Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker The billionaire fired thousands of workers but savings are minimal and offset by degradation of services As Elon Musk steps back from his role heading the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) many experts on government operations complain that Doge has done nothing to improve the quality of services the government provides to the American people “Doge is not offering any solid claims that it has improved services in any way,” said Donald Moynihan a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan it has made the quality of some government services worse.” Musk, the world’s richest man, was appointed to run the government efficiency drive by Donald Trump in January and as a “special government employee” was barred from working for more than 180 days for the administration. He also has his own business woes to attend to. Read moreBut on his way out of the White House, Musk has boasted that Doge has achieved $150bn in savings, although many budget experts question the accuracy of that figure. Musk has repeatedly made exaggerated and erroneous claims about savings which are a fraction of Musk’s goal of $1tn in cuts Moynihan and other public policy experts said it was unfortunate that Musk and Doge took the hard-charging focus of profit-maximizing business executives – of aggressively seeking to cut jobs and payroll – instead of adopting a broader focus aimed at making government more efficient while improving services the executive director of the Yale Budget Lab said Musk evidently has little interest in making services better “They were the ‘department of government slash and burn’,” Gimbel said “There doesn’t seem to be an approach to dig in on places where government services could really be improved Any improvement in government services takes time There has clearly been a degeneration of government servicesMartha Gimbel of the Yale Budget LabAsked whether Musk and Doge had improved any government services “There has clearly been a degeneration of government services.” Public policy experts and members of the public have pointed to numerous ways that government services have deteriorated due to Doge’s cuts There have been longer waiting times to get appointments at veterans’ hospitals longer waits when people call the Internal Revenue Service The departure of many highly experienced social security employees has led to workers with far less training giving advice on benefits Read moreMusk acknowledged that his $1tn goal had been far harder to reach than he had anticipated how much pain is the cabinet and the Congress willing to take?” he said but it requires dealing with a lot of complaints.” The White House did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the deterioration of some government services or to the Guardian’s request for any examples of how Doge has improved services Gimbel said that Americans don’t realize that many government services will get worse in coming months as the tens of thousands of Doge-ordered job cuts play out. “Things will definitely get worse,” she said. For instance, the administration has far to go in carrying out its plan to cut 80,000 employees in the Department of Veterans Affairs While many public policy experts say Trump and Musk wildly exaggerate in their claims that there is huge waste Gimbel said there is of course waste in government “People who have been in government know where those places are There is a ton of tech that needs modernizing There’s a lot of Medicare and Medicaid overbilling Doge doesn’t seem interested in that either What you have is a relatively expensive exercise in slash-and-burn that sometime in the future will cost a lot to fix.” It’s hard to offer any rational basis for the decisions that are being made There certainly aren’t any improvements that the American public will seeMax Stier of the Partnership for Public ServiceMax Stier the president of the Partnership for Public Service said that many business executives – including Jack Welch the former General Electric CEO famed for cost-cutting and increasing profits – would be unhappy with Musk’s quick and brutal cuts Stier complained that Musk and his team of twentysomething tech whizzes made steep cuts while knowing little about an agency’s operations or about the qualifications and responsibilities of the people they fired or pushed out Free newsletterA deep dive into the policies controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration “Jack Welch would be appalled by the approach that Doge has taken,” Stier said ever have fired people without having a real understanding about the way the organization worked and about the qualities of people who were being fired This is an arbitrary exercise that has moved out employees who are often by far the most qualified rather than the least qualified.” Stier noted that Trump has described Doge as an exercise in cost-cutting and organizational improvement “It’s hard to offer any rational basis for the decisions that are being made There certainly aren’t any improvements that the American public will see.” “It’s burning down government capability,” he continued “It’s unquestionably clear that they are firing people willy-nilly and are disrupting government services without any understanding of the consequences or concern about the consequences It isn’t a mentality that predominates in Silicon Valley It’s sheer reckless behavior in the public sector because real people get hurt.” And several public policy experts said the increased wait times and hassles the public will face due to Doge’s cuts should also be subtracted from the $150bn Moynihan said Musk has precisely the wrong vision for someone tasked with making government more efficient “His vision is that there is no way that government employees can produce anything of value,” Moynihan said “So the idea of tools that makes government services better is completely alien to the Musk mindset “I think he believes that nothing public employees do has any real value that they are not capable employees and therefore cutting them will do no harm,” Moynihan added “It’s a vision that doesn’t understand what public services are why they exist and how they benefit people.” She pointed to the sharp cuts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health does important research to ensure that firefighters’ personal protective equipment is safe as possible “There’s this notion that Doge is just cutting line items on a spreadsheet It’s hurting real lives and real people,” Shuler said “They’ve treated federal workers with blatant disregard and have been nothing short of dehumanizing and insulting toward them.” Gimbel of the Yale Budget Lab warned of another downside to Doge’s cuts. “Part of what government does is mitigate risk,” she said. “Take food safety. Government inspectors decrease the risk that you will get listeria or salmonella. But when they reduce the number of food inspectors will you get listeria or salmonella tomorrow Will it probably increase the chances of people getting listeria and salmonella over the next five years Log in to comment on videos and join in on the fun Watch the live stream of Fox News and full episodes Reduce eye strain and focus on the content that matters The company's CEO is its 'greatest asset and gravest risk' Will he stay or will he go? Tesla last week shot down a report that its board is searching for a new CEO to replace Elon Musk atop the company But questions about the company's future are not going away any new CEO "will be operating in Musk's shadow." it has become clear that his political work is a "business liability." From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox Musk is Tesla's "greatest asset and gravest risk," said Bloomberg Succession planning would be a sign that the company board is "looking out for investors." After all any "reasonable set of directors" would be "taking steps to find a successor" to a CEO running "multiple companies" and making political waves "liable to trash the brand." Instead Tesla's EV business has been in "decline for much of the past two years," while the board of directors stood by and failed to act That reveals the "hollowness of the board" that ostensibly oversees Musk Tesla has sent a message that Musk "isn't untouchable," said Quartz The report of the board's willingness to replace him was likely part of a "game of high-stakes poker between the board and Musk" in which the board was firing a "warning shot," said Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives It is likely Musk will remain CEO for at least five years "Is Musk bigger than Tesla?" said Gene Munster managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com Joel Mathis, The Week USSocial Links NavigationJoel Mathis is a writer with 30 years of newspaper and online journalism experience His work also regularly appears in National Geographic and The Kansas City Star His awards include best online commentary at the Online News Association and (twice) at the City and Regional Magazine Association. Andrew Stanton is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in Maine. His role is reporting on U.S. politics and social issues. Andrew joined Newsweek in 2021 from The Boston Globe. He is a graduate of Emerson College. You can get in touch with Andrew by emailing a.stanton@newsweek.com either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content Tesla investor Ross Gerber told Newsweek that he believes Elon Musk could be behind The Wall Street Journal report that the electric-vehicle manufacturer's board has considered ousting him as CEO Newsweek reached out to Tesla for comment via email on Friday The Journal reported this week, citing "people familiar with the discussions," that the Tesla board has considered removing Musk as the company's CEO amid the political backlash. Both Musk and the Tesla board have denied the report Musk, in a post to X, formerly Twitter wrote that it is an "EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS" that the Journal would "publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors!" in a phone interview with Newsweek on Thursday said he believes it is possible Musk himself could have been behind the report has not publicly indicated that he is interested in stepping away from Tesla "This news is basically because Elon is probably looking for someone to replace him at Tesla," Gerber told Newsweek Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, owned more than 250,000 shares of Tesla stock as of March. In August 2024, he told Business Insider that he dumped $60 million of stock in the company. He previously called for the Tesla board to oust Musk as CEO He said he believes Musk could be removed as the company's CEO but take over as board chair still allowing him to exert influence and control behind the scenes A Musk confidant like JB Straubel could then replace Musk as CEO This could allow the company to have enough of a "marketing separation" from Musk to mitigate backlash and get consumers to return to purchasing Tesla products while also giving Musk the opportunity to focus on working on other endeavors like xAI Gerber said he would be supportive of the move Investors want to see how Musk can "still be a driving force" for the company but want a "less visible approach" to his involvement "That's exactly what needs to happen and that's what happens everywhere else Elon's not all of the sudden not going to get control During a Tesla earnings call in April Musk said he plans to reduce the amount of time he is spending at DOGE He still plans to spend a day or two each week at the department Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm wrote 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." in a statement reported by Axios: "We stand by our reporting Tesla was given the opportunity to provide a statement before publication Musk said last month that he would return to Tesla in May and continue his work for DOGE while not indicating that he plans to step away from the company in the near future Tesla's stock rebounded a bit following news of his return Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground Newsweek is committed to journalism that's factual and fair Hold us accountable and submit your rating of this article on the meter. Newsletters in your inbox See all By Stuart A. Thompson Anastasia Maria Loupis runs a popular account on X that used to receive hundreds of thousands of views each day for her far-right commentary conspiracy theories and antisemitic statements over his support for visa programs that many of President Trump’s supporters despise Her reach plummeted on X and never recovered he promised to create a free speech haven and named himself a “free speech absolutist.” Musk would use his control of the app to pick and choose his favorites amplifying voices he admired while suppressing people or topics he loathed The New York Times found three users on X who feuded with Mr Musk in December only to see their reach on the social platform practically vanish overnight The accounts are the starkest signs yet that Mr Musk or others at the company have the power to punish critics and that they may be willing to use it startling free speech advocates who hoped that the billionaire would be their champion Concerns about Mr. Musk’s influence have grown alongside his political ambitions as one of President Trump’s closest allies. He has also set his sights on boosting far-right politics across the world “This is working against the type of environment that he claimed he wanted to build,” said Ari Cohn, the lead counsel for technology policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression “Don’t sit here and cloak yourself in the First Amendment and free speech It is not clear what precisely happened to the three accounts that feuded with Mr Dozens of other users also said their accounts were impacted after criticizing the billionaire but The Times reviewed data for those accounts and did not find clear evidence that their visibility was severely impacted the algorithms that control a post’s distribution — and the data that fuels those decisions — are impossible for outsiders to scrutinize Mr. Musk has offered several clues to what happened, writing on X amid the feud that if powerful accounts blocked or muted others, their reach would be sharply limited. (Mr. Musk is the most popular user on X with more than 219 million followers, so his actions to block or mute users could hold significant sway.) He also suggested that he might have kicked some users off X’s premium program which boosts the visibility of paying subscribers Doing so would effectively curtail their reach and prevent them from making money on X A spokesman for X declined to comment. In a post about its moderation policies, the company wrote that it had several tools to limit the visibility of posts or users or remove content based on an individual’s views or opinions.” Like Ms. Loupis, Laura Loomer is used to picking fights on X as a far-right influencer who has gained over a million followers spreading falsehoods, conspiracy theories and racism, branding herself as an unflinching ally of Mr But things changed when she turned her sights on Mr writing that he was “exposed” over his support for the visa programs It stayed that way for weeks until her posts started gaining traction again — just as Mr Musk started interacting with her posts once more Loomer also briefly lost access to X Premium after feuding with Mr which might have explained the declining popularity of her posts But a Times analysis found no clear relationship between the popularity of her posts and when she was removed from and reinstated to the program “Thank you very much @elonmusk for giving me back my monetization tonight,” she wrote on X in February she also lost the ability to earn money from her paid subscribers and from X’s revenue program which shares ad dollars with premium users She estimated in an interview that she lost about $50,000 from X during the period when her account was suppressed “I think it’s wrong to say it’s a free speech platform and then shut off people’s ability to monetize,” Ms Ms. Loupis and Ms. Loomer contributed to a torrent of criticism against Mr. Musk over his position on visas for skilled workers Many Trump supporters with anti-immigrant views want such programs shuttered Loomer’s posts returned to their previous highs Loupis opened a second account on X in a bid to circumvent any suppression against her Despite having a fraction of the followers posts on her new account are getting more views than those posted to her original account She wrote in January that she planned to sue Mr “It has turned out to be all lies from him,” said Ms “It's disappointing because we supported him and believed in him very Mr. Musk has been accused of abusing his control over X before, though not in this exact way. A group of prominent journalists were suddenly suspended in 2022 Musk suggested at the time that they had violated the site’s privacy rules by posting personal information Their accounts were later reinstated without explanation The third user The Times identified was Owen Shroyer, a far-right activist and host of a show on Infowars the streaming platform home to many conspiracy theorists Shroyer found that his followers would see his posts if they were online when he posted them “My theory is that someone is manipulating reach based off of personal writing instead that “some of the powers he has delegated could be being abused.” X offers few tools to monitor the social network Musk has disabled some features that had allowed researchers to monitor changes on the platform The Times used a service that collects data from X to analyze views for dozens of users involved in various feuds with Mr Musk for changes in their daily impressions Musk have claimed they were quietly suppressed on the platform a tactic known as shadowbanning or ghost banning Though The Times did not identify other accounts that were artificially suppressed such changes would be difficult to spot if users did not post frequently who has more than one million followers on her original account really big influencers with millions of followers Before Mr. Musk bought the platform in 2022, when it was known as Twitter, many right-wing users had criticized the company for shadowbanning. Mr. Musk wrote in November last year that “there is no shadowbanning anymore.” At the same time, he has said that he believes in “freedom of speech not freedom of reach,” meaning that the platform would not bar people for hateful content but would make it harder to find such content “There will always be critics,” Mr. Musk wrote in February last year “What is perhaps notable is that I don’t attempt to silence them even on a platform that I own.” Share full article909909Ken Bensinger contributed reporting a team of advisers from President Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived at the Southeast Washington headquarters of the National Labor Relations Board independent federal agency investigates and adjudicates complaints about unfair labor practices It stores reams of potentially sensitive data from confidential information about employees who want to form unions to proprietary business information who are effectively led by White House adviser and billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk appeared to have their sights set on accessing the NLRB's internal systems They've said their unit's overall mission is to review agency data for compliance with the new administration's policies and to cut costs and maximize efficiency But according to an official whistleblower disclosure shared with Congress and other federal overseers that was obtained by NPR subsequent interviews with the whistleblower and records of internal communications technical staff members were alarmed about what DOGE engineers did when they were granted access particularly when those staffers noticed a spike in data leaving the agency It's possible that the data included sensitive information on unions ongoing legal cases and corporate secrets — data that four labor law experts tell NPR should almost never leave the NLRB and that has nothing to do with making the government more efficient or cutting spending according to the disclosure and records of internal communications members of the DOGE team asked that their activities not be logged on the system and then appeared to try to cover their tracks behind them turning off monitoring tools and manually deleting records of their access — evasive behavior that several cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR compared to what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do The employees grew concerned that the NLRB's confidential data could be exposed particularly after they started detecting suspicious log-in attempts from an IP address in Russia the IT department launched a formal review of what it deemed a serious ongoing security breach or potentially illegal removal of personally identifiable information The whistleblower believes that the suspicious activity warrants further investigation by agencies with more resources like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or the FBI The labor law experts interviewed by NPR fear that if the data gets out including by private companies with cases before the agency that might get insights into damaging testimony legal strategies and internal data on competitors — Musk's SpaceX among them It could also intimidate whistleblowers who might speak up about unfair labor practices and it could sow distrust in the NLRB's independence The new revelations about DOGE's activities at the labor agency come from a whistleblower in the IT department of the NLRB who disclosed his concerns to Congress and the U.S Office of Special Counsel in a detailed report that was then provided to NPR his attempts to raise concerns internally within the NLRB preceded someone "physically taping a threatening note" to his door that included sensitive personal information and overhead photos of him walking his dog that appeared to be taken with a drone according to a cover letter attached to his disclosure filed by his attorney Andrew Bakaj of the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid The whistleblower's account is corroborated by internal documentation and was reviewed by 11 technical experts across other government agencies and the private sector NPR spoke to over 30 sources across the government cybersecurity and law enforcement who spoke to their own concerns about how DOGE and the Trump administration might be handling sensitive data Much of the following account comes from the whistleblower's official disclosure and interviews with NPR "I can't attest to what their end goal was or what they're doing with the data," said the whistleblower "But I can tell you that the bits of the puzzle that I can quantify are scary This is a very bad picture we're looking at." It's unclear how or whether DOGE is protecting the privacy of that data is reflective of the current climate of fear and intimidation toward whistleblowers denied that the agency granted DOGE access to its systems and said DOGE had not requested access to the agency's systems Bearese said the agency conducted an investigation after Berulis raised his concerns but "determined that no breach of agency systems occurred." the whistleblower's disclosure to Congress and other federal overseers includes forensic data and records of conversations with colleagues that provide evidence of DOGE's access and activities NPR's extensive reporting makes clear that DOGE's access to data is a widespread concern 11 sources directly familiar with internal operations in federal agencies and in Congress told NPR that they share Berulis' concerns and some have seen other evidence that DOGE is exfiltrating sensitive data for unknown reasons White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement "It is months-old news that President Trump signed an Executive Order to hire DOGE employees at agencies and coordinate data sharing Their highly-qualified team has been extremely public and transparent in its efforts to eliminate waste Instead of a brand-new car for a 16th-birthday present It's a familiar story for tech nerds the world over: He methodically took the machine apart "to figure out how it works," just like he had dissected radios from the thrift store years earlier Berulis was always interested in public service A knee injury prevented him from joining the military He served as a volunteer firefighter for a period and donated his time working for a local rape crisis hotline answering calls from victims in need of someone to listen "I had an interest in serving my country." Berulis had been a technical consultant for many years including in auditing and modernizing corporate systems when a job opened up at the National Labor Relations Board While he didn't know much about the agency Berulis quickly found its mission to protect employees' rights in line with his long-standing desire "to help people." He started about six months before President Trump was inaugurated for his second term this past January securing the NLRB's cloud-based data servers and reinforcing what's called "zero trust" principles which means that users can get access only to the parts of the system they need in order to do their jobs — no more if an attacker gets hold of a single username and password the attacker can't access the whole system "There was a great opportunity to build up and do some good." But after the inauguration he described a "culture of fear" descending over the agency engineers associated with DOGE arrived at the NLRB's headquarters programming languages and applications the NLRB was using DOGE learned that it used commercially available cloud infrastructure that businesses typically use which connects to government cloud systems at other agencies and can be accessed remotely Berulis said he and several colleagues saw a black SUV and police escort enter the garage after which building security let the DOGE staffers in They interacted with a small number of staffers never introducing themselves to most of the IT team Berulis says he was told by colleagues that DOGE employees demanded the highest level of access what are called "tenant owner level" accounts inside the independent agency's computer systems with essentially unrestricted permission to read When an IT staffer suggested a streamlined process to activate those accounts in a way that would let their activities be tracked the IT staffers were told to stay out of DOGE's way For cybersecurity professionals, a failure to log activity is a cardinal sin and contradicts best practices as recommended by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as well as the FBI and the National Security Agency It violates every core concept of security and best practice." Those forensic digital records are important for record-keeping requirements and they allow for troubleshooting but they also allow experts to investigate potential breaches sometimes even tracing the attacker's path back to the vulnerability that let them inside a network The records can also help experts see what data might have been removed Basic logs would likely not be enough to demonstrate the extent of a bad actor's activities There's no reason for any legitimate user to turn off logging or other security tools the executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy and former acting principal deputy national cyber director at the White House in an interview with NPR about the whistleblower's disclosure "This type of activity is why the government buys insider-threat-monitoring technology So we can know things like this are happening and stop sensitive data exfiltration before it happens," he told NPR the NLRB's budget hasn't had the money to pay for tools like that for years Berulis saw something else that alarmed him while browsing the internet over the weekend Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate and DOGE engineer Jordan Wick had been sharing information about coding projects he was working on to his public account with GitHub a website that allows developers to create After journalist Roger Sollenberger started posting on X about the account Berulis noticed something Wick was working on: a project Wick made it private before Berulis could investigate further whoa.'" He immediately alerted his whole team While NPR was unable to recover the code for that project the name itself suggests that Wick could have been designing a backdoor or "Bdoor," to extract files from the NLRB's internal case management system according to several cybersecurity experts who reviewed Berulis' conclusions Wick did not respond to NPR's requests for comment "It definitely seems rather odd to name it that," said one of the engineers who built NxGen and asked for anonymity so as not to jeopardize their ability to work with the government again if you're not worried about consequences." "The whole idea of removing logging and [getting] tenant-level access is the most disturbing part to me," the engineer said NxGen is an internal system that was designed specifically for the NLRB in-house according to several of the engineers who created the tool and who all spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation or adverse consequences for any future government work The engineers explained that while many of the NLRB's records are eventually made public the NxGen case management system hosts proprietary data from corporate competitors personal information about union members or employees voting to join a union Access to that data is protected by numerous federal laws Those engineers were also concerned by DOGE staffers' insistence that their activities not be logged allowing them to probe the NLRB's systems and discover information about potential security flaws or vulnerabilities without being detected any [chief information security officer] worth his salt would look at network activity like this and assume it's a nation-state attack from China or Russia," said Braun the DOGE engineers had left the NLRB and deleted their accounts according to Berulis' disclosure to Congress Berulis had had limited visibility into what the DOGE team was up to in real time the NLRB isn't advanced when it comes to detecting insider threats or potentially malicious actors inside the agency itself "We as an agency have not evolved to account for those," he explained "We were looking for [bad actors] outside," he said But he counted on DOGE leaving at least a few traces of its activity behind puzzle pieces he could assemble to try to put together a picture of what happened — details he included in his official disclosure First, at least one DOGE account was created and later deleted for use in the NLRB's cloud systems, hosted by Microsoft: "DogeSA_2d5c3e0446f9@nlrb.microsoft.com." DOGE engineers installed what's called a "container," a kind of opaque virtual computer that can run programs on a machine without revealing its activities to the rest of the network though it did allow the engineers to work invisibly and left no trace of its activities once it was removed Berulis started tracking sensitive data leaving the places it's meant to live he saw a chunk of data exiting the NxGen case management system's "nucleus," inside the NLRB system he saw a large spike in outbound traffic leaving the network itself added up to around 10 gigabytes — or the equivalent of a full stack of encyclopedias if someone printed them It's a sizable chunk of the total data in the NLRB system though the agency itself hosts over 10 terabytes in historical data It's unclear which files were copied and removed or whether they were consolidated and compressed which could mean even more data was exfiltrated It's also possible that DOGE ran queries looking for specific files in the NLRB's system and took only what it was looking for because data almost never directly leaves from the NLRB's databases Berulis shared a screenshot tracking data entering and exiting the system and there's only one noticeable spike of data going out He also confirmed that no one at the NLRB had been saving backup files that week or migrating data for any projects Even when external parties like lawyers or overseers like the inspector general are granted guest accounts on the system it's only to view the files relevant to their case or investigation explained labor law experts who worked with or at the NLRB "None of that confidential and deliberative information should ever leave the agency," said Richard Griffin who was the NLRB general counsel from 2013 to 2017 that spike in data leaving the system is a key indicator of a breach "We are under assault right now," he remembered thinking When Berulis asked his IT colleagues whether they knew why the data was exfiltrated or whether anyone else had been using containers to run code on the system in recent weeks no one knew anything about it or the other unusual activities on the network they found that logs that were used to monitor outbound traffic from the system were absent had no attribution — except to a "deleted account," he continued "Nobody knows who deleted the logs or how they could have gone missing," Berulis said The IT team met to discuss insider threats — namely whose activities it had little insight into or control over "We had no idea what they did," he explained Those conversations are reflected in his official disclosure They eventually launched a formal breach investigation and prepared a request for assistance from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) those efforts were disrupted without an explanation who felt he needed help to try to get to the bottom of what happened and determine what new vulnerabilities might be exploited as a result In the days after Berulis and his colleagues prepared a request for CISA's help investigating the breach Berulis found a printed letter in an envelope taped to his door sensitive personal information and overhead pictures of him walking his dog according to the cover letter attached to his official disclosure but the letter made specific reference to his decision to report the breach Law enforcement is investigating the letter "If the underlying disclosure wasn't concerning enough physical intimidation and surveillance of my client is it is likely happening to others and brings our nation more in line with authoritarian regimes than with open and free democracies," wrote Bakaj "It is time for everyone – and Congress in particular – to acknowledge the facts and stop our democracy something that will take generations to repair." In part because of the stymied internal investigation and the attempts to silence him Berulis managed to uncover some stranger and more troubling details about what happened while DOGE was logged on which he enumerated in his official declaration Unknown users also gave themselves a high-level access key meaning "shared access signature," to access storage accounts Berulis said there was no way to track what they did with it Someone had disabled controls that would prevent insecure or unauthorized mobile devices from logging on to the system without the proper security settings There was an interface exposed to the public internet potentially allowing malicious actors access to the NLRB's systems Internal alerting and monitoring systems were found to be manually turned off And Berulis noticed that an unknown user had exported a "user roster," a file with contact information for outside lawyers who have worked with the NLRB Berulis said he noticed five PowerShell downloads on the system a task automation program that would allow engineers to run automated commands There were several code libraries that got his attention — tools that he said appeared to be designed to automate and mask data exfiltration There was a tool to generate a seemingly endless number of IP addresses called "requests-ip-rotator," and a commonly used automation tool for web developers called "browserless" — both repositories starred or favorited by Wick according to an archive of his GitHub account reviewed by NPR While investigating the data taken from the agency Berulis tried to determine its ultimate destination But whoever had exfiltrated it had disguised its destination too DOGE staffers had permission to access the system Berulis says someone appeared to be doing something called DNS tunneling to prevent the data exfiltration from being detected after he saw a traffic spike in DNS requests parallel to the data being exfiltrated a spike 1,000 times the normal number of requests they set up a domain name that pings the target system with questions or queries But they configure the compromised server so that it answers those DNS queries by sending out packets of data allowing the attacker to steal information that has been broken down into smaller chunks "We've seen Russian threat actors do things like this on U.S government systems," said one threat intelligence researcher who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly by their employer who has extensive experience hunting nation-state-sponsored hackers reviewed the whistleblower's technical claims they were given the keys to the front door," the researcher continued While the researcher clarified that it would be difficult to fully verify what happened without full access to the NLRB system they said Berulis' conclusions and accompanying evidence were a cause for concern who served in the FBI for a decade in various cybersecurity roles also reviewed Berulis' extensive technical forensic records and analysis and spoke to NPR about his conclusions I would have to report this [breach] to the Securities and Exchange Commission The timeline of events demonstrates a lack of respect for the institution and for the sensitivity of the data that was exfiltrated There is no reason to increase the security risk profile by disabling security controls and exposing them They didn't exercise the more prudent standard practice of copying the data to encrypted and local media for escort." there's no way to definitively prove who did it," Handorf concluded DOGE's intentions with regard to the NLRB data remain unclear. Many of the systems that DOGE embedded itself in across the rest of the government have payment or employment data information that it could use to evaluate which grants and programs to halt and whom to fire But the case management system is very different It houses information about ongoing contested labor cases personal information from Social Security numbers to home addresses proprietary corporate data and more information that never gets published openly Experts interviewed by NPR acknowledge that there are inefficiencies across government that warrant further review but they say they don't see a single legitimate reason that DOGE staffers would need to remove the data from the case management system to resolve those problems "There is no reason whatsoever for accessing the information But what you need for that is people who understand what the agency does putting algorithms in and creating a breach of security," said Harley Shaiken a professor emeritus at the University of California Berkeley who specializes in labor and information technology "There is nothing that I can see about what DOGE is doing that follows any of the standard procedures for how you do an audit that has integrity and that's meaningful and will actually produce results that serve the normal auditing function the executive director of Harvard Law School's Center for Labor and a Just Economy and a former NLRB board member "The mismatch between what they're doing and the established professional way to do what they say they're doing .. that they are not actually about finding more efficient ways for the government to operate," Block said the mere possibility that sensitive records were copied is a serious danger that could create a chilling effect for employees everywhere who turn to the National Labor Relations Board for protection "Just saying that they have access to the data is intimidating," said Kate Bronfenbrenner the director of labor education research at Cornell University and co-director of the Worker Empowerment Research Network 'I'm not going to testify before the board because the child of immigrant parents who fled the Soviet Union and Nazi-controlled Germany said she spends a lot of time thinking about how systems can crumble under the right circumstances there's this belief that we have these checks and balances … but anyone who's part of the labor movement should know that's not true," she told NPR it would make it easier for companies to fire employees for union organizing or keep blacklists of organizers — illegal activities under federal labor laws enforced by the NLRB But "people get fired in this country all the time for the lawful act of trying to organize a union," said Block Having a copy of the opposing counsel's notes as companies prepare for legal challenges would also be an attractive possibility It's not just employees who might suffer if this data got out Companies also sometimes provide detailed statements on internal business planning and corporate structure in the midst of unfair-labor-practice complaint proceedings If a company was attempting to fire someone who it alleged had disclosed trade secrets and was fighting an unfair-labor-practice complaint based around that decision those trade secrets might come up in the board's investigation too That information would be valuable to competitors the potential exposure of the NLRB's data could have serious implications "I think it is very concerning," said Shaiken "It could result in damage to individual workers to union-organizing campaigns and to unions themselves," he said "It is bringing a wrecking ball into the dentist office meaning this is wildly disproportionate and raises real dangers," Shaiken continued Labor law experts were particularly concerned about what they described as clear conflicts of interest his companies and his vast network of former employees and allies who are now getting access to government jobs and data Trump and Musk, during an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity, said Musk would recuse himself from anything involving his companies. "I haven't asked the president for anything ever," Musk said "I'm getting a sort of a daily proctology exam here it's not like I'll be getting away [with] something in the dead of night." However DOGE has been granted high-level access to a lot of data that could benefit Musk and there has been no evidence of a firewall preventing misuse of that data Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. raised his concerns about Musk accessing sensitive labor investigation data on cases against his companies or competitors during the confirmation hearing for Trump's labor secretary He pressed her to answer whether she believed the NLRB is constitutional and to commit to keeping sensitive data confidential While she said she was committed to "privacy" and said she respects the NLRB's "authority," she insisted that Trump "has the executive power to exercise it as he sees fit." All this is happening in the context of a broader attempt by the White House to hamstring labor agencies The NLRB was created "to guarantee workers' rights to organize and to address problems that workers have in the workplace," said Shaiken the labor movement enjoyed an unusual amount of support from Washington "But what we have seen is a sharp slamming of the brakes to that and putting the vehicle in reverse in terms of what Trump has done so far," he continued In addition to sending DOGE to the NLRB, the Trump administration tried to neutralize the board's power to enforce labor law by removing its member Gwynne Wilcox. Courts have gone back and forth on whether Wilcox's removal was illegal as presidents are meant to demonstrate cause for dismissal of independent board members Representatives of DOGE and former colleagues of Musk's who have been installed across the federal government have failed to reassure the public or the courts that they have taken the proper precautions to protect the data they're ingesting and that private business interests won't influence how that data is used or what policy decisions are made Block and the other labor law experts interviewed by NPR say "It's not that he's a random person who's getting information that a random person shouldn't have access to," said Harvard Law's Block then he has information about the cases the government is building against him," she said headed by somebody who is the subject of active investigation and prosecution of cases Musk's company xAI could also benefit from sucking up all the data DOGE has collected to train its algorithms. Cybersecurity experts like Bruce Schneier, a well-known cryptographer and adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, have pointed to this concern at length in interviews and written pieces According to two federal government sources who were not authorized to speak publicly about their workplaces and who shared email documentation with NPR managers have consistently been warning employees that their data could be subject to AI review particularly their email responses to the Musk-led campaign to get federal employees to detail "what they did last week" in five bullet points every Monday "It's not a flight of imagination to see several DOGE staffers release some of that [data] surreptitiously to Musk or people close to him," said Shaiken If the data isn't properly protected after it leaves the agency or if DOGE left a digital door open to the agency itself data could also be exposed to potential sale or theft by criminals or foreign adversaries An attacker could also try to take advantage of the connections between the NLRB's cloud account and other government cloud environments using their access to the NLRB as a foothold to move to other networks "Both criminals and foreign adversaries traditionally have used information like this to enrich themselves through a variety of actions," explained Handorf targeting and prioritizing intellectual property theft for espionage or even harming a company to enrich another." Within minutes after DOGE accessed the NLRB's systems someone with an IP address in Russia started trying to log in The attempts were "near real-time," according to the disclosure Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created DOGE accounts — and the person had the correct username and password While it's possible the user was disguising their location it's highly unlikely they'd appear to be coming from Russia if they wanted to avoid suspicion cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR explained a few failed login attempts from a Russian IP address aren't a smoking gun those cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR said it's a concerning sign that foreign adversaries may already be searching for ways into government systems that DOGE engineers may have left exposed the opportunity to ride the coattails of authorized access is ridiculously easy to achieve," said Handorf What he means is that if DOGE engineers left access points to the network open it would be very easy for spies or criminals to break in and steal data behind DOGE He said he could also see foreign adversaries trying to recruit or pay DOGE team members for access to sensitive data "It would not surprise me if DOGE is accidentally compromised." "This is exactly why we usually architect systems using best practices like the principle of least privilege," Ann Lewis the former director of Technology Transformation Services at the General Services Administration "The principle of least privilege is a fundamental cybersecurity concept … that states that users should have only the minimum rights roles and permissions required to perform their roles and responsibilities This protects access to high-value data and critical assets and helps prevent unauthorized access accidental damage from user errors and malicious actions told NPR in a written statement: "This case has been particularly sensitive as it involves the possibility of sophisticated foreign intelligence gaining access to sensitive government systems which is why we went to the Senate Intelligence Committee directly." In over a dozen lawsuits in federal courts around the country judges have demanded that DOGE explain why it needs such expansive access to sensitive data on Americans from Social Security records to private medical records and tax information But the Trump administration has been unable to give consistent and clear answers largely dismissing cybersecurity and privacy concerns In one case dealing with Treasury Department payment systems that control trillions of dollars in federal spending, U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas blocked DOGE access on Feb finding "a real possibility exists that sensitive information has already been shared outside of the Treasury Department It's an area of focus for Democratic lawmakers on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform An aide for the Democratic minority on the House Oversight Committee who was not authorized to speak publicly told NPR that the committee is in possession of multiple verifiable reports showing that DOGE has exfiltrated sensitive government data across agencies for unknown purposes revealing that Berulis' disclosure is not an isolated incident But government cybersecurity officials are already resigning or being fired, forced to relocate or put on administrative leave all over the federal government, from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to the Interior Department That has limited their power to respond to the ongoing disruptions or keep track of what DOGE is doing One of the first people to speak out about DOGE's access to sensitive data was Erie Meyer who resigned as the chief technology officer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in February She has provided testimony in ongoing court cases surrounding DOGE's access and also spoke to NPR in an interview The CFPB has sensitive and potentially market-moving data Meyer said DOGE employees granted themselves "God-tier" access to the CFPB's systems turned off auditing and event logs and put the cybersecurity experts responsible for insider threat detection on administrative leave When IT experts at the CFPB planned to conduct an "after action" report on DOGE's activities When she heard about how DOGE engineers operated at the NLRB particularly the steps they took to obfuscate their activities "I am trembling," she said upon hearing about the potential exposure of data from the NLRB "They can get every piece of whistleblower testimony Other technical employees working with government agencies who spoke to NPR shared Berulis' concerns "Our cyber teams are pissed because they have to sit on their hands when every single alarm system we have regarding insider threats is going off," said one employee at an agency of the Interior Department who requested anonymity Cybersecurity teams wanted to shut off new users' access to the system Meanwhile, in a letter published on March 13 on Federal News Network 46 former senior officials from the General Services Administration one of the government agencies hardest hit by DOGE's cost-cutting efforts and that oversees nearly all federal buildings and purchasing wrote that they believed "highly-sensitive IT systems are being put at risk and sensitive information is being downloaded to unknown unvetted external sources in clear violation of privacy and data-protection rules." The Trump administration could be trying to codify DOGE's practices into how the government shares information the executive director of nonprofit public interest law firm National Security Counselors who is representing federal employees in a lawsuit concerning the Office of Personnel Management's use of a private email server Weeks after DOGE staffers descended on federal buildings across Washington, Trump issued an executive order urging increased data sharing "by eliminating information silos" in what's seen by experts like McClanahan as an attempt to give DOGE engineers further top cover in accessing and amalgamating sensitive federal data despite laws concerning privacy and cybersecurity "The entire reason we have a Privacy Act is that Congress realized 50 years ago that the federal government was just overflowing with information about normal everyday people and needed some guardrails in place," McClanahan told NPR "The information silos are there for a reason," he continued "It's astonishing to me that the very people who not a handful of years ago were screaming about the government tracking us with vaccines now cheer for feeding every piece of information about themselves into Elon Musk's stupid Skynet." DOGE appears to still be in the process of visiting federal agencies across the country including just recently the Securities and Exchange Commission according to one former government source directly familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to share information they weren't authorized to share it's unclear how much sensitive data has been removed and collected and combined It's also unclear where the labor data went and who has access to it "This shocks the conscience," said Richard Griffin, the former general counsel of the NLRB. "And if DOGE operatives captured and removed case files, it could constitute a violation of the Privacy Act." because he believes people deserve to know how the government's data and computer systems are at risk Berulis says he would have been fired for operating like DOGE Disclosing his concerns "was a moral imperative at this point," he said "I've never encountered this in my 20 years of IT." His hope is that there might be further investigations into mishandling of sensitive data across the federal government "I believe with all my heart that this goes far beyond just case data," he said "I know there are [people] at other agencies who have seen similar behavior I firmly believe that this is happening maybe even to a greater extent at other agencies." investigators and IT experts in a similar position he hopes to provide a road map of what to look for "It was my goal by disclosing to Congress not to focus on me at all but to give them information that they might not necessarily have the things that you don't necessarily look for unless you know where to look," he continued The NLRB said it would cooperate with any investigations that stem from Berulis' disclosure to Congress the NLRB respects its employee's right to bring whistleblower claims to Congress and the Office of Special Counsel and the Agency looks forward to working with those entities to resolve the complaints," said Bearese Berulis had a simple request for the DOGE engineers: "Be transparent because that's what efficiency is really about if the systems that DOGE accesses are left insecure it might not matter if its intentions are honorable "This could just be the start of the operation They still haven't crossed that boundary where they're plugged into every federal system out there," he continued NPR's Stephen Fowler contributed reporting Have information or evidence to share about DOGE's access to data inside the federal government? Reach out to the author, Jenna McLaughlin, through encrypted communications on Signal at jennamclaughlin.54. Stephen Fowler is available on Signal at stphnfwlr.25 The first nonverbal Neuralink patient to receive the chip implant is offering a glimpse into how he uses the technology — editing and narrating a YouTube video using signals from his brain Brad Smith is the third person in the world to get a brain chip implant with Elon Musk's Neuralink Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that primarily affects motor neurons — the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord responsible for controlling voluntary muscle movement patients lose voluntary control of muscle movements Smith posted a video on YouTube last week showing how he uses his brain implant in day-to-day life He explained how the brain-computer interface (BCI) lets him use brain signals to control the mouse on his MacBook Pro to edit the video which he said is the first edited with Neuralink or a BCI is roughly the size of five stacked quarters and contains more than 1,000 electrodes Smith said that Neuralink doesn't read a constant stream of his thoughts but rather interprets brain signals indicating how and where he wants to move the cursor While he initially tried imagining moving his hand to control the cursor it ultimately proved more effective for him to think about moving his tongue and clenching his jaw to control the cursor and virtually click the mouse AI was also used on recordings of Smith from before he lost his ability to speak to create a synthetic version of his voice allowing him to effectively narrate the video in his own voice In a separate video from reporter and Musk biographer Ashlee Vance Musk phoned Smith during a visit from Neuralink's team to Smith's home "I hope this is a game changer for you and your family," Musk said "I'm excited to get this in my head and stop using eye-gaze," Smith said through his computer Smith said in his video last week that he'd been using eye-gaze technology to communicate but that the technology was limited to dark rooms lets him communicate outdoors and in varying lighting The Neuralink implant also allows Smith to play video games with his kids with footage showing him playing "Mario Kart." "It took years to get here, and I still break down and cry," Smith told Vance for his Substack publication Core Memory "It is really nice to have a purpose greater than me I am really excited to serve others in the future with this work." BI has reached out to Smith for additional comment a quadriplegic who became the company's first human patient previously told BI the implant has helped him regain independence and control in his life and make new social connections His focus is on covering news and politics in Texas as well as other general news across the United States James joined Newsweek in July 2022 from LBC and previously worked for the Daily Express You can get in touch with James by emailing j.bickerton@newsweek.com Elon Musk is the target of new conflict of interest questions from Democratic members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform they asked key figures in the Trump administration whether Musk who currently heads up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had any "conflicts of interest" or "liabilities" including ties to hostile foreign powers They also asked about "illegal drug" use and government contracts Newsweek contacted Musk for comment via the Tesla and SpaceX press offices on Monday by email outside of regular office hours The fresh letters demonstrate a Democratic desire to keep both Musk and Trump under pressure amidst ongoing controversy about the Tesla and SpaceX CEO's influence within the administration published by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on May 1 Gabbard and Patel "demanding information about Elon Musk's ties to foreign governments like China and Russia Musk's growing treasure chest of government contracts awarded to his companies and potential liabilities that would make him vulnerable to coercion and corruption." Gabbard and Patel were all asked to provide any relevant documents to the committee members by May 15 The letters were signed by Rep. Gerald Connolly, the ranking Democratic member of the committee, and all 20 of its other Democratic members. However none of the 26 House Republicans sitting on the committee signed Democrats on the committee announced they were investigating what they described as "glaring conflicts of interest" between Musk's involvement in the Trump administration and his commercial activities Musk strongly denied using illegal drugs following a report in the Wall Street Journal that he had used LSD psychedelic mushrooms and ecstasy at private parties In March the New York Times reported Musk would be briefed about U.S. military plans for a potential war with China The business tycoon described the reports as "pure propaganda" adding: "I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT In 2019, Tesla opened a factory in Shanghai which produces about half of all Tesla vehicles according to the Wall Street Journal According to an analysis by the Washington Post, Musk spent around $288 million supporting Trump and other Republican candidates during the November 2024 elections On Saturday, voters in Cameron County, Texas, approved plans to officially designate Starbase In a statement Rep. Connolly said: "The Democratic Members of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are conducting an investigation into Elon Musk, special government employee and senior adviser to President Donald Trump and other foreign governments and officials and business with foreign governments and officials." Gabbard and Patel plan to reply to the Democratic committee members' letter The members' powers to compel documents are weakened as they are only a minority of the committee and don't have the support of any Republican members The TimesElon Musk started supporting the Republican Party after a snub by President Biden and not because of his political convictions the technology billionaire’s father has suggested Musk voted almost exclusively Democratic until a public falling out with the party months after Biden took office in 2020 Errol Musk said his son was “annoyed” that the Biden administration did not invite Tesla the biggest electric vehicle maker in the US where the former president signed an executive order laying out the government’s carbon emissions goals Musk had previously been a supporter of the DemocratsALLISON ROBBERT/GETTY IMAGES“Not being invited to the White House it was mind-boggling to him,” Errol told RT a state-owned Russian television network that has been criticised for being a Kremlin mouthpiece Registered in England No. 894646. Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, SE1 9GF. Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world departures that are likely to hamper the agency’s ability to go after tax cheats More than 3,600 revenue agents — responsible for collecting tax payments — have left the IRS Tech billionaire Elon Musk described his close relationship with Donald Trump calling the US President a “friend” and highlighting how often they see eye to eye on key issues “I think probably if you asked us both the same set of questions in two different rooms 80 percent of the time we would come up with the same answer,” he added He said the gesture had been misrepresented and was a “loving gesture” toward the president “It’s a relentless propaganda campaign,” Musk said of the criticism, noting, “Obviously President Trump has experienced [this] for a very long time so they’re going to come up with whatever attacks they can.” Responding to a question about his upbringing in apartheid-era South Africa, Musk strongly rejected the Nazi comparisons so it’s an outrageous thing to claim that I’m a Nazi,” he said Musk also defended Trump against similar allegations and criticised media outlets for amplifying what he described as “legacy news lies.” Musk accused his detractors of conducting a smear campaign aimed at destroying his public image the sort of ‘he’s a Nazi’ lie — enough times especially people that still believe the legacy news,” Musk said “They really are trying every angle to get me,” he added “If they could press a button and kill me… in reality they are doing character assassination instead.” Many have questioned the concentration of power in Musk’s hands and his unchecked influence over policy decisions affecting millions of Americans Catch all the Business News , Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates Download the Mint app and read premium stories Log in to our website to save your bookmarks Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis To the extent that the various creeps surrounding Mad King Donald have a coherent program of social change it looks something like this: 1) Decapitate the institutions of elite American culture 2) install skeezy billionaire apparatchiks to lead them and 3) wait for American life to be transformed in their own image Substantial philosophical backing exists for this theory of change The belief that a relatively narrow class of intellectuals manages the social order—and that their worldview trickles down through the rest of society—can be found lurking in the writings of 19th-century capitalist James Mill Trump and Elon Musk are not so much shrinking government as weakening cultural institutions to allow for an easier leadership swap Silicon Valley billionaires just figured out that their own thirst for power can sound pretty populist if you yell about elite failures and mumble about your plan to do something about it But where populists want to level inequalities between the rich and the rest the Trump creeps just want to be the guy sitting in the fancy chair telling everyone what to do and a great many people will be hurt before things improve the Trump brigade is testing a genuinely fascinating philosophical problem: Can you hijack a nation’s culture with a crew made up entirely of losers Just look at these guys! Never has so much money surrounded so little rizz. Jeff Bezos, the world’s most prosperous shopkeeper, has been living out a painfully predictable midlife crisis for the better part of a decade. After cheating on his wife with a washed-up local TV anchor (also married) and designed a spaceship that looks like a penis The intellectual point here is that it’s hard to sell things that nobody wants to buy and Mark Zuckerberg can manipulate our intellectually compromised president all they want with gazillion-dollar parties and dark money maneuvers but what does their vision for the future actually look like Mark Zuckerberg used to run a company called Facebook until it became so uncool that he had to change its name to Meta The company began as a clone of various social media sites floating around post-Y2k made distinct by the deliberate application of Ivy League exclusivity Facebook was initially a very special Friendster for Harvard students only a circle which then widened to the Ivy Leagues But the original reason to log onto Facebook was that it offered you the chance to participate in something Harvardish It’s an example of cultural transformation from the top in which people eager for their own piece of exclusivity get their information from a platform managed by Harvardians and help Harvardism spread through digital life Nothing screams digital cool like fake robot friends According to Trump administration insiders who spoke to Rolling Stone, Musk is “annoying,” not funny, and desperate to be funny—a description that clicks for anyone who remembers him ruining a Dave Chappelle show two years ago “Elon just thinks he’s smarter than everyone else in the room and acts like it even when it’s clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” one insider told the magazine Sometimes these guys do have a certain weird charm. Sam Bankman-Fried convinced a lot of people that he was a major economy-technology brainiac by skipping haircuts and insulting the concept of books A lot of people really wanted to eat that up They didn’t know what they were assembling when they put together their digital monstrosities and they can’t fix what they made because they don’t even know what it’s for aggrieved social conservatives have turned to the very people who built the digital culture nobody likes—the vast pornographic juggernaut—to win back social prestige for faith and family “A lot of these technologists hoped that the centrist path was a viable one, because it would permit them in theory to change the culture without having to expose themselves to the risk of becoming partisans,” far-right social conservative political operative Chris Rufo told Semafor. Now, he insists, “the smartest people in tech” have become “explicitly political” and pro-Trump. It’s an outrageous joke in every direction. Whatever else these guys might do, they can’t make what they’re doing cool. Just ask Katy Perry. Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. voted overwhelmingly in favor of the incorporation I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice Elon Musk's SpaceX facility in South Texas has officially become a city voted overwhelmingly in favor of the incorporation on Saturday published by the Cameron County Elections Department showed a landslide victory of 212 votes to 6 Starbase is the facility and launch site for the SpaceX rocket program that is under contract with the Department of Defense and NASA that hopes to send astronauts back to the moon and someday to Mars Musk first floated the idea of Starbase in 2021 and approval of the new city was all but certain The election victory was personal for Musk. The billionaire’s popularity has diminished since he became the chain-saw-wielding public face of President Donald Trump’s federal job and spending cuts and profits at his Tesla car company have plummeted SpaceX has generally drawn widespread support from local officials for its jobs and investment in the area But the creation of an official company town has also drawn critics who worry it will expand Musk’s personal control over the area with potential authority to close a popular beach and state park for launches Companion efforts to the city vote include bills in the state Legislature to shift that authority from the county to the new town’s mayor and city council All these measures come as SpaceX is asking federal authorities for permission to increase the number of South Texas launches from five to 25 a year The city at the southern tip of Texas near the Mexico border is only about 1.5 square miles (3.9 square kilometers) crisscrossed by a few roads and dappled with airstream trailers and modest midcentury homes SpaceX officials have said little about exactly why they to want a company town and did not respond to emailed requests for comment. “We need the ability to grow Starbase as a community,” Starbase General Manager Kathryn Lueders wrote to local officials in 2024 with the request to get the city issue on the ballot. The letter said the company already manages roads and utilities, as well as “the provisions of schooling and medical care” for those living on the property. SpaceX officials have told lawmakers that granting the city authority to close the beach would streamline launch operations. SpaceX rocket launches and engine tests, and even just moving certain equipment around the launch base requires the closure of a local highway and access to Boca Chica State Park and Boca Chica Beach. Critics say beach closure authority should stay with the county government, which represents a broader population that uses the beach and park. Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino, Jr. has said the county has worked well with SpaceX and there is no need for change. Another proposed bill would make it a Class B misdemeanor with up to 180 days in jail if someone doesn’t comply with an order to evacuate the beach. The South Texas Environmental Justice Network, which has organized protests against the city vote and the beach access issue, held another demonstration Saturday that attracted dozens of people. Josette Hinojosa, whose young daughter was building sandcastle nearby, said she was taking part to try to ensure continued access to a beach her family has enjoyed for generations. With SpaceX, Hinojosa said, “Some days it’s closed, and some days you get turned away,” Organizer Christopher Basaldú, a member of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas tribe, said his ancestors have long been in the area, where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf. “It’s not just important,” he said, “it’s sacred.” Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies The bride's billionaire brother does not appear to have attended the wedding Justin Sullivan/Getty; charl laubscher/Instagram Today’s Paper U.S.|Inside Starbase, Elon Musk’s New City https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/05/us/elon-musk-starbase-texas.htmlShare full article8686Advertisement local residents who mostly work for Elon Musk’s rocket company voted to create an official city for themselves: Starbase By Junho Lee and J. David Goodman Share full article8686 Over the last few years, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been building a kind of company town around its launch site in Cameron County Space X has used its launch pad to test and launch larger and larger rockets starting around 2019 It was the reason for the company’s move to this area along the Gulf Coast SpaceX closes the public beach during launches But a bill that would have allowed the new city of Starbase to approve beach closures on its own failed last month Portions of the two-lane highway are closed during launches This area has housing for employees of SpaceX which could eventually be expanded via voluntary annexation Here are the company’s rocket manufacturing facility and offices, which have also grown quickly. On one building, a huge mural depicts a colony on Mars, which Mr. Musk hopes to reach The city’s boundaries snake around various parcels of land owned by SpaceX including some that still appear to be vacant suggesting opportunities for further growth SpaceX is already building more than a dozen larger homes and is planning for retail businesses Its plans for the city also appear to include more housing which could require state or federal approvals But Starbase’s initial boundaries contain a relatively small 1.5 square miles or so and do not include all the property owned by SpaceX in the area but the testing site seen here is outside the city limits and the drive can sometimes take 45 minutes or almost an hour because of traffic and slowdowns at the Border Patrol checkpoint on Highway 4 between Brownsville and Starbase The New York Times; aerial image via Vexcel Imaging The creation of the city of Starbase followed one of the nation’s more unusual elections No campaigning took place and there were no yard signs or other evidence of a consequential vote in the area the measure passed by a whopping 212 to 6 — the kind of margin that had been expected but was very unlike most contests in a deeply polarized nation Under state law, a new city can be incorporated after a certain number of residents file a petition to do so, and a majority of voters approve it. Only registered voters who live within its proposed boundaries are able to take part in the election most of whom either work for SpaceX or have a relative who does A majority of the eligible voters registered in the area since the start of the year Many had never taken part in an election of any type before But turnout was more than 75 percent in this one voters also chose a slate of elected officials to run the new city the candidate for mayor had been a different SpaceX employee SpaceX has explained little about its plans for the new city beyond its intention to have Starbase take over some functions that the company itself has been conducting Some local residents said there had been talk of connecting the city to a local water system residents must have their water trucked in from Brownsville But the company has filed paperwork with the state to spend millions building the school power plant and the commercial center along with a sushi restaurant near Mr Share full article8686See more on: Elon Musk, SpaceXRead 86 CommentsRead 86 CommentsShare full article8686Advertisement I remember very well when that new building went up at the end of Willowdale Road near the West Virginia University Medical Center and not too far from my friend Doug’s house Morgantown—driven by the university in general and by what they now call the Robert C with townhouses and shopping centers and office buildings having swallowed the acres of woods where my friends and I used to play it was kind of a big deal when a spanking new building like that was conjured into being; this one was of particular interest because it was something different: a federal government building bringing a little slice of Washington to town If you’ve been following the news, you may know that I’m referring to the NIOSH building—the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health which for 55 years employed dedicated researchers in Morgantown studying the effects of black lung on coal miners occurs when coal dust is inhaled and has killed many men before their time; it killed one of my grandfathers in his fifties died way before the federal government managed to overcome the coal operators’ fierce resistance to even acknowledging that coal mining could expose one to harm and established NIOSH through an act of Congress laboratories were established in Morgantown and six other cities to research occupational safety in the mines and other dangerous workplaces Some 200 people worked at the lab in my hometown and from the mobile van they used to travel across coal country to perform checks on miners sometimes literally right outside the mine gate Those 200 people were fired in early April by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and many of them have been temporarily rehired but they’re slated to be fired again in June is one-thirty-fifth of 1 percent of the federal budget Thursday night, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle and Jacob Soboroff hosted a fantastic special from Washington in which they gathered some 50 federal workers from around the country to talk about what they did was a Morgantown-based epidemiologist who spoke eloquently about the dedication of the people he worked with Keri Murphy of the Commerce Department was working to implement the CHIPS and Science Act—that is bringing jobs back to America in just the way Donald Trump says he wants “That’s why I thought I was safe,” Murphy told Soboroff Tamara Maze of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said: “All federal workers I’ve ever known are in it because we want to serve the country.” and if you have a chance to watch it this weekend should start a weekly show dedicated to federal workers in which case stories of these dedicated professionals would have infiltrated the discourse and countered the toxic right-wing propaganda about these workers whom even most Democrats have rarely bothered to defend “The best time to have planted a tree was 20 years ago; the second-best time is now.” Be that as it may: Musk is a poisonous human being He may be good at making money (with the help of government subsidies) but he is planet Earth’s greatest walking proof that that skill does not automatically confer other skills despite how much our culture (and especially right-wing media) lionizes the super-rich and especially about government administration and public service Am I overdoing it? Consider the other big piece of Musk news this week, which came to us courtesy of a chilling op-ed in The New York Times Wednesday she spun the tale of how Musk and his Muskrats are doing nothing less than compiling a vast database on every one of us: “assembling a sprawling surveillance system,” she writes “the likes of which we have never seen in the United States.” Multiple whistleblowers have come forward to the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee to describe the details the databases of most executive branch agencies are siloed off from one another There is a reason for this—so the CIA can’t get your Social Security information with its usual combination of evil intent and clumsy ineptitude is trying to break down these walls so that the Trump White House can have a thorough file on each of us just a couple clicks away One whistleblower “alleged that DOGE workers are filling backpacks with multiple laptops each one loaded with purloined agency data.” aren’t yet willing to impute to Musk the malign motivation that Angwin does But why should we doubt that a man who praises dictators and thinks the neo-Nazi AfD party is Germany’s only hope would hesitate at the idea of a surveillance state what we know about DOGE’s infiltration of those databases points pretty clearly in that direction Just please give this destroyer of worlds a smaller world to destroy This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky. Sign up here. and special correspondent for renowned publications such as The Guardian Tomasky has been a trusted voice in political journalism for more than three decades When Steve Riabov started his Silicon Valley construction company six years ago, his hero was another business entrepreneur: Elon Musk Riabov thought if he modeled his home kitchen and bathroom remodeling business after the "bold, adventurous, and daring" tech leader, it would help his company blossom into a multi-million-dollar home-building enterprise. So he named his firm Musk Construction he's now committed to purging Musk from Musk Construction ‒ even though it will cost him between $15,000 and $20,000 to get a new company trademark and permits And he's already removed the Musk Construction logo from the company's red Tesla vehicles More: Elon Musk takes a backseat as Donald Trump reaches 100 days in office It's not clear how many other entrepreneurs named their companies after Musk when he was building a reputation as a national hero But clearly, Musk's reputation has changed since the days when he was valorized as the man who became the richest in the world by leading Tesla and SpaceX and co-founding the online payment site PayPal Recent polling shows many Americans now have an unfavorable opinion of Musk, who also owns or co-founded companies including the social media site X (formerly Twitter) which is developing implantable brain-computer interfaces which provides tunneling technology ‒ none of which he named after himself with sales slowing and even some clients who signed contracts backing out for fear of possible affiliation with Musk Riabov feels the association is hurting rather than helping his company's bottom line Telsa tanking?: Tesla profits plummet 71% amid backlash to Musk's role with Trump administration "I’ve come too far to stop now," Riabov said about the name change One expert who researches the interaction between corporations and political actors said Riabov's decision to change his company's name makes sense Strategic decisions matter, especially in the face of economic conditions facing downturns," said Dinesh Hasija a business professor at Augusta University in Georgia "As long as your company name aligns with its core values 'This is a revolution': Musk shrugs off DOGE criticism, defends department In 2014, Riabov was living in Luhansk, Ukraine, when he said the Russian military invaded his hometown as part of the Donbas invasion Riabov said he was kidnapped on suspicion of being a spy for Ukraine and spent two weeks being tortured in a basement. He shakes his head while recalling the situation and grabs a copy of his self-published autobiography, "Hitchhiking To A Million - The Story of Ukraine Refugee," where he wrote about the experience I could’ve died in there and my dreams would’ve died with me 'Vladimir, STOP!': Trump chides Putin for Russia's deadly attack on Ukraine amid push for peace deal Riabov fled Ukraine with his then-girlfriend They applied for tourist visas to the United States With financial help from friends and family the couple hitchhiked back to Malaysia and flew to Los Angeles with only $70 between them when they arrived in America but determined to make a life for ourselves," he said After sleeping on the streets for two weeks in L.A. they applied and were granted political asylum toiled as a handyman doing odd jobs in the area His English improved by reading books and listening to audiobooks on creating businesses and biographies about entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson. But he gravitated toward "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future," by Ashlee Vance "Musk’s drive was motivating," Riabov said “He was determined to build things on Mars Riabov applied for a Limited Liability Company (LLC) formed his construction company in San Jose "I figured out it should be something sharp who attained American citizenship last year Riabov began to worry the Musk name might be "bad for business," as the entrepreneur became more entrenched with Trump's presidential campaign Riabov said that it became too much for him and his staff in February when Musk supported Trump's public dressing down of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and blamed Zelenskyy for Russia’s 2022 Ukrainian invasion Riabov was further incensed when Musk described Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., as a “traitor” over his support of Ukraine and called for the termination of all U.S and now America is taking such a different stance." 'Everybody's to blame': Trump accuses Zelenskyy of starting Russia's war on Ukraine Then, Musk Construction sales representative Anthony Khrypchemko told him a client they had signed for a major bathroom remodel backed out. "We had the paperwork signed and everything, but they saw an online interview of Steve praising Musk from about six, seven years ago, and because of that, they said 'We're not going with you guys,'" Khrypchemko said. The company's overall sales have been well in the seven figures for the past two years, but now they're "a bit on the slower side," Khrypchemko said. Riabov said the company doesn't know how much potential business it may have lost due to its name. He asked his staff, which includes workers in Silicon Valley and across Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Georgia and Portugal, if they should rename it. They said yes, without hesitation and unanimously voted to rename the company, RISE Construction. "It became really necessary to disassociate. Musk used to be our inspiration, whose ideas were so amazing, progressive and inspiring," said Sofie Rokishchuk, Riabov's assistant who works remotely from Ukraine. "But that's all changed. It's crucial for us, as Ukrainians, to present a strong and united front. To let everyone know we don't stand by (Musk's) ideology." Riabov said the challenge remains convincing clients that his construction company, which now includes building new homes, provides quality work. "We haven't heard anybody tell us we should stick with the old name," Riabov said. "That's a plus for us." Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk walks to the stage to speak at the Butler Farm Show, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, file) Elon Musk flashes his T-shirt that reads “DOGE” to the media as he walks on South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) President Donald Trump, from foreground center to right, Elon Musk, his son X Æ A-Xii, and in background at left, Secretary of State Marco Rubio attend a mixed martial arts fight at UFC 314, Saturday, April 12, 2025, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Elon Musk attends the finals for the NCAA wrestling championship, Saturday, March 22, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, file) MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — X Corp., the social media platform owned by Trump adviser Elon Musk, is challenging the constitutionality of a Minnesota ban on using deepfakes to influence elections and harm candidates, saying it violates First Amendment speech protections. Minnesota’s law imposes criminal penalties — including jail time — for disseminating a deepfake video, image or audio if a person knows it’s fake, or acts with reckless disregard to its authenticity, either within 90 days before a party nominating convention, or after the start of early voting in a primary or general election. It says the intent must be to injure a candidate or influence an election result. And it defines deepfakes as material so realistic that a reasonable person would believe it’s real, and generated by artificial intelligence or other technical means. “Of course he is upset that Minnesota law prevents him from spreading deepfakes that meant to harm candidates and influence elections. Minnesota’s law is clear and precise, while this lawsuit is petty, misguided and a waste of the Attorney General Office’s time and resources,” her statement said. Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office, which is legally obligated to defend the constitutionality of state laws in court, said in a statement that it’s “reviewing the lawsuit and will respond in the appropriate time and manner.” The Minnesota law was already the subject of a constitutional challenge by Christopher Kohls, a content creator, and GOP state Rep. Mary Franson, who likes to post AI-generated parodies of politicians. That case is on hold while they appeal to overturn a judge’s denial of their request to suspend the law. The attorney general’s office argues in that case that deepfakes are a real and growing threat to free elections and democratic institutions, that the law is a legitimate and constitutional response to the problem, and that it contains important limitations on its scope that protect satire and parody. X said in its statement that its “Community Notes” feature allows users to flag content they consider problematic, and that it’s been adopted by Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. The company’s lawsuit said its “Authenticity Policy” and “Grok AI” tool provide additional safeguards. “I’m almost positive that this will be struck down,” Rozenshtein said. There’s no exception under the First Amendment for false or misleading political speech, even lies, he said. And the potential for criminal penalties gives social media companies like X and Facebook “an incentive to take down anything that might be a deepfake. ... You’re going to censor a massive amount to comply with this law.” “People want to be fooled, and it’s very bad for our democracy, but it’s not something I think can be solved with a deepfakes ban,” he said. a flurry of angry social media posts made at 3 A.M You look closer at an advertisement on the side of the bus stop using rude British slang for a male anatomical part The LedeReporting and commentary on what you need to know today. Autocrat for your country.” On a bus stop in East London’s Bethnal Green a sign branded Tesla “the Swasticar,” and announced that the vehicle “Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 Seconds.” “Now With White Power Steering,” another read A spokesperson for Transport for London told me “These posters were not authorised by TfL nor our advertising partners and we have instructed our teams and contractors to remove any that are found on our network.” Musk has turned his frenzied attention to the case of Lucy Connolly and what he perceives as a lack of free speech in the U.K a white British child-care worker and mother was sentenced to thirty-one months in prison for a post in which she called for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire (Connolly is seeking to appeal) after three children were fatally stabbed at a dance class in Southport The tragedy ignited violent racial riots fueled by claims that the perpetrator was a Muslim immigrant had “Fries,” “Airplane,” and “memes,” while the U.K had “Chips,” “Aeroplane,” and “2 years in jail.” Whatever one thinks of Connolly’s sentence—and it is divisive in the U.K.—Musk’s motives for interfering seem dubious His interest in British affairs has made him broadly unpopular with the public; a full eighty per cent of Brits dislike him He has even managed to alienate Reform voters a majority of whom now view him unfavorably the group behind the fake Tesla advertisements Why is he putting fingers in our pie?” Emma is in her early thirties and lives in South London Everyone Hates Elon grew out of a ranty group chat that she had with two friends (Members spoke to me on the condition of anonymity Names have been changed.) They would message about the news and then they started to exchange “random ideas to troll Elon Musk.” Their first plan was to create a crowdfund to which people could pledge to donate one pence each time Musk posted on X “with the money going to causes he hates,” Jason (Musk typically posts thousands of times per month The group is on track to raise about a hundred and fifty thousand pounds by the end of the year.) “We just had this idea to turn the hate he spews on his platform against him and turn it into something positive,” he said They printed and distributed stickers that read “Don’t Buy a Swasticar.” A couple of weeks later they made a life-size cutout of Musk doing the salute-like gesture and attempted to install it in a Tesla showroom in North London A video on Instagram shows Emma speaking with a sales representative “Musk wants us to show the true colors of Tesla so we thought Jason went to another showroom with custom air fresheners for the cars—“Musk B-Gone”; “Covers the stench of fascism”—and was swiftly escorted out The remains of the Tesla will be crushed and auctioned to raise money for food banks and it felt amazing to be there venting our frustration,” Jason told me (Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.) “What we try to do is channel our anger into some kind of creativity,” Emma said “We want to make our activism in this stuff quite creative and appeal to lots of people.” “Remove with wealth tax,” the poster advised “Immediate intervention is crucial for your health they jumped in an Uber and headed to a pub in Kennington Jason was already editing the footage for an Instagram post both he and Emma had worked on campaigns for progressive nonprofits “It can be frustrating that organizations tend to do things in the same way where there’s not any humor in what they’re saying,” Jason said “They kind of talk in this impenetrable way that doesn’t reach anyone who doesn’t agree with it already.” He was drinking a non-alcoholic beer “When you’re faced with threats from people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump and how aggressive they are with their messaging I don’t think the same old approach really works,” he said “One of our frustrations is how quickly messages of the far right and the right spread,” Emma said “Something as simple as ‘Make America Great Again’ or but actually they’re quite good at messaging.” She went on “Often those progressive messages are just rubbish ‘Let’s love each other,’ or it’s really politically heavy.” With Everyone Hates Elon they wanted funny messages that people could remember and repeat “If all we can do is get people repeating ‘Elon Musk is a bellend,’ or ‘We should have a wealth tax,’ then there are two things we’re happy with One appeal of the group’s messaging is its peculiarly British sensibility; the statements tend to cut through the noise (The term is roughly equivalent to “dickhead.”) “We can see someone like Elon Musk this is something we can do to galvanize the U.K. Jason posted the video to the group’s Instagram and TikTok “He’s the richest private citizen in the world,” Jason said A long-ago crime, suddenly remembered A limousine driver watches her passengers transform The day Muhammad Ali punched me What is it like to be keenly intelligent but deeply alienated from simple emotions? Temple Grandin knows The harsh realm of “gentle parenting.” Retirement the Margaritaville way Fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Thank You for the Light.” Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. On the road to Boca Chica Beach sits a huge bronze sculpture of Elon Musk’s head The thing is nine feet tall and probably weighs half a ton Alone on the side of State Highway 4 on the way out of Brownsville Drive a few more miles through the yucca and native brush and Musk’s massive rocket production and testing complex dominates the land here on the Texas-Mexico border its glass buildings dwarfing the tidal flats below The last thing you see before you hit the Gulf is the rocket launch pad the area must be cleared for safety reasons Launches at the site could be about to increase five-fold Musk wants the power to close the beach on his schedule Local leaders and environmentalists stand in opposition. The right to access public beaches is enshrined in the Texas Constitution starting with a single Montessori-style school SpaceX installed Airstreams and tiny homes for its rank-and-file workers and built sleek modern houses for its execs There’s a school and health clinic and bar a modest ranch-style house in Boca Chica Village on Memes Street and loitering too long outside will guarantee being tailed by a SpaceX staffer in a golf cart The Musk effect has even seeped its way into the feel of Brownsville Space-themed murals adorn the historic buildings downtown One featuring Musk’s mug proclaims in big letters buffeted by high winds and pummeled by strong waves The beach has been popular with locals who have come here to fish or camp or just drive alongside the dunes dating back to its days as a resort in the 1920s It gets its name — which means “little mouth” in Spanish — from the Rio Grande, which spills into the Gulf at the end of the beach. Saddled right along the U.S.-Mexico border, the beach divides Playa Bagdad in Matamoros and South Padre Island, a Texas resort town popular with tourists. The nearby area was the site of the final land battle of the U.S. Civil War The beach is also important ecologically as a stopping ground for migratory birds and home to rare native species Last fall, the federal government fined SpaceX nearly $150,000 for alleged environmental violations at the site large placards have been erected that remind visitors about the environmental significance of this place Right now, the county government has control over when to close the beach ahead of a launch SpaceX wants this power to be shifted to the soon-to-be city of Starbase The change would require a new law to be passed Enter Sen. Adam Hinojosa, R-Corpus Christi. His bill would let Starbase’s elected leaders close the beach anytime they want during the week In a letter to state lawmakers SpaceX’s Vice President Sheila McCorkle called the bill “a simple administrative change” that would “kickstart the world’s first private spaceport and bolster Texas’ commercial space industry.” The county would retain control over beach access on the weekends “We’ve worked with Cameron County to ensure this balance,” McCorkle wrote “You're talking about changing the current authority of Cameron County and handing it over to a city that is nonexistent,” he said during an interview in his office at the end of last month the bill is a solution in search of a problem Treviño is OK with another bill that would make it a misdemeanor to trespass on the beach when it’s closed “You don't want an individual camping themselves out in an attempt to impede Hinojosa argued for the SpaceX beach bill in front of the Texas Senate “The bill does not in any way increase the number of closures It simply modernizes who manages them,” Hinojosa said a McAllen Democrat who is not related to Adam Hinojosa has represented the district next door for decades He said he understands that the beach needs to be closed during a launch But during the debate on the bill in front of the full Texas Senate he said the state is giving Musk special treatment “I just don't want to take the authority away from the county and give it to a municipality that has yet to be created,” Hinojosa said it was going to hand control over a public beach to a private corporation “Why is it that we are singling out this particular city for more control while all other municipalities across the state we are curtailing their authority?” she asked “All we're doing is trying to streamline the process to make it more efficient,” he responded “And if you don't like the way the commissioners court is voting,” she asked The vote was all but a foregone conclusion with all Republicans for it and all Democrats against It still must pass the Texas House before becoming law The Texas Newsroom has repeatedly reached out to Adam Hinojosa’s office for an interview about this bill — after its first debate in committee after the county judge voiced his opposition and again once more SpaceX also did not reply to requests for comment Jerry Patterson remembers well the deal he struck with Elon Musk when Patterson was Texas land commissioner Patterson said Musk wanted the discretion to close the beach at his will he told The Texas Newsroom in an interview last month that every Texan must be able to access our state’s public beaches Patterson said he offered Musk a compromise If SpaceX requested to close the beach for a launch and didn’t hear back promptly from the government assuming the silence amounted to tacit approval Then, in 2013, state lawmakers formalized the handshake deal by passing a new law that gave county officials the power to close the Boca Chica Beach for launches Popular beachgoing days like Memorial and Labor Day July 4 and a few other days are blocked off — barred from closure unless state officials sign off its leaders won’t be “answering the beachgoers.” “You really are putting that decision in the hands of SpaceX,” he said The 2013 law is now being challenged by local groups that say it is unconstitutional The case is currently before the Texas Supreme Court At a pizza parlor in downtown Brownsville on an afternoon last month board members from one of the organizations suing contemplate the years they’ve spent fighting one of the richest people on the planet They describe their struggle in almost Sisyphean terms he’s not sure about the potential outcome of the war “What ultimately will happen in my opinion “is that Musk will get the Constitution changed.” It’s unclear whether any arrests have been made in either case. 2025 at 11:48 PM EDTBookmarkSaveElon Musk called the US government inefficient and said artificial intelligence should be used to replace the functions currently done by some public workers according to a person who attended the closed-door session at the Milken Institute Global Conference In a wide-ranging conversation on Sunday with financier Michael Milken Musk also spoke about his brain-implant company The New York Giants showed obvious interest in the 2025 NFL Draft’s running back class They brought several of the top runners in for “30” visits and there was a definite theme. Each of the running backs brought in were physical, downhill runners and the team ultimately selected Cam Skattebo out of Arizona State — arguably the most physical back in the draft The Giants have also reportedly signed Elon running back Rushawn Baker as an undrafted free agent 220 pounds and sporting a downhill running style Baker is a New York Native and a star around the Rochester area and was named first team All-State as a senior His college career started at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania before transferring to Elon in North Carolina prior to the 2024 season Can the Western New York native stick with Big Blue Baker is an interesting prospect from an athletic standpoint He sports a compact physique at 5-foot-10⅞ inches Baker posted a very good 1.52-second 10-yard split as well as a 38½-inch vertical leap both of which line up with the good initial burst he shows on tape Baker runs with solid vision and patience behind the line of scrimmage He does a really good job of anticipating defenders and giving his offensive line time to establish their blocks He has a powerful lower half and does a good job of dropping his pad level into contact around the line of scrimmage as well as using quick feet to make subtle adjustments to his pathing Baker’s burst allows him to exploit quickly closing holes while his strength and contact balance let him survive contact around the line of scrimmage His ability to navigate the trash around the line of scrimmage could make him the type of back who can keep an offense on schedule While he was able to out-athlete his competition at the CAA Baker is ultimately a one-cut downhill runner He won’t be confused with a scatback or a burner at the NFL level and he was rarely used as a receiver — though that might not mean he can’t catch It seems unlikely that Baker will stick with the Giants’ 53-man roster Tyrone Tracy is likely entrenched as the starter with Devin Singletary likely sharing reps to keep both healthy and fresh while Cam Skattebo picks up the tough yardage The bigger question is whether Baker can do enough to to force Eric Gray or Dante Miller off the roster bubble The Giants might keep two backs on their practice squad so Baker’s best bet is to show that he’s more dependable option than Gray Baker’s game could strike a balance between Tracy’s elusiveness between the tackles and Skattebo’s ability to pick up the tough yards Having a player who could spell either Tracy or Skattebo could appeal to the Giants — or make him a useful emergency option to keep around Residents – most of them SpaceX workers – in remote Texas community approve plan to create new city Voters in a small patch of south Texas voted this weekend to give Elon Musk a town to call his own officially creating a new city called Starbase in the area where Musk’s SpaceX holds rocket launches A couple of hundred residents of what was previously known as Boca Chica decided to make their unincorporated neighborhoods into a town that will grant them the authority to pass city ordinances The ballot, which also named a senior SpaceX representative as its mayor with 100% of the early vote Most of the 283 eligible voters were SpaceX employees or had connections to the company whose billionaire chief has long wanted a human mission to Mars “Starbase, Texas,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X His post came after polls closed and unofficial results published by Cameron County showed an unambiguous 97.7% backing for the project but the South African-born 53-year-old had yet to cast his ballot when the early voting period closed on 29 April The town’s new mayor, 36-year-old Bobby Peden, has worked at SpaceX since 2013 and is vice-president of test and launch operations in Texas. Peden, along with two other city commissioner candidates who are also SpaceX employees Starbase sits on a tiny piece of land near the Mexican border on a small bay that feeds into the Gulf of Mexico Airstream trailers and palm trees line the streets An imperious golden bust of Musk stands nine feet tall outside the town A plaque on its pedestal reads “ELON AKA Memelord” Last month, vandals defaced the statue by peeling off layers of foam and fiberglass from its cheeks There is an employee-only restaurant called Astropub with a neon red “Occupy Mars” sign behind the bar One of the main boulevards is called “Memes Street” Free weekly newsletterA weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives The incorporation of Starbase has also faced protests and pushback from others in the area The South Texas Environmental Justice Network activist group has been holding protests and urging Texans to email their state representatives to oppose the incorporation The group argued that creating Starbase would allow SpaceX to close access to the public beach in the town whenever it wants and block others from using the public land not Elon Musk to control,” the organization said in a statement on its site residents have visited Boca Chica beach for fishing and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe has spiritual ties to the beach Musk has in previous years made grand pronouncements about the future of Starbase while urging employees to move to the town “Starbase will grow by several thousand people over the next year or two,” he posted on X in 2021 SpaceX has become an increasingly valuable part of Musk’s empire as Tesla’s performance has tanked and the government has turned to SpaceX for billions of dollars in contracts related to space travel Musk has relocated his primary residence and businesses to Texas in recent years. He lives in a $35m sprawling compound in Austin that houses three separate mansions During his backing of Trump’s re-election last year he temporarily uprooted and moved to the swing state of Pennsylvania Musk then took up residence in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building while serving as senior adviser to Donald Trump but left the White House in late April as he shifts back to overseeing his companies Agence France-Presse contributed to this report Elon Musk has given a wide-ranging interview as he prepares to step away from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Newsweek has contacted DOGE for comment via email outside regular working hours Musk is set to step back from his role at DOGE as the government task force continues its mission to reduce the size and spending of the federal government DOGE-mandated cuts at federal agencies have been met with considerable backlash and legal action Soon after his inauguration in January, President Donald Trump designated the billionaire a "special government employee," allowing him to work a paid or unpaid government job for 130 days each year Musk's time at DOGE has been eventful, to say the least, something he discussed in his Fox News interview with Lara Trump, the wife of the president's son Eric Trump that's for sure—an eventful year to say the least Look on the bright side," he said in the interview Musk initially projected that DOGE would cut $2 trillion in federal spending, a figure he later revised down to $1 trillion. In a separate interview with reporters this week, Musk said DOGE so far had saved an estimated $160 billion in federal spending Musk's step back from government also comes after Tesla suffered a 71 percent plunge in profits during the first quarter of 2025 "We have had people shoot up Tesla stores and burn down Tesla cars I wasn't expecting that level of violence really," he told Lara Trump Musk said he believed the actions taken by protesters were because they were recipients of billions in "waste and fraud" and wanted to "keep receiving it." According to a May 1 report by The Wall Street Journal, Tesla board members queried several executive search firms to work on a formal process for finding the company's next chief executive and Musk said it was "deliberately false." In the interview, Musk also said he believed the president's electoral victory in November was essential to stopping illegal immigrants from entering the country and voting for Democrats I think the Democrat campaign to import vast numbers of illegal voters would have succeeded," he said would have become a "one-party state from which we could never escape." He did not provide evidence of this claim Musk has faced accusations of being a Nazi after he twice made a one-armed gesture during a speech to a crowd gathered in Washington which obviously President Trump has experienced for a very long time so they're going to come up with whatever attacks they can to destroy the public perception of someone." So it's an outrageous thing to claim that I'm a Nazi because the issue with Nazis was not their mannerisms or their choice of dress but the fact that they killed millions of people "They've also called President Trump a Nazi and there was one publication that said he's … worse than Hitler has done a lot to prevent wars and stop wars which is the very opposite of being a Nazi." Musk's tenure in government is set to expire in late May according to the executive order the president signed to create it hang-ups and hours-long waits on Social Security recipients In recent months, people trying to reach the Social Security Administration (SSA) have encountered website crashes, automatic hang-ups and hours-long waits on the phone or in person. But horrible customer service appears to be just the first step in Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s plan to destroy Social Security — the United States’ largest social welfare program, which provides benefits to 73 million people without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack.” Advocates fear that as DOGE makes Social Security increasingly nonfunctional, trust in the enormously popular program will erode allowing Musk and his allies the opportunity to further weaken or privatize aspects of the program Weakening Social Security has serious and even deadly consequences: Among older people who receive benefits, 39 percent of men and 44 percent of women derive more than half their income from it Around 80 percent of recipients are retired workers (or their spouses and dependents) who paid into the system during their working years while the rest qualify due to a disability or are children of deceased workers “Never before did we have a president claiming that there was all this fraud where there wasn’t any or all this waste where there wasn’t any,” Nancy Altman a political advocacy group that calls for expansion of Social Security “And then using that to make changes precipitously without any kind of thought — some of which are just going to create more fraud And no one has ever had access to all this data Dudek has acted as a rubber stamp for DOGE’s staff-cutting agenda “DOGE has been all over the Social Security Administration,” said Altman “It’s not an exaggeration to say around 1,000 years of institutional experience and knowledge have walked out the door,” said Altman … There has really been an enormous brain drain from the agency Dudek admitted, behind closed doors, that he is following the orders of DOGE and the White House. “I work for the president. I need to do what the president tells me to do,” Dudek told senior SSA staff and advocates in a mid-March recording leaked to ProPublica but the president wanted it and I did it.” Later in the meeting Although the Finance Committee voted along party lines to advance Bisignano’s nomination in March, Senate Democrats are calling for Trump to withdraw the nomination “There’s a trust gap between the nominee and the American people before he’s even gotten in the door,” Wyden said in a statement Social Security employees and beneficiaries are feeling the effects of the mayhem introduced under Dudek struggling to keep up with constant changes from above and dealing with a growing backlog of claims Spending freezes leave workers unable to purchase office supplies make copies of documents or hire necessary services like interpreters for hearings “This chainsaw of the Musk-Trump co-presidency is gutting this agency The SSA website is crashing repeatedly, and callers find themselves hung up on or put on hold for hours. Meanwhile, the team in charge of monitoring customer experience was cut by DOGE. AARP reported that its help line is flooded with calls from confused “Morale is in the toilet,” an employee told the Washington Post in March “What’s going on is the destruction of the agency from the inside out, and it’s accelerating,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told the Washington Post “I have people approaching me all the time in their 70s and 80s They don’t know what’s coming.” all the while never missing a month of payments But it might not keep that record for long “This chainsaw of the Musk-Trump co-presidency is gutting this agency. It is breaking it from within,” Martin O’Malley, former SSA commissioner under President Biden, testified before the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on April 1 “And it ultimately will lead to cascading failures interruptions and system shutdowns that will eventually — and I think within the next couple of months — lead to benefit interruptions for the first time in 90 years.” A former deputy SSA commissioner under George W. Bush has expressed similar concerns that benefits could soon be disrupted “It would appear that what they’re trying to do is crater this agency and kneecap its ability to serve the public,” O’Malley testified because 80 percent of Americans believe that Social Security should be strengthened and made better until they wreck it and sour enough of the public against it.” He warned: “I truly believe that the Musk-Trump co-presidency has already taken 90 percent of the actions necessary to crater this agency.” While Trump and Bisignano insist they will not cut benefits, advocates and Democratic politicians argue that cutting services achieves the same end. “[T]here are backdoor ways to accomplish the same thing as a benefits cut,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) pointed out in Bisignano’s hearing and everyone who gives up or dies before they get their benefits sorted out due to those delays is also a benefit cut.” Dudek alarmed advocates by saying the agency would begin to outsource “non-essential functions to industry experts,” a seeming reference to privatizing aspects of the program Altman warned that as DOGE messes with SSA and makes system crashes more likely “There’s about $1.5 trillion that flows through Social Security None of that goes to Wall Street or any of these for-profit companies,” she said “But I think these ‘tech bros’ and others would love to get their hands on it.” She fears that if the Trump administration breaks the system and disrupts benefits She also warns that if SSA outsources customer services people needing assistance will find themselves “trapped in an AI nightmare.” “There are so many reasons that artificial intelligence just cannot do what humans do on this program,” explained Altman “People who call don’t always know exactly what their issue is and it takes some conversation to figure it out and then they discover there’s three others And the other thing is that people call at very vulnerable times or they’re disabled and can no longer work.” even though they are ineligible to receive benefits In an even more wild claim, Musk has repeatedly accused Biden of illegally handing out Social Security numbers to immigrants to encourage voter fraud in a “massive large-scale program to import as many illegals as possible ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States.” “They have just done this over and over again on Social Security, just coming up with these wild claims that bear no resemblance to the truth,” Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told the Washington Post DOGE seems to be using its fraud allegations to justify major policy overhauls Citing fraud protection, SSA abruptly announced in mid-March that people would no longer be able to apply for benefits or make changes to their direct deposits by phone these activities could only be done online or in-person at a field office In response to public outcry, SSA scrapped the changes on April 9 and the rapid announcements have created an environment of confusion and fear for recipients the confusion at SSA has made recipients more susceptible to scams “Scammers have been sending out very official looking notices saying or your benefits are going to stop,’” said Altman you can’t live without your benefits.” DOGE meddling also increases the risk of a data breach. In testimony former SSA acting Chief of Staff Tiffany Flick described how DOGE associates were given sensitive information without requisite training which they viewed from within Trump’s Office of Personnel Management offices the risk of data leaking into the wrong hands is significant.” She also warned that SSA’s IT is built on an “incredibly complex web of systems” that are extremely reliable but could easily be broken by DOGE associates In a lawsuit brought by unions and retiree advocacy groups, federal Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander issued a preliminary injunction in mid-April blocking DOGE from accessing personal SSA data and ordering them to delete any already obtained She also required DOGE to remove software installed on SSA systems and stop accessing SSA code and promising: “I will follow it exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems.” Hollander called Dudek’s representation “inaccurate,” noting that her order “expressly applies only to SSA employees working on the DOGE agenda.” In response Dudek walked back his threats to close down SSA no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child.” The Trump administration is also using SSA to attack immigrants. In April, SSA added thousands of migrants to the agency’s “death master file,” with the intention of cutting them off from banks And in March, it was reported that SSA has frozen a process called Enumeration-Beyond-Entry in which immigrants who are granted work authorization are automatically issued and mailed Social Security cards This change will create more work and costs for SSA while adding hurdles for immigrant workers Despite being enormously popular, SSA has long weathered attacks from the right — often through claims the program is unsustainable. From the mid-1980s through 2020, Social Security collected more each year than it paid out, allowing it to build trust funds worth $2.8 trillion the latest Social Security Trustees’ Report indicates that by 2033 the agency may no longer be able to pay out full benefits by ending provisions that limit benefits for some public service retirees.) Altman said this time is “qualitatively different.” “It strikes me what they’re trying to do is convince everybody there’s an enormous amount of fraud we are witnessing a terrifying array of anti-democratic tactics to silence political opposition increase surveillance and expand authoritarian reach Truthout is appealing for your support as Trump and his sycophants crack down on political speech Nonprofits like Truthout could be caught in Trump’s crosshairs as he attacks dissenting groups with bad faith lawsuits and targeted harassment of journalists these attacks come at a time when independent journalism is most needed The right-wing corporate takeover of media has left reliable outlets few and far between with even fewer providing their work at no cost to the reader Who will be there to hold the fascists to account We ask for your support as we doggedly pursue justice through our reporting Truthout is funded overwhelmingly by readers like you Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation today Katie Rose Quandt is a freelance journalist in the Bronx who writes about justice and inequality. Follow her on Twitter: @katierosequandt As Trump and his sycophants work to silence political dissent independent media is a key part of the resistance Support our work by making a one-time or monthly donation to Truthout today Late-night hosts discussed the latest impacts of Trump’s tariffs and further chaos within his administration Late-night hosts surveyed the wreckage from Donald Trump’s latest cabinet reshuffling and took aim at his recent comments about a toy shortage On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert spoke about Trump’s decision to remove Mike Waltz as his national security adviser weeks after the controversial Signal story in which information was accidentally leaked to a journalist. Read moreHe called it “a tough decision and as with anything this sensitive the first person to find out was Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg” Colbert joked that Waltz’s “face was most shaped like a mailbox” out of Trump’s cabinet and he “lasted a pretty long time for a Trump national security adviser” it was announced that he would now become ambassador to the UN this way Waltz will be able to share every country’s secrets,” he said This week also saw McDonald’s report a sales decline of 3.6% Colbert joked: “My God what have I done … I’ve hurt the only one I ever loved.” he also said that the 99¢ store would soon be known as “Shelves n Smells” It has led to some Republicans reportedly stockpiling toilet paper to which Colbert said: “China doesn’t make our toilet paper There may also be a toy shortage this Christmas as a result and when Trump was asked about it his response was for people to just buy fewer dolls Colbert also said that Elon Musk would “soon be stepping down from ruining everything” On Jimmy Kimmel Live the host spoke about the national rallies that had been organised for May Day to protest against Trump’s “war on working people” there were no reports of these taking place and instead they focused on the “hot new bikinis Brittany Mahomes is wearing this spring” Kimmel said to Trump: “Maybe if you hadn’t fired all those people they wouldn’t be able to march at two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon.” He also spoke about Musk having “worn out his welcome at the White House” and how he would now be able to “focus on his own disaster of a company” and his “old job of impregnating women like a one-man Maury Povich show’” The former TV host called the president a man of “deep faith” and “deep conviction” Kimmel joked that he was a man of “not just one deep conviction “he skipped church to play golf on Easter” He called Dr Phil a fraud as he had previously appeared on the show to call Trump a “liar and a narcissist” He then moved on to the news about Waltz being moved to his new position “We can’t trust you to keep our secrets but go cavort freely with representatives from every country in the world,” he said On Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about “more turmoil and confusion” with the reshuffle even though there has “already been so much chaos” the Fox pundit turned secretary of defence “doesn’t seem to be doing a great job of defending himself” He also said that the shelves will “soon be empty” with tariffs affecting access to many products including toys at Christmas “Thanks to Trump you can say Merry Christmas again but you won’t want to because it’s going to be shit,” he joked after saying Trump was the kind of father who buys his children gifts at 11.59pm on 24 December While the right has pushed the idea that it’s liberals who like to mandate what people can and can’t buy it’s now Republican policies that have led to a shortage He played footage of rightwing pundits pushing it as a “crazy commie woke lib idea” to restrict access to certain products but called them “hypocrites” as he played a clip of Trump saying kids will have to put up with two dolls instead of 30 dolls Meyers said that a man who lives with such extreme wealth “lecturing us on the folly of material possessions” was absurd He said Trump was “telling the peasants to stop complaining and be happy with their rations” It's now within the realm of possibility that SpaceX could be paid in crypto company scrip because Elon Musk is now in control of a company town. Starbase, Texas will become an officially incorporated city after a public vote on Saturday the electorate wasn't entirely neutral heading to the polls Most of the 283 eligible voters were SpaceX employees Starbase will soon have the authority to pass laws The results of Saturday's vote were 212 votes in favor and only six votes against the proposal. Starbase established its own government with a mayor and two commissioners, according to the BBC. Bobby Peden The two commissioner positions were filled by Starbase residents with ties to SpaceX We already have an idea of what the private space company has in mind for the small town in Texas There's already a bill in the Texas Legislature to allow Starbase to close State Highway 4 Boca Chica Beach and Boca Chica State Park for rocket launches SpaceX aims to ramp up the number of launches per year at Starbase from five to 25 SpaceX has been launching from Starbase since 2019, but the city's incorporation also carries concerns that the company will use its new power to cause further environmental damage in South Texas. According to Deutsche Welle, Bekah Hinojosa co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network they would build up their dangerous rocket operations and cause more seismic activity and that they would destroy more of the wildlife habitat in the region." It should be worrying that SpaceX could have complete control over Starbase with little or no oversight Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights sustainability and space.Follow AuthorMay 05 02:48pm EDTShareSaveCommentA sign that reads "Starbase" is seen near the SpaceX facilities in Brownsville Tech billionaire Elon Musk's dream of gaining city status for his SpaceX spaceport in the southern US state of Texas became a reality on Saturday when voters overwhelmingly backed turning his Starbase into a new municipality which also named a senior SpaceX representative as its mayor with 100 percent of the early vote (Photo by Gabriel Cardenas / AFP) (Photo by GABRIEL CARDENAS/AFP via Getty Images) Voters in a remote corner of Texas near both the Mexico border and the Gulf of Mexico have overwhelming conveyed a new informal title on Elon Musk: Starbase town patriarch by a landslide decision of 212 votes in favor and just six against The new municipality measures less than 2 square miles in area as it’s believed the vast majority of voters work at Starbase Local Cameron County officials have also regularly touted SpaceX and Starbase as an engine of economic development for the area Starbase voters also elected three SpaceX employees to serve as the town’s new mayor and a pair of commissioners including mayor-elect and company VP Bobby Peden Converting Starbase into what will pretty clearly be a company town puts certain zoning infrastructure and public services decisions and administration under the control of the new municipality The local government can also pursue other powers like the ability to close the local beach for weekday launches something that currently requires authorization from Cameron County Such authority would require approval from state legislators and is opposed by otherwise supportive county officials like Treviño Jr Despite the overwhelming vote to incorporate including some locals and activist groups in South Texas who cite environmental concerns over the rocket production launch facility and purported “Gateway to Mars” envisioned by the company Several dozen people attended a demonstration on the beach in opposition to Starbase’s incorporation, according to a post from the South Texas Environmental Justice Network Musk has long envisioned Starbase as a key epicenter for his ambitions to sprinkle more humanity throughout the solar system starting with a settlement on the surface of Mars via numerous Starship flights The massive space vehicle has so far been exclusively developed although it’s possible it could also one day launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida 2021: SpaceX prepares for its next mission with the Spaceship SN15 at .. More the high bay at the Starbase Space Facility in Boca Chica Starship is also scheduled to ferry astronauts to the moon in the coming years as part of NASA’s Artemis program In addition to the Starfactory rocket manufacturing facility and launch infrastructure Starbase also provides support for employees and tourists SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment on future plans for the new city