Good morning, it's Friday, Oct. 16. One man's $158 million and 1.3 million small donors are colliding in Texas, where early voting starts Monday.

Also in today's issue: A school shooting in Oregon, No livestream for Hasan, DOJ sues California, Powder letters reach the Senate, Bombs ready, interceptors short, A judge rebukes Musk and Noem, The FTC subpoenas AI firms.

PS—Was this forwarded to you? Join The Bluebill here. Or forward this to a friend.

If you live in Texas, early voting opens Monday, and two numbers released Thursday show how badly the rest of the country wants your vote.

The first is $158 million. That's how much Elon Musk gave in September to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing Senate Republicans, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The second is 1.3 million. That's roughly how many people have given to Democrat James Talarico's Senate campaign, and 97% of their donations were $100 or less. And here's a detail worth noticing: the group that actually spent Musk's money in Texas doesn't list Musk as its donor.

Ken Paxton, the state's Republican attorney general, beat longtime Sen. John Cornyn in a bitter primary after President Trump endorsed him. Now most recent polls show Talarico, a state lawmaker, with a narrow lead inside the margin of error. A Democrat hasn't won a Senate race in Texas since 1988. If Paxton loses, the Republican hold on the Senate gets much shakier.

So the money is pouring in from both directions. Talarico raised $64 million from July through September, the most any Senate candidate has ever raised in a third quarter, his campaign said. Paxton reported $18 million. Republicans have closed that gap with outside money.

Here's how a super PAC works. Since a 2010 Supreme Court ruling known as Citizens United, groups that don't coordinate with a candidate can raise and spend unlimited amounts. Candidates face strict caps on what one person can give them directly. So a donor who wants to go big writes a check to a super PAC instead.

Now the route. Musk gave $75 million on Sept. 9 and $83 million two weeks later. Each time, one day later, the Senate Leadership Fund sent the exact same amount to a group called Texas PAC. That group has reported more than $100 million in spending for Paxton and against Talarico. On Texas PAC's books, the money comes from the Senate Leadership Fund. Nothing in the filings suggests a rule was broken, but voters could only trace the full chain on Thursday, about three weeks after the second check.

Musk's two checks also made up more than half of everything the Senate Leadership Fund raised all quarter. His team told Fox News he gave about $276 million to Republican groups in those three months.

Both sides have a case. Musk's America PAC says the money helps Republicans get their message out, and it warns a Democratic Washington would push the country toward socialism. The Supreme Court has treated political spending as protected speech, and big donors back both parties. Talarico counters that his campaign is about ending billionaire control of politics.

Watch the next campaign finance reports, due Oct. 22, which will show money raised through Oct. 14. Big new checks would show how seriously both parties see Texas. And if Talarico wins on $100 donations against that kind of outside money, every campaign in 2028 will study how.

Connect your customer data, teams, and tools without the hassle of complex integrations or lengthy setups. One easy platform gives marketing, sales, and service teams a unified customer view and the tools to turn it into growth.

Why HubSpot and what's new
• Generate leads and automate marketing with Marketing Hub
• Build your pipeline and close more deals with Sales Hub
• Scale customer support and drive retention with Service Hub
• Keep customer data clean, connected, and actionable with one, unified platform

Join 306,000+ in over 135 countries using HubSpot to grow their businesses.

See what a more connected approach to growth can do for you and your team. Get setup quickly and start checking off your hardest tasks.

Get started free

Three children and a teacher were killed Thursday when a 16-year-old forced his way into Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, by shooting at locked doors, police said. The children were 5, 8 and 11 years old. A 7-year-old and a 54-year-old teacher are in critical condition. A community member who saw the teen go inside followed him and shot him dead; officers arrived about three minutes after the first 911 call. The AP, citing a law enforcement official, reported the pump-action shotgun had been bought by the teen's mother. Oregon has required owners to lock up their guns since 2021, and an owner can be held liable if an unsecured gun is used to hurt someone. Police haven't named a motive, and Bend schools are closed Friday.

President Trump said Thursday the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan will not be livestreamed, reversing a plan Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last week. Hasan killed 13 people at the Texas Army base in 2009 and is set to die Dec. 3. Trump wrote that streaming might have deterred terrorists, but many Americans "would rather not watch him die." Victims' immediate families can still attend. The plan drew objections from both parties, and House Speaker Mike Johnson warned a video could become a recruiting tool for terrorists. Going ahead would have put the U.S. in a very small club: Afghanistan and Iran were the only countries known to hold public executions last year, according to Amnesty International. The last public execution in the U.S. appears to have been in 1936.

The Justice Department sued California Thursday, claiming more than 20,000 noncitizens are registered to vote. It wants a federal judge to stop the state from counting mail ballots from likely noncitizens until their citizenship is confirmed. The suit follows the 48-hour deadline the department gave counties earlier this week. Los Angeles County refused to open the federal list, which arrived on a thumb drive, saying that wasn't a secure way to handle voters' data. California's top election official calls the claims unsubstantiated, while Attorney General Todd Blanche says the state has undermined confidence in elections. The department's record is worth knowing: it has filed 31 lawsuits seeking states' voter rolls and lost 26, with no wins so far. California mails a ballot to every registered voter.

Letters with suspicious substances reached state election offices and Senate offices this week, and the FBI is working to find whoever sent them. Senators Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Alex Padilla of California, both Democrats, were told Thursday that their offices were targeted, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's office was also an intended recipient. Election workers in Louisiana and Oklahoma opened envelopes holding white powder; no one was hurt, and Louisiana's tests found nothing harmful. One envelope carried an old return address for the Democratic Socialists of America, which says it left that office in 2013. Election officials' groups said those who run elections should never fear for their safety. Thursday was exactly 25 years since an anthrax letter was opened in Senate leader Tom Daschle's office (Fox News).

The next wave of millionaires will be people who figured out how to make AI work for them.

The window to get ahead is still open. But not for long.

Here are 200+ proven ways to make money with AI in 2026.

Sign up for Superhuman AI, the free daily newsletter read by 1M+ professionals, and get instant access to all 200+ ways to profit from AI this year.

Claim your free list

The White House and Pentagon have drawn up plans to use a 30,000-pound bomb nicknamed the "mother of all bombs," the largest U.S. non-nuclear weapon, on Iranian military sites if President Trump orders it, sources told CBS News. The White House says Trump keeps all options open, though last week he said there would be no attack before the midterms. A second report points to a weak spot. In December, two months before the war began, then-Army chief Gen. Randy George warned that Patriot and THAAD missile-defense interceptors would stay critically short until 2030, U.S. officials said. Hegseth ousted him in April, and the Pentagon calls shortage claims false. Those interceptors are what shield U.S. troops and allies from incoming missiles, and new orders take more than three years to fill.

A federal judge found that Elon Musk and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, along with other officials, knowingly spread false claims about Mary Comans, FEMA's former chief financial officer. Comans, a career civil servant, was fired in February 2025 and publicly accused of sending improper payments to New York City hotels housing migrants. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick found that senior officials made that decision and that Musk's own DOGE team approved the payments. He called Musk's post of her photo "state sanctioned intimidation" and found Noem and aide Corey Lewandowski fed false information to activist Laura Loomer. The ruling, reported Thursday, came in a hearing to clear her name after a court found she was fired without due process. Lawyers for Musk and Noem haven't commented.

The Federal Trade Commission has sent subpoena-like demands to Anthropic and OpenAI, the agency confirmed Thursday, seeking documents on safety incidents, privacy policies and safeguards. The probe began this summer, after several cases in which AI agents escaped their test environments and hacked into websites. Other organizations are expected to receive demands later. The FTC enforces consumer protection law, so the core question is whether these companies have been honest with users about the risks. President Trump has resisted calls to slow AI, calling it vital to national interests, and has set up a "Super Intelligence" task force. Voters lean the other way: 64% of adults told an AP-NORC poll that AI is developing too fast, and 8 in 10 said keeping it under human control matters a lot.

That's roughly how much of America's prewar stock of THAAD missile-defense interceptors was used in the Iran war, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies estimate. No replacements were scheduled to arrive this past fiscal year, and officials say rebuilding even to the old, low level could take until 2030.

P.S. Should one donor's super PAC giving be capped? Hit Reply — one word is enough.