Science & Technology
One company appears to be thriving as part of NASA’s return to the Moon

NASA Space Technology

Talking to the Moon —

“This has really been a transformational year for us.”

Eric Berger

NASA Space Technology The second Intuitive Machines lander is prepared for hot-fire testing this week.

Enlarge / The second Intuitive Machines lander is prepared for hot-fire testing this week.

Intuitive Machines

One of the miracles of the Apollo Moon landings is that they were televised, live, for all the world to see. This transparency diffused doubts about whether the lunar landings really happened and were watched by billions of people.

However, as remarkable a technical achievement as it was to broadcast from the Moon in 1969, the video was grainy and black and white. As NASA contemplates a return to the Moon as part of the Artemis program, it wants much higher resolution video and communications with its astronauts on the lunar surface.

To that end, NASA announced this week that it had awarded a contract to Houston-based Intuitive Machines for “lunar relay services.” Essentially this means Intuitive Machines will be responsible for building a small constellation of satellites around the Moon that will beam data back to Earth from the lunar surface.

“One of the requirements is a 4K data link,” said Steve Altemus, co-founder and chief executive of Intuitive Machines, in an interview. “That kind of high fidelity data only comes from a data relay with a larger antenna than can be delivered to the surface of the Moon.”

NASA Space Technology About the plan

This is part of NASA’s plan to build a more robust “Near Space Network” for communications within 1 million miles of Earth (the Moon is about 240,000 miles from Earth). Intuitive Machines’ contract is worth as much as $4.82 billion over the next decade, depending on the level of communication services that NASA chooses to purchase.

The space agency is also expected to award a ground-based component of this network for large dishes to receive signals from near space, taking some of this burden off the Deep Space Network. Altemus said Intuitive Machines has also bid on this ground component contract.

The Houston company, with its IM-1 mission, made a largely successful landing on the Moon in February. A second lunar landing mission, IM-2, is scheduled to take place in late December or January, a few months from now. Funded largely by NASA, the IM-2 mission will carry a small drill to the South Pole of the Moon to search for water ice in Shackleton Crater.

Then, approximately 15 months from now, the company is planning to launch another lander, IM-3. This mission is likely to carry the first data-relay satellite—each is intended to be about 500 kg, Altemus said, but the final design of the vehicles is still being finalized—to lunar orbit. Assuming this first satellite works well, the two following IM missions will each carry two relay satellites, making for a constellation of five spacecraft orbiting the Moon.

Two of the satellites will go into polar orbits and serve NASA’s Artemis needs at the South Pole, Altemus said. Two more are likely to go into halo orbits, and a fifth satellite will be placed into an equatorial orbit. This will provide full coverage of the Moon not just for communications, but also for position, navigation, and timing.

NASA Space Technology Intuitive Machines rising

A former deputy director of Johnson Space Center, Altemus founded Intuitive Machines in 2013 along with an investor, Kam Ghaffarian, and an aerospace engineer named Tim Crain. It hasn’t always been easy. Development of Intuitive Machines’ Nova C lander took years longer than anticipated; there were setbacks such as a propellant tank failure, and money was at times tight.

In part to address these financial difficulties, the company went public in 2023, at the tail end of the mania in which space companies were becoming publicly traded via special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. Many space companies that went public this way have struggled mightily, and Intuitive Machines has also faced similar pressures.

“It’s been a challenge,” Altemus said. “We went public in 2023, and navigating that was the story of last year, as well as getting to the launch pad.”

But then good things started happening. Despite some technical troubles, including the failure of its altimeter, the company’s first lander managed a soft touchdown on the Moon on its side. Even with this untinended orientation, the Intuitive Machines-1 mission still managed to complete the vast majority of its science objectives. In August, the company won its fourth task order from NASA—essentially a lunar delivery mission—under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

And then the company won the massive data relay contract this week.

“This has really been a transformational year for us,” Altemus said. “The vision for the company is finally coming together.”

Politics
Tim Walz appears at California fundraiser after defending military service – as it happened

Politics tamfitronics

Politics tamfitronics Walz defends military service in first solo campaign appearance

Speaking of the Harris campaign, the vice-president’s newly minted running mate, Tim Walztoday made his first solo campaign appearance at a convention of union members.

The Minnesota governor gave a wide-ranging speech in which he attacked Donald Trump and cheered the power of organized labor, while also taking time to respond to attacks from the former president and his supporters, who say Walz has exaggerated his military service.

Here’s what he said in response, at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’s annual convention:

“I am damn proud of my service to this country. And I firmly believe you should never denigrate another person’s service record.”

— Amid GOP attacks, Tim Walz defends the timing of his decision to retire from the National Guard in 2005 pic.twitter.com/zEXTt2cXLA

— The Recount (@therecount) August 13, 2024nn”}}”>

“I am damn proud of my service to this country. And I firmly believe you should never denigrate another person’s service record.”

— Amid GOP attacks, Tim Walz defends the timing of his decision to retire from the National Guard in 2005 pic.twitter.com/zEXTt2cXLA

— The Recount (@therecount) August 13, 2024

The attacks on Walz’s military service, from Trump allies including his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vancehave centered on the timing of his decision to retire after 24 years of army national guard service. Here’s more on that:

Tim Walz has wrapped up his 30 minute appearance at an event in Newport that donors paid between $1000 and 100,000 to attend.

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The Orange Country register reports that his speech was “peppered with Midwest jokes and self-deprecating quips”.

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Here is the local news outlet’s report:

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n

Standing before a large ballroom at the Balboa Bay Resort, a waterfront hotel in Newport Beach, Walz ran through his resume: governor, congressman, educator, coach — “We won the damn state championship,” he reminded a cheering audience. He ran through his platform — supporting gun ownership when balanced with certain regulations, paid family leave and clean air regulations.

n

‘They keep talking about these are radical things, and I’m like, go ahead and label me whatever you want because I’ll damn sure guarantee you 80% of people in Minnesota and across the country want those things,’ said Walz to applause.

n

‘You know better than anybody in this state what we’ve got in the vice president,’ Walz said. ‘She’s found her voice.’

n

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One of the fundraiser’s hosts, attorney Wylie Aitken, said he had never seen so much enthusiasm in all the years he’d been doing this:

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‘“It’s amazing that when everybody was kind of down and out and feeling, legitimately, concern with Biden, etc., then suddenly to have this reversal and to see this incredible enthusiasm that’s energised everyone.”

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Missouri voters will decide in November whether to guarantee a right to abortion with a constitutional amendment that would reverse the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.

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Missouri has become the eighth state to have abortion on the ballot in November.

n The secretary of state’s office certified Tuesday that an initiative petition received more than enough signatures from registered voters to qualify for the general election. It will need approval from a majority of voters to become enshrined in the state constitution.

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rally in support of abortion rights, 2 July 2022, in Kansas City, Missouri.”,”caption”:”People rally in support of abortion rights, 2 July 2022, in Kansas City, Missouri. “,”credit”:”Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Missouri will join at least seven states voting on abortion rights during the presidential election.

n Arizona’s secretary of state certified an abortion-rights measure for the ballot on Monday. Measures also will go before voters in Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada and South Dakota.

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While not explicitly addressing abortion rights, a New York ballot measure would bar discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes” and “reproductive healthcare,” among other things.

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Tim Walz is scheduled to appear at a fundraiser in Newport Beach, California this afternoon. On Wednesday, he will address fundraisers in Denver and Boston, and then wrap up his trip on Thursday in Newport, Rhode Island, and Southampton, New York.

n Walz’s focus on fundraising this week comes after he stormed through a series of battleground states with Harris last week to introduce himself to voters nationally. The two held rallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.

n His speeches so far have been built around key themes for Democrats in 2024: support for abortion rights, lifting the middle class and characterizing Trump as “weird” — an attack line Walz has been credited with authoring.

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hold signs as US Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz speaks at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) 46th International Convention in Los Angeles, California, US, 13 August 2024.”,”caption”:”Supporters hold signs as US Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz speaks at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) 46th International Convention in Los Angeles, California, US, 13 August 2024. “,”credit”:”Photograph: Ringo Chiu/Reuters”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1723589041000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”00.44 CEST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1723589617000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”00.53&nbsp ;CEST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1723589209000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”00.46 CEST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”00.46″,”title”:”Tim Walz due to appear at California fundraiser”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 14 Aug 2024 02.07 CEST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Tue 13 Aug 2024 14.55 CEST”},{“id”:”66bbddc98f081edd5aa0f150″,”elements”:[{[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Democratic voter registration has surged following Biden dropping out – and Harris stepping in, the New York Times reports.

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This follows an almost year-long trend of more people registering as Republicans than Democrats in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina, including a spike after the Trump assassination attempt.

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But after Biden dropped out, weekly Democratic registrations outnumbered Republican nominations in North Carolina.

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Pennsylvania saw the largest Democratic margin for new registrations since late last year.

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The paper’s chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, points out that the Democrats nonetheless still need to catch up:

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A bit of a shift in new voter registration in PA/NC since Biden dropped out, though Democrats still have a big deficit to makeup here – from @fparises https://t.co/QArpHqRIEo

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) August 13, 2024

nn”}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1723588041000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”00.27 CEST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1723589638000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”00.53 CEST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1723588382000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”00.33 CEST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”00.33″,”title”:”Democratic voter registration surges since Biden drops out – report says”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 14 Aug 2024 02.07 CEST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Tue 13 Aug 2024 14.55 CEST”},{“id”:”66bbd5988f081edd5aa0f117″,”elements”:[{[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Elon Musk is basking in the afterglow of the interview he conducted on Twitter/X with Donald Trump last night. The Tesla CEO said their conversation had attracted 1bn views and comments, a number that was impossible to verify, while adding he would be willing to hold a similar event with Kamala Harris. But a remark the ex-president made during the interview about firing employees who strike has spurred the United Auto Workers to file a federal labor law complaint against both Trump and Musk, while Harris’s campaign dismissed last night’s event as a chat between “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a live stream in the year 2024”. The campaign also went public with news that it had received warning from the FBI of foreign hackers trying to breach its systems, but does not think they have been successful.

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Here’s what else has happened today so far:

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    n

  • n

    Tim Walzthe Minnesota governor who is Harris’s running mate, made his first solo campaign appearance at a union convention, and defended his military service.

  • n

  • n

    Harris has no public events scheduled today, but her campaign continues to face questions over why the vice-president hasn’t held a press conference or granted a sit-down interview since announcing her bid for the White House.

  • n

  • n

    Musk has a long history of opposing unions, including at Tesla, where the UAW has been trying to encourage workers to organize.

  • n

  • n

    Trump has been flying around to campaign events in a plane once owned by Jeffrey Epsteinaccording to a report.

  • n

  • n

    Bernie Sandersthe progressive senator, warned that Trump was “laying the groundwork” to dispute the November election, if he loses.

  • n

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Speaking of the Harris campaign, the vice-president’s newly minted running mate, Tim Walztoday made his first solo campaign appearance at a convention of union members.

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The Minnesota governor gave a wide-ranging speech in which he attacked Donald Trump and cheered the power of organized labor, while also taking time to respond to attacks from the former president and his supporters, who say Walz has exaggerated his military service.

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Here’s what he said in response, at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’s annual convention:

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“I am damn proud of my service to this country. And I firmly believe you should never denigrate another person’s service record.”

— Amid GOP attacks, Tim Walz defends the timing of his decision to retire from the National Guard in 2005 pic.twitter.com/zEXTt2cXLA

— The Recount (@therecount) August 13, 2024

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The attacks on Walz’s military service, from Trump allies including his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vancehave centered on the timing of his decision to retire after 24 years of army national guard service. Here’s more on that:

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Kamala Harris’s campaign said it has received a warning from the FBI that it had been targeted by foreign hackers, but they have not detected any breaches of their systems.

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“In July, the campaign legal and security teams were notified by the FBI that we were targeted by a foreign actor influence operation. We have robust cybersecurity measures in place, and are not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from those efforts. We remain in communication with appropriate law enforcement authorities,” a campaign official said.

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Earlier this week, the FBI said it was investigating a leak of documents from the Trump campaign that is being blamed on hackers tied to Iran. Here’s more on that:

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The prominent progressive senator Bernie Sanders has warned that Donald Trump is preparing to once again dispute the results of the 2024 election, should he lose.

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Trump has never publicly conceded his 2020 election loss to Joe Bidenand engaged in a months-long effort to prevent the Democrat from taking office that culminated in the violent January 6 insurrection.

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In a just-released statement, Sanders cites the former president’s recent language to argue that he is preparing to do the same this year:

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n

Donald Trump may be crazy, but he’s not stupid. When he claims that “nobody” showed up at a 10,000-person Harris-Walz rally in Michigan that was live-streamed and widely covered by the media, that it was all AI, and that Democrats cheat all of the time, there is a method to his madness. Clearly, and dangerously, what Trump is doing is laying the groundwork for rejecting the election results if he loses. If you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally do not exist, it will not be hard to convince them that the election returns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere are “fake” and “fraudulent”.

n

This is what destroying faith in institutions is about. This is what undermining democracy is about. This is what fascism is about.

n

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Sea level rise will help create “more oceanfront property”, carbon pollution is only a problem once it starts causing “headaches and nausea” and we should be more worried about “nuclear warming” than global warming.

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Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s conversation on X, which Musk owns, last night featured several incoherent and baseless statements on the climate crisisprompting both confusion and derision among environmental advocates.

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Bill McKibbenco-founder of the climate group 350.org, labeled it the “dumbest climate conversation of all time.”

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Trump, the Republican presidential nominee in this election, said that rising seas will help create “more oceanfront property” and complained that “people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming,” in reference to potential nuclear war.

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During the often disjointed exchange, Trump also said it is a “disgrace” that Joe Biden’s administration hadn’t opened up the Arctic to oil drilling and baselessly claimed that “you have farmers that are not allowed to farm anymore and have to get rid of their cattle” because of climate edicts.

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Musk, meanwhile, said that he is “helping the environment” by making electric cars via Tesla but said that he didn’t want people to “vilify” the oil and gas industry that is driving the climate crisis and that the real dangers were, he felt, an increase in CO2 that will cause “headaches and nausea” and the world potentially running out of oil.

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“We don’t need to rush and we don’t need to like, you know, stop farmers from farming or, you know, prevent people from having steaks or basic stuff like that,” Musk said about the urgency of climate change. “Like leave the farmers alone.”

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Scientists are clear that the world needs to rapidly move away from fossil fuels to avoid worsening and disastrous climate impacts such as heatwaves, flooding and droughts.

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The exchange did little to assuage concerns that a second Trump term will only help accelerate dangerous global heating.

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of the Statue of Liberty underwater because of sea level rise.”,”caption”:”Illustration of the Statue of Liberty underwater because of sea level rise.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Denis—S/Shutterstock”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1723572856000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”20.14 CEST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1723574263000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”20.37 CEST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1723573520000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”20.25 CEST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”20.25″,”title”:”Trump and Musk talk on climate labeled ‘dumb’ by top expert”,”contributors”:[{[{“name”:”Oliver Milman”,”imageUrl”:”https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/contributor/2014/9/30/1412084830432/Oliver-Milman.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=dc9d7205ee13422323669d8ba9443463″,”largeImageUrl”:”https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/09/Oliver-Milman,-L.png?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=851c9c9b1357655e93f43b2ec335f721″}],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 14 Aug 2024 02.07 CEST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Tue 13 Aug 2024 14.55 CEST”},{“id”:”66bb8e3f8f081edd5aa0ee97″,”elements”:[{[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

The United Auto Workers union (UAW) leadership is going all in against Donald Trump for this presidential election.

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In addition to the statement from the union president, Shawn Fainthe association has posted on X: “He’s for the billionaires. Not for you. Donald Trump is a scab.”

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He’s for the billionaires. Not for you.
Donald Trump is a scab. #StandUpUAW pic.twitter.com/hj10zDPbzw

— UAW (@UAW) August 13, 2024

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And, with a skeptical inquiring face emoji, the union re-posted a message from Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign X account, @KamalaHQ: “Trump praises billionaire Elon Musk for firing workers who were striking for better pay and working conditions.”

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The UAW has endorsed Harris for president, as the presumptive Democratic nominee against Trump, the Republican nominee. It is also trying to unionize workers at Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle company.

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🤔 https://t.co/dxTzqxYIzF

— UAW (@UAW) August 13, 2024

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Elon Musk is basking in the afterglow of the interview he conducted on X with Donald Trump last night. The Tesla CEO said their conversation had attracted 1bn views and comments, a number that was impossible to verify, while adding he would be willing to hold a similar event with Kamala Harris. But a remark Trump made during the interview about firing employees who strike has spurred the United Auto Workers to file a federal labor law complaint against both the former president and Musk, while Harris’s campaign dismissed last night’s event as a chat between “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a live stream in the year 2024”.

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Here’s what else has happened today so far:

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    n

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    Harris has no public events scheduled today, but her campaign continues to face questions over why the vice-president hasn’t held a press conference or granted a sit-down interview since announcing her bid for the White House.

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    Musk has a long history of opposing unions, including at Tesla, where the UAW has been trying to encourage workers to organize.

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    Trump has been flying around to campaign events in a plane once owned by Jeffrey Epsteinaccording to a report.

  • n

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The United Auto Workers labor union, which is trying to organize workers at Tesla, has filed a federal labor charge over comments Donald Trump made last night in his interview with Elon Musk.

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The union, which has endorsed Kamala Harris’s bid for the White House, said this comment from Trump to Musk ran afoul of federal law against threatening to fire workers who go on strike: “You walk in, you say, You want to quit? They go on strike, I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s OK, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone.’”

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Here’s more, from UAW president Shawn Fain:

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n

Donald Trump will always side against workers standing up for themselves, and he will always side with billionaires like Elon Musk, who is contributing $45m a month to a Super Pac to get him elected. Both Trump and Musk want working-class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly. It’s disgusting, illegal and totally predictable from these two clowns.

n

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Following his conversation with Donald Trump last night, Elon Musk said he would be willing to host a similar interview with Kamala Harris:

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Happy to host Kamala on an 𝕏 Spaces too

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

nn”},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Musk proposed using X’s Spaces feature, which allows live audio broadcasts. Should Harris take him up on the offer, one wonders if he will first fix whatever issue caused the more than 40-minute delay in beginning his interview with Trump last night.

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Good morning US politics readers. On Monday night, Donald Trump sat down with billionaire Elon Musk for an interview on X that began 45 minutes late, featured the Republican presidential nominee’s greatest hits and biggest lies, in which he denigrated immigrants and attempted to paint Kamala Harris as a “radical” leftist, repeatedly mispronounced her name, and called the Democratic presumptive nominee “beautiful”.

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Throughout the conversation, the two men lavished praise and admiration on each other and at the end, Musk told Trump he was “on the right path”. Here are key takeaways from the event.

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The Harris campaign condemned the interview as an example of Trump’s “extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda”. Joseph Costello, a Harris campaign spokesperson, said:

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n

Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself – self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a live stream in the year 2024.

n

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The interview came as Harris has pulled ahead in polls following the launch of her campaign last month. The Decision Desk HQ and the Hill’s national polling average now shows Harris with a 0.3% lead over Trump, who had a 3.3% advantage over Joe Biden before the president withdrew from the race.

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Harris appears to be in an even stronger position in the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which will likely determine the outcome of the election in November. According to a recent set of surveys conducted last week by the New York Times and Siena College, Harris now leads by four points in those three states, while prior polls showed a virtual tie or a slight Trump advantage in those states.

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Here’s what else we’re watching:

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12:20pm ET. Joe Biden and the first ladyJill Biden, will depart the White House en route to New Orleans.

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3.35pm. Minnesota governor and Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, will deliver remarks at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Convention in Los Angeles. He will later deliver remarks at a campaign reception in Newport, California.

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Key events

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Politics tamfitronics Walz speaks to donors at fundraising event in Newport

Tim Walz has wrapped up his 30 minute appearance at an event in Newport that donors paid between $1000 and 100,000 to attend.

The Orange Country register reports that his speech was “peppered with Midwest jokes and self-deprecating quips”.

Here is the local news outlet’s report:

Standing before a large ballroom at the Balboa Bay Resort, a waterfront hotel in Newport Beach, Walz ran through his resume: governor, congressman, educator, coach — “We won the damn state championship,” he reminded a cheering audience. He ran through his platform — supporting gun ownership when balanced with certain regulations, paid family leave and clean air regulations.

‘They keep talking about these are radical things, and I’m like, go ahead and label me whatever you want because I’ll damn sure guarantee you 80% of people in Minnesota and across the country want those things,’ said Walz to applause.

‘You know better than anybody in this state what we’ve got in the vice president,’ Walz said. ‘She’s found her voice.’

One of the fundraiser’s hosts, attorney Wylie Aitken, said he had never seen so much enthusiasm in all the years he’d been doing this:

‘“It’s amazing that when everybody was kind of down and out and feeling, legitimately, concern with Biden, etc., then suddenly to have this reversal and to see this incredible enthusiasm that’s energised everyone.”

Politics tamfitronics Abortion will be on ballot in at least eight states in November

Missouri voters will decide in November whether to guarantee a right to abortion with a constitutional amendment that would reverse the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.

Missouri has become the eighth state to have abortion on the ballot in November.

The secretary of state’s office certified Tuesday that an initiative petition received more than enough signatures from registered voters to qualify for the general election. It will need approval from a majority of voters to become enshrined in the state constitution.

Politics tamfitronics People rally in support of abortion rights, 2 July 2022, in Kansas City, Missouri.
People rally in support of abortion rights, 2 July 2022, in Kansas City, Missouri. Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP

Missouri will join at least seven states voting on abortion rights during the presidential election.

Arizona’s secretary of state certified an abortion-rights measure for the ballot on Monday. Measures also will go before voters in Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada and South Dakota.

While not explicitly addressing abortion rights, a New York ballot measure would bar discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes” and “reproductive healthcare,” among other things.

Harris and Walz are planning to hold a rally in Milwaukee while the DNC is happening in Chicago next week, the New York Times reports – in the venue where Trump accepted the Republican nomination last month.

The rally is planned for Tuesday, according to the report, which cites four people briefed on the discussions.

The Fiserv Forum, where the rally will reportedly take place, is 80 miles, or 128km, from the United Center in Chicago, where the DNC is taking place all week.

The move is not unusual, but is interesting because it will serve as a direct comparison of crowd size and energy to Trump’s event. Trump has claimed, falsely, that Harris’s crowd sizes are fake.

Meanwhile Joe Biden says Ukraine’s military incursion into Russia has “created a real dilemma” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. He added that US officials are in constant touch with the Ukrainians about the move.

About 1,000 Ukrainian troops rammed through the Russian border in the early hours of 6 August, with tanks and armoured vehicles, Reuters reports. A US official said late on Tuesday that the goal of Ukraine’s Kursk incursion appears to be to force Russia to pull troops out of Ukraine to defend Russian territory against the cross-border assault.

Answering questions from reporters upon arrival in New Orleans, Biden said he has been briefed every four to five hours for the last six to eight days on Ukraine’s action.

“It’s creating a real dilemma for Putin,” he said in his first substantive comments about the operation, which appeared to have caught the Russians off guard.

The US has provided billions of dollars of weaponry to Ukraine intended largely for defensive purposes, as Ukraine tries to repel the Russian invasion launched in February 2022.

Politics tamfitronics US President Joe Biden visits New Orleans on 13 August 2024.
US President Joe Biden visits New Orleans on 13 August 2024. Photograph: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

In May, Biden authorised Kyiv to launch US-supplied weapons at military targets inside Russia that are supporting an offensive against the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

The White House said Ukraine did not provide advance notice of its incursion, which took place in the Kursk region of Russia. Russian forces on Tuesday struck back at Ukrainian troops with missiles, drones and airstrikes.

As we await news of Walz’s appearance at a fundraiser in California, here is AP’s look at his first solo appearance since being named the Democratic vice presidential nominee last week:

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz warned cheering union members Tuesday that Donald Trump would wage war on working people while threatening Medicare and Social Security as he kicked off a five-state fundraising swing.

Politics tamfitronics Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Convention in Los Angeles, Tuesday, 13 August.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Convention in Los Angeles, Tuesday, 13 August. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP

Speaking in a cavernous, dimly lit ballroom to thousands of members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Walz said he and Vice President Kamala Harris want to spread collective bargaining and other worker protections to “every state in the union.”

“When unions are strong, America is strong,” Walz, a former school teacher and union member, said.

The Democratic campaign chose to kick off Walz’s national swing on the safest of political terrain — heavily Democratic California, home to Vice President Harris and where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans about 2-1.

Though Harris is gaining ground in the polls, Trump is still more popular than he was at this point in 2016 or 2020:

Point 2 has been overlooked for a year https://t.co/uQpsRi38iS

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 13, 2024nn”}}”>

Politics tamfitronics Tim Walz due to appear at California fundraiser

Tim Walz is scheduled to appear at a fundraiser in Newport Beach, California this afternoon. On Wednesday, he will address fundraisers in Denver and Boston, and then wrap up his trip on Thursday in Newport, Rhode Island, and Southampton, New York.

Walz’s focus on fundraising this week comes after he stormed through a series of battleground states with Harris last week to introduce himself to voters nationally. The two held rallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.

His speeches so far have been built around key themes for Democrats in 2024: support for abortion rights, lifting the middle class and characterizing Trump as “weird” — an attack line Walz has been credited with authoring.

Politics tamfitronics Supporters hold signs as US Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz speaks at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) 46th International Convention in Los Angeles, California, US, 13 August 2024.
Supporters hold signs as US Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz speaks at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) 46th International Convention in Los Angeles, California, US, 13 August 2024. Photograph: Ringo Chiu/Reuters

Politics tamfitronics Democratic voter registration surges since Biden drops out – report says

Democratic voter registration has surged following Biden dropping out – and Harris stepping in, the New York Times reports.

This follows an almost year-long trend of more people registering as Republicans than Democrats in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina, including a spike after the Trump assassination attempt.

But after Biden dropped out, weekly Democratic registrations outnumbered Republican nominations in North Carolina.

Pennsylvania saw the largest Democratic margin for new registrations since late last year.

The paper’s chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, points out that the Democrats nonetheless still need to catch up:

A bit of a shift in new voter registration in PA/NC since Biden dropped out, though Democrats still have a big deficit to makeup here – from @fparises https://t.co/QArpHqRIEo

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) August 13, 2024nn”}}”>

AP has important apostrophe news:

Whatever possessed Vice President Kamala Harris to pick Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t a desire to inflame arguments about apostrophes. But it doesn’t take much to get grammar nerds fired up. They’re all over social media debating rules for possessive proper names ending in S. Some agree with The Associated Press, which says just add an apostrophe to Harris to make it possessive. Others agree with The New York Times and other outlets that add an apostrophe S. Timothy Pulju, a senior lecturer in linguistics at Dartmouth College, says the AP guidance reflects how English was spoken and written centuries ago but a shift is underway. For now, he says both are acceptable.

“The lower the stakes, the bigger the fight,” Ron Woloshun, a creative director and digital marketer in California told AP.

If we don’t agree on these rules right now, it’s going to be a very long eight years:

Let’s do an S after the apostrophe after Harris, and an S after the apostrophe after Walz.

“Harris’s pick vindicates Walz’s message.”

I will not be taking further questions at this time.

— The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) August 6, 2024″}}”>

If we don’t agree on these rules right now, it’s going to be a very long eight years:

Let’s do an S after the apostrophe after Harris, and an S after the apostrophe after Walz.

“Harris’s pick vindicates Walz’s message.”

I will not be taking further questions at this time.

— The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) August 6, 2024

The resident punctuation guru on my desk, Warren Murray, has this rule: you use apostrophe and -s when that is the way you say it. Otherwise, it is an apostrophe. So it is Harris’s, and Walz’s. (At my Anglican high school the rule was that only Jesus got an apostrophe -s).

The Guardian’s style guide says: The possessive in words and names ending in S normally takes an apostrophe followed by a second S (Jones’s, James’s), but be guided by pronunciation.

Alice Herman

Tuesday’s Minnesota Democratic primary is the last in a series of heated primaries for the progressive “Squad” of House Democrats who have been vocal in their criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. Fellow Squad members Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri were recently defeated by candidates supported by a deluge of pro-Israel spending. But Omar faces a lower-key race.

The two-term congresswoman became the first woman of color to represent Minnesota in the US House of Representatives in 2019. While in office, she has allied herself with the left wing of the Democratic party, serving as the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and backing key progressive measures such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.

Politics tamfitronics United States Representative Ilhan Omar.
United States Representative Ilhan Omar. Photograph: Shutterstock

Even before the 7 October Hamas attacks and Israel’s ensuing offensive, Omar had established herself as a vocal critic of Israel. She memorably drew criticism in 2019 for quipping that US politicians’ support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins”, in reference to donations from the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (Aipac). The comment drew accusations of antisemitism and she later apologized for it.

In the wake of the 7 October attacks, and as Israel escalated its retaliatory war, Omar was among the first in Congress to call for a ceasefire. She has spoken out in support of the university encampments in solidarity with Gaza. Her daughter was suspended from Barnard College for taking part.

These together would seem to make Omar a natural target of pro-Israel groups, but Samuels, a former Minneapolis city councilman has not drawn support from Aipac or its affiliated Super Pac, United Democracy Project. In contrast, UDP dropped more than $20m to unseat Bowman and Bush.

The lobby groups have not said why they have not gotten involved in the Minnesota primary – but it is possible that Omar just did not provide them the fodder.

Hello, this is Helen Sullivan taking over our live US politics coverage. Coming up today, we’re expecting Tim Walz to speak at a Harris-Walz campaign reception in Newport Beach, California.

And Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is defending her seat in the state Democratic primary, a rematch against Don Samuels that comes two years after she barely eked out a victory against him. Polls close at 8pm Minnesota time – in about three hours.

I’ll take you through the latest – stay tuned.

Politics tamfitronics The evening so far

Elon Musk is basking in the afterglow of the interview he conducted on Twitter/X with Donald Trump last night. The Tesla CEO said their conversation had attracted 1bn views and comments, a number that was impossible to verify, while adding he would be willing to hold a similar event with Kamala Harris. But a remark the ex-president made during the interview about firing employees who strike has spurred the United Auto Workers to file a federal labor law complaint against both Trump and Musk, while Harris’s campaign dismissed last night’s event as a chat between “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a live stream in the year 2024”. The campaign also went public with news that it had received warning from the FBI of foreign hackers trying to breach its systems, but does not think they have been successful.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

  • Tim Walzthe Minnesota governor who is Harris’s running mate, made his first solo campaign appearance at a union convention, and defended his military service.

  • Harris has no public events scheduled today, but her campaign continues to face questions over why the vice-president hasn’t held a press conference or granted a sit-down interview since announcing her bid for the White House.

  • Musk has a long history of opposing unions, including at Tesla, where the UAW has been trying to encourage workers to organize.

  • Trump has been flying around to campaign events in a plane once owned by Jeffrey Epsteinaccording to a report.

  • Bernie Sandersthe progressive senator, warned that Trump was “laying the groundwork” to dispute the November election, if he loses.

In the further annals of Republicans who broke with Donald Trump returning to the fold, former North Carolina senator Richard Burr said he will vote for the ex-president in November.

Burr, who declined to seek re-election and left the Senate in 2022, was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House of Representatives in response to the January 6 insurrection.

The conviction ultimately failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate required to be approved, and North Carolina’s GOP censured Burr for his vote.

In an interview with Spectrum News, Burr said:

Maybe someone will have a hard time squaring with it. I don’t have a hard time squaring with it because I firmly understood why I voted for impeachment. And like I said, that’s not a disqualifier as to whether you can serve. It’s a bad choice I thought a president made one time.