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A new analysis from The Washington Post reveals that just 50 megadonors are responsible for $1.5 billion in campaign cash for the 2024 presidential cycle.

Overall, this group of billionaires skews toward former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party — although there are Democratic megadonors in the mix as well.

The Supreme Court's latest term has kicked off a free-for-all that lets right-wing judges and attorneys challenge just about any federal policy they want, reported Politico on Monday — including much of President Joe Biden's agenda to protect workers and consumers.

The right-wing majority did this in a trio of rulings, the report stated: one that overturns a longstanding doctrine that judges defer to the expertise of agency policymakers; one that effectively eliminates the statute of limitations to challenge federal regulations; and one that requires far more regulatory enforcement actions be subject to a jury trial rather than an administrative hearing.

Officials in a North Texas county debunked claims made by a Fox News host that migrants were registering to vote outside a state drivers license facility west of Fort Worth — an unsubstantiated claim that appeared to spark an investigation by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.

Both the Parker County Republican chair and election administrator said there was no evidence to support the Aug. 18 social media post made by television personality Maria Bartiromo, who previously promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Paxton’s office announced it was opening an investigation into “reports that organizations operating in Texas may be unlawfully registering noncitizens to vote” Wednesday.

In announcing the investigation, the attorney general’s office said investigators confirmed that nonprofits had booths set up outside of license offices to offer voter registration assistance, though it did not state specifically where these offices were located.

The attorney general’s office statement did not say any laws were broken.

The Department of Public Safety, which managed the state’s drivers license offices, said in an email obtained by The Texas Tribune that voter registration groups would not be allowed to recruit new voters outside those locations — a response to allegations that so far have not been proven true.

Neither the attorney general’s office nor the public safety department responded to questions about the investigation.

There are several ways to register to vote in Texas, including when obtaining or updating a driver’s license or identification card. U.S. citizens and Texas residents may also register with a volunteer deputy voter registrar. Those are individuals who must register with their local county and attend training.

Among the first questions on the state’s voter registration application is whether or not the applicant is a U.S. citizen.

There is no evidence that large numbers of noncitizens vote or are registered to vote. A 2019 attempt by the state to scour voting rolls for noncitizens was abandoned after it jeopardized legitimate voter registrations and prompted three federal lawsuits.

Gabriel Rosales, Texas state director for the League of United Latin American Citizens, said he viewed Paxton’s investigation as an act of intimidation to keep Hispanic voters from voting, adding there was nothing wrong with people providing voter registration assistance outside of drivers license offices.

"I don't think it violates anything by having them out there," Rosales said. Republicans " see the writing on the wall,” he said. “They know that if the Hispanic vote comes out, they lose.”

Bartiromo’s claim first made on social media cited “a friend,” who cited a friend’s wife who said there was a massive line of immigrants obtaining driver’s licenses at a DPS office in Weatherford and said there was a tent outside the office where those immigrants were registering to vote. She later repeated similar claims on her Fox Business television program.

Bartiromo did not respond to questions or a request for an interview.

Bartiromo is no stranger to spreading controversial allegations with little or no proof. She was among the first on Fox News to repeat a baseless conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged its voting machines to take votes away from Donald Trump during the 2020 presidential election.

Those allegations were the basis of a $787 million defamation lawsuit settlement between Dominion and Fox News. As part of the suit, it was revealed that the source of Bartiromo’s Dominion claims was an email from a Minnesota woman who, in addition to what she described as a “ wackadoodle” theory about Dominion, wrote that she was a time-traveler who talks to the wind, and that former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was actually killed as part of a weeklong human hunting expedition.

The woman’s claims were forwarded to Bartiromo by Sidney Powell, a Dallas lawyer and longtime election fraud conspiracy theorist who pleaded guilty last year for her role in an attempt to overturn 2020 election results in Georgia. A day after receiving the email, Bartiromo aired an interview with Powell that echoed many of its claims about Dominion. Text messages made public as part of the Dominion suit show that some of Bartiromo’s producers believed she was susceptible to conspiracy theories, and that GOP activists were using her to advance their agenda.

Parker County Republican Chair Brady Gray refuted Bartiromo’s claims that immigrants were lined up outside the DPS office in Weatherford. He said on social media that his party investigated the claim.

“While we are everyday registering more voters in Parker county, there has been no large submission of registrants consistent with the claim,” he wrote on X. “The DPS office has confirmed that there have been no tents or tables and no one registering voters on their premises, and that if it were the case they would be told to leave, as it is not allowed.”

Parker County Elections Administrator Cricket Miller also denied the incident and said communication between DPS and her office confirmed there weren't even any tables or booths set up outside the DPS office.

Gray, in an interview with The Texas Tribune, reiterated there was no evidence of voter registration fraud in Parker County. However, he said he supports Paxton and others investigating voter fraud.

"I think that if you have a functioning brain and an IQ over about 40, it would be absurd for you to believe that there's no election fraud happening anywhere," Gray said.

He said the online reaction to his post on X debunking the claims was strange with people using this one instance to debunk claims of fraud elsewhere in the state.

Robert Downen contributed.

The Texas Tribune answering reader questions about 2024 elections. To share your question or feedback with us, you can fill out this form.

“We’re losing 300,000 people a year to fentanyl that comes through our border. We had it down to the lowest number and now it’s worse than it’s ever been.”

— Former President Donald Trump at a July 24 campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina

Late Friday, the editorial board of the conservative Wall Street Journal raised the red flag that a Senate with a Democratic majority and Vice President Kamala Harris in the Oval Office after November will dismantle the 60-vote filibuster rule that has long stymied liberal lawmakers.

As the editors noted, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been boasting that a solid Democratic majority could mean that the rule will be "a goner."

In an interview this week, the Democratic leader noted that Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have kept Democrats from even bending the rules to help pass legislation and that, after November, "Well, they’re both gone.”

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That led the WSJ editorial board to lament, "This should put a chill into Republicans, independents, moderates, and swing voters. Democrats claim they merely want to bend the filibuster to protect abortion and voting rights. Yet that would break it for good. The pressure would be immense to add other exceptions, such as to restructure the Supreme Court, make Washington, D.C., a state with two Democratic Senators, or ban state right-to-work laws."

Noting that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has indicated she is on board with what would be a ground-shifting change, the editors continued, "All of this raises the stakes for the Senate races this year. West Virginia aside, Democrats are leading now in every tossup race except for Montana. And there the incumbent, Jon Tester, is barely trailing his GOP challenger, businessman Tim Sheehy. Mr. Tester is refusing to endorse Ms. Harris to cover his progressive voting record, and Mr. Schumer will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to keep that seat."

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Thursday that former President Donald Trump suggested using nets to stop Asian carp from getting into the Great Lakes.

Pritzker told the Michigan Democratic Party delegation to the Democratic National Convention on Thursday that Trump made the suggestion during a meeting at the White House with governors shortly after becoming president.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suspending his campaign and saying he is throwing his support to former President Donald Trump.

Kennedy, an environmental attorney and talk radio host who hails from the famous Kennedy political family, formally announced his intentions in a speech on Friday. He said the campaign was suspended, and not ended.

A new High Point University/SurveyUSA Poll shows Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee for governor, leading Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson by 14 percentage points in North Carolina’s closely watched governor’s race.

The online poll of more than 1,000 North Carolina registered voters found 48% favored Stein and 34% supporting Robinson. Eighteen percent say they remain undecided.