Sustainable aviation fuel an important part of decarbonization: GenZero CEO
Frederick Teo, CEO of Temasek-backed GenZero, explains how the Green Fuel Forward initiative launched with the World Economic Forum supports the aviation industry's decarbonization efforts.
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New York Post
5 hours ago
- New York Post
Here's why SpaceX faces a bright future as government contractor despite Musk-Trump divorce
The public breakup between Elon Musk and President Trump has cast a pall over the future of SpaceX – but the mogul's company should remain on a solid trajectory because the two sides need each other. Trump has counted on his estranged First Buddy's privately owned firm to fulfill the administration's plans for NASA to return to the moon, ongoing operations at the International Space Station, a reported classified deal with US intelligence to build hundreds of spy satellites and expanding internet access to rural parts of America. SpaceX – known for building and launching rockets, and the Starlink satellite internet network – has approximately $22 billion in government contracts on the books, according to Reuters. 4 Elon Musk, shown with President Trump in Texas last year, called for Trump to be impeached. Getty Images That includes a roughly $5 billion deal to build the Dragon spacecraft for use by NASA, which Musk threatened to decommission in his unhinged social media rants aimed at Trump – only to later reverse course hours later. Trump threatened to end Musk's federal contracts in response to the verbal onslaught, which included the allegation that Trump is 'in the Epstein files' and that he would have 'lost the election' without his help. 'Trump could certainly cancel most deals and contracts if he wants but the government may still have to pay them – depends on the contract details,' a Republican consultant connected with Trump, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the feud, told The Post on Friday. The two men appeared no closer to a detente, with Trump refusing to get on the phone with his former DOGE cost-cutter and largest campaign benefactor after he blasted the White House-backed 'One Big Beautiful Bill.' While that makes for great theater, the split probably works in both of their favors, according to the source. 'Trump and Elon both got what they wanted here,' the GOP consultant said. 'Elon was able to distance himself from Trump in a public enough way to get his businesses back on track and Trump was able to have all of the MAGA warriors who were questioning the bill shut up or even defend it so they could defend Trump and prove they took his side.' SpaceX 'will be fine' despite the fireworks, the source added. 4 President Trump said Friday that Musk had 'gone crazy.' AP White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to comment on the war of words. 'President Trump is focused on making our country great again and passing the One Big Beautiful Bill,' she said. SpaceX did not immediately return a request for comment. As the founder, chairman and CEO of SpaceX, Musk is in total control with 79% of the company's voting shares as of 2023, according to a filing at the time. The closely held firm recently secured a $350 billion valuation. Overall, Musk and his businesses that also include Tesla, brain chip firm Neuralink and The Boring Company have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, according to a recent Washington Post analysis. If Trump does decide to go to DefCon 5 on Musk, the billionaire's alleged drug use could be used as one possible lever to wriggle out of the SpaceX contracts. 4 SpaceX is key to NASA's plans to return to the Moon. REUTERS During Trump's first term in office in 2019, Bloomberg reported that the Pentagon was reviewing Musk's SpaceX security clearance after he smoked marijuana during an appearance on 'The Joe Rogan Experience' podcast. While Musk has strenuously denied misusing drugs, House Democrats this week requested details from Trump on whether he had any knowledge of Musk working 'under the influence.' The possible loss of government contracts would not be 'catastrophic' for Musk or his rocket company. 'SpaceX has developed itself into a global powerhouse that dominates most of the space industry, but there's no question that it would result in significant lost revenue and missed contract opportunities,' Justus Parmar, CEO of SpaceX investor Fortuna Investments, told Reuters. Meanwhile, MAGA firebrand Steve Bannon called for the South African-born Musk to be deported – and floated the possibility that Trump could use a Korean War-era statute called the Defense Production Act to enable a federal takeover of the privately owned company. 4 SpaceX has about $22 billion in federal contracts. REUTERS However, the headline-grabbing proposal is likely a nonstarter. 'There's no way Bannon's idea of just taking over private companies works out long term, both because it would be litigated and because other companies would keep the US government at arm's length to avoid future similar issues,' the consultant said. 'Neither outcome is workable.'
Epoch Times
7 hours ago
- Epoch Times
Hakeem Jeffries Declines to Say Whether Democrats Should ‘Embrace' Musk
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Friday cautiously avoided saying whether Democrats should seize on Elon Musk's public falling-out with President Donald Trump as an opportunity to forge political ties with the tech billionaire. Musk and Trump clashed openly on Thursday over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act budget legislation, which is pending in the Senate after narrowly passing the House last week. Musk, aligning himself with the fiscally conservative wing of the Republican Party, criticized the Trump-backed legislation as rife with pork barrel spending and raised alarm over its potential to exacerbate the national debt, which is approaching $37 trillion.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Elon Musk Is Still Not Your Friend
This article is part of HuffPost's biweekly politics newsletter. Click here to subscribe. After months of political bliss, it seems as if the president and the world's richest man are ready to call it quits. Donald Trump and Elon Musk traded barbs on their respective social media websites on Thursday and into Friday, as social media users happily looked on. It was only a matter of time before Trump and Musk, who are not known for making and keeping allies, had a spectacular falling out. The inciting incident turned out to be Musk's criticisms of the Trump-backed 'Big Beautiful Bill,' the House's spending bill that slashes the safety net in order to provide $4.5 trillion worth of tax cuts to the rich. At first, Musk's comments were mild, saying the bill doesn't reduce the deficit and 'undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.' But he went fully nuclear on Thursday. Musk, who already claimed he won the election for Trump, posted to X to accuse the president of being in the 'Epstein files,' or a list of people with suspicious associations with the financier, who died in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. (Trump and Epstein socialized in the 1980s and 1990s, but Trump has denied ever being on his private plane or island, where some of the alleged sex crimes took place.) Trump, in turn, suggested on Truth Social he would cut Musk's government contracts, while the president's allies even started talking about deporting Musk. At this point, it seems clear that the once-budding bromance is toast. Many people reacted with schadenfreude to the world's weirdest celebrity breakup. But it also had a few Democrats seeming ready to slide into Musk's DMs. 'We should ultimately be trying to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values that he agrees with,' Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told Politico on Thursday. 'A commitment to science funding, a commitment to clean technology, a commitment to seeing international students like him.' Other Democrats also signaled that the rift could benefit their party. 'I'm a believer in redemption, and he is telling the truth about the legislation,' Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said, while still cautioning that Musk's slashing of the federal government is still an open wound. 'There are Democrats who see his decimation of the federal workforce and the federal government as an unforgivable sin.' Making the enemy of your enemy your friend is not always an outlandish idea. There have been multiple reports that even some in the Trump administration were fighting with Musk behind the scenes, making it seemingly feasible to build a new alliance between him and Democrats. And Musk is known for dumping truckloads of money into politics when he's on your side. He was, by far, the largest Republican donor in the 2024 cycle, contributing more than $290 million to Trump's campaign. Then in April, Musk made a Wisconsin Supreme Court race the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history by spending $25 million to boost Brad Schimel, the GOP candidate. (Schimel lost by 10 points.) But there are strange bedfellows, and then there's extending an olive branch to someone as toxic as Elon Musk. For one thing, Musk is deeply unpopular with basically everyone. An April ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that Musk only had a 35% approval rating nationwide. It was even worse among the people who the Democratic Party represents — just 4% of those voters approve of Musk's works. In fact, he's so disliked that it seems likely Trump can spin their very public split into a good thing for him politically. And when you boil it down further, nearly everything Musk has done as a part of the Trump campaign, and later, the Trump administration, is anathema to what Democratic voters believe. Musk's purchase of Twitter, which he renamed to X, in 2022 began the South African billionaire's journey to becoming Trump's closest ally and biggest donor. When a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man attempted to assassinate Trump in July 2024, Musk solidified his support by officially endorsing him. Musk appeared at Trump rallies and spent the final weeks of the campaign spreading conspiracy theories and throwing money around in order to send Trump back to the White House. Then at Trump's second inauguration, Musk was widely condemned for doing a Nazi-like salute while speaking to supporters. This didn't stop Trump from giving him a semi-official role in government, with the power to set up the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and hire a cadre of inexperienced employees to ostensibly cut waste from the government. DOGE staffers accessed private data, fired critical employees and were named in multiple lawsuits — many of which are still ongoing today. Musk has repeatedly shared antisemitic posts on social media, including claiming 'Hitler didn't murder millions of people.' He's a proponent of a racist 'Great Replacement' conspiracy theory, which claims that people of color are executing an intentional plot to eliminate white people. While the Trump administration has ramped up deportations, blocked migrants from receiving asylum and used ugly rhetoric about immigrants in general, Musk was able to convince the president to admit white South Africans as refugees, claiming there is a 'white genocide' happening in South Africa. Then there's the fallout from the cuts his team at DOGE has made across the federal government. Musk spearheaded the effort to cut funding for essential agencies, impacting everything from the IRS to HIV prevention to natural disaster response to Social Security. The entire U.S. Agency for International Development was effectively dismantled, which led to the deaths of children abroad and put millions of lives at risk. Across the federal government, everyday people, including Trump supporters, were thrust into unemployment as DOGE officials decided their roles weren't important. 'I want a big tent party too, but Elon's primary policy goals don't fit within the tent,' Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith of Slingshot Strategies told HuffPost. 'There's nothing around Social Security or Medicare cuts that fits within the tent of the Democratic Party at all.' Over the last five months, Musk has hardly signaled that he's ready to pivot to liberalism. In fact, up until this week, he remained by Trump's side, appearing at Cabinet meetings (despite not being a Cabinet member), irritating those in Trump's inner circle and parading around the White House with one of his children. Musk's time at the White House was scheduled to come to an end at the end of May when his 130-day 'special employee' status expired. The Democrats are in a bit of a political wilderness, and it can be tempting to look for a powerful new ally. After losing to Trump, the infighting has been continuous, with many placing the blame on former President Joe Biden for failing to step aside sooner, with others pointing at former Vice President Kamala Harris for running a campaign that wasn't capable of defeating Trump. But Democrats should remember that their attempts to reach across the aisle and find common ground are not what their base is asking for. A March NBC News poll found that 65% of Democrats did not want the party to compromise with Trump — even if it means getting nothing done in Congress. 'There's no reason to take Elon back,' Roth Smith said. Kevin Robillard contributed reporting.
