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      Elon Musk’s Starlink Expands Across White House Complex

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      Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is now accessible across the White House campus. It is the latest installation of the Wi-Fi network across the government since Mr. Musk joined the Trump administration as an unpaid adviser.It was not immediately clear when the White House complex was fitted with Starlink after President Trump took office for a second term.Starlink terminals, rectangular panels that receive internet signals beamed from SpaceX satellites in low-Earth orbit, can be placed on physical structures. But instead of being physically placed at the White House, the Starlink system is now said to be routed through a White House data center, with existing fiber cables, miles from the complex.White House officials said the installation was an effort to increase internet availability at the complex. They said that some areas of the property could not get cell service and that the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure was overtaxed.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the effort was “to improve Wi-Fi connectivity on the complex.”But the circumstances are different from any previous situation to resolve internet services. Mr. Musk, who is now an unpaid adviser working as a “special government employee” at the White House, controls Starlink and other companies that have regulatory matters before or contracts with the federal government. Questions about his business interests conflicting with his status as a presidential adviser and major Trump donor have persisted for weeks.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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      Trump Administration’s Cuts to Housing Nonprofits Fuel Concerns Over Discrimination

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      “Soon there’ll be no enforcement,” said Representative Maxine Waters of California. “We really are going to go backward.”Representative Maxine Waters of California and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts say they are banding together to fight the Trump administration’s recent cuts that they say will leave Americans unprotected from housing discrimination.On Monday, the two Democrats delivered a letter to Housing and Urban Development secretary Scott Turner that said cutbacks to fair housing initiatives will “embolden housing discrimination” and put “people’s lives at risk.” The letter has 108 signatures, all from Democrats in Congress.The action comes on the heels of lawsuits filed last week against HUD and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency by four local fair housing organizations that are hoping to make their case class action. Under the DOGE cost-cutting plan, at least 66 local fair housing groups — whose purpose is to enforce the landmark Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in real estate — face the sudden rescission of $30 million in grants.Mr. Turner has also forecast that he will slash staff by 50 percent at the agency and by 77 percent at its Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, which enforces the Fair Housing Act at the federal level.“Soon there’ll be no enforcement,” Ms. Waters said in an interview. “We really are going to go backward.”Ms. Warren said that if housing discrimination is left unchecked, it will freeze more Americans out of a volatile housing market, adding that seniors, people with disabilities, Blacks and Latinos are most at risk of losing their homes in the volatile market.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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      At Gridiron Dinner, Jokes About Trump, Musk and Russia Abound

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      But President Trump wasn’t around to hear any of the barbs thrown at the annual D.C. event.The annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington on Saturday featured jokes about President Trump, the breakdown of the global order, Russia, Democrats’ uncertain future and, of course, Elon Musk.One of the headliners was Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, a rising star in the Democratic Party. He acknowledged that his speaking slot was a sign of his own political ambitions, while making a jab at the White House’s current occupant.“If I actually wanted to be president, I wouldn’t do any of this,” he said. “Instead, I would take my case directly to the people who are in charge of our democracy. The Kremlin.”Even after all these years, jokes about Mr. Trump and Russia still play with the official Washington crowd. Those in the Hyatt basement, which was packed with reporters, editors, television anchors and ambassadors, laughed along.But Mr. Trump wasn’t there to hear any of it.He and top members of his administration skipped the dinner, which is one of those old-fashioned Washington rituals. Presidents dating back to William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt have attended the event hosted by the Gridiron Club, an association of top journalists that was formed in 1885. It has historically been a chance for a president to schmooze with the people who cover him, as well as to crack jokes about the political fight of the day.Mr. Trump skipped the dinner in 2017, the first year he was president, but he did attend in 2018. That year, he made some self-deprecating jokes about the turmoil of his administration. (“I like chaos. It really is good. Who’s going to be the next to leave? Steve Miller, or Melania?”) That was the first and last time he attended.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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      Rejected by Washington, Federal Workers Find Open Arms in State Governments

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      Where the federal government sees waste, states see opportunity — both to serve as a counterweight to the Trump administration and to recruit some much-needed talent.In the weeks since the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, began eliminating jobs, state and local governments have been actively recruiting federal workers impacted by the Trump administration’s effort to dramatically reduce the federal work force.Hawaii is fast-tracking job applications. Virginia started a website advertising its job market. Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania signed an executive order aimed at attracting federal employees to the state’s 5,600 “critical vacancies” in the state government. Both New Mexico and Maryland announced expanded resources and agencies to help federal workers shift into new careers in the state, and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York is encouraging people to “come work in the greatest state in the nation.”There has been interest. The New York governor’s office said roughly 150 people have signed up to attend information sessions hosted by the state’s Department of Labor.But it’s too soon to say how many federal employees are applying for state-level roles and how exactly demographics could shift as a result, according to William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.There were about 2.3 million civilians employed by the federal government’s executive branch when President Trump was sworn into office on Jan. 20. Thousands of government jobs have been cut as part of DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts across a range of agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.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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      Postal Service Reaches Deal With Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency

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      The leader of the U.S. Postal Service said in a letter to lawmakers on Thursday that he had reached an agreement with Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team allowing it to help in “identifying and achieving further efficiencies.”The Postal Service has long struggled with its finances, and Mr. Musk and President Trump have both suggested it should be privatized. But Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting group, the Department of Government Efficiency, has not targeted the Postal Service’s roughly 635,000 workers.Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who took his position during the first Trump presidency and moved to shrink the agency’s ranks during the Biden administration, said he had signed an agreement with Mr. Musk’s group on Wednesday.Mr. DeJoy, a Republican megadonor, wrote in the letter that Mr. Musk’s initiative was “an effort aligned” with his efforts.He said that the Postal Service’s work force had shrunk by 30,000 since the 2021 fiscal year, and that the agency planned to complete a “further reduction of another 10,000 people in the next 30 days” through a previously established voluntary-retirement program.Last week, Mr. Musk said at a tech conference organized by the bank Morgan Stanley that the Postal Service should be privatized, declaring, “We should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized.”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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      Why Trump’s Tesla Showcase Mattered to Elon Musk

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      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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      Elon Musk Seeks to Put $100 Million Into Trump Political Operation

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      Elon Musk has signaled to President Trump’s advisers in recent days that he wants to put $100 million into groups controlled by the Trump political operation, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.It is unheard-of for a White House staffer, even one with part-time status, to make such large political contributions to support the agenda of the boss. But there has never been someone in the direct employ of an administration like Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, who is leading Mr. Trump’s aggressive effort to shrink the federal government, the Department of Government Efficiency.Over the weekend, Mr. Musk traveled to and from Florida aboard Air Force One with Mr. Trump, and posted on his social media website, X, that he had dinner with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday night after some tense interactions earlier in the week.And on Tuesday, as Mr. Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, faced some violent protests around the globe, Mr. Trump made a display of having five Teslas brought to the White House grounds in a demonstration for the news media, and checked out the cars with Mr. Musk by his side. It was an extraordinary promotion of a company by the most powerful person in the federal government.“I think he’s been treated very unfairly by a very small group of people,” Mr. Trump told reporters, referring to Mr. Musk. “And I just want people to know that he can’t be penalized for being a patriot.”Mr. Musk and White House officials didn’t return a request for comment.Associates of both Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have talked in recent days about Mr. Musk’s planned donation to a Trump-controlled entity. Mr. Musk has signaled he wants to make the donations not to his own super PAC, which is called America PAC and has spent heavily on Mr. Trump in the past, but to an outside entity affiliated with the president.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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      Trump’s Attacks Give Zelensky a Popularity Boost in Ukraine

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      The Ukrainian leader’s approval rating is rising, and critics have backed off after he was humiliated and criticized by President Trump, who has also demanded new elections in Ukraine.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was losing popularity at home for months, seen by many as a thin-skinned leader who had concentrated power around him. Political opponents saw an opening to win a future election against him. His former top general in the war against Russia had a higher approval rating.Enter President Trump. In recent weeks, he has echoed Moscow’s talking points on the war and called Mr. Zelensky a “dictator without elections” who “has done a terrible job.” Mr. Trump and his allies have demanded new presidential elections in Ukraine, despite the war, and humiliated Mr. Zelensky at a disastrous meeting in the White House.But Mr. Trump’s actions appear to have helped the Ukrainian leader at home.Mr. Zelensky’s approval ratings have risen, according to two recent polls, and his political opponents have said publicly that now is not the time for elections. Suggestions by political opponents and some analysts that Mr. Zelensky should share power and form a coalition government — a Ukrainian team of rivals — have not gained traction. And even if critics haven’t exactly rallied around the president, they haven’t outright attacked him.“Some people expected me to criticize Zelensky,” Petro Poroshenko, Mr. Zelensky’s predecessor as Ukraine’s president and a frequent needler-in-chief, said after the explosive meeting between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump. “But no, there will be no criticism, because that’s not what the country needs right now.”Mr. Zelensky is still in a precarious position. He needs to somehow chart a path forward with a U.S. president who clearly wants to deal with a different Ukrainian leader.Mr. Zelensky has offered to step down in exchange for peace or Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Political opponents have agreed that elections cannot be held while the country is at war, because frontline troops and Ukrainians outside the country cannot vote. But given that Ukraine was to hold an election in spring 2024, they will probably push for one if a cease-fire is reached — likely long before a final peace deal is inked. And opposition politicians seem to be biding their time, despite public calls for unity.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