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WASHINGTON – Reuters reports businessman Elon Musk, an ally of President-elect Donald Trump, endorsed Republican Senator Rick Scott for U.S. Senate majority leader on Sunday as the race to fill the influential post heats up after the party won control of the chamber. Republicans are expected to hold at least 52 seats in the 100-member Senate after capturing three previously held by Democrats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana in last Tuesday’s election. Current Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who has led his party in the chamber since 2007, has said he will step down from leadership after the election. “Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader!” Musk, a tech billionaire who has emerged as a major backer of Trump in recent months, wrote in a social media post on Sunday.

Musk is the world’s wealthiest person. Scott, who represents Florida in the Senate, is a former healthcare executive and the wealthiest sitting senator. Musk endorsed Trump on July 13, the day the former president was shot in the ear in a Pennsylvania assassination attempt. In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Scott said that the Senate needs to implement real change. “We can’t keep doing what we’re doing,” Scott said. “That’s what Donald Trump got elected to do, to be the change.” Trump campaigned on promises, among other things, to deport immigrants who are in the United States illegally, cut taxes, impose tariffs on international trading partners and loosen fiscal policy. Scott has the backing of several hard-right Republican senators, but it remains whether he can bring Republican moderates to his side.

TEXAS BORDER (AP) – Mexico is facing a second Donald Trump presidency, and few countries can match its experience as a target of Trump’s rhetoric: There have been threats to close the border, impose tariffs and even send U.S. forces to fight Mexican drug cartels if the country doesn’t do more to stem the flow of migrants and drugs. That’s not to mention what mass deportations of migrants who are in the U.S. illegally could do to remittances — the money sent home by migrants — that have become one of Mexico’s main sources of income. But as much as this second round looks like the first round — when Mexico pacified Trump by quietly ceding to his immigration demands — circumstances have changed, and not necessarily for the better. Today, Mexico has in Claudia Sheinbaum a somewhat stern leftist ideologue as president, and Trump is not known for handling such relations well.

Back in 2019, Mexico’s then-President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador was a charismatic, plain-spoken, folksy leader who seemed to understand Trump, because both had a transactional view of politics: You give me what I want, I’ll give you what you want. The two went on to form a chummy relationship. But while López Obrador was forged in the give-and-take politics of the often-corrupt former ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, Sheinbaum grew up in a family of leftist activists and got her political experience in radical university student movements. “Claudia is more ideological than López Obrador, and so the problem is that I see her potentially responding to Trumpian policies, whether it’s, you know, organized crime or immigration or tariffs with a much more nationalistic, jingoistic view of the relationship,” said Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s former ambassador to the U.S. from 2007 to 2013. Sheinbaum made a point of being one of the first world leaders to call Trump on Thursday to congratulate him after the election, but during the call Trump did two things that may say a lot about how things will go.

DALLAS (AP) — In one Norman Rockwell painting, a family proudly welcomes a beaming Boy Scout home from camp, his duffel bag in hand. In another of Rockwell’s achingly idyllic works, a Cub Scout stands on a chair to measure the chest of his older brother, a Boy Scout who has taped his fitness record to his bedroom wall.

Many of the works from the Boy Scouts of America’s collection are as interwoven into American life as the organization itself, having been featured on magazine covers, calendars and even used to sell war bonds. Next week, the works will begin to be auctioned off to help pay the compensation owed to tens of thousands of people — mainly men — who were sexually abused while in scouting.

The collection of over 300 works, including dozens by Rockwell, is estimated to be worth nearly $60 million — a tiny amount in relation to the organization’s multibillion dollar bankruptcy plan. Campgrounds and other Boy Scouts’ properties have also been sold to help pay the survivors.

“The idea that an iconic art collection that the Boy Scouts have assembled over many years is being liquidated in order to pay survivors recoveries and to bring them some measure of justice I think is very significant,” said Barbara Houser, a retired bankruptcy judge who is overseeing the survivors’ settlement trust.

This year, the 114-year-old organization based in suburban Dallas announced it is rebranding to Scouting America, a change intended to signal the organization’s commitment to inclusivity. The group now welcomes girls, as well as gay youth and leaders.

MIAMI (AP) — From Pennsylvania to Florida to Texas, areas with high numbers of Hispanics often had little in common on Election Day other than backing Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris for president.

Trump, the president-elect, made inroads in heavily Puerto Rican areas of eastern Pennsylvania where the vice president spent the last full day of her campaign. Trump turned South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, a decadeslong Democratic stronghold populated both by newer immigrants and Tejanos who trace their roots in the state for several generations.

He also improved his standing with Hispanic voters along Florida’s Interstate 4 corridor linking the Tampa Bay area — home to people of Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Colombian and Puerto Rican origin — with Orlando, where Puerto Ricans make up about 43% of the local Hispanic population. Trump was the first Republican since 1988 to win Miami-Dade County, home to a sizable Cuban population and the country’s metropolitan area with the highest share of immigrants.

It was a realignment that, if it sticks, could change American politics.

Texas and Florida are already reliably Republican, but more Hispanics turning away from Democrats in future presidential races could further dent the party’s “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, that had helped catapult it to the White House before Trump romped through all three this time. The shift might even make it harder for Democrats to win in the West, in states such as Arizona and Nevada.

Harris tried to highlight the ways Trump may have insulted or threatened Latinos.

Trump, in his first term, curtailed the use of Temporary Protected Status, which Democratic President Joe Biden extended to thousands of Venezuelans, and tried to terminate the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He also delayed the release of relief aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 until nearly the end of his term, having long blasted the island’s officials as corrupt and inept.

Once he returns to the White House, Trump has pledge to stage the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. That could affect millions of families in mixed-status homes, where people who are in the United States illegally live with American citizens or those with legal residency.

But the Democratic warnings did not appear to break through with enough voters for Harris. Now the party must figure out how to win back votes from a critical, fast-growing group.

“Trump, he’s a very confounding figure,” said Abel Prado, a Democratic operative and pollster who serves as executive director of the advocacy group Cambio Texas. “We have no idea how to organize against him. We have no idea how to respond. We have no idea how to not take the bait.”

Ultimately, concerns about immigration did not resonate as much as pocketbook issues with many Hispanics.

About 7 in 10 Hispanic voters were “very concerned” about the cost of food and groceries, slightly more than about two-thirds of voters overall, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. Nearly two-thirds of Hispanic voters said that they were “very concerned” about their housing costs, compared with about half of voters overall.

Trump had a clear edge among Hispanic voters who were “very concerned” about the cost of food. Half said he would better handle the economy, compared with about 4 in 10 for Harris. Among Hispanic voters who were very worried about crime in their community, Trump had a similar advantage.

“When they looked at both candidates, they saw who could improve our economy and the quality of life,” said Marcela Diaz-Myers, a Colombian immigrant who headed a Hispanic outreach task force for the Pennsylvania Republican Party. “Did he sometimes offend? Yes. But that happens in political campaigns. Many of the people who voted for President Trump were able to get past this and trust that he will move the country in the right direction.”

Harris promised to lower grocery prices by cracking down on corporate price gouging and to increase federal funding for first-time homebuyers. Also, recent violent crime rates have declined in many parts of the country.

Shen also spent many of the final days of the campaign trying to capitalize on remarks by a comic who spoke at a Trump rally in New York and joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.” She even leaned on Puerto Rican celebrities — from Bad Bunny to Jennifer Lopez — to decry racism.

But Trump nonetheless gained ground in some of the areas with the highest concentration of Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, the state where Harris spent more time campaigning than any other. He won the counties of Berks, Monroe and Luzerne — and lost Lehigh County by fewer than 5,000 votes against Harris. Biden had carried it by nearly three times that margin in 2020.

Trump’s victory was even wider in Florida, where nearly one-quarter of residents are Hispanic. He won the state by 13 percentage points — or about four times his 2020 margin.

Trump also flipped the central Florida counties of Seminole and Osceola, where many Venezuelans have immigrated as their home country becomes increasingly unstable, and narrowed Democrats’ advantage in Orange County, which is also heavily Venezuelan.

Farther south, Trump won Miami-Dade County with an 11-percentage point advantage after losing it by 7 percentage points to Biden and by 30 percentage points to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Kevin Marino Cabrera, a Miami-Dade County commissioner who was state director for Trump’s 2020 campaign, said Hispanics rejected the “woke ideology.” Trump has made his opposition to transgender rights central to his campaign.

“To be clear, Hispanic voters are not buying what Democrats are selling,” Cabrera said.

The same was true in South Texas, where Hispanics are largely of Mexican descent.

Prado, the Democratic operative and pollster, lives in Hidalgo County, which is 92% Hispanic and the most populous part of the Rio Grande Valley. Trump carried it after losing by more than 40 percentage points in 2016. Trump swept all the major counties along the Texas-Mexico border.

Prado said Democratic county commissioners and state legislators helped secure funding for new bridges across the Texas-Mexico border and for other initiatives that have sparked commerce and economic and job growth in the area. Yet, he said, “the Republican Party has done a really good job of inserting themselves as an answer to nonexistent problems and then taking credit for (things) that they didn’t do.”

Prado said many Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley, particularly devoutly religious ones, were alienated by national Democrats’ focus on reproductive and transgender rights, with the latter becoming a key political weapon for Republicans.

“This nonsense about you’re going to send your son to school and he’s gonna come back a girl,” he said. “Our side scoffed because we said, ‘No one’s going to believe that.’ But, no, it struck a chord.”

Others were simply looking to cast a defiant vote, Prado said, or were inspired by the idea of self-made people embracing the American dream, even though Trump got his start in business with a large loan from his father.

Daniel Alegre, CEO of TelevisaUnivision, which owns the Spanish-language television Univision, along with other television and radio properties, said Trump’s gain among Hispanics was less about party than issues and that Hispanics were most concerned about the economy and immigration.

Alegre, whose network hosted town halls in October with both Trump and Harris, also noted that there’s a growing feeling among Hispanic citizens that new immigrants were getting more government services than were available when immigrants who have been here longer arrived in the United States — and that the Trump campaign tapped into resentment around that issue.

“The most important thing either party can do is keep their ears to the ground and stay connected to the community,” he said, and in this case, the Trump campaign clearly accomplished that.

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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Linley Sanders in Washington and David Bauder in New York contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The election of Donald Trump returns an ally of school choice to the White House, this time with a Republican-controlled Senate — and potentially House — that could be more supportive of proposals that fizzled during his first term.

Although proposals to expand private schooling suffered high-profile defeats in several states, Trump’s victory has brought new optimism to advocates of supporting school choice at the federal level. One of their main priorities: tax credits for donations to organizations that provide private school scholarships.

Jim Blew, who served as an assistant secretary in the U.S. Education Department in the first Trump administration, said he’s hopeful the new Congress will greenlight ideas like tax credits for scholarships.

“The new members are all very clearly supportive of school choice, and I think that’s going to change the dynamics,” said Blew, who co-founded the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute.

Private school choice comprises several ways of using taxpayer money to support education outside of traditional public schools, including vouchers, education savings accounts and tax-credit scholarships. The idea of giving this option to all families regardless of income — known as universal private school choice — has soared in popularity in recent years and is now enshrined in law in a dozen states. Nearly three dozen states have some form of private school choice.

Yet the concept has faced pushback — and not just from groups like teachers unions that have long advocated for keeping public money in public schools. Some conservatives in states with large rural communities have questioned the programs’ merits, citing the lack of private schools in sparsely populated areas. In those areas, public school districts are often the largest employer.

In Tuesday’s election, voters in Kentucky rejected a measure to enable public funding for private school attendance, and Nebraska voted to partially repeal a law that uses taxpayer money to subsidize private education. A proposed constitutional amendment in Colorado that would’ve established schoolchildren’s “right to school choice” also was defeated.

Concerns about diverting money from public education appeared to gain traction in deep-red Kentucky and Nebraska. Ferial Pearson, the chair of an organization in Nebraska that advocates for public education, said it would continue working to provide public schools “the support and resources they need to thrive.”

In Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday that voters sent a clear message that taxpayer money should go to public schools.

“This should end any and all debate. And this should end any attempts to take money away from our public schools to send them to unaccountable private schools,” Beshear said at a news conference. He renewed his pitch for larger pay raises for public school teachers and other school personnel, along with his plan to establish universal pre-K across Kentucky.

To some observers, it was unsurprising that even states that voted for Trump took a stand against school choice.

“Especially in the wake of the pandemic, with all the school closures and learning loss and chronic absenteeism, parents want something different — but they also like their public schools,” said Liz Cohen, the policy director at FutureEd, a nonpartisan research center at Georgetown University. “People want something new, but it doesn’t mean they want to get rid of everything.”

Cohen, who has studied private school choice expansion across the country, emphasized decisions on a ballot measure “feel a lot more local and specific than who you’re voting for for president.”

During his campaign, Trump touted school choice as a form of greater parental rights, aimed at countering what conservative critics describe as leftist indoctrination in classrooms and promoting a free-market approach to education.

One of his platform pledges is to “serve as a champion for America’s homeschool families” and “to protect the God-given right of every parent to be the steward of their children’s education.” He proposes allowing homeschooling families to use 529 college savings plans for spending on their children’s educational expenses, an option he advanced for private-school families during his first term.

In that term, Trump tapped Betsy DeVos — a fervent supporter of school choice — as his education secretary. That administration, however, struggled to get its school choice pitches off the ground. An effort to provide federal tax credits for scholarship donations flopped, as did proposals to slash federal public school programs by billions of dollars.

With a more favorable Congress, those initiatives could have a better shot. U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and the frontrunner to chair the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has supported tax incentives for scholarship donations. And Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he will focus the next Congress on “maximizing school choice for parents and holding woke university administrators accountable.”

Some conservatives argue there would be benefits to leaving the issue to states.

“I … worry that we’re going to return to the political dynamics of Trump’s first term, which were very bad for the charter schools sector in blue states,” said Michael Petrilli, the president of the Fordham Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “Because Trump strongly supported school choice, including charter schools, he made those issues radioactive on the left, so reform-oriented Democrats were sidelined or silenced.”

In other races around the country, preliminary results show victories for school board candidates in Los Angeles and Chicago were concentrated among candidates who promoted traditional public education over alternatives such as charters.

In Texas, various pro-voucher legislators endorsed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott won their races. Abbott had sought to unseat GOP legislators who’d voted against a plan to subsidize private school tuition with public money. The newly elected candidates could give Abbott the votes needed to pass that voucher legislation.

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Associated Press writer Bruce Schreiner contributed to this report from Louisville, Ky. ___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City can’t use an unconstitutional, two-century-old “anti-pauper” law to block the state of Texas from offering migrants free bus rides to the city from the southern border, a state judge has ruled.

The court on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Mayor Eric Adams in January against charter bus companies contracted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. It sought to bar them from knowingly dropping off “needy persons,” citing an 1817 state law that criminalized bringing an indigent person into the state “for the purpose of making him a public charge.”

Justice Mary Rosado said in a sternly worded decision that the law is unconstitutional for several reasons.

For one, she wrote, states are not permitted to regulate the interstate transportation of people based on their economic status.

The statute also “violates a fundamental right — the right to travel,” she added.

Rosado said requiring bus operators to screen passengers based on the possibility that they may need public assistance when they get to their destination would infringe on that fundamental right, and punishing the bus companies for failing to keep poor people out of the city would be improper.

The judge concluded by saying that if city officials want to do something, they should turn to Congress rather than ask the court to enforce “an antiquated, unconstitutional statute to infringe on an individual’s right to enter New York based on economic status.”

Starting in 2022, the state of Texas began offering migrants free bus rides to cities with Democratic mayors. At least 46,000 were sent to New York, 19,000 to Denver, 37,000 to Chicago and over 17,000 to other cities, according to Abbott’s office.

At the time, Adams, a Democrat, said the trips were illegal and amounted to “political ploys from the state of Texas.”

It would have been difficult for New York City to sue Texas due to a legal doctrine known as sovereign immunity, so it went after the private charter companies instead.

Despite the court loss, the Adams administration said the lawsuit has had its desired effect: Fewer charter buses brought immigrants to the city after it was filed, and none have been identified since June, according to a statement from his office. Adams has not given up on further action, either.

“We are reviewing our legal options to address the costs shifted to New York City as a result of the Texas busing scheme,” mayoral spokesperson Liz Garcia said in a statement.

The New York Civil Liberties Union applauded the court’s decision.

“Mayor Adams is not above the law and cannot keep wrongly exploiting the plight of newly arrived immigrants to bolster his own political agenda,” NYCLU senior staff lawyer Beth Haroules said. “Everyone, regardless of their citizenship status or income, has the right to freely travel and reside anywhere within the United States.”

Abbot said during one visit to New York City that Adams was right to be upset about the surge in migrants but should be blaming President Joe Biden.

Adams ultimately did criticize the federal government, saying it had an obligation to help the city pay for housing and providing services to migrants.

New York has long provided shelter to more homeless people than any other U.S. city, in part because of a 1981 court ruling requiring it to shelter anyone who asks for it. City officials say they have provided shelter and other services to more than 200,000 immigrants in the past two years, only a fraction of whom arrived via Texas-sponsored buses.

As the new arrivals swelled, New York and other cities ended up following Abbott’s lead, offering migrants free bus tickets to other places. New York paid over 4,800 fares for immigrants to travel to Texas, including some who had been bused from there, according to city officials.

AUSTIN (AP) —Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars broadcasts could end next week as he faces a court-ordered auction of his company’s assets to help pay the more than $1 billion defamation judgment he owes families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Or maybe not.

Both opponents and supporters of the bombastic internet show and radio host have expressed interest in bidding on the Infowars properties he has built over the past 25 years. They include Roger Stone, an ally of Jones and Donald Trump, and anti-Jones progressive media groups. If Jones supporters buy the assets, he could end up staying on Infowars.

Up for sale are everything from Jones’ studio desk to Infowars’ name, video archive, social media accounts and product trademarks. Buyers can even purchase an armored truck and video cameras. For now, Jones’ personal social media, including his account on X, formerly known as Twitter, with 3 million followers, are not up for sale, but court proceedings on whether they should be auctioned are pending.

The auctions resulted from Jones’ personal bankruptcy case, which he filed in late 2022 after the Sandy Hook families were awarded nearly $1.5 billion in damages in lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas over his claims that the school shooting was a hoax. Many of Jones’ personal assets also are being liquidated to help pay the judgment.

The deadline to submit bids and nondisclosure agreements on the Infowars assets is Friday afternoon. After the bids are reviewed, prospective buyers deemed qualified will be invited to a live auction that could see multiple bidding rounds next Wednesday. Any items not sold will be put up at another auction on Dec. 10.

Jones has expressed confidence that supporters — whom he did not name — will buy the assets of Infowars and its parent company, Free Speech Systems, allowing him to continue using its platforms. He also appears to be preparing for losing the brand because he has set up new websites and social media accounts and has been directing his audience to them.

“There’s a lot of buyers, people that are patriots that want it and will come in,” Jones said on his show in August. “If not … we’ll work with somebody else, fire something up. And it’ll be a little bit of a hiccup for the crew, and things. But that will just make us bigger.”

Email messages to Infowars and Jones’ bankruptcy lawyer were not returned.

It’s not clear how much money the auctions might bring in. In court documents, Free Speech Systems listed the total value of its properties and holdings at $18 million. Proceeds from the sales will go to creditors including the Sandy Hook families, who have not yet received any money from Jones and his company.

Confidentiality agreements and sealed bids generally are used in auctions to maximize bid amounts while preventing bidders from talking to each other and driving down the offers. The trustee in Jones’ bankruptcy case said in court documents that the procedures for the Infowars auction were designed to attract the highest possible bids.

Christopher Mattei, a Connecticut lawyer representing the Sandy Hook families, called the auctions an important milestone in their yearslong fight to hold Jones accountable. He also said the families will be seeking a portion of all Jones’ future income.

“From the beginning, the Connecticut families have sought to hold Jones fully accountable for his lies and to protect other families from him,” Mattei said. “Stripping Jones of the corrupt business he used to attack the families while poisoning the minds of his listeners is an important measure of justice.”

The families sued Jones and his company for defamation and emotional distress for repeatedly saying on his show that the 2012 shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax staged by crisis actors to spur more gun control.

Parents and children of many of the victims testified that they were traumatized by Jones’ hoax conspiracies and threats by his followers.

Jones, who has since acknowledged that the shooting did happen, is appealing the judgments.

Jones has made millions of dollars from his internet and radio shows, primarily through sales of nutritional supplements, survival gear, clothing and other merchandise.

Jones and other right-wing commentators once on the fringe have catapulted in popularity as many people have moved away from traditional news sources. Trump elevated them further during his 2024 campaign by repeating some of their conspiracy theories and appearing on several of their podcasts and shows. On Thursday, Jones, a long-time Trump supporter, even accepted proposals, some perhaps tongue-in-cheek, by Donald Trump Jr. and other conservatives to be the president-elect’s press secretary.

Stone, the Jones and Trump ally and a conservative commentator, said on his X account and on Jones’ show that he would like to put together a group of investors to buy Infowars. He did not return email and social media messages on Thursday.

“I understand the importance of Infowars as a beacon of the truth, as a beacon of truthful information. And therefore, I would like to do whatever I possibly can to ensure, if possible, that Infowars survives,” Stone said on Jones’ show in September.

People on social media also have urged billionaire Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and X, to buy Infowars, an idea Jones has backed but Musk has not publicly responded to.

On the other side, Jones’ detractors have shown interest in buying Infowars, kicking Jones out and turning it into something else, such as a news site that debunks conspiracy theories or even a parody site. They include officials at two progressive media sites, The Barbed Wire and Media Matters for America.

An opinion piece by The Barbed Wire in September by publisher Jeff Rotkoff had a headline that read, “Let’s Buy Infowars. Alex Jones used these exact materials to exploit his viewers, peddle conspiracy theories, and damage the lives of grieving parents. We want revenge.”

Rotkoff urged readers to donate money to help put in bids, but he said Thursday that The Barbed Wire, based in Jones’ home state of Texas, was now unlikely to make any offers.

“But we have talked to a number of similarly ideologically aligned bidders and we are certain we will be outbid,” Rotkoff said in an email. “We’re thrilled that there appear to be multiple well-resourced bidders who share our interest in undoing much of the damage to our country done by Alex Jones. We’ll be rooting for those folks to be successful.”

He declined to say who the other potential bidders were.

Who exactly has submitted bids so far has not been disclosed. Jeff Tanenbaum, president of ThreeSixty Asset Advisors, which is helping to run the auction along with Tranzon Asset Advisors, would only say there have been a large number of inquiries.

If detractors buy up Infowars’ properties and Jones gets the boot, he should be able to build new platforms fairly quickly, said Melissa Zimdars, an associate professor of communication and media at Merrimack College in Massachusetts.

“As long as there is an audience hungry for his content — and there is — he’ll be able to utilize X and various fringe social media platforms,” she said in an email.