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    Why Trump’s Tesla Showcase Mattered to Elon Musk

    A lot has changed since former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. snubbed Elon Musk at an event in 2021.It wasn’t so long ago that Elon Musk couldn’t even get an invitation to the White House.The year was 2021, and President Joe Biden was announcing tighter pollution rules and promoting his electric vehicle policies.Behind him on the lawn were gleaming examples — a Ford F-150 Lightning, a Chevrolet Bolt EV, a Jeep Wrangler — as well as the chief executives of the companies that made them. But the nation’s biggest electric vehicle producer was nowhere to be seen.“Seems odd that Tesla wasn’t invited,” Musk tweeted before the event.The Biden White House explained the snub by noting that the automakers that had been invited were the nation’s three largest employers of the United Automobile Workers, a powerful union, and it suggested that the administration would find other ways to partner with Tesla. (Union animus toward electric vehicles later became a problem for Biden.) But today, the moment is seen as a turning point in a feud between Musk and Biden that some Democrats say they have come to regret deeply.“They left Elon out,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who is working to get his party to embrace electric vehicles, “and now he hates ’em.”It was hard not to think about that episode yesterday when Musk and Trump lined up Teslas, including Cybertrucks, on the White House driveway and proceeded to rattle off their benefits like denizens of a suburban showroom.“I love the product,” Trump said.“Try it,” Musk said. “You’ll like it!”Musk now has the White House attention and promotion that he wanted several years ago — and with it, a pile of potential benefits for some of his companies — but it’s come at a price. He donated some $300 million largely through his own super PAC to help Trump get elected. My colleagues Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman reported yesterday that he’s signaled a willingness to put another $100 million into groups controlled by Trump’s political operation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Marjorie Taylor Greene to Lead ‘DOGE’ Panel and Work With Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

    When she arrived in Congress in 2021, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, was quickly stripped of her two committee assignments by Democrats and shunned by her colleagues on Capitol Hill.Almost three years later, Ms. Greene is poised to hold a gavel for the first time, a sign of the ascendancy of the MAGA wing of the G.O.P. in Congress, where President-elect Donald J. Trump’s most loyal allies will occupy prominent posts next year.Representative James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is planning to create a new subcommittee to partner with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to “eliminate government waste.” The committee, which has yet to be created, will work with the new Department of Government Efficiency, known as “DOGE,” and leading Republicans have agreed to allow Ms. Greene to serve as its chairwoman.Republicans said the committee would be charged with investigating waste and corruption within the federal government.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene during a House Homeland Security Committee meeting on Capitol Hill, in Washington, in January.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesEven though she is not yet the chairwoman of a committee that does not yet exist, Ms. Greene’s new position appeared to be a done deal, with top Republicans confirming it would be hers to lead when the new Congress convenes in January.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    JD Vance to Appear With Tucker Carlson, Who Amplified False Holocaust Claims

    Not long ago, candidates running for national office spent much of the general election distancing themselves from the fringes of their parties.But on Saturday, Senator JD Vance of Ohio will share a stage with someone on the fringes of his.Mr. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, is scheduled to appear in Hershey, Pa., as the special guest of the “Tucker Carlson Live” show, just weeks after Mr. Carlson, the former Fox News anchor, praised and aired the views of Darryl Cooper, who falsely claimed that the Holocaust was not an intentional act of genocide.Mr. Carlson described Mr. Cooper as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” In Mr. Carlson’s interview with him, which was posted on social media this month, Mr. Cooper falsely claimed that the Nazis’ systematic killing of European Jews was an accident of history carried out by a German military overwhelmed with prisoners of war — not an act of premeditated genocide. In fact, the Nazis’ killing of almost six million Jews was meticulously planned and documented.Mr. Cooper also called Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, “the chief villain of the Second World War” for declaring war on Germany after the Nazis invaded Poland.Mr. Carlson’s promotion of Mr. Cooper drew criticism from the Biden White House and from some conservatives.A Vance campaign spokesman said this month that Mr. Vance did not share the views of Mr. Cooper but “doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture.”Mr. Vance has defended his decision to keep his interview with Mr. Carlson, saying that Republicans believe in free speech and debate. “Tucker Carlson is not affiliated with the campaign, so I don’t think what Tucker Carlson does is a distraction or is not,” Mr. Vance said this month. “He’s going to do what he wants to do, and we can disagree or agree with the viewpoints.”Tickets for the events ranged from $35 for upper-level seats to $1,600 for a “V.I.P. Meet and Greet Experience” that included access to a reception with Mr. Vance, a photo with Mr. Carlson and a seat in the first five rows.Mr. Carlson is in the midst of his first live tour, a national, monthlong run of shows with some of the most well-known and controversial figures in conservative politics. His guests have included Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point Action, and media personalities such as Glenn Beck and Dan Bongino.Later this month, Mr. Carlson will be joined by Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist who has been ordered to pay over $1.4 billion in defamation damages to the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012; Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; and Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest child and the host of the podcast “Triggered.” More

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    Man Pleads Guilty to Threatening to Kill Marjorie Taylor Greene

    Sean Patrick Cirillo called Ms. Greene’s office and told staff members about his plans to kill the politician, the F.B.I. said. He faces a maximum of five years in prison.An Atlanta man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to making death threats against Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.The man, Sean Patrick Cirillo, 34, made two threatening phone calls on Nov. 8, 2023, to Ms. Greene’s Washington, D.C., office, spoke to staff members and said that he planned to shoot the politician in the head, an F.B.I. agent said in court documents.“I’m gonna kill her next week,” Mr. Cirillo said, according to recordings of the phone call that were reviewed by the F.B.I. “I’m gonna murder her.”Mr. Cirillo pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Atlanta to one count of transmitting interstate threats. He will face a maximum possible penalty of five years in prison when he is sentenced on Nov. 7.“Threatening to kill a public official is reprehensible,” Ryan K. Buchanan, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said in a statement. “Our office will not tolerate any form of violence, threats or intimidation against public officials.”In a statement, Mr. Cirillo’s lawyer, Allison Dawson, said that Mr. Cirillo had struggled with mental health issues and was not on his prescribed medication at the time of the incident.Ms. Greene’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.After Mr. Cirillo was arrested, Ms. Greene said in a statement to Atlanta News First: “Threats to murder elected officials should never be tolerated.”During his phone calls to Ms. Greene’s office, the F.B.I. said, Mr. Cirillo said that he was focusing on Ms. Greene through the sight of a sniper rifle. He also threatened to kill her staff members who picked up the two calls, which he made on Nov. 8 at 1:33 p.m. and 5:36 p.m., the F.B.I. said.The next day, when the F.B.I. showed up at Mr. Cirillo’s home by tracking his phone number, Mr. Cirillo admitted to making the calls, said he had made them to “get attention” and added that he had called “multiple other people as well including other members of Congress,” court records state. It is not clear who else received Mr. Cirillo’s calls.Mr. Cirillo’s guilty plea is the latest event in a recent pattern of threats toward political figures. Last week, a man was charged with threatening to assault and kill federal officials, judges and state employees across several states, including people involved in the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump.In California, some elected officials said they were rethinking public office in light of increasing harassment.Kirsten Noyes More

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    In Las Vegas, Trump Appeals to Local Workers and Avoids Talk of Conviction

    Former President Donald J. Trump stood in blazing heat in a Las Vegas park on Sunday and directly appealed to working-class voters by promising to eliminate taxes on tips for hospitality workers.But beyond that proposal, little at Mr. Trump’s campaign rally suggested that his new status as a felon had changed his message. And when Mr. Trump’s teleprompter apparently stopped working, his speech — which his campaign advisers had billed as focused on issues of local concern to Nevada voters — devolved into familiar stories and riffs.“I got no teleprompters, and I haven’t from the beginning,” Mr. Trump said after speaking for roughly 15 minutes, though his speech included excerpts from prepared remarks that his campaign had provided to reporters. “That probably means we’ll make a better speech now.”Mr. Trump repeatedly voiced his frustration with the lack of a teleprompter, even though he has often boasted of his ability to give long speeches without one.His remarks, which lasted roughly an hour, felt unfocused as he cycled through well-worn territory, railing against electric vehicles, immigration, the four criminal cases brought against him and President Biden’s physical and mental condition.Once again, Mr. Trump broadly depicted migrants crossing the border illegally as violent criminals or mentally ill people, and then recited “The Snake,” a standby poem he has used since 2016 to expound on the threat that he believes undocumented immigrants pose to the country.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How Trump’s Most Loyal Supporters Are Responding to the Verdict

    Many saw in the jury’s finding a rejection of themselves, of their values and even of democracy itself. The sense of grievance erupted as powerfully as the verdict itself.From the low hills of northwest Georgia to a veterans’ retreat in Alaska to suburban New Hampshire, the corners of conservative America resounded with anger over the New York jury’s declaration that former President Donald J. Trump was guilty.But their discontent was about more than the 34 felony counts that Mr. Trump was convicted on, which his supporters quickly dismissed as politically motivated.They saw in the jury’s finding a rejection of themselves, and the values they believed their nation should uphold. Broad swaths of liberal America may have found long-awaited justice in the trial’s outcome. But for many staunch Trump loyalists — people who for years have listened to and believed Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that the system is rigged against him, and them — the verdict on Thursday threatened to shatter their faith in democracy itself.“We are at that crossroads. The democracy that we have known and cherished in this nation is now threatened,” Franklin Graham, the evangelist, said in an interview from Alaska. “I’ve got 13 grandchildren. What kind of nation are we leaving them?”Echoing him was Marie Vast, 72, of West Palm Beach, Fla., near Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. “I know a lot of people who say they still believe in our government,” she said, “but when the Democrats can manipulate things this grossly, and use the legal system as a tool to get the outcome they want, the system isn’t working.”Among more than two dozen people interviewed across 10 states on Friday, the sentiments among conservatives were so strong that they echoed the worry and fear that many progressives described feeling after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade almost two years ago.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Mike Johnson Becomes the Speaker of the Whole House. For Now.

    Democrats saved the speaker but want to oust him at the ballot box in November, while his standing in his own party remains in serious question.The notion that the speaker serves the whole House is often tossed around, but rarely the case.While the position is established in the Constitution and under longstanding House rules entails presiding over the entire institution, the speaker has historically played a highly political role, installed by the majority party to ruthlessly execute its will and legislative agenda. But circumstances have changed.Representative Mike Johnson can now, for better or worse, truly lay claim to being speaker of the whole House, after Democrats saved him from a Republican-led coup on Wednesday in another remarkable moment in a chaotic Congress filled with them. Had Democrats not come to his rescue, the votes existed in his own party to potentially oust him.It was the logical outcome of a session in which House Democrats, despite being in the minority, have repeatedly supplied the votes and even the procedural backing to do most of the heavy legislative lifting to stave off default, fund the government and aid U.S. allies, forming an uneasy coalition government with more mainstream Republicans.The result left Mr. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican still new to the job, indebted to Democrats even as he immediately sought to distance himself from them by emphasizing his deep conservative credentials. Democrats said their support for him underscored their bona fides as the grown-up party willing to go so far as to back a conservative Republican speaker to prevent the House from again going off the rails.Now the two parties will have to navigate this previously unexplored terrain as they head into an election season that will determine who is speaker next year.The reality is that after passing the foreign aid package including funding for Ukraine that prompted the push by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, to depose Mr. Johnson, little polarizing legislative work remains to be done this Congress while the fight for House control is about to get into full swing. That fact led Mr. Johnson to walk off the House floor to high-fives from his Republican supporters and quickly try to remind his colleagues and America that, despite the decisive Democratic assist, he is still a die-hard right winger.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More