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Looking to make a splash in the crowded pool of Republican presidential contenders, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is offering an unusual deal to donors: Anyone who sends a donation of at least $1 will get a $20 gift card in return.

The campaign's offer is good for the first 50,000 donors — and is an unconventional bid to meet the fundraising thresholds required to be onstage for next month's Republican primary debate.

In this case, it's not the dollar amount of donations that matters; it's the number of donors. To participate in the debate, candidates must have at least 40,000 donors. They also have to bring in donations from 200 or more donors in at least 20 states.

The rules create "some unusual incentives" for quickly building a wide donor base, Nick Bauroth, who chairs the political science department at North Dakota State University, told NPR.

"This offer could cost Burgum up to a million dollars, but well worth it if he gets on the main stage" at the debate, Bauroth added. Also worth remembering: Burgum is a billionaire.

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Why would a campaign trade $20 gift cards for $1 donations?

Burgum's gift card strategy is a sign that his long-shot campaign sees the debate in Milwaukee as a potential make-or-break moment.

"Depending on the outcome, it will either be viewed as genius or the dumbest political move in history," Patricia Crouse, a political science and legal studies professor at the University of New Haven, told NPR.

Participating in the debate would raise Burgum's profile — something his unique offer is already accomplishing, drawing stories by FWIW, Axios, The New York Times and other national media outlets.

The online donation process itself could expand Burgum's base: When people donate, the campaign gleans their email and street addresses. Anyone who adds a phone number also agrees to receive phone calls and text messages.

As for what type of gift card is at stake, the campaign says donors "will actually get a Visa or Mastercard gift card to their mailing address."

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Is this new practice ethical — or legal?

Burgum's offer raises questions about money's role in U.S. politics and the ethics and legality of sending money to potential voters.

"My immediate reaction to this scheme is a concern that it violates the federal prohibition on straw donors," Michael S. Kang, a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, told NPR.

"It's illegal to reimburse another person for their campaign contribution. Giving a donor a $20 gift card for donating seems a bit like that."

Crouse says that in her view, the practice might not be illegal, "but from my perspective, it's a bit unethical." Burgum isn't technically "buying" votes, she noted: "He is simply buying the right to compete."

The threshold for competing on the debate stage on Aug. 23 is set by the Republican National Committee, which hopes to winnow a wide field of 2024 presidential hopefuls down to a manageable group.

"Burgum is competing within the Republican primary and is just trying to game the debate qualification rules," Kang said, adding, "The scheme does test the limits of current law."

When contacted by NPR, a Federal Election Commission representative declined to comment on the legality of Burgum's offer, saying the agency "is unable to comment on specific activities, nor may we speculate on matters that may have the potential to come before the agency."

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Who is Burgum?

He's a former political outsider who surprised many in 2016 when he won the race to become his home state's governor. That year, Burgum had placed third in the running for the Republican convention's endorsement — but he won the party primary just two months later.

"In the past, the party endorsement decided the matter," Bauroth said, but Burgum overturned that norm. He was reelected in 2020.

Burgum now hopes to repeat his odds-defying performance, facing off against politicians from more politically influential states, including a former president and former vice president. As before, he has shown a willingness to dip into his private wealth to fuel his campaign.

Burgum announced his candidacy for U.S. president last month via a launch event in Fargo and an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal. He's battling for attention against the likes of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump.

"If the polls are to be believed ... he's probably hovering just under 1%," Prairie Public News Director Dave Thompson said on Monday. "And that's important," he added, because the 1% polling mark is another threshold required to be invited to the August debate.

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Where did Burgum get his money?

Burgum is a billionaire thanks to a successful tech and investing career.

He was an early investor and played prominent roles in three business-software companies that went public and/or were bought by large corporations: the Great Plains accounting-software company, human resources management firm SuccessFactors and Atlassian, the company behind workflow and collaboration tools such as Jira and Confluence.

Burgum was also an executive at Microsoft after the company bought North Dakota-based Great Plains for $1.1 billion in stock in 2001.

Those successes came after Burgum, a North Dakota native, attended Stanford University's business school and mortgaged part of his family's farmland to invest in Great Plains, as he told Forbes.

Former clandestine officer Shaun Wiggins allegedly assaulted the woman repeatedly in what he insisted was a covert program to train her to use her body “as a weapon.”

The woman claims she was told it would replicate the purported “off limits” work every CIA officer was inevitably called on to do, and that the techniques she picked up would become a valuable part of her “technical skillset.”

But the “fabricated and extended ‘training exercise’” did nothing to help the young cybersecurity specialist realize her dream of joining the agency, and instead groomed her for ongoing sexual abuse—ultimately landing her in a psychiatric facility.

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Rep. Ken Buck, a member of the conservative group, offered some of the most definitive comments yet about Greene’s status in the caucus in an interview with NBC News.

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A member of the House Freedom Caucus confirmed Wednesday that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has been removed from the conservative group, citing her repeated “attacks” on GOP colleagues.

“She’s not a member of the Freedom Caucus, and she shouldn’t be in the future,” Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., said in an appearance on NBC News' “Meet the Press NOW” in some of the most definitive comments yet about Greene’s status in the group.

Greene, a fundraising powerhouse with an enormous social media following, has been one of former President Donald Trump’s top defenders on Capitol Hill. She is the first lawmaker to be ousted from the Freedom Caucus since it was started in 2015 by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, then-Reps. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., and others.

Other members of the ultraconservative group had said a vote was taken June 23 to eject Greene over her altercation with Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and her vocal support for Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s ultimately successful bid for speaker and his trillion-dollar debt-ceiling deal with President Joe Biden.

But for the past two weeks, there was confusion about her status after Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry, R-Pa., declined to comment about the matter and Greene insisted that no one had informed her that she had been voted out. Some Freedom Caucus members suggested that Greene has been avoiding Perry’s attempts to reach her to deliver the news.

By Wednesday, Perry and Greene still had not personally spoken about the issue, even though they would have been on the House floor together during votes.

“No, I haven’t talked with him about any of that,” Greene said. “I’m mostly focused on the work I’m doing and serving my district, not interested in any drama.”

A spokesman for Greene had no immediate comment about Buck’s remarks. Greene did not attend a Freedom Caucus meeting Tuesday night after lawmakers returned to Washington from the July Fourth recess.

Buck, who is one of the more mild-mannered members of the often rambunctious Freedom Caucus, said Greene’s ouster was about not her political views but her repeated attacks on other members of the group, including her criticism of colleagues for blocking McCarthy, R-Calif., from winning the speaker’s gavel in January.

“She has consistently attacked other members of the Freedom Caucus in an irresponsible way, and as a result of that she was kicked out of the Freedom Caucus,” Buck said, “and she should not be, she should not be a member.

“We have diverse opinions in the Freedom Caucus. It’s not monolithic, but insofar as attacking other members, it just shouldn’t be tolerated over and over again,” he continued. “It’s not one simple attack. It’s not what happened on the floor a few weeks ago with Lauren Boebert. It is a series of really poorly thought-out attacks on other members.”

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| ‘LUDICROUS, IRONIC, ABSURD’ |

Christopher Wray, a longtime Republican, was peppered with contentions questions from members of his own party during a six-hour House hearing Wednesday.

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FBI Director Christopher Wray fielded hours of “absurd” questions on Wednesday from the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, as the party continues to ramp up its attempts to discredit both Wray and the agency that he runs with claims of political bias against conservatives.

Ironically, as he pointed out repeatedly during the six-hour hearing Wednesday, Wray is a lifelong Republican and member of the right-wing Federalist Society. He was also appointed to his post in 2017 by then-president Donald Trump.

“I hope you don’t change your party affiliation after this hearing is over,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) joked at one point.

Despite his sterling conservative resume, Wray was forced to defend himself from charges of bias from members of his own party, many of whom alleged that the FBI was unfairly targeting the right in its recent investigations and prosecutions.

Wray used a variety of adjectives to describe recent right-wing conspiracies lobbed at the FBI—including that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was an inside job masterminded by the agency—calling Republican attacks on his character “insane,” “absurd,” “ironic” and “ludicrous.”

“The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” he told the committee.

None of the director’s fiery language stopped Republicans on the committee from questioning Wray about Jan. 6, entertaining a years-old conspiracy theory that the FBI helped incite the riot.

It was a claim championed by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who was sued alongside the network earlier Wednesday by Ray Epps, who was falsely smeared by right-wing media and accused of being an FBI informant despite little evidence.

Wray tried his best not to feed into the narrative.

“I will say this notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was part of some operation by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous and is a disservice to our brave, hard-working, dedicated men and women,” he said.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) even brought up the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, insinuating that Wray’s FBI was helping the broader U.S. government cover it up. Wray called the claim “ironic” and “somewhat absurd,” considering the FBI was, at one point, “the only agency in the entire intelligence community” to give credit to the lab leak theory.

Wray largely avoided getting too heated with even his biggest critics Wednesday, keeping a steady demeanor throughout a number of contentious lines of questioning. Near the end of the hearing, he subtly warned those on the committee who may hope to see him bend amid the political gamesmanship.

“No one should ever mistake my demeanor for what my spine is made out of,” he said.

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The Cuban Foreign Ministry on Tuesday called the stop by a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay a "provocative escalation.”

The U.S. nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Pasadena, stopped at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay earlier this month, the Cuban Foreign Ministry said. A U.S. Navy spokesperson told ABC News it was a "scheduled logistics stop" as the submarine transits to Colombia to participate in a multinational maritime exercise.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly rejects the arrival of a nuclear-powered submarine in Guantanamo Bay on July 5, 2023, that stayed until July 8 at the US military base located there, which is a provocative escalation of the United States, whose political or strategic motives are not known," the statement read.

"The presence of a nuclear submarine there at this moment makes it imperative to wonder what is the military reason behind this action in this peaceful region of the world," the statement continued.

The U.S. government notified the Cuban government that the submarine would stop in Guantanamo Bay on the morning of July 5, a U.S. Navy spokesperson said.

"This is not without precedent. Other nuclear-powered submarines have stopped at Guantanamo before without incident," the spokesperson added.

On the other side of the island, a Russian naval vessel arrived at Havana's port on Tuesday.

The naval vessel -- a Russian training ship named the Perekop - entered the port carrying "humanitarian aid, as well as equipment delivered directly from the Russian Museum of St. Petersburg for multimedia exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts of Havana," Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the official state newspaper of Russia, reported.

The Perekop traveled across the Atlantic Ocean from the Russian port city of Kronshtadt to the Caribbean Sea. It departed Russia on June 20 and arrived in Cuba on July 11. The ship will go on to make other stops in the Caribbean, South America and Africa before returning to Russia in September, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

The presence of the Russian naval ship on Cuba's shores is a sign of increased diplomatic relations between the two nations.

Cuba, which was hit hard by the pandemic, has been experiencing severe shortages of basic goods like food and gas for months.

North Korea launched a ballistic missile toward its eastern waters Wednesday, South Korea said, two days after the North threatened “shocking” consequences to protest what it called a provocative U.S. reconnaissance activity near its territory.

Bradley Reger was seen chatting up a young girl at a Nevada airport just the night before his arrest last week, authorities said.

The Department of Justice said Tuesday it was abandoning the defense of Trump in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.

The number of out athletes competing has more than doubled since the 2019 Women’s World Cup. The total number of LGBTQ athletes in each competition is likely higher, because some players might not feel comfortable coming out publicly.

The policy changes come after an NBC News investigation last month into child safety on the platform.

Gal Luft, 57, was charged with acting as an unregistered agent for the Chinese government, trafficking weapons and lying to federal agents.

All Nordic states are now members of the military alliance, bolstering key border regions with Russia.