Elon Musk certainly has a lot of ideas. Since making a fortune from PayPal in the original dotcom boom, he’s taken over Tesla, pushing forward production of electric cars, and founded SpaceX, the rocket company that now flies plenty of NASA payloads.
Two newer companies — the Boring Company, focused on digging holes for transit tunnels, and NeuraLink, which is developing brain-computer interfaces — also occupy his time. Then there’s the Hyperloop, the high-speed land travel design he’s encouraged others to develop. Somehow, this brash billionaire still has time to get himself into trouble on Twitter.
Tim Sweeney recently endorsed Elon Musk’s latest attempt to paint the nationwide protests as a leftist conspiracy — this time, one backed by billionaire progressive mega donors George Soros and Reid Hoffman. “Disgusting,” he wrote in response to Musk’s X post connecting the dots, then defended himself by citing his experience in the Apple lawsuit. (Not sure whether these are similar circumstances?)
There’s been no change in plans to wind down the agency, a CFPB employee testified.
Donald Trump livestreamed a Tesla showcase in the White House driveway on Tuesday, apparently reading the notes of a Tesla sales pitch as he performed choosing one of its EVs to purchase from five delivered for the event.
Standing alongside Elon Musk, Trump attempted to boost the automaker, after prices of its shares dropped 15 percent over the last five days, and said he’d label violence against its locations as domestic terrorism.
Musk tweeted that in 2022, adding that it could “...cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy.” Today Electrek highlights this incident that occurred Monday morning in Ventura, CA.
It’s unknown if the Cybertruck’s driver forgot to engage “wade mode” or made some other error while trying to launch a jet ski from the boat ramp, but KABC reports the vehicle was completely submerged by the time fire crews arrived. A Facebook post says it took about an hour and a half to recover the Cybertruck.
The platform has been going down intermittently since around 5:40AM ET on Monday, with no official ETA for when the outages will be resolved, and no details provided about what’s causing the issues. Musk made similar claims about cyberattacks impacting X’s services last year when Spaces crashed out during a scheduled conversation with Donald Trump, though X staffers at the time told The Verge that an attack hadn’t occurred.
I’ve been at the courthouse this morning as Adam Martinez, chief operating officer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is grilled about whether the agency is unlawfully trimming staff and ordering people to stop work. Martinez admitted staff members have been confused about what they’re allowed to work on, but he insists it’s improving. So far, Judge Amy Berman Jackson seems skeptical — we’ll be headed back after lunch for more.
Wired reports that following a 150-person pilot, General Services Administration employees are using the chatbot, which Elon Musk’s DOGE hopes to expand to the entire agency, for “general purposes.”
An internal memo seen by Wired instructs workers not to “type or paste federal nonpublic information,” and includes suggestions for “effective” prompts. One employee told the outlet GSAi is “about as good as an intern,” producing “generic and guessable answers.”
Six people were arrested Saturday after “several hundred protestors” blocked entrances to a Manhattan Tesla showroom, The New York Times reports. “Tesla Takedown” protests aim to hurt Elon Musk by targeting Tesla, which has seen sales dropping globally since Musk started directing deep cuts in the federal government.
The Times details violence beyond formal protests, including shots fired at a showroom Thursday night. Earlier that day, feds charged someone accused of “planting a Molotov cocktail near a vehicle.”
[nytimes.com]
While Musk and Rubio beefed about who should really be in charge of the state department, an unelected billionaire or the secretary of state, “the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.” The result of the meeting was the first attempt to put any brakes on Musk’s power. Good luck with that!
A day after workers at the US African Development Foundation blocked Elon Musk’s cronies from entering their office, DOGE employees came back with federal marshals, The New York Times reports. The DOGE team had been described as “very young men” with backpacks. This Times photo shows the DOGE employees entering on Thursday with their escort.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump said DOGE is “headed by Elon Musk,” despite DOJ lawyers arguing he isn’t its administrator or even an employee. Now Politico reports he told the top members of his administration that Musk “was empowered to make recommendations to the departments but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy.”
Of course, as CNN reports, Trump also told reporters later:
“We’re going to be watching them, and Elon and the group are going to be watching them, and if they can cut, it’s better,” Trump said. “And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”
SpaceX recently listed some explanations for how its seventh Starship flight test ended, and now another report is coming. Flight 8’s launch and Super Heavy booster rocket separation was successful, with the booster returning to the pad.
However, before reaching the engine cutoff point nearly nine minutes into the flight, the Starship began to tumble, then exploded (according to SpaceX, “...experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost”) without attempting its planned payload deploy demo.
The resulting debris field caused the FAA to issue a ground stop order at several Florida airports until 8PM ET.
Big brands are advertising on X again, and some Senate Democrats are worried their return to the platform is due to coercion. In a letter addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi, five Democratic Senators asked the DOJ to investigate whether Musk is using his influence to retaliate against companies that refuse to do business with his platform.
Musk’s role at DOGE, combined with his ownership of X and other businesses, amount to a “significant conflict of interest,” reads the letter obtained by the Wall Street Journal. “The apparent attempt to strong-arm the federal government to advance his business dealings could violate federal ethics laws and, depending on the specific facts, the federal extortion statute.”
Workers are now barred from browsing general news, online shopping, and sports websites on government devices, unless they get an exception for a legitimate business need, according to an email to SSA employees obtained by Rolling Stone.
Apparently this will help “better protect the sensitive information entrusted to us in our many systems,” which might include some of the same systems the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has reportedly tried to access.
[rollingstone.com]
The FAA is dealing with crashes, layoffs, and outdated tech. Now Elon Musk wants in.
Contrary to what Facebook ad scams are promoting via deepfake videos of Fox News personalities, Musk hasn’t discovered “one simple trick” to reverse the blood sugar condition. Most of these ads, which Engadget started noticing in early February, are linking viewers to unproven supplements that “big pharma” doesn’t want you to see.
It’s common for fraudsters to use AI-manipulations in “celeb bait” scams. Meta is in the process of investigating and removing the ads.
District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has denied Musk’s request for an injunction to pause the ChatGPT maker’s transition to a for-profit company. The case is now set for an expedited trial this fall given “the public interest at stake.”
This comes after OpenAI unanimously rejected Musk’s unsolicited $97.4 billion offer to buy the AI startup. In February Rogers said she was unlikely to issue an injunction in a case pitting “billionaires versus billionaires.”
[bloomberg.com]
Users on a Facebook group for Cybertruck owners are posting about public backlash being directed towards their vehicles, showing people flicking them off and lewd or abusive messages they’ve received.
Cybertrucks are a recognizable target for the “Tesla Takedown” protestors opposing Elon Musk’s federal government takeover. Many owners are embracing the hate, however, with 404 Media noting that group members chalk it up to something only “crazed,” “poor,” or “brainwashed” “libs” are doing.
The GOP big tent gets even bigger, but not everyone at CPAC loves the tech oligarch’s hold over Trump.
How much does MAGA really care about the tech industry?
It started with a handful of demonstrations that have now reached 65 cities. But can these rallies actually take down Tesla?
As shown in a clip posted by The Handbasket writer Marisa Kabas, people in the Department of Housing and Urban Development HQ were greeted on day one of their mandatory return to office with what appears to be an AI-generated video of Donald Trump kissing Elon Musk’s feet. It is visible in the post, and they are both left feet, for some reason.
She writes that the video played on loop for about five minutes, until staff unplugged them.
[bsky.app]
Apparently responding to a President Trump post saying he wanted Elon Musk to be “more aggressive,” the Musk-led organization emailed federal workers — even some placed on leave — demanding “approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week” by Monday at 11:59PM ET, reports Business Insider.
“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk posted today, echoing his 2022 opt-in-to-stay-employed email to Twitter workers. Federal employee union AFGE said in a statement it will “challenge any unlawful terminations.”
Filed in Manhattan by conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, who claims that Musk is her months-old son’s father, the petitions seek to establish his paternity and request sole legal custody of the child, according to Taylor Lorenz’s User Mag.
Musk, who has a history of secret children, hasn’t acknowledged St. Clair’s claims, as Vanity Fair notes in a story on the petitions.
Acting commissioner Leland Dudek, a data analyst at a small anti-fraud office before his ascension last week, was placed on paid leave and under internal investigation on suspicion he’d broken privacy and tax laws by “sharing unauthorized access to information” with DOGE representatives, The Washington Post reports.
Trump ousted prior acting commissioner Michelle King and gave the role to Dudek shortly after DOGE learned of the investigation, according to the Post.
[washingtonpost.com]
