Stephen Colbert Gleefully Burns Elon Musk With 'Terrible News' About His Influence
'Late Show' host Stephen Colbert on Wednesday night celebrated Susan Crawford's victory this week over Brad Schimel in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race.
'A lot of folks are happy about this partly because it keeps the court's 4-3 liberal majority,' Colbert said. 'But mostly because it is terrible news for Elon Musk.'
Musk and Musk-aligned groups spent some $20 million to help Schimel, with Musk even handing out million-dollar checks to voters.
'Spending all that money, spending all that cash, just to watch the whole thing burst into flames,' Colbert said. 'Now he knows what it's like to buy a Tesla.'
Crawford won by 10 points in a state known for extremely close elections despite Musk's attempts to use his cash to swing the election.
'Musk didn't just lose,' Colbert gloated. 'He got crushed.'
See more in his Wednesday night monologue:
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Opinion - Coders are saving the Second Amendment: DIY guns and digital resistance
America has always defended itself and its freedoms with a gun in hand. But as technology evolves, code is starting to take its place. A new generation of Second Amendment supporters no longer visits shooting ranges or joins the NRA — instead, it circulates blueprints for 3D-printed weapons. Its members' mission is to protect their homes and their right to bear arms, no matter how the government feels about it. While Americans argue about bans, laws, and protests, an entire ecosystem of do-it-yourself gun culture has grown right under their noses. It's nothing like the old movies, where weapons were built from pipes and nails. Ghost guns — firearms without serial numbers or registration — are often made with parts printed on 3D printers and bought online. U.S. law allows individuals to make firearms for personal use, as long as they don't sell them. According to the ATF, this is legal in many cases. This culture has gone far beyond garages. Blueprints and guides are now spread through Tor, Telegram, and GitHub – anonymously and in ways that are nearly impossible to erase. The first famous design, 'The Liberator,' was posted back in 2013. To this day, anonymous communities keep sharing new versions. These self-styled digital patriots view the right to bear arms as a core freedom. Critics argue they undermine control, because weapons without serial numbers can't be traced. Laws can limit sales, but not ideas. While politicians try to close down stores, millions are downloading code. The Second Amendment has been digitized — it now lives in browsers. When the Supreme Court recently allowed new regulations on so-called 'ghost guns,' as detailed in this ruling, it only proved the paradox: Governments can chase physical parts, but the digital heartbeat of the Second Amendment grows stronger. For every law targeting the sale of hardware, a thousand computer files escape into the wild — untraceable, unstoppable, multiplying in the encrypted corners of the internet, where freedom now lives. Maybe we have reached the point where weapons are no longer just objects. They cannot be eradicated through any amount of banning, seizing, or burning so long as they can be downloaded. Yes, it's scary, but freedom isn't about comfort. It is about risk, discomfort, and chaos — and living with that to keep the right to defend yourself. I don't support putting guns in the hands of criminals. I also don't believe the answer is total control, or that such a thing is even possible. Today, the state is trying to catch up with the internet. But the internet will never stop. As Wired explains, this movement is spreading faster than any law can catch up. And maybe the real question isn't whether to ban weapons — it's how to live in a world where a weapon is now knowledge. This is Prometheus's curse for the digital age: We have stolen the fire of creation, and now we must live with its light, its heat and its burns. The more the government tries to play god by banning and seizing, the deeper into the cave the forge of innovation moves, hammering out new blueprints where Zeus's lightning cannot reach. Maybe this is the new era of the Second Amendment — and its files can't be taken away from Americans. Artem Kolisnichenko writes on crime, immigration, and border policy across the American South and Southwest. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Southern Baptists' call for the US Supreme Court to overturn its same-sex marriage decision is part of a long history of opposing women's and LGBTQ+ people's rights
The Southern Baptist Convention has lost 3.6 million members over the past two decades and faces an ongoing sexual abuse crisis. At its June 2025 annual meeting, however, neither of those issues took up as much time as controversial social issues, including the denomination's stance on same-sex marriage. The group called for the overturning of Obergefell v. Hodges – the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage – and the creation of laws that 'affirm marriage between one man and one woman.' Messengers – Southern Baptists' word for delegates from local churches – also asked for laws that would 'reflect the moral order revealed in Scripture and nature.' They also decried declining fertility rates, commercial surrogacy, Planned Parenthood, 'willful childlessness,' the normalization of 'transgender ideology,' and gender-affirming medical care. This detailed list targeting women's and LGBTQ+ rights was justified by an appeal to a God-ordained created order, as defined by Southern Baptists' interpretation of the Bible. In this created order, sex and gender are synonymous and are irrevocably defined by biology. The heterosexual nuclear family is the foundational institution of this order, with the father dominant over his wife and children – and children are a necessity if husbands and wives are to be faithful to God's design for the family. The resolution, On Restoring Moral Clarity through God's Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family, passed easily in a denomination that was taken over from more moderate Southern Baptists by fundamentalists in the early 1990s, largely in response to women's progress in society and in the denomination. Southern Baptists were always conservative on issues of gender and sexuality. As I was entering a Southern Baptist seminary in the early 1980s, the denomination seemed poised to embrace social progress. I watched the takeover firsthand as a student and then as a professor of women and gender studies who studies Southern Baptists. This new resolution is the latest in a long history of Southern Baptist opposition to the progress of women and LGBTQ+ people. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Southern Baptists began to embrace the women's movement. Women started to attend Southern Baptist seminaries in record numbers, many claiming a call to serve as pastors. While Southern Baptist acceptance of LGBTQ+ people lagged far behind its nascent embrace of women's rights, progress did seem possible. Then in 1979, a group of Southern Baptist fundamentalists organized to wrest control of the denomination from the moderates who had led it for decades. Any hope for progress on changes regarding LGBTQ+ rights in the denomination quickly died. Across the next two decades, advances made by women, such as being ordained and serving as senior pastors, eroded and disappeared. The SBC had passed anti-gay resolutions in the 1970s defining homosexuality as 'deviant' and a 'sin.' But under the new fundamentalist rule, the SBC became even more vehemently anti-gay and anti-trans. In 1988, the SBC called homosexuality a 'perversion of divine standards,' 'a violation of nature and natural affections,' 'not a normal lifestyle,' and 'an abomination in the eyes of God.' In 1991, they decried government funding for the National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference as a violation of 'the proper role and responsibility of government' because of its encouragement of 'sexual immorality.' Predictably, across the years, the convention spoke out against every effort to advance LGBTQ+ rights. This included supporting the Boy Scouts' ban of gay scouts, opposing military service by LGBTQ+ people, boycotting Disney for its support of LGBTQ+ people, calling on businesses to deny LGBTQ+ people domestic partner benefits and employment nondiscrimination to protect LGBTQ+ people, and supporting the Defense of Marriage Act that limited marriage to a woman and a man. The gender and sexuality topic, however, that has received the most attention from the convention has been marriage equality. Since 1980, the SBC has passed 22 resolutions that touch on same-sex marriage. The SBC passed its first resolution against same-sex marriage in 1996 after the Hawaii Supreme Court indicated the possibility it could rule in favor of same-sex marriage. The court never decided the issue because Hawaii's Legislature passed a bill defining marriage as between a man and a woman. In 1998, the convention amended its faith statement, the Baptist Faith and Message, to define marriage as 'the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment.' The denomination passed its next resolution in 2003 in response to the Vermont General Assembly's establishment of civil unions. The resolution opposed any efforts to validate same-sex marriages or partnerships, whether legislative, judicial or religious. In 2004, after the Massachusetts Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriages in that state, the convention called for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. It reiterated this call in 2006. When the California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, the SBC passed another resolution in 2008 warning of the dire consequences of allowing lesbians and gay men to marry, as people from other states would marry in California and return home to challenge their states' marriage bans. In 2011, the convention offered its support for the Defense of Marriage Act, followed in 2012 by a denunciation of the use of civil rights language to argue for marriage equality. The resolution argues that homosexuality 'does not qualify as a class meriting special protections, like race and gender.' When Obergefell was before the Supreme Court, the SBC called on the court to deny marriage equality. After Obergefell was decided in favor of same-sex marriage, the convention asked for Congress to pass the First Amendment Defense Act, which would have prohibited the federal government from discriminating against people based on their opposition to same-sex marriage. That same resolution also offers its support to state attorneys general challenging transgender rights. This was not the first time the SBC had spoken about transgender issues. As early as 2007, the denomination expressed its opposition to allowing transgender people to constitute a protected class in hate crimes legislation. In 2014, the convention stated its belief that gender is fixed and binary and subsequently that trans people should not be allowed gender-affirming care and that government officials should not validate transgender identity. In 2016, the denomination opposed access for transgender people to bathrooms matching their gender identities. In 2021, the convention invoked women's rights – in a denomination famous for its resistance to women's equality – as a reason to undermine trans rights. In its resolution opposing the proposed Equality Act, which would have added sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classifications, the SBC argued, 'The Equality Act would undermine decades of hard-fought civil rights protections for women and girls by threatening competition in sports and disregarding the privacy concerns women rightly have about sharing sleeping quarters and intimate facilities with members of the opposite sex.' This most recent resolution from June 2025 returns to the themes of fixed and binary gender, a divinely sanctioned hierarchical ordering of gender, and marriage as an institution limited to one woman and one man. While claiming these beliefs are 'universal truths,' the resolution argues that Obergefell is a 'legal fiction' because it denies the biological reality of male and female. Going further, this resolution claims that U.S. law on gender and sexuality should be based on the Bible. The duty of lawmakers, it states, is to 'pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law – about marriage, sex, human life, and family – and to oppose any law that denies or undermines what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.' By taking no action on sexual abuse while focusing its efforts on issues of gender and sexuality, the convention affirmed its decades-long conservative trajectory. It also underlined its willingness to encourage lawmakers to impose these standards on the rest of the nation. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Susan M. Shaw, Oregon State University Read more: Data on sexual orientation and gender is critical to public health – without it, health crises continue unnoticed Southern Baptist Convention votes to expel two churches with female pastors – a religion scholar explains how far back these battles go How women in the Southern Baptist Convention have fought for decades to be ordained Susan M. Shaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trump Plots Major Musk Snub After Their Furious Feud
The White House is considering cutting Elon Musk's SpaceX out of its massive 'Golden Dome' missile defense project after he and President Donald Trump had a nuclear falling-out. Last month, the world's richest man and Trump megadonor was considered the frontrunner to partner with data firm Palantir and drone builder Anduril in the president's pet project, inspired by Israel's Iron Dome defense system. Trump has touted the Golden Dome as a $175 billion endeavor that would be operational by the time he leaves offices in 2029. The independent Congressional Budget Office, however, estimated the project would take 20 years and $524 billion to complete, making it a windfall for the contractors involved. Originally the administration had instructed the Pentagon to prioritize a network of satellites for the defense system, but a new framework could forego SpaceX's satellite capabilities in favor of expanding existing ground systems instead, sources told Reuters. Musk donated more than $250 million to get Trump elected and served as one of his most important advisors until the two men got in an ugly public fight over the president's budget bill. Things escalated over several days, with Trump eventually threatening to cancel Musk's government contracts. The world's richest man then called for the president to be impeached and accused him of improper involvement with disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in a Manhattan jail in 2019. 'Because of the blowup, the Pentagon has been given the space to look at other alternatives,' for the Golden Dome, a source told Reuters. If SpaceX's role is in fact reduced, it would be the first known setback to Musk's pursuit of federal contracts since his bromance with Trump ended last week, according to the news outlet. A senior Defense Department official said the Pentagon 'has no announcements regarding future contracts associated with the Golden Dome effort.' After taking the weekend to cool off, Musk tried to come crawling back to Trump this week, deleting his Epstein post, sharing Trump's social media posts to his 220 million followers on X, and issuing a public apology. Reuters couldn't determine if those overtures will help SpaceX's Golden Dome prospects. The entire saga, however, raises questions about whether the people building the Golden Dome are being chosen based on political affiliations as opposed to technical merit, Laura Grego, a missile defense expert and research director at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, told Reuters. SpaceX, Anduril and Palantir all have founders who have been major political supporters of Trump, and all three have met with top administration officials to discuss the Golden Dome, the agency reported. In a statement, a White House spokesman said 'the Trump Administration is committed to a rigorous review process for all bids and contracts' and that decision would be made 'prioritizing the best deal for America and leveraging the most advanced and innovative technology,' Reuters reported. But neither Congress nor the Department of Defense requested the Golden Dome, which experts warn could start an arms race in space. Trump has not announced any of the contractors involved, saying only that he would engage 'the brightest minds' from Silicon Valley. The administration hasn't offered a timeline for deciding on a framework or announcing the companies involved. Contractors have been racing to pitch their products and services despite nobody really knowing what the Golden Dome will entail, sources told Reuters. 'There isn't a coordinated effort with a true vision,' said one person familiar with the process. 'All of these companies are just grabbing at this pot of money.' SpaceX had pitched a constellation of 400 to 1,000 satellites that would detect missiles, track their trajectory and determine if they are headed to the U.S. Changing the system's architecture could allow the administration to deliver at least part of the project by the end of Trump's term, sources told Reuters.
