted statements. Recognizing this does not diminish the awfulness of this act of violence. Nor does it lessen our outrage or diminish our sympathy for his family, friends, and colleagues. Yet if this is an appropriate moment to assess Kirk and issue bold statements about his participation in America’s political life, there ought to be room for a true discussion. Kirk, a right-wing provocateur who founded and led Turning Point USA, an organization of young conservatives, was a promoter of Trump’s destructive and baseless conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Two days before the January 6 riot, Kirk boasted in a tweet that Students for Trump and Turning Point Action were “Sending 80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president.” After the attack, Kirk deleted the tweet, and he claimed that the people his group transported to DC participated only in the rally that occurred before the assault on Congress—where Trump whipped up the crowd and encouraged it to march on the Capitol. The New York Times subsequently reported that Turning Point Action sent only seven buses to the event. Turning Point also paid the $60,000 speaking fee to Kimberly Guilfoyle, a MAGA personality, for the brief remarks she made at the rally. “We will not allow the liberals and the Democrats to steal our dream or steal our elections,” Guilfoyle told the crowd. (Kirk took the Fifth when he was deposed by the House January 6 committee.) Even prior to the election, Kirk helped set the stage for Trump’s attempt to subvert the republic. In September 2020, the Washington Post reported that Turning Point Action was running a “sprawling yet secretive campaign” to disseminate pro-Trump propaganda “that experts say evades the guardrails put in place by social media companies to limit online disinformation of the sort used by Russia during the 2016 campaign.” The messages Turning Point generated spread the charge that Democrats were using mail balloting to steal the election and downplayed the threat from Covid. (Kirk’s group called the story a “gross mischaracterization.”) Whatever Kirk’s group and supporters did on January 6, he was part of the MAGA crusade that largely broke US politics. Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 loss, his conniving to stay in power, and his encouragement of a lie that led to massive political violence greatly undermined American democracy and exacerbated the already deep divide in the nation. Kirk was a part of that. Yet Klein overlooks that in praising Kirk. And a New York Times piece on Kirk’s political career made no mention of this, though it did report that he had been “accused” of “antisemitism, homophobia and racism, having blamed Jewish communities for fomenting hatred against white people, criticized gay rights on religious grounds and questioned the qualifications of Black airline pilots.” Kirk’s advocacy of vigorous debate ought not be separated from what he said while jousting in the public square. He hosted white nationalists on his podcast. He posted racist comments on his X account, including this remark: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.'” He endorsed the white “replacement” conspiracy theory. After the October 7 attack on Israel, he compared Black Lives Matter to Hamas. He called for preserving “white demographics in America.” He asserted that Islam was not compatible with Western culture. He derided women who supported Kamala Harris 2024 for wanting “careerism, consumerism, and loneliness.” Or, as he also put it, “Democratic women want to die alone without children.” When Paul Pelosi, the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, was brutally attacked in 2022, Kirk spread a conspiracy theory about the crime and called for an “amazing patriot” to bail out the assailant. He routinely deployed extreme rhetoric to demonize his political foes. Kirk did enjoy debating others. He visited campuses and held events in which he took on all comers, arguing over a variety of contentious issues. He was a showman, and his commitment to verbal duking was admirable. He appeared proud of the harsh opinions he robustly shared. Which means there’s no reason now to be shy about them while pondering his legacy. Moreover, as a movement strategist, he relied upon and advanced lies and bigotry—including falsehoods that fueled violence and an assault on our national foundation. That was not a side gig for Kirk. It was a core component of his organizing. He did not practice politics the right way. He used deceit to develop his movement and to weaken the United States. His assassination is heinous and frightening and warrants widespread condemnation. It should prompt reflection on what is happening within the nation and what needs to be done to prevent further political violence. It should not protect him or others who engage in such politics of extremism from critical review.

When Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, went looking for someone to head the National Counterterrorism Center, she landed on Joe Kent, a former Green Beret, past CIA officer, and twice-failed MAGA congressional candidate in Washington state, who, as the Associated Press reported, “stands out for the breadth of his ties to a deep-seated extremist fringe.” During his first campaign in 2022, Kent consulted with white nationalist Nick Fuentes on social-media strategy. He also had a member of the Proud Boys on his campaign staff, and he embraced as a supporter and ally Joey Gibson, the leader of Patriot Prayer, a Christian nationalist group. But his associations with far-right extremists began prior to his attempt to win a congressional seat. In 2020, Kent helped boost the organizing message of a new right-wing paramilitary outfit that called itself the 1st Amendment Praetorian. On September 20, 2020, Robert Patrick Lewis, a former Green Beret and QAnon supporter, posted a long thread on Twitter (now X) that announced the formation of the group. Lewis declared that a band of “military, law enforcement & intel community veterans” had come together to protect the First Amendment rights of conservatives. He presented a harsh, conspiratorial, and paranoid view, claiming, “There are Marxist & leftist politicians aiming to lock down total control over our populace.” He asserted, “Their tyrannical, Marxist subversive groups such as ANTIFA & BLM demand total subservience to and adulation of their specific view of the world.” And he maintained the “corrupted Main Stream Media does their best to tarnish the reputation and destroy the lives of any public or private citizen who dares step up to them or fight back against their narrative.” Lewis called on “military, law enforcement or intelligence community” veterans to join 1AP and fight back. In an apparent sign of support, Kent reposted this thread. Lewis noted that 1AP would be providing security services for right-wing rallies and marches, including those “with a large number of high-profile, conservative VIPs speaking & attending.” For one event, he said he needed veterans to provide “physical security, intelligence/surveillance and to serve as team leaders for small security & intelligence and intelligence cells.” He promised, “we will keep your names confidential and our personnel records & communications will be encrypted.” He added, “This group was formed to protect attendees at President Trump’s campaign rallies.” Soon after forming 1Ap, Lewis presented it not only as a security service for the right but as an intelligence operation. He told Fox News, “Our intelligence shows that no matter who wins the election, they [Antifa] are planning a massive ‘Antifa Tet Offensive,’ bent on destroying the global order they are not beholden to any one party. Their sole purpose is to create havoc, fear, and intimidation.” (No such uprising occurred.) After the election, 1AP claimed it was collecting evidence of fraud. On January 6, as the riot began at the Capitol, Lewis tweeted, “Today is the day the true battles begin.” (He later said he was at the Willard Hotel, not Capitol Hill, that day.) Lewis’ 1AP did provide security at various events featuring far-right extremists. According to the final report of the House January 6 committee, during a December 12, 2020, rally of pro-Trump election deniers in Washington, DC, Stuart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing, anti-government militia, “coordinated” with 1AP “to guard VIPs, including retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne.” (Both Flynn and Byrne were prominent promoters of the crackpot conspiracy theory holding that the 2020 election was stolen form Trump.) Months later, Lewis and 1AP provided security at a QAnon conference in Dallas, where Flynn essentially called for a military coup in the United States. On social media, Kent has often boosted posts from Lewis. At one point each complimented the other for a podcast appearance. When Kent ran for Congress, Lewis expressed his support for him on social media. In a 2022 Telegram post, Lewis said that he knew Kent “personally” and “wish I could personally vote for him.” In January, 1AP posted on Telegram that there were “mumblings” that Kent could be appointed to lead the National Counterterrorism Center and that this “would be a very good thing. I could not support this more strongly.” Mother Jones sent Kent, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Counterterrorism Center a list of questions about Kent’s support for 1AP and his relationship with Lewis. Neither Kent nor the agencies responded. Kent has an established record as an extremist and promoter of conspiracy theories. During his 2022 run, he called for charging Dr. Anthony Fauci with murder to hold him “accountable” for the “scam that is Covid.” He promoted Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was rigged against him. He backed the idea the January 6 riot was orchestrated by the Deep State to discredit Trump and his supporters. He referred to the J6 rioters as “political prisoners.” He pushed the notion that billionaire Bill Gates was seeking to “control the food supply” and “control housing” to force people to “live in the pod eat the bugs.” Like Gabbard, Kent has no experience in leading a large intelligence organization. (After serving in the Army, he was a field operative for the CIA for a short time.) As head of the NCTC, Kent will have the responsibility for monitoring and preventing both foreign and domestic terrorism. But his past as a conspiracy theorist and his association with far-right extremists raise questions about his analytical abilities and his capacity to assess threats of domestic terrorism that arise from the right. His association with 1AP and Lewis is just one more reason to wonder about his judgment.

The day before the German election, I was sobbing uncontrollably over a video that my German family sent me. It shows a table on a sidewalk, set with pretty porcelain and a sign “Feel like coffee like at Grandma’s?” As passersby sit down, a young man with a guitar carefully pours a cup and offers cream and sugar. Then he sings: “Oma, you’ve been gone a while, but I remember how you’d sit down at our kitchen table and say ‘Never again is now.’”  The viral video, created by a Hamburg singer as part of a day of action against the extreme right, is a little corny. It’s definitely part of the “remembrance culture” that some sneer at. But for, I dare say, anyone who grew up in Germany somewhere between the 1950s and 2000s, it’s a gut punch. The grandmother in the song would have been, give or take, my dad’s generation—someone who was a child during the Nazi era, maybe didn’t talk about it much, but when they did, had this to say: Never, ever, ever again.  Right now, even as we mourn the last of those who remember the Third Reich and the Holocaust, Germany and other countries are electing parties that are, at the very most generous, fascist-adjacent. Twenty percent of Germans voted for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Sunday’s election, twice as many as did so four years ago. That’s the gut punch part. But tears are not going to get us out of here. So what will? From my perch here in the US—where I arrived decades ago, thinking that having grown up in a country that experienced fascism was never going to be relevant again—here are a couple of thoughts on what we might learn from the German election.  1: Multiparty democracy is a mess, but it has one big plus: It creates options for people who are mad at the status quo. The German campaign echoed a lot of Trump v. Harris 2024: Immigration and inflation were the drivers, and underneath that was the discontent with “those in charge” that has been a theme in virtually every recent election in the West. But unlike Americans, Germans who wanted to send a message to a government they didn’t like had options. 2: One of those options—but only one—was the AfD. Call them the Make Germany Great Again movement, but unlike MAGA they were not able to take over one of the dominant parties. They had to create their own. The AfD is where you’ll find traditional conservatives who’ve been radicalized, people who were always radical but couldn’t say so in polite society, and people who are simply mad as hell. It’s not a Nazi party: That would be illegal in Germany, and politically nonviable too, at least for now. But the AfD absolutely has created a space for fascist-adjacent politics and ideas, from forced “remigration” of immigrants including those with German citizenship, to rehabbing Third Reich slogans and questioning whether SS members were criminals.  3: Twenty percent for the AfD is about exactly what the polls predicted; they’d hoped for 25 percent, which would have been seismic. I can’t help thinking of my dad, who used to say that in any country, 20 percent of voters will vote for the nutbags, if nutbags are on offer. The big problem is when they sweep in a bunch of other folks. 4: But again, those other folks had options. The left-wing party (which has pretty thoroughly repudiated its roots in East Germany’s Communist Party) looks to be landing at close to 9 percent, up from just over 5. The libertarian party was punished for having been part of the unpopular governing coalition, but the new left-populist party BSW—anti-immigration, anti-aid to Ukraine, anti-pronoun, but pro-labor, pro-welfare state, and decidedly anti-Nazi—looks close to making it past the 5-percent threshold that would get it seats in Parliament. Think of BSW as if the Obama-Trump voters had made their own party. It’s a fascinating development and one we might see replicated elsewhere at some point. 5: More parties means more options for forming a non-fascist government. The “firewall” that Germany’s democratic parties have erected against the far right, pledging never to let them govern, has eroded, but it will hold. For now.  So what’s next? To be sure, being the strongest opposition party is the ideal scenario for the far right: They get to demagogue everything the government does and everything it can be blamed for, such as the soaring energy prices caused by its pal Putin and his war in Ukraine. That posture is where the far right is most comfortable (other than complete control). But throwing rocks also has its limits in a country that is divided not along a single line, but along a spectrum. Others, especially the emboldened left party, will challenge the AfD as the voice of protest.  And here’s who else turned out to be less popular than feared: Putin and Elon Musk. Musk, as my colleague Julianne McShane reported, campaigned hard for the AfD, and Putin’s courtship of them may have extended to paying one of its officials. But being the puppet of either an American billionaire or a Russian dictator is not a great look anywhere in Europe. What should we take away from this for US politics? For one, that people vote in protest for lots of different reasons. It’s a mistake to assume (as Trump and Musk seem to believe, and some in the media too) that a MAGA victory means a MAGA country. America’s two-party system does a lot to mask the differences between voters, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. And just as importantly, small-d democrats were an overwhelming majority in Germany—and they might be here, too. Eighty percent voted for parties that vowed not to make common cause with the far right. That can’t happen in the US in quite the same way because of the far right’s takeover of the GOP. But America’s small-d democratic coalition still exists, and capital-D Democrats might capitalize on that by showing that their tent is big enough. Disagreement is healthy, if you can agree on the most important part—that democracy is about agreeing to disagree.  The next few years will be hard on small-d democrats everywhere. Bad things will continue to happen—maybe another pandemic, almost certainly an economic slowdown, quite possibly more armed conflicts. Demagogues and authoritarians will exploit those things as hard as they can. But 20 percent is about their ceiling, unless they get extraordinarily lucky or democratic forces cave. So let’s dust ourselves off and get to work. Because never again is now.

In emergency updates, American Sign Language interpreters are crucial to the safety of Deaf people—close to a million of whom live in the Los Angeles area alone. They’ve also become the latest target of right-wing online influencers like Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk, who offered a very obnoxious take on his eponymous Charlie Kirk Show last Wednesday, calling live ASL interpretation a “distraction” in the context of the fires; other right-wing media figures have piled on, adding ASL to the increasingly preposterous list of “woke” practices somehow related to the fires. But the Americans with Disabilities Act protects the right to equal information, as National Association of the Deaf board president Lisa M. Rose wrote in a response to Kirk. “Sign language interpreters provide crucial visual context, emotional nuance, and cultural mediation that captions alone cannot convey,” Rose wrote. “This real-time interpretation can be life-saving during emergencies, when clear and immediate understanding is vital.” Kirk was far from the only right-winger to attack ASL interpreters: “critical race theory” profiteer Christopher Rufo said on X that no “wild human gesticulators [are] necessary,” referring to a video of a Los Angeles County emergency management news conference; Richard Hanania said ADA requirements to have ASL interpretation “have led to a nightmare.” Bad takes on ASL interpreters and their purpose are not new, but given the current hold of anti-DEI activists on the Republican Party, and the speed with which other social and news media organizations have capitulated to Trump on advertising, fact-checking, and diversity initiatives, those attacks may soon lead to fewer ASL interpreters on emergency news broadcasts. There are already gaps in meeting that requirement, and not just from the right—in 2020, for instance, a judge had to force Andrew Cuomo to include an ASL interpreter in his lauded Covid briefings. Kirk and Rufo obviously know little about ASL if they’re criticizing it for being expressive—which it’s supposed to be. As Arika Okrent wrote in a 2012 Atlantic article “signers are animated not because they are bubbly and energetic, but because sign language uses face and body movements as part of its grammar.” What’s for certain is that interpretation is vital, not annoying—the exact opposite of Kirk, Rufo, and Hanania’s takes.

On Thursday afternoon, a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas ordered an evidentiary hearing to review the auction process that resulted in Infowars being sold to satire site the Onion, saying he wanted to ensure the “process and transparency” of the sale. Infowars’ founder, the conspiracy mega-entrepreneur Alex Jones, has unsurprisingly declared that the auction process was “rigged” and vowed that the review process will return the site to him, while the Onion’s CEO told Mother Jones and other news outlets that the sale is proceeding. For reasons that no one has yet explained, attorneys for X, formerly known as Twitter, the social media giant now owned by Elon Musk, entered an appearance during the hearing and asked to be included on any future communications about the case. “I was told Elon is going to be very involved in this,” Jones said during a live broadcast on X. After Infowars was seized and the site shut down, Jones promptly began operating under the name and branding of a new venture, dubbed the Alex Jones Network, which streams on X. Jones noted that lawyers for X were present at the hearing, adding, somewhat mysteriously, “The cavalry is here. Trump is pissed.” (He later elaborated that “Trump knows I’m one of his biggest defenders.”) > “I was told Elon is going to be very involved in this,” Jones said. An attorney who entered an appearance for X didn’t respond to a request for comment; nor did X’s press office. Onion CEO Ben Collins, previously a journalist at NBC News covering disinformation, told Mother Jones on Friday morning, “We won the bid. The idea that he was just going to walk away from this gracefully without doing this sort of thing is funny in itself.” In a statement reprinted by Variety and other outlets, Collins said that the sale is “currently underway, pending standard processes.” Collins had said previously that the plan was to relaunch Infowars as a satirized version of itself in January. As this odd situation played out, however, Infowars’ website came back online on Friday afternoon; soon after, Jones and his staff had also returned to Infowars‘ studios. Throughout Friday and Saturday morning, the site was full of stories preemptively declaring Jones’ victory over the Onion.  “I told you,” Jones crowed during a Friday night broadcast, back behind his usual desk. “If you want a fight, you got one.” Jones also vowed that even if Infowars is sold he would sue anyone who “impersonates” him, as well as “the big Democrat gun control group,” involved in the sale. (The New York Times has reported that Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for gun law reform, plans to advertise on the relaunched, satire version of the site.) Judge Christopher Lopez of Texas’ Southern District has been overseeing the years-long bankruptcy process for Infowars. The company and Jones personally filed for bankruptcy protection amid civil lawsuits brought by the parents of children who died at Sandy Hook. Jones was found liable by default for defaming the Sandy Hook families by repeatedly claiming that the mass shooting was a “hoax” and suggesting some of the parents were actors. In the Thursday hearing, Lopez said, “nobody should feel comfortable with the results of the auction” until the evidentiary hearing was held. Christopher Murray, the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee who declared the Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron LLC, to be the auction’s winner, considered the bids in private. According to Bloomberg, Murray told Lopez that Global Tetrahedron’s bid was a better option because the Sandy Hook families agreed to waive some of the money owed to them in order to pay off Jones’ other creditors.  “I’ve always thought my goal was to maximize the recovery for unsecured creditors,” Murray said, per Bloomberg. “And under one bid, they’re clearly better than they were under the other.”  Jones has made it clear that he was working with a group of what he dubbed “good guy” bidders, who he hoped would buy the site and keep him on air. The only other bid besides the Onion’s was $3.5 million from First United American Companies LLC, the company that operates Jones’ online supplement store.  The evidentiary hearing is expected to be held on Monday. 

Long gone are the innocent days when media outlets claimed the independence and nuance of the politics of Elon Musk. Now, amid myriad X posts spreading far-right propaganda on immigrants, trans people, and, well, just about any other topic, it has become obvious where one of the richest men in the world stands. This week, there was more proof that Musk has put his money where his mouth has been. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Musk poured tens of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns and conservative groups even before he publicly endorsed Donald Trump in July. Conservatives helped conceal Musk’s contributions through so-called social welfare or “dark money” groups that do not have to disclose their donors and can raise unlimited funds. (Musk did not respond to the Journal’s request for comment.) One piece of reporting stood out. The newspaper found that the tech billionaire donated more than $50 million in 2022 for campaign advertisements by Citizens for Sanity, a group connected to former Trump aide Stephen Miller and his non-profit America First Legal, which bills itself as “the long-awaited answer to the ACLU.”  Ties to Miller back in 2022 illuminate Musk’s current penchant for posting about immigrants. Musk has increasingly aligned himself with xenophobic anti-migrant plans and trans hysteria championed by Miller within the Trump administration.  As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote, Trump has vowed to conduct “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Miller and others have worked for years to develop a plan—including deploying the National Guard, constructing massive detention camps through executive order, and packing the federal government with their own people.  In recent months, Musk’s posts have sunken to lies of mass voter fraud to help Trump win. As I reported, the billionaire recently posted a rant about how Democrats are the true threat to democracy by fast-tracking asylum seekers for citizenship so that they can vote in swing states. Simple fact-checking finds that asylum seekers are not being flown to battleground states, are not being given a facilitated citizenship process, and are not being allowed to vote—it is all false.  As we previously noted, these statements fall within the 2024 iteration of the Republicans’ “Big Lie.” If Trump loses in November, then Democrats stole the election through noncitizen voters.  Musk has also directly aligned himself with Trump, founding a super PAC called America PAC to get 800,000 people to vote for the former president in key battleground states. According to the Guardian, Trump’s ground operation in swing states are now mostly outsourced to America PAC, and Business Insider said that Musk is now shelling out millions to Republicans in 15 competitive House races. Yesterday, Politico reported that America PAC was teaming up with Turning Point Action, the political advocacy division of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, to fund hundreds of “ballot chasers” in Wisconsin.  Musk also announced yesterday on X that he would attend Trump’s comeback rally on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, the location of an assassination attempt against the former president in July.  So much for claiming to be politically moderate.

On Sunday, Elon Musk posted a lengthy diatribe about Democrats being the real “threat to democracy.” In his tweet, Musk claimed that Democrats are flying “asylum seekers” to swing states (this is not happening), fast-tracking them for citizenship (asylum seekers are not fast-tracked), and ensuring said noncitizens can vote (noncitizens cannot vote). (In the tweet, Musk also lists Ohio as an example of a swing state; it is not.) In short: Almost every claim in Musk’s rant is factually incorrect. As we previously stated, Republicans’ “Big Lie” this time has been that Democrats are stealing the election by pushing noncitizens to the ballot box. Trump backed the claim in the presidential debate earlier this month when asked about whether he acknowledges that he lost in 2020. “A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote,” the former president said. “And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”  But, as my colleague Isabela Dias reported, this is not accurate. There are not masses of noncitizens registered to vote. In fact, as she wrote, “a study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that in the 2016 election, election officials in 42 jurisdictions overseeing the tabulation of 23.5 million votes only referred about 30 cases of ‘suspected noncitizen voting’ for investigation or prosecution—or 0.0001 percent of votes.” Musk’s logic, though, goes beyond the idea of noncitizens voting. He claims 1 in 20 “illegals” will become citizens per year, resulting in two million new legal voters for Democrats in four years. “America then becomes a one-party state and Democracy is over,” the billionaire wrote. “The only ‘elections’ will be the Democratic Party primaries.” > Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the > last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to > save it! > > Let me explain: if even 1 in 20 illegals become citizens per year, something > that the Democrats are expediting as fast… https://t.co/u3HBdd5Bv0 > > — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 29, 2024 But this is far from the truth. Last year, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, only 29,000 asylees became naturalized citizens. They all entered the US before Joe Biden’s presidency and were engaged in the five-year process of demonstrating legal permanent residence to apply for citizenship.  Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) also weighed in, replying to Musk’s post, with another theory. “It’s a two prong strategy,” he explained. “When they bring illegals to blue states, the blue states get extra electoral votes in the presidential election and extra congressional districts, even though the illegals can’t vote. This is because we count them in the census and for apportionment.” As our reporter Ari Berman wrote in 2020, this has been a long-term complaint from the right. Political representation in the 14th Amendment includes “all persons”—not only those eligible to vote. And elected officials, in turn, represent the total population, including those who cannot vote (kids, for example). Republicans want to exclude noncitizens from the census and change the paradigm to reinforce Republican voting power.  Massie’s communications director, John Kennedy, did not respond to a request for comment.  Musk has been driving his claims of noncitizens voting for months. The Washington Post reported earlier in September that the false claims had election officials worried. Many told the newspaper that the posts coincided with a rise in requests to toss voter rolls and made them fearful over the possibility of violent threats in the lead-up to November.  The owner of X also targeted a story from the Los Angeles Times that found that immigration authorities were approving citizenship applications “at the fastest speed in years.” The Times highlighted that right-wing figures were making “baseless claims” and included a statement from Naree Ketudat, a spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security.  She said that the agency has processed naturalization petitions within a six-month period for decades and that the department “does not take actions based on electoral politics or upcoming elections. Period.”  So, all of it is was wrong. But Musk has not let facts get in the way of posting through it.