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    Federal prosecutor reportedly quit over concern Ábrego García indictment was politically motivated – as it happened

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    A career federal prosecutor resigned in protest the same day that charges were filed against Kilmar Ábrego García, following an investigation that apparently began after the mistaken deportation of the Maryland resident became a legal and political headache for the Trump administration, ABC News reports.Ben Schrader, announced his resignation as the chief of the criminal division at the US attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee in a LinkedIn post on 21 May, the same day the indictment of Ábrego García was signed by the acting US attorney for that district.Sources told ABC News that Schrader stepped down because of concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons.“Earlier today, after nearly 15 years as an Assistant United States Attorney, I resigned as Chief of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee”, Schrader wrote on LinkedIn that day. “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. I wish all of my colleagues at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville and across the Department the best as they seek to do justice on behalf of the American people.”At a news conference on Friday, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, refused to say exactly when the investigation that led to the charges was opened, but she told reporters that the indictment was based on “recently found facts” about a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, and that “thanks to the bright light that has been shined on Ábrego García, this investigation continued”.The indictment was signed by Robert McGuire, who has been the acting US attorney in Nashville since December, and three senior prosecutors from the justice department’s Joint Task Force Vulcan, which was created during the first Trump administration “to dismantle MS-13”.This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day. Here are some of the latest developments:

    Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order, was returned to the United States and charged with the criminal smuggling of undocumented immigrants inside the United States.

    Ben Schrader, a career federal prosecutor, reportedly resigned in protest the same day that charges were filed against Ábrego García, following an investigation that apparently began after the mistaken deportation became a legal and political headache for the Trump administration.

    Donald Trump suggested that court orders to his administration to return Ábrego García to the US was a sign that “the judges are trying to take the place of a president that won in a landslide”.

    One day after his feud with Elon Musk exploded Trump claimed that he was far too busy to think about the billionaire donor who had accused him of sex crimes and called for his impeachment. That claim was undermined by the fact that Trump spent a chunk of his morning on the phone with at least three television reporters, gossiping about Musk.

    Two federal appeals court judges appointed by Trump overturned a lower court ruling to allow him to resume punishing the Associated Press for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by that name instead of the new one Trump gave it.
    Two judges appointed by Donald Trump to a federal appeals court ruled in his favor on Friday, allowing him to resume blocking the Associated Press from covering him at events in the Oval Office, on Air Force One and in his Mar-A-Lago club.The 2-1 ruling was written by US circuit judge Neomi Rao, who served in Trump’s first administration, and joined by fellow Trump appointee Gregory Katsas.The divided ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit temporarily blocks an order by another Trump appointed judge, US district judge Trevor McFadden, who had ruled in April that the Trump administration had to allow AP journalists access to events while the news agency’s lawsuit moves forward.The AP sued after Trump banned the news organization for refusing to follow him in referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.The court left in place part of a lower-court order that required Trump to give AP access to events held in larger spaces, like the East Room of the White House.The Department of Homeland Security conducted raids on multiple locations across Los Angeles on Friday, clashing with the crowds of people who gathered to protest.Masked agents were recorded pulling several people out of two LA-area Home Depot stores and the clothing manufacturer Ambient Apparel’s headquarters in LA’s Fashion District.There has not yet been confirmation of how many people were taken into custody, but initial estimates provided by news helicopter reports shows roughly two dozen people were loaded into white vans and taken away.Armed agents clad in heavy protective and tactical gear, including some who wore gas masks, could also be seen pushing individuals and trying to corral large groups that congregated to challenge the raids, and smoke grenades were reportedly thrown near the crowds. Pepper spray was used as the federal officers attempted to clear the area.Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Donald Trump suggested that some sort of unspecified action needed to be taken against federal judges who ordered his administration to bring the wrongly deported Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García back from El Salvador.Trump continued to insist that the supreme court’s order requiring his administration to bring Ábrego García back to the United States was incorrect. “He should’ve never had to be returned”, Trump said. “Either way it’s a total disaster – this is a pretty bad guy.”In comments posted on YouTube by the Washington Post, Trump seemed to give insight into the political calculation behind his administration’s decision to bring Ábrego García back, as the supreme court had ordered, but first indict him on new criminal charges.“I could see a decision being made” Trump said, “‘bring him back; show everybody how horrible this guy is’”.He then returned to his outrage at federal judges for not allowing him to deport people like Ábrego García who have been accused of crimes without giving them an opportunity to challenge the evidence against them in court.“Frankly, we have to do something, because the judges are trying to take the place of a president that won in a landslide” Trump said. “And that’s not supposed to be the way it is”.Trump seems convinced that Ábrego García is so obviously a gang member that there is no need for a trial. However, the president demonstrated in April that he is deeply confused about at least one piece of the supposed evidence.In a social media post in mid-April, Trump held up a photograph of the tattoos on Ábrego García’s hand, symbols that one corner of the internet is convinced represent the letters and numbers M,S,1 and 3, to signify that he is a member of the gang MS-13.In an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News two weeks later, though, Trump revealed that he had been confused by the photograph, which added the letters and numbers as a form of annotation. “He had MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed”, Trump insisted to Moran. When Moran pointed out that the letters and numbers had been added to the photograph he held up to illustrate what people thought the four symbols represented, Trump made it clear that he had mistaken the annotation for part of the tattoo. “Go look at his hand”, Trump said.Now that Ábrego García is back in the United States and will be in court, new photographs of his hand will soon be available for Trump to inspect.During a brief news conference on Air Force One, en route to his golf course in New Jersey, Donald Trump told reporters that he has been far too busy to spend any time thinking about Elon Musk, his top donor and former aide who called for him to be impeached on Thursday.“Honestly, I’ve been so busy working on China, working on Russia, working on Iran, working on so many things, I’m not thinking about Elon” Trump said. “I just wish him well.”The president’s comment, one day after Musk accused him of having been involved in his late friend Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, oddly echoed Trump’s response to a question about Epstein’s longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2020 when she was arrested and charged with helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse girls.Back then, when Trump was asked during a coronavirus briefing in the White House if he expected Maxwell “to turn in powerful men”, he responded: “I don’t know, I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly.”“I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well, whatever it is.”Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in jail the following year. Her prosecution was led by Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. Williams later oversaw the indictment on New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, on corruption charges that were later dropped by the Trump administration.On Friday, Williams left the law firm Paul Weiss to join Jenner & Block, moving from a firm that struck a deal with Trump to one that fought him in court.Trump’s claim that he was far too busy on Friday to concern himself with Musk’s criticism was slightly undermined by the fact that he spent much of his morning at the White House talking about Musk to multiple reporters on the phone. When Jonathan Karl of ABC News called the president at 6:45 am, Trump picked up to talk about Musk and called him “a man who has lost his mind”. Trump also took time to tell Bret Baier of Fox, “Elon has totally lost it”. Trump also spoke to CNN’s Dana Bash, to insist: “I’m not even thinking about Elon, he’s got a problem, the poor guy’s got a problem”. Bash said that Trump also told her he wishes Elon well.Donald Trump, who is again enjoying a long weekend at one of his golf courses, took a moment to respond, obliquely, to Elon Musk’s unsourced claim on Thursday that the Trump administration has not released all of the files from the sex-trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein because Trump is implicated in his late friend’s crimes.During an Air Force One flight to New Jersey on Friday, Trump shared a comment from David Schoen, a lawyer who defended the president at his second impeachment trial in 2021, over the January 6 riot.“I was hired to lead Jeffrey Epstein’s defense as his criminal lawyer 9 days before he died”, Schoen wrote on Musk’s social media platform X on Thursday. “He sought my advice for months before that. I can say authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively that he had no information to hurt President Trump. I specifically asked him!”Following Musk’s post on Thursday, which was viewed more than 200 million times (according to Musk’s company), Schoen also wrote on the billionaire’s platform: “I can tell you unequivocally as someone who would know that President Trump never did anything wrong with Jeffrey Epstein.”A career federal prosecutor resigned in protest the same day that charges were filed against Kilmar Ábrego García, following an investigation that apparently began after the mistaken deportation of the Maryland resident became a legal and political headache for the Trump administration, ABC News reports.Ben Schrader, announced his resignation as the chief of the criminal division at the US attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee in a LinkedIn post on 21 May, the same day the indictment of Ábrego García was signed by the acting US attorney for that district.Sources told ABC News that Schrader stepped down because of concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons.“Earlier today, after nearly 15 years as an Assistant United States Attorney, I resigned as Chief of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee”, Schrader wrote on LinkedIn that day. “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. I wish all of my colleagues at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville and across the Department the best as they seek to do justice on behalf of the American people.”At a news conference on Friday, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, refused to say exactly when the investigation that led to the charges was opened, but she told reporters that the indictment was based on “recently found facts” about a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, and that “thanks to the bright light that has been shined on Ábrego García, this investigation continued”.The indictment was signed by Robert McGuire, who has been the acting US attorney in Nashville since December, and three senior prosecutors from the justice department’s Joint Task Force Vulcan, which was created during the first Trump administration “to dismantle MS-13”.In a new statement, Senator Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who visited Kilmar Ábrego García in El Salvador, reiterated the point he made after his trip in April, when he said that he was “not defending the man” but “defending the rights of this man to due process”.Here is Van Hollen’s new statement:
    “For months the Trump Administration flouted the Supreme Court and our Constitution. Today, they appear to have finally relented to our demands for compliance with court orders and with the due process rights afforded to everyone in the United States. As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights – and the rights of all. The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.”
    This restates what Van Hollen said in an interview with ABC News in April, of the Trump administration: “Here’s where they should put their facts: they should oput it before the court. They should put up or shut up in court.”El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, joined the White House in attacking Senator Chris Van Hollen on social media with a post on Elon Musk’s X in which he referred back to a staged photograph of the Maryland senator’s meeting Kilmar Ábrego García in April.Referencing the release of Ábrego García from custody in El Salvador on Friday, Bukele wrote: we work with the Trump administration, and if they request the return of a gang member to face charges, of course we wouldn’t refuse.”He added: “No more margaritas under custody”.On his return from El Salvador in April, however, Van Hollen accused the government of El Salvador of creating the hoax he called “Margarita-gate”, by placing a pair of cocktail glasses on the table between himself and Ábrego García as they met to make it look as though they were enjoying drinks.Those photographs were posted on X by Bukele, along with a caption that downplayed the seriousness of the situation by falsely claiming that the senator and the wrongly deported man had been “sipping margaritas” as they met.But the senator said that the drinks were placed there during the meeting by someone from the Salvadoran government before the photographs were taken and that neither he nor Ábrego García had touched them. Van Hollen pointed out that there was visual evidence for this in the photographs: the rims of both glasses were covered in salt or sugar, but it was clear from the images that neither glass had been drunk from, since the rims were undisturbed.The US supreme court on Friday permitted the so-called ‘department of government efficiency’, or Doge, a team set up by former Trump aide Elon Musk to take a chainsaw to the federal workforce, broad access to personal information on millions of Americans in Social Security Administration data systems while a legal challenge plays out, Reuters reports.At the request of the Justice Department, the justices put on hold US district judge Ellen Hollander’s order that had largely blocked Doge’s access to “personally identifiable information” in data such as medical and financial records while litigation proceeds in a lower court. Hollander found that allowing Doge unfettered access likely would violate a federal privacy law.The court’s brief, unsigned order did not provide a rationale for siding with Doge. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices dissented from the order.White House officials have wasted no time in using the newly announced criminal charges against Kilmar Ábrego García to attack Democrats who objected to his deportation without due process in violation of a previous court order.Writing on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, the White House’s official account dedicated to partisan “rapid response” resurfaced an April post from Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat whose constituents include Ábrego García’s wife, to suggest that he should now be ashamed of having stood up for the undocumented Maryland resident’s due process rights.“A grand jury found his full-time job was human smuggling, Chris,” the White House account commented. “He spent his entire life abusing people – including women and children. This is who you spent so much time defending. Shame on you.”The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, also using the platform owned by a former Trump aide who called for the president to be impeached just yesterday, claimed that the indictment against Ábrego García “proves the unhinged Democrat Party was wrong, and their stenographers in the Fake News Media were once again played like fools”.Apparently unaware that the allegations have yet to be tested in court, the president’s chief spokesperson insisted that “Democrat lawmakers” including Van Hollen, “and every single so-called ‘journalist’ who defended this illegal criminal abuser must immediately apologize to Garcia’s victims”.At a news conference, the US attorney general, Pamela Bondi, just announced that Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order, has been returned to the United States and charged with criminal charges related to smuggling undocumented immigrants inside the United States.Bondi said that the US government presented an arrest warrant for Ábrego García to El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.She also said that the grand jury indictment on 21 May was based on recently discovered facts and that the grand jury “found that over the past nine years, Ábrego García has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring.”“Upon completion of his sentence, we anticipate he will be returned to his country of El Salvador”, Bondi said.Bondi suggested that Ábrego García was involved in other crimes, based on what unnamed co-conspirators allege, but he was only indicted on two counts related to the alleged smuggling.In response to a reporter’s question, Bondi said that Ábrego García would serve a prison sentence in the US if convicted, on charges that carry a possible sentence of 10 years, and then be deported to El Salvador again.We are waiting for the start of a livestreamed justice department news conference, which is expected to deal with the indictment of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador and is reportedly on his way back to the United States to face new criminal charges stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee which prompted officers to suspect that he might have been transporting undocumented migrants.The criminal indictment, which was filed on 21 May, accuses Ábrego García of being “a member and associate” of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 and charges him with taking part in a conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants inside the United States.The reportedly imminent return to the United States of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order that he should not be sent there because he had a reasonable fear of persecution in that country, comes nearly two months after the attorney general, Pamela Jo Bondi, insisted that it would never happen.“He is not coming back to our country” Bondi told reporters at a news conference on 16 April. “President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story.”Asked if she could provide evidence that he was a member of the MS-13 gang, Bondi said only that the allegation was contained in a 2019 court hearing.Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unlawfully deported to El Salvador, is on his way back to the US where he will face criminal charges, ABC News is reporting, citing sources.A federal grand jury has indicted Ábrego García for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the US, according to the report.The outlet, citing sources, reports that a two-count indictment, filed under seal in federal court in Tennessee last month, alleges that Ábrego García participated in a years-long conspiracy to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to the interior of the country.Among those allegedly transported were members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, according to the report. The alleged conspiracy spanned nearly a decade, according to the report.A US trade delegation including three cabinet officials will meet with trade representatives from China in London on Monday “with reference to the trade deal”, Donald Trump has announced.He posted on Truth Social:
    I am pleased to announce that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and United States Trade Representative, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, will be meeting in London on Monday, June 9, 2025, with Representatives of China, with reference to the Trade Deal. The meeting should go very well. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
    It comes a day after Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping held a “very good” phone call during which they discussed “some of the intricacies of our recently made, and agreed to, Trade Deal”, Trump said.Trump also said Xi had invited him to visit China, an invitation he aid he reciprocated.Xi said of the call that a “consensus has been reached”, adding that the two sides “should enhance consensus” as well as “reduce misunderstanding, strengthen cooperation” and “enhance exchanges”. “Dialogue, cooperation is the only right choice for China and the US,” the Chinese president said.Elon Musk may believe his money bought the presidential election and the House of the Representatives for the Republicans. But he is discovering painfully and quickly that it has not bought him love, loyalty or even fear among many GOP members of Congress on Capitol Hill.Faced with the choice of siding with Musk, the world’s richest man, or Donald Trump, after the two staged a public relationship breakdown for the ages on Thursday, most Republicans went with the man in the Oval Office, who has shown an unerring grasp of the tactics of political intimidation and who remains the world’s most powerful figure even without the boss of Tesla and SpaceX by his side.The billionaire tech entrepreneur, who poured about $275m into Trump’s campaign last year, tried to remind Washington’s political classes of his financial muscle on Thursday during an outpouring of slights against a man for whom he had once professed platonic love and was still showering with praise up until a week before.One after another, Republican House members came out to condemn him and defend Trump, despite having earlier been told by Musk that “you know you did wrong” in voting for what has become Trump’s signature legislation that seeks to extend vast tax cuts for the rich.Troy Nehls, a GOP representative from Texas, captured the tone, addressing Musk before television cameras:
    You’ve lost your damn mind. Enough is enough. Stop this.
    It chimed with the sentiments of many others. “Nobody elected Elon Musk, and a whole lot of people don’t even like him, to be honest with you, even on both sides,” Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey congressman, told Axios.“We’re getting people calling our offices 100% in support of President Trump,” Kevin Hern, a representative from Oklahoma, told the site.
    Every tweet that goes out, people are more lockstep behind President Trump and [Musk is] losing favour.
    Republicans were balancing the strength of Trump’s voice among GOP voters versus the power of the increasingly unpopular Musk’s money – and most had little doubt which matters most.“On the value of Elon playing against us in primaries compared to Trump endorsing us in primaries, the latter is 100 times more relevant,” Axios quoted one unnamed representative as saying.The Trump administration is preparing to make good on the president’s threat to strip “large scale” federal funding from California, an effort that could begin as early as Friday, according to CNN.The report says agencies have been directed to start identifying grants the administration can withhold from the state. A whistleblower reportedly told a congressional committee that the administration was planning to cut all research grants to California.The White House has not commented on the plans. The timeline remains speculative, and it is unclear what grants would be targeted.Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut federal funding as a way to force states, institutions and universities to comply with his agenda. Last week, he said California could lose “large scale” funding “maybe permanently” if the state continued to allow transgender athletes to participate in girls’ and women’s sports.The declaration appeared to be in reference to a transgender track-and-field star from southern California. On Saturday, she won two gold medals and a silver, which she shared with other teen athletes under a new rule by the state’s high school sports body.Trump had also repeatedly threatened to withhold federal disaster aid, assailing the state’s Democratic leaders for their handling of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles earlier this year.More from House speaker Mike Johnson, who has told CNBC he has been texting with Elon Musk and hopes the dispute is resolved quickly.He said of the “big, beautiful bill”:
    I don’t argue with [Musk] about how to build rockets and I wish he wouldn’t argue with me about how to craft legislation and pass it.
    Johnson earlier issued a warning: “Do not second-guess and don’t ever challenge the president of the United States, Donald Trump.”He had also projected confidence that the Trump-Musk dispute won’t affect prospects for the tax and border bill. “Members are not shaken at all,” he said. “We’re going to pass this legislation on our deadline.” More

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      The Guardian view on the Trump-Musk feud: we can’t rely on outsized egos to end oligopoly | Editorial

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      It would have taken a heart of stone to watch the death of the Trump-Musk bromance without laughing. Democrats passed the popcorn on Thursday night as the alliance between the world’s most powerful man and the world’s richest imploded via posts on their respective social media platforms.Less than a week ago they attempted a conscious uncoupling in the Oval Office. Then Elon Musk’s attacks on Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax and spending plan escalated to full-scale denunciation of a “disgusting abomination” – objecting to its effect on the deficit, not the fact it snatches essential support from the poor and hands $1.1tn in tax cuts to the rich.The president said that Mr Musk had “gone crazy” and was angry that electric vehicle subsidies were being removed, claimed he had fired him, threatened to terminate his government contracts, and mocked the billionaire’s recent black eye. Steve Bannon chipped in, suggesting that Mr Musk should be deported.Mr Musk said Mr Trump should be impeached and alleged the government had not released files on the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein because the president was in them. He threatened to immediately start decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft – now key to Nasa’s programme – and suggested it was time for a new political party. The ultimate insult: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election,” he wrote.Mr Musk later appeared minded to limit the damage, backing away from the spacecraft threat – not surprising, perhaps, when he had just watched $152bn wiped off Tesla’s value. Each man knows that the other could hurt him, via government fiat or political war chest. Yet both are so unpredictable that the row could still reignite.Two narcissists used to imposing their will were never likely to coexist happily for long, despite the advantages of doing so: this was less a marriage of convenience than of naked self-interest. Mr Trump loathes sharing the limelight; the Tesla boss frequently grabbed it. The president is surely as resentful of as he is dazzled by Mr Musk’s spectacular wealth. He was angered to discover that Mr Musk had arranged private briefings on the Pentagon’s plans for any potential war with China – not only a blatant conflict of interest, but perhaps more upsettingly, a sign of his growing power. Mr Musk’s behaviour has also appeared increasingly erratic. A recent New York Times report alleged he took large amounts of drugs including ketamine while advising Mr Trump prior to the election. Mr Musk has described the story as “bs”.His departure from the president’s orbit is good news. Mr Musk implausibly claimed he would save $2tn annually – approaching a third of the federal budget – by taking a chainsaw to bureaucracy. Wild decisions by the so-called department of government efficiency are mired in the courts. But he has nonetheless caused real damage which will not easily be remedied, gutting agencies and departments which took decades to build. People are dying because of his demolition of USAID.Yet while the bond between the peak of power and the peak of wealth has been severed, politics remains in thrall to money. Mr Trump’s approach is particularly noxious, turning wealth directly into political favours and power, and power into further wealth. This is the new oligopoly. He oversees a cabinet of billionaires, and has directed his real estate tycoon friend Steve Witkoff, a man with no diplomatic experience, to bring peace in the Middle East and Ukraine. But though megadonors are heavily skewed towards the Republicans, Democrats too depend on billionaires. Mr Musk is a symptom of the underlying malaise. Democracy requires better safeguards against the unhealthy marriage of wealth and power than the rampant egos of those who command them. More

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      Elon Musk signals he may back down in public row with Donald Trump

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      Elon Musk has suggested he may de-escalate his public row with Donald Trump after their spectacular falling out.The Tesla chief executive signalled he might back down on a pledge to decommission the Dragon spacecraft – made by his SpaceX business – in an exchange on his X social media platform. He also responded positively to a call from fellow multibillionaire Bill Ackman to “make peace” with the US president.Politico also reported overnight that the White House has scheduled a call with Musk on Friday to broker a peace deal after both men traded verbal blows on Thursday.The rolling spat – which played out over social media and in a Trump White House appearance – included the president saying he was “very disappointed in Elon” over Musk’s criticism of his tax and spending bill. Musk also said the president’s trade policies would cause a recession and raised Trump’s connections to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Musk had responded to a Trump threat to cancel his US government contracts on Thursday with a post on X stating he would retire his Dragon spacecraft, which is used by Nasa. However, responding to an X user’s post urging both sides to “cool off”, Musk wrote: “Good advice. Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”Musk also appeared to proffer an olive branch in a reply to a post from the hedge fund owner Ackman, who called on Trump and Musk to “make peace for the benefit of our great country”. Musk replied: “You’re not wrong.”Politico also reported a potential peace call between Musk and the White House, claiming Trump’s aides had worked to persuade the president to tone down his public criticism of the Tesla owner before arranging the phone conversation for Friday.After a brief interview with Trump about Thursday’s Musk implosion, Politico reported that the president displayed “an air of nonchalance” about the spat. “Oh it’s OK” Trump said, when asked about the dispute. “It’s going very well, never done better.” Referring to his favourability ratings, Trump added: “The numbers are through the roof, the highest polls I’ve ever had and I have to go.”Politico reported that Trump’s aides had urged the president to focus on getting his tax and spending bill through the Senate instead of clashing with Musk, with one of his Truth Social posts reflecting a less confrontational tone. “I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform, before adding that the tax cut legislation was one of the “Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress”. More

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      Musk calls for Trump to be impeached as extraordinary feud escalates

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      Elon Musk called for Donald Trump to be impeached after mocking his connections to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as the president threatened to cancel federal contracts and tax subsidies for Musk’s companies in an extraordinary social media feud on Thursday.The deterioration of their once close relationship into bitter acrimony came over the course of several remarkable hours during which the president and the world’s richest man hurled deeply personal insults over matters significant and insignificant.In the most churlish moment of the astonishing saga, Musk said on X the reason the Trump administration had not released the files into Epstein was because they implicated the president. He later quote-tweeted a post calling for Trump to be removed and said Trump’s tariffs would cause a recession.“Time to drop the really big bomb: Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” Musk wrote, after Trump threatened to cut subsidies for Musk’s companies as it would save “billions”.The direct shots at Trump were the latest twist in the public feud over a Republican spending bill that Musk had criticized. Trump and Musk had been careful not to hit each other directly, but the pair discarded restraint as it escalated online.The bizarre drama served to underscore the degree to which Trump and Musk’s relationship has been one of mutual convenience, despite the White House claiming for months that they were simply ideologically aligned.It also caused the rightwing writer Ashley St Clair, who gave birth to Musk’s 14th known child and sued Musk for child support, to weigh in. “Let me know if u need any breakup advice,” she posted on X, tagging Trump.Shares in Tesla, Musk’s electronic vehicle company, fell almost 15% on Thursday afternoon with the decline timed to when Trump’s remarks began. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, is not publicly traded, but competitors to SpaceX rose on the news.For weeks, Musk has complained about the budget bill, and used the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimating the bill would add $2.4tn to the deficit over the next decade as an opening to condemn the legislation as a “disgusting abomination”.On Thursday, Trump appeared to finally have had enough of Musk’s complaints. Speaking in the Oval Office as the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, looked on in bemusement, Trump mocked Musk’s recent black eye and questioned why he didn’t cover it up.“You saw a man who was very happy when he stood behind the Oval desk. Even with a black eye. I said, do you want a little makeup? He said, no, I don’t think so. Which is interesting,” Trump said. “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will any more.”Trump then ratcheted up his barbs against Musk, accusing him of turning against the bill solely out of self-interest, as the bill did not benefit Tesla, Musk’s electronic vehicle company. Trump also pulled the nomination of Musk’s preferred candidate to lead Nasa.“I’m very disappointed with Elon,” Trump said. “He had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out we’re going to cut the EV mandate.”Musk then went on the warpath.Within minutes of Trump’s comments appearing in a clip on X, where Musk was responding in real time, Musk accused the president of lying about the bill, and accused Trump of being ungrateful for the millions he spent to get him elected.“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk said in a post on X. He added: “Such ingratitude.”Musk taking credit for Trump’s election win initially threatened to be the touchpoint for their relationship, given Trump had made a point to say that Musk’s contributions had no effect on him winning the battleground state of Pennsylvania.But then Trump posted on Truth Social that he had fired Musk from his role as a special adviser because he was “wearing thin” at the White House, and Musk responded: “Such an obvious lie. So sad.”It was less than a half an hour later that Musk fired off his Epstein tweet, in effect accusing him of being part of an alleged child sexual abuse ring linked to Epstein, using a dog whistle for the Maga movement to try to set them against the president.In doing so, Musk ignored his own connections to Epstein. In 2014, like Trump, Musk was photographed at a party with Ghislaine Maxwell, a former Epstein girlfriend who was convicted in 2021 on charges that she helped the financier’s sex-trafficking activities.The public feud comes after a remarkable partnership that lasted longer than many Democrats on Capitol Hill and in Trump’s orbit predicted.Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Trump’s re-election campaign through his specially created America Pac, which shouldered a large portion of Trump’s door-knocking campaign, although the actual impact of that ground-game effort is unclear. More

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      in US Politics

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

      by

      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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      in US Politics

      The Cybertruck was supposed to be apocalypse-proof. Can it even survive a trip to the grocery store?

      by

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      View image in fullscreenThe Cybertruck answers a question no one in the auto industry even thought to ask: what if there was a truck that a Chechen warlord couldn’t possibly pass up – a bulletproof, bioweapons-resistant, road rage-inducing street tank that’s illegal to drive in most of the world?Few had seen anything quite like the Cybertruck when it was unveiled in 2019. Wrapped in an “ultra-hard, 30X, cold-rolled stainless steel exoskeleton”, the Cybertruck was touted as the ultimate doomsday chariot – a virtually indestructible, obtuse-angled, electrically powered behemoth that can repel handgun fire and outrun a Porsche while towing a Porsche, with enough juice leftover to power your house in the event of a blackout. At the launch, Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, said the truck could tackle any terrain on Earth and possibly also on Mars – and all for the low, low base price of $40,000. “Sometimes you get these late-civilization vibes [that the] apocalypse could come along at any moment,” Musk said. “Here at Tesla, we have the best in apocalypse technology.”Six years on, Covid and Musk’s political alignment with Donald Trump have kicked up the apocalypse vibes, and Tesla’s good sense has only become more questionable as the Cybertruck has been reduced to an object of universal scorn and derision further raising a host of questions: is the Cybertruck even a decent doomsday chariot? Could it really survive end times? Will it survive Musk himself? “There’s no doubt it’s a heavy-duty vehicle that can take some punishment, even from small arms fire,” says Arthur Bradley, a prepping expert who oversees the building of satellite systems at Nasa’s Langley research center in Virginia. “But you can’t weigh the pros without also asking: ‘Are people shooting at me because they think I’m an idiot or a bad guy, or they don’t support my political views – or they don’t support me supporting this company?’”View image in fullscreenPost-armageddon transport has a simple but specific brief: be tough, durable and drive through anything – and no vehicle ticks those boxes more reliably than trucks. Fictional concepts such as Mad Max’s tanker-based War Rig are often the inspiration for real-world creations like Ford’s custom-built F650 Supertruck, a tractor-trailer sized monstrosity that can carry 120 gallons of fuel, tow 30,000lb, and be reinforced with bulletproof armor. The truck is how insurgent fighters get around war zones and what storm chasers use to run down tornadoes. “They’re certainly pretty good for prepping purposes,” says Sean Gold, a former air force emergency manager who has worked in the prepping industry for nearly a decade. “They’re large, off-road-capable, able to get off roads that might be congested – that sort of thing.”The Cybertruck, however, broke from a century’s worth of truck-building orthodoxy, eschewing the typical three-box layout for a wedge-shaped silhouette that took inspiration from the movie Blade Runner and cyberpunk motifs. It mocked the F-150, the US’s top-selling vehicle for the last 47 years, as prehistoric tech. On its website, Tesla featured imaginative images of the Cybertruck crawling around Mars. Few knew what to make of it. Simone Giertz, a DIY robotics inventor who built a Tesla truck on her popular YouTube channel, was among a select group invited to Tesla’s Hawthorne, California, studio for the Cybertruck unveiling. “I have never physically felt the air leave a room in the way that it did when the Cybertruck rolled out on stage,” she recalls. “People were so confused.”Since Musk’s hard-right turn, however, the Cybertruck’s design has gone from aesthetically polarizing to politically so. A recent Slate article nods at the truck’s uncanny resemblance to the Casspir, the apartheid-era military transport that patrolled South African townships in Musk’s boyhood. “As violence and flames engulfed the streets of the nation, Black South African children drew and wrote about the apartheid security forces and its tools – dogs and Casspirs – chasing and shooting at them in their schools, streets, and homes,” the article says. “By the 1990s, the Casspir had become an iconic global symbol of apartheid oppression.”View image in fullscreenIt’s no surprise then that the Cybertruck would become a status symbol for security forces. One California police department spent $153,000 on a Cybertruck for “community outreach efforts” (though it didn’t rule out using it to “respond to emergencies” as needed), and a Chechen warlord showed off a machine-gun mounted Cybertruck he claimed was purpose-built to help his army fight alongside Russia in the Ukraine war. “I am sure that this ‘beast’ will bring a lot of benefit to our fighters,” Ramzan Kadyrov said while heaping praise on “the respected Elon Musk”, who has denied making the vehicle for Kadyrov. Ultimately, the Cybertruck had to be towed from the battlefield after randomly shutting down on Chechen forces, and Kadyrov accused Musk of switching it off remotely – a nagging concern among Tesla owners.In Tesla’s early days, the catastrophe thinking was small – a “bioweapon defense mode” button on each vehicle’s climate control, something Musk reckoned might come in handy “if there’s ever an apocalyptic scenario of some kind”. But even as Musk’s winking references to the apocalypse manifested into a bulletproof rig made of stainless steel, there was no denying that he may have been right to think the Cybertruck could be a hit with consumers. After the 2019 unveiling, Tesla received about 2m preorders from customers plonking down $100 each. But in the end the enthusiasm wouldn’t last because Musk couldn’t keep his promises.The Cybertruck came to market two years too late, which was time that allowed Tesla’s rivals to get in the game; more Cybertruck reservation holders might have hung in there if Musk hadn’t marked the truck’s base price up to $99,000. Perhaps most detrimental for Tesla: the Cybertruck’s purported utility appeared to be worse than advertised. The average truck is undergirded with a steel frame to handle the rigors of hauling and towing – but the Cybertruck’s underbody is made of aluminum, much lighter metal that can bend and even break under heavy strain. Stainless steel is also susceptible to rust – which is to say the Cybertruck is an iffy proposition to survive regular winter, let alone nuclear winter.The internet teems with video of the Cybertruck spinning its wheels in a snowy parking space, on the beach and farther off the beaten path; meanwhile the Rivian R1T, a legitimately capable electric vehicle rival to the Cybertruck, was apparently no worse for wear after being tossed around during Hurricane Helene. (“What a dream marketing opportunity for Rivian,” Giertz says. “Your truck actually survived a natural disaster.”)Dan Neil, the Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer prize-winning car critic, slid off a hill while test-driving the Cybertruck with his teenage daughter. “We took it on class three and class four trails, which it is technically capable of,” he says. “But it’s also 2ft wider than any trail at any national park could generally accommodate. That’s the part I don’t get. It’s definitely an on-road car.”View image in fullscreenThat makes the Cybertruck an even tougher sell to doomsday preppers – many of whom already had their doubts about the viability of EV technology during and after a major disaster, says Gold, the former air force manager. The Cybertruck’s 300ish-mile range in particular becomes a much riskier proposition when plugs stop working. “The beauty of EVs is you don’t have to hunt for fuel,” says Bradley, the Virginia-based prepping expert. “But the drawback is most people don’t have a large solar power generation system. If you get a little too far out, or run into a situation that causes you to use up your energy, you might not get back home.”Daisy Luther, a former automotive service manager who went into the prepping business after the 2008 financial collapse, wonders how anyone in the post-apocalypse would go about fixing a Cybertruck (which has already been recalled eighttimes) – especially in the event of an electromagnetic pulse or similar event. “I generally recommend that if someone is getting a vehicle to last them through some kind of apocalyptic situation that it have as few computer chips and electronics as possible,” says Luther, who drives an old Jeep. “I can do small repairs on something mechanical, but I can’t do anything that requires a computer flash or a satellite upgrade because I don’t have the equipment.”Last month I rented a Tesla Cybertruck to get a feel for it as a family vehicle and found it to be ill-equipped for these times, let alone the end times. (And I say that as the owner of a Model Y, an exceedingly versatile family hauler that’s also massively fun to drive.) At over 6ft wide, 18ft long and 3.5 tons, the Cybertruck was a bear to maneuver around Atlanta’s narrow streets; its obtuse-angled shape made identifying traffic hazards through the car’s windows and mirrors a virtual impossibility. Even when I find myself considering the Cybertruck just for its potential as a standby home generator, I was soon reminded that Hyundai and Kia EVs offer similar capability for a fraction of the cost.For my toddler boys the Cybertruck is what the Lamborghini Countach was to me in my youth, the apogee of poster cars – but the truck isn’t what I would call kid-friendly. Mostly, it kept me worried about them gouging out an eye, losing a finger or getting static shock from touching the steel doors as they explored.“You’re driving a meme car!” Ezra Dyer, the Car and Driver columnist, helpfully reminds me. “You have to buy into the idea that it’s kind of funny, wink-wink.” When my wife asked if the children would be safe inside, I hesitated to tell her that Alijah Arenas – the highly regarded USC basketball recruit and son of former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas – had to be put into a coma after losing control of his Cybertruck and crashing into a fire hydrant in Los Angeles. Suffice to say, had Alijah Arenas been driving a Rivian (the safest pickup on the road full stop) or Tiger Woods’s 2009 Escalade, he would have been able to walk away from the accident; but somehow, bystanders managed to pry open the Cybertruck’s doors, which don’t have exterior handles (!), and pull him away from a fiery scene made scarier by the truck’s tough to extinguish high-voltage battery – the last thing you’d want to deal with when the world’s already burning.View image in fullscreenUnlike modern cars, the Cybertruck was expressly not designed to deform on impact – further ratcheting up the safety risks during and after a cataclysmic disaster. (This is also why Cybertrucks are banned in the UK, EU and China, the world’s largest EV market.) Gold, who drives a Model 3, could envision a bad actor hacking into the truck remotely or even Musk himself shutting them down out of spite as may or may not have been the case with the Chechen warlord. “I know it doesn’t really make sense [for him to do that],” Gold says, “but the possibility is concerning”.Then there’s Gold’s point: the Cybertruck is such a ripe target, it sticks out so much. Early on the Ford CEO, Jim Farley, dismissed it as the kind of status mobile you might find “parked in front of a hotel”. In its relatively short life, the Cybertruck has gone from being a status mobile for Kim Kardashian, Pharrell Williams and other tastemakers to the ultimate meme-mobile – a Maga hat on wheels. (SNL’s Colin Jost called it the answer to the question: “What if Kanye was a car?”) When the truck isn’t being flipped off in traffic (although that wasn’t my experience driving it in Atlanta, a saturated Tesla market), it’s being used as a slate canvas for political protests against Musk. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to drive one around town today,” Bradley says.Read more from The Armageddon complex series

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      The irony of Tesla’s apocalypse machine is it couldn’t even overcome Musk’s worst nature, or even live up to the Earth-saving principles that Tesla used to espouse. “Maybe this explains it: he’s working really hard on bringing down civil society; maybe that was just to increase the market?” Giertz jokes. “It’s interesting because when the environmentalists turned on Elon, he immediately pivoted to another target group: the preppers who want to be self-sufficient. But at this point when civility is out the window and we are even more pissed at the guy who brought the apocalypse in, I’d rather be in a Toyota Prius than a Cybertruck.”On the company’s earnings call last month Musk vowed to step back from running the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to devote more time to Tesla amid speculation that he could be replaced as CEO – but the catastrophe may be unsalvageable. “I don’t think that [Doge] is the issue,” Ross Gerber, a major Tesla investor, told CNN. “Actually, it’s that people despise Elon Musk even more than they hate Trump. And that’s not something that he can solve at this point.”Despite being the world’s top selling EV pickup, Cybertruck sales are still so poor that the company doesn’t even bother reporting them – but record high inventory and steep depreciation curves give the game away. Quietly, Tesla shifted marketing strategies for the Cybertruck, pivoting away from the Martian imagery to more classic pickup truck iconography – but it’s too little, too late, and now just gaslighting the public. In recent months Tesla’s board chair made $198m unloading the company’s stock amid falling profits. Ford, Rivian and other competitors are fast gaining ground in the market. “It’s really interesting to see how far Tesla has fallen,” says Benoit. “At this point it’s beyond political.”If anything, the Cybertruck becoming the Titanic of cars is the fate we actually should’ve prepared for. History tells us anytime a vehicle is touted as future-proof, it’s all but doomed to become a monument to unchecked hubris. “My guess is this incarnation of the Cybertruck has a very limited life,” Bradley says. “I think there will be another Cybertruck, but it will probably be more modern-looking – like a regular pickup truck.” More

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      Move fast and destroy things: 100 chaotic days of Elon Musk in the White House

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      One hundred days after Elon Musk entered the White House as Donald Trump’s senior adviser and the de facto leader of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), the Tesla CEO has left little of the federal government unscathed. Over the course of just a few months, he has gutted agencies and public services that took decades to build while accumulating immense political power.Musk’s role in the Trump administration is without modern precedent. Never before has the world’s richest person been deputized by the US president to cull the very agencies that oversee his businesses. Musk’s attempts to radically dismantle government bureaus have won him sprawling influence. His team has embedded its members in key roles across federal agencies, gained access to personal data on millions of Americans and fired tens of thousands of workers. SpaceX, where he is CEO, is now poised to take over potential government contracts worth billions. He has left a trail of chaos while seeding the government with his allies, who will likely help him profit and preserve his newfound power.The billionaire’s newfound sway has not come without pushback and a cost. Doge’s blitz through the government has sparked furious nationwide backlash, as well as dozens of lawsuits challenging Musk’s mass firings and accusing his task force of violating numerous laws. Musk’s personal popularity has sunk to record lows, and Tesla’s profits have tanked.A look back at the first 100 days of the Trump administration shows the extent to which Musk’s efforts have changed the US government. It also shows that what Musk framed as a cost-cutting task initiative is failing to meet its ostensible goal of finding $1tn in fraud or waste, but it is succeeding in reshaping federal agencies along ideological grounds, paving the way for private companies to fill the resulting vacuum of public services.Musk has recently stopped physically working from the White House and stated he plans to pivot away from his government position soon, but has entrenched himself as one of the world’s most divisive political figures and gives no sign he is willing to fully give up his influence. Instead, the first 100 days of Doge shows that the scope of Musk’s ambition extends to remaking how the government deals with everything from humanitarian aid to the rule of law.Doge sweeps through agenciesOn the same day Trump was sworn into office, the president issued an executive order that created Musk’s “department of government efficiency” by renaming the US Digital Service agency, which previously handled governmental tech issues. Trump’s order included only a vague mandate to modernize government technology and increase efficiency, but within days it would become clear that Musk and his team had far more expansive aims.In the months leading up to the executive order, Musk had been hiring a team of staffers that included a mix of young engineers, tech world executives and longtime lieutenants from his private companies. Running the day-to-day operations was Steve Davis, who had worked with Musk at various companies, including SpaceX and the Boring Company, for more than 20 years. Davis was known as an exacting boss – Musk once compared him to chemotherapy. Others had far less experience, including 19-year-old Edward Coristine, who had worked for several months at Musk’s Neuralink company. The teenager had been fired from a previous internship for leaking information and went by the username “big balls” in online profiles.Doge’s early days made headlines for targeting masses of government workers with layoffs and pushing others to resign, with more than 2 million employees receiving an email on 28 January titled “Fork in the road” that encouraged staffers to take a buyout. The emails, which asked: “What did you accomplish this week?” would become a signature of Musk and his new bureau, sent again and again whenever staff began to prey on a new herd of government employees.Shortly after Trump’s executive order created Doge, Musk’s team quickly began popping up in the offices of numerous agencies. One of the first was the General Services Administration, which oversees digital technology and government buildings. Doge staffers appeared on Zoom calls with no introduction and hidden last names, questioning federal employees about what they did for work and refusing to answer questions. They also began to show up in person, taking over conference rooms and moving Ikea beds on to the sixth floor of the GSA to sleep overnight. Perplexed government workers at numerous agencies described Doge’s actions as a hostile takeover, where a goon squad would appear and demand rapid changes to systems they knew little about.“They’ve only fired people and turned things off,” said a current federal employee, who agreed to speak anonymously for fear of retribution.Simultaneously, Doge staffers were aggressively gaining access to key data systems that controlled the flow of payments to federal workers and funding for government contracts. In one striking incident, Doge team members clashed with the highest ranking career official at the treasury department over access to a payment system that controls $6tn in annual funds. The fight ended with the official, David Lebryk, being put on administrative leave before he ultimately resigned. Doge staff obtained the access they wanted.Pushback against Doge from other officials resulted in similar punishments. As Doge staffers stormed into the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in early February, they found themselves in a heated standoff with security officials who tried to bar them from accessing a secure room which held sensitive and confidential data. The confrontation ended with USAID’s top security official being put on administrative leave, while Doge gained access to its systems. With no one to stop them, Doge staffers then began the process of hollowing out the agency that had once been the world’s largest single supplier of humanitarian aid. More than 5,600 USAID workers around the world would be fired in the ensuing weeks.“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk boasted days later on X, his social media platform.Musk moves to gut the governmentDoge’s targeting of USAID turned out to be a blueprint for how Musk and company would go after other parts of the government. In early February, Musk’s team had established a presence across federal agencies and placed itself at the fulcrum of government employment systems. The next step was mass layoffs.“We do need to delete entire agencies,” Musk told attendees at a World Governments Summit in Dubai on 13 February. “If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”The same day as Musk’s remarks, the Trump administration ordered agencies to fire thousands of probationary workers – a designation that applies to employees who have been at their jobs for less than a year, including those who may have been recently promoted. Other workers soon received an email from Doge that demanded they list five things that they did last week or face termination, a chaotic request that also turned out to be an empty threat. Cabinet officials privately deemed it nonsensical.Amid the widespread cuts, Musk began reveling in his new powers both on X and in public appearances. At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on 23 February he stood on stage in a black Maga hat, sunglasses and gold chain, gleefully wielding a chainsaw that was gifted to him by Javier Milei, the rightwing populist Argentinian president.“This chainsaw is for bureaucracy!” he said. “I am become meme.”While Musk celebrated his first cuts, Doge began going after entire offices and agencies it viewed as politically progressive or opposed to its goals. The GSA’s 18F office, which helped build software projects such as the IRS’s free tax filing service, was one of the first targets. On 3 February, Musk told a rightwing influencer on X that the office was “deleted” in response to an inaccurate post accusing the group of being radical leftists. Employees at the 18F office asked their new Musk-allied leadership what “deleted” meant, former workers said, but received no further clarification. The employees continued working for weeks under a cloud of confusion and tension with their new leaders, until the middle of the night on Saturday 1 March, when they received an email saying they were going to be laid off en masse.“We were living proof that the talking points of this administration were false. Government services can be efficient,” Lindsay Young, the former executive director of 18F, said in a post on LinkedIn. “This made us a target.”Doge’s influence soon extended beyond government tech offices into major agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, which announced in March that it was cutting 10,000 jobs to align with Trump’s executive order on Doge. In a display of the chaos that Doge had inspired, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr weeks later admitted that around 2,000 of those workers were fired in error and would need to be reinstated.Musk fights the judicial systemAs soon as Trump issued the executive order to create Doge, watchdog and labor groups filed lawsuits challenging its legality. More lawsuits piled on as Doge accessed sensitive data systems, fired workers and refused to respond to public records requests. Altogether, there have now been more than two dozen cases targeting the agency.At first, Doge and Musk seemed to move faster than the judicial system could respond as they slashed and burned government agencies. Around the start of March, however, many of the court cases began to produce rulings that curtailed Doge’s layoffs and temporarily blocked its staff’s access to data. Judges ruled that the Trump administration needed to reinstate probationary workers that they fired, limited some Doge access to databases at agencies such as the Social Security Administration and ordered Musk’s team to turn over internal records it had been seeking to keep private.Musk’s reaction was a constant stream of attacks against the judicial system on X, which included demands that lawmakers “impeach the judges” and claims that there was a “judicial coup” under way against Trump. Musk repeatedly amplified far-right influencers saying that the US should emulate El Salvador’s strongman president, Nayib Bukele, whose party ousted supreme court judges in 2021 in a slide toward authoritarianism.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile Musk campaigned against federal judges that were increasing oversight and forcing more transparency on Doge, he also began plowing money into a Wisconsin supreme court race that would have tipped the state’s judicial body conservative. The billionaire and the groups he funded put more than $20m toward electing a conservative judge, which he claimed was crucial to “the future of civilization”.The attempt to influence the Wisconsin vote followed his blueprint from the presidential race. His Super Pac offered $100 to voters willing to sign a petition stating their opposition to “activist judges”, and he held a campaign rally where he gave out $1m dollar checks on stage. Musk’s effort failed to convince voters, with his preferred candidate losing by 10 percentage points.The outcome of the Wisconsin supreme court race proved to be the first in a series of setbacks that tested the limits of Musk’s political influence and the toxicity of his personal brand. As the billionaire embraced his new role as a Republican mega-donor and placed himself often literally at center stage, it became clear that his routine did not always play well outside of the insulated bubbles of Maga rallies and Tesla product launches. While people saw more and more of Musk, polls showed that the public liked him less and less.Protests boom against Musk and TeslaAs Musk’s association with Trump and the international far right became too prominent to ignore over the past year, there has been a rising social stigma against associating with his products. The most tangible symbol of Musk’s empire, Tesla, has become the focus of an international protest movement since the creation of Doge. SpaceX, the second-largest source of Musk’s wealth, has seemed insulated from the vicissitudes of consumer sentiment and increased its role in US space operations.Protests at Tesla dealerships, as well as vandalism against individual cars, started small in the weeks after inauguration, with gatherings of a few dozen people in cities including New York City and San Francisco. Some Tesla owners sold their cars due to the association with Musk or placed “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy” bumper stickers on their vehicles. The demonstrations quickly escalated to more cities, though, organizing under the banner of “Tesla Takedown” protests that targeted showrooms around the country.By mid-March, a fully fledged international protest movement against Tesla and Musk had formed and brought about mass protests. Thousands of people gathered at showrooms from Sydney to San Francisco on 30 March in a day of action, with organizers stating that “hurting Tesla is stopping Musk”. Vandalism against Tesla dealerships, charging stations and cars also intensified around the world, including multiple molotov cocktail attacks and incidents of arson. Trump and Musk called the attacks domestic terrorism, while Pam Bondi, the attorney general, vowed to crack down on anyone targeting Tesla.The pressure on Tesla represented a real threat to the company, which was already dealing with an overall sluggish market for electric vehicles and increased competition from Chinese automakers. As protests spread, Musk leaned on his status in Maga world to attempt to revitalize the brand. Trump appeared on the White House driveway in front of several parked Teslas, telling reporters that he was going to buy one of them and praising Musk as a “patriot”. Others in Trump’s orbit, including Fox News host Sean Hannity, also posted sales pitches for the automaker.Despite praise from Trump and Musk’s assurances to workers and investors that they should not sell Tesla stock, analysts reported that the protests along with other economic issues were nevertheless taking a toll. A stock selloff has resulted in Tesla’s share price falling around 25% since the start of the year, wiping billions of dollars from Musk’s net worth. A first-quarter earnings call on 22 April revealed Tesla’s performance was even worse than expectations, with a 71% drop in profits and 9% drop in revenue year over year.Musk announced on the call that he would spend significantly less time working on Doge starting sometime in May.Musk eyes an exit, but Doge remainsMusk’s declaration that he would pare back his time with Doge to one or two days a week gave a more definitive sense of his exit after weeks of speculation about when and how he would leave the White House. Although Trump has remained adamant that Musk is doing a good job and remains welcome in the administration, a growing chorus of top officials have either openly feuded with him or privately griped about his presence throughout his first 100 days.Musk has had intense clashes with secretary of state Marco Rubio, transportation secretary Sean Duffy and several other top Trump staffers. He reportedly got into a near-physical shouting match with treasury secretary Scott Bessent in recent weeks, and has publicly called chief trade adviser Peter Navarro, the architect of Trump’s tariff policies, “dumber than a sack of bricks”.The power struggles between Musk and administration officials leave it unclear how much say Doge will have without Musk constantly placed at the right hand of the president, but his allies are still spread throughout the government and actively working on carrying out his mission. Doge has continued to target agencies throughout April, gutting smaller groups such as an agency that coordinates government policy on homelessness, and eyeing others including the Peace Corps for mass layoffs.Some of Doge’s cuts have directly targeted agencies that oversee Musk’s companies, including at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that regulates and investigates the risks of self-driving cars. Shifts in priorities and leadership at agencies such as Nasa and the Pentagon also put SpaceX in a position to potentially make billions off of new contracts, while former government employees say it is likely Doge already has access to confidential business data on SpaceX’s competitors.While part of the Doge team is still finding workers to fire, other members have begun accessing even more data systems and are starting to put them to work. One target has been immigration, where Doge staff have accessed personal information that includes therapy records for unaccompanied migrant children, housing information and biometric data. The goal, multiple outlets have reported, is to create a master database that could be used to enforce the Trump administration’s deportations and other anti-immigration maneuvers.Mission accomplished?As Doge’s purpose has become more amorphous over its first three months, its initially advertised goal of cutting $1-2tn from the budget has moved further from view. Musk has instead shifted the goal posts, saying that he expects to find $150bn in savings this year – a fraction of his original goal and a small dent in the overall federal budget. That number may also be an illusion, as Doge’s tally of its savings has been filled with constant errors and miscalculations. Much of Doge’s savings could also be erased by the costs of defending itself in court and losses associated with its mass layoffs.The real effects of Doge’s first 100 days are still playing out. Dismantling USAID is projected to cause around 176,000 excess deaths, more than half of them children, according to a Boston University tracking project. Cuts to agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association and Federal Emergency Management Agency could imperil natural disaster forecasting and relief. Agencies such as Veterans Affairs that provide public services may deteriorate, while cuts to research and education programs may be felt for decades to come.“The amazing thing is that they haven’t actually done anything constructive whatsoever. Literally all they’ve done is destroy things,” a current federal employee said of Doge. “People are going to miss the federal government that they had.” More

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      Tesla denies report claiming board looked to replace Elon Musk

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      Tesla has denied a report that its board sought to replace Elon Musk as its chief executive amid a backlash against his rightwing politics and declining car sales.Robyn Denholm, the chair of the board at the electric carmaker, said in a statement on Tesla’s social media account on X: “Earlier today, there was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company.“This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published). The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.”View image in fullscreenIt followed a Wall Street Journal story published on Wednesday that claimed “board members” had contacted headhunters to recruit a successor about a month ago.The reported move came as tensions grew at Tesla around falling profits and criticism of Musk for spending much of his time in Washington, where he has been helping Donald Trump slash federal spending as de facto head of the “department of government efficiency” (Doge).It is unclear in the report whether these members were acting on behalf of the board as a collective, or if it was only some of them taking steps to find a new chief executive. The Tesla board is made up of eight people, including Elon Musk himself, his brother, Kimbal Musk, and James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.Tesla has been hit by a widespread backlash against Musk’s recent political activity, not only against his Doge work, but also his public support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party before German national elections in February. Sales of the electric car have dropped in some of its biggest markets and there have been political protests at some of its showrooms.Last week, the company reported that profits had dropped by 71% in the first quarter of this year to $409m (£307m), compared with $1.39bn in the same period in 2024. Meanwhile, Tesla’s stock has suffered, with the company losing about a quarter of its market value this year.Musk told investors that starting from May he would be “allocating far more of my time to Tesla”. He is scheduled to leave his government role on 30 May, according to a strict 130-day cap on his service as a special government employee.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere have long been concerns around the demands on Musk’s time. As well as Tesla, he oversees four other companies, including the space exploration company SpaceX and the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.Musk denounced the Wall Street Journal report on X on Thursday. He wrote: “It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the @WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors!” More

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      Opt out: how to protect your data and privacy if you own a Tesla

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      Welcome to Opt Out, a semi-regular column in which we help you navigate your online privacy and show you how to say no to surveillance. The last column covered how to protect your phone and data privacy at the US border. If you’d like to skip to a section about a particular tip, click the “Jump to” menu at the top of this article.At the press of a button, your Tesla pulls itself out of parking spot with no one behind the wheel using a feature called Summon. It drives itself on highways using Autopilot. When you arrive at your destination, it can record nearby activity while parked with a feature called Sentry Mode.To effectively operate any of these features, your car needs to monitor and collect a large amount of data about you. Most Tesla vehicles come equipped with nine internal and external cameras. Information from your Tesla, delivered via location trackers, sensors and more, can paint an intricate picture of your life and movement.“Teslas are truly rolling surveillance platforms,” said John Davisson, a senior counsel and director of litigation at digital rights research group Electronic Privacy Information Center. “There are some privacy safeguards that Tesla offers that at least allow you, on the face of the settings, to opt out of data sharing … provided that Tesla is actually following through on those commitments.”Tesla isn’t alone in collecting a considerable amount of data to enable a suite of advanced features on your vehicle. Any connected car collects some level of information to operate. Some Tesla owners are newly concerned, given CEO Elon Musk’s role in Donald Trump’s administration.Those concerns are not entirely unfounded, according to Reem Suleiman, the director of advocacy at Mozilla Foundation, which gave Tesla a “privacy not included” grade in its assessment of the carmaker’s data security practices. For one, the company’s track record of protecting user data is shaky. In 2023, a Reuters investigation found that employees were sharing sensitive footage that vehicles captured in internal messaging forums. A Washington Post analysis of transparency reports published by Twitter and then X after Musk took over likewise showed that X acquiesced to 20% more government requests to remove content in just the first half of 2024 than Twitter did in all of 2021 – the last time the company published the transparency report.We spoke to privacy experts, consulted Tesla’s privacy policy and even asked Tesla’s own AI chatbot how to share the least amount of data with Tesla as possible. If you own a Tesla, there are some precautions you can and, in many cases, should take with regards to your vehicle. But be forewarned: adjusting these settings so that you share the least possible amount of data with Tesla will shut off access to many of your car’s functions.“They pretty much say that, if you choose to opt out of data collection, then your car is essentially a lemon,” Suleiman said. “They essentially say that your vehicle can have reduced functionality, serious damage or inoperability. So it’s kind of a non-choice, when you think about it.”Here’s what you need to know about your privacy in Tesla vehicles:What information is your Tesla collecting about you?Tesla’s privacy policy details a wide swath of data that its vehicles collect – most of which is stored locally but is also sent to the company unless you change your settings.According to Tesla’s AI chatbot, information collected on you includes: “location data (although Tesla doesn’t record or store vehicle-specific GPS information, except in the case of a crash); driving habits and behaviors (such as speed, braking patterns, and acceleration); diagnostic and vehicle usage data (to help improve Tesla’s products and services); infotainment system data (like browsing history and voice commands) and Autopilot data (camera recordings, sensor readings, and other inputs to support advanced safety features)”.The good news is that data can be collected and stored on your vehicle’s local drives if opt out of sharing information with the company. The bad news is that data can still be accessed if law enforcement somehow gets a hold of your vehicle during a traffic stop or other circumstance, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Davisson.And it’s not just your car that’s collecting information. The Tesla mobile app, from which you can activate Sentry Mode or Summon, also collects location, contact, browsing and device information. Read on for how to dial back how much your car monitors you.Who is Tesla sharing your data with?If you opt to share your data with Tesla, all of the data it collects on you may be shared with third parties, including law enforcement. According to the company’s privacy policy, in addition to sharing data with law enforcement when the company receives a valid court order, Tesla will also share data when it is “essential to protect national security or public safety”. Davisson says that language is vague and opens the door for video footage to be shared with law enforcement for any number of reasons. Recently, for instance, the FBI has categorized vandalism of Tesla vehicles and showrooms as “domestic terrorism”.“Especially now, when everything is apparently a national emergency, it’s a very short hop from that to considering immigration enforcement to be a safety issue that requires constant sharing of real-time footage to Ice or other law enforcement officials,” said Davisson. “And it’s a scary situation.”So how do you protect your data?Consider other vehiclesEveryone has a different risk profile when it comes to their privacy. Some people may be more concerned than others about who is gaining access to their personal information. It’s not just your own privacy you need to be cognizant of, however, as Tesla’s exterior cameras can collect footage of people around the vehicle as well.If you are concerned about information gathering and don’t already have a Tesla, privacy experts say you should opt for a different car. If you do have one and want to reclaim your privacy, sell it. Even Tesla’s AI chatbot gave similar advice.“If someone is deeply concerned about their privacy, they might consider alternatives, such as: 1 Opting for a vehicle manufacturer with more restrictive data collection practices (though this might come at the cost of reduced convenience features); 2 Exploring aftermarket solutions or modifications that could potentially reduce data sharing (though this might void warranties or introduce compatibility issues).”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFactory-reset your car before selling itSo you’ve already bought a Tesla, and you’ve decided to sell it. Suleiman and the Mozilla Foundation highly recommend factory-resetting the car before you do. That means your car will be wiped of all of its data as if it was just coming off the lot.“Just because you sell your car off doesn’t mean that you’ve scrubbed the data,” Suleiman said. “It requires a little bit of due diligence.”So before you take the vehicle off your Tesla account, you will need to factory-reset your car from your in-car settings. Sit in the driver’s seat and follow these steps:1 Go to Controls > Service > Factory Reset.2 Enter your Tesla account username and password to verify your credentials.3 Confirm that you want to perform a factory reset.“This will erase all personal data, including saved addresses, music favorites and imported contacts, and restore your car’s settings to their factory defaults,” according to Tesla’s AI chatbot. The company also recommends deleting your “HomeLink” devices – which can allow you to control things like your garage door, lights or home security system from your Tesla. Do that by clicking on the “HomeLink” icon at the top of the “Controls” screen then going to HomeLink settings, where you can remove connections to other devices.How to share the least amount of your data with TeslaIn the settings of your vehicle and the Tesla app, you can opt not to share your data with the company. But as we’ve said before, be prepared to lose some functionality of your car.Opting out of data-sharing in your car is fairly straightforward. In your vehicle, go to Settings > Software > Data sharing. Turn off “allow data sharing”. This will disable the sharing of analytics, road segment, diagnostic and vehicle usage data. Tesla’s AI chatbot also recommended turning off “allow Autopilot analytics” to stop sharing Autopilot-related data.Opt out of mobile app location and data sharing. In the Tesla app, go to Settings (the button will either look like three horizontal lines or a gear icon). Then scroll down to Security and Privacy. Then select turn off Location Services. Click Turn off Analytics to stop sharing app usage data to the company. Then revoke access to your camera, microphone and contacts.“By following these steps, you’ll be sharing the least amount of data with Tesla while still enjoying the core features and functionalities of your vehicle and mobile app,” according to the Tesla AI chatbot.But this will affect the functionality of your car. According to Tesla’s chatbot, data sharing will affect these features:“Remote vehicle monitoring and control through the mobile app (eg, checking your vehicle’s status, location, and surroundings); navigation and routing optimization (although basic navigation will still work); geofencing and smart preconditioning (your vehicle won’t be able to anticipate your arrival or departure); some Autopilot features, such as traffic-aware cruise control and automatic emergency braking, may not function optimally; over-the-air software updates might be delayed or unavailable; certain advanced safety features, like Emergency Services, may not work seamlessly.”“I don’t think it should be a trade-off,” Davisson said. “It is true that some of the collision avoidance systems and autonomous features on Teslas like other vehicles do rely on data collection and cameras. But it should not come at the cost of the privacy, certainly of the driver or passengers of the vehicle or for people that happen to be in the area surrounding the vehicle.” More