Is Elon Musk misunderstood — or rightfully criticized for his DOGE tenure?
DAVID: So semi-former Trump minion Elon Musk said something true this week and it is making news. Musk said the Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill is going to raise the deficit, undoing the work of his Department of Government Efficiency.
'I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,' Musk said.
Among Trump staffers, even an obvious truth is controversial, so naturally, as The New York Times reported: 'Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, shot back at Mr. Musk on social media without naming him. Mr. Miller asserted that the bill would reduce the deficit — despite multiple independent analyses saying otherwise.'
MELINDA: He did tell the truth about the Big Ugly Bill adding to the deficit. But nearly everything else he's said about DOGE was a LIE. All he accomplished was inflicting pain, which you don't need to be some brilliant man of the future to pull off.
DAVID: But he is brilliant. Musk is a truly American character. He's an immigrant, a stellar success and an iconoclast. If he doesn't fit the DSM definition of multiple-personality disorder, he should. I like all of him — environmental visionary, space explorer, digital media baron, disrupter of government business as usual. The only one I am not so fond of is exploiter of more baby mommas than … well, anyone I have ever heard of.
MELINDA: Oh my friend, on that last point, Elon Musk is no old-school exploiter, and I'm not about to hurry past that point, either. I'm not at all surprised that he, as a devoted eugenicist, is essentially running a baby farm, turning out as many little Elons 2.0 as possible.
An April piece in the religion magazine First Things, headlined 'Elon's Family Values,' warns your fellow conservatives of the growing challenges to the traditional family, not just from 'the anti-judgmental left with its rainbow of 'family types,' but from new voices on the right who regard genes as the be-all and end-all.'
Musk, the piece goes on to say, 'embodies the values of the genetic-determinist right.' He's got either 12 or 13 kids — with either three or four women, 'including, most recently, a colleague with whom he had no intention of forming a family.'
That colleague, Shivon Zilis, an executive at his neurotechnology firm, told his biographer Walter Isaacson, 'He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to,' and generously volunteered to donate his sperm. 'I can't possibly think of genes I would prefer for my children,' she said. Their child was reportedly conceived through 'polygenic screening to produce children with the characteristics he desires.' In fact, all but the first of the children we know about were conceived with advanced reproductive technology so as to get the 'best' results.
This is not just creepy, but alarming. The last time people in this country got all excited about eugenics, the Nazis took notice.
DAVID: I hadn't read about the eugenics, which seems more than a little extreme, but smart, conscientious, stable men have been seeking out smart, conscientious, stable women for a looooong time. (I know I am leaving myself open here: Stable, Elon? No way. He thinks he's going to Mars. I mean stable in the income provider sense.)
I don't think your Nazi parallel works though, because their eugenics was based on racial pseudoscience. Musk isn't claiming white babies are the ubermenschen — he is claiming that with careful genetic screening, we can create babies that are smarter and healthier than the traditional point-and-shoot method of reproduction.
I won't be leaping into this new science myself. There's still plenty of room for unintended consequences. But I believe in the march of science and if we can wipe out diseases, like my depression (which I am sure has hereditary component), I welcome the progress. Maybe my grandkids won't suffer what I have.
And if a little coterie of Elons 2.0 can advance the cause of mankind half as much as their father has, the world will be better off having them. What I am worried about is the fact that he isn't really raising all those kids like a father should. It is my experience that the more brilliant the kid, the more parenting they need to not go over the rails. My bet is his fatherless kids will disappoint.
MELINDA: This is very much the old-time eugenics. You think Musk's love of the R-word and of far-right parties in Europe are out of nowhere? There is nothing benign about Elon Musk. His vision is as cold and dark as that trip to Mars he wants to take.
DAVID: Elon's vision of the future isn't dark — it is practical. When electric cars were a vegetable, you could only sell them to the Birkenstock crowd. Musk made them sexy. Everybody wants one. The first time my son rode in one, he was hooked. That is the genius that the global warming clerisy lacked as they tried to shove electric cars down unwilling consumers' throats.
Elon has made getting to orbit vastly cheaper, and he is going to do more to make space travel practical. If you want mankind to survive, we need to become an interplanetary species. There is something fundamentally human about his drive to colonize and explore. It is something people of all cultures have always done.
MELINDA: His buddy the anti-enviro president is busy making sure we'll need to be an interplanetary species sooner rather than later, but what about the lives on this planet, right here and right now?
Though DOGE did not cut nearly as much as Musk said it would, or as he said that it did, he can take a bow for causing many deaths across the world by taking his trusty chainsaw to USAID.
DAVID: Wait a minute, DOGE claimed $55 billion in savings on its website according to The Post, and journalists there were only able to find $9 billion worth of lies. That means the DOGE claims were better than 80% true. I'd give real money if we could get that level of veracity across the rest of the Trump administration.
MELINDA: I'm saying look behind the numbers. That he justified vaporizing USAID, again dishonestly, by pointing to a bunch of subscriptions to Politico and The New York Times that he tried to pretend were payoffs was the perfect encapsulation of the whole DOGE effort. Could he really not go to the trouble of canceling the subscriptions without canceling lifesaving efforts across the planet? No matter what percentage of cuts promised were actually achieved, the human devastation caused by the USAID cuts alone were unforgivable.
This was what you'd expect from someone who equates empathy with weakness. And just what you like about him mystifies me.
I mean, he fired thousands of civil servants, sometimes by accident, without even bothering to find out what they did, or caring about the consequences. Those were my neighbors when I lived outside D.C., and they must have been yours, too. The sight of those dedicated, hard working people, who could have been making much more money in the private sector but were there because they wanted to serve, carrying their little boxes of plants of family photos out of federal buildings was a shameful one.
The big other thing that DOGE accomplished was invading our privacy. Remember when Republicans were against that? Excuse me if I think he just wanted to mine the data for his own business interests, but yes, that is what I think.
His tenure was short but the damage he's done will last. And he's disillusioned, at having learned that you can't destroy lives, fire those who had been investigating your companies and jump around with cheese on your head without some reputational damage? He got more than his money's worth as Donald Trump's top campaign donor just in making so many threats to his businesses go away.
Readers who disagree with me regularly tell me that I hate the president when no, the truth is that I pity him, even if I'm a lot sorrier about what he's done to our country and our world. If you know much about the family he grew up in, then you know he got everything except what he really needed. I always think it must be terrible never to have had anything but completely transactional relationships. So when he's nattering about trophy wives to West Point graduates, I'm not even sure he knows that not all of us would trade our families for more decorative ones if only we could afford it.
Maybe because I know less about how the world's richest man got the way he is, I have less sympathy for him.
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Newsweek
21 minutes ago
- Newsweek
What Falling Mortgage Rates Mean for American Homebuyers
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Mortgage rates are falling despite the Federal Reserve's reluctance to introduce new cuts over the past eight months, giving American homebuyers more purchasing power at a time when the market is slowly shifting in their favor. Last week, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage—the most popular home loan in the nation—dropped to its lowest level since April. As of August 7, according to Freddie Mac, it was at 6.63 percent, down from 6.72 percent a week earlier but still up 0.16 percentage points from a year earlier. While mortgage rates remain historically high, especially compared to the pandemic lows of below 3 percent, for homebuyers waiting on the sidelines for a good time to enter the market, any movement away from the 7 percent mark is a positive shift. Why Have Mortgage Rates Made a Dip? "Although the Fed has not yet cut its policy rate, mortgage rates and other long-term rates move in anticipation of what's ahead for the economy and the likely policy environment," chief economist Danielle Hale told Newsweek. In this case, the July jobs report has likely determined the recent dip in mortgage rates. The report showed that U.S. employers added 73,000 jobs last month, fewer than the 109,000 forecasters had expected, and unemployment rose from 4.1 percent in June to 4.2 percent. Hiring figures for May and June were also revised down, with a combined total of 258,000 fewer jobs over the past three months than previously estimated. In an aerial view, homes are seen under construction at a new housing development on August 08, 2025, in Henderson, Nevada. In an aerial view, homes are seen under construction at a new housing development on August 08, 2025, in Henderson, Nevada."The fact that the July employment report showed weaker job growth, downward revisions to prior job growth estimates, and an uptick in the unemployment rate has reset expectations among investors," Hale said. "The Fed is now widely expected to cut its policy rate at its meeting in mid-September. This combined with a softer economic outlook has helped nudge longer-term interest rates, including mortgage rates, lower." The weaker-than-expected jobs report has also caused Treasury yields to tumble last week, as concerns over the future of the U.S. economy were revamped among investors, who are now betting that the central bank will cut interest rates next month. "Mortgage rates react to the bond market," Melissa Cohn, regional vice president of William Raveis Mortgage, told Newsweek. "Bonds react to current economic data, and the latest data has been weaker than expected, especially as it relates to the employment sector. All the weaker data and mild inflation reports that the Fed will react to in September are moving bond yields and mortgage rates today." What Does This Mean for the US Housing Market? There is no doubt among experts that lower mortgage rates are good news for American homebuyers. "Mortgage rates have dropped by .25 to .375 percent over the past 10 days. This means more affordability in the home that they are looking to purchase," Cohn said. But experts are also skeptical of the significance of this improvement. "This drop now makes homebuying more affordable of course, but it's too soon to tell if the improvements have an impact," Phil Crescenzo Jr., vice president of Southeast Division at Nation One Mortgage Corporation, told Newsweek. "We saw fairly consistent mortgage rates in late spring and summer, so it didn't take a huge move to be better than recent trends," Hale said. "It's also fair to describe today's mortgage rates as still relatively high." "Put simply, this is a good break for current home shoppers who are already in the market, and it may be enough of a break to spur others to restart their home searches, especially as we approach a seasonably more favorable time of year for buyers," Hale said. "Real improvement in home affordability will need rates to drop even further. For borrowers' sake, let's hope that the data continues to be weaker and rates keep dropping," Cohn said. Is This a Good Time To Buy a Home? It is as good a time as any to buy a home in the U.S.—meaning that buyers are still facing significant challenges even as mortgage rates dip slightly. "I expect mortgage rates to eventually fall further, but this is not guaranteed, and the timing is also challenging to predict," Hale said. 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In this instance, I expect that mortgage rates are likely to move lower at least until the Fed's first cut, which I expect in September."
Miami Herald
21 minutes ago
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‘Have to find a way:' Black leaders in Miami weigh defunded Overtown park's future
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Axios
21 minutes ago
- Axios
Focus groups: Trump redistricting push could backfire with swing voters
The reaction of Georgia swing voters in our latest Engagious / Sago focus groups shows how President Trump's sudden push for redistricting could backfire on the GOP in the midterms — if Democrats can hold voters' attention. The big picture: Just four of the 11 Biden-to-Trump swing voters in Tuesday night's sessions said they could explain why more than 50 Democratic Texas legislators have left that state. But when provided with neutral facts describing the situation, none of the 11 said they support the GOP redistricting effort. All 11 oppose an effort from the state attorney general to remove some of the Democrats from office. 10 of the 11 said Texas Democrats did the right thing by leaving the state. "Once Georgia swing voters understand what Texas Republicans are attempting, they reject it," said Rich Thau, president of Engagious, who moderated the focus groups. "That said, Democrats have done a lousy job of educating swing voters about mid-decade redistricting." Zoom in: Of the 11 focus group participants, all of whom backed President Trump in November, just three now say they approve of the administration's overall actions. All 11 said they're more anxious about the economy now than when Trump took office. Seven said they disapprove of the tariffs. How it works: Axios observed two online focus groups Tuesday night that included 11 Georgia residents who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2024. Five are Democrats, four are independents and two are Republicans. While a focus group is not a statistically significant sample like a poll, the responses show how some voters are thinking and talking about current events. What they're saying: " The cost of living is ridiculous and it's not slowing down; it shows no signs of getting better," said Todd L., 42, of Atlanta. "It seems like every other day there's a new tariff or he's pissed off some other country, and just every single day there's more news about inflation and job losses," said Gavin E., 52, of Decatur. "It just keeps getting worse and worse. We're hemorrhaging. It's crazy." When it comes to the Texas redistricting dispute, Kevin J., 57, of Woodstock, said: "Doing this now and redrawing their districts, that's just they want to please Donald Trump." Said Chris Z., 36, of Norcross: "He wants it now. He wants it his way. There's a proper way to do things and he doesn't follow. ... There's no balance of power. That's just not how things operate, and it'll be a domino effect with other states doing the same thing." "Once it's done every five years, then some state will push it to two years and some state will push it to a year," said Sherrecia J., 34, of Atlanta. "It's going to become more and more ridiculous. It has to have a boundary." "What's the purpose of having laws and constitutions and protocols if they're not going to be followed?" said Olanrewaju A., 44, of Decatur. Meanwhile, Thau also spent a portion of the sessions asking these swing voters how they are using and thinking about AI. The panels followed the launch of OpenAI's GPT-5. Some communities, including in Georgia, are raising concerns about the growth of data centers and their potential strains on the power grid and the environment. 10 of the 11 said they've used some form of AI; five use ChatGPT at least weekly; eight consider themselves supporters of AI. Nine worried AI will weaken privacy protections, especially related to financial data; nine also feared AI will be used to undermine America's political system; and eight said they fear AI will figure out how to launch weapons on its own, without human commands.
