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Elon Musk dodges DOGE stimulus check question during Wisconsin rally: Here's what he said.

Elon Musk dodges DOGE stimulus check question during Wisconsin rally: Here's what he said.

USA Today01-04-2025
Elon Musk dodges DOGE stimulus check question during Wisconsin rally: Here's what he said.
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Watch the moment Elon Musk admits DOGE checks may never come
Elon Musk admitted that DOGE stimulus checks for taxpayers will be subject to congressional approval or President Donald Trump.
Elon Musk, the face of the Department of Governmental Efficiency, dodged questions about a potential DOGE stimulus check during a rally in Wisconsin Sunday.
The billionaire and Tesla CEO ceded that any stimulus from DOGE's dubious savings would have to go through a congressional vote.
"It's somewhat up to Congress and maybe the president to, you know, as to whether specific checks are cut," Musk said.
Musk said that Americans would feel the impact of the broad and deep cuts his team is making in the form of relief from inflation.
"As government spending is made more efficient and spending is reduced, the tax by inflation is reduced," Musk said.
The February core Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, one of the Federal Reserve's inflation measures, came in higher than expected Friday.
How did the idea of a DOGE stimulus start?
President Donald Trump said that he was considering an idea first proposed by an investment firm CEO to issue stimulus checks to Americans DOGE in February.
"We're considering giving 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20% to paying down the debt," Trump said in a tangent during the Saudi-sponsored FII PRIORITY Summit in Miami Beach.
The pronouncement came on the same day as reporting from USA TODAY showed that DOGE's website published misleading information on the amount of money it has claimed to save, including a nearly $8 billion error.
Stimulus payments from DOGE savings were floated by Azoria investment firm CEO James Fishback, who lobbied on X for Musk to issue a stimulus check based on the claimed savings. Others on the platform and TikTok echoed the sentiment, with one video claiming, on dubious factual grounds, that taxpayers could get as much as $8,000.
Musk responded to Fishback's post, saying, "Will check with the President."
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Bolivia heads to the polls as its right-wing opposition eyes first victory in decades
Bolivia heads to the polls as its right-wing opposition eyes first victory in decades

The Hill

time43 minutes ago

  • The Hill

Bolivia heads to the polls as its right-wing opposition eyes first victory in decades

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The right-wing front-runners also have expressed interest in doing business with Israel, which has no diplomatic relations with Bolivia, and called for foreign private companies to invest in the country and develop its rich natural resources. After storming to office in 2006 at the start of the commodities boom, Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous president, nationalized the nation's oil and gas industry, using the lush profits to reduce poverty, expand infrastructure and improve the lives of the rural poor. After three consecutive presidential terms, as well as a contentious bid for an unprecedented fourth in 2019 that set off popular unrest and led to his ouster, Morales has been barred from this race by Bolivia's constitutional court. His ally-turned-rival, President Luis Arce, withdrew his candidacy for the MAS on account of his plummeting popularity and nominated his senior minister, Eduardo del Castillo. As the party splintered, Andrónico Rodríguez, the 36-year-old president of the senate who hails from the same union of coca farmers as Morales, launched his bid. Ex-president Morales urges supports to deface ballots Rather than back the candidate widely considered his heir, Morales, holed up in his tropical stronghold and evading an arrest warrant on charges related to his relationship with a 15-year-old girl, has urged his supporters to deface their ballots or leave them blank. Voting is mandatory in Bolivia, where some 7.9 million Bolivians are eligible to vote. Doria Medina and Quiroga, familiar faces in Bolivian politics who both served in past neoliberal governments and have run for president three times before, have struggled to stir up interest as voter angst runs high. 'There's enthusiasm for change but no enthusiasm for the candidates,' said Eddy Abasto, 44, a Tupperware vendor in Bolivia's capital of La Paz torn between voting for Doria Medina and Quiroga. 'It's always the same, those in power live happily spending the country's money, and we suffer.' Conservative candidates say austerity needed Doria Medina and Quiroga have warned of the need for a painful fiscal adjustment, including the elimination of Bolivia's generous food and fuel subsidies, to save the nation from insolvency. Some analysts caution this risks sparking social unrest. 'A victory for either right-wing candidate could have grave repercussions for Bolivia's Indigenous and impoverished communities,' said Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, a Bolivian research group. 'Both candidates could bolster security forces and right-wing para-state groups, paving the way for violent crackdowns on protests expected to erupt over the foreign exploitation of lithium and drastic austerity measures.' All 130 seats in Bolivia's Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Parliament, are up for grabs, along with 36 in the Senate, the upper house. If, as is widely expected, no one receives more than 50% of the vote, or 40% of the vote with a lead of 10 percentage points, the top two candidates will compete in a runoff on Oct. 19 for the first time since Bolivia's 1982 return to democracy.

Bolivia heads to the polls as its right-wing opposition eyes first victory in decades
Bolivia heads to the polls as its right-wing opposition eyes first victory in decades

San Francisco Chronicle​

timean hour ago

  • San Francisco Chronicle​

Bolivia heads to the polls as its right-wing opposition eyes first victory in decades

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivians headed to the polls on Sunday to vote in presidential and congressional elections that could spell the end of the Andean nation's long-dominant leftist party and see a right-wing government elected for the first time in over two decades. The election on Sunday is one of the most consequential for Bolivia in recent times — and one of the most unpredictable. Even at this late stage, a remarkable 30% or so of voters remain undecided. Polls show the two leading right-wing candidates, multimillionaire business owner Samuel Doria Medina and former President Jorge Fernando 'Tuto' Quiroga, locked in a virtual dead heat. Many undecided voters But a right-wing victory isn't assured. Many longtime voters for the governing Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, now shattered by infighting, live in rural areas and tend to be undercounted in polling. With the nation's worst economic crisis in four decades leaving Bolivians waiting for hours in fuel lines, struggling to find subsidized bread and squeezed by double-digit inflation, the opposition candidates are billing the race as a chance to alter the country's destiny. 'I have rarely, if ever, seen a situational tinderbox with as many sparks ready to ignite,' Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, founding partner of Aurora Macro Strategies, a New York-based advisory firm, writes in a memo. Breaking the MAS party's monopoly on political power, he adds, pushes 'the country into uncharted political waters amid rising polarization, severe economic fragility and a widening rural–urban divide.' Bolivia could follow rightward trend The outcome will determine whether Bolivia — a nation of about 12 million people with the largest lithium reserves on Earth and crucial deposits of rare earth minerals — follows a growing trend in Latin America, where right-wing leaders like Argentina's libertarian Javier Milei, Ecuador's strongman Daniel Noboa and El Salvador's conservative populist Nayib Bukele have surged in popularity. A right-wing government in Bolivia could trigger a major geopolitical realignment for a country now allied with Venezuela's socialist-inspired government and world powers such as China, Russia and Iran. Conservative candidates vow to restore US relations Doria Medina and Quiroga have praised the Trump administration and vowed to restore ties with the United States — ruptured in 2008 when charismatic, long-serving former President Evo Morales expelled the American ambassador. The right-wing front-runners also have expressed interest in doing business with Israel, which has no diplomatic relations with Bolivia, and called for foreign private companies to invest in the country and develop its rich natural resources. After storming to office in 2006 at the start of the commodities boom, Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous president, nationalized the nation's oil and gas industry, using the lush profits to reduce poverty, expand infrastructure and improve the lives of the rural poor. After three consecutive presidential terms, as well as a contentious bid for an unprecedented fourth in 2019 that set off popular unrest and led to his ouster, Morales has been barred from this race by Bolivia's constitutional court. His ally-turned-rival, President Luis Arce, withdrew his candidacy for the MAS on account of his plummeting popularity and nominated his senior minister, Eduardo del Castillo. 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'It's always the same, those in power live happily spending the country's money, and we suffer.' Conservative candidates say austerity needed Doria Medina and Quiroga have warned of the need for a painful fiscal adjustment, including the elimination of Bolivia's generous food and fuel subsidies, to save the nation from insolvency. Some analysts caution this risks sparking social unrest. 'A victory for either right-wing candidate could have grave repercussions for Bolivia's Indigenous and impoverished communities,' said Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, a Bolivian research group. 'Both candidates could bolster security forces and right-wing para-state groups, paving the way for violent crackdowns on protests expected to erupt over the foreign exploitation of lithium and drastic austerity measures.' All 130 seats in Bolivia's Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Parliament, are up for grabs, along with 36 in the Senate, the upper house. If, as is widely expected, no one receives more than 50% of the vote, or 40% of the vote with a lead of 10 percentage points, the top two candidates will compete in a runoff on Oct. 19 for the first time since Bolivia's 1982 return to democracy.

Three Republican-led states to deploy National Guard troops to U.S. capital
Three Republican-led states to deploy National Guard troops to U.S. capital

CNBC

time2 hours ago

  • CNBC

Three Republican-led states to deploy National Guard troops to U.S. capital

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