• Elon Musk is offering voters in Michigan $100 to sign a petition. It’s a smaller version of the $1 million payments he offered to select swing-state voters in 2024 and shows an increased willingness by the world’s richest man to push for a large role in the governmental process.

Elon Musk’s America PAC is offering registered voters in Wisconsin $100 each if they sign a petition against “activist judges who impose their own views.” Those payments come as another Musk-backed group is spending heavily in the state ahead of a Wisconsin Supreme court race.

At the same time, The Washington Post reports Musk has donated to several Republican senators who have moved to impeach federal judges.

The push comes as Donald Trump called for the impeachment of a federal judge earlier this week after the justice ordered the government to turn around planes that were deporting Venezuelan immigrants. Trump ignored that order, earning a rebuke from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Musk called a separate ruling by a judge that blocked Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military “a judicial coup,” adding, “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people.”

Paying people to sign a petition echoing his thoughts is becoming a go-to play for Musk. Last fall, he offered voters in swing states the chance to win $1 million each when they signed a petition his PAC put out “to support free speech and the right to bear arms.”

Prosecutors in Pennsylvania argued those payments were illegal, but a judge said the district attorney failed to present proper evidence and allowed Musk to continue making the offer.

Musk was the largest donor in the 2024 election and, while these contributions are small in comparison, they indicate an increased likelihood he intends to play a significant role in the midterm elections next year.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at winding down the U.S. Department of Education. While Republicans cheer on the move, which many observers are calling legally dubious, it has left nearly 45 million student loan borrowers with one more thing to worry about: what happens to their monthly payments?

The Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid (FSA) office manages a student loan portfolio valued at around $1.7 trillion, and oversees repayment and deferral plans. Trump has said that FSA isn’t up to the challenge, saying the Treasury Department or another larger agency is better equipped to handle the portfolio load.

Though the order has been signed, it’s not immediately clear what will happen to the student loan portfolio.

It’s also not clear if the Education Department will continue to lend money going forward or how much, although Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said Thursday that the department will still “support” borrowers. It is a goal of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—which has acted as a roadmap for much of the Trump administration’s actions so far—for all loans to be privatized.

“Closing the Department does not mean cutting off funds from those who depend on them,” McMahon said in a statement. “We will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs.”

Transferring the student loan portfolio to a new department would cause “considerable upheaval initially and the issues could persist for years,” Kevin Ladd, chief operating officer and co-creator of Scholarships.com, who has worked in the higher education funding field for 25 years, previously told Fortune. The new department would need more staffing and new computer systems, and there would need to be new oversight and other protection processes put in place, says Ladd. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is aggressively cutting federal government staff.

Programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and income-driven repayments plans that help students discharge their loans more quickly are also at risk of “going away,” Ladd said.

“While federal student loans would likely continue to be an option for current and future college students, the terms would likely be much stricter and students should be taking that into consideration before signing off on anything,” he said.

Student loan system in upheaval

Trump signed an executive order earlier this month stating borrowers working at nonprofit groups will not be eligible for student loan forgiveness if the Administration deems they have engaged in “improper” activities . While it is unclear what exactly would fall into this category, this will comes as worrying news for some borrowers who have spent years working in careers that been eligible for loan forgiveness.

Additionally, a federal court recently upheld an injunction related to former President Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, an income-based repayment plan that greatly reduced some borrowers’ monthly payments. That has sent bills sky-rocketing for some borrowers. Others have taken major hits to their credit scores.

And McMahon has stated she is cutting the department’s workforce by nearly 50%, reducing it from 4,133 workers to roughly 2,183.

Critics of the president’s actions say that more people will need to take out private loans to attend school, which will be detrimental to their long-term financial health. Private loans have fewer consumer protections than federal loans, and potentially higher interest rates.

“Without the Department, fewer students would be able to go to college, student loan borrowers would default in droves, and fraudulent colleges would prey on students with impunity,” says Sameer Gadkaree, president and CEO of The Institute for College Access & Success, an independent nonprofit that advocates for better access to higher education.

Also a worry: the companies managing student loans on behalf of the government already face complaints about mismanaging the repayment terms—particularly when there is a change in which company is processing the payments. Increasing the disarray could increase headaches for borrowers.

Those enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, for example, will have to be extra careful checking that their payment counts are being updated. Once these borrowers make 120 on-time payments in certified professions, the remainder of their loans are legally supposed to be forgiven. But there have been numerous issues with this process in years past, and that was while the Education Department was operating as intended.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has a book coming out in September that her publisher is billing as an invitation for “readers to see the Supreme Court through the lens of her experience.”

“Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution” will be released Sept. 9, according to Sentinel Books, a conservative imprint of Penguin Random House.

“In ‘Listening to the Law,’ Justice Barrett illuminates her role and daily life as a justice, touching on everything from her deliberation process to dealing with media scrutiny,” Friday’s announcement by Sentinel reads in part. “With the warmth and clarity that made her a popular law professor, she brings to life the making of the Constitution and lays out her approach to interpreting its text, inviting readers to wrestle with questions of originalism and to embrace the rich heritage of the Constitution.”

In a statement issued through Sentinel, Barrett said, “The process of judging, which happens behind closed doors, can seem like a mystery. It shouldn’t.”

Her signing with Sentinel was first reported in 2021, and financial documents released the following year showed Barrett receiving a $425,000 advance as part of a reported $2 million deal.

Other current justices have published books in recent years, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Barrett, 53, is the youngest member of the court, which she joined in 2020 just weeks after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The third justice appointed by President Donald Trump, Barrett solidified a conservative majority that has overturned abortion rights, broadened religious rights and ended affirmative action in college admissions. Barrett has also tried to promote a spirit of civil debate: She and Sotomayor, one of the court’s liberals, made a handful of joint public appearances i n 2024.

“I don’t think any of us has a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude,” Barrett told a conference of civics educators in Washington.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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