Matters may not, however, prove so simple in many rural areas of Canada:

<Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Tuesday responded to US President Donald Trump’s tariffs by ripping up the Canadian province’s contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink. “It’s done; it’s gone,” Ford said of the deal.

Consumers who have quickly grown to rely on the SpaceX satellite network may not be willing to follow suit.

Starlink flies more than 7,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) serving some 5 million subscribers, and Canada is the company’s largest market outside of the US.

Serving swaths of remote locations that traditional internet services don’t reach, the popular service poses a dilemma for patriotic Canadians who want to boycott American goods over widespread anger against Trump and his closest adviser, Musk.

Take Louise Dumayne, a Yukon-based writer who posted a rallying call to shun US companies on her Facebook page. Everything that is, except Starlink.

Dumayne — who lives close to the Klondike gold rush town of Dawson City, about 445 kilometers (277 miles) by car from the Arctic Circle — said reliable internet service from Starlink has boosted her husband’s income by as much as 40%. “I feel conflicted,” she said on a video call (via Starlink) from her wooden cabin, where a caribou hide hangs on the wall.

Starlink is “really robust” and works despite temperatures lower than minus 40C (minus 40F), she said.

After the US imposed 25% tariffs on most Canadian and Mexican imports on March 4, and with Trump threatening tariffs on more countries, consumers around the world may be facing similar conflicts.

Ford isn’t the only Canadian politician targeting SpaceX. British Columbia’s Premier David Eby in early February said his province was no longer considering a deal with Starlink that had been in the works. R.J. Simpson, the premier of the Northwest Territories, on Tuesday said his government is looking at alternatives, too.

Businessman Gord Fry has first-hand experience of the backlash. The owner of Muskoka Starlink, a company that installs equipment in an area two hours from Toronto by car, Fry has received online and in-person abuse due to the name on his van.

He’s turned off public comments for Facebook ads “to stop the political rants,” said Fry. “The only thing that’s holding Starlink back regarding further and faster advancements through Canada is a negative public opinion that’s being caused by Elon Musk shooting his mouth off, and certainly Trump.”

Still, for all the anger, Starlink has a quasi-monopoly on reliable and affordable LEO internet. That leaves few options for people who want to distance themselves from Musk.

“What is the alternative? There’s not much alternative,” said Quebec’s minister of cybersecurity and digital technology Gilles Bélanger.

Home to many remote communities that crave decent and affordable internet, Canada in many ways is a perfect fit for the SpaceX-owned network. Starlink had about 533,000 users in the country as of January, according to the firm Idem Est Advisory & Research.

Musk himself has connections to Canada. His mother was born in Saskatchewan and he attended Queen’s University in Ontario before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania.

Yet after more than 350,000 Canadians signed a petition to revoke the SpaceX chief executive officer’s citizenship, he posted “Canada is not a real country” on his social media platform X, before later deleting the comment. Trump, meanwhile, has enraged Canadians by saying he plans to use “economic force” to make Canada a “51st state.”

While Musk’s electric car company Tesla Inc. looks vulnerable to blowback, with sales slumping in Europe, Australia and China, Starlink’s dominant position is helping to protect his space network from political backlash.

Nunavut, an Arctic territory about 20% larger than Alaska, has no roads connecting its 25 communities and no fiber-optic lines to link them to the internet. That lack of connectivity has been an impediment to development in Canada’s North even as economic and military interest grows due to climate change making the region more accessible by sea.

Starlink saw significant and rapid adoption in Nunavut, according to data from internet speed testing website owner Ookla LLC. A “Starlink Nunavut” Facebook group has more than 7,000 members, which would represent about a fifth of the vast territory’s population, although not all of the group members necessarily live there.

“It looks like every other house has a Starlink when you go for a walk,” said Andrew Arreak, a resident of Mittimatalik, known in English as Pond Inlet, a predominantly Inuit community almost eight hours by air from Ottawa....>

<....Neighbors take Starlink antennae with them on camping and hunting trips out in the tundra, and it makes them much safer, he said. Before, they used radio with limited range.

Madeleine Redfern, former mayor of the territory’s capital Iqaluit, seconded Arreak’s endorsement. For years she paid NorthwesTel Inc. C$1,000 ($695) a month to keep her home office connected, but suffered from data caps, excess use charges and poor service.

Since switching to Starlink, she pays closer to C$130 and is now able to do things like stream videos. “People who don’t have it are desperate to get it,” she said of Musk’s network.

Starlink’s website shows Iqaluit as “sold out.”

Tony Fortunato, an engineer installing Starlink terminals for Nunavut’s housing agency, said talk of boycotts isn’t persuading locals. “They’re like: ‘It doesn’t affect me. We have no choice. Like what are we gonna do? Have nothing?’”

Canada’s government has announced projects to improve Nunavut’s broadband, including nearly C$27 million for SSi Micro Ltd. to increase satellite capacity for the territory’s 25 communities and more than C$270 million to create a fiber link to Iqaluit and three others.

Those holding out for a Canadian Starlink rival will have to wait.

A spokesperson for NorthwesTel said the company mainly provides fiber optic internet in the Yukon, where it’s headquartered, and the Northwest Territories. To offer satellite broadband it also partners with OneWeb, a LEO constellation owned by France’s Eutelsat Communications SACA, and with Canada’s Telesat Corp.

Ottawa-based Telesat today uses geostationary satellites at elevations many times higher than Musk’s, meaning a slower round trip for communications.

Telesat is building a $4.6 billion LEO fleet of 198 satellites called Lightspeed with Ontario manufacturer MDA Space Ltd that could better compete with Starlink, but the constellation is years behind schedule, with service scheduled to begin in 2027.

Although Telesat’s model is wholesale, CEO Dan Goldberg told Bloomberg by email that “a direct-to-consumer offering could be supported over time,” in the vein of Starlink.

Another provider, Xplore Inc., last September announced the first connections in a plan to create fiber links for more than 35,000 Ontario homes and businesses, part of a plan to make more than 400,000 connections nationwide by 2027.

Former Iqaluit mayor Redfern is chief operating officer for CanArctic Inuit Networks Inc., which hopes to connect a subsea fiber line between Nunavut’s capital and a town in Newfoundland and Labrador.

SpaceX and Xplore didn’t reply to requests for comment.

Before the trade war, Canada’s politicians were promising to fork over large sums of money to get rural constituents connected to Starlink.

Ontario announced a C$100 million partnership last November to offer Starlink to 15,000 homes and businesses in rural and northern areas, a deal that Ford canceled on Tuesday. “We won’t award contracts to people who enable and encourage economic attacks on our province and our country,” the Ontario premier said at a press conference.

Quebec, which has pledged to make high-speed internet available to all its residents, has a deal worth C$138 million that has paid for Starlink equipment and discounts for about 10,000 people. The program expires in June, and a decision on whether to renew some subsidies should come in May, said Bélanger.

“Maybe C$138 million is not big enough” for Musk to care about a backlash, he said. “Canada will need to think about a solution, a Canadian solution.”

For now, Yukon-based writer Dumayne worries that Canadian users of Starlink could even become pawns in the trade war if US-Canada relations deteriorate further.

“What if Elon Musk decides on a tit-for-tat with Starlink and decides that he’s going to double the price?” she said. “We’d have to pay it, at this point.”>

<JD Vance’s political journey has been nothing short of a dramatic transformation. Back in 2016 – the same year his book “Hillbilly Elegy” was released – Vance openly expressed his disdain for Donald Trump, calling him an “idiot,” likening him to Nixon and, at worst, “America’s Hitler.”

“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a**hole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” Reuters reports of a private message Vance sent on Facebook to an associate in 2016.

When his Hitler comment went public in 2022, a spokesperson “did not dispute it, but said it no longer represented Vance’s views.”

In a striking reversal, he has since become one of Trump’s most loyal soldiers, rising through the ranks to secure a spot as vice president.

On March 4, House Speaker Mike Johnson presided over the House floor, preparing for the president’s bold and fiery congressional address.

But right before Trump promised that his disruptive approach to politics was “just getting started,” Vice President Vance was chatting with Johnson, right in front of a live microphone.

But what was he saying?

Speaking with the Mirror, lip reading specialist Jeremy Freeman claims that Vance privately stated, “Yes it is, a full reckoning, and long overdue”.

He was also reportedly overheard telling Johnson, “By the way, I think the speech is going to be great. But I don’t know how you do this for 90 minutes.”

Johnson’s response to the VP was picked up by a nearby hot mic, where he’s heard saying: “The hardest thing was doing it during Biden, when his speech was a stupid campaign speech.”

This wasn’t a throwaway comment – it was serious enough for Johnson to react by discreetly lowering his microphone, as if ensuring their conversation remained private.

But what exactly was Vance referring to? And how does it fit into the broader political landscape as Trump and his allies gear up for another contentious political battle?

Vance’s words come at a time when he has been making headlines for his fiery rhetoric and policy stances. Just days before his cryptic remark, he had a heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office and has been publicly dismissive toward Britain.

While his comment about a “full reckoning” is not confirmed or understood, the remark sparked online speculation with fans offering their opinions on the VP who some are calling a “punk.”

“What’s the reckoning JD? What are you vultures planning? You’ve hijacked our country & it’s money what are you going to do now? send us to camps?” tweets one netizen.

“I’ve seen Vance’s type before. The weedy kid who hangs around the bully, but soils himself when the bully isn’t around and is confronted alone. Runs his mouth, but backpedals when he realizes he’s about to get a punch in the face. I detest bullies, and those who enable them,” shares a second.

Another adds, “Trump is a dupe – Vance is the threat.”

Given this transformation, his “full reckoning” comment is especially intriguing. Is he signaling a purge of anti-Trump elements within the party? A warning to political adversaries? Or is it a broader call for a shift in government priorities under the new administration?

Regardless, one thing is certain: Vance is no longer just a politician in Trump’s orbit. He’s a key player in an administration that appears poised for sweeping political and institutional changes. And if his words are any indication, the reckoning – whatever it may be – has only just begun.>

<Every time a baby is born in Louisiana, where Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson handily won reelection last year, there’s more than a 60% chance taxpayers will finance the birth through Medicaid.

In Republican Rep. David Valadao ’s central California district, 6 out of 10 people use Medicaid to pay for doctor visits and emergency room trips.

And one-third of the population is covered by Medicaid in GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski's Alaska, one of the nation’s costliest corners for health care.

Each of these Republicans — and some of their conservative colleagues — lined up last week to defend Medicaid, in a departure from long-held GOP policies. Republicans, who already have ruled out massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare, are turning their attention to siphoning as much as $880 billion from Medicaid over the next decade to help finance $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

But as a deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown nears, hesitation is surfacing among Washington's Republican lawmakers — once reliable critics of lofty government social welfare programs such as Medicaid — who say that deep cuts to the health care program could prove too untenable for people back home.

“I've heard from countless constituents who tell me the only way they can afford health care is through programs like Medicaid,” Valadao said on the House floor. “And I will not support a final reconciliation bill that risks leaving them behind.”

And on Wednesday, President Donald Trump, too, made his position on Medicaid clear: “We’re not going to touch it.”

States and the federal government jointly pay for Medicaid, which offers nearly-free health care coverage for roughly 80 million poor and disabled Americans, including millions of children. It cost $880 billion to operate in 2023.

Johnson has ruled out two of the biggest potential cuts: paying fixed, shrunken rates to states for care and changing the calculation for the share of federal dollars that each state receives for Medicaid. Just a few years ago, Johnson spearheaded a report that lobbied for some of those changes during the first Trump administration.

Johnson insisted in a CNN interview that the focus will instead be ferreting out “fraud, waste and abuse" in Medicaid, although it's unlikely to deliver the savings Republicans seek.

GOP pressure over Medicaid is mounting, with some state party leaders joining the calls to preserve the program. States are already struggling with the growing cost of sicker patients and could be left to cover more if the federal government pulls back. In some states, the federal government picks up over 80%.

More than a dozen Minnesota GOP lawmakers wrote the president recently warning that “too deep of a cut is unmanageable in any instance.” Gov. Joe Lombardo, R-Nev., told Congress in a letter that “proposed reductions would put lives at risk." In Alaska, state Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, a Republican and nurse, cited “huge concerns” during a floor speech....>

<....Nationally, 55% of Americans said the government spends too little on Medicaid, according to a January poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

“It’s now a very popular program that touches a very broad cross-section of American society,” said Drew Altman, president of the health care research firm KFF. “Roughly half of the American people say that they or a family member have at one time been served by the program.”

Significant changes to Medicaid are still on the table. They have to be for Republicans get the savings they need to pay for tax cuts.

Work requirements, which could save as much as $109 billion over the next decade, seem to have solid support among GOP members, with some individual Republican-led states already moving to implement them.

Republicans also could consider cuts in benefits or coverage, as well as eliminating a provider tax that states use to finance Medicaid, Altman added.

Democrats warn that reductions are inevitable and could be dire.

Starting Monday, TV ads will caution people across 20 congressional districts that hospitals are at risk of closing and millions of people could lose coverage if Republicans cut Medicaid "to fund massive tax cuts for Elon Musk and billionaires.” The Democratic super political action committee House Majority Forward has launched the seven-figure campaign.

Trump and Republicans have for years called for lowering government spending on health care, but they have struggled to formulate a serious plan that gains traction. Trump, for example, has spent nearly a decade arguing for an overhaul of the Affordable Care Act. His efforts to repeal the Obama-era national health care law failed during his first term, and in his most recent presidential campaign he offered only “concepts of a plan” to adapt the program.

Michael Cannon, a director of health studies at libertarian Cato Institute, believes Medicaid needs an overhaul because it is a significant part of the federal budget and a contributor to the nation's growing debt.

But Republicans, he said, are not looking at serious ways to drive down the cost of health care.

“The only reason for the cuts right now is to pay for the tax cuts,” Cannon said. “None of them are talking about the need to do better health reform.”>

<Over the last six weeks, President Trump has been spending political capital like a drunk at a casino who insists he’s got “a system.” If history is any predictor, his second term trajectory may already be set — right off a cliff, pedal to the floor.

Too soon to say that? Consider former President Joe Biden, who, in his first weeks in office, reversed Trump’s border policies and unleashed another flood of pandemic relief cash. These moves ultimately helped create his two biggest political headaches: a migrant crisis and runaway inflation so bad that even Dollar Tree had to raise its prices.

Then Biden made it worse by shrugging the problems off. Immigration, his administration argued, was “cyclical,” and inflation was merely “transitory.” Neither explanation turned out to be accurate. His approval ratings tanked immediately upon his disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal and never recovered.

Now it’s Trump’s turn to step on a rake. His approval ratings just went underwater, meaning he hit this particular milestone even faster than Biden. According to a new Ipsos poll, three in five Americans think the cost of living — you know, the issue that likely won Trump the 2024 election — is “going in the wrong direction.”

As you might recall, Trump promised to bring down food prices on day one. Well, here we are, and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is telling the public to deal with high egg prices by raising their own chickens.

I understand the appeal. Raising chickens — at least in a world without bird flu — might sound charming, and I bet many environmentally conscious liberals would find it quite nostalgic. But for most urban and suburban Americans, this is like the secretary of transportation suggesting we tackle rising gas prices by riding horses to work.

If a Democrat had said anything this absurd, Fox News would be hosting an emergency town hall titled “Biden’s Barnyard Blunder: The War on Your Wallet.” But somehow, this little nugget of genius has barely registered. Maybe people are too busy choosing between a carton of eggs and keeping the lights on.

Meanwhile, Trump seems hell-bent on seeing just how much economic misery voters can stomach. His latest stroke of brilliance? Slapping tariffs on Canada and Mexico — because nothing fixes inflation quite like boosting prices.

Planning to build a house? Brace yourself for soaring lumber costs. And in case that wasn’t enough, his mass deportation plan threatens to gut the construction workforce, sending labor costs through the roof. It’s a perfect one-two punch: fewer workers, pricier materials and a housing market already on life support.

Don’t worry, though — rather than acknowledge the flawed approach, Republicans are already laying the groundwork for the inevitable fallout of Trump’s policies by claiming that Americans are willing to suffer high prices for Trump....>

<....Right. Keep telling yourselves that.

Speaking of scams, Trump just announced something called a “strategic crypto reserve.” I don’t know what that is, but I do know if you put “crypto” and “Trump” in the same sentence, somebody is getting fleeced. And it ain’t him or his fat-cat friends in the tech industry.

This brings us to Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. On paper, cutting waste sounds great. In reality? A foreign-born billionaire with a ketamine habit and a collection of surprise baby mamas who is firing American workers en masse is the kind of thing that plays terribly — especially when some of the laid-off employees are Trump voters who somehow believed he would only go after other people.

That’s right. It turns out that the so-called “deep state” includes regular folks, many of them military veterans, who don’t love being laid off by a billionaire space cadet or one of his Gen Z minions.

Then there’s the looming foreign policy catastrophe: Trump has made an art form of alienating allies, but his decision to pause military aid and intelligence sharing for Ukraine could have severe consequences — like, say, Russia steamrolling right over Ukraine.

A majority of Americans, per Ipsos, actually support Ukraine fighting back with U.S. weapons. So Trump starts off in a minority position, and that’s before his policies risk pushing Ukraine toward a very public collapse (a scenario one can only hope doesn’t unfold).

If Ukraine falls and the headlines are dominated by reports of Russian war crimes and images of tanks rolling into Kyiv, Trump’s already fraught position could unravel.

In short, Trump is charging ahead like a man convinced he has an ironclad mandate. He’s making the kind of big, flashy moves that typically blow up in spectacular manner. After all, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

He has slipped out of tight spots many times before, so maybe he’ll pull it off again.

Or maybe, just maybe, his bill is finally coming due.>

<A top State Farm executive was fired this week after saying the insurer’s California rate hikes are “kind of” orchestrated and after making disparaging remarks about Pacific Palisades homeowners that were caught on an undercover video.

Haden Kirkpatrick, State Farm Mutual’s vice president for innovation and venture capital, was recorded saying that the request by its California subsidiary for rate hikes was “kind of” orchestrated “but not in the way you would think,” according to a video published by O’Keefe Media Group, a conservative outlet.

“Our people look at this and say, ‘S—, we’ve got like maybe $5 billion that we’re short if something happens.’ We’ll go to the Department of Insurance and say, ‘We’re overexposed here, you have to let us catch up our [rates]’. ... He’ll say ‘Nah.’ And we’ll say, ‘OK, then we are going to cancel these policies,’ ” he said in the video, recorded surreptitiously in January after the fires.

State Farm General, the subsidiary and California’s largest home insurer, has filed for an emergency 22% rate hike for its homeowners policies, citing the fires and a $5-billion decline in its surplus account over the last decade. The insurer has said it is now left with just over $1 billion in surplus to handle another big catastrophe.

That request was the subject of a recent hearing with Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, who initially rejected the hike but agreed to consider more evidence.

During the meeting, a State Farm executive told Lara that without the rate hike the company “may have to take actions that we otherwise don’t want to do,” according to a transcript of the meeting.

The company has estimated the Pacific Palisades, Eaton and other fires on Jan. 7 will cost it more than $7 billion, though with reinsurance its net losses will be closer to $600 million.

In response to the video, Michael Soller, a spokesperson for Lara, said, “We want answers from State Farm. This only raises more questions.”

Kirkpatrick also is recorded saying that homes should not have been built in Pacific Palisades but that residents want to have “natural areas around them for their ego,” calling the area “a f— desert.”

He further said he tasked the company’s HR team to create a year “2040” workforce that is more “Hispanic and Latino,” which he said was being “biased ... away from my own kind.”

State Farm released a statement that “the individual in the video is no longer associated with State Farm” and his assertions are “inaccurate and in no way represent the views of State Farm. They do not reflect our position regarding the victims of this tragedy, the commitment we have demonstrated to the people of California, or our hiring practices across the company.”

Kirkpatrick said that the company fired him for making the remarks, which he said were recorded on a Tinder date in late January that he now believes was a setup. He otherwise declined to comment.

Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog sent a letter Thursday to Lara calling on the commissioner to investigate the unvarnished remarks, which it said “suggest that State Farm is not simply reacting to financial risk but is deliberately using cancellations and the threat of future cancellations to pressure the Department of Insurance for rate increases.”

James O’Keefe is the founder and chief executive of O’Keefe Media Group, which publishes undercover videos provided by “citizen journalists” to “expose corruption, abuse, lies hidden from public view.”

The conservative activist previously founded Project Veritas, which also published undercover videos, but has been criticized for deceptive editing.

In 2013, O’Keefe agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former employee of the community organizing group ACORN, who had been depicted in an undercover video apparently offering to help smuggle underage girls into the U.S. to act as prostitutes. The employee said he had reported O’Keefe to police for proposing an illegal act prior to the video’s airing.>

<President Donald Trump's administration is now making possibly its biggest assertion yet of sweeping executive powers no previous president has exercised.

The U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) — a small agency with a $40 million budget and a staff of roughly 30 people — has been in an intense battle with the administration as it seeks to replace its board chair and lay off its staff. Last week, Trump tapped State Department official Pete Marocco to chair the USADF's board, even though former Sen. Carol Moseley Brown (D-Ill.) is the Senate-confirmed board chair who has been in the role since 2024.

The board and staff of the USADF do not recognize Marocco as the legitimate chair and have argued in court that his appointment was illegal. On Friday, Talking Points Memo (TPM) reported that it obtained an email from a senior official in the Trump White House's Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) claiming that Marocco is the legal chair, as Trump has the "inherent authority under Article II" of the U.S. Constitution to put acting agency heads in place without the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate. This would be a clear-cut violation of the Appointments Clause in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution.

Stanford University Law School professor Anne Joseph O'Connell said the PPO email was "so much more of an executive power claim than a lot of what they’ve done."

"Why have a confirmations process?” O'Connell told TPM. “We wouldn’t need a confirmations process – and that’s written into the Constitution.”

TPM's Josh Kovensky reported that the most recent vacancies act in 1998 indeed lets presidents appoint acting heads of federal agencies without Senate approval. And officials in an "acting" role are typically limited in what they can do, and have a timeline on how long they can temporarily lead an agency until they're officially confirmed by the Senate. But the 1998 legislation exempts several independent agencies from the rule allowing acting heads to be put in place without senators confirming them — including the USADF. The Trump official even acknowledged that the USADF was exempted in that law, but insisted that because this poses an obstacle to his "inherent authority" that Marocco's appointment as the agency's new board chair is justified.

“Here what you have is a president who’s saying, well, the position’s vacant, so I’m allowed to temporarily appoint someone to that position without advice and consent of the Senate, but that’s not how this works,” University of Minnesota Law School professor Nicholas Bednar told Kovensky. “It would effectively just be a runaround on Congress’s ability to check who the President wants in office.”>

<[Event "16th World Open"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1988.07.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Tempone, Marcelo"]
[Black "Ashley, Maurice"]
[ECO "E20"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.f3 c5 5.d5 exd5 6.cxd5 O-O 7.Nh3 Re8 8.Nf2 Re5 9.Bd2 Bxc3 10.Bxc3 Rxd5 11.Qb3 Rd6 12.e4 Nc6 13.Qc4 Qe7 14.Nd3 b6 15.O-O-O Re6 16.Nf4 Ne5 17.Qa4 Rd6 18.Nd5 Nxd5 19.exd5 Ng6 20.Kb1 Bb7 21.Ba6 Bxa6 22.Qxa6 Qg5 23.Qb7 Re8 24.Ka1 Qxg2 25.Rhe1 Rxe1 26.Rxe1 Nf8 27.a3 Qxf3 28.Qb8 Rxd5 29.Ka2 Rd3 30.Be5 Qd5+ 31.Ka1 f6 32.Bg3 Rd1+ 33.Rxd1 Qxd1+ 34.Ka2 Qd5+ 35.Ka1 Kf7 36.Qxa7 Qc6 37.Bc7 b5 38.Qb8 d5 0-1>

<The Wisconsin Supreme Court contest is shaping up to be a battle of billionaires, with each side in the race casting the other’s most prominent donors as boogeymen.

Liberal megadonors like George Soros and outside groups with ties to Elon Musk have spent millions in the first major race in a battleground state since the 2024 election that both parties will look to as a barometer of the political environment in the opening weeks of President Donald Trump's administration.

The technically nonpartisan April 1 election will determine the state Supreme Court’s ideological balance for the second time in two years. Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate and a state judge in Waukesha County who previously served as the state’s Republican attorney general, is facing off against Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate and a state judge in Madison.

Thanks in large part to the involvement of megadonors like Musk and Soros, the race is on track to surpass the state’s 2023 contest as the most expensive state Supreme Court campaign in U.S. history. And like that race, the future of several hot-button issues with both state and national significance — including abortion rights, unions and congressional maps — will again be at stake.

Democrats in particular have trained their sights on Musk, the tech billionaire who’s running the controversial Department of Government Efficiency.

This week, the Wisconsin Democratic Party launched what it’s calling a seven-figure investment to link Schimel to Musk. The spending will be geared toward ads, town hall events and canvassing efforts that specifically take aim at Musk.

One digital spot that started running this week lists off a series of actions DOGE has taken or recommended, before slamming Musk as “out of control” and accusing him of “unloading millions to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”

“He knows MAGA politician Brad Schimel is for sale,” the ad’s narrator says.

Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler said the effort was intended to drive turnout among Democrats and other voters who are concerned about the impacts Musk and DOGE could have on the state.

“Democrats are feeling a hair-on-fire sense of emergency around Musk’s power grab and his attacks on their communities. Making sure that they know that Brad Schimel would be Musk’s puppet on the state Supreme Court is a powerful motivator for people to go and cast a ballot,” Wikler said in an interview.

Democrats have had the advantage in ad spending in this race, spending almost $18 million to Republicans’ $12.7 million, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

A big chunk of the GOP spending has come from two Musk-aligned groups, Building America’s Future and America PAC, that have spent more than $8 million to boost Schimel.

While Building America’s Future is not required to disclose its donations, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal have both reported that Musk helped to fund the group in the past. The group has spent about $2.4 million on ads in the Supreme Court race so far, according to AdImpact.

One of Building America’s Future’s ads takes aim at a particular case Crawford oversaw as a judge involving a man convicted of sexually assaulting a minor.

America PAC, a Musk-funded super PAC that spent more than $261 million during the 2024 election cycle, has dumped more than $4 million into the race, mostly on canvassing and political mailers.

Representatives for Musk, Building America’s Future and America PAC didn’t respond to requests for comment. A White House spokesperson who handles inquiries regarding Musk and DOGE also didn’t respond to questions....>

<....Musk has posted on X about the race, writing in January that it’s “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!”

Republicans have for years made unfounded claims of voting fraud in Wisconsin, alleging that drop boxes in the state allow people to vote illegally. The issue has appeared before the state Supreme Court multiple times in recent years.

Musk’s electric car company Tesla has challenged a Wisconsin law in state court that bans carmakers from owning dealerships. The case could possibly make its way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Crawford, for her part, has used Musk as a foil at campaign events. At a recent speech in Cambridge, Wisconsin, she said, “You know, when I was a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be fighting the world’s richest man for justice in Wisconsin.”

And at a Milwaukee Press Club event on Wednesday, Crawford said Musk “seems to be an unelected right-hand man to President Trump right now” and that it’s “very concerning when somebody like that wades into a state judicial race.”

On the other side, the Wisconsin Republican Party and aligned groups have drawn attention to the cadre of liberal billionaires who have thrown money into the race, including Soros and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

“Susan Crawford is a vehicle for Democrats, like George Soros and Reid Hoffman, to implement a dangerously unpopular agenda,” Wisconsin GOP spokesperson Anika Rickard said.

House Freedom Action, the political arm of the conservative U.S. House Freedom Caucus, has begun running ads that specifically take aim at Crawford for receiving support from Soros, Hoffman and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

In one such ad from the group, a narrator slams the trio of “left-wing billionaires” for “putting millions behind Susan Crawford because Crawford is a leftist ideologue who will turn Wisconsin into Illinois.”

That effort came after Soros gave $1 million to the Wisconsin Democratic Party in January. Pritzker gave $500,000 that month, while Hoffman contributed $250,000. State campaign finance laws allow the state parties to transfer cash to the candidate’s committees.

Representatives for Soros, Hoffman and Pritzker didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Schimel campaign spokesperson Jacob Fischer slammed Crawford for taking money from “extremists like George Soros and JB Pritzker.”

“The attempts by Susan Crawford and the Democrats to distract the people of Wisconsin from her extreme views and the radical billionaires funding her are a mockery of hypocrisy,” Fischer said in a statement.

Several other ultrawealthy Americans have also gotten involved in the race, particularly on the conservative side.

For example, Elizabeth Uihlein gave $650,000 to the Wisconsin GOP in January, while Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, chipped in $500,000. Diane Hendricks, the billionaire businesswoman and film producer who owns ABC Supply, also gave the Wisconsin Republican Party $975,000 that month.>

<Donald Trump has called for two MSNBC hosts to be fired as he criticized the TV channel for its low ratings.

While answering questions in the Oval Office on Thursday, the US president hit out at Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow, saying they "should be forced to resign." Trump criticized Nicolle and Rachel for their remarks about 13-year-old Devarjaye DJ Daniel.

This week, Trump invited the teenage cancer survivor as a special guest to his joint session in the White House and gave him an honorary Secret Service badge. DJ, who dreams of becoming a police officer, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2018 but has since defied the odds and survived.

He said, "Worse than CNN is 'MS-DNC,' which is the worst. And the good news is very few people watch them anymore. They have lost such credibility; and, frankly, what Nicolle Wallace said - I've never been a fan of hers, and she's not very talented - but I'll tell you, what she said the other day about that young man is disgraceful. She should be forced to resign."

The US president then criticized Rachel, attacking her credibility, as he said, "And Rachel Maddow should be forced to resign. Nobody watches her anyway. I don't know if - it's not possible they pay her as much money as I hear - but certainly she's lost all credibility." He added, "Both of them. But what they said the other day, they should be forced to resign, about that young person who is suffering."

After the teen met Trump, Nicolle said on air, "I hope he's alive for another 95 years, and I hope he lives the life he wants to live. He wants to be a cop, he knows what he wants to do and maybe when you have childhood cancer that crystallizes."

She then brought up the January 6, 2021, riots, saying, "I hope he has a long life as a law enforcement officer - but I hope he never has to defend the United States capitol against Donald Trump's supporters. And if he does, I hope he isn't one of the six who loses his life to suicide."

Rachel also weighed in, branding Trump "disgusting" and saying that he had "made a spectacle" out of the teens' [sic] cancer battle. She said during the segment, "For the record and this is disgusting, the president made a spectacle out of praising a young man who thus far has survived pediatric cancer, as if the president had something to do with that.

"This was in the midst of him praising DOGE. DOGE cuts, among other things, have cut off funding for ongoing research into pediatric cancer." The TV host faced backlash on social media for her comments on top of Trump's comments.

As DJ received his badge from Director Sean Curran on Tuesday, Trump said, "He has always dreamed of becoming a police officer. But in 2018, DJ was diagnosed with brain cancer. The doctors gave him five months at most to live. That was more than six years ago. Since that time, DJ and his dad have been on a quest to make his dream come true. And tonight, DJ, we're going to do you the biggest honor of them all."

After the MSNBC hosts were criticized for their remarks, DJ's father also shared his views, as he hit out at Rachel. Theodis Daniel told the New York Post, "She needs to shut her mouth if she has nothing nice to say. This lady didn't even serve time in the military. I was on the USS Kitty Hawk. She does not need to put her bad energy on us.">

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6 8.Qd2 Qxb2 9.Rb1 Qa3 10.f5 Nc6 11.fxe6 fxe6 12.Nxc6 bxc6 13.Be2 Be7 14.Rb3 Qc5 15.Be3 Qa5 16.Bb6 Qe5 17.Bd4 Qa5 18.O-O Qd8 1/2-1/2>

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.Bg5 e6 7.Qd2 a6 8.O-O-O Bd7 9.f4 b5 10.Bxf6 gxf6 11.Kb1 Qb6 12.Nxc6 Bxc6 13.f5 Qc5 14.Bd3 b4 15.Ne2 a5 16.Nf4 Bd7 17.b3 Qe5 18.g3 Rc8 19.Rhe1 Bh6 20.Bc4 Rc6 21.Qe2 Bxf4 22.gxf4 Qxf4 23.fxe6 fxe6 24.Qh5+ Ke7 25.Rg1 Be8 26.Qxa5 Qh6 27.Bb5 1-0>

Then again, when the mood hits the aforementioned <stalker>, these submissions are database dumps.