Justice department had ordered state to segregate and not count 20,000 ballots from people it claims are non-citizens

• US midterms – live updates

The supreme court on Monday ruled against the Trump administration and its attempts to force California election officials to segregate and not count ballots from people that the justice department claims are non-citizens. The ruling follows several lower courts siding with California officials, who argued the federal government was seeking to interfere in state elections.

The court did not issue an explanation for its ruling, which is customary in cases that come to it on an emergency basis. There were no noted dissents from the justices.

The tech mogul’s midterm donations backing Republicans have made him the largest single-cycle political donor in modern US history

Elon Musk has poured so much money into US politics this midterms election cycle that his donations could fund half a dozen SpaceX rocket launches or buy thousands of Tesla Cybertrucks. At the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles, Musk could order more than 31.9m cheeseburgers with the money he has spent on the midterms.

Musk, the world’s richest person, has funnelled at least $445.77m into Republican-aligned political action committees (Pacs) and groups since last year, according to US Federal Election Commission data as of 29 October. The contributions have made him the Republicans’ most prominent financial backer and the largest single-cycle political donor in modern US history.

Newsom accuses Trump of ‘assault on democracy’ as DoJ claims 20,000 registered voters in state are non-citizens

A US federal appeals court rejected the Trump administration’s move to block California from counting the ballots of 20,000 registered voters that the justice department claims are non-citizens.

The court on Monday ruled 2-1 against Donald ⁠Trump’s ​justice department in the dispute, denying the administration’s demand that election officials segregate the thousands of ballots until people on the list could verify their citizenship. The justice department had given the California secretary of state 48-hours to carry out the order, which state election officials refused – leading to the lawsuit.

Billionaire, on SpaceX earnings call, says ‘special committees’ exploring idea but no agreement reached yet

As SpaceX released its second-ever public earnings report Tuesday, Elon Musk declared his support for combining the aerospace and AI company with his electric vehicle company, Tesla. He said both companies had created special committees to explore a potential merger, but have not reached any agreement on terms of a transaction.

“Both SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees to discuss this idea at the request of shareholders and these special committees are, uh, consist of independent directors,” Musk said on the call. “Because I’m a conflicted party, I can’t actually be in the discussions of the special committees.”

Musk’s midterm donations, mostly for rightwing candidates and causes, surpass his contributions to Trump in 2024

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Elon Musk has become the biggest political donor of the 2026 US midterm elections cycle, funneling about $366m into political groups and campaigns as he backs conservative candidates and rightwing causes. The world’s richest person has poured more than $276m into politics since July alone, some of the most rapid political spending in US history. He’s targeting key races that will determine which party controls the US Senate.

The New York Times first reported the spending numbers, which will be released in a federal filing on Thursday. Musk’s spending outpaces his 2024 presidential election contributions, in which he sunk nearly $300m into Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.

A year after his explosive tenure at Doge, the SpaceX CEO is back in the Trump administration’s good graces

Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that Elon Musk will co-lead a government project to study the future of warfare, marking the SpaceX CEO’s first return to government since he ran the chaotic, so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge. Musk will be joined by Palmer Luckey, CEO of the defense tech company Anduril, and Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House.

A defense department press release on the effort, called Project Meridian, described its goal as “identifying the capabilities required to achieve absolute technological dominance on the next-generation battlefield”. The project will run for 120 days and culminate in an unclassified public report of its recommendations.

Heads of two of the world’s largest artificial intelligence companies give separate briefings on AI safety

Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic, heads of two of the world’s largest artificial intelligence companies, addressed the United Nations security council on Wednesday in separate briefings on AI safety.

“We have a choice in front of us,” Altman told the council. “AI can either be more like a new renaissance of creativity and discovery, or more like a new industrial revolution of upheaval and disarray.”

Silicon Valley China hawks, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei among them, fear the country surpassing US’s AI lead as much as superintelligence destroying humanity

When reporters asked Donald Trump this week if he supported calls to slow down the development of artificial intelligence out of growing fears for cybersecurity, public safety and the fate of humanity, he said no. His argument: China.

“We’re leading China in AI,” Trump said. “We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to ⁠keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins.”

President has dismissed anxieties over AI’s dangerous potential even as Democrats and some Republicans acknowledge risks

• Analysis: Why a decade of doomsday warnings failed to slow AI race

Donald Trump is facing a rare backlash from the US Congress as Democrats and some Republicans push for guardrails on the world’s most powerful AI companies.

Concerns over the dangerous potential of AI reached fever pitch this week after tech leaders sounded the alarm over the rapid advancement of the technology and its potential threat to humanity.

After apocalyptic warnings about the threats posed by AI, leaders like Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s calls to ‘slow the pace’

Facing a public uproar over Anthropic researchers’ repeated warnings that artificial intelligence could kill all of humanity by 2030, the AI company’s CEO Dario Amodei issued a proposal at the weekend to slow down the technology’s advancement to ensure public safety.

In a rare display of unity, the heads of the largest US artificial intelligence companies all agreed immediately.

The billionaire and the party have developed a symbiotic relationship to spread their far-right views both in Germany and the US

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party rattled European politics this week after a convincing victory in a German state election, which placed it only a few seats away from forming the country’s first state-level far right government since the second world war.

Elon Musk was thrilled.

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On 11 September, 25 years ago, Osama bin Laden drove with a small number of al-Qaida retainers and aides to a remote location in eastern Afghanistan. His convoy of SUVs was accompanied by a minivan converted into a makeshift communications centre.

The van’s rudimentary equipment did not allow Bin Laden to watch the 19 men he had started sending to the US more than a year before fly planes into the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon near Washington DC, killing about 3,000 people. But he listened as shocked radio announcers broke the news.

Musk denied he was aware Grok ever produced ‘any naked underage images’

A survivor of child sexual abuse has sued Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, alleging that its chatbot used pictures of her abuse to generate new illegal pornographic images that depict her.

“Using real images of Plaintiff and class members, Grok generated child pornography depicting Plaintiff and class members,” states the complaint, which was filed last week in a US district court in California.

A Las Vegas jury on Monday found Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis guilty in the 1996 murder of the hip-hop icon

• Jury finds Duane Davis guilty of murder of Tupac Shakur

Thirty years after the killing of Tupac Shakur, conspiracy theories and rumors about the perpetrator’s identity, one man has now been held criminally responsible for the rap icon’s death.

A Las Vegas jury convicted Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a 63-year-old former South Side Compton Crips gang leader, of murder for his role in the drive-by shooting. During the two-week-long trial, prosecutors argued Davis was the “on-the-ground, on-site commander of the effort to kill Tupac” and had sought revenge after the musician was involved in a fight with his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.

Settlement agreement says Meta must make many safety and wellness features the default option for young users

Meta has agreed to put new guardrails on teenagers’ use of its apps, in a decision that could fundamentally change the social media experience for young people in the US.

In a turnaround, the social media giant will make several safety limitations the default option for young users, instead of requiring them to opt in.

The Federal Communications Commission on 28 July announced a ban on humanoid robots from China including the popular Unitree G1 model. The Guardian's technology journalist Nick Robins-Early explains the recent popularity of these trending robots and why the US government says they are a risk to the country's national security

Meta CEO presents utopian vision of AI in 6,000-word essay amid Silicon Valley debate over government regulation

Mark Zuckerberg published a lengthy essay on Monday detailing his views on artificial intelligence and announced several plans for how Meta would develop the technology in the future. The CEO’s essay went online the same day as Meta released a new, open-source AI model that seeks to rival Anthropic and OpenAI’s products called Muse Glimmer.

Over the course of more than 6,000 words in a post titled “The Future is for Everyone,” Zuckerberg addressed a range of topics related to AI that included datacenters, government regulation, cybersecurity, the creation of bioweapons, labor market disruption, surveillance powers and more. The essay presented a utopian vision of AI as a personalized “superintelligence” – using the word 60 times.

A new feature briefly allowed Google Earth users to overlay AI-generated images on locations of their choosing

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Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week we’ll be discussing a regrettable decision by Google Earth, the dramatic fall of the “Nostradamus of AI”, and what happens when AI agents go rogue.

New AI models, advanced robots and specialty computer chips are unsettling markets and the US tech industry

Over the past month, a series of advancements in China’s artificial intelligence, chip manufacturing and robotics technologies have rattled financial markets, caused divisions among US tech moguls and left the Trump administration scrambling to respond.

Silicon Valley has long pointed to China’s tech industry as a competitive threat and used its growth as rationale for why US firms should not face regulatory oversight that could slow them down. In recent weeks, however, China’s progress has pushed US tech CEOs past vague warnings and into open disagreement over how to address Chinese-made products upending their industry.

Both tech companies beat Wall Street predictions on revenue in their second quarters

Apple and Amazon both released their second quarter earnings on Thursday, a test of investor confidence in major tech companies amid growing concerns over exorbitant AI spending.

Apple revealed quarterly revenue of $109.4bn, beating Wall Street expectations of $108.65bn in revenue. It also reported $2.02 earnings per share, driven by sales of its marquee products such as iPhones and laptops.