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NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden slammed Elon Musk for hypocrisy on immigration after a published report that the Tesla CEO once worked illegally in the United States. The South Africa-born Musk denies the allegation.

“That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here. No, I’m serious. He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. And he’s talking about all these illegals coming our way?” Biden said while campaigning on Saturday in Pittsburgh at a union hall.

The Washington Post reported that Musk worked illegally in the country while on a student visa. The newspaper, citing company documents, former business associates and court documents, said Musk arrived in Palo Alto, California in 1995 for a graduate program at Stanford University “but never enrolled in courses, working instead on his startup. ”

Musk wrote on X in reply to a video post of Biden’s comments: “I was in fact allowed to work in the US.” Musk added, “The Biden puppet is lying.”

Investors in Musk’s company, Zip2, were concerned about the possibility of their founder being deported, according to the report, and gave him a deadline for obtaining a work visa. The newspaper also cited a 2005 email from Musk to his Tesla co-founders acknowledging that he did not have authorization to be in the U.S. when he started Zip2.

According to the account, that email was submitted as evidence in a now-closed California defamation lawsuit and said that Musk had apllied to Stanford so he could stay in the country legally.

Musk is today the world’s richest man. He has committed more than $70 million to help Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and other GOP candidates win on Nov. 5, and is one of the party’s biggest donors this campaign season. He has been headlining events in the White House race’s final stretch, often echoing Trump’s dark rhetoric against immigration.

Trump has pledged to give Musk a role in his administration if he wins next month.

There was no immediate response to messages left with X and Tesla seeking Musk’s comment.

ORLANDO, FL. (AP) -  Diana Xue has always followed the politics of her husband, friends and neighbors in Orlando, Florida, and voted Republican.

This Election Day, she’ll break that pattern.

When Florida’s GOP-dominated Legislature and Republican governor enacted a law last year banning Chinese nationals without permanent U.S. residency from buying property or land, Xue, who became a U.S. citizen about a decade after coming from China for college, had an “awakening.” She felt then that the Sunshine State had, more or less, legalized discrimination against Chinese people.

Florida has proved reliably Republican in recent years, but Xue said, “Because of this law, I will start to help out, flip every seat I can.”

At least two dozen states have passed or proposed “alien land laws” targeting Chinese nationals and companies from purchasing property or land because of China’s status as a foreign adversary. Other countries are mentioned, but experts say China is the constant focus in political discussions.

Mostly Republican legislators have pushed the land laws amid growing fears of intelligence and economic threats from China. At the time of the Florida law’s signing, Gov. Ron DeSantis called China the “greatest geopolitical threat” to the U.S. and said the law was taking a stand against the Chinese Communist Party.

Some China-born people with American citizenship are now feeling alienated by the laws to the point that they are leaning Democratic. Many are afraid of being treated wrongly because of their ethnicity.

U.S.-China tensions hit a fever pitch in February 2023 after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was spotted over Montana. Shortly after, GOP-leaning states like Missouri, Texas and Tennessee introduced similar land ownership measures.

The measures all involved restrictions on businesses or people from China and other foreign adversaries, including not buying land within a certain distance from military installations or “critical infrastructure.” Under some of the laws, very narrow exceptions were made for non-tourist visa holders and people who have been granted asylum.

The National Agricultural Law Center now estimates 24 states ban or limit foreigners without residency and foreign businesses or governments from owning private farmland. Interest in farmland ownership restrictions emerged after a Chinese billionaire bought more than 130,000 acres (52,600 hectares) near a U.S. Air Force base in Texas, and Chinese company Fufeng Group sought to build a corn plant near an Air Force base on 300 acres (120 hectares) in North Dakota.

Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, raised concerns that such laws not only counter market economy principles and international trade rules, but “further fuel hostility towards the Asian and Chinese community in the U.S., intensify racial discrimination, and seriously undermine the values that the U.S. claims to hold.”

State laws banning Chinese nationals from owning land discourage Chinese investors and spook other foreign investors who would otherwise help the U.S. to rebuild its industrial base, said John Ling, who has worked for decades to attract international, especially Chinese, manufacturing projects to the U.S.

The laws have also thrown off real estate agents and brokers. Angela Hsu, a commercial real estate attorney in Atlanta, said it’s been confusing to navigate a law Georgia’s governor signed in April restricting land sales to some Chinese citizens.

“The brokers I’ve talked to, they’re just trying to figure out what they can do safely,” Hsu said.

On the federal level, the House in September approved a bill that would flag as “reportable” farmland sales involving citizens from China, North Korea, Russia and Iran. The odds for it to win approval from the Senate, however, are slim.

China “has been quietly purchasing American agricultural land at an alarming rate, and this bill is a crucial step towards reversing that trend,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Washington state.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, of California, joined multiple Asian American organizations in opposing the bill, arguing its “broad-brush approach” of targeting people from specific countries amounted to racial profiling.

China owns less than 1% of total foreign-owned farmland in the U.S., far behind Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, the U.K., Germany or Portugal.

After Florida’s land law was signed in May 2023, four Chinese nationals filed a lawsuit. In April, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing them asked a federal appeals court to block it.

The saga sparked the Chinese diaspora in Florida to mobilize. Some formed the Florida Asian American Justice Alliance. Among them was Xue. She became interested studying the Legislature and lobbying. She found that only Democrats like state Rep. Anna Eskamani, who is Iranian American, agreed the law was xenophobic.

“She said, ‘This is discrimination. I’ll stand with you, and I’ll fight with you,'” Xue said.

Hua Wang, board chair of another civic engagement group, United Chinese Americans, said more people are becoming aware that these laws are directly “affecting each one of us.”

“There are people in both Texas and Florida who say for the first time they are becoming interested and they become organized,” Wang said.

Land laws passed in the name of national security echo a pattern from World War II, when the U.S. saw Japanese people as threats, said Chris Suh, a professor of Asian American history at Emory University. It’s difficult to argue the laws are unconstitutional if on paper they are citizenship-based and other countries are named, Suh said.

Anti-Chinese sentiment has shaped policies going back over 150 years. Among these was the Page Act of 1875, which strategically limited the entry of Chinese women to the U.S., and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first broad race-based immigration law.

Policies targeting foreigners hurt the bottom line of all Americans, Suh said, noting that excluding Chinese laborers from railroad work or Japanese immigrants from buying homes didn’t benefit U.S. railroad tycoons and landowners.

“That’s something to keep in today’s context as well,” Suh said. “One of the key allies of the the people who are trying to overturn the alien land law in Florida are the people who are going to lose money if they lose the potential buyers of their land.”

The law makes Chinese immigrants who achieved citizenship worry about things like racism or accusations of being a spy in their own home, Xue said.

“You think it’s nothing to do with you, but people look at you — how you look, how your last name is,” Xue said. “They are not going to ask you are you a U.S. citizen or not.”

___

Terry Tang reported from Phoenix. Didi Tang reported from Washington.

TEXAS – Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has differing stances on Former President Trump and Vice President Harris’ trips to the Lone Star State ahead of election day. Perry believe’s Trump’s Texas travel is sending a “powerful message” to Texans and the American people, while the Vice President is wasting her time with the state in the middle of a heated Senate battle. Trump’s former energy secretary went on to further sing his praises on NewsNation, citing Trump’s energy and immigration policies as reasons for why him being in the state is beneficial.

SAN ANTONIO (AP) – A Texas man who wore a hat supporting former President Donald Trump punched an election worker who told him that wearing items endorsing a candidate are prohibited at voting sites, a sheriff said Friday.

The election worker, identified as a 69-year-old man, was treated at the scene Thursday and returned to his election post at a San Antonio library on Friday, officials said. The suspect was arrested on felony charges of assaulting an elderly person and could face additional charges, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said.

The alleged assault happened at the end of the first week of early voting in Texas, where long lines have stretched outside some polling places.

Both the sheriff and county elections administrator urged voters to stay calm and patient during sometimes long waits to vote during what they described as a contentious election.

“Thankfully there was nothing life-threatening about what occurred, but it was still an ugly incident,” Salazar said.

The suspect, identified as Jesse Lutzenberger, remained in jail Friday evening, according to Bexar County records. Jail records did not list an attorney and a phone number for Lutzenberger’s home could not immediately be found Friday.

Under Texas law, wearing clothing for or against a candidate inside a polling place is prohibited, as it’s considered electioneering. Lutzenberger allegedly entered the polling location in a red “MAGA or TRUMP” baseball cap, according to an arrest affidavit.

After being told he had to remove his cap in the voting area, Lutzenberger did and proceeded to cast a ballot, according to Salazar. He then put the cap back on before leaving, followed by the clerk again telling him remove the hat while inside the building.

As the clerk escorted him out of the library, Lutzenberger allegedly threw an elbow or arm back toward the clerk and then turned to punch him in the face multiple times, according to Salazar.

The clerk was treated at the scene by emergency medical personnel, Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen said.

Salazar said there have been “several” incidents of voters wearing prohibited clothing or caps into polling places, but they then removed them when the state law was explained to them.

“Nothing here is worth getting hurt for, going to jail for,” he said.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Donald Trump tried Friday to turn a major celebratory event for Kamala Harris into an attack line tied to one of his favorite subjects, immigration.

Hours before the vice president was scheduled to appear with superstar Beyoncé in Houston, Trump made his own stop in Texas and accused Harris of hanging out with “woke celebrities” but not with the families of people who have been killed by migrants.

With 11 days until the election, Trump and Harris both took a detour from their travels in battleground states for brief forays into solidly Republican Texas. Neither believes the state is competitive, but they’re using it as a backdrop to drive a message about the issues they hope voters will have front of mind when they cast ballots. For Trump, that’s border security. For Harris, it’s abortion rights.

Trump’s trip to Texas, his second stop in a border state in two days, comes as the former president escalates his already dark and apocalyptic rhetoric against illegal immigration.

“We’re like a garbage can for the rest of the world to dump the people that they don’t want,” Trump told supporters Friday in Austin. Trump has continued to push the unfounded idea that foreign governments actively send criminals to the U.S.

Harris said the remark is “just another example of how he really belittles our country.”

“The president of the United States should be someone who elevates discourse and talks about the best of who we are, and invests in the best of who we are, not someone like Donald Trump, who is constantly demeaning and belittling who the American people are,” Harris told reporters in Houston.

Throughout the campaign, Trump has routinely appeared with grieving relatives of people who were hurt or killed by people living in the country illegally. On Friday, he ceded the microphone to the mother of a 12-year-old Texas girl, Jocelyn Nungaray, whose body was found in June. Prosecutors have charged two Venezuelan men in the U.S. illegally with capital murder.

“She was just being a child, and due to the Biden-Harris policies we have here … she’s not here anymore,” Alexis Nungaray said.

During a rally Thursday in Arizona, Trump railed against Harris for the Biden administration’s record on the border, which he said had “unleashed” an “army of migrant gangs” that are “waging a campaign of violence and terror against our citizens.”

At an event in Las Vegas later in the day, Trump claimed towns had been “invaded and conquered” by violent immigrants, adding: “We have a lot of towns that haven’t yet been infected.” Trump has long echoed tropes about immigration in portraying migrants as disease carriers, dating back to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump views immigration as the issue that won him the White House in 2016. He accuses Harris of perpetrating “a wicked betrayal of America” and having “orchestrated the most egregious betrayal that any leader in American history has ever inflicted upon our people,” even though crime is down.

While migrants have been charged with some high-profile crimes that Trump repeatedly highlights, research has shown that immigrants — including those who entered the country illegally — are charged with fewer violent crimes than American citizens.

He has also spread false theories that Democrats are registering immigrants without legal status to vote.

While in Austin, Trump also will sit down with Joe Rogan, the nation’s most listened-to podcaster, creating another opportunity for the Republican nominee to highlight the hypermasculine tone that has defined much of his 2024 White House bid. The interview is expected to be released Saturday.

Rogan interview underscores Trump’s focus on masculinity
Trump has made masculinity a central theme of his campaign, appearing on podcasts targeting young male voters and tapping surrogates who sometimes use crude language.

At a Trump rally Wednesday, former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson called the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Tim Walz, a “weak man” and compared Trump’s return to the White House to a dad who comes home ready to punish his misbehaved children.

“When Dad gets home, you know what he says?” Carlson asked. “You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you are getting a vigorous spanking right now.”

Rogan and Trump have a complicated relationship. Rogan had previously said that he declined to host Trump on his podcast before because he did not want to help him.

Earlier this year, Trump criticized Rogan after the podcaster said that then-candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. was the only person running for president who made sense to him. Kennedy has since suspended his bid, endorsed Trump and joined him on the campaign trail.

“It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring???” Trump wrote on his social media site in August, referring to Rogan’s experience as a commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

The podcaster is known for his hourslong interviews on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which is listed as No. 1 in the United States, according to Spotify’s charts. He calls women “chicks” and once laughed as a comedian friend described repeatedly coercing young women comics into sex.

HOUSTON (AP) — During his four years in office, Donald Trump erased a half a century of hard-fought progress for women when he appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, Kamala Harris will say Friday in Texas during a rally with Beyoncé, according to excerpts of her speech.

“And now, he wants to go even further. Let us be clear: If Donald Trump wins again, he will ban abortion nationwide,” Harris will say, according to excerpts ahead of the rally highlighting the medical fallout from abortion restrictions.

The message was intended to register in the political battlegrounds away from Texas, where the Democratic nominee is hoping that the aftereffects from the fall of Roe v. Wade will spur voters to turn out to support her quest for the presidency.

“For anyone watching from another state, if you think you are protected from Trump abortion bans because you live in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, California, or any state where voters or legislators have protected reproductive freedom, please know: No one is protected,” she will say. “Because a Donald Trump national ban will outlaw abortion in every single state.”

Trump has been inconsistent in his message to voters on abortion and reproductive rights, though he’s said he’d veto a national abortion ban. He has repeatedly shifted his stance and offered vague, contradictory and at times nonsensical answers to questions on an issue that has become a major vulnerability for Republicans in this year’s election.

Harris will also be joined at the rally by women who have nearly died from sepsis and other pregnancy complications because they were unable to get proper medical care, including women who never intended to end their pregnancies.

Some of them have already been out campaigning for Harris and others have told their harrowing tales in campaign ads that seek to show how the issue has ballooned into something far bigger than the right to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Since abortion was restricted in Texas, the state’s infant death rate has increased, more babies have died of birth defects and maternal mortality has risen.

With the presidential election in a dead heat, Harris is banking on abortion rights as a major driver for voters — including for Republican women, particularly since Trump appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn the constitutional right. He has been inconsistent about how he would approach the issue if voters return him to the White House.

Harris’ campaign has taken on Beyonce’s 2016 track “Freedom” as its anthem, and the message dovetails with the vice president’s emphasis on reproductive freedom. The singer’s planned appearance Friday adds a high level of star power to Harris’ visit to the state. She will be the latest celebrity to appear with or on behalf of Harris, including Lizzo, James Taylor, Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and Eminem. While in Texas, Harris also will tape a podcast with host Brené Brown.

Trump was also in Texas Friday, where he predicted he’d break records for the number of people deported from the United States if he wins the election. He was also taping a podcast with host Joe Rogan.

There is some evidence to suggest that abortion rights may drive women to the polls as it did during the 2022 midterm elections. Voters in seven states, including some conservative ones, have either protected abortion rights or defeated attempts to restrict them in statewide votes over the past two years.

“Living in Texas, it feels incredibly important to protect women’s health and safety,” said Colette Clark, an Austin voter. She said voting for Harris is the best way to prevent further abortion restrictions from happening across the country.

Another Austin resident, Daniel Kardish, didn’t know anyone who has been personally affected by the restrictions, but nonetheless views it as a key issue this election.

“I feel strongly about women having bodily autonomy,” he said.

Democrats warn that a winnowing of rights and freedoms will only continue if Trump is elected. Republican lawmakers in states across the U.S. have been rejecting Democrats’ efforts to protect or expand access to birth control, for example.

“In America, freedom is not to be given. It is not to be bestowed. It is ours. By right. And that includes the fundamental freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have the government telling her what to do,” Harris will say, according to prepared remarks.

Democrats also hope Harris’ visit will give a boost to Rep. Colin Allred, who is making a longshot bid to unseat Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Allred will appear at the rally with Harris, and in excerpts said when he is elected he’ll help codify reproductive rights.

When Roe was first overturned, Democrats initially focused on the new limitations on access to abortion to end unwanted pregnancies. But the same medical procedures used for abortions are used to treat miscarriages.

And increasingly, in 14 states with strict abortion bans, women cannot get medical care until their condition has become life-threatening. In some states, doctors can face criminal charges if they provide medical care.

About 6 in 10 Americans think their state should generally allow a person to obtain a legal abortion if they don’t want to be pregnant for any reason, according to a July poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Texas encapsulates the post-Roe landscape. Its strict abortion ban prohibits physicians from performing abortions once cardiac activity is detected, which can happen as early as six weeks or before.

As a result, women, including those who didn’t intend to end a pregnancy, are increasingly suffering worse medical care. That’s in part because doctors cannot intervene unless a woman is facing a life-threatening condition, or to prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”

The state also has become a battleground for litigation. The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the side of the state’s ban just two weeks ago.

Complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion.