(NewsNation) — A federal appeals court declined to revive President Joe Biden’s student debt-relief program while a lawsuit proceeds.

The debt relief plan was struck down by a federal judge in Texas earlier this month, and the administration had asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay of that order until the court could hear an appeal. A three-judge panel of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump appointees unanimously denied the request in a ruling issued Wednesday.

It’s one of two active legal challenges to the debt-relief program. In October, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with six conservative-led states and blocked the program, a decision the administration has asked the Supreme Court to reverse.

Spirits among advocates were high when the program was announced in August, when Biden promised $10,000 in federal loan forgiveness for those making less than $125,000 and $20,000 for those making that same amount who received Pell Grants.

While the administration recently notified certain borrowers who are eligible for forgiveness, it also indicated that it cannot execute the program while the Justice Department fights legal challenges in court, leaving borrowers confused over the status of their promised debt relief. The administration has also stopped accepting applications for the program as a result.

In response to the lawsuits, Biden announced another extension of the pause on loan payments, which now runs through June 30. If the courts decide the program is legal, the payment pause will end 60 days after the Education Department is permitted to begin dispersing the relief.

“We’re not going to back down though on our fight to give families breathing room,” Biden previously said when he announced another extension to the pause on federal student loan payments. “That’s why the Department of Justice is asking the Supreme Court of the United States to rule on the case.”

In its filing at the Supreme Court, the White House argued the injunction “frustrates the government’s ability to respond to the harmful economic consequences of a devastating pandemic with the policies it has determined are necessary.”

The White House also noted its borrowers are being left in a state of limbo.

The Hill contributed to this report.

(NewsNation) — The Moscow Police Department has issued a clarification about statements the Latah County Prosecutor’s office shared in relation to the Idaho student murders.

Morgan Romero, an anchor for KTVB in Boise, tweeted Wednesday evening that Latah County, Idaho prosecuting attorney Bill Thompson confirmed that one of the victims in the home was in fact the target of the murders. It’s unclear which student he meant.

Tuesday evening, Thompson told NewsNation’s Brian Entin that it was not necessarily one person who was targeted, but more so the home itself.

Moscow police said conflicting information has been released by the prosecutor in the past 24 hours.

“The Latah County Prosecutor’s Office stated the suspect(s) specifically looked at this residence, and that one or more of the occupants were undoubtedly targeted,” Moscow police said. “We have spoken with the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office and identified this was a miscommunication. Detectives do not currently know if the residence or any occupants were specifically targeted but continue to investigate.”

Moscow police’s statement comes on the heels of community members gathering at the University of Idaho to remember the four students who were stabbed to death in an off-campus rental home Nov. 13.

A county coroner preliminarily determined that the students identified as Ethan Chapin, 20; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, all died from stab wounds and were likely asleep at the time of their murders.

At the vigil, Kaylee’s father revealed that Kaylee and her best friend, Madison, were both killed together in the same bedroom in the same bed.

“These girls were absolutely beautiful. They had been friends since sixth grade. We both put them in a charter academy; they felt like they were being punished. In sixth grade, they just found each other. And every day they did homework together, they came to our house together. They shared everything. They made a proposal to go to a regular high school so then they went to high school together. Then they started looking at colleges. They came here together. They eventually got into the same apartment together. In the end, they died together in the same room, in the same bed. It’s a shame, and it hurts. But the beauty of the two always being together is something that comforts us,” Steve Goncalves said.

The Moscow community continues to mourn the students killed in the stabbings, as the investigation has not seen much apparent progress. Any suspects or persons of interest have not been publicly identified in the case.

(NewsNation) — Georgia voters continued to turn out in droves Wednesday, pushing the total number of ballots casts in the Senate runoff past 1 million just three days into early voting.

It’s the second runoff in as many years for the state that last year sent two Democrats to the Senate, which gave the party a trifecta of power in Washington. Though Democrats have already retained control of the Senate, the Georgia contest will determine if it is a 50- or 51-seat majority.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said roughly 250,000 voters went to the polls across the state Wednesday, following two days that each saw more than 300,000 people cast ballots. Combined with absentee ballots that have been received, more than 1 million votes have been cast in the runoff.

“We’re having tremendous turnout,” Raffensperger said Wednesday on “CUOMO.”

Though the state is setting records for its turnout, it comes in a condensed time period. Legislation overhauling the state’s election system last year cut in half the runoff calendar.

Single-day turnout numbers have been boosted as a result. Monday’s total of 301,545 was the largest early voting day in the state’s history, but it also came with lines that were hours long, The New York Times reported.

Because the early voting period is condensed, it’s unlikely this year’s numbers will surpass the 3.1 million early voters who turned out in last year’s runoff, which Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won. Warnock is now defending his seat against Republican Herschel Walker.

In addition to shortening the runoff period, the 2021 legislation also limited voting by mail and scaled back the number of drop boxes available. Republicans argued it was about election security and administration, while Democrats contended it would lead to voter suppression.

Election security became a major focus of this year’s midterms, and Raffensperger said at the end of the day, the runoff will be a fair and honest election.

“We make sure that our county election directors are making sure they do their work … and they’re doing remarkably well,” Raffensperger said. “Everyone’s vote is secure.”

Claims of malfeasance and election rigging have increased since 2020, when former President Donald Trump refused to accept defeat. The issue was especially prominent in Arizona, where Cochise County voted to delay the certification of the 2022 election, missing a Monday deadline mandated by state law.

It took more than a week for Maricopa County, the most populous county, to tabulate results, which allowed conspiracies to brew. More than 275,000 early voters dropped off their ballots on Election Day, which all then had to be signature-verified before they could be counted.

Raffensperger said if states can craft laws that allow for faster counting, it will build trust in the system.

“That gives voters confidence in the process,” Raffensperger said. “We’re making sure we have honest and fair elections and we report those results quickly.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat began voting on Thursday with his Hindu nationalist party expected to win a seventh straight term, but any unexpected slip could herald a tighter contest in national polls due by 2024.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not lost in the western industrial state since 1995 and Modi served as its chief minister for nearly 13 years before becoming prime minister in 2014 after trouncing the Congress party.

Opinion polls conducted in the lead-up to the Gujarat polls projected the BJP to comfortably retain power in the state.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which was formed only a decade ago and has claimed power in Delhi and the state of Punjab, is set to become one of the main opposition parties in Gujarat at the expense of Congress.

Early on Thursday, voters in Surat, the state’s second largest city and a diamond cutting and polishing hub, lined up to cast their ballot in the first of the two-phase election.

The city is expected to witness a three-way contest with Congress and AAP also looking to make inroads in the BJP bastion. The second phase of voting is on Tuesday and results are due on Dec. 8.

In the last state election five years ago, the BJP won 99 seats in the 182-member assembly while Congress got 77.

The BJP is expected to win between 131 to 139 seats this time, ABP-CVoter projected in November. Congress could win 31 to 39 seats while the Aam Aadmi Party could bag up to 15.

According to India TV-Matrize opinion poll, also conducted in November, the BJP may win up to 119 seats.

Modi remains popular in many parts of the country despite criticism of inflation and unemployment, and his party also expects to emerge victorious in state assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh in the north, which were held last month with results to be declared on Dec. 8.

AAP has promised voters subsidies on electricity and other bills in their bid to become the main challenger to the BJP.

Congress, on the other hand, launched a cross-country march in September against what it calls “hate and division”, hoping to revive its fortunes and regain some popularity.

Elon Musk said on Wednesday a wireless device developed by his brain chip company Neuralink is expected to begin human clinical trials in six months, and one of its first targeted applications is restoring vision.

The company is developing brain chip interfaces that it says could enable disabled patients to move and communicate again. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, Neuralink has in recent years been conducting tests on animals as it seeks U.S. regulatory approval to begin clinical trials in people.

“We want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device into a human but we’ve submitted I think most of our paperwork to the FDA and we think probably in about six months we should be able to have our first Neuralink in a human,” Musk said during a much-awaited public update on the device.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did not immediately reply to a Reuters’ request for comment.

The first two human applications targeted by the Neuralink device will be in restoring vision and enabling movement of muscles in people who cannot do so, Musk said. “Even if someone has never had vision, ever, like they were born blind, we believe we can still restore vision,” he said.

The event was originally planned for Oct. 31 but Musk postponed it just days before without giving a reason.

Neuralink’s last public presentation, more than a year ago, involved a monkey with a brain chip that played a computer game by thinking alone. read more

Musk, who also runs electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla (TSLA.O), rocket firm SpaceX, and social media platform Twitter, is known for lofty goals such as colonizing Mars and saving humanity. His ambitions for Neuralink, which he launched in 2016, are of the same grand scale.

He wants to develop a chip that would allow the brain to control complex electronic devices and eventually allow people with paralysis to regain motor function and treat brain diseases such as Parkinson’s, dementia and Alzheimer’s. He also talks of melding the brain with artificial intelligence.

Neuralink, however, is running behind schedule. Musk said in a 2019 presentation he was aiming to receive regulatory approval by the end of 2020. He then said at a conference in late 2021 that he hoped to start human trials this year.

Neuralink has repeatedly missed internal deadlines to gain FDA approval to start human trials, current and former employees have said. Musk approached competitor Synchron earlier this year about a potential investment after he expressed frustration to Neuralink employees about their slow progress, Reuters reported in August.

Synchron crossed a major milestone in July by implanting its device in a patient in the United States for the first time. It received U.S. regulatory clearance for human trials in 2021 and has completed studies in four people in Australia.

Republican candidate for governor Kari Lake plans to sue Arizona’s largest county next week to overturn her election loss, sources familiar with the matter tell TIME, as the state’s election system is beset by turmoil more than three weeks after Election Day.

Lake, who lost by less than one percentage point to Democrat Katie Hobbs and has refused to concede, cannot file her lawsuit under Arizona law until state officials certify the election results. That process will take place on Dec. 5, when Arizona’s governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and chief justice will validate the election outcome based on official results submitted by the state’s 15 counties.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

In the meantime, Lake’s legal team has been collecting affidavits from voters who claim they were unable to vote on Election Day because of problems with tabulator machines in roughly 30% of Maricopa County’s vote centers, according to Lake campaign insiders.

The equipment problems led to long lines and voter confusion at those polling places. Maricopa County officials have stressed that no voters were denied the right to vote. Anyone who experienced issues with the machines, they said, was able to deposit their ballot in a secure box to be tabulated later. “People were still able to vote,” said Bill Gates, the chairman of the county’s board of supervisors. “It was just a matter of maybe not voting in the way they wanted to.”

Lake trails Hobbs by a little more than 17,000 votes. Lake’s lawsuit, sources say, is likely to claim that more than that many voters were disenfranchised by Maricopa’s tabulator snafus, which they argue had a disparate impact on Republicans, who were more likely to vote in person on Election Day, compared to Democrats, who in recent years have tended to vote early or by mail. It’s a trend that is due in large part to former President Donald Trump having falsely demonized mail voting as rife with fraud.

Read more: Trump’s Attacks on Mail Voting Bolstered ‘Big Lie,’ Jan. 6 Panel Says

Lake, the former news anchor turned politician, intends to ask the Maricopa County Superior Court to nullify its election and hold it over again. Such a decision would be unprecedented in modern American elections. Some of Lake’s top advisers recognize that the chances of a judge ruling in their favor are slim. “Courts require proof,” a Lake insider tells TIME. “And it’s going to be hard to prove. You don’t know how many people actually drove to a polling location, looked at the long line, and left. You’ll never know who decided not to pull in. And that’s unfortunate for Kari. We can just argue common sense. But that’s not evidence in court. It’s going to be tough.”

On social media, Lake has said her lawsuit will include “at least one smoking gun” based on whistleblowers who have contacted her campaign. “I’m working with a team of patriotic, talented lawyers on a legal case to challenge the botched elections,” she said in one video. “We will file this case in accordance with Arizona state law, and you’ll want to stay tuned for this one. Trust me.”

Lake is being represented by the Phoenix-based conservative lawyer Tim La Sota, and sources say there are conversations ongoing with the Republican National Committee to potentially join in the lawsuit. Lake’s campaign had hired Harmeet Dhillon, an RNC committeewoman who helped with Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 election, to run its election week operations.

Republican candidates who have said without evidence that Trump won in 2020 ran across the country in this year’s midterms. Nearly all who have lost have conceded, making Lake the most high-profile holdout.

Local officials in all of Arizona counties convened on Monday to approve their respective election results, but those typically mundane proceedings were far more dramatic than usual in some counties. The Republican-controlled Cochise County governing board voted two-to-one to delay a vote on certifying their results until Friday, a move that risks delaying the statewide certification and that quickly drew lawsuits from outside groups and Hobbs in her role as secretary of state. In Mohave County, the Republican chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Ron Gould, reluctantly certified the election results but only “under duress,” he said, proclaiming from the dais: “I have no choice but to vote ‘Aye’ or I will be arrested and charged with a felony.”

And in Maricopa County, which comprises more than 60% of the state’s voters, hundreds protested the Board of Supervisors’ certification meeting, with many testifying about their grievances over Election Day issues with technical glitches and long lines. The board eventually voted unanimously to certify the election results.

Problems with the machine tabulators emerged early in the morning on Election Day at 70 of Maricopa’s 223 vote centers; by midday, county officials said they had diagnosed and remedied the problem.

One longtime Arizona politico acknowledged that the problems were disruptive, but insisted that they did not ultimately disenfranchise any Arizona voters. “Were there some inconveniences? Yeah, absolutely,” Barrett Marson, a veteran Arizona Republican operative, tells TIME. “Did Maricopa County make a mistake? Absolutely. But did they rectify it as soon as possible? Absolutely. Did people have to wait in long lines to vote? Yes, but they voted. That’s Kari Lake’s problem. People were still allowed to vote.”

During the public comment period on Monday at the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meeting, Lake supporters one by one excoriated the county, in some cases citing unsubstantiated claims that the technological hiccups were part of an intentional plot to steal the election. “This is a war between good and evil,” one man told the board, “and you all represent evil.”

Over and over again, those who spoke expressed that they had little faith that the election was fair. One of the speakers, who works for a right-wing media outlet, suggested that Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, was compromised in his role because he founded a political action committee last year called Pro-Democracy Republicans of Arizona to combat GOP candidates who say the last presidential election was stolen, despite multiple investigations finding no evidence of substantial fraud. Lake has often said that Joe Biden is an “illegitimate” president who did not really beat Trump in 2020. Richer did not respond to a request for comment.

One woman who served as a poll observer testified that they weren’t trained to check out voters who had already checked in at a polling place. That became an issue for some voters who had tabulator machines reject their ballots and who wanted to go to another location to vote. Another said she heard from a fellow poll worker that one of the tabulators at her polling place wasn’t working the night before the election.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office cited the tabulator malfunctions and check-out issues prominently in a Nov. 19 letter to Maricopa County demanding answers on the Election Day mishaps. “These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” the attorney general’s office wrote.

Maricopa County officials responded on Nov. 27, saying the county complied with federal and state election law, and that voters who went to a second polling place on Election Day without checking out of the previous polling place were able to cast a provisional ballot. Elections officials would then research to make sure that the voter did not vote twice before counting that ballot. The letter did not address the training of poll workers for check-out procedures.

Brnovich’s shadow looms large in the ongoing controversy over the 2022 Arizona election, as he is one of the state officials tasked with certifying the election next week. While the Republican attorney general certified and defended the integrity of the last Arizona election two years ago, he later cast doubt on its legitimacy when he ran for U.S. Senate this year. Brnovich has not made any public declaration on whether he will certify this election. His office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Meanwhile, Hobbs, as secretary of state, has engaged in a legal battle to compel Cochise County to certify its election results as mandated by state law, after its Board of Supervisors refused to do so, citing concerns with voting machines, even though voters did not experience issues in that jurisdiction. “The Secretary of State’s Office provided supporting documentation that confirmed Cochise County’s election equipment was properly certified,” a spokesperson for Hobbs tells TIME. “The Board of Supervisors had all of the information they needed to certify this election and failed to uphold their responsibility for Cochise voters.”

Since the Associated Press called the election for Hobbs on Nov. 14, Lake has vowed to fight the results of what she has called a “shoddy election” and has emphasized to her supporters that she will challenge the outcome.

“This whole system is a joke,” she told a conservative podcast host on Tuesday. “Either our courts help us out right now, or I feel we lose this country.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York Wednesday became the first Black leader of either major political party in Congress. House Democrats voted unanimously for him to succeed Nancy Pelosi as leader of the House Democrats, and Jewish leaders and pro-Israel groups welcomed their choice. 

The Democratic Majority for Israel called him “a staunch supporter of the critical relationship between the United States and Israel” and the American Jewish Congress noted that Jeffries “has shown himself to be a determined supporter of the Jewish people — one who has never hesitated to call out antisemitism and all those seeking to harm Jews.” 

In a news conference after the caucus vote, Jeffries said Democrats, who will be in the minority beginning in January, will “push back against extremism whenever necessary.”

The ascension of Jeffries, 52, to a top leadership position was swift. Following his election to Congress in 2012, when he defeated an anti-Israel candidate, Jeffries — a lawyer who had represented Brooklyn in the New York State Assembly and worked at the firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison — was immediately deemed a rising star by party leaders. 

During that first Congressional campaign, Jeffries was compared to former President Barack Obama, who wowed the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and became president just two years after he won his Senate seat in Illinois. 

He was appointed as the whip of the Congressional Black Caucus and forged close relations with Jewish leaders in New York and pro-Israel groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He became chair of the House Democratic Caucus when his party took control of Congress in 2018. 

The predominantly Orthodox and Russian Jewish population in the 8th District he represents is estimated at 15% of its constituency.

David Greenfield, CEO of the Met Council and a former city councilman, said he’s known Jeffries since he first ran for Assembly in 2006 and has since become a close friend. “He understands the Jewish community, supports our issues and concerns and is absolutely pro-Israel,” he said, calling him “an exceptional once-in-a-generation leader” who will “literally be the new face of the Democratic party.”

Jeffries visited Israel five times in the last decade and often called Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, New York City’s sixth borough. “When you live in a tough neighborhood Israel should not be made to apologize for its strength,” he said during a rally outside the United Nations during the 2014 war in Gaza. 

During the debate over the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, Jeffries held a public listening session hosted by AIPAC and local Orthodox groups, who opposed the deal, though he later announced his support for it. In a panel discussion at AIPAC’s policy conference in 2019, Jeffries described the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement “inherently antisemitic.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres, a pro-Israel progressive from New York, described Jeffries as a “fearless and forceful” leader in his defense of the U.S-Israel alliance and “living proof that bipartisan support for the U.S-Israeli relationship is deep and durable.” 

Torres, who was first elected in 2020 and has since become a staunch advocate for Israel, was the first Democrat to publicly back Jeffries for leader following November’s midterm elections. He said Jeffries inspired him and other members of Congress to “follow the standard that he set” for supporting the Jewish state and strengthening the bond between the Black and Jewish communities.

“Pro-Israel advocacy is not for the faint-hearted,” Torres said. “Hakeem is neither faint-hearted nor fair-weather.” 

 

In his reelection campaigns, Jeffries earned the backing of AIPAC, DMFI, Jewish Democratic Council of America and Pro Israel America. The liberal pro-peace J Street PAC didn’t endorse him in the last election cycle, even though they supported House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime AIPAC ally. 

When the next Congress convenes in January, both chambers will be led by Democrats from Brooklyn. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer lives in Park Slope; Jeffries is from Crown Heights. 

In a pre-election interview, Jeffries said his support for Israel will continue. He said he expected to travel to Israel in the spring of 2023 in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the modern Israeli state. 

The post Hakeem Jeffries, a staunchly pro-Israel Democrat, will lead his party in the U.S. House appeared first on The Forward.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to put on hold a Texas judge’s ruling that said President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt was unlawful.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Biden administration’s request to pause a judge’s Nov. 10 order vacating the $400 billion student debt relief program in a lawsuit pursued by a conservative advocacy group.

The decision by Fort Worth, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman was one of two nationally that has prevented the U.S. Department of Education under Biden from moving forward with granting debt relief to millions of borrowers.

The administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to similarly lift an order by the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that, at the request of six Republican-led states, had barred it from cancelling student loans.

A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit in Wednesday’s brief order declined to put Pittman’s ruling on hold while the administration appealed his decision, but the court directed that the appeal be heard on an expedited basis.

The panel included two Republican appointees and one judge nominated by former Democratic President Barack Obama. Pittman was appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump.

Biden announced in August that the U.S. government would forgive up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year, or $250,000 for married couples. Students who received Pell Grants to benefit lower-income college students will have up to $20,000 of their debt canceled.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden promised to help debt-saddled former college students. Biden’s program has drawn opposition from Republicans, who have portrayed it as shifting the burden of debt from wealthy elites to lower-income Americans.

The Congressional Budget Office in September calculated that the debt forgiveness program run would cost taxpayers about $400 billion.

About 26 million Americans have applied for student loan forgiveness, and the U.S. Department of Education had already approved requests from 16 million by the time Pittman issued his ruling.

Pittman ruled in a lawsuit by two borrowers who were partially or fully ineligible for the loan forgiveness who were backed by the Job Creators Network Foundation, a conservative advocacy group founded by Bernie Marcus, a co-founder of Home Depot.

The judge said it was irrelevant if Biden’s plan was good public policy because the program was “one of the largest exercises of legislative power without congressional authority in the history of the United States.”

Pittman wrote that the HEROES Act – a law that provides loan assistance to military personnel and that was relied upon by the Biden administration to enact the relief plan – did not authorize the program.

Elon Musk said on Wednesday a wireless device developed by his brain chip company Neuralink is expected to begin human clinical trials in six months.

The company is developing brain chip interfaces that it says could enable disabled patients to move and communicate again. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, Neuralink has in recent years been conducting tests on animals as it seeks U.S. regulatory approval to begin clinical trials in people.

“We want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device into a human but we’ve submitted I think most of our paperwork to the FDA and probably in about six months we should be able to upload Neuralink in a human,” Musk said during a much-awaited public update on the device.

The event was originally planned for Oct. 31 but Musk postponed it just days before without giving a reason.

Neuralink’s last public presentation, more than a year ago, involved a monkey with a brain chip that played a computer game by thinking alone. read more

Musk is known for lofty goals such as colonizing Mars and saving humanity. His ambitions for Neuralink, which he launched in 2016, are of the same grand scale. He wants to develop a chip that would allow the brain to control complex electronic devices and eventually allow people with paralysis to regain motor function and treat brain diseases such as Parkinson’s, dementia and Alzheimer’s. He also talks of melding the brain with artificial intelligence.

Neuralink, however, is running behind schedule. Musk said in a 2019 presentation he was aiming to receive regulatory approval by the end of 2020. He then said at a conference in late 2021 that he hoped to start human trials this year.

Neuralink has repeatedly missed internal deadlines to gain U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to start human trials, current and former employees have said. Musk approached competitor Synchron earlier this year about a potential investment after he expressed frustration to Neuralink employees about their slow progress, Reuters reported in August.

Synchron crossed a major milestone in July by implanting its device in a patient in the United States for the first time. It received U.S. regulatory clearance for human trials in 2021 and has completed studies in four people in Australia.