logo
SpaceX role in new defense system reportedly in question after Musk-Trump feud

SpaceX role in new defense system reportedly in question after Musk-Trump feud

Yahoo20 hours ago

Investing.com -- The U.S. government is reconsidering SpaceX's role in a new missile defense system following the recent dispute between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, according to a Reuters report late Thursday.
The White House had previously considered a plan for SpaceX to work with Palantir Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:PLTR) and Anduril on key components of the "Golden Dome" missile defense system.
Now, a revised framework for the system, designed to track and prevent potential missile attacks against the United States, could diminish SpaceX's involvement. According to the report, one option under consideration would initially bypass SpaceX's satellite capabilities and instead focus on expanding existing ground-based missile defense systems.
When asked about the project, a White House spokesman stated, "The Trump Administration is committed to a rigorous review process for all bids and contracts."
A senior Defense Department official added that the Pentagon "has no announcements regarding future contracts associated with the Golden Dome effort."
The reconsideration comes in the wake of a public disagreement between Musk and President Trump that occurred last week.
Related articles
SpaceX role in new defense system reportedly in question after Musk-Trump feud
U.S. agencies monitored foreign visits to Elon Musk's properties, says WSJ
Blackstone plans $500 billion European investment over next decade

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Exclusive: Trump's tariff deal ‘quietly' added 10% raise which nobody is complaining about anymore, says his former commerce secretary
Exclusive: Trump's tariff deal ‘quietly' added 10% raise which nobody is complaining about anymore, says his former commerce secretary

Yahoo

time11 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Exclusive: Trump's tariff deal ‘quietly' added 10% raise which nobody is complaining about anymore, says his former commerce secretary

Wilbur Ross, former Commerce Secretary and a key architect of Trump's first-term trade policy, describes Trump's current tariff strategy as a deliberate evolution: moving faster, hitting harder, and using broader executive powers to impose tariffs for both economic and diplomatic leverage. The Trump administration's use of tariffs has sparked debate over the ultimate goals of its economic strategy. However, a former Cabinet member and key trade advisor to the President has suggested there is an underlying logic to the approach. Since winning the Oval Office, President Trump has announced an evolving range of policies. with economic sanctions spinning higher on some trade partners while others have been granted pauses. Many of the announcements have not come through official White House channels; for example, Trump threatened a 50% tariff on the EU in April in a bid to get European negotiators to the table—by posting on his social media site, Truth Social. Indeed, Trump has come under scrutiny from Beijing, arguably the most critical region for the U.S. to make a deal, who claim America's tariff tactics have been 'coercion and blackmail' when instead it should 'convey information to the Chinese side…through relevant parties.' But Wilbur Ross, Trump's Commerce Secretary in his first administration, says there's a clear tactic at play beneath Trump's bluster. The 87-year-old banker turned D.C. power player said there is an 'art' to Trump's dealmaking, as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has suggested; Ross told Fortune in an exclusive interview: 'Well, everybody's reaction to [tariffs] was first shock and amazement, but the actual retaliatory measures that they put in were fairly modest—even China didn't match in dollar for dollar. 'There's a real reason for that, I think the other countries, as they've thought about it, have recognized that while they have to talk very bravely for their domestic political constituencies… They also recognize that at the end of the day, they can't afford a tit-for-tat escalating trade war with us.' And this was a fact Trump was relying on, continued Ross: 'One of the earliest things he put in was that 10% tariff on everything from everywhere. 'Nobody is even complaining about that anymore. When you think about it, in the normal course, getting quietly to do a 10% tariff on everything from everywhere was a huge achievement, even if he didn't get anything else. But because he followed it with these much more extreme things, it makes the 10% look like it's not such a big bother. 'But it's a huge number, and he's been collecting it every day.' Indeed, imported goods alone into the U.S. in 2024 stood at $3.36 trillion—even before tax, duties, and levies were collected (worth $82 billion) and before imported services are added to those figures. Even 10% of near-$3.4 trillion is an eye-watering sum to add to federal budgets, though some items like autos and steel are even higher. Indeed nations like China, Canada, and Mexico are all already subject to more than the baseline 10% universal tariff. When Ross spoke to Fortune in a previous exclusive interview earlier this year, he said President Trump would be all the more confident in his second term because he now better understands the inner workings of Washington, D.C., and has a stronger mandate courtesy of a solid election sweep. And President Trump's tactics, which have included everything from threatening a 25% hike on Apple's iPhones specifically to raising sanctions to more than 150% on China at some points, reflect the path Ross expected. After all, as Secretary, Ross was one of the key allies in Trump's team when renegotiating America's position on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). At the time, Trump was a fierce critic of the deal with Mexico and Canada and wanted to withdraw from the agreement and begin negotiating from there. Ross felt the better tactic was to threaten such action and keep an exit as a last resort, an opinion that Trump eventually came around to agreeing with. Likewise, having been appointed in 2017 Ross oversaw the tariff action in the first Trump administration which included sanctions on Chinese goods as well as aluminum and steel more widely. 'He has started out on a much more adventurous path than last time,' Ross told Fortune this week. 'Broader in scope and more extreme in terms of the numbers themselves.' Trump has three objectives, he adds: shrinking trade deficits, producing revenue to offset his 'One Big, Beautiful Bill' and achieving other diplomatic purposes such as the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. and global defense spending. 'He has a much more fulsome, much more complicated agenda than before,' Ross explains. 'It's also different in…that last time I was very careful to set the groundwork to do public hearings, stakeholder meetings, to do written reports, to set a whole record so that under the Administrative Procedures Act we would be relatively safe from people trying to knock it out in court. 'This time, they did a very different thing. They went in mostly just by his say so using the IFA, the Emergency Powers Act, and they ran into a snag at the Court for International Trade.' This snag may alter the course of tariff reaction on the account of businesses, he added, because their investment timelines may shift based on when the tariffs are legally approved. But Ross added: 'Most people are operating under the assumption that sooner or later, he'll get something like what he was looking for…and therefore, while it's slowed down a bit, [I] don't think it will derail [trade talks] because [foreign governments] also know there are other ways he could punish them rather than just the tariffs. 'So it's a bump in the road, but I don't think it's a huge pothole that would wreck the car.' This story was originally featured on

Trump embraces Israel after ‘successful' Iran attack
Trump embraces Israel after ‘successful' Iran attack

Politico

time14 minutes ago

  • Politico

Trump embraces Israel after ‘successful' Iran attack

President Donald Trump signaled there is no daylight between the United States and Israel after it launched an attack on Iran late Thursday, killing multiple high-ranking military leaders and targeting Iran's nuclear and long-range missile capabilities. Trump repeatedly praised the attack as 'successful' in a media blitz on Friday, and urged Iran to agree to a deal with the U.S. to shutter its nuclear program. The president's strong support for Israel's attacks took a noticeably different tone from Secretary of State Marco Rubio's statement immediately following the attacks on Thursday, which stressed the U.S. was not involved in Israel's 'unilateral' actions. Trump said the U.S. was aware of Israel's plans to strike Iran in advance, but did not clarify if the U.S. sanctioned the attacks or was merely given advance notice. When asked by The Wall Street Journal about whether the U.S. was given a heads-up, Trump said, 'Heads-up? It wasn't a heads-up. It was, we know what's going on.' And he told Reuters, 'We knew everything.' Trump declined to answer when asked by ABC News if the U.S. was directly involved in the attacks, but praised Israel's use of 'American equipment' in the military operation to NBC News. Shortly after the attacks on Thursday, Rubio released a statement that appeared to create some distance between the U.S. and Israel. 'Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,' Rubio said in the Thursday statement. Asked by CNN on Friday about Rubio's statement, Trump reiterated his strong support for Israel. 'We of course support Israel, obviously, and supported it like nobody has ever supported it,' he said. U.S. allies around the world have expressed shock at the attacks and stressed the need for deescalation. A Downing Street spokesperson said United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer held a call with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to discuss 'long-held grave concerns over Iran's nuclear programme' and called on both nations to cease further military action. 'The leaders reaffirmed Israel's right to self-defence, and agreed that a diplomatic resolution, rather than military action, was the way forward,' the spokesperson said. Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said Friday morning Israel launched the attack after gathering intelligence suggesting that Iran was 'moving forward' with plans to 'destroy Israel.' 'They were going to initiate another attack like Oct. 7. Once we gathered the information about that, we decided not to wait. We believed their intentions,' Danon said in an interview with 'Fox and Friends.' In each interview, Trump called on Iran to return to the negotiating table and agree to a nuclear deal. The president told Axios he believes the attacks may help bring Iran closer to a deal — but it wasn't clear in the immediate aftermath of the strikes how negotiations were affected. In his NBC News interview, the president said the Iranians were 'calling me to speak,' but noted that 'the same people we worked with the last time ... many of them are dead now.' But just hours before the attacks, Trump said Israel attacking Iran could 'blow' any chance of a deal. 'As long as I think there is an agreement, I don't want [Israel] going in, because I think that would blow it,' he told reporters at the White House on Thursday. 'Might help it actually, but it also could blow it.' Iranian leaders have reacted with fury to Israel's wave of strikes — and have signaled the country also blames the United States for the actions. A post from Iran's United Nation's mission 'vehemently' condemned the strikes, and said 'the Israeli regime and its backer — namely the United States — shall be held fully accountable for these blatant violations of international law and their grave consequences.' The Pentagon is moving two warships closer to Israel in the aftermath of the attack to provide additional security, POLITICO previously reported. Trump told Reuters he is unsure if U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff's scheduled meeting with Iran to continue nuclear talks in Oman on Sunday will still take place in the wake of the attacks.

Appeals court won't reconsider Trump's $5M loss to E. Jean Carroll
Appeals court won't reconsider Trump's $5M loss to E. Jean Carroll

New York Post

time14 minutes ago

  • New York Post

Appeals court won't reconsider Trump's $5M loss to E. Jean Carroll

NEW YORK, June 13 (Reuters) – Donald Trump failed to persuade a federal appeals court to reconsider the $5 million verdict won by E. Jean Carroll after a jury found that the U.S. president sexually abused and defamed the former magazine columnist. A divided 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Friday left intact its Dec. 30 decision upholding the jury award. Carroll, now 81, accused Trump of attacking her around 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan, and defaming her in an October 2022 Truth Social post by denying her claim as a hoax. 3 Donald Trump failed to persuade a federal appeals court to reconsider the $5 million verdict won by E. Jean Carroll. AP 3 Carroll accused Trump of attacking her around 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in Manhattan, and defaming her in an October 2022 Truth Social post by denying her claim. REUTERS Jurors decided in May 2023 that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll, and defamed her by lying. They did not find that Trump raped Carroll, as she had claimed. In seeking reconsideration, Trump maintained that the trial judge erred in letting jurors review the 2005 'Access Hollywood' video of him bragging about his sexual prowess, and a 'pile-on' of inflammatory evidence that he mistreated two other women. 3 Jurors decided in May 2023 that Trump had sexually assaulted and defamed Carroll. Getty Images One, businesswoman Jessica Leeds, said Trump groped her on a plane in the late 1970s. The other, former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff, said Trump forcibly kissed her at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005. Trump has denied their claims. Trump, who turns 79 on Saturday, is separately appealing an $83.3 million jury verdict in January 2024 for defaming Carroll and damaging her reputation in June 2019, when he first denied her claim about the Bergdorf encounter. The president is arguing in that appeal that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last July providing him substantial criminal immunity shields him from liability in Carroll's civil case. In his 2019 and 2022 denials of Carroll's accusations, Trump said she was 'not my type' and had made up the rape claim to promote her memoir.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store