Alex Heath

Elon Musk has cut half of Twitter’s remaining public policy team, according to a tweet by a member of the team who said she was among those laid off. My understanding is that about 15 people are affected.

That’s clear after listening to the latest All In podcast that is co-hosted by longtime friends of Musk, including Jason Calacanis and David Sacks — both were advisors to Musk during the early days of his Twitter takeover.

Twitter is gearing up to relaunch its verification program as soon as tomorrow, though the release could be pushed to early next week, I’m told. The plan is for a total of three checkmarks: the paid Twitter Blue subscription for a blue check (existing, non-paid blue checks will lose them 90 days post-launch if they don’t pay), a grey check designated for government accounts and managed by Twitter, and a gold check for advertisers.

Elon Musk expects you to be writing a lot of code and he wants to see it tonight, according to an internal memo first reported by Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer that I also obtained.

“We will also make it easy to do crypto,” Musk told employees during an internal Q&A yesterday, a recording of which I obtained. “You should be able to easily send money to anyone in Twitter with one click,” he said. “The payments side of things will probably be more valuable than all the rest of Twitter combined.”