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      Tesla’s Falling Profit May Pressure Elon Musk to Return to Day Job

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      The carmaker is expected to report a decline in quarterly earnings after Tesla’s brand suffered because of its chief executive’s role in the Trump administration.Tesla is expected to report on Tuesday that its profits fell in the first three months of the year, which could increase the pressure on Elon Musk, the automaker’s chief executive, to curtail his work for President Trump and spend more time managing the company.Wall Street analysts expect Tesla to say its net profit declined slightly from $1.1 billion in the first quarter of 2024.Tesla sales have been slumping because of intense competition from Chinese carmakers like BYD, a lack of new models and Mr. Musk’s support of far-right causes, which has turned away some liberals and centrists from buying Tesla vehicles.Tesla remains the most valuable automaker in the world as measured by its stock price, but its shares have lost about half their value since mid-December as investors have grown more pessimistic about the company’s prospects and concerned about Mr. Musk’s role in the Trump administration.Tesla has steadily lost market share to Chinese carmakers and more established automakers, like General Motors, Volkswagen and Hyundai, that have been offering a growing selection of electric vehicles.Mr. Musk’s company once hoped to sell 20 million vehicles a year by the end of the decade, twice as many as Toyota. But sales have been sliding after climbing to 1.8 million in 2023. Last year, the company sold 1.7 million cars, and its global sales fell 13 percent in the first quarter of 2025 from a year earlier.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      MAGA Pronatalism Is Doomed to Fail

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      Long before Donald Trump said he wanted to be known as the “fertilization president,” Hungary was trying mightily to promote traditional families and raise its lagging birthrate. “We are living in times when fewer and fewer children are being born throughout Europe,” its prime minister, Viktor Orban, said in 2019. Immigration, he argued, was no answer to this demographic shortfall. “We do not need numbers, but Hungarian children,” he said. “In our minds, immigration means surrender.”He then announced a seven-point “family protection action plan” meant to encourage marriage and baby-making. It included government loans of 10 million Hungarian forints (at the time almost $35,000) to women under 40 when they married, which would be forgiven if they had at least three children. Large families would receive help buying cars and houses, and women who had at least four children would be exempt from personal income taxes for life.Hungary became the intellectual center of the global pronatalist movement, hosting right-wing thinkers from around the world at biannual “demographic summits” in Budapest. In 2021, giving a speech in Virginia about the “civilizational crisis” of low birthrates, JD Vance lauded Orban’s family policies and asked, “Why can’t we do that here?”Now that Vance is vice president, the administration might be about to try. “The White House has been hearing out a chorus of ideas in recent weeks for persuading Americans to get married and have more children,” The New York Times reported on Monday. Proposals include baby bonuses for American mothers and a new affirmative-action program that would set aside almost a third of Fulbright scholarships for people who are married or have kids. Malcolm and Simone Collins, oft-profiled pronatalists hoping to seed the future with their elite genes, reportedly sent the White House a draft executive order establishing a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women with at least six children. (Similar prizes existed in both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.)But if Trump really wanted to arrest the decline in America’s fertility rate — which reached a historic low of 1.62 births per woman in 2023 — the best thing he could do is resign in concert with his entire administration. The crude chauvinism his presidency represents is a major impediment to the creation of healthy families.There are plenty of people on the left who find fear of falling birthrates unseemly. I don’t blame them; the pronatalist milieu is rife with misogyny, white supremacy and eugenics. But rapidly declining fertility really is a problem. It’s likely to lead to stagnant, geriatric societies without enough young working people to maintain, let alone expand, the social safety net.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Government Watchdog Drops Inquiries Into Mass Firings of Probationary Workers

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      The independent government agency charged with protecting federal workers’ rights will drop its inquiry into the more than 2,000 complaints that the Trump administration had improperly fired probationary employees, according to emailed notices received by five workers and reviewed by The New York Times.The agency, the Office of Special Counsel, told affected employees that it had concluded that it could not pursue the claims of unlawful termination in part because they were fired not for individual cause, but en masse as part of President Trump’s “governmentwide effort to reduce the federal service.”The decision effectively eliminates one of the few avenues government employees had to challenge their terminations. It comes as Mr. Trump has forced out the office’s leader and replaced him for now with a loyal member of his cabinet, Doug Collins, the secretary of veterans affairs.The office is charged with protecting whistle-blowers from retaliation, which is the reason for its independent status and a Senate-confirmed leader. But it also scrutinizes other employment-related issues, including investigations into claims of prohibited personnel practices, or PPPs, such as discrimination, nepotism or an attempt to coerce political activity.Reached for comment, the Office of Special Counsel declined to say how many of the more than 2,000 fired probationary employees with pending complaints actually received the notice.Experts in federal employment law said the justifications to end the investigations were baffling at best.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat

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      The defense secretary sent sensitive information about strikes in Yemen to an encrypted group chat that included his wife and brother, people familiar with the matter said.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.The previously unreported existence of a second Signal chat in which Mr. Hegseth shared highly sensitive military information is the latest in a series of developments that have put his management and judgment under scrutiny.Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Mr. Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defense secretary, and was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” the people familiar with the chat said. He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Raised $239 Million for Inauguration, More Than Doubling His Own Record

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      The staggering amount, disclosed in a filing with the Federal Election Commission, was driven by corporate America’s eagerness to win the president’s favor.President Trump raised $239 million for his inauguration festivities in January, a norm-shattering amount fueled by corporate America’s desire to curry favor with a famously transactional president.The total, disclosed in a filing with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday, is more than double the previous record of $107 million set by Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee in 2017. About 140 different people or companies gave at least $1 million to the effort, including blue-chip companies like JPMorgan Chase, Delta Air Lines and Target.The committee, known formally as the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee, is required by federal law to report the names of donors and the dollar amounts for contributions over $200 to the F.E.C. no more than 90 days after the Jan. 20 ceremony. It is not required to report how it spent the money.Many of the donations to Mr. Trump’s inauguration were previously announced — such as $1 million each from tech giants like Meta and Amazon — in part because companies wanted it known widely that they were backing Mr. Trump’s formal return to power. But the report revealed a few names not well-publicized, including several friends of Elon Musk, such as tech investors like John Hering, Ken Howery and Keith Rabois, who each gave $1 million. (Neither Mr. Musk, a top presidential adviser, nor any of his companies donated.)The three largest contributions came from a poultry producer, Pilgrim’s, which donated $5 million; a crypto company, Ripple Inc., which donated just under that; and Warren Stephens, a Republican donor who gave $4 million on the same day, Dec. 2, that Mr. Trump named him as his pick to be ambassador to Britain.Inaugurations, even with several days of elaborate dinners and other events, have never cost anything near roughly a quarter-billion dollars, and the amount raised by the committee will resurface questions about where any leftover funds might go. The committee has not said how much money it has spent, but the president’s allies have said that the remaining amount will be funneled to other Trump-sponsored projects, primarily a nonprofit organization that will build his presidential library.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Meeting Wrongly Deported Man, Van Hollen Accuses Trump of Defying Courts

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      Senator Chris Van Hollen on Sunday accused the Trump administration of “outright defying” court orders to return a wrongly deported Maryland man whom Mr. Van Hollen met with in El Salvador last week, and he urged the administration to stop releasing unfavorable records about the man.“They are flouting the courts as we speak,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Facilitating his return means something more than doing nothing, and they are doing nothing.”Mr. Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, traveled to El Salvador last week to press for the release of the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported to a notorious Salvadoran prison in March in what an administration lawyer described as an “administrative error.”A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to take a more active role in bringing back Mr. Abrego Garcia, a few days after the Supreme Court ruled that the government should “facilitate” his return from El Salvador.Instead, the White House has publicized an allegation of domestic abuse from Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife from 2021, when she sought a protective order. Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife said last week that the two “were able to work through this situation privately.”The administration also cited a police filing from a Tennessee trooper who stopped Mr. Abrego Garcia on a highway in 2022 and raised suspicion of human trafficking. Federal law enforcement officials instructed the trooper not to detain him, and Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife has said he routinely drove workers to their jobs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alito Releases Dissent in Supreme Court Decision Blocking Deportations

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      Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented in the Supreme Court’s decision on Saturday to block the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under a rarely invoked 18th century wartime law, calling the court’s order “hastily and prematurely granted.”In his five-page dissent released on Saturday shortly before midnight, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that in his view, the court’s decision to intervene overnight was not “necessary or appropriate.”The court’s unsigned, one-paragraph order came after a fast-moving legal battle late Friday. The American Civil Liberties Union had rushed to several lower courts, then to the Supreme Court, claiming that the Trump administration was planning to deport more Venezuelan migrants, presumably to El Salvador, with little to no due process under the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act.The Supreme Court’s decision ordered a pause on the deportations of the detainees while it considers the emergency application.Read Justice Alito’s DissentJustice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision to block the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan migrants under a wartime law was premature.Read Document 5 pagesThe order suggested a deep skepticism on the court about whether the Trump administration could be trusted to live up to the key part of an earlier ruling that said detainees were entitled to be notified if the government intended to deport them under the law, “within a reasonable time,” and in a way that would allow the deportees to challenge the move.“In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief,” Justice Alito wrote in his dissent, “without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order.”Justice Alito said that he had refused to join the court’s order because “we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate.” More

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      In Trump’s America, There Are No Rules, Only Access

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      Daniel JurmanOne of the most dramatic policy reversals in U.S. economic history happened this month. In the span of just a few days, President Trump announced sweeping tariff increases, panicking global markets, and then partially backed down — all without meaningful consultation with Congress or much evidence his administration used a rational process to arrive at the numbers.Economists, who don’t often agree on much, greeted the plan with near unanimous criticism and a fair degree of derision. Few if any political analysts could articulate a coherent rationale for why threatening to launch a trade war on most nations on earth would make strategic sense.Yet in a way it does, because the real story may not be about trade. Looked at in a different way, it’s about power.In principle, it is not up to the president to decide unilaterally whether to impose tariffs, or on which countries to impose them. The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution clearly vests this authority in Congress. However, Mr. Trump made use of his powers to restrict trade under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to regulate trade during economic emergencies. The president effectively declared that the executive branch could bypass Congress’s constitutional authority.Financial markets seemed to grasp this. Unlike past global crises, this episode did not send investors fleeing into the dollar’s safety. Quite the opposite: The dollar dropped sharply when the tariffs were announced and continued to fall even after the administration reversed course. This suggests that investors are anxious about much more than just the economic damage from protectionist policies. They’re worried about the United States no longer being a safe place to hold their assets. They have good reason to be concerned.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More