Citizen Musk
Elon Musk has emerged as one of the most powerful figures in American politics. After contributing more than $250m to President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, Musk joined his administration as head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. From that post, he launched an aggressive effort to slash the federal workforce—targeting entire agencies, some of which regulate his own companies. His position also gave him access to vast troves of government data, potentially fuelling the growth of his artificial intelligence ventures.
Fault Lines traces Musk's transformation from Trump critic to top donor and political ally. Through interviews with historians, insiders and journalists, Citizen Musk investigates whether one billionaire bought his way into power—and whether the United States is sliding into oligarchy.
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Al Jazeera
3 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
US Fed leaves interest rates unchanged amid economic uncertainty
The United States Federal Reserve has left its benchmark rate unchanged despite mounting pressure from President Donald Trump to cut rates. On Wednesday, the Fed said it will leave its short-term rate unchanged at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent. The central bank's decision was largely in line with expectations, and it has not cut interest rates since December. The decision comes as policymakers weigh signs of a weakening economy. US retail sales numbers fell more than expected in its report from the US Department of Commerce yesterday. Last week's jobless claims report from the US Department of Labour came in at its highest in eight months at 248,000. However, the last jobs report showed the unemployment rate was steady at 4.2 percent, indicating the labour market, while slowing, remains fairly stable. 'The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run. Uncertainty about the economic outlook has diminished but remains elevated,' the central bank said in a statement. 'Fed Chair Jerome Powell has little urgency to ease. But if any easing were to have occurred, it would have been hugely stimulative, and would have lowered US debt interest expense,' Michael Ashley Schulman, partner and chief investment officer at Running Point Capital Advisors, told Al Jazeera. Policymakers are looking at the looming and consistently shifting changes to Trump's tariff policies as well as the escalating tensions in the Middle East. While oil prices were on the decline before Israel's attack last week on Iran and its retaliatory strikes, the concerns about a closure of the Strait of Hormuz as tensions escalate have fueled concerns that prices could go up in the coming weeks. Trump criticises Powell Before the rate announcement, Trump expressed disappointment in the central bank's decision to hold rates steady in the past few months. 'Powell's too late,' he said, referring to his desire for rate cuts. 'I call him 'too late Powell' because he's always too late. I mean, if you look at him, every time I did this I was right 100 percent, he was wrong,' Trump said. He added that he 'may have to force something' but it is not clear what Trump meant by that. He also suggested that he should lead the central bank. 'Maybe I should go to the Fed,' Trump said. 'Am I allowed to appoint myself at the Fed? I'd do a much better job than these people.' Powell's term is set to expire next May, and Trump has recently walked back his rhetoric on firing the central bank head. 'What I'm going to do is, you know, he gets out in about nine months, he has to, he gets fortunately terminated … I would have never reappointed him, [former President Joe] Biden reappointed him. I don't know why that is, but I guess maybe he was a Democrat … he's done a poor job,' Trump said.
Al Jazeera
4 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Supreme Court upholds Tennessee law barring gender-affirming care for youth
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a Tennessee law barring puberty blockers and hormone therapies for transgender minors does not violate the US Constitution and can therefore remain in effect. Wednesday's decision was split along ideological lines, with the high court's six conservative judges siding with Tennessee and its three left-leaning judges joining together for a dissent. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the majority. In it, he explained that the plaintiffs — three transgender minors, their parents and a doctor — had not successfully shown a violation of the Constitution's 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law. The plaintiffs had sought to lift the ban, arguing that Tennessee's law, known as SB1, discriminated against them based on their sex and gender. Roberts, however, disagreed. He pointed out that the ban applies to young men and women equally. 'SB1 does not mask sex-based classifications,' he wrote. 'The law does not prohibit conduct for one sex that it permits for the other. Under SB1, no minor may be administered puberty blockers or hormones to treat gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, or gender incongruence.' Roberts also noted that puberty blockers continue to be available under the Tennessee law to treat congenital defects, early puberty, disease or injury among children. That application likewise was allowed regardless of sex, he wrote. 'SB1 does not exclude any individual from medical treatments on the basis of transgender status but rather removes one set of diagnoses — gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, and gender incongruence — from the range of treatable conditions,' Roberts said. Transgender youth are sometimes prescribed hormone inhibitors to delay the onset of puberty, thereby stopping the development of secondary sexual characteristics like breasts, deepening voices and facial hair. LGBTQ advocates say such gender-affirming care is essential in some cases to alleviate the stress of such changes and reduce the potential need for surgeries later on. Puberty blockers are widely considered to be safe and their effects temporary. But Roberts noted that some medical providers are pushing for more research into the long-term effects of the drugs and pointing to 'open questions' in the medical field. 'Health authorities in a number of European countries have raised significant concerns regarding the potential harms associated with using puberty blockers and hormones to treat transgender minors,' Roberts wrote. 'Recent developments only underscore the need for legislative flexibility in this area,' he continued. The majority's opinion was met by a fierce dissent, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She pointed out that puberty blockers can save lives, given that transgender youth face higher rates of suicide, self-harm and bullying. 'The majority contorts logic and precedent to say otherwise, inexplicably declaring it must uphold Tennessee's categorical ban on lifesaving medical treatment so long as 'any reasonably conceivable state of facts' might justify it,' Sotomayor wrote. 'By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.' She emphasised that the consensus in the US medical community is that puberty blockers are 'appropriate and medically necessary' in cases of a comprehensive and clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria. 'Transgender adolescents' access to hormones and puberty blockers (known as gender-affirming care) is not a matter of mere cosmetic preference,' Sotomayor said. 'To the contrary, access to care can be a question of life or death.' She questioned why Tennessee lawmakers should have the power to regulate a medical decision — and why puberty blockers could still be used to address issues like unwanted facial hair among teenage girls but not gender affirmation among transgender youth. 'Tennessee's ban applies no matter what the minor's parents and doctors think, with no regard for the severity of the minor's mental health conditions or the extent to which treatment is medically necessary for an individual child,' Sotomayor said. Wednesday's decision comes at a precarious time for the transgender community in the US. Since returning to office for a second term in January, US President Donald Trump has taken steps to limit the rights of transgender people. On his very first day back in the White House, the Republican leader issued an executive order announcing the federal government would only recognise two sexes, male and female. Days later, on January 27, he issued another executive order, effectively setting the stage for a ban on transgender troops in the military. Trump denounced transgender people as 'expressing a false 'gender identity'' and said their identity 'conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle'. The Supreme Court upheld that ban as well. June 6 marked an initial deadline for transgender troops to self-identify and leave the military voluntarily. In addition, Trump has said his administration will withhold federal funds from schools that allow transgender girls and women to participate in women's sports. That decision has led to clashes with states like Maine, where Democratic Governor Janet Mills has pledged to stand up to Trump. The fight over Tennessee's ban on puberty blockers arrives amid a wave of similar legislation: According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), some 25 states have bans on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth. The group estimates that those laws leave around 100,000 transgender minors without access to medical care they may need. The ban the Supreme Court weighed on Wednesday had initially faced an injunction from a lower court, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction pending an appeal. The ACLU called the Supreme Court's decision a setback but pledged to continue filing legal challenges. In a statement, it noted that the Supreme Court had not overturned the wider precedent that discriminating against transgender people is illegal. 'Today's ruling is a devastating loss for transgender people, our families, and everyone who cares about the Constitution,' said Chase Strangio, a co-director for the ACLU's LGBTQ and HIV Project. 'We are as determined as ever to fight for the dignity and equality of every transgender person.'
Al Jazeera
4 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Iran war gives Netanyahu political breathing room in Israel
Two confidence votes, each fewer than seven days apart, tell much of the story of Israel's political transformation since it launched attacks on longstanding regional nemesis Iran on Friday. Early on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government narrowly survived a vote that ensured its continuation after an 11th-hour deal was reached with ultra-Orthodox parties who are a key force within it. Had a deal not been found, then parliament would have been dissolved and new elections called, leaving Netanyahu vulnerable as opposition against him grew. But then on Monday, a similar attempt to dissolve parliament failed miserably after no confidence motions brought forward by parties led by Palestinian citizens of Israel failed to attract any support from the centre and the right. Of course, in between, Israel had launched its attacks on Iran, upending domestic Israeli politics as well as regional geopolitics. Rejecting Monday's no confidence motions, opposition politician Pnina Tamano-Shata – who has been critical of Netanyahu in the past – told lawmakers the efforts were 'disconnected from reality'. That is now the mainstream view in Israeli politics, with opposition parties falling into line behind Netanyahu and a war against Iran that the prime minister has been promoting for at least two decades. Writing in Israeli media the day after Israel's strikes on Iran began, former Prime Minister and self-styled centrist Yair Lapid, who less than a month earlier had been calling upon the prime minister to seek a truce in Gaza, wrote of his full support for the attacks on Iran while urging the United States to participate in the war. He was then pictured shaking Netanyahu's hand with a map of Iran on a wall behind the two right-wing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, whom polls have shown to be a favourite to replace Netanyahu if early elections were called, also told Israeli media: 'There is no right, no left, no opposition and no coalition' in regard to the attacks on Iran. Speaking to Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of parliament representing the Hadash-Ta'al Party, said: 'Politically, the switch to supporting the war by the main opposition isn't surprising. It took them a year and a half to say it's forbidden to kill children. It will probably take them another year and a half to realise they don't automatically have to fall in behind Netanyahu every time there's a new crisis.' 'There are no voices in Israel questioning this, apart from us, and we're Palestinians and leftists, so apparently not to be trusted,' Touma-Suleiman said. 'Even those who call themselves the Zionist left are supporting the war.' 'Israelis are raised being told they're in danger and that they're going to need to do everything they can to survive,' she added. Only last week, things seemed very different. Domestically, Netanyahu and his coalition were under pressure from a parliament, public and even military that appeared to have grown tired of the country's seemingly endless war on Gaza. Open letters protesting the burden that the war was imposing upon Israeli lives and, in some cases, Palestinian ones had come from members of the military and from within its universities and colleges. Large numbers of reservists were also believed to be refusing to turn up for duty. There was also pressure to hold an inquiry into Netanyahu and his government's failure to prevent the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, and a corruption trial that has haunted Netanyahu since 2019 rumbled on. Now, the prime minister leads a public and parliament that, apart from a few notable exceptions, appears united behind his leadership and its new attacks upon an old enemy, Iran. That is despite the unprecedented attacks that Israel has faced over the past week with ballistic missiles crashing into Tel Aviv, Haifa and other Israeli cities – killing at least 24 Israelis. On Monday, a poll conducted by Israel's Channel 14 showed 'overwhelming' public support for the prime minister with editorials and coverage across much of the Israeli media similarly supportive of the prime minister. On Tuesday, one of the country's leading newspapers, The Times of Israel, echoed the claims of politicians, such as Lapid, that Iran was committing war crimes in response to Israel's unprovoked attacks on Friday, itself deemed illegal by some legal scholars. No mention was made of the accusations of genocide against Israel being considered by the International Court of Justice or the warrants for war crimes issued against Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court. 'Through a [long] campaign led by Netanyahu and others, the idea that Iran is the source of all anti-Israeli sentiment in the region, not the plight of the Palestinians, who are occupied and subjected to ethnic cleansing, has largely become entrenched within Israeli politics,' Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said of the dramatic political unity that has followed on the heels of Friday's attacks. 'The idea that Iran is the source of all evil has become embedded across Israeli society.' However, Netanyahu has squandered support before, and he may do so again. Much like in Gaza, Netanyahu has set maximalist war aims. In Gaza, it was a 'total victory' over Hamas while with Iran he has said Israel will end Iran's nuclear programme and even suggested the possibility of regime change in Tehran. Netanyahu may find once again that it is easy to start wars but not to finish them in a manner that is satisfactory to his political base. 'Netanyahu is making a big gamble,' Dov Waxman, professor of Israel studies at the University of California-Los Angeles, told Al Jazeera. 'If the war doesn't succeed in destroying Iran's nuclear programme or forcing Iran to make unprecedented concessions to reach a new nuclear agreement, then it will be considered a failure in Israel, and this will no doubt hurt Netanyahu politically. And if the war drags on and Israeli casualties continue to mount, then Israeli public opinion may well turn against the war and blame Netanyahu for initiating it.' However, the degree to which a change in the public and political mood may act as a check upon Netanyahu and his government is unclear. Netanyahu has repeatedly ignored the public pressure to find a deal to secure the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza with some government members even directly criticising family members of captives. 'Netanyahu has just weeks, maybe even days, of public support left to him if the damage continues,' Flaschenberg said, 'But as we've seen in Gaza, that doesn't really matter. So if he does stretch it out, as part of his apparent policy of endless war, then that's what he'll do. The only thing that can really stop this new war is a decisive stand by the US. That's it.'
