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    It’s been a big, beautiful week of bad news for Trump. But don’t expect it to stick | Zoe Williams

    Nothing is going according to plan for the Trump administration. The big, beautiful bill, originally vaunted to save the US taxpayer at least $2tn, so far, according to projections, delivers savings in the region of $9.4bn. Elon Musk has exited government, saying he wasn’t in favour of the bill, which could be big, or beautiful, but in this case, not both. Musk’s government contract ran for only 120 days, so it would have been up at the end of this week anyway.Just to try to lasso those words back to an observable reality where they might mean something, the bill isn’t all that big; there are some very vindictive moves around Medicaid entitlement, intended to fund tax cuts elsewhere, that will have seismically bad outcomes for vulnerable individuals without necessarily burning a hole in anyone else’s pocket. Tips and overtime are exempted from tax, but probably the only thing that’s legitimately big, or if you like, huge, is the increase of the debt ceiling by $4tn. So it gives with one hand, takes away with the other, promise-wise – those tax exemptions were mentioned often on the campaign trail, but a government that causes havoc trying to shrink the state while simultaneously increasing the amount it can borrow isn’t going to please anyone in either party but sycophants.As for “beautiful” – the supplemental nutrition assistance program (Snap) will see reforms that throw more costs on to each state. Forty-two million low-income Americans are on Snap, and there would be more requirements upon those who are childless. Centring cuts on those who are already hungry has a cruelty that glisters in an age of necropolitics, but it lacks the scale, the granite finality, that “beauty” would connote to these people.“We have to get a lot of votes, we can’t be cutting – we need to get a lot of support,” Trump said, in response to Musk’s criticism, which seems to have enlivened in the president some fresh appreciation of how democracy works, though whether it will last until lunchtime is anyone’s guess. The worry about Musk’s departure is not that Doge will be lost without him, but that his criticism will embolden the hawks in Congress, who didn’t want to vote for the bill in the first place. Then it really will be a puddle of words without meaning.Meanwhile, a US federal court struck down almost all Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs, in the classic judicial way, by deeming them an overreach of his powers. The ruling is purely on legislative grounds (Trump didn’t wait for the approval of Congress) rather than on any economic grounds (that they would make everything much more expensive for the US public, obliterating the impact of any big or beautiful tax cuts with a single big-ticket purchase, particularly if any part thereof was made in China, which means almost everything). The justice department has filed an appeal.The observer could file all this under “government: harder than it looks”. Moving fast and breaking things doesn’t work. Borrowing and spending while slashing and burning in a formless, ad hoc fashion doesn’t work. Billionaires with fragile egos, trying to cooperate while reserving the right to say whatever they like about each other, well, this has never worked.It would be the gravest imaginable mistake, though, to think that just because the wheels are coming off it this bus is losing its destructive power. One of the global indignities of the US spectacle is having to lose hours analysing the hidden meanings and augurs of the acts of men who don’t, themselves, give one second’s thought to anything. Did Trump mean to humiliate Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and if he didn’t, what came over him, and if he did, what could we predict of the future of Europe? Did Musk mean to Sieg Heil, and if he didn’t, has he lost his mind, and if he did, has he lost his mind? Did they mean to fall out, will they get back together, is this a pantomime, will one chase the other further from reality or back towards it?These questions fundamentally debase us, at the same time as giving the false sense of security that, once these guys step away from public life, singly or together, sense will be restored. The dangerous thing about them is the thing that makes them infinitely replaceable: there will always be another richest guy in the world; there will always be another high net-worth individual who has become separated from social values, not by the wealth itself but by the single-minded solipsism of its accretion. Trump and Musk could get to a place of such enmity that they eschewed the offices of state to spend the days mud-wrestling, and there would be no comfort to take from it, just a new double-act, with new peccadilloes that would be strikingly like the last.The federal court’s decision is another matter, and can be mutedly celebrated until it fails to act on some other gross constitutional transgression.

    Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist More

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    Elon Musk announces exit from US government role after breaking with Trump on tax bill

    Elon Musk has announced on social media that he is leaving his role in the Trump administration, a departure the White House confirmed was in process on Wednesday evening.“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” the billionaire wrote on X, his social media platform.“The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” he said, referring to his “department of government efficiency.”A White House official told Reuters it was accurate Musk is leaving the administration and his “off-boarding will begin tonight.”The departure of a man who once appointed himself Trump’s “first buddy” was quick and unceremonious. Musk did not have a formal conversation with Trump before announcing he was leaving the administration, according to a source with knowledge of the matter, who added that his exit was decided “at a senior staff level.”Musk, the world’s richest person, has defended his role as an unelected official who was granted unprecedented authority by Trump to dismantle parts of the US government. His 130-day mandate as a special government employee in the Trump administration was set to expire about 30 May.Both Musk and the administration has said DOGE’s efforts to restructure and shrink the federal government will continue.Musk has been signalling his departure from Washington, and his commitment to return his business ventures, all week. He sharply criticised Trump’s spending plan, and expressed frustration with the response to the efforts of his signature “department of government efficiency.”He criticised the president’s marquee tax bill, calling it too expensive and a measure that would undermine his work to make the government more “efficient.”“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realised,” Musk told the Washington Post on Tuesday. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.”He also told the Post that Doge had been turned into a “whipping boy” that was criticised for anything that went wrong in the Trump White House.Musk had butted heads in private with some cabinet-level officials, and publicly attacked White House trade adviser Peter Navarro as a “moron” for dismissing Musk’s push for “zero tariffs” between the US and Europe.Musk had also recently expressed frustration to White House officials over a deal between Abu Dhabi and OpenAI, the Sam Altman-led rival to Musk’s own AI company, the New York Times reported. Musk had previously tried to derail the deal unless his company was included in it, the Wall Street Journal reported.The billionaire’s recent “disillusionment” with politics was also influenced by the failure of his Wisconsin judicial candidate, despite Musk spending $25m on the race, the New York Times reported.Trump and DOGE have managed to cut nearly 12%, or 260,000, of the 2.3 million-strong federal civilian workforce largely through threats of firings, buyouts and early retirement offers, a Reuters review of agency departures found.Musk’s political activities have drawn protests and some investors have called for Musk to leave his work as Trump’s adviser and manage Tesla more closely.Having spent nearly $300m to back Trump’s presidential campaign and other Republicans last year, he said earlier this month he would substantially cut his political spending. “I think I’ve done enough,” Musk said at an economic forum in Qatar.While Musk had told Trump’s advisers this year that he would give $100m to groups controlled by the president’s team before the 2026 midterms, the New York Times reported, the money had not yet come in as of this week.Reuters and Nick Robbins-Early contributed reporting More

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    Musk is pivoting from DC and Doge’s failures – and wants investors to know

    Elon Musk really wants the public – and investors – to know that he’s leaving Washington DC behind.In a series of interviews and social media posts this week, Musk has criticized Donald Trump’s marquee tax bill and emphasized his recommitment to leading SpaceX, Tesla and the artificial intelligence company xAI. The world’s richest person claimed that he was back to working around the clock at his companies – to the point of sleeping in conference rooms and factory offices once again.Musk has been telegraphing a pivot back to his businesses for months, but in recent appearances, he has repeatedly distanced himself from his unpopular stint in Washington while proclaiming that his new sole focus is his tech empire. It is a drastic turnaround for Musk, who spent most of the last year constantly at Trump’s side promoting far-right ideology online, appearing on stage at political rallies and pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the Republican party.The shift, which comes amid public and investor backlash against Musk’s political ambitions, was apparent this week as SpaceX launched and lost control of its Starship prototype rocket. Musk gave a round of media appearances to the Washington Post, Ars Technica, CBS News Sunday Morning and a YouTube aerospace influencer, all of which featured him emphasizing his dedication to his companies or attempting to explain away the shortcomings of his heavily criticized “department of government efficiency”.“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” Musk told the Washington Post on Tuesday. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.”Musk additionally told the Post that Doge had been turned into a “whipping boy” that was criticized for anything that went wrong under the Trump administration. In Ars Technica, Musk admitted: “I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics.”Bashing Trump’s tax billThe turn from Trump’s self-appointed “first buddy” back to the familiar territory of space travel and tech has taken place as Doge faces numerous legal challenges and remains widely unpopular.Although Musk successfully seeded the government with his allies and helped gut regulators that would oversee his companies, Doge’s central promise to slash $2tn worth of fraud and waste has been an obvious failure. Doge’s cuts, while devastating to government services, humanitarian aid and the federal workforce, have amounted to little in terms of actual budget savings. Much of the savings it has claimed on its “wall of receipts” have also turned out to be false, including the cancellation of an $8bn contract that in reality was an $8m contract.Musk’s answer for Doge’s shortcomings appears to be casting the blame on some of his familiar foes: politicians and bureaucrats. In doing so, however, he has increasingly split with the Republican party – though notably stopped short of any criticism of Trump himself.Musk’s split with Congressional Republicans has been starkest on X, the social media platform that he owns. Musk’s posts have fully leaned into the narrative that Doge’s actions were successfully reducing waste, but that Congress hamstrung its operations through actions like approving Trump’s tax bill, which is expected to add $2.3tn to the deficit.Musk told CBS that he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, which increases the budget deficit …  and undermines the work that the Doge team is doing”.Now, Musk claims, he will focus on saving humanity through technologies like self-driving cars, interplanetary rockets and humanoid robots – exactly the products his companies need investors to believe in.“I have come to the perhaps obvious conclusion that accelerating GDP growth is essential,” Musk posted on Friday in response to a thread calling the GOP bill “disastrous” and demanding term limits on Congress. “Doge has and will do great work to postpone the day of bankruptcy of America, but the profligacy of government means that only radical improvements in productivity can save our country.”In a separate exchange, he replied to a conversation between two users with large followings who routinely praise his leadership and business acumen.“I think Elon is realizing that, despite the promises made by the new administration and a Republican-controlled Congress – and all the campaign platforms they ran on – the current incentive structures and entrenched special interests in government make it nearly impossible to enact any meaningful, long-term changes to address the many big issues we face,” one pro-Musk account posted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“DOGE has done incredible work, but the GOP has failed to actually implement any of the cuts,” another prominent Musk-booster replied.“Yeah (Sigh),” Musk responded to the thread.Musk goes back to selling the futureWhat became clear throughout Musk’s time in Washington was that the public did not enjoy seeing him and many in the Trump administration did not like working with him. Numerous polls showed his overall popularity declining even as people supported the premise of reducing government inefficiencies. Musk’s prominent involvement in a Wisconsin supreme court election intensified opposition to his influence, while international demonstrations made him the face of the administration. Musk also found few friends within the Trump administration, with report after report of heated clashes with senior officials and some Republican political operatives warning his brand had become too toxic for the party.The pushback against Musk affected his businesses, causing Tesla sales to plummet to the point that the company’s board reportedly began considering replacing him as CEO. While Musk denied those claims, in recent weeks he has very loudly reaffirmed his dedication to leading his businesses.“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,” he posted on Saturday. “I must be super focused on 𝕏/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out.”While only a few weeks ago Musk’s posts on X were a nonstop stream of invectives against Democrats, fringe theories about immigration and demands to gut the judicial system, his online output has also changed. His posts this week have been heavily focused on SpaceX’s ambitions to go to Mars and Tesla’s self-driving car program, stopping only occasionally to promote attacks against “the woke mind virus” or feud with the government of his native South Africa.As Musk moves away from full-time politics and tries to win back investor confidence, he has also doubled down on his habit of making grandiose predictions of how his technologies will transform the world. Echoing a long list of previous claims that have missed deadlines and so far failed to come to fruition, he has promoted new endeavors like Tesla’s humanoid robots as crucial to the future of civilization.“Once you have humanoid robots, the actual economic output potential is tremendous. It’s really unlimited,” Musk said on stage at the Saudi-US Investment Forum on 13 May. “Potentially, we could have an economy 10 times the size of the global economy, where no one wants for anything.”Rather than dwell on a year of missed targets and intense backlash, Musk is back to selling a future where anything is possible. More

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    Trump confirms he’ll be negotiating his signature tax bill after Musk criticism

    Donald Trump said he will be negotiating his signature tax bill after Elon Musk publicly criticised the president’s spending plan, saying it “undermines” cost-cutting efforts that the world’s richest man once spearheaded.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump acknowledged the bill “needs to get a lot of support” in Congress, adding “we have to get a lot of votes”. The president also said he was “not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it” and confirmed he would be negotiating the legislation.The remarks come after Musk said he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, which increases the budget deficit … and undermines the work that the Doge team is doing” in comments made to CBS as part of a longer interview due to run on its Sunday morning programme this weekend.Musk had been leading the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) since January, which was given the task of cutting state spending. He later announced in April he would be stepping back from the Trump administration after Tesla’s earnings plunged, and spending millions of dollars in a supreme court race that his Republican candidate ultimately lost.Musk now appears to be hitting out at Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was narrowly approved last week by the House of Representatives.The bill pushes ahead with a number of Trump’s campaign promises, including extending tax cuts for individuals and corporations and ending clean energy incentives enacted under Joe Biden.It also involves about $1tn (£741bn) in cuts to benefits aimed at supporting struggling households, including a health insurance scheme for low-income families, Medicaid, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) food stamps.However, the bill also funds the construction of a wall along the border with Mexico, as well as staff and facilities for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Even when taking cuts into account, the bill is expected to add about $2.3tn to the deficit, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.Musk told CBS: “I think a bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”The comments will fuel rumours of a growing rift between the billionaire and the US president, whom Musk helped bankroll last year. In total, Musk’s super political action committee donated $200m to Trump’s presidential campaign before the November election, which many credit with helping to return Trump to the White House.Musk also has business interests at stake, with Trump’s bill due to end a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles and to impose a $250 annual registration fee for owners. The Tesla boss has previously called for an end to those incentives, although that was months before the EV maker’s earnings started to wobble.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast month, Tesla reported a 71% drop in first-quarter profits to $409m, compared with $1.39bn in the same period in 2024. Tesla’s stock has also suffered, with the company losing about a quarter of its market value since Musk took a top spot in Trump’s administration at the start of the year.Musk’s criticism is likely to fuel opposition by hardline Republicans, who threatened to block Trump’s legislation as it passes through the US senate unless the president rolls out deeper cuts that would reduce the national debt. One key senator, Rand Paul from Kentucky, told Fox News Sunday that the bill’s cuts were “wimpy and anaemic” and would “explode the debt”.However, Trump has already been treading on politically sensitive territory by supporting a bill that makes big cuts to programmes he promised to protect. He pledged multiple times on the campaign trail last year that he would not touch basic safety nets, including Medicaid.Some of the president’s “make America great again” supporters, including the former White House strategist Steve Bannon, have also warned against such a move, with one Missouri senator, Josh Hawley, saying that cutting health insurance for the working poor would be “politically suicidal”. More

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    Trump’s mass federal cuts disrupt LA wildfire recovery: ‘It’s coming tumbling down’

    On 13 April, Tess McGinley was working in her Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) cubicle in Los Angeles, calling people who had lost their homes in the January wildfires, when her team was told to stop what they were doing and leave the office immediately.McGinley, a 23-year-old team leader for AmeriCorps, the US agency for national service and volunteerism, was helping Fema by reviewing wildfire survivors’ cases to ensure they received housing assistance. Over the past six weeks, she and her seven teammates had reviewed more than 4,000 cases and made hundreds of calls to survivors. Now, even as the team drove home after their jobs were cut, their government phones kept ringing. “Survivors just kept calling us … And we weren’t able to help,” McGinley said.“I think of one survivor calling over and over, getting my voicemail, and thinking that Fema has abandoned them,” she added.View image in fullscreenMore than 400 AmeriCorps staff and volunteers were deployed in the aftermath of the January megafires that destroyed thousands of homes and businesses and killed 30 people. They helped 26,000 households affected by the fires and packed 21,000 food boxes. But in April, the agency placed about 90% of its staff on immediate leave.The cuts were among the harshest doled out by Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge). But AmeriCorps is just one of several agencies involved in the response to emergencies like the LA fires that has seen drastic reductions as Trump has sought to slash costs across the federal government and shift disaster preparedness on to state and local governments. Fema, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the army corps of engineers and the Small Business Administration (SBA) have all been affected as well.A flurry of lawsuits are challenging the Trump administration’s cuts to various federal departments, including two lawsuits led by the state of California and Democracy Forward over the gutting of AmeriCorps.But the cuts are already being acutely felt in LA’s burn zones. Disaster relief is composed of many different agencies at the local, state and federal levels, and the federal support is now being pulled out. “Jenga is one of the best ways to describe it,” said Kelly Daly, AmeriCorps employees union AFSCME Local 2027 president. “It’s going to come tumbling down.”The impact of AmeriCorps volunteersAnthony Garcia-Perez, 25, spent more than three months helping wildfire survivors, working six days a week and 10 hours a day. AmeriCorps made it possible for him to volunteer by covering his hotel and meals. He worked at a YMCA in Pasadena, handing out food and clothing donations to survivors, and at a disaster recovery center, assisting Fema workers and translating for wildfire survivors who only spoke Spanish.He recalls meeting a family of five who lost their home in the Eaton fire and became regulars at the YMCA. The mother, father and three young children were living in their car. The children had no toys. Garcia-Perez found dolls for the two girls, and a rattle toy for the family’s newborn son. “Seeing the smiles on the kids’ faces, getting something as simple as a doll, definitely made my day,” Garcia-Perez said. “The mom was overwhelmed. She started crying and thanking us for everything. We said we were more than happy to help. We’re here for them.”View image in fullscreenGarcia-Perez heard on 28 April that the funding supporting him was cut. “We were told to go back to our hotels, pack and then be ready to go home the next day,” he said.Nearly a month after leaving Los Angeles, his mind still turns to the families he helped. “I wonder if they’re OK, I wonder if they’re getting the help they need.”Crucial Small Business Administration loansAfter the fires, the Small Business Administration contributed $2bn in disaster loans – the largest source of federal disaster recovery for homeowners, renters, businesses and non-profits. In March, the Trump administration announced cuts to 43% of the agency’s workforce.Judy Chu, the US congresswoman who represents wildfire survivors in Altadena, said she feared the federal cuts would make it harder for survivors to navigate recovery. “So many of them need help, especially the elderly and disabled,” she said. “I worry about them being able to make their way through the morass of bureaucracy.”Chu said she had already heard from Altadena residents who felt frustrated by the federal cuts.View image in fullscreenA woman who lost her home in the Eaton fire had told Chu she had secured a loan from the SBA, support she said was crucial because she was underinsured and couldn’t afford to rebuild without a loan. Since the Doge cuts, she said her caseworker was not responsive and she experienced long wait times to get questions answered.“Our community was devastated,” the woman wrote to Chu. “We want to rebuild and move forward, but how can we when the very support we rely on is being stripped away?”Canceling Fema’s disaster aidTo help the city recover, Fema approved more than $200m in relief funds for eligible wildfire survivors, and helped fund transitional hotels and shelters. The agency also deployed 70 staff to help survivors apply for aid. The White House said in a statement that Fema deployed hundreds of staff to Los Angeles and provided shelter for more than 2,800 households.The agency delivered crucial aid in LA, but now it is facing possible extinction. Trump has threatened to get rid of Fema, and on 9 May, he fired its leader, Cameron Hamilton, one day after Hamilton publicly disagreed with dismantling the agency. The administration has fired hundreds of Fema employees and offered deferred resignations. Fema is ending door-to-door canvassing in disaster areas, and cancelling the $750m set to be allocated this year through the building resilient infrastructure and communities grant program, which funds local projects to protect against disasters including wildfires.Brad Sherman, the US congressman who represents the fire-stricken neighborhood of the Palisades, said Trump had demoralized federal workers when the president suggested getting rid of Fema while visiting Los Angeles in January. “I talked to Fema people, and they were, of course, upset. They’re professionals. They did their job. But it’s hard under those circumstances,” Sherman said.Sherman called it “absurd” that Trump wants to abolish Fema by pushing its responsibilities on to states. “The idea of shifting it to the states is absolutely crazy,” he said.Slashing army corps and EPA cleanup staffTwo federal agencies, the EPA and the army corps, are responsible for the majority of wildfire debris cleanup in Los Angeles. But both agencies are bleeding staff.“We’re relying on the army corps to do the debris removal, which is the single thing that has to happen before rebuilding can start,” Sherman said.As the climate crisis fuels more destructive wildfires, army corps workers are deploying to more burn zones. They had barely finished cleaning up after the fires in Lahaina, Hawaii, when they were deployed to Los Angeles, said Colin Smalley, president of IFPTE Local 777 representing army corps workers.The Doge deferred resignation program pushed a large number of army corps employees out the door, meaning there are fewer workers available to respond to wildfires, Smalley said. Supervisors can only approve staff to deploy to disaster missions to the extent that it doesn’t compromise the agency’s core functions, he explained. “It creates a concern about our ability to absorb these kinds of disasters. [Our disaster response] is jeopardized by these personnel actions that Elon Musk and Doge have forced upon us,” Smalley said.View image in fullscreenThe EPA, the agency responsible for the hazardous materials cleanup in Altadena and the Palisades, has faced brutal cuts, with Trump moving to reduce staff to 1980s levels.When Doge began slashing EPA staff in early March, it prompted an urgent letter from members of Congress, including Chu and Sherman, asking the agency to reconsider. “In the wake of the recent California wildfires, it is more critical than ever that EPA is fully staffed and supported to ensure EPA’s efforts to identify hazardous materials on properties impacted by the Eaton and Palisades fires is completed promptly,” they wrote.EPA staff completed the hazardous debris removal in Los Angeles in record time, but the cuts will harm future wildfire recovery, said Mark Sims, who recently retired from his role representing EPA workers at Engineers and Scientists of California Local 20, IFPTE. He explained that the EPA was suffering brain drain as both senior and new staff leave in droves. “Their responses will be a lot less robust, and take a lot longer to do,” he said.White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an email that “President Trump led a historic, record-breaking effort to clean up the damage from the LA wildfires, including turning on the water to prevent further tragedy,” referring to a widely debunked claim that Trump’s order for the Army Corps to release billions of gallons of irrigation water could have helped Los Angeles fight the fires. Fire hydrants ran dry in the Palisades due to an infrastructure issue, not a water supply problem.She argued LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, slowed down recovery efforts “by dragging their feet and bogging down the process with unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape” and the president had pushed them to speed up. “The Trump administration remains committed to empowering and working with state and local governments to invest in their own resilience before disaster strikes,” she wrote.A White House official said AmeriCorps had failed eight consecutive audits and, in the fiscal year 2024, the agency had found and publicly reported $45m in improper payments, which are outside the control of the agency and were made by grantee partners.Trump has argued his federal cuts are necessary to root out fraud and waste. But McGinley, the AmeriCorps team leader, said part of her team’s job was to review cases and ensure people were not receiving double benefits. “It made a difference that it helped people receive housing assistance, and it helped identify that waste in the government system, too,” she said.“My team worked really hard,” McGinley said. She recalled a woman who lost her home in the Eaton fire. She was blind, making it harder for her to upload the necessary documents to receive assistance. But McGinley’s team sent people to the woman’s hotel to help her upload the files to prove she was eligible. “She was able to stay in housing, which is huge after you’ve lost everything in your life,” McGinley said. More

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    Whatever happened to Elon Musk? Tech boss drifts to margins of Trump world

    The Oval Office was crowded, with reporters cautioned not to collide with the Resolute Desk. Standing beside them, dressed in black, was Elon Musk, billionaire ally of Donald Trump and head of his government efficiency drive.“Elon is from South Africa – I don’t want to get Elon involved,” the US president told his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, during a discussion about crime against white farmers. “He actually came here on a different subject: sending rockets to Mars. He likes that better.”Musk’s silence during the fraught hour-long meeting was a small but telling reminder of his shift in Trump’s orbit. He remains close to the president and welcome in the West Wing. He also paid a second visit to the Pentagon this week. But a relationship that many forecast would end in an explosive collision of egos seems instead to be undergoing an inexorable tapering off.On Monday, the Politico website published an analysis under the headline “Why has Elon Musk disappeared from the spotlight?” It found a sharp drop in the number of times that Trump posted about Musk on his Truth Social platform, from an average of four times a week in February and March to zero since the start of April.In February, Politico said, Trump’s fundraising operation invoked Musk in fundraising emails almost every day, with one message reading: “I love Elon Musk! The media wants to drive us apart, and it’s not working. He’s great.” But such mentions abruptly halted in early March, with the exception of one email in May advertising a “Gulf of America” hat that Musk had worn.In addition, White House officials no longer fill their social media feeds with Musk-related content. Reporters seldom ask about him at the White House press briefing. Members of Congress are giving his name a wide berth.Musk seems to be taking the hint. This week, the Tesla chief executive confirmed that he had reduced his role as the unofficial head of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to just two days a week, and will also cut his political spending substantially – the latest public signal that he is shifting his attention back to his business empire amid growing investor concerns.It is a dramatic shift from the first weeks of Trump’s second term, when Musk attended the inauguration, was a constant presence at Mar-a-Lago, appeared alongside Trump in the Oval Office and gave a joint interview on Fox News full of mutual admiration. Doge dominated media headlines as it took a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy.It seemed that Trump was dazzled by the world’s richest person, who sends rockets into space and spent at least $250m to support his election campaign last year. In March, the president even turned the White House south lawn into a temporary Tesla showroom, displaying five of the electric vehicles and promising to buy one himself.View image in fullscreenBut the polls told their own story. Last month, a national survey by Marquette University Law School found approval of how Musk is handling his work at Doge at 41% with disapproval at 58%. About 60% of those polled had an unfavourable view of Musk himself, compared with 38% who were favourably disposed to him.Ro Khanna, a Democratic member of Congress who has known Musk for more than a decade, commented: “As his numbers declined, so did Trump’s interest. Trump discards people when their ratings fall and it’s very transactional. It’s nothing more than an initial fascination and a sense of being discarded.”Khanna, whose congressional district sits in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, had predicted from the outset that Musk was not going to last more than four or five months: “I said he’s going to get frustrated, exhausted and Washington will win – not him – in terms of how the town works.”At that time, Khanna was hoping that Doge would make cuts at the Pentagon. Instead, it flouted the constitution to slash the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service and other targets.“I said there’s no way he’s going to get anywhere close to $2tn of cuts; he didn’t even get close to a trillion; it’s about $81bn. He learned the lesson that a lot of very successful business leaders learn, that democracy is much tougher than they imagine and doesn’t bend to their will,” Khanna said.Indeed, Musk continues to hit roadblocks. On Wednesday, the US Institute of Peace retook control of its headquarters after a federal judge said the firing of its board and employees by Doge was illegal. On Thursday, a federal judge in San Francisco said Trump cannot restructure and downsize the US government without the consent of Congress and that she would probably extend her ruling blocking federal agencies from implementing mass layoffs.Even so, Doge has already enacted deep cuts to the workforce and spending and, in some cases, sought to shutter entire agencies, causing untold damage to the fabric of government.For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) “is not ready” for next month’s start of the hurricane season, according to an internal agency review reported by CNN. The disaster relief agency, which employs more than 20,000 workers, has lost roughly 30% of its full-time staff to layoffs and Doge buyouts.Khanna warned: “We’re going to be living with the consequences for years to come because unfortunately they’ve managed to totally destroy USAID, they’ve destroyed NIH [the National Institutes of Health], they’ve destroyed FDA [the Food and Drug Administration], they’ve destroyed EPA [the Environmental Protection Agency], they’ve hollowed out so much of the state department and it’s going to take a generation to rebuild.“I’m hoping that the damage will stop. We have to see what will continue but hopefully there’ll be no more sledgehammer to these institutions.”Even conservatives who believe in downsizing government share the concerns. Rick Tyler, a political strategist who has worked on Republican campaigns, said: “What they’re trying to do is make the government smaller, which I applaud, but they are not making it more efficient because there has been no vision, no plan to actually make the government operate with fewer people and less money. There is no redesign. This is just slash and burn.”Tesla, which is the major source of Musk’s wealth, has suffered significant brand damage and lost sales due to his political work, particularly with Trump. He has also expressed support for the far-right, anti-immigration AfD party in Germany. Tesla dealerships have become scenes of protest and vandalism in the US and beyond.It may be that Musk met his political Waterloo in Wisconsin. His spending of at least $3m helped make Wisconsin’s supreme court race the most expensive of its kind in US history. He even made a personal appearance in Green Bay the weekend before the election wearing a cheesehead hat – popular with fans of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers – and personally handed out cheques for $1m to supporters.View image in fullscreenBut the candidate he backed lost by 10 percentage points. Democrats had used his intervention to successfully mobilise voters in an election dubbed “People vs Musk”.This week, Musk told Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum in Doha: “In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future.” The Wisconsin Democratic party chair, Ben Wikler, told the Associated Press: “The people have won. The biggest funder in Republican politics is taking his toys and going home.”Evidently, Musk and his chainsaw have become a political liability for Republicans seeking re-election in next year’s midterms. Democrats in races across the country are expected to use Musk as a political boogeyman in attack ads on their opponents.Tyler observed: “The polling numbers, Trump suffering politically, which would hurt his party, which is going to hurt his agenda, caused enough strife that I’m sure he heard from enough members to say, could we just not talk about Elon Musk any more?”Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, added: “It was a trial balloon on how they would reduce federal employees. If it worked and people thought it was great, maybe they would keep going with or without Musk, but they used him as the front person for it and the punching bag. When it backfired, they cut him loose. Not surprising at all.“There is nobody that you can sincerely believe Donald Trump thinks is important to his popularity or his standing in a positive way because he believes he generates all that himself. And I don’t think he’s wrong about that. But if you become a liability, you’re gone pretty quickly.” More

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    The Guardian view on the US and South Africa: Trump looks to his base and partners look elsewhere | Editorial

    The most telling moment of Donald Trump’s meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa was not the cynical screening of footage promoting false claims of “white genocide” in South Africa. It was when a reporter asked the US president what he wanted his counterpart to do about it. Mr Trump replied: “I don’t know.”Leaders enter the Oval Office uneasily, especially since the kicking administered to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The South African president came armed with gratitude, two golf stars, a billionaire and compliments on the decor – and kept a cool head and a straight face as he was ambushed. Mr Ramaphosa later described it as “robust engagement”. But, in truth, it was a clash of two worlds rather than an interaction.On one side sat a political heavyweight who calmly asserted the facts; on the other, Mr Trump, espousing wild and inflammatory myths. One side wanted to do bilateral business; the other to pander to the grievances of his domestic base, many of whom doubtless relished the public scolding of an anti-apartheid veteran. No solution was proffered to the imaginary problem.The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has fallen far short in too many regards. Violent crime is rife. But the administration’s accusations invert reality. White South Africans are 7% of the population but still own 72% of the land. Experts say that it is poor black people, not wealthier whites, who are disproportionately likely to be victims of violence. Yet as the scholar Nicky Falkof has written, white South Africans have become a “cautionary tale for the White far right [internationally] … central to the landscape and language of White supremacy”. Look where DEI gets you.Mr Trump aired complaints about the “large-scale killing” of white farmers in his first term, amplifying conspiracy theories that originated in far-right forums. Since then, he has grown closer to the South African-born Elon Musk, who has accused politicians there of “promoting white genocide”. The US has now cut aid to South Africa, accusing the government of “unjust racial discrimination” and attacking its genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice. Washington has expelled the South African ambassador and given white Afrikaners asylum even as it turns away those fleeing wars.Mr Trump’s divisive conspiracy theories and failed attempt to humiliate Mr Ramaphosa appear, ironically, to be fostering unity on foreign affairs within South African politics, where the ANC and its (white-led) coalition partner, the Democratic Alliance, have had very different histories and priorities. The US still accounts for a tenth of the country’s trade. South Africa must shore up its auto sector and agriculture, given its sky-high unemployment rate. But like other governments, Pretoria is salvaging what it can in US relations now, while looking ahead to diversifying its ties. Few expect Washington to renew duty-free trade arrangements for African states this autumn.Warming relations with other western countries is one option. But increasing closeness to China, already South Africa’s top trading partner, looks like an inevitability. Members of the Brics grouping see an opportunity to strengthen ties, though South Africa is discovering that expansion does not always mean greater influence for its dominant players. Mr Trump is looking for kudos, free planes and red meat to throw to his base. Washington’s partners are increasingly looking elsewhere. It’s in US interests to show them respect and nurture longstanding relationships.

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    The Guardian view on Britain’s new aid vision: less cash, more spin. The cost will be counted in lives | Editorial

    Last week, the government justified cutting the UK’s development budget from 0.5% to 0.3% of gross national income – the lowest level in more than 25 years – by claiming Britain’s role is now to “share expertise”, not hand out cash. With a straight face, the minister responsible, Jenny Chapman, told MPs on the international development committee that the age of the UK as “a global charity” was over. But this isn’t reinvention – it’s abdication, wrapped in spin. No wonder Sarah Champion, the Labour MP who is chair of the committee, called Lady Chapman’s remarks “naive” and “disrespectful”. Behind the slogans lies a brutal truth: lives will be lost, and Britain no longer cares. Dressing that up as the “new normal” doesn’t make it less callous.Kevin Watkins of the London School of Economics analysed the cuts and found no soft-landing options. He suggests charting a sensible course through this wreckage, noting that harm from the cuts is inevitable but not beyond mitigation. Dr Watkins’ proposals – prioritising multilateralism, funding the global vaccine alliance (Gavi) and replenishing international lending facilities – would prevent some needless deaths. Ministers should adopt such an approach. The decision to raid the aid budget to fund increased defence spending was a shameful attempt to cosy up to Washington. The cuts were announced just before Sir Keir Starmer’s White House meeting with Donald Trump, with no long-term strategy behind them. It’s a deplorable trend: globally, aid levels could fall by $40bn this year.The gutting of USAID, the world’s biggest spender on international development, by Elon Musk, was less fiscal policy than culture-war theatre. Foreign beneficiaries don’t vote, and liberal-leaning aid contractors lack clout, so dismantling USAID shrinks “globalism” while “owning the establishment”. But the real casualties lie elsewhere. Memorably, Bill Gates said the idea of Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, “killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one”. Countries that built health systems around USAID now face a reckoning. It wasn’t just cash – it sustained disease surveillance, logistics and delivery. Ironically, much of it never left American hands, absorbed by US private interests.In the UK, University of Portsmouth researchers say aid increasingly serves foreign policy, not development. It’s not just ineffective – it’s cynical. Aid should change lives, not wave flags. All this as poor nations’ debt crisis deepens. Without global reform, the Institute for Economic Justice warns, African nations face a cycle of distress blocking investment in basic needs. The UK recasts withdrawal as progress – holding up Ethiopia and Zimbabwe as model partners. But Georgetown University’s Ken Opalo makes a cutting point: in diplomacy, when the music stops, those who outsourced ambition get exposed. Aid dependency, he argues, has hollowed out local ownership. With little planning, many governments now face a choice: take over essential services or cling to a vanishing donor model.Politicians should choose their words carefully. The former Tory development secretary Andrew Mitchell rightly criticised Boris Johnson’s “giant cashpoint in the sky” remark for damaging public support for aid. Labour ministers are guilty, too. Britain has replaced moral leadership with metrics, and compassion with calculation. The policy’s defenders call it realism. But without vision, it’s just surrender – leaving the world’s poor to fend for themselves, forced to try to survive without the means to do so. More