The petition, created by Musk’s America PAC, comes amid the entrepreneur’s larger campaign over the last week to register conservative voters in swing states.

Paying someone to vote or to register to vote is explicitly illegal under federal law. Musk’s payouts seem to skirt those laws, though. Musk and America PAC have said that payouts or lottery entries will be given to registered voters for their petition signatures or referrals of other signatories. The petition is supportive of free speech and gun rights. Signing the petition does not require any specific party affiliation. 

“I think it straddles the line, and it’s a little unclear whether it goes over the line or not,” said John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in election administration.

The fact that the lottery is contingent on signing a petition, rather than merely registering to vote, may be enough to keep Musk from overtly breaking the law, experts told NBC News, but it’s not clear-cut.

“This is at best very questionable legally,” said Michael Morse, an assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. “Federal law says that you cannot pay someone to register to vote. I think you can read this petition as an inducement to register to vote.”

“I’ve never heard of a million-dollar lottery in the last weeks of a presidential campaign, to either sign a petition or to induce people to register, so we’re in new legal territory here,” said Nate Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School.

“The relevant legal question is whether this is payment to induce people to register. If it is, then it violates the law. If it’s payment to induce people to sign a petition, then it’s not a problem,” he said. 

Musk’s PAC announced the initial payouts to signatories and referrers of signatories of the petition on Oct. 6. Over the last several days, Musk has upped the ante, adding money to his promises several times.

Rick Hasen, the director of the UCLA School of Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project and an NBC News election law analyst, wrote Saturday that he believes Musk’s plan is “clearly illegal” because the petition requires signers to be registered voters in particular states. 

Hasen noted that the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Manual explicitly cites “lottery chances” as an example of a type of illegal bribe if it’s “intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Democrat Josh Shapiro said on Meet the Press Sunday that the lottery was “deeply concerning” and suggested law enforcement could investigate it. 

But none of the experts who spoke with NBC News believed law enforcement is likely to stop the lottery or fine Musk before the election.

“The Department of Justice is authorized to enforce the statute,” Morse said. “But I think in the next three weeks they have other things to do.”

The Justice Department, Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, and Federal Election Commission declined to comment.

Musk endorsed Trump in July, after Trump became the Republican Party’s nominee. The world’s wealthiest person, Musk is engaged in at least 11 regulatory or legal battles with the federal government related to his companies, a previous NBC News tally found, making the stakes of the presidential election high for him. Musk’s companies have won billions in federal contracts over the last decade, according to a recent tally from The New York Times.

The deadline for voter registration in Pennsylvania and Michigan is Monday. The contest’s rules appear to say that while it no longer accepts new entrants after Monday, it will continue to name new $1 million prize winners each day until the election. So far it has named two.

On Monday morning, Musk celebrated Republican voter registration in Pennsylvania.

“New Republican voter registration last week in Pennsylvania absolutely crushed Democrat voter registration!” he wrote on X. 

Morse, the Penn law professor, said he viewed the lottery as unlikely to be a consequential stunt, and instead it seemed more like a data mining operation.

“You can only register to vote in Pennsylvania until today. I just see this as a political stunt. It’s a stunt to mine people’s data, to build up an email list for contacts, for campaigning, for mobilization,” he said, referring to get-out-the-vote efforts and other voter engagement.

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Shapiro’s comments on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” come one day after Musk announced in Pennsylvania that every day until Election Day, he would give $1 million to a random registered voter who signs a petition circulated by his super PAC “in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms.”

The super PAC has made signing the petition a prerequisite for attending rallies headlined by Musk, and on Saturday he surprised one rally attendee by giving away the first $1 million check onstage.

Shapiro, a Democrat, made clear on Sunday that his political differences with Musk, who has endorsed former President Donald Trump and pledged to use millions of dollars to turn out Pennsylvania voters for the former president via his super PAC, are not driving his skepticism of these cash prizes.

“Musk obviously has a right to be able to express his views. He’s made it very, very clear that he supports Donald Trump. I don’t. Obviously we have a difference of opinion,” Shapiro said, adding: “I don’t deny him that, right, but when you start flowing this kind of money into politics, I think it raises serious questions.”

Questions about the legality of these cash payments abounded on Saturday night, as election law experts pointed to various provisions in federal law that prohibited making cash payments to voters.

Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project and an NBC News election law analyst, called the payments “clearly illegal” in a post on his website Saturday night.

He pointed to a federal law, 52 U.S.C. 10307(c), which says that any individual who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”

Hasen told NBC News on Sunday that Musk’s PAC is only offering the payments to registered voters, not the general public at large, which is what could make the scheme illegal.

“Essentially what you’re doing is you are creating a lottery. You’re creating a lottery where the only people eligible to participate in the lottery are people who register to vote, or are registered to vote, and that’s illegal,” Hasen said.

He noted that the general intent behind election laws prohibiting bribery is to prevent people from buying votes, but “you don’t have to say you have to vote for a particular candidate in order to be breaking this law. … It can be to either incentivize people to register or vote, or it can be to reward them,” Hasen told NBC News on Sunday.

Musk and a representative for America PAC did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story.

It’s unclear whether federal authorities are looking into Musk’s $1 million payments, but Hasen said that federal authorities have the option to prosecute Musk or simply issue a warning telling the mogul to stop paying registered voters in this way.

“It seems like if this law is going to be enforced, it needs to be deterred,” Hasen said.

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Elon Musk said Saturday that he would randomly award $1 million a day to registered voters who sign a petition for his pro-Trump political action committee in an effort to get his fans in swing states to the polls.

Speaking at an America PAC event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Musk said, “I have a surprise for you,” adding that the prize money is available “every day from now until the election.”

Musk then called up a man named John Dreher, who he said was one of the petition signees in attendance, and handed him a giant check.

“I think think it’s kind of fun, and you know, it seems like a good use of money basically,” said the Tesla CEO, who is worth almost $250 billion.

Musk, who is also CEO of defense contractor SpaceX and owner of social media platform X, embarked on a speaking tour in Pennsylvania to drive voter registration in his support of the Republican nominee. He called the state the “linchpin” in this election.

“How Pennsylvania goes I think is how the election goes,” Musk said.

The deadline to sign the petition is Monday night, which is the day Pennsylvania’s voter registration closes. The petition, posted on the America PAC website, said that to be eligible for payments, signees “must be registered voters of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin.”

Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor and NBC news election law analyst, said in a blog post that Musk’s initiative appears to be a violation of federal election laws, specifically one that says a person who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”

“Certain things in this country can be sold, and certain things we have decided should not be for sale,” Hasen told CNBC in an interview. “Congress has determined you should not be able to sell your vote to the highest bidder, and we should not have the political process distorted by people with the most wealth who may try to get you to vote in a certain way.”

CNBC reached out to Musk and one of his advisors for comment, but they didn’t respond.

In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said Musk’s plan to give money to registered voters in his state is “deeply concerning” and “it’s something that law enforcement could take a look at.”

Floating conspiracy theories

At pro-Trump events, Musk has pushed debunked voter fraud conspiracies, called for deregulation, and repeatedly characterized President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Donald Trump’s rival, as replaceable “puppets.”

“No one’s even bothering to try to kill Kamala, you know, because there’s no point,” Musk said on Saturday, repeating a line he’s used in the past that caught the attention of the secret service. “I’m not suggesting someone should try to kill her, it would be pointless, but I’m just saying. I’m just making an observation.”

Musk said in his appearances that he views many government agencies and regulations in the U.S. as ineffective and unnecessary. Trump has taken up an idea floated by Musk to create a government efficiency commission, and said the tech magnate would be a big part of the commission.

“We should not trust the government, really. We just shouldn’t,” Musk said Harrisburg. “Even if I’m in the government, don’t trust the government.”

While Musk’s companies have long relied on government spending and support, he’s berated the Federal Communications Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Aviation Administration and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries for holding SpaceX back.

“We get crazy things,” Musk said, “like SpaceX got fined $140,000 for dumping potable drinking water on the ground at Starbase.”

As CNBC previously reported, SpaceX has repeatedly discharged hot, industrial wastewater into the wetlands surrounding the company’s launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, which the EPA found was a Clean Water Act violation.

Musk mocked NOAA Fisheries for asking SpaceX to conduct a study to predict how its rockets could impact sharks and whales if they fall into the ocean.

“I’m like, it’s a big ocean, you know, there’s a lot of sharks. It’s not impossible, but it’s very unlikely,” Musk said. The agency’s mission is to “conserve America’s coastal and marine resources.”

Musk’s animosity towards President Biden picked up in 2021, when the White House declined to invite Tesla to an electric vehicle summit.

“You know, Tesla’s about 140,000 people — it’s like there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears from people working hard to make great electric cars,” Musk said on Saturday. “To be could-shouldered like that for no reason. It’s like, what’s the deal?”

Musk has long battled unions, and Tesla was charged with union-busting before the EV summit. Biden has maintained a pro-labor platform throughout his presidency.

One attendee in Harrisburg asked Musk if he believed that self-driving cars should eventually be mandatory if they can perform more safely in traffic than human drivers. Tesla has promised customers a “robotaxi” for years, but never produced one.

Musk suggested he was against anything federally mandated.

“We should just get the government out of things and let the market figure it out,” he said. “I’m generally against government. With that, I’d like to thank you all for coming. It’s been an honor to speak with you.”

Musk only mentioned Trump sparingly throughout the evening, and didn’t discuss his policies or record as president in any detail.

WATCH: Elon Musk gives $75 million to pro-Trump PAC

After Musk pushed a debunked voter fraud conspiracy theory Thursday evening at a pro-Trump town hall event in Pennsylvania, he announced in an X post that he was doubling his financial offer for engagement with the petition, which had been set at $47. He said the deadline to sign the petition is Monday night, the day that Pennsylvania voter registration closes. 

“If you’re a registered Pennsylvania voter, you & whoever referred you will now get $100 for signing our petition in support of free speech & right to bear arms,” Musk wrote.

Musk initially launched the petition and referral offer in early October. His America PAC released the petition, which is in support of the Constitution’s First and Second amendments. For anyone who refers a registered swing state voter to sign it, Musk promised to mail a check. For the current offer, he said checks will be mailed to voter addresses on file in Pennsylvania. 

The program appears to avoid breaking campaign finance laws, which make it illegal to pay people to register to vote, because the payment is for signing the petition and referring registered voters to sign the petition, rather than for registration. 

However, Musk, the world’s richest person, has vocally urged swing state voters in Pennsylvania to vote for former President Donald Trump, saying Thursday that the 2024 election will decide the “fate of America” and “the fate of Western civilization.” 

Previously vowing to stay apolitical, Musk has sharply veered to support conservatives since taking over X, formerly Twitter. Over the summer, he endorsed Trump and has ramped up various means of support for the candidate. Recent disclosures show that Musk has donated $75 million to his own pro-Trump super PAC. 

Musk also joined Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and plans to continue hosting town halls in the state, which he said is the “linchpin” for the election, through Monday. 

On X, where he is the most-followed person with over 200 million followers, Musk has repeatedly pushed false and inflammatory claims on topics including immigration, free speech and voter fraud. 

Musk’s America PAC has also paid to run ads on Facebook and Instagram for voter registration in swing states. In August, the PAC collected voter data but only directed certain zip codes to an official way to register to vote, a move that courted significant controversy. Election officials in Michigan and North Carolina investigated whether the website was misleading voters, but Michigan said it hadn’t found any evidence of violating state campaign finance law. 

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At the start of 2020, Musk was worth about $28.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. By the end of that year, he was worth around $167 billion, and as of September, his net worth was valued at roughly $265 billion, according to the index.

The biggest driver of Musk’s wealth has been Tesla stock, which rallied during the Covid-19 pandemic. Tesla stock was hovering around $30 per share in January 2020. By January 2021, the stock had surged to almost $300 per share.

“If you look at the list of the richest Americans, whether we’re talking about Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, the reason people get super rich is they start a company and they grow that company,” said James Pethokoukis, economic policy analyst for the American Enterprise Institute. “And the reason that company keeps growing and growing is [it’s] producing something valuable that people want,” Pethokoukis added.

Wealthier individuals typically have larger portions of their assets invested in the stock market, while middle-income households tend to have more of their wealth tied up in real estate.

The wealthiest 1% of Americans own nearly 50% of all U.S. stocks, while the bottom 50% of Americans hold about 1% of all stocks, as of mid-2024, according to Federal Reserve data.

About 58% of families owned stock in 2022, either directly or indirectly through passive investments such as retirement accounts.

“Wealth inequality is very much driven by the prices of different types of assets,” said John Sabelhaus, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. “One of the things that will cause wealth inequality to go up as measured by wealth concentration is the stock market.”

There is also debate over the role of taxation in contributing to wealth inequality. While some, including Pethokoukis, argue large compensation packages are the reward for creating a successful company, others, like Sabelhaus, say loopholes in the tax system create an unlevel playing field.

“Over the past quarter century in particular, changes in tax policy have made it much more difficult to tax the rich,” Sabelhaus said. “There are many more exclusions, many more ways to get around paying taxes.”

Many Americans primarily earn their income by trading their time and skills for a paycheck, which is taxed based on how much the individual earns. On paper, the ultrawealthy’s income is not quite as clear. 

“If we think about income as being sort of the improvement in one’s ability to spend over time, you and I have paychecks. And those paychecks measure how much we can spend,” Sabelhaus said. “Musk … has a gigantic compensation package. But even that package, only a fraction of it shows up as taxable income because much of it is in bonuses and other ways of getting paid that make it easy to avoid taxation.”

Elon Musk’s X is getting back up and running in Brazil after a months-long standoff between the company and the country’s federal supreme court minister, Alexandre de Moraes.

“X is proud to return to Brazil,” the company wrote in a post on X from its global government affairs account. “Giving tens of millions of Brazilians access to our indispensable platform was paramount throughout this entire process. We will continue to defend freedom of speech, within the boundaries of the law, everywhere we operate.”

X was suspended in Brazil on Aug. 31, after an order from de Moraes that was upheld by a panel of other justices.

Brazil’s supreme court, known as Supremo Tribuno Federal, said in a statement on Tuesday that, “The company complied with the conditions stipulated by the rapporteur, Minister Alexandre de Moraes, and the platform may once again be used by Brazilians.”

The suspension was put in place because Musk, who owns X and runs it as technology chief, defied requests by Brazil’s court to ban some user accounts or remove content that the court said violated federal laws.

Brazil’s strict internet regulations are intended to limit the spread of hate speech, incitements to violence, and political misinformation or content harmful to democratic institutions online. The country also requires tech platforms to employ a legal representative in Brazil.

Rather than comply, Musk initially closed X’s headquarters in Brazil, and said he wouldn’t employ a legal representative there for a time. Musk spent months disparaging de Moraes, comparing him to movie villain Voldemort, calling him a “fake” judge and describing “the evil tyranny of Moraes.”

Brazil’s Correio Brazilenese reported that X was pressured by investors in Musk-led companies, to relent and comply with Brazilian law by late September as the company faced a threat of daily fines.

At one point, the court moved to freeze X’s business accounts in Brazil, along with those of SpaceX-owned Starlink, a satellite internet service provider in the country.

During X’s suspension, competitors including Bluesky and Threads gained millions of users in Brazil, according to SimilarWeb data. G1 Globo news reported that users were regaining access to X on Tuesday after the court authorization.

WATCH: WSJ’s Tim Higgins on X in Brazil

X has to pay one last fine before the social network owned by Elon Musk is allowed back online in Brazil, according to a decision out Friday from the country’s top justice, Alexandre de Moraes.

The platform was suspended nationwide at the end of August, a decision upheld by a panel of judges on Sept. 2. Earlier this month, X filed paperwork informing Brazil’s supreme court that it is now in compliance with orders, which it previously defied.

As Brazil’s G1 Globo reported, X must now pay a new fine of 10 million reals (about $2 million) for two additional days of non-compliance with the court’s orders. X’s legal representative in Brazil, Rachel de Oliveira, is also required to pay a fine of 300,000 reals.

The case dates back to April, when de Moraes, the minister of Brazil’s supreme court, known as Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), initiated a probe into Musk and X over alleged obstruction of justice.

Musk had vowed to defy the court’s orders to take down certain accounts in Brazil. He called the court’s actions “censorship,” and railed online against de Moraes, describing the judge as a “criminal” and encouraging the U.S. to end foreign aid to Brazil.

In mid-August, Musk closed down X offices in Brazil. That left his company without a legal representative in the country, a federal requirement for all tech platforms to do business there.

By Aug. 28, de Moraes’ court threatened a ban and fines if X didn’t appoint a legal representative within 24 hours, and if it didn’t comply with takedown requests for accounts the court said had engaged in plots to dox or harm federal agents, among other things.

Earlier this month, the STF froze the business assets of Musk companies, including both X and satellite internet business Starlink, operating in Brazil. The STF said in court filings that it viewed Starlink parent SpaceX and X as companies that worked together as related parties.

Musk wrote in a post on X at that time that, “Unless the Brazilian government returns the illegally seized property of and SpaceX, we will seek reciprocal seizure of government assets too.”

As head of the STF, de Moraes has long supported federal regulations to rein in hate speech and misinformation online. His views have garnered pushback from tech companies and far-right officials in the country, along with former President Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters.

Bolsonaro is under investigation, suspected of orchestrating a coup in Brazil after losing the 2022 presidential election to current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

While Musk has called for retribution against de Moraes and Lula, he has worked with and praised Bolsonaro for years. The former president of Brazil authorized SpaceX to deliver satellite internet services commercially in Brazil in 2022.

Musk bills himself as a free speech defender, but his track record suggests otherwise. Under his management, X removed content critical of ruling parties in Turkey and India at the government’s insistence. X agreed to more than 80% of government take-down requests in 2023 over a comparable period the prior year, according to analysis by the tech news site Rest of World.

X faces increased competition in Brazil from social apps like Meta-owned Threads, and Bluesky, which have attracted users during its suspension.

Starlink also faces competition in Brazil from eSpace, a French-American firm that gained permission this year from the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) to deliver satellite internet services in the country.

Lukas Darien, an attorney and law professor at Brazil’s Facex University Center, told CNBC that the STF’s enforcement actions against X are likely to change the way large technology companies will view the court.

“There is no change to the law here,” Darien wrote in a message. “But specifically, big tech companies are now aware that the laws will be applied regardless of the size of a business and the magnitude of its reach in the country.”

Musk and representatives for X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Late Thursday, X Global Government Affairs posted the following statement:

“X is committed to protecting free speech within the boundaries of the law and we recognize and respect the sovereignty of the countries in which we operate. We believe that the people of Brazil having access to X is essential for a thriving democracy, and we will continue to defend freedom of expression and due process of law through legal processes.”

WATCH: X is a financial ‘disaster’

The move further escalates the monthslong feud between the two men over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes had warned Musk on Wednesday night that X could be blocked in Brazil if he failed to comply with his order to name a representative, and established a 24-hour deadline. The company hasn’t had a representative in the country since earlier this month.

In his decision, de Moraes gave internet service providers and app stores five days to block access to X, and said the platform will remain blocked until it complies with his orders. He also said people or companies who use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X will be subject to daily fines of 50,000 reais ($8,900).

“Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country,” de Moraes wrote.

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Brazil is an important market for X, which has struggled with the loss of advertisers since Musk purchased the former Twitter in 2022. Market research group Emarketer says some 40 million Brazilians, roughly one-fifth of the population, access X at least once per month.

X had posted on its official Global Government Affairs page late Thursday that it expected X to be shut down by de Moraes, “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”

“When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the company wrote. “Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him.”

X has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to comply with orders to block users.

Accounts that the platform previously has shut down on Brazilian orders include lawmakers affiliated with former President Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy.

Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has repeatedly claimed the justice’s actions amount to censorship, and his argument has been echoed by Brazil’s political right. He has often insulted de Moraes on his platform, characterizing him as a dictator and tyrant.

De Moraes’ defenders have said his actions aimed at X have been lawful, supported by most of the court’s full bench and have served to protect democracy at a time in which it is imperiled. His order Friday is based on Brazilian law requiring foreign companies to have representation in the country so they can be notified when there are legal cases against them.

Given that operators are aware of the widely publicized standoff and their obligation to comply with an order from de Moraes, plus the fact doing so isn’t complicated, X could be offline as early as 12 hours after receiving their instructions, said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Technology and Society Center at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Rio de Janeiro.

The shutdown is not unprecedented in Brazil.

Lone Brazilian judges shut down Meta’s WhatsApp, the nation’s most widely used messaging app, several times in 2015 and 2016 due to the company’s refusal to comply with police requests for user data. In 2022, de Moraes threatened the messaging app Telegram with a nationwide shutdown, arguing it had repeatedly ignored Brazilian authorities’ requests to block profiles and provide information. He ordered Telegram to appoint a local representative; the company ultimately complied and stayed online.

X and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in several countries — mostly authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest. Twitter was banned in Egypt after the Arab Spring uprisings, which some dubbed the “Twitter revolution,” but it has since been restored.

A search Friday on X showed hundreds of Brazilian users inquiring about VPNs that could potentially enable them to continue using the platform by making it appear they were logging on from outside the country. It was not immediately clear how Brazilian authorities would police this practice and impose fines cited by de Moraes.

Mariana de Souza Alves Lima, known by her handle MariMoon, showed her 1.4 million followers on X that she would go to rival social network BlueSky, posting a screenshot and saying: “That is where I’m going.”

X said that it plans to publish what it has called de Moraes’ “illegal demands” and related court filings “in the interest of transparency.”

Also on Thursday evening, Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet service provider, said on X that de Moraes this week froze its finances, preventing it from doing any transactions in the country where it has more than 250,000 customers.

“This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied—unconstitutionally—against X. It was issued in secret and without affording Starlink any of the due process of law guaranteed by the Constitution of Brazil. We intend to address the matter legally,” Starlink said in its statement.

Musk replied to people sharing the reports of the freeze, adding insults directed at de Moraes. “This guy @Alexandre is an outright criminal of the worst kind, masquerading as a judge,” he wrote.

Musk later posted on X that SpaceX, which runs Starlink, will provide free internet service in Brazil “until the matter is resolved” since “we cannot receive payment, but don’t want to cut anyone off.”

In his decision, de Moraes said he ordered the freezing of Starlink’s assets, as X didn’t have enough money in its accounts to cover mounting fines, and reasoning that the two companies are part of the same economic group.

——-

Ortutay reported from San Francisco.

Musk voted by mail in November 2016, the year Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, and in the November 2018 midterm election, the records show. Musk’s primary residence was in Los Angeles at the time. 

The state records show that Musk had a sparse history of voting in California. During the 18 years he was eligible to vote there, he cast ballots in only those two elections. He became eligible to vote when he became a U.S. citizen in 2002 and cast his first ballot 14 years later, at age 45. He was actively registered to vote by August 2006, the records show. 

Among the elections Musk skipped were presidential races in which Barack Obama, John McCain and Mitt Romney were on the ballot, all primary elections and all local elections. California has an open primary system in which all registered voters are allowed to participate. 

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This is the first time Musk’s California voting records have been made public. NBC News obtained the history through a public records request to the California secretary of state’s office. The office initially declined the request for Musk’s voter file, saying it doesn’t provide records for canceled registrations. It later reversed the decision. 

Musk canceled his registration in the state in August 2020, according to his voter file. He announced at a conference in December 2020 that he had moved to Texas. 

NBC News sought comment from Musk about his voting history and his past statements about mail-in ballots. In an email, he didn’t address his votes but stood by his view about voter fraud. 

“Voting by mail has been recognized as an invitation to fraud throughout the world,” he wrote. 

Musk has criticized voting by mail at least four times this year on his social media app, X, mixing his criticisms with falsehoods and partial truths about U.S. elections — part of a broader pattern of his posting misleading or false claims about election security.

In January, he wrote: “In the USA, you don’t need government issued ID to vote and you can mail in your ballot. This is insane.” 

But that’s misleading. The standard voter registration form asks applicants for ID numbers, and while the specific requirements vary by state, they generally require a driver’s license number, a state identification number or a Social Security number. And some states, such as Texas, ask for the same information again when people vote by mail. California requires some first-time voters to mail copies of their IDs with their ballots. 

In May, Musk falsely asserted that widespread voting by mail was “not allowed” before the Covid-19 pandemic: “Widespread voting by mail (not allowed before the scamdemic) makes proving fraud almost impossible.” 

Voting by mail was the choice of a majority of California voters both times Musk voted. In the November 2018 election, 65% of California ballots were cast by mail, according to state records. In the November 2016 election, the figure was 58%. 

California now has universal voting by mail, with all registered voters receiving ballots in advance that they can mail back or deliver by hand. 

The California secretary of state’s office declined to comment on Musk’s criticism, but it did provide information about how the state tries to ensure the system’s integrity. It said that when people register, it checks ID numbers against what’s on file and that when people vote by mail, it examines their signatures. State law requires voters to attest under penalty of perjury that they’re eligible to vote. The office also said it captures the IP addresses used for all online voter registrations in case someone tries to register multiple names from the same device, among other security measures. 

Numerous investigations and studies have documented that there’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the U.S., and examples of fraud involving mail-in or absentee ballots are exceedingly rare. When they do occur, prosecutors have successfully brought cases against perpetrators, including in a highly publicized fraud scheme in North Carolina, despite Musk’s claim that voting by mail makes proving fraud almost impossible. 

Musk’s own Super PAC, America PAC, has been encouraging some swing state voters to absentee vote with ballots that can be submitted by mail. NBC News obtained a mailer from America PAC that was distributed in Wisconsin that included a QR code linking to America PAC’s website, with accompanying text reading “SCAN HERE TO APPLY FOR YOUR ABSENTEE BALLOT.” In Wisconsin, voters can cast absentee ballots by mailing them in, by bringing them to a county clerk’s office or by bringing them to a polling place.

After he moved to Texas, Musk voted by absentee ballot in 2020, the Daily Beast has reported. It’s not clear whether he mailed the absentee ballot. The website also reported that Musk voted in an election in Texas in June 2022 but skipped the November 2022 election. 

Musk is registered to vote in Brownsville, Texas, where his company SpaceX has operations, though as of December he lived in Austin, according to a report from Business Insider, citing court records. 

Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is often ranked as the wealthiest person in the world. 

Musk isn’t the only one to both criticize voting by mail and use it. Trump has done the same, including voting by mail in 2020 in Florida. Musk has endorsed Trump’s bid to return to the White House over Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Voting by mail was for years associated with Democrats as part of their get-out-the-vote efforts. But this year some Republicans are embracing it as a way to boost turnout on their side. 

Musk wrote on X this year, “I voted 100% Dem until a few years ago.” The contents of ballots are secret, and the state records don’t show whom Musk voted for. 

He has said he voted for Clinton in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020. 

Musk was registered in California as having no party preference, consistent with his describing himself as an independent. 

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The justice, Alexandre de Moraes, has threatened to suspend social media giant X nationwide in the coming hours if its billionaire owner Elon Musk doesn’t swiftly comply with one of his orders. Musk has responded with insults, including calling de Moraes a “tyrant” and “a dictator.”

It is the latest chapter in the monthslong feud between the two men over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. The deadline for compliance is fast approaching, and many in Brazil are waiting and watching to see if either man will blink.

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What is the basis for Moraes’ threat?

Earlier this month, X removed its legal representative from Brazil on the grounds that de Moraes had threatened her with arrest. On Wednesday night at 8:07 p.m. local time (7:07 p.m. Eastern Standard Time), de Moraes gave the platform 24 hours to appoint a new representative, or face a shutdown until his order is met.

De Moraes’ order is based on Brazilian law requiring foreign companies to have legal representation to operate in the country, according to the Supreme Court’s press office. This ensures someone can be notified of legal decisions and is qualified to take any requisite action.

X’s refusal to appoint a legal representative would be particularly problematic ahead of Brazil’s October municipal elections, with a churn of fake news expected, said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Technology and Society Center at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Rio de Janeiro. Takedown orders are common during campaigns, and not having someone to receive legal notices would make timely compliance impossible.

“Until last week, 10 days ago, there was an office here, so this problem didn’t exist. Now there’s nothing. Look at the example of Telegram: Telegram doesn’t have an office here, it has about 50 employees in the whole world. But it has a legal representative,” Belli, who is also a professor at the university’s law school, told The Associated Press.

Does a single judge really have that much power?

Any Brazilian judge has the authority to enforce compliance with decisions. Such measures can range from lenient actions like fines to more severe penalties, such as suspension, said Carlos Affonso Souza, a lawyer and director of the Institute for Technology and Society, a Rio-based think tank.

Lone Brazilian judges shut down Meta’s WhatsApp, the nation’s most widely used messaging app, several times in 2015 and 2016 due to the company’s refusal to comply with police requests for user data. In 2022, de Moraes threatened the messaging app Telegram with a nationwide shutdown, arguing it had repeatedly ignored Brazilian authorities’ requests to block profiles and provide information. He ordered Telegram to appoint a local representative; the company ultimately complied and stayed online.

Affonso Souza added that an individual judge’s ruling to shut down a platform with so many users would likely be assessed at a later date by the Supreme Court’s full bench.

How would Moraes suspend X?

De Moraes would first notify the nation’s telecommunications regulator, Anatel, who would then instruct operators — including Musk’s own Starlink internet service provider — to suspend users’ access to X. That includes preventing the resolution of X’s website — the term for conversion of a domain name to an IP address — and blocking access to the IP address of X’s servers from inside Brazilian territory, according to Belli.

Given that operators are aware of the widely publicized standoff and their obligation to comply with an order from de Moraes, plus the fact doing so isn’t complicated, X could be offline in Brazil as early as 12 hours after receiving their instructions, Belli said.

Since X is widely accessed via mobile phones, de Moraes is also likely to notify major app stores to stop offering X in Brazil, said Affonso Souza. Another possible — but highly controversial — step would be prohibiting access with virtual private networks ( VPNs) and imposing fines on those who use them to access X, he added.

Has X been shut down in other countries?

X and its former incarnation, Twitter, are banned in several countries — mostly authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan.

China banned X when it was still called Twitter back in 2009, along with Facebook. In Russia, authorities expanded their crackdown on dissent and free media after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. They have blocked multiple independent Russian-language media outlets critical of the Kremlin, and cut access to Twitter, which later became X, as well as Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.

In 2009, Twitter became an essential communications tool in Iran after the country’s government cracked down on traditional media after a disputed presidential election. Tech-savvy Iranians took to Twitter to organize protests. The government subsequently banned the platform, along with Facebook.

Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest. Twitter was banned in Egypt after the Arab Spring uprisings, which some dubbed the “Twitter revolution,” but it has since been restored.

Why is Brazil so important to X and Musk?

Brazil is a key market for X and other platforms. Some 40 million Brazilians, roughly one-fifth of the population, access X at least once per month, according to the market research group Emarketer. Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has claimed de Moraes’ actions amount to censorship and rallied support from Brazil’s political right. He has also said that he wants his platform to be a “global town square” where information flows freely. The loss of the Brazilian market — the world’s fourth-biggest democracy — would make achieving this goal more difficult.

Brazil is also a potentially huge growth market for Musk’s satellite company, Starlink, given its vast territory and spotty internet service in far-flung areas.

Late Thursday afternoon, Starlink said on X that de Moraes this week froze its finances, preventing it from doing any transactions in the country where it has more than 250,000 customers.

“This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied—unconstitutionally—against X. It was issued in secret and without affording Starlink any of the due process of law guaranteed by the Constitution of Brazil. We intend to address the matter legally,” Starlink said in its statement.

Musk replied to people sharing the earlier reports of the freeze, adding his own insults directed at de Moraes.

“This guy @Alexandre is an outright criminal of the worst kind, masquerading as a judge,” he wrote.

De Moraes’ defenders have said his actions have been lawful, supported by most of the court’s full bench and have served to protect democracy at a time in which it is imperiled.

In April, de Moraes included Musk as a target in an ongoing investigation over the dissemination of fake news and opened a separate investigation into the executive for alleged obstruction.

Will X appoint a new legal representative?

X did not respond to requests for comment on its plan to name a new representative in Brazil.

Pinheiro Neto, a Brazilian law firm that previously represented X, also declined to comment on the company’s legal situation.

___

Biller reported from Rio and Ortutay from Oakland, California.

The petition, created by Musk’s America PAC, comes amid the entrepreneur’s larger campaign over the last week to register conservative voters in swing states.

Paying someone to vote or to register to vote is explicitly illegal under federal law. Musk’s payouts seem to skirt those laws, though. Musk and America PAC have said that payouts or lottery entries will be given to registered voters for their petition signatures or referrals of other signatories. The petition is supportive of free speech and gun rights. Signing the petition does not require any specific party affiliation. 

“I think it straddles the line, and it’s a little unclear whether it goes over the line or not,” said John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in election administration.

The fact that the lottery is contingent on signing a petition, rather than merely registering to vote, may be enough to keep Musk from overtly breaking the law, experts told NBC News, but it’s not clear-cut.

“This is at best very questionable legally,” said Michael Morse, an assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. “Federal law says that you cannot pay someone to register to vote. I think you can read this petition as an inducement to register to vote.”

“I’ve never heard of a million-dollar lottery in the last weeks of a presidential campaign, to either sign a petition or to induce people to register, so we’re in new legal territory here,” said Nate Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School.

“The relevant legal question is whether this is payment to induce people to register. If it is, then it violates the law. If it’s payment to induce people to sign a petition, then it’s not a problem,” he said. 

Musk’s PAC announced the initial payouts to signatories and referrers of signatories of the petition on Oct. 6. Over the last several days, Musk has upped the ante, adding money to his promises several times.

Rick Hasen, the director of the UCLA School of Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project and an NBC News election law analyst, wrote Saturday that he believes Musk’s plan is “clearly illegal” because the petition requires signers to be registered voters in particular states. 

Hasen noted that the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Manual explicitly cites “lottery chances” as an example of a type of illegal bribe if it’s “intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Democrat Josh Shapiro said on Meet the Press Sunday that the lottery was “deeply concerning” and suggested law enforcement could investigate it. 

But none of the experts who spoke with NBC News believed law enforcement is likely to stop the lottery or fine Musk before the election.

“The Department of Justice is authorized to enforce the statute,” Morse said. “But I think in the next three weeks they have other things to do.”

The Justice Department, Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, and Federal Election Commission declined to comment.

Musk endorsed Trump in July, after Trump became the Republican Party’s nominee. The world’s wealthiest person, Musk is engaged in at least 11 regulatory or legal battles with the federal government related to his companies, a previous NBC News tally found, making the stakes of the presidential election high for him. Musk’s companies have won billions in federal contracts over the last decade, according to a recent tally from The New York Times.

The deadline for voter registration in Pennsylvania and Michigan is Monday. The contest’s rules appear to say that while it no longer accepts new entrants after Monday, it will continue to name new $1 million prize winners each day until the election. So far it has named two.

On Monday morning, Musk celebrated Republican voter registration in Pennsylvania.

“New Republican voter registration last week in Pennsylvania absolutely crushed Democrat voter registration!” he wrote on X. 

Morse, the Penn law professor, said he viewed the lottery as unlikely to be a consequential stunt, and instead it seemed more like a data mining operation.

“You can only register to vote in Pennsylvania until today. I just see this as a political stunt. It’s a stunt to mine people’s data, to build up an email list for contacts, for campaigning, for mobilization,” he said, referring to get-out-the-vote efforts and other voter engagement.

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Sandy Garossino, the mother of Claire Boucher, better known as the musician Grimes, published a series of posts on X, the social media platform that Musk owns, because she said she had no other way to reach Musk. Grimes shared the initial post to her 1.3 million followers on the app.

“It was nice seeing you on Father’s Day. I hope you got the card that I helped X make. He was so proud of it,” she wrote, referring to one of the children he had with Grimes. “I’m writing here as the only way I have to reach you. As you know, my 93 year old mother is now at end-of-life palliative care.”

“I am alarmed to learn that the children cannot come as you are withholding them and their needed passport documents from Claire,” Garossino continued, using Grimes’ given first name.

Grimes and Musk dated off and on for several years and have three children together. The two parents have been locked in a legal fight over custody in courts in California and Texas.

Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He did not respond on X to Garossino’s posts, though he was active on the app Saturday including after Garossino posted.

Representatives for Grimes did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Garossino declined to comment beyond the social media posts.

Garossino, a columnist for the news site Canada’s National Observer, said on X that she was troubled to see on television that Musk was in Paris for the Olympics with at least one of the children.

“Where are the other children, and with whom? They are scheduled to be with their mother,” she wrote.

Garossino said the matter was urgent because her mother is 93 years old and receiving end-of-life palliative care. She said Saturday was her mother’s birthday.

“I write with a grandmother’s plea, asking you to honour your agreement, return the children, and provide the documents they need to see their great grandmother before she passes,” she wrote.

Musk is the father of 12 children. His relationship with one of them, 20-year-old Vivian Jenna Wilson, burst into public view this week when Musk said in an interview that he considered Wilson, who is transgender, to be figuratively dead and infected with a “woke mind virus.” Wilson said in an interview with NBC News Thursday that Musk was a largely absent father who berated her as a child for not being more masculine, including yelling at her to deepen her voice while she was still in elementary school.

Grimes publicly expressed support for Wilson, saying Thursday on X: “I love and am forever endlessly proud of Vivian.”

Wilson said Saturday that she supported Grimes in the custody dispute and that Musk was continuing to behave irresponsibly as a father.

Wilson wrote on Threads that Elon had been “keeping their children, her children, away from their mother during the most important developmental period in a child’s life.”

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Wilson, 20, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, responded to comments Musk made Monday about her and her transgender identity. On social media and in an interview posted online, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and he alleged that he had been “tricked” into authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her when she was 16. 

Wilson said that Musk hadn’t been tricked and that, after initially having hesitated, he knew what he was doing when he agreed to her treatment, which required consent from her parents.

Musk’s recent statements crossed a line, she said. 

“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.” 

Wilson said that, for as long as she could remember, Musk hasn’t been a supportive father. She said he was rarely present in her life, leaving her and her siblings to be cared for by their mother or by nannies even though Musk had joint custody, and she said Musk berated her when he was present. 

“He was cold,” she said. “He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.” 

Wilson said that, when she was a child, Musk would harass her for exhibiting feminine traits and pressure her to appear more masculine, including by pushing her to deepen her voice as early as elementary school. 

“I was in fourth grade. We went on this road trip that I didn’t know was actually just an advertisement for one of the cars — I don’t remember which one — and he was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high,” she said. “It was cruel.” 

Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Wilson and her twin brother were born to Musk’s first wife, author Justine Musk. The couple divorced in 2008, and Wilson said her parents shared custody between their homes in the Los Angeles area. 

Musk, 53, is among the wealthiest people in the world through his stakes in Tesla, where he’s CEO, and in SpaceX, which he founded. He has also become a significant political figure, having endorsed former President Donald Trump this month for another term in the White House. Musk has 12 children, including Wilson. 

Now a college student studying languages, Wilson has never granted an interview before and has largely stayed out of public view. She did, however, attract attention in 2022 when she sought court approval in California to change her name and, in the process, denounced her father. 

“I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form,” she said in the court filing. 

She told NBC News that at the time, she was surprised by the media attention to the court filing, which she submitted when she was 18. She said in the interview that she stands by what she wrote, though she said she might have tried to be more eloquent had she known the coverage it would get. 

Wilson said that she hadn’t spoken to Musk in about four years and that she refused to be defined by him. 

“I would like to emphasize one thing: I am an adult. I am 20 years old. I am not a child,” she said. “My life should be defined by my own choices.” 

Musk threw a spotlight on Wilson on Monday by speaking about their relationship in a video interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson streamed live on X, saying he didn’t support Wilson’s gender identity. 

“I lost my son, essentially,” Musk said. He used Wilson’s birth name, also known as a deadname for transgender people, and said she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.” 

And in a post on X, Musk said Monday that Wilson was “born gay and slightly autistic” and that, at age 4, she fit certain gay stereotypes, such as loving musicals and using the exclamation “fabulous!” to describe certain clothing. Wilson told NBC News that the anecdotes aren’t true, though she said she did act stereotypically feminine in other ways as a child. 

Wilson also addressed Musk’s recent comments in a series of posts Thursday on the social media app Threads. 

“He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there,” she wrote. “And in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness.”

“I’ve been reduced to a happy little stereotype,” she continued. “I think that says alot about how he views queer people and children in general.” 

In recent years, Musk has taken a hard–right turn into conservative politics and has been waging a campaign against transgender people and policies designed to support them. This month, he said he was pulling his businesses out of California to protest a new state law that bars schools from requiring that trans kids be outed to their parents.

On X, Musk has for years criticized transgender rights, including medical treatments for trans-identifying minors, and the use of pronouns if they are different from what would be used at birth. He has promoted anti-trans content and called for arresting people who provide trans care to minors. 

After Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, in 2022, he rolled back the app’s protections for trans people, including a ban on using deadnames. 

Musk told Peterson that Wilson’s gender transition has been the motivation for his push into conservative politics. 

“I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that, and we’re making some progress,” he said. 

Wilson was also mentioned in a biography of Musk by author Walter Isaacson — a book that she told NBC News was inaccurate and unfair to her. The book refers to her politics as “radical Marxism,” quoting Musk’s sister-in-law Christiana Musk, but Wilson said she’s not a Marxist, though she said she does oppose wealth inequality. The book also calls her by her middle name, Jenna. 

Wilson said Isaacson never reached out to her directly ahead of publication. In a phone interview Thursday, Isaacson said he had reached out to Wilson through family members. 

Christiana Musk didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Wilson told NBC News that for years she had considered speaking out about Musk’s behavior as a parent and as a person but that she could no longer remain silent after his comments Monday. 

She said she had never received an explanation for why her father spent so little time with her and her siblings — behavior that she now views as strange. 

“He was there, I want to say, maybe 10% of the time. That’s generous,” she said. “He had half custody, and he fully was not there.” 

“It was just a fact of life at the time, so I don’t think I realized just how abnormal of an experience it was,” she added.

Wilson said she came out twice in life: once as gay in eighth grade and a second time as transgender when she was 16. She said that she doesn’t recall Musk’s response the first time and that she wasn’t present when Musk heard from others that she was transgender, because by then the pandemic had started and she was living full-time with her mother. 

“She’s very supportive. I love her a lot,” Wilson said of her mom.

The pandemic was a chance to escape Musk’s cruelty, she said. 

“When Covid hit, I was like, ‘I’m not going over there,’” she said. “It was basically very lucky timing.” 

Musk told Peterson in the interview that he had been “tricked” into signing documents authorizing transgender-related medical treatment for Wilson — an allegation Wilson said isn’t true. 

“I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys,” Musk said, using her birth name.

“This was before I had really any understanding of what was going on, and we had Covid going on,” he said, adding that he was told she might commit suicide.

Wilson said that, in 2020, when she was still a minor at 16, she wanted to start treatment for severe gender dysphoria but needed the consent of both parents under California law. She said that her mother was supportive but that Musk initially wasn’t. She said she texted him about it for a while. 

“I was trying to do this for months, but he said I had to go meet with him in person,” she said. “At that point, it was very clear that we both had a very distinct disdain for each other.” 

When she eventually went and gave him the medical forms, she said, he read them at least twice, once with her and then again on his own, before he signed them. 

“He was not by any means tricked. He knew the full side effects,” she said. 

She said she took puberty blockers before she switched to hormone-replacement therapy — treatments that she said were lifesaving for her and other transgender people. 

“They save lives. Let’s not get that twisted,” she said. “They definitely allowed me to thrive.” 

She said she believed the requirements to obtain such treatments remain onerous, with teenagers pressured to say they’re at extreme risk of self-harm before they’ll be approved. She said she felt judged by Musk and Peterson, in the Monday interview, for not being at a high enough risk in their eyes. 

“I have been basically put into a point where, to a group of people, I have to basically prove whether or not I was suicidal or not to warrant medically transitioning,” she said. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling.” 

CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed.

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Musk made the announcement after a series of social media posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, one day after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the first-in-the-nation law to ban school districts from requiring educators and school staff to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to anyone without the child’s permission.

“This is the final straw,” Musk responded to a post that shared an article about the new law, which will take effect in January. “Because of this law and the many other that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will move its HQ from Hawthore, California to Starbase, Texas.”

He added in a subsequent post: “I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.”

It’s not clear how the decision would affect the employment of hundreds of Southern Californians employed by the aerospace company.

The billionaire said the X, formerly Twitter, headquarters in downtown San Francisco would be also moving to Texas.

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SpaceX, founded by Musk in 2002, has been a revolutionary force in the space industry, pioneering the re-use of multimillion-dollar rocket boosters to dramatically cut the cost of aerospace missions. The company has earned multiple contracts from NASA for conducting resupply missions to the International Space Station, and transporting astronauts to and from the orbiting outpost with its Crew Dragon capsules. SpaceX is also working with NASA as part of the ambitious Artemis program aimed at establishing a base on the moon, with the larger goal of using the base as a possible launch point for manned missions to Mars.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was quick to respond to Musk’s vow to move the company, writing on X, “This cements Texas as the leader in space exploration.”

SpaceX already has significant operations in Texas, where it developing its massive Starship vehicle — billed as the most powerful rocket ever flown — for use in the Artemis program and human/cargo missions to Mars.

Tesla shareholders on Thursday voted overwhelmingly in favor of restoring Musk’s 10-year pay plan, valued by the company in April at $44.9 billion. It was worth more early in the year, but Tesla’s stock value has fallen about 25% since then.

The all-stock package, approved by the board and shareholders in 2018, rewards Musk for hitting milestones that include raising Tesla’s market value, pretax income and revenue.

It had been tossed out by a Delaware judge in January who said the process for approving it was “deeply flawed.” The court ruled that Musk controlled the company’s board, and shareholders weren’t fully informed.

But the company said Musk deserves the pay because he turned Tesla into the top-selling electric vehicle maker in the world, increasing its market value by billions.

Even with the reapproval vote, Musk won’t get access to the stock options just yet. Tesla is expected to ask the judge to revisit her decision in light of the vote, and if she doesn’t, the company probably will appeal the ruling to Delaware’s Supreme Court. The whole process could take months.

No matter the outcome, Musk’s package — the largest award to a CEO of a U.S. public company — is far above what’s been granted to other chief executives. Here’s how the package compares:

WITH THE MEDIAN CEO PAY

The median pay package for an S&P 500 U.S. CEO last year was $16.3 million, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. If you multiply that by 10 to get $163 million for a decade of work, Musk’s earnings still would be 275 times greater.

In her January ruling that struck down the package, Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick wrote that Musk’s package, then worth about $56 billion, was 250 times larger than the median peer CEO’s pay plan.

WITH INDIVIDUAL CEOS

The top earner in the AP’s survey was Hock Tan, CEO of artificial intelligence company Broadcom Inc. His package, mostly consisting of stock awards, was valued at about $162 million, when given to Tan at the start of fiscal 2023. Thanks to a surging stock price, Broadcom in March valued Tan’s pay package, plus older options he hadn’t yet cashed in, at $767.7 million. That’s an amount easily eclipsed by Musk’s potential haul of 304 million shares worth almost $45 billion.

Other CEOs at the top of AP’s survey are William Lansing of Fair Isaac Corp, ($66.3 million); Tim Cook of Apple Inc. ($63.2 million); Hamid Moghadam of Prologis Inc. ($50.9 million); and Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix ($49.8 million).

Technically, Musk got no compensation last year because he didn’t get any stock options. But he stands to get even richer if his pay package goes through.

WITH TESLA WORKERS

It’s difficult to calculate what Musk’s annual pay would have been last year. The company says he got nothing. But if his compensation package makes it through the courts, his pay will be in the billions. According to the company’s proxy filing this year, the median annual pay of a non-CEO Tesla employee last year was $45,811.

Elon Musk‘s eldest child with ex Grimes, X Æ A-Xii, is all smiles in a new pic his dad shared on his fourth birthday.

The billionaire Tesla CEO posted the photo of the boy, nicknamed X, on the social media platform he owns, X, formerly Twitter. Musk captioned the post, which shows the child sitting on what appeared to be a reception desk, “Lil X turns 4 today on May 4th.”

The Space X founder, a father of 11 and one of the top three richest people in the world, rarely shares pics of his kids on social media. He has occasionally been photographed out with X, most recently in March during a visit to Tesla’s electric car plant in Gruenheide, Germany.

In addition to X, Musk and Grimes, who broke up in 2022, are also parents to Exa Dark Sideræl, or Y, 2, and Techno Mechanicus, or Tau, whose birth was confirmed in 2023.

Musk, 52, also fathered six children with ex-wife Justine Wilson Musk: Twins Vivian and Griffin, 19, triplets Kai, Damian, and Sax, 18, and eldest child, son Nevada, who tragically passed away at age 10 weeks in 2002.

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In 2021, the businessman welcomed twins Strider and Azure. with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis. She has occasionally shared pics of their kids on her own X account.

In April, Musk jokingly reflected on his parenting journey on X. “Whoa,” he wrote, “I just realized that raising a kid is basically 18 years of prompt engineering.”

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Chinese Premier Li Qiang told Musk that he hopes the U.S. will work more with China on “win-win” cooperation, citing Tesla’s operations in China as a successful example of economic cooperation, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said on its main evening news program.

For China, Musk is a welcome antidote to the tough talk from U.S. officials, which played out most recently during a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Li’s remarks also reflect China’s efforts to attract foreign investment to boost its flagging economy.

It wasn’t clear whether Musk would visit the auto show, which runs through this week. Chinese automakers and startups have launched a bevy of electric cars in recent years, some going head-to-head with Tesla and undercutting the American maker on price.

An earlier CCTV online report said that Musk had come at the invitation of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and met with its president, Ren Hongbin, to exchange views on further cooperation and other topics.

Tesla has a major manufacturing base in Shanghai for both domestic sales in China and exports to Europe and other regions. It cut prices in China a week ago, dropping the Model 3 to 231,900 yuan ($32,700) and the Model Y to 249,900 yuan ($35,200), following similar reductions in the U.S.

The European Union has launched an investigation into Chinese subsidies for the EV industry that could lead to tariffs on electric vehicles made in China, potentially including Tesla cars.

The green energy subsidies have helped transform the Chinese auto market, with EVs reaching about a quarter of new car sales last year, eating into demand for gasoline-powered vehicles.

Foreign automakers such as Volkswagen and Nissan are scrambling to develop new EV models to hold onto or claw back market share in China, the world’s largest automobile market.

Don Lemon announced Wednesday that Elon Musk had canceled the former CNN anchor’s new talk show on the social media platform X — before an episode even debuted.

In a statement posted on X, Lemon claimed that Musk was upset about an interview he did with Lemon on Friday, almost exactly two months after their deal was announced.

“There were no restrictions on the interview that he willingly agreed to, and my questions were respectful and wide ranging, covering everything from SpaceX to the presidential election,” Lemon said. “We had a good conversation. Clearly he felt differently.”

Lemon said the interview with Musk would still be available to watch on YouTube and X. “While Elon goes back on his word, I will be doubling down on my commitment to free speech,” he said.

In a subsequent video clip posted on X, Lemon directly addresses his smartphone camera and says: “Hi, everyone. Elon Musk is mad at me.”

In a post, one of X’s verified corporate accounts confirmed the company had “decided not to enter into a commercial partnership with the show.” When an X user asked for specific reasons, Musk replied from his personal handle and accused Lemon of being a mouthpiece for former CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who stepped down in early 2022.

“Instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity,” Musk said in part.

Lemon, who was fired from CNN last April, made a content pact with X in January as part of what the company billed as a push to expand video offerings. The website also teamed up with former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, and sports personality Jim Rome.

“Elon publicly encouraged me to join X with a new show, saying I would have his ‘full support,’ and that his ‘digital town square is for all.’ … I took Elon and his management team’s word that they, for the first time, were interested in working directly with new and diverse voices,” Lemon said in his statement.

Musk, who took control of what was formerly known as Twitter in late 2022, vowed to make the platform an arena for “free speech.” He has drawn intense scrutiny for propagating misinformation and giving a platform to conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.

The tech mogul’s first media partnership was with the former Fox News host and right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, who has since launched his own independent media enterprise.

Lemon announced he had been terminated from CNN on the same day that Fox News said it was parting ways with Carlson. The news of Lemon’s exit came after Variety published an article about allegations that he had mistreated female colleagues over his career.

He has denied those allegations.

Lemon also faced backlash for making on-air comments about then-Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley that were widely viewed as sexist and ageist.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Don Lemon says he has been fired from CNN
• Don Lemon to return to ‘CNN This Morning’ after training following comments about Nikki Haley’s age
• The complicated tragedy of Don Lemon’s CNN implosion

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Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has to testify in a probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission concerning his 2022 acquisition of Twitter, a U.S. judge ordered in a court filing out Saturday.

As CNBC previously reported, the SEC is investigating whether Musk, or anyone else, committed securities fraud in 2022 as the billionaire began buying stock in Twitter, and building a stake ahead of his leveraged buyout of the social media company.

Musk closed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022 in a deal worth roughly $44 billion, and has since rebranded it X.

In the order dated Feb. 10, 2024, federal magistrate judge Laurel Beeler wrote that although Musk and his legal team argued the SEC’s subpoena in this matter amounted to harassment of the billionaire, the federal financial regulator was “within its authority,” and their subpoena was “definite, and seeks relevant information” to their investigation.

The federal financial regulator and Musk now have one week to set a date and location for his testimony.

Musk, his attorney Alex Spiro and the SEC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Musk has repeatedly sought to challenge if not strip authority from federal regulatory agencies.

For example, he has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to undo a settlement agreement that he and Tesla struck with the SEC previously. The settlement required Musk to have a “Twitter sitter” approve his tweets about his electric vehicle business before posting them. Musk’s attorneys have argued that the agreement set an unconstitutional condition on Musk and amounts to a violation of his free speech rights.

In another example, Musk-led defense contractor SpaceX sued the National Labor Relations Board after the federal agency filed a complaint against the company alleging the rocket-maker illegally fired employees who signed an open letter critical of Musk. The letter said, among other things, that Musk’s “behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us.” 

SpaceX filed its lawsuit against the NLRB in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Brownsville. Attorneys for SpaceX argued in their suit that the very structure of the federal labor board violates the U.S. Constitution. Their suit resembles another one brought by a former employee of Starbucks against the NLRB, and seeks to prevent the NLRB’s earlier complaint against SpaceX from moving forward.

Read the full order to compel compliance here.

The ruling by Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick comes more than five years after a shareholder lawsuit targeted Tesla CEO Musk and directors of the company. They were accused of breaching their duties to the maker of electric vehicles and solar panels, resulting in a waste of corporate assets and unjust enrichment for Musk.

The shareholder’s lawyers argued that the compensation package should be voided because it was dictated by Musk and was the product of sham negotiations with directors who were not independent of him. They also said it was approved by shareholders who were given misleading and incomplete disclosures in a proxy statement.

Defense attorneys countered that the pay plan was fairly negotiated by a compensation committee whose members were independent, contained performance milestones so lofty that they were ridiculed by some Wall Street investors, and blessed by a shareholder vote that was not even required under Delaware law. They also argued that Musk was not a controlling shareholder because he owned less than one-third of the company at the time.

An attorney for Musk and other Tesla defendants did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

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But Musk reacted to the ruling on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that he owns, by offering business advice. “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware,” he said. He later added, “I recommend incorporating in Nevada or Texas if you prefer shareholders to decide matters.”

Musk, who as of Tuesday topped Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people, had earlier this month challenged Tesla’s board to come up with a new compensation plan for him that would give him a 25% stake in the company. On an earnings call last week, Musk, who currently holds 13%, explained that with a 25% stake, he can’t control the company, yet he would have strong influence.

In trial testimony in November 2022, Musk denied that he dictated terms of the compensation package or attended any meetings at which the plan was discussed by the board, its compensation committee, or a working group that helped develop it.

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McCormick determined, however, that because Musk was a controlling shareholder with a potential conflict of interest, the pay package must be subject to a more rigorous standard.

“The process leading to the approval of Musk’s compensation plan was deeply flawed,” McCormick wrote in the colorfully written 200-page decision. “Musk had extensive ties with the persons tasked with negotiating on Tesla’s behalf.”

McCormick specifically cited Musk’s long business and personal relationships with compensation committee chairman Ira Ehrenpreis and fellow committee member Antonio Gracias. She also noted that the working group working on the pay package included general counsel Todd Maron who was Musk’s former divorce attorney.

“In fact, Maron was a primary go-between Musk and the committee, and it is unclear on whose side Maron viewed himself,” the judge wrote. “Yet many of the documents cited by the defendants as proof of a fair process were drafted by Maron.”

McCormick concluded that the only suitable remedy was for Musk’s compensation package to be rescinded. “In the final analysis, Musk launched a self-driving process, recalibrating the speed and direction along the way as he saw fit,” she wrote. “The process arrived at an unfair price. And through this litigation, the plaintiff requests a recall.”

Greg Varallo, a lead attorney for the shareholder plaintiff, praised McCormick’s decision to reverse the “absurdly outsized” Musk pay package.

“The fact that they lost this in Delaware court, it’s a jaw dropper,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives. “It’s unprecedented, a ruling like this. I think going in investors thought it was just typical legal noise and nothing was going to come out about it. The fact that they went head to head with Tesla and Musk and the board and voided this, it’s a huge legal decision.”

During his trial testimony, Musk downplayed the notion that his friendships with certain Tesla board members, including sometimes vacationing together, meant that they were likely to do his bidding.

The plan called for Musk to reap billions if Tesla, which is based in Austin, Texas, hit certain market capitalization and operational milestones. For each incidence of simultaneously meeting a market cap milestone and an operational milestone, Musk, who owned about 22% of Tesla when the plan was approved, would get stock equal to 1% of outstanding shares at the time of the grant. His interest in the company would grow to about 28% if the company’s market capitalization grew by $600 billion.

Each milestone included growing Tesla’s market capitalization by $50 billion and meeting aggressive revenue and pretax profit growth targets. Musk stood to receive the full benefit of the pay plan, $55.8 billion, only by leading Tesla to a market capitalization of $650 billion and unprecedented revenues and earnings within a decade.

Tesla has achieved all twelve market capitalization milestones and eleven operational milestones, providing Musk nearly $28 billion in stock option gains, according to a January post-trial brief filed by the plaintiff’s attorneys. The stock option grants are subject to a five-year holding period, however.

Defense attorney Evan Chesler argued at trial that the compensation package was a “high-risk, high-reward” deal that benefitted not just Musk, but Tesla shareholders. After the plan was implemented, the value of the company climbed from $53 billion to more than $800 billion, having briefly hit $1 trillion.

Chesler also said Tesla made sure that the $55 billion compensation figure was included in the proxy statement because the company wanted shareholders to know that “this was a heart-stopping number that Mr. Musk could earn.”

A Delaware judge on Tuesday voided the $56 billion pay package of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, ruling that the company’s board of directors failed to prove “that the compensation plan was fair.”

Tesla’s share price slid about 3% in after-hours trading Tuesday following news of the decision in the Delaware Chancery Court lawsuit filed by Richard Tornetta, a shareholder in the electric automaker.

The pay package that Tesla granted Musk in 2018 was the largest compensation plan in public corporate history, the judge noted, making the Tesla and SpaceX boss a centi-billionaire and the richest person on the planet.

The plan offered Musk the chance to secure 12 tranches of Tesla stock options, which would vest if the company’s market capitalization increased by $50 billion and Tesla achieved a revenue target.

“Was the richest person in the world overpaid?” asked Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen McCormick in her 200-page ruling. “The stockholder plaintiff in this derivative lawsuit says so. He claims that Tesla, Inc.’s directors breached their fiduciary duties by awarding Elon Musk a performance-based equity-compensation plan.”

McCormick in her decision found that Tornetta had proved that Musk “controlled Tesla,” and that the process leading to the board’s approval of his compensation was “deeply flawed.”

Musk had “extensive ties with the persons tasked with negotiating on Tesla’s behalf,” including management members “who were beholden to Musk,: among them General Counsel Todd Maron, who was his “former divorce attorney.”

“In the final analysis, Musk launched a self-driving process, recalibrating the speed and direction along the way as he saw fit,” the judge wrote. “The process arrived at an unfair price. And through this litigation, the plaintiff requests a recall.”

“The plaintiff is entitled to rescission,” McCormick wrote.

“The parties are to confer on a form of final order implementing this decision and submit a joint letter identifying all issues, including fees that need to be addressed to bring this matter to a conclusion at the trial level,” McCormick said.

CNBC has requested comment from Musk, his lawyer and Tornetta’s attorney, on the decision.

In a tweet late Tuesday afternoon, Musk wrote, “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware.”

McCormick noted her ruling hinged on a finding that Musk, rather than its board of directors and shareholders, controlled Tesla, at least when it came to the question of setting his compensation.

The judge wrote, “In addition to his 21.9% equity stake, Musk was the paradigmatic ‘Superstar CEO,’ who held some of the most influential corporate positions (CEO, Chair, and founder), enjoyed thick ties with the directors tasked with negotiating on behalf of Tesla, and dominated the process that led to board approval of his compensation plan.”

Tesla and Musk’s attorneys, the court decided, “were unable to prove that the stockholder vote was fully informed because the proxy statement inaccurately described key directors as independent and misleadingly omitted details about the process.”

Earlier this month, Musk began angling for 25% of voting control over Tesla.

He currently owns about 13% of the company’s stock outright.

“I am uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI & robotics without having ~25% voting control. Enough to be influential, but not so much that I can’t be overturned,” he wrote in a post on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

Musk owns X and runs it.

In a Monday post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Musk said that the patient received the implant the day prior and was “recovering well.” He added that “initial results show promising neuron spike detection.”

The billionaire, who co-founded Neuralink, did not provide additional details about the patient. When Neuralink announced in September that it would begin recruiting people, the company said it was searching for individuals with quadriplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Neuralink reposted Musk’s Monday post on X, but did not publish any additional statements acknowledging the human implant. The company did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ requests for comment Tuesday.

The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates medical devices and would need to approve any consumer product, did not immediately respond to NBC’s request for comment on Musk’s announcement. 

Neuralink’s device is about the size of a large coin and is designed to be implanted in the skull, with ultra-thin wires going directly into the brain. In its September announcement, Neuralink said the wires would be surgically placed in a region of the brain that controls movement intention. The initial goal of the so-called brain computer interface is to give people the ability to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone.

In a separate Monday post on X, Musk said that the first Neuralink product is called “Telepathy” — which, he said, will enable users to control their phones or computers “just by thinking.” He added that intial users would be those who have lost use of their limbs.

It’s unclear how well this device or similar interfaces will ultimately work, or how safe they might be. Clinical trials are designed to collect data on safety and effectiveness.

Neuralink is one of many groups working on linking the nervous system to computers, efforts aimed at helping treat brain disorders, overcoming brain injuries and other applications. There are more than 40 brain computer interface trials underway, according to clinicaltrials.gov.

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Musk toured the most notorious extermination camp established by Nazi Germany during World War II before attending a conference on antisemitism organized by the European Jewish Association in the nearby Polish city of Krakow.

He admitted to having been “naïve” about the extent of antisemitism until recently, saying that is because most of his friends are Jewish and he has had little contact with it in his own life.

“In the circles that I move, I see almost no antisemitism,” Musk said at the conference in a discussion with Daily Wire podcaster Ben Shapiro. “And, you know, there’s this old joke ‘I’ve got like this one Jewish friend.’ No, I have like two-thirds of my friends are Jewish. I have twice as many Jewish friends as non-Jewish friends. I’m like Jewish by association, I’m aspirationally Jewish.”

He defended his X platform as a a place where freedom of speech flourishes, saying that a free exchange of ideas is something that ultimately helps to correct hatred, noting that the Nazis shut down freedom of press and information.

“The overarching goal for the X platform is to be the best source of truth in the world,” he said. The “relentless pursuit of the truth is the goal with X and allowing people to say what they want to say, even if it’s controversial, provided that it does not break the law.”

The billionaire has faced accusations from the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish civil rights organization, and others of tolerating antisemitic messages on the platform, formerly known as Twitter, since purchasing it in 2022.

He sparked an outcry in November, including from the White House, when he responded on X to a user who accused Jews of hating white people and professing indifference to antisemitism by posting, “You have said the actual truth.” He later apologized for the comment, calling it the “dumbest” post that he’s ever done.

Several big brands, including Disney and IBM, stopped advertising on the platform last year after liberal advocacy group Media Matters said that their ads were appearing alongside pro-Nazi content and white nationalist posts. X has since sued Media Matters, saying the Washington-based nonprofit manufactured the report to “drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.”

Musk visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau site with his 3-year-old son and others, including Shapiro and the founder and head of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin. The site, near the town of Oswiecim in southern Poland, is fenced off with barbed wire. Wooden barracks for the prisoners and the ruins of gas chambers endure as evidence of Nazi crimes. There is also a monument to the victims where remembrance ceremonies are held yearly.

“It was incredibly moving and deeply sad and tragic that humans could do this to other humans,” Musk said about the visit. “I’m a student of history, so I had seen the pictures, I’d seen the videos, but … it hits you much more in the heart when you see it in person.”

Musk had been expected to make the visit on Tuesday and take part in a memorial service, together with political figures attending the EJA conference in Krakow, but showed up at the Nazi death camp on Monday instead.

“Due to schedule concerns, before Elon Musk’s arrival to the European Jewish Association conference, he took part in a private visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau with EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Ben Shapiro and Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev. Musk laid a wreath at the wall of death and took part in a short memorial ceremony and service by the Birkenau memorial,” the EJA said in an email.

Oliver Bradley, an EJA media adviser, said the organization “challenged” Musk to come to Auschwitz during a Zoom conference on antisemitism in social media several months ago.

“Musk shrugged his shoulders at the suggestion stating that he already knew the history of the Holocaust … as if visiting might not be an impactful experience,” Bradley said.

But Margolin, the EJA chairman, “successfully convinced Musk of the necessity of experiencing a place of genocide in order to even begin to truly fathom the dimension of the Holocaust,” Bradley said.

X, the social media platform that Musk bought when it was known as Twitter, didn’t respond to a request for comment about his trip, sending an automated message saying, “Busy now, please check back later.” SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company, also didn’t respond to email requests for comment.

The EJA conference on the rise of antisemitism was held in Krakow before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27.

More than 1.1 million people were murdered by the Nazis and their henchmen at Auschwitz during World War II. Most who were killed were Jews, but the victims also included Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and others. In all, about 6 million European Jews died during the Holocaust. When the Soviets liberated the camp, they found about 7,000 survivors.

Musk said that had there been social media at the time of World War II, the Holocaust “would have been impossible to hide” and lives could have been saved.

A Los Angeles-based regional director for the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday filed a complaint that consolidates eight unfair labor practice charges against SpaceX. The cases stem from the company’s alleged actions following the circulation of the employees’ letter back in June 2022.

The letter, among other workplace concerns, called on executives to condemn Musk’s public behavior on X — the platform then-known as Twitter — and hold everyone accountable for unacceptable conduct. Musk’s actions included making light of sexual harassment allegations against him, which the billionaire denied.

“As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company,” the open letter said at the time. The letter also referred to Musk’s actions as a ”frequent source of distraction and embarrassment.”

A total of nine employees were soon terminated for their involvement in the letter, according to a November 2022 filing made on behalf of one of the employees to the NLRB.

In addition to the firings, Wednesday’s complaint (which again covers eight cases) accuses SpaceX of interrogating other workers about the letter, announcing that employees were terminated for their participation in the letter and “inviting employees to quit if they disagreed with the behavior of Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk.”

The complaint also alleges that some were shown screen shots of communications between employees about the letter, which “created an impression among (SpaceX’s) employees that their protected concerted activities were under surveillance.”

SpaceX did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ requests for comment Thursday.

The Hawthorne, Calif., company has until mid-January to respond to the complaint, according to Wednesday’s filing. The complaint marks the NLRB’s first step towards litigating these allegations and seeking a settlement. If a settlement isn’t reached, a hearing is scheduled to begin on March 5 in Los Angeles.

It poses new uncertainty for advertisers, who have fled X over concerns about hate speech appearing alongside their ads, and is the latest divisive public personality to get back their banned account.

Musk posted a poll on Saturday asking if Jones should be reinstated, with the results showing 70% of those who responded in favor. Early Sunday, Musk tweeted, “The people have spoken and so it shall be.”

A few hours later, Jones’ posts were visible again and he retweeted a post about his video game. He and his Infowars show had been permanently banned in 2018 for abusive behavior.

Musk, who has described himself as a free speech absolutist, said the move was about protecting those rights. In response to a user who posted that “permanent account bans are antithetical to free speech,” Musk wrote, “I find it hard to disagree with this point.”

The billionaire Tesla CEO also tweeted it’s likely that Community Notes — X’s crowd-sourced fact-checking service — “will respond rapidly to any AJ post that needs correction.”

It is a major turnaround for Musk, who previously said he wouldn’t let Jones back on the platform despite repeated calls to do so. Last year, Musk pointed to the death of his first-born child and tweeted, “I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”

Jones repeatedly has said on his show that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six educators never happened and was staged in an effort to tighten gun laws.

Relatives of many of the victims sued Jones in Connecticut and Texas, winning nearly $1.5 billion in judgments against him. In October, a judge ruled that Jones could not use bankruptcy protection to avoid paying more than $1.1 billon of that debt.

Relatives of the school shooting victims testified at the trials about being harassed and threatened by Jones’ believers, who sent threats and even confronted the grieving families in person, accusing them of being “crisis actors” whose children never existed.

Jones is appealing the judgments, saying he didn’t get fair trials and his speech was protected by the First Amendment.

Restoring Jones’ account comes as Musk has seen a slew of big brands, including Disney and IBM, stop advertising on X after a report by liberal advocacy group Media Matters said ads were appearing alongside pro-Nazi content and white nationalist posts.

They also were scared away after Musk himself endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory in response to a post on X. The Tesla CEO later apologized and visited Israel, where he toured a kibbutz attacked by Hamas militants and held talks with top Israeli leaders.

But he also has said advertisers are engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.

“Don’t advertise,” Musk said in an on-stage interview late last month at The New York Times DealBook Summit.

After buying Twitter last year, Musk said he was granting “amnesty” for suspended accounts and has since reinstated former President Donald Trump; Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, following two suspensions over antisemitic posts last year; and far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was kicked off the platform for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policies.

Trump, who was banned for encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, has his own social media site, Truth Social, and has only tweeted once since being allowed back on X.

Meet Grok, the first technology out of Elon Musk’s new AI company, xAI.

Grok, the company said, is modeled on “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” It is supposed to have “a bit of wit,” “a rebellious streak” and it should answer the “spicy questions” that other AI might dodge, according to a Saturday statement from xAI.

Leading up to the release, Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, an example of Grok responding to a request for a step-by-step cocaine recipe.

“Oh sure!” Grok responded. “Just a moment while I pull up the recipe for homemade cocaine. You know, because I’m totally going to help you with that.” 

Grok also has access to data from X, which xAI said will give it a leg-up. Musk, on Sunday, posted a side-by-side comparison of Grok answering a question versus another AI bot, which he said had less current information.

Still, xAI hedged in its statement, as with any Large Language Model, or LLM, Grok “can still generate false or contradictory information.”

The prototype is in its early beta phase, only two months in training and is available to a select number of users to test out before the company releases it more widely. Users can sign up for a waitlist for a chance to use the bot. Eventually, Musk said on X, Grok will be a feature of X Premium+, which costs $16 per month.

The Tesla and Space X CEO appears to be positioning xAI as a challenger to companies like OpenAI, Inflection and Anthropic.

On an initial round of tests based on middle school math problems and Python coding tasks, the company said that Grok surpassed “all other models in its compute class, including ChatGPT-3.5 and Inflection-1.” It was outperformed by bots with larger data troves.

“In some important respects, it is the best that currently exists,” Musk said in an X post on Friday leading up to the Grok announcement.

Grok is a term coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1961 science fiction novel “Stranger in a Strange Land.” In the book, ‘grok’ is a Martian term with no direct Earthling translation. Critics have debated the word’s exact definition but have settled on some version of having very deep empathy or intuition with something. Merriam-Webster defines it simply as a transitive verb that means “to understand profoundly and intuitively.”

xAI launched in July with a team stacked with former employees of OpenAI, DeepMind and more. It is still hiring for several roles.

The company’s self-stated mandate is to build artificial intelligence “to advance our collective understanding of the universe.” Musk has previously said that he believes today’s AI makers are bending too far toward “politically correct” systems. xAI’s mission, it said, is to create AI for people of all backgrounds and political views.

Grok is said to be a means of testing that AI approach “in public.”

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The petition, created by Musk’s America PAC, comes amid the entrepreneur’s larger campaign over the last week to register conservative voters in swing states.

Paying someone to vote or to register to vote is explicitly illegal under federal law. Musk’s payouts seem to skirt those laws, though. Musk and America PAC have said that payouts or lottery entries will be given to registered voters for their petition signatures or referrals of other signatories. The petition is supportive of free speech and gun rights. Signing the petition does not require any specific party affiliation. 

“I think it straddles the line, and it’s a little unclear whether it goes over the line or not,” said John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in election administration.

The fact that the lottery is contingent on signing a petition, rather than merely registering to vote, may be enough to keep Musk from overtly breaking the law, experts told NBC News, but it’s not clear-cut.

“This is at best very questionable legally,” said Michael Morse, an assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. “Federal law says that you cannot pay someone to register to vote. I think you can read this petition as an inducement to register to vote.”

“I’ve never heard of a million-dollar lottery in the last weeks of a presidential campaign, to either sign a petition or to induce people to register, so we’re in new legal territory here,” said Nate Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School.

“The relevant legal question is whether this is payment to induce people to register. If it is, then it violates the law. If it’s payment to induce people to sign a petition, then it’s not a problem,” he said. 

Musk’s PAC announced the initial payouts to signatories and referrers of signatories of the petition on Oct. 6. Over the last several days, Musk has upped the ante, adding money to his promises several times.

Rick Hasen, the director of the UCLA School of Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project and an NBC News election law analyst, wrote Saturday that he believes Musk’s plan is “clearly illegal” because the petition requires signers to be registered voters in particular states. 

Hasen noted that the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Manual explicitly cites “lottery chances” as an example of a type of illegal bribe if it’s “intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Democrat Josh Shapiro said on Meet the Press Sunday that the lottery was “deeply concerning” and suggested law enforcement could investigate it. 

But none of the experts who spoke with NBC News believed law enforcement is likely to stop the lottery or fine Musk before the election.

“The Department of Justice is authorized to enforce the statute,” Morse said. “But I think in the next three weeks they have other things to do.”

The Justice Department, Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, and Federal Election Commission declined to comment.

Musk endorsed Trump in July, after Trump became the Republican Party’s nominee. The world’s wealthiest person, Musk is engaged in at least 11 regulatory or legal battles with the federal government related to his companies, a previous NBC News tally found, making the stakes of the presidential election high for him. Musk’s companies have won billions in federal contracts over the last decade, according to a recent tally from The New York Times.

The deadline for voter registration in Pennsylvania and Michigan is Monday. The contest’s rules appear to say that while it no longer accepts new entrants after Monday, it will continue to name new $1 million prize winners each day until the election. So far it has named two.

On Monday morning, Musk celebrated Republican voter registration in Pennsylvania.

“New Republican voter registration last week in Pennsylvania absolutely crushed Democrat voter registration!” he wrote on X. 

Morse, the Penn law professor, said he viewed the lottery as unlikely to be a consequential stunt, and instead it seemed more like a data mining operation.

“You can only register to vote in Pennsylvania until today. I just see this as a political stunt. It’s a stunt to mine people’s data, to build up an email list for contacts, for campaigning, for mobilization,” he said, referring to get-out-the-vote efforts and other voter engagement.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Elon Musk ratchets up bid to re-elect Trump with series of stunts and appearances
• What tariffs do and why economists don’t like them
• Fewer diners and ice cream shops: Trump and Harris shift strategies on the trail amid security threats

Benjamin Brody, 22, is represented by Mark Bankston, a Texas attorney who won a defamation case last year against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a lawsuit brought by families of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. Brody is seeking a jury trial in Austin, Texas, and unspecified damages of at least $1 million.

Attorneys for Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment left through a spokesperson.

In June, a video posted to X showed a confrontation involving protesters near a Pride festival in Oregon. Some of those involved wore the same colors as the Proud Boys extremist group, according to The Oregonian. On X, some users falsely identified one of the participants as Brody, highlighting his post-college plans to work for the government to spread baseless assertions that federal agents were involved.

The lawsuit includes screenshots of Musk engaging with users spreading the posts involving Brody, including one in which Musk described it as a “probable false flag situation.” Brody, a recent college graduate who said he was in California when the event happened, came under harassment because of Musk’s reach, according to the lawsuit.

The posts by Musk were still on X as of Monday.

It is not the first time Musk has been sued for defamation. He defeated a lawsuit in 2019 from a British cave explorer who claimed he was branded a pedophile when the Tesla CEO called him “pedo guy” on what was then called Twitter.

Musk’s tech company has also taken others to court over what is posted on the site. In August, X sued a group of researchers over accusations that their work highlighting an increase in hate speech on the platform cost the company millions of dollars of advertising revenue.

The petition, created by Musk’s America PAC, comes amid the entrepreneur’s larger campaign over the last week to register conservative voters in swing states.

Paying someone to vote or to register to vote is explicitly illegal under federal law. Musk’s payouts seem to skirt those laws, though. Musk and America PAC have said that payouts or lottery entries will be given to registered voters for their petition signatures or referrals of other signatories. The petition is supportive of free speech and gun rights. Signing the petition does not require any specific party affiliation. 

“I think it straddles the line, and it’s a little unclear whether it goes over the line or not,” said John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in election administration.

The fact that the lottery is contingent on signing a petition, rather than merely registering to vote, may be enough to keep Musk from overtly breaking the law, experts told NBC News, but it’s not clear-cut.

“This is at best very questionable legally,” said Michael Morse, an assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. “Federal law says that you cannot pay someone to register to vote. I think you can read this petition as an inducement to register to vote.”

“I’ve never heard of a million-dollar lottery in the last weeks of a presidential campaign, to either sign a petition or to induce people to register, so we’re in new legal territory here,” said Nate Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School.

“The relevant legal question is whether this is payment to induce people to register. If it is, then it violates the law. If it’s payment to induce people to sign a petition, then it’s not a problem,” he said. 

Musk’s PAC announced the initial payouts to signatories and referrers of signatories of the petition on Oct. 6. Over the last several days, Musk has upped the ante, adding money to his promises several times.

Rick Hasen, the director of the UCLA School of Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project and an NBC News election law analyst, wrote Saturday that he believes Musk’s plan is “clearly illegal” because the petition requires signers to be registered voters in particular states. 

Hasen noted that the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Manual explicitly cites “lottery chances” as an example of a type of illegal bribe if it’s “intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Democrat Josh Shapiro said on Meet the Press Sunday that the lottery was “deeply concerning” and suggested law enforcement could investigate it. 

But none of the experts who spoke with NBC News believed law enforcement is likely to stop the lottery or fine Musk before the election.

“The Department of Justice is authorized to enforce the statute,” Morse said. “But I think in the next three weeks they have other things to do.”

The Justice Department, Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, and Federal Election Commission declined to comment.

Musk endorsed Trump in July, after Trump became the Republican Party’s nominee. The world’s wealthiest person, Musk is engaged in at least 11 regulatory or legal battles with the federal government related to his companies, a previous NBC News tally found, making the stakes of the presidential election high for him. Musk’s companies have won billions in federal contracts over the last decade, according to a recent tally from The New York Times.

The deadline for voter registration in Pennsylvania and Michigan is Monday. The contest’s rules appear to say that while it no longer accepts new entrants after Monday, it will continue to name new $1 million prize winners each day until the election. So far it has named two.

On Monday morning, Musk celebrated Republican voter registration in Pennsylvania.

“New Republican voter registration last week in Pennsylvania absolutely crushed Democrat voter registration!” he wrote on X. 

Morse, the Penn law professor, said he viewed the lottery as unlikely to be a consequential stunt, and instead it seemed more like a data mining operation.

“You can only register to vote in Pennsylvania until today. I just see this as a political stunt. It’s a stunt to mine people’s data, to build up an email list for contacts, for campaigning, for mobilization,” he said, referring to get-out-the-vote efforts and other voter engagement.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Elon Musk ratchets up bid to re-elect Trump with series of stunts and appearances
• What tariffs do and why economists don’t like them
• Fewer diners and ice cream shops: Trump and Harris shift strategies on the trail amid security threats

Taiwan is “not for sale,” and neither is it part of China, said Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a rebuke to Elon Musk who called the island “an integral part of China.”

“Listen up, Taiwan is not part of the PRC and certainly not for sale!” Taiwan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu said late Wednesday on X, also formerly known as Twitter. PRC refers to the People’s Republic of China, the official name of China.

The message was in response to a comment made by Musk during the All-In Summit, which was recently held in Los Angeles.

“I think I understand China well. I’ve been there many times and have met with senior leadership at many levels .. for many years,” Musk said. “I think I’ve got a pretty good understanding as an outsider of China.”

Taiwan has been governed independently of China since the island split from the mainland in a civil war in 1949. Beijing continues to view Taiwan as part of its territory that should be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Musk, the CEO of X, SpaceX, as well as electric car maker Tesla, went on to say: China’s policy “has been to reunite Taiwan with China. From their standpoint, maybe it is analogous to Hawaii or something like that, like an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China.”

CNBC could not immediately reach Musk for comment outside office hours.

Wu, in his tweet, added that he hoped Musk could also ask the Chinese Communist Party to allow its people access to X, which is currently banned in China.

“Hope Elon Musk can also ask the CCP to open X to its people. Perhaps he thinks banning it is a good policy, like turning off Starlink to thwart Ukraine’s counterstrike against Russia,” Wu said.

In the early days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Musk had reportedly curtailed a Ukrainian military attack on Russia by limiting access to the SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network. The move attracted backlash from Ukraine and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

This is not the first time that Musk has drawn ire from the self-ruled island.

Last October, the billionaire also drew rebuke from Taiwan for his suggestion that tensions between China and Taiwan could be resolved if Beijing had some control over Taiwan.

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Walter Isaacson’s book “Elon Musk” hit shelves Tuesday, and the author told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” about a heated exchange he documented between the Tesla CEO and Bill Gates.

Isaacson said his book chronicles the good, bad and ugly behind Musk, and that one of the things that upsets the billionaire is when people short Tesla stock to try and make a profit. Early last year, Musk met with Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, who had previously shorted the automaker’s stock and bet that it would decrease in value.

“The demons and dancing in Elon Musk’s head include people who short Tesla,” Isaacson said Tuesday.

Gates wanted to discuss philanthropy efforts around climate change with Musk, and Isaacson said that since Musk did not have an assistant at the time, the two had to text directly to set up the meeting. When Gates arrived, one of the first questions Musk asked was whether Gates was still shorting Tesla, and Gates answered honestly: He was.

Isaacson said Musk exploded, and Isaacson later received a text from Musk that called Gates “insane” among other things.

Representatives for Gates and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Read more about the encounter in an excerpt from Isaacson’s book here.

The petition, created by Musk’s America PAC, comes amid the entrepreneur’s larger campaign over the last week to register conservative voters in swing states.

Paying someone to vote or to register to vote is explicitly illegal under federal law. Musk’s payouts seem to skirt those laws, though. Musk and America PAC have said that payouts or lottery entries will be given to registered voters for their petition signatures or referrals of other signatories. The petition is supportive of free speech and gun rights. Signing the petition does not require any specific party affiliation. 

“I think it straddles the line, and it’s a little unclear whether it goes over the line or not,” said John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in election administration.

The fact that the lottery is contingent on signing a petition, rather than merely registering to vote, may be enough to keep Musk from overtly breaking the law, experts told NBC News, but it’s not clear-cut.

“This is at best very questionable legally,” said Michael Morse, an assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. “Federal law says that you cannot pay someone to register to vote. I think you can read this petition as an inducement to register to vote.”

“I’ve never heard of a million-dollar lottery in the last weeks of a presidential campaign, to either sign a petition or to induce people to register, so we’re in new legal territory here,” said Nate Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School.

“The relevant legal question is whether this is payment to induce people to register. If it is, then it violates the law. If it’s payment to induce people to sign a petition, then it’s not a problem,” he said. 

Musk’s PAC announced the initial payouts to signatories and referrers of signatories of the petition on Oct. 6. Over the last several days, Musk has upped the ante, adding money to his promises several times.

Rick Hasen, the director of the UCLA School of Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project and an NBC News election law analyst, wrote Saturday that he believes Musk’s plan is “clearly illegal” because the petition requires signers to be registered voters in particular states. 

Hasen noted that the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Manual explicitly cites “lottery chances” as an example of a type of illegal bribe if it’s “intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Democrat Josh Shapiro said on Meet the Press Sunday that the lottery was “deeply concerning” and suggested law enforcement could investigate it. 

But none of the experts who spoke with NBC News believed law enforcement is likely to stop the lottery or fine Musk before the election.

“The Department of Justice is authorized to enforce the statute,” Morse said. “But I think in the next three weeks they have other things to do.”

The Justice Department, Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, and Federal Election Commission declined to comment.

Musk endorsed Trump in July, after Trump became the Republican Party’s nominee. The world’s wealthiest person, Musk is engaged in at least 11 regulatory or legal battles with the federal government related to his companies, a previous NBC News tally found, making the stakes of the presidential election high for him. Musk’s companies have won billions in federal contracts over the last decade, according to a recent tally from The New York Times.

The deadline for voter registration in Pennsylvania and Michigan is Monday. The contest’s rules appear to say that while it no longer accepts new entrants after Monday, it will continue to name new $1 million prize winners each day until the election. So far it has named two.

On Monday morning, Musk celebrated Republican voter registration in Pennsylvania.

“New Republican voter registration last week in Pennsylvania absolutely crushed Democrat voter registration!” he wrote on X. 

Morse, the Penn law professor, said he viewed the lottery as unlikely to be a consequential stunt, and instead it seemed more like a data mining operation.

“You can only register to vote in Pennsylvania until today. I just see this as a political stunt. It’s a stunt to mine people’s data, to build up an email list for contacts, for campaigning, for mobilization,” he said, referring to get-out-the-vote efforts and other voter engagement.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Elon Musk ratchets up bid to re-elect Trump with series of stunts and appearances
• What tariffs do and why economists don’t like them
• Fewer diners and ice cream shops: Trump and Harris shift strategies on the trail amid security threats

The petition, created by Musk’s America PAC, comes amid the entrepreneur’s larger campaign over the last week to register conservative voters in swing states.

Paying someone to vote or to register to vote is explicitly illegal under federal law. Musk’s payouts seem to skirt those laws, though. Musk and America PAC have said that payouts or lottery entries will be given to registered voters for their petition signatures or referrals of other signatories. The petition is supportive of free speech and gun rights. Signing the petition does not require any specific party affiliation. 

“I think it straddles the line, and it’s a little unclear whether it goes over the line or not,” said John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in election administration.

The fact that the lottery is contingent on signing a petition, rather than merely registering to vote, may be enough to keep Musk from overtly breaking the law, experts told NBC News, but it’s not clear-cut.

“This is at best very questionable legally,” said Michael Morse, an assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. “Federal law says that you cannot pay someone to register to vote. I think you can read this petition as an inducement to register to vote.”

“I’ve never heard of a million-dollar lottery in the last weeks of a presidential campaign, to either sign a petition or to induce people to register, so we’re in new legal territory here,” said Nate Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School.

“The relevant legal question is whether this is payment to induce people to register. If it is, then it violates the law. If it’s payment to induce people to sign a petition, then it’s not a problem,” he said. 

Musk’s PAC announced the initial payouts to signatories and referrers of signatories of the petition on Oct. 6. Over the last several days, Musk has upped the ante, adding money to his promises several times.

Rick Hasen, the director of the UCLA School of Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project and an NBC News election law analyst, wrote Saturday that he believes Musk’s plan is “clearly illegal” because the petition requires signers to be registered voters in particular states. 

Hasen noted that the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Manual explicitly cites “lottery chances” as an example of a type of illegal bribe if it’s “intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Democrat Josh Shapiro said on Meet the Press Sunday that the lottery was “deeply concerning” and suggested law enforcement could investigate it. 

But none of the experts who spoke with NBC News believed law enforcement is likely to stop the lottery or fine Musk before the election.

“The Department of Justice is authorized to enforce the statute,” Morse said. “But I think in the next three weeks they have other things to do.”

The Justice Department, Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, and Federal Election Commission declined to comment.

Musk endorsed Trump in July, after Trump became the Republican Party’s nominee. The world’s wealthiest person, Musk is engaged in at least 11 regulatory or legal battles with the federal government related to his companies, a previous NBC News tally found, making the stakes of the presidential election high for him. Musk’s companies have won billions in federal contracts over the last decade, according to a recent tally from The New York Times.

The deadline for voter registration in Pennsylvania and Michigan is Monday. The contest’s rules appear to say that while it no longer accepts new entrants after Monday, it will continue to name new $1 million prize winners each day until the election. So far it has named two.

On Monday morning, Musk celebrated Republican voter registration in Pennsylvania.

“New Republican voter registration last week in Pennsylvania absolutely crushed Democrat voter registration!” he wrote on X. 

Morse, the Penn law professor, said he viewed the lottery as unlikely to be a consequential stunt, and instead it seemed more like a data mining operation.

“You can only register to vote in Pennsylvania until today. I just see this as a political stunt. It’s a stunt to mine people’s data, to build up an email list for contacts, for campaigning, for mobilization,” he said, referring to get-out-the-vote efforts and other voter engagement.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Elon Musk ratchets up bid to re-elect Trump with series of stunts and appearances
• What tariffs do and why economists don’t like them
• Fewer diners and ice cream shops: Trump and Harris shift strategies on the trail amid security threats

The tech mogul posted his stance on free speech and antisemitism seemingly out of the blue on his verified account Monday afternoon. When asked by a user who was questioning his stance, Musk alleged that the ADL has been “trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.”

“If this continues, we will have no choice but to file a defamation suit against, ironically, the ‘Anti-Defamation’ League,” Musk wrote. “If they lose the defamation suit, we will insist that they drop the the “anti” part of their name, since obviously …”

He later wrote in another post that X has “no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit” against the group to clear its name.

An email to attorneys representing Musk and X asking whether a complaint has been drafted was not immediately returned.

Read the full story at NBCNews.com here.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued SpaceX on Thursday, alleging Elon Musk’s space company discriminated in its hiring practices against refugees and people granted asylum in the U.S.

The lawsuit says between 2018 and 2022, SpaceX “wrongly claimed” that export control laws limited its hiring to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.

The DOJ has been investigating SpaceX since June 2020, when the department’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section received a complaint of employment discrimination from a non-U.S. citizen.

“Our investigation found that SpaceX failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status and imposed what amounted to a ban on their hire regardless of their qualification, in violation of federal law,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.

Clarke added that the DOJ’s investigation found “SpaceX recruiters and high-level officials took actions that actively discouraged asylees and refugees from seeking work opportunities at the company.”

According to data SpaceX provided, the DOJ said that over a nearly four period and across more than 10,000 hires, the company “hired only one individual who was an asylee and identified as such in his application.”

That lone hire came about four months after the DOJ notified SpaceX of its investigation.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. The suit was filed in the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a division of the DOJ that adjudicates immigration cases.

The DOJ lawsuit seeks to win “fair consideration and back pay for asylees and refugees who were deterred or denied employment at SpaceX due to the alleged discrimination,” as well as civil penalties and policy changes from the company.

In 2021, the DOJ’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section alleged that SpaceX was stonewalling a subpoena related to its investigation and requested a judge order that SpaceX comply with its request for documents related to how the company hires. SpaceX had filed a petition with a DOJ administrative tribunal to dismiss the subpoena on grounds that it exceeded the scope of IER’s authority, but that petition was denied.

IER opened its probe after a man named Fabian Hutter complained that SpaceX discriminated against him in March 2020 when he was asked about his citizenship status during a job interview for a technical strategy associate position.

Hutter is not a U.S. citizen, but according to a document filed by SpaceX in response to a DOJ subpoena in 2021, he is a “lawful permanent [U.S.] resident holding dual citizenship from Austria and Canada.”

Hutter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

Read the DOJ’s lawsuit below:

– CNBC’s Dan Mangan contributed to this report.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct that the U.S. Department of Justice sued SpaceX, alleging the company discriminated in its hiring practices against refugees and people granted asylum in the U.S. A previous version misstated the nature of the alleged violation.

Meta’s Twitter clone called Threads, which launched last month and quickly shot up the app rankings, is starting to roll out on the web, giving users access from their PCs. The site, Threads.net, is not live for everyone yet and may still just show a link to download the mobile app.

A Meta spokesperson said the company will be “rolling out” the web version of Threads for the general public “over the next few days.”

Meta said that, in the coming weeks it will be improved to look more like the mobile app.

While Threads was quick to sign on users after it was introduced in July, the app saw a drop-off in growth and engagement the following week as its limitations became apparent. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in early August that the company was working on a web version of Threads as well as a search function, underscoring efforts to make the app more compelling.

Advertisers and influencers previously told CNBC that Threads needs more features like a search tool and a way to access the app from desktop computers to be a serious challenger to X, formerly known as Twitter. Influencers and power users on X often use the desktop version of the app to post comments and share content throughout the day.

Meanwhile, X has been attempting to win back advertisers with new brand safety tools, intended to make companies more comfortable with running ads on the service. Several nonprofit organizations and researchers have documented a rise in hate speech and racist content since Tesla CEO Elon Musk took control of X in October, claims the company disputes.

Although Zuckerberg recently told analysts on an earnings call that he’s “quite optimistic” about Threads, Meta is not planning to monetize the app until it’s more established.

WATCH: Threads is the perfect situation at the perfect time for Meta

On Wednesday morning, many marketers, journalists and news junkies were met with a paywall they have been dreading: X, formerly known as Twitter, started charging users to access TweetDeck.

TweetDeck, now called X Pro, allows users to view and customize multiple feeds that update in real time. The platform was acquired by Twitter in 2011 after it became one of the most popular ways for people to access the site.

The service has historically been free to use, but X announced in a post in July that it would become a subscriber-only feature. Starting Wednesday, users who want access to X Pro will have to pay for X Premium, the service introduced by the site’s owner, Elon Musk, as a way to generate additional revenue for the company. The subscription costs users $84 a year.

People who purchase X Premium will also receive a blue checkmark on their account, in addition to prioritized rankings in replies and search, access to longer posts and fewer ads, among other features. The service, formerly called Twitter Blue, got off to a rocky start in November when it was pulled after users created accounts posing as popular brands and celebrities. Twitter Blue relaunched again in December, though impersonation problems persisted.

Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, acquired Twitter late last year for $44 billion. Employees and users felt his impact immediately, as he enacted steep job cuts and introduced a number of major new features and policy changes on the platform.

Most recently, the company began to carry out a sweeping rebrand, which Musk announced in July. Twitter retired its famous blue and white bird logo and transformed into X. Changes to the names of Twitter’s services such as TweetDeck quickly followed.

Tesla rolled out cheaper versions of its Model S and Model X vehicles in the U.S. as competition in the electric vehicle space continues to ramp up.

The lower cost versions of both vehicles launched Monday are $10,000 less than the regular model, according to Tesla’s website.

The Model X Standard Range starts at $88,490 versus $98,490 for the Model X. The cheaper version has a driving range of 255 miles to 269 miles. For comparison, the Model X has a range of 330 miles to 348 miles and a slightly faster acceleration speed.

The Model S Standard Range starts at a price of $78,490 versus $88,490 for the Model S. The cheaper version of the Model S has a driving range of 298 miles to 320 miles. The Model S has a range of 375 miles to 405 miles.

Tesla continues to focus on gaining market share and boosting sales of its cars at the expense of margins. In its June quarter earnings, the carmaker, run by billionaire Elon Musk, reported operating margins of 9.6%, the lowest for at least the last five quarters.

The lower cost cars are part of a broader drive by Tesla focusing on being competitive on price as auto makers around the world launch electric vehicles and competition heats up.

Tesla has continuously tinkered with its prices in key markets. The company cut prices again for its Model Y and Model 3 cars in China on Sunday.

The Model S and Model X are Tesla’s oldest vehicles and the price cut may be an attempt to breathe new life into the cars as investors await mass production of the company’s Cybertruck next year.

“I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on,” Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, wrote Sunday on Threads, the text-based app Meta launched as a competitor to X, the company formerly known as Twitter. 

The social media executives have been teasing the possibility of a mixed martial arts fight since June, calling it a “cage match,” an informal term referring to wrestling in a closed-in space that combatants aim to escape from.

But in his latest comments, Zuckerberg said that while he was ready to fight, Musk kept coming up with reasons he couldn’t. “Elon won’t confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead,” Zuckerberg continued. Musk previously claimed he may need surgery before he fights his rival. 

Musk has not yet publicly responded to Zuckerberg’s latest comments, and a spokesperson for X could not immediately be reached for comment.

Read the full story at NBCNews.com 

The “Oblivion” singer shared rare insight into her co-parenting dynamic with the tech mogul, noting that their son X Æ A-12, 3, and daughter Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, 19 months, are following in Elon’s footsteps when it comes to interest in life beyond the stars.

“X knows a lot about rockets,” Grimes told Wired in an interview published Aug. 8. “It’s crazy. He knows more about rockets than me.”

In fact, the pair’s little boy already as a knack for astronomical engineering. “We had to stop giving him toys, because if they’re not anatomically correct, he gets upset,” the 35-year-old added. “He’s a little engineer, for sure. But his obsession with space is bordering on, ‘Is this healthy?'”

What’s more, she revealed that the 3-year-old was impacted by the April explosion of Starship, a rocket launched by Elon’s spacecraft company SpaceX.

“When X saw Starship blow up, he had, like, a three-day PTSD meltdown,” Grimes recalled. “Every hour, he was waking up and going, ‘Starship …’ and I had to rub his back.”

As for her daughter, whose nickname is Y, the “Genesis” artist said she’s also showing her own interest in engineering.

“Yeah, she’s a little engineer too,” the singer said. “She likes industrial shipping. She’s very strange.”

Elon Musk Aug 7, 2023

Elon Musk says he may need surgery; date for ‘cage match' with Mark Zuckerberg ‘in flux'

While acknowledging that being children of the Tesla founder—who is a dad of 10—might come with a “pretty intense” life, Grimes said she’s dedicated to honing a creative environment for X and Y.

“Being Elon’s kid is not the same as being anyone’s kid,” she added. “In my house, at least, I want it to be more of a crazy warehouse situation and a cool art space.”

In addition to raising future scientists, Grimes said being a mom has made her “a lot more optimistic.”

“I was not super focused before,” she explained. “It was just, what sounds cool, what feels cool. Now I feel a social responsibility with my art—to make future-optimistic art. Not a lot of people are doing that. People have a very dire vision of the future, because it’s easy and fun to write about cyberpunk dystopias. So seeing my kids makes me pathologically optimistic. It’s a life mission.”

She also remains on good terms with Elon, who she dated from 2018 to 2021. However, in 2022, Grimes called the exact terms of their relationship “very fluid” in an interview with Vanity Fair.

But one thing is for certain: Grimes is not the same person she was five years ago. “He’s challenged me a lot,” she noted. “I learned a lot about running my own team and my own life. I’m now way tougher and smarter than I used to be.”

However, she did share one thing she taught Musk: “Have more fun.”

“I try to soften him up, to build family culture,” Grimes said. “And he steals a lot of my memes.”

The two tech billionaires seemingly agreed to an in-person face-off in late June. It’s unclear if a physical fight will actually end up happening, but Musk and Zuckerberg have continued to fuel interest in the potential match through online jabs at one another — most recently on Sunday, when Musk said the fight would be live-streamed on his social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.

Musk added that the fight’s proceeds would go to a charity for veterans. On his Threads social media account, Zuckerberg responded: “Shouldn’t we use a more reliable platform that can actually raise money for charity?” In a follow-up post, the CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta said he wasn’t “holding his breath” for a fight.

“I’m ready today. I suggested Aug 26 when he first challenged, but he hasn’t confirmed,” wrote Zuckerberg, who is actually trained in mixed martial arts and posted about completing his first jiu jitsu tournament earlier this year. “I love this sport and will continue competing with people who train no matter what happens here.”

Earlier Sunday, Musk said was training for the fight by lifting weights. He later addressed the timing of the fight — noting the date “is still in flux” due to a scheduled MRI and the potential of surgery.

“I’m getting an MRI of my neck & upper back tomorrow,” Musk wrote Sunday night. “May require surgery before the fight can happen. Will know this week.”

Talk of an in-person fight all started in June, when Musk, who owns X, responded to a tweet about Meta preparing to release a new Twitter rival called Threads. He took a dig about the world becoming “exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options” — but then one Twitter user jokingly warned Musk of Zuckerberg’s jiu jitsu training.

“I’m up for a cage match if he is lol,” Musk wrote. After Zuckerberg appeared to agree to the proposal, Musk proposed the Vegas Octagon.

Whether or not Musk and Zuckerberg actually make it to the Las Vegas ring has yet to be seen — especially as Musk often tweets about action prematurely or without following through. But, even if their cage match agreement is all a joke, the banter gained attention. An endless chain of memes and posts to “choose your fighter” sprung up in response.

The Associated Press reached out to Meta, X and Ultimate Fighting Championship, which owns the Octagon, for statements Monday morning.

The petition, created by Musk’s America PAC, comes amid the entrepreneur’s larger campaign over the last week to register conservative voters in swing states.

Paying someone to vote or to register to vote is explicitly illegal under federal law. Musk’s payouts seem to skirt those laws, though. Musk and America PAC have said that payouts or lottery entries will be given to registered voters for their petition signatures or referrals of other signatories. The petition is supportive of free speech and gun rights. Signing the petition does not require any specific party affiliation. 

“I think it straddles the line, and it’s a little unclear whether it goes over the line or not,” said John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in election administration.

The fact that the lottery is contingent on signing a petition, rather than merely registering to vote, may be enough to keep Musk from overtly breaking the law, experts told NBC News, but it’s not clear-cut.

“This is at best very questionable legally,” said Michael Morse, an assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. “Federal law says that you cannot pay someone to register to vote. I think you can read this petition as an inducement to register to vote.”

“I’ve never heard of a million-dollar lottery in the last weeks of a presidential campaign, to either sign a petition or to induce people to register, so we’re in new legal territory here,” said Nate Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School.

“The relevant legal question is whether this is payment to induce people to register. If it is, then it violates the law. If it’s payment to induce people to sign a petition, then it’s not a problem,” he said. 

Musk’s PAC announced the initial payouts to signatories and referrers of signatories of the petition on Oct. 6. Over the last several days, Musk has upped the ante, adding money to his promises several times.

Rick Hasen, the director of the UCLA School of Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project and an NBC News election law analyst, wrote Saturday that he believes Musk’s plan is “clearly illegal” because the petition requires signers to be registered voters in particular states. 

Hasen noted that the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Manual explicitly cites “lottery chances” as an example of a type of illegal bribe if it’s “intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Democrat Josh Shapiro said on Meet the Press Sunday that the lottery was “deeply concerning” and suggested law enforcement could investigate it. 

But none of the experts who spoke with NBC News believed law enforcement is likely to stop the lottery or fine Musk before the election.

“The Department of Justice is authorized to enforce the statute,” Morse said. “But I think in the next three weeks they have other things to do.”

The Justice Department, Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, and Federal Election Commission declined to comment.

Musk endorsed Trump in July, after Trump became the Republican Party’s nominee. The world’s wealthiest person, Musk is engaged in at least 11 regulatory or legal battles with the federal government related to his companies, a previous NBC News tally found, making the stakes of the presidential election high for him. Musk’s companies have won billions in federal contracts over the last decade, according to a recent tally from The New York Times.

The deadline for voter registration in Pennsylvania and Michigan is Monday. The contest’s rules appear to say that while it no longer accepts new entrants after Monday, it will continue to name new $1 million prize winners each day until the election. So far it has named two.

On Monday morning, Musk celebrated Republican voter registration in Pennsylvania.

“New Republican voter registration last week in Pennsylvania absolutely crushed Democrat voter registration!” he wrote on X. 

Morse, the Penn law professor, said he viewed the lottery as unlikely to be a consequential stunt, and instead it seemed more like a data mining operation.

“You can only register to vote in Pennsylvania until today. I just see this as a political stunt. It’s a stunt to mine people’s data, to build up an email list for contacts, for campaigning, for mobilization,” he said, referring to get-out-the-vote efforts and other voter engagement.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Elon Musk ratchets up bid to re-elect Trump with series of stunts and appearances
• What tariffs do and why economists don’t like them
• Fewer diners and ice cream shops: Trump and Harris shift strategies on the trail amid security threats

The two tech billionaires seemingly agreed to a “cage match” face-off in late June. Zuckerberg is actually trained in mixed martial arts, and the CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta posted about completing his first jiu-jitsu tournament earlier this year.

“Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on X,” Musk wrote in a post Sunday on the platform. “All proceeds will go to charity for veterans.”

Musk said earlier Sunday he was training for the fight by lifting weights.

“Don’t have time to work out, so I just bring them to work,” Musk wrote.

Whether or not Musk and Zuckerberg actually make it to the ring in Las Vegas has yet to be seen — especially as Musk often tweets about action prematurely or without following through. But even if their cage match agreement is all a joke, the banter has gained attention.

It all started when Musk, who owns X, responded to a tweet about Meta preparing to release a new Twitter rival called Threads. He took a dig about the world becoming “exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options” — but then one Twitter user jokingly warned Musk of Zuckerberg’s jiu-jitsu training.

“I’m up for a cage match if he is lol,” Musk wrote.

Representatives of X, Meta and Ultimate Fighting Championship, which owns the venue where the fight might take place, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Musk’s push to stream the video live on X comes as he aims to turn the platform into a “digital town square.” However, his much-publicized Twitter Spaces kickoff event in May with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announcing his run for president struggled with technical glitches and a near half-hour delay.

Musk had said the problems were due to “straining” servers because so many people were trying to listen to the audio-only event. But even at their highest, the number of listeners listed topped out at around 420,000, far from the millions of viewers that televised presidential announcements attract.

In an update to its help center, X says subscribers can now “choose to hide your checkmark on your account.” Doing so will hide the verified checkmark on a user’s profile and posts, but the icon may still appear in some places, according to the help center. 

“Some features may not be available while your checkmark is hidden,” the help center also states, though it does not expand on which features may be inaccessible. 

The development comes months after X rolled out its paid subscription program, Twitter Blue, which has now been rebranded to X Blue. 

Users of the subscription service, which starts at $8 a month, receive a blue checkmark after a review to ensure their account meets X’s eligibility criteria, according to X’s help center. Verification was previously provided by the platform at zero cost to accounts it considered noteworthy, including government accounts, news organizations, journalists and celebrities. 

Read the full story at NBCNews.com 

The San Francisco Department of Building Inspection said Monday it received 24 complaints about the unpermitted structure over the weekend. Complaints included concerns about its structural safety and illumination.

The Elon Musk-owned company, which has been rebranded as X, had removed the Twitter sign and iconic blue bird logo from the building last week. That work was temporarily paused because the company did not have the necessary permits. For a time, the “er” at the end of “Twitter” remained up due to the abrupt halt of the sign takedown.

The city of San Francisco had opened a complaint and launched an investigation into the giant “X” sign, which was installed Friday on top of the downtown building as Musk continues his rebrand of the social media platform.

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The chaotic rebrand of Twitter’s building signage is similar to the haphazard way in which the Twitter platform is being turned into X. While the X logo has replaced Twitter on many parts of the site and app, remnants of Twitter remain.

Representatives for X did not immediately respond to a message for comment Monday.

Elon Musk has not yet publicly commented and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Twitter/X says Kanye West’s account is being ‘turned back on.’ It will be ineligible for a monetization and no ads will appear next to his posts, according to the company,” New York Times technology reporter Ryan Mac tweeted. “This comes after he shared an image of a swastika a few months ago.”

Musk said in a December post that Ye was suspended “for incitement to violence.” The tweet was blocked by the platform for violating its rules.

That wasn’t the first time Ye got in trouble over his posts. In October 2022, his account was restricted over antisemitic comments but he returned to the platform the following month.

Ye has not tweeted anything since his account was unsuspended. His last post is Dec. 1, 2022, and was seemingly a jab at his ex-wife Kim Kardashian.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

The petition, created by Musk’s America PAC, comes amid the entrepreneur’s larger campaign over the last week to register conservative voters in swing states.

Paying someone to vote or to register to vote is explicitly illegal under federal law. Musk’s payouts seem to skirt those laws, though. Musk and America PAC have said that payouts or lottery entries will be given to registered voters for their petition signatures or referrals of other signatories. The petition is supportive of free speech and gun rights. Signing the petition does not require any specific party affiliation. 

“I think it straddles the line, and it’s a little unclear whether it goes over the line or not,” said John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in election administration.

The fact that the lottery is contingent on signing a petition, rather than merely registering to vote, may be enough to keep Musk from overtly breaking the law, experts told NBC News, but it’s not clear-cut.

“This is at best very questionable legally,” said Michael Morse, an assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. “Federal law says that you cannot pay someone to register to vote. I think you can read this petition as an inducement to register to vote.”

“I’ve never heard of a million-dollar lottery in the last weeks of a presidential campaign, to either sign a petition or to induce people to register, so we’re in new legal territory here,” said Nate Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School.

“The relevant legal question is whether this is payment to induce people to register. If it is, then it violates the law. If it’s payment to induce people to sign a petition, then it’s not a problem,” he said. 

Musk’s PAC announced the initial payouts to signatories and referrers of signatories of the petition on Oct. 6. Over the last several days, Musk has upped the ante, adding money to his promises several times.

Rick Hasen, the director of the UCLA School of Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project and an NBC News election law analyst, wrote Saturday that he believes Musk’s plan is “clearly illegal” because the petition requires signers to be registered voters in particular states. 

Hasen noted that the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Manual explicitly cites “lottery chances” as an example of a type of illegal bribe if it’s “intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Democrat Josh Shapiro said on Meet the Press Sunday that the lottery was “deeply concerning” and suggested law enforcement could investigate it. 

But none of the experts who spoke with NBC News believed law enforcement is likely to stop the lottery or fine Musk before the election.

“The Department of Justice is authorized to enforce the statute,” Morse said. “But I think in the next three weeks they have other things to do.”

The Justice Department, Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, and Federal Election Commission declined to comment.

Musk endorsed Trump in July, after Trump became the Republican Party’s nominee. The world’s wealthiest person, Musk is engaged in at least 11 regulatory or legal battles with the federal government related to his companies, a previous NBC News tally found, making the stakes of the presidential election high for him. Musk’s companies have won billions in federal contracts over the last decade, according to a recent tally from The New York Times.

The deadline for voter registration in Pennsylvania and Michigan is Monday. The contest’s rules appear to say that while it no longer accepts new entrants after Monday, it will continue to name new $1 million prize winners each day until the election. So far it has named two.

On Monday morning, Musk celebrated Republican voter registration in Pennsylvania.

“New Republican voter registration last week in Pennsylvania absolutely crushed Democrat voter registration!” he wrote on X. 

Morse, the Penn law professor, said he viewed the lottery as unlikely to be a consequential stunt, and instead it seemed more like a data mining operation.

“You can only register to vote in Pennsylvania until today. I just see this as a political stunt. It’s a stunt to mine people’s data, to build up an email list for contacts, for campaigning, for mobilization,” he said, referring to get-out-the-vote efforts and other voter engagement.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Elon Musk ratchets up bid to re-elect Trump with series of stunts and appearances
• What tariffs do and why economists don’t like them
• Fewer diners and ice cream shops: Trump and Harris shift strategies on the trail amid security threats

Until Tuesday evening, that username belonged to Gene Hwang, a San Francisco photographer who held it since 2007. Hwang said he received an email from the company he had suspected might be coming: X had taken the handle and offered little in return.

“I had suspected this could be an outcome and as such I wasn’t too upset,” he said in a phone interview. 

The email, which Hwang shared with NBC News, left him with few options. It said he could have his pick of any unclaimed or inactive usernames, along with some smaller perks like X merch and a visit to X’s headquarters.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

Elon Musk has long been enamored of the letter X.

Now, he’s killing off the Twitter brand and the iconic blue bird in favor of X as part of an effort to turn his $44 billion acquisition into something that’s genuinely his.

Musk’s vision for X is something akin to China’s WeChat, a super app that people can use for entertainment and buying goods and services online, in addition to posting updates and messaging their friends. But the rebrand comes after months of erratic behavior by the world’s richest person turned off users and pushed away advertisers, leaving Twitter in a troubled financial position and increasingly vulnerable to competition.

Killing an iconic internet brand is “extremely risky” at a time when rival apps such as the new Instagram Threads and smaller upstarts such as Bluesky are luring users, said Mike Proulx, an analyst at Forrester.

Musk has “singlehandedly wiped out over fifteen years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon,” Proulx said in an email.

A company spokesperson didn’t provide a comment for this story.

It’s not entirely a surprising move. Musk had already converted Twitter’s corporate name to X Corp, which itself is a subsidiary of X Holding Corp, as revealed in an April court filing. Musk said last October, just prior to buying Twitter, that he viewed the $44 billion deal as “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”

The letter X features prominently in the name of Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX. And over two decades ago, X.com was the name of Musk’s payments company that eventually became PayPal through a merger with a rival at the time.

Name changes have become fairly commonplace among storied web companies. Facebook became Meta in late 2021, and Google adopted the Alphabet moniker six years earlier. However, in those cases the newly named parent companies kept the branding of their core services, so Facebook users and Google searchers could keep doing their thing without disruption.

Musk appears to be betting he can get rid of Twitter altogether. Over the weekend, he introduced the new X logo and said in a tweet that “soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”

Linda Yaccarino, who Musk hired as CEO in May, said in an email to employees Monday that the company will “continue to delight our entire community with new experiences in audio, video, messaging, payments, banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”

Succeeding in that mission is easier said than done.

Musk’s desire to turn X into a super app requires “time, money and people,” which Twitter “no longer has,” said Proulx. Earlier this month, Musk said that Twitter has suffered a 50% drop in advertising revenue and that it needs “to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.”  

Some advertisers had grown concerned about promoting their products on Twitter because of reports showing a rise of hate speech and racist and offensive comments on the platform as documented by multiple civil rights groups and researchers.

Musk has tried to offset some decline in advertising with a premium subscription service. But at $8 a month, the company would need tens of millions of subscribers to make up for the losses.

Those advertisers remaining on the platform now have to adopt a new lingo. People and businesses around the world know Twitter messages as “tweets.” Like Kleenex, Twitter was able to develop a recognizable brand that was instantly familiar with consumers, a feat that any corporate marketing team would celebrate.

Ralph Schackart, an analyst at William Blair, told CNBC last week that his team of analysts “didn’t pick anything up” from advertisers they polled as part of a recent survey on the digital advertising market that would indicate that these businesses had upped their spending on Twitter. Meanwhile, there are signs that the overall digital ad market could be improving, according to the William Blair survey.

Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said in an emailed statement that the name change marks “a gloomy day for many Twitter users and advertisers” and a “clear signal that the Twitter of the past 17 years is gone and not coming back.”

“Twitter’s rebrand is a reminder that Elon Musk, not Threads or any other app, is and has always been the most likely ‘Twitter killer,'” Enberg wrote.

WATCH: Elon Musk wouldn’t be who he is without ‘demon mode’ and his drive, says biographer Isaacson

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Musk replaced his own Twitter icon with a white X on a black background and posted a picture on Monday of the design projected on Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

The X started appearing on the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the phone app.

Musk had asked fans for logo ideas and chose one, which he described as minimalist Art Deco, saying it “certainly will be refined.”

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk tweeted Sunday.

The billionaire is CEO of rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, he founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal.

The X.com web domain now redirects users to Twitter.com, Musk said.

In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would be called Xs.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.