A giant Elon Musk bust was spotted at a Utah national park with a sign calling out DOGE cuts
The bust appeared aimed at DOGE-led cuts to the National Park Service.
A spokesperson for Arches National Park said there has not been an increase in lines this year.
A giant bust fit for a Big Tech museum appeared at Arches National Park in Utah over the weekend with a message aimed at the person it was molded after: Elon Musk.
The piece was on a trailer that was being pulled by a white pickup truck, according to photos shared with Business Insider. The bust was enclosed in a frame lined with blue stars and also carried a sign fashioned after President Donald Trump 's signature style.
Karen Henker, acting public affairs specialist for Arches National Park, confirmed to BI that the Musk bust was spotted in the park over the weekend.
Nancy Charmichael, who spotted the head and shared the photos with BI, said it was probably around 10 to 12 feet tall and had a "self-satisfied smirk."
Charmichael, who was visiting from Orlando, said she saw the bust a couple times while driving around the park and that she "appreciated it." She said she'd been concerned about recent cuts to the National Park Service.
"It's unfortunate," she said. "But we were just there, they're still beautiful."
It's unclear who was behind the piece, but it appeared to be in response to cuts made to the National Park Service that were fueled by the White House DOGE office. Musk was the face of government efficiency efforts before he stepped back from his White House work in May.
Musk and the White House did not respond to requests for comment from BI.
According to the National Parks Conservation Association, a park advocacy group, NPS has lost 24% of its permanent staff since January. "The park staff who remain are being asked to do more with less, and it's simply not sustainable," the group said in a statement this month.
The recently passed spending bill, aka the " Big Beautiful Bill," also cut $267 million of funding that had been committed for national parks, which advocates say were already underfunded and understaffed as park visitation reaches all-time highs.
Henker, the park spokesperson, said that "lines to get into Arches are very common and have been for years." Arches is among the national parks that have enacted a timed-entry reservation system, which limits how many visitors enter the park at certain times. Henker said there has not been an increase in lines at the park this year compared to prior years.
Do you have a story to share about what it's been like at national parks this summer? Are you the person behind the Elon Musk bust? Contact this reporter at .
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Los Angeles Times
34 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Social Security turns 90 this week. Republicans are trying to keep it from reaching 100
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a clear mind about the value of Social Security on Aug. 14, 1935, the day he signed it into law. 'The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure,' he said in the Oval Office. 'We can never insure 100 per cent of the population against 100 per cent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against ... poverty-ridden old age.' He called it a 'cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete.' FDR envisioned further programs to bring relief to the needy and healthcare for all Americans. Some of that happened during the following nine decades, but the structure is still incomplete. And now, as Social Security observes the 90th anniversary of that day, the program faces a crisis. If there are doubts about whether Social Security will survive long enough to observe its centennial, those have less to do with its fiscal challenges, the solutions of which are certainly within the economic reach of the richest nation on Earth. They have more to do with partisan politics, specifically the culmination of a decades-long GOP project to dismantle the most successful, and the most popular, government assistance program in American history. From a distance, the raids on the program's customer service infrastructure and the security of its data mounted by Elon Musk's DOGE earlier this year looked somewhat random. Fueled by abject ignorance about how the program worked and what its data meant, DOGE set in place plans to cut the program's staff by 7,000, or 12 percent, and to close dozens of field offices serving Social Security applicants and beneficiaries. This at a time when the Social Security case load is higher than ever and staffing had already approached a 50-year low. This might have been billed as an effort to impose 'efficiency' on the system. But 'a more accurate description,' writes Monique Morrissey of the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute, 'is sabotage.' That has been conservatives' long-term plan — make interactions with Social Security more involved, more difficult and more time-consuming in order to make it seem ever less relevant to average Americans' lives. Once that happened, the public would be softened up to accept a privatized retirement system. Get the inefficient government off the backs of the people, the idea goes, so Wall Street can saddle up. George W. Bush's privatization plan, indeed, was conceived and promoted by Wall Street bankers, who thirsted for access to the trillions of dollars passing through the system's hands. This was never much of a secret, but it simmered beneath the surface. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, speaking at a July 30 event sponsored by Breitbart News, said the quiet part out loud. Referring to a private savings account program enacted as part of the GOP budget reconciliation bill Trump signed July 4, Bessent said, 'In a way, it is a back door for privatizing Social Security.' The private accounts are to be jump-started with $1,000 deposits for children born this year through 2028, to be invested in stock index mutual funds; families can add up to $5,000 annually in after-tax income, with withdrawals beginning when the child reaches 18, though in some cases incurring a stiff penalty. I asked the Treasury Department for a clarification of Bessent's remark, but didn't receive a reply. Bessent, however, did try to walk the statement back via a post on X in which he stated that the Trump accounts are 'an additive benefit for future generations, which will supplement the sanctity of Social Security's guaranteed payments.' Sorry, Mr. Secretary, no sale. You're the one who talked about 'privatizing Social Security' at the Breitbart event. You're stuck with it. Plainly, an 'additive' benefit would have nothing to do with Social Security. How it would 'supplement the sanctity' of Social Security benefits isn't apparent from Bessent's statement, or the law. Still, we can parse out the implications based on the long history of conservative attacks on the program. In 1983, the libertarian Cato Journal published a paper by Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis, two policy analysts at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, titled 'Achieving a 'Leninist' Strategy—i.e., for privatizing Social Security. From Lenin they drew the idea of mobilizing the working class to undermine existing capitalist structures. Cato's 'Leninist' strategy paper explicitly advocated encouraging workers to opt out of Social Security by promising them a payroll tax reduction if they put the money in a private account. IRAs, the authors asserted, would acclimate Americans to entrusting their retirements to a privatized system. They advocated an increase in the maximum annual contribution and its tax deductibility. 'The public would gradually become more familiar with the private option,' they wrote. 'If that did happen, it would be far easier than it is now to adopt the private plan as their principal source of old-age insurance and retirement income.' In other words, it would provide a backdoor for privatizing Social Security. (Germanis has since emerged as a cogent critic of conservative economics. Butler served at Heritage until 2014 and is currently a scholar in residence at the Brookings Institution; he told me in March that he still believes in parallel systems of private retirement savings as we have today, but as 'add on' savings rather than a substitute for Social Security.) Cato, a think tank co-founded by Charles Koch, has never relinquished its quest to privatize Social Security; the notion still occupies pride of place on the institution's web page devoted to the program. In 2005, when I attended a two-day conference on the topic at Cato's Washington headquarters, Michael D. Tanner, then the chair of Cato's Social Security task force, explained that Cato wasn't concerned so much with the system's fiscal and economic issues as with its politics. Its goal, he stated frankly, was to unmake FDR's New Deal. 'This is about whether we redefine a relationship between individuals and government that we've had since 1935,' he told me. 'We say that what was done was wrong then, and it's wrong now. Our position is that people need to be responsible for their own lives.' Yet forcing dramatic change on a program so widely trusted and appreciated is a heavy lift. That's why Republicans have tried to downplay their intentions. Back in 2019, for instance, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) talked about the need to hold discussions about Social Security's future 'behind closed doors.' Secrecy was essential, Ernst said, 'so we're not being scrutinized by this group or the other, and just have an open and honest conversation about what are some of the ideas that we have for maintaining Social Security in the future.' As I observed at the time, that was a giveaway: The only time politicians take actions behind closed doors is when they know the results will be massively unpopular. Raising taxes on the rich to pay for Social Security benefits? That discussion can be held in the open, because the option is decisively favored in opinion polls. Cut benefits? That needs to be done in secret, because Americans overwhelmingly oppose it. Curiously, Trump and his fellow Republicans seem to think that attacking Social Security is an electoral winner. Possibly they've lost sight of the program's importance to the average American. Among Social Security beneficiaries age 65 and older, 39% of men and 44% of women receive half their income or more from Social Security. In the same cohort, 12% of men and 15% of women rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income. Notwithstanding that reality, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently asserted that delays in sending out Social Security checks or bank deposits would be no big deal. 'Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month,' Lutnick said. 'My mother-in-law, who's 94 — she wouldn't call and complain.... She'd think something got messed up, and she'll get it next month.' He claimed that only 'fraudsters' would complain. I had a different take. Mine was that even a 24-hour delay in benefit payments would have a cataclysmic fallout for the Republican Party. It would be front-page news coast to coast. There would be nowhere for them to hide. While bringing misery to millions of Americans, a delay — which would be unprecedented since the first checks went out in 1940 — would be a gift for Democrats, if they knew how to use it. Where will we go from here? The current administration has already done damage to this critically-important program. An acting commissioner Trump installed briefly interfered with the enrollment process for infants born in Maine—an important procedure to ensure that government benefits continue to flow to their families—because the state's governor had pushed back against Trump in public. In July, the newly-appointed Social Security commissioner, Frank Bisignano, allowed a false and flagrantly political email to go out to beneficiaries and to be posted on the program's website implying that the budget reconciliation bill relieved most seniors of federal income taxes on their benefits. It did nothing of the kind. To the extent that Social Security may face a fiscal reckoning in the next decade, the most effective fix is well-understood by those familiar with the program's structure. It's removing the income cap on the payroll tax, which tops out this year at $176,100 in wage income. Up to that point, wages are taxed at 12.4%, split evenly between workers and their employers. Above the ceiling, the tax is zero. Remove the cap, and make capital gains, dividends and interest income subject to the tax, and Social Security will remain fully solvent into the foreseeable future. Trump and his fellow Republicans don't seem to understand how most Americans view Social Security: as an 'entitlement,' not because they think they're getting something for nothing, but because they know they've paid for it all their working lives. As much as the system's foes would like it to go away, as long as the rest of us remain vigilant against efforts to 'redefine a relationship between individuals and government' established in 1935, we will be able to celebrate its 100th anniversary 10 years from now, in 2035.
New York Post
34 minutes ago
- New York Post
Sean Duffy recounts spat with Elon Musk over cutting air traffic controllers: 'The Senate confirmed me'
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy opened up on the latest episode of 'Pod Force One' about his dispute with tech mogul Elon Musk over the billionaire's push to slash headcount in his department. Duffy told The Post's Miranda Devine in the new episode, out Wednesday, that he drew a red line at the prospect of firing so-called 'safety-critical positions,' including air traffic controllers. Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington. Subscribe here! 'I get along well enough with Elon,' Duffy began. 'He has a number of equities that come through DOT,' referring to Musk's SpaceX and Tesla companies. However, Duffy emphasized that 'Elon — or no one else — is the Secretary. I am. The Senate confirmed me.' 4 Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told 'Pod Force One' that he took issue with Elon Musk's push to cut the headcount at his department. Ron Sachs – CNP for NY Post 'I think it might not have been intentional, might have been ham-handed [like] some of the requests that were made by [the Department of Government Efficiency], but my position was, we are not going to fire air traffic controllers.' 'Safety critical positions are not going to be fired within the Department of Transportation. We can do things more efficiently … but we are not going to fire air controllers. And so we had a little back and forth, [but] we got along very well after that. I think the papers made it a bigger deal than it was.' Duffy told Devine the dispute with Musk took place before the Jan. 29 midair collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and a regional jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport which killed 67 people. 'Elon is an amazing innovator. He's creative. And again, there's a lot to learn from him, but I run this department, and again, I didn't want someone on the outside trying to tell me to fire people,' the secretary explained. 'Had I done that, had I actually fired controllers, oh, my—think what the liberal media would do to me. I would be slaughtered. We didn't, thank God, but [this] is why, throughout government, you have to make sure that the secretaries are the ones who are driving the policy.' 4 Elon Musk had clashed with multiple cabinet officials during his quest to shrink government bloat. AP 4 Duffy told The Post's Miranda Devine that he drew a red line over Musk cutting 'safety critical positions' like air traffic controllers. Ron Sachs – CNP for NY Post 4 Duffy praised Musk as an 'amazing innovator' — but stressed that he alone makes decisions about his department. Ron Sachs – CNP for NY Post Up until the end of May, Musk was the driving force behind the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a cost-cutting initiative across the federal bureaucracy. During that time, Musk clashed with numerous cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, with former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon claiming last month that Musk shoulder-checked Bessent 'like a rugby player.' Full Episode In early June, Musk and Trump had an epic falling-out over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act with the South Africa-born billionaire warning the legislation was 'utterly insane and destructive.' The space and electric car guru had been incensed that the megabill was projected to dramatically increase the national deficit, venting that it 'undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.' 'I don't know if Elon was concerned about being able to access critical minerals from China, and if he was angry at the president for going after China and putting tariffs on China that can affect the critical minerals that he makes batteries with. I don't know if it was EV subsidies,' Duffy mused. 'I don't know what happened internally, but I would tell you this, the president couldn't be more generous and couldn't have been nicer to him.'
Washington Post
35 minutes ago
- Washington Post
How ‘Altman's Pause' could knock the AI industry off course
James Pethokoukis is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of 'The Conservative Futurist.' OpenAI's latest chatbot model, GPT-5, is an improved artificial-intelligence tool: faster, more capable, more accurate. But it's not the technomagic wand some AI optimists hoped for. The leap to 'superintelligence,' the prize behind $400 billion in Big Tech investment this year, now looks later rather than sooner, if even possible. It's not the end of the world if Silicon Valley adjusts its dreams of miracle cures, super-materials and warp-speed growth down toward steady office-automation efficiencies for now. Progress is often uneven, with periods of rapid innovation followed by plateaus in which new technology is incorporated. And tempering our immediate hopes for scientific wonders at least means diminishing our fears of rogue machines and mass job extinction. But this slowdown comes at a dangerous time in which investors are running one step ahead of a populist backlash that could shackle AI with regulation before the technology can reach its next breakthrough. There's now substantial risk that the industry's critics turn the public narrative toward its visible harms — whether it's fears of lost jobs, environmental harm or a broader upheaval of daily life — without enough visible benefits to counteract them. Americans already tell pollsters they are more concerned than excited about AI. Their doomscrolls bring stories of chatbot addiction, celebrity deepfakes and synthetic voices cloning loved ones to scam the elderly. Older generations worry that younger ones are cheating their way through school. Then there are worrisome economic headlines undermining the case for rapid AI progress with minimal government intervention. One example is the squeeze on entry-level tech positions, created by companies' turn to AI for tasks traditionally handled by recent graduates. As summarized by a recent New York Times headline: 'Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.' (Plenty of readers probably texted that link to their college kids.) This disruption is mostly confined to certain tech sectors, but Americans are hearing constant speculation that their white-collar jobs are next, whether or not it's happening anytime soon. As with the China trade shock, limited or exaggerated downsides can dominate perception: Losses in manufacturing towns overshadowed diffuse gains from trade — cheaper goods, greater productivity, new export jobs — and fueled right-wing populism and tariffs. The economy is on shaky ground for reasons unrelated to AI— such as the trade war — and the technology could run into public worries about stagflation. Energy prices are set to rise as consumers compete for power with AI data centers, and the White House is shortsightedly cutting off new projects that might help. Now add the realistic possibility that the AI investment flood, responsible for half of the nation's growth of gross domestic product in the first half of the year, dries up. If the boom busts and drags down the economy, it could merge with job fears into a potent 'disruption without reward' narrative. That would make it far easier for policymakers to impose strict rules, automation taxes or moratoria — stalling AI not because it failed, but because politics killed it. We can see signs of how this might play out now: Trucking unions are pushing to let local governments block Waymo's expansion. Hollywood unions are pressing for strict limits on AI-written scripts and digital replicas. Organized groups protect their turf, while the public, which might enjoy safer transport or cheaper, more varied entertainment, often has little political voice. Should AI fail to deliver tangible benefits for ordinary voters, politicians may be more inclined to acquiesce to the protectionist entreaties of special interests. This echoes economic history. During the Industrial Revolution, Britain's productivity rose while wages stagnated — a period dubbed 'Engels's pause,' after Friedrich Engels's grim account of industrial poverty. Early mechanization spoils went mainly to factory owners, while laborers saw their traditional livelihoods disrupted, sparking the infamous Luddite attacks on textile machinery. Britain's leaders pressed ahead — and later generations reaped enormous prosperity — but the long lag in sharing those gains fueled years of social unrest. Today's version could be 'Altman's pause' in honor of OpenAI boss Sam Altman: Tech giants take most early AI profits, while disrupted workers wait for the promised rising tide to lift all boats. And unlike in the 19th century, modern populist leaders might side with the displaced this time — as Donald Trump did with dockworkers fighting port automation — or with environmentalists alarmed by data centers' water and energy demands. Anti-disruption sentiment is brewing within both progressive and MAGA coalitions, meaning political blowback could come from multiple directions. Engels's pause ended when gains finally spread: New industries created better-paying jobs, skills improved and living standards rose. Governments today should focus on accelerating that diffusion. That means keeping a light touch on regulation, scaling workforce training so algorithms complement rather than replace workers, and ensuring there is reliable and affordable energy — including nuclear — to power AI data centers. Permitting reform should make it easier to build. Sensible safeguards against misuse are essential, but fear should not freeze progress. The aim is to turn any Altman's pause into a short lull before a broad, sustained rise in prosperity.
