Trump has no plans to speak to billionaire Elon Musk

The Sun12 hours ago

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has no plans to speak to billionaire Elon Musk and may even ditch his red Tesla car, the White House said Friday after a stunning public divorce fraught with risk for both men.
Trump's camp insisted that he wanted to move on from the row with the South African-born Musk, with officials telling AFP that the tech tycoon had requested a call but that the president was not interested.
The Republican instead intended to focus on getting the US Congress to pass his 'big, beautiful' spending bill -- Musk's harsh criticisms of which had triggered the astonishing meltdown on Thursday.
Fallout from the blow up between the world's richest person and its most powerful could be significant, as Trump risks political damage and Musk faces the loss of huge US government contracts.
Trump phoned reporters at several US broadcast networks to insist that he was looking past the row. He called Musk 'the man who has lost his mind' in a call to ABC and told CBS he was 'totally' focused on the presidency.
The White House meanwhile squashed earlier reports that they would talk.
'The president does not intend to speak to Musk today,' a senior White House official told AFP on condition of anonymity. A second official said it was 'true' that Musk had requested a call.
- Tesla giveaway? -
Tesla stocks tanked more than 14 percent on Thursday amid the row, losing some $100 billion of the company's market value, but recovering partly Friday.
Trump was considering either selling or giving away the cherry red Tesla S that he announced he had bought from Musk's firm at the height of their relationship.
The electric vehicle was still parked on the White House grounds on Friday.
'He's thinking about it, yes,' a senior White House official told AFP when asked if Trump would sell or give away the Tesla.
Trump and Musk had posed inside the car at a bizarre event in March, when the president turned the White House into a pop-up Tesla showroom after viral protests against Musk's role as head of the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
- 'Expiration date' -
The move came despite apparent efforts by Musk to de-escalate.
On Thursday, the SpaceX boss briefly threatened to scrap his company's Dragon spacecraft -- vital for ferrying NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station -- after Trump suggested he could end Musk's giant government contracts.
But later in the day, Musk sought to deescalate, writing on his X social media platform: 'OK, we won't decommission Dragon.'
The tech magnate also kept a low profile early Friday.
But there is no clarity on how the two big egos will repair the relationship, which had already been fraying badly, causing tensions in the White House.
Trade Advisor Peter Navarro, whom Musk once called 'dumber than a sack of bricks' in an argument over Trump's tariffs, refused to gloat but said the tycoon had an 'expiration date.'
'No, I'm not glad or whatever,' he told reporters. 'People come and go from the White House.'
Vice President JD Vance also stuck by Trump amid the blazing row -- blasting what he called 'lies' that his boss was 'impulsive or short-tempered' -- but notably avoided criticizing Musk.
The tensions burst into the open this week when Musk called Trump's flagship spending bill an 'abomination' because it raises the US deficit.
Then in a televised Oval Office diatribe on Thursday, Trump said he was 'very disappointed' with Musk.
The pair traded insults for hours on social media, with Musk at one point suggesting impeachment of Trump and signalling interest in forming a new political party.

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US steps up immigration crackdown with LA raids, NY courthouse arrests

The Sun

an hour ago

The Sun

US steps up immigration crackdown with LA raids, NY courthouse arrests

LOS ANGELES (United States): Masked and armed federal agents carried out sweeping immigration raids in Los Angeles Friday, while others pounced on migrants at a New York courthouse in forceful displays of US President Donald Trump's crackdown on people without papers. From courthouses to hardware store parking lots in two of the most diverse cities in the world, federal agents wrestled migrants into handcuffs and unmarked vehicles. Agents used extreme tactics, conducting unprecedented raids on at least three areas of Los Angeles to detain dozens of people. At one sweep less than two miles from Los Angeles City Hall, agents threw flash-bang grenades to disperse angry crowds of people following alongside a convoy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles as protesters hurled eggs and epithets at the agents, media reported. - 'Terror' - 'As a Mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place,' LA Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement. 'These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city.' White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who grew up in LA's Santa Monica, insisted on social media platform X that Bass had 'no say in this at all.' 'Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced.' Service Employees International Union leader David Huerta was briefly detained while documenting one of the raids in Los Angeles, according to media reports. 'Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals,' Huerta said in a statement after his release. Homeland Security Investigations spokesperson Yasmeen Pitts O'Keefe told the Los Angeles Times that federal agents were executing search warrants related to the harboring of people illegally in the country. Hundreds of protesters gathered in downtown Los Angeles on Friday afternoon to demand the release of detainees, broadcaster ABC7 reported. The largely peaceful rally was later ordered to disperse by police, with some violent clashes between protesters and riot police being reported. - NY courthouse arrests - Across the country, plainclothes agents in New York pounced on two immigrants in the hallway of a courthouse Friday. AFP saw the officers yell for the men not to move before forcing them to lay face-down on the ground as they were handcuffed and arrested. It was not immediately clear why the two men were arrested. Trump was elected to a second term with broad support for his promise to crack down hard on the entry and presence of undocumented migrants. ICE agents have intensified such operations in and around American immigration courts in recent weeks. The Department of Homeland Security revoked regulations that limited agents' access to protected areas such as courts after Trump returned to office in January. One of the men arrested in New York was Joaquin Rosario, a 34-year-old Dominican who arrived in the United States a year ago, registered as he came in and who had his first immigration hearing Friday, his relative Julian Rosario said. 'He was at ease. He did not think anything was going to happen,' the relative said, adding that Rosario was so unworried he had not brought his lawyer with him. The other detainee appeared to be Asian. He arrived accompanied only by one of many immigration advocacy group volunteers who walk immigrants to and from the courtroom. The volunteers screamed out as the agents arrested the two men but it did nothing to halt the raid. - 'Sound the alarm' - Human rights groups are outraged by such operations, arguing that they sap trust in the courts and make immigrants wary of showing up for appointments as they try to gain US residency. 'They're illegal abductions,' said Karen Ortiz, a court employee who was demonstrating Friday against the sudden arrests of migrants. 'We need to sound the alarm and show the public how serious this is and one way we can do that is actually physically putting ourselves between a masked ICE agent and someone they're trying to detain and send away,' she told AFP. Trump has dramatically tested the limits of executive power to crack down on foreigners without papers since he returned to office, arguing that the United States is being invaded by criminals and other undesirables.

ICE raids spark outrage in LA, NYC amid migrant crackdown

The Sun

an hour ago

The Sun

ICE raids spark outrage in LA, NYC amid migrant crackdown

Chinese spies at Stanford? US tightens visa policies over espionage fears

The Star

2 hours ago

The Star

Chinese spies at Stanford? US tightens visa policies over espionage fears

Chinese spies at Stanford University. American and Chinese pawns for Beijing at Duke Kunshan. Chinese student scouts near a military site in Michigan. These are some of the 'bombshell' allegations that have been fuelling online buzz and US government efforts to sever educational ties between the US and China in recent months. A day after The Stanford Review – a student-run conservative newspaper – published a report on May 7 alleging that Beijing was conducting a 'widespread intelligence-gathering campaign' on campus, Senator Ashley Moody, Republican of Florida, cited the piece as evidence that Congress must pass her bill to prevent all Chinese citizens from obtaining US student visas. Similarly, months after a Duke University student published an account of her experiences with Chinese media during a trip to China, two US representatives wrote to Duke's president seeking to shut down Duke Kunshan, the university's joint campus with Wuhan University in China, alleging that it was helping to facilitate Chinese propaganda and intellectual property theft. And, months after claims that Chinese students were spying near a military site in Michigan, the University of Michigan – facing pressure from lawmakers – announced it would end its partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Capping this trend, the State Department announced last week it would 'aggressively' revoke visas of Chinese students, including those with 'connections' to China's Communist Party and in 'critical fields', citing Beijing's 'intelligence collection' and theft of US research. Lawmakers and government officials involved say that US engagement with Chinese students and universities must be restricted to protect national security. But US-based China scholars and education advocates call the risks overstated and often unsubstantiated, and the proposed responses disproportionate. The cost, they say, of misjudging the balance between openness and protecting national security is high – putting not only America's ability to understand China, but also its capacity to innovate, at risk. That risk has become all the more potent as US President Donald Trump's administration targets international students more broadly, from expanding the review of visa applicants' social media accounts to revoking Harvard University's authority to host them at all. 'I do not believe that the danger here is that students on campus are going to gain access to secrets or be a national security risk,' said Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues, adding that open campuses offered little intelligence value. Wilder, who previously worked at the CIA, said there was a conflation of worry about control by Beijing with the actual gathering of intelligence. 'There is a very real fear among Chinese students studying in the US that they are being monitored by other Chinese students on behalf of the Chinese embassy – but that doesn't mean those students are spies.' Defining spying as 'the stealing of secrets that a foreign government does not want you to have', Wilder cautioned that an overly broad definition would lead to a wasting of resources. 'Chasing after students means missing the bigger, more dangerous targets,' he said, citing as an example of a higher priority the case of Su Bin, a Chinese businessman who pleaded guilty in 2016 to hacking the computer networks of major US military contractors. China specialists have also questioned the strength of the evidence cited in some of the published allegations. 'The Stanford Review article relies heavily on anonymous sources and anecdotal experience, which could create serious problems for accurately assessing the nature of the risk,' said Rosie Levine, executive director of the US-China Education Trust, a Washington-based non-profit that facilitates academic exchanges. And that, Levine said, could lead to blanket suspicion being cast upon all Chinese students based on their country of origin rather than any problematic behaviour. 'I fear that articles like this will put a target on the back of Chinese students who are genuinely in the United States to get a good education,' she said, arguing that targeting behaviours rather than specific nationalities or institutions might be more productive. The Review article cited anonymous students and experts to claim the presence of spies at Stanford – without describing any concrete intelligence-gathering operation involving a current student or faculty member. It cites one former visiting researcher from China – Chen Song – who was indicted by the Department of Justice in 2021 for concealing her affiliation with the People's Liberation Army. The case was ultimately dismissed, a fact the report did not mention. Without directly criticising the article, some Stanford researchers and faculty warned that a more systematic collection of evidence was crucial to 'sound policy'. They also pushed for using spying-related terms more precisely. 'Espionage is a serious crime, and, while some cases will rise to that threshold, applying the label too broadly risks flawed prosecutions and confusing different aspects of research security,' said Larry Diamond, Matthew Pottinger and Matt Turpin in a letter to the Review. Pottinger and Turpin both worked in the White House during Trump's first term. The Stanford Review did not respond to a request for comment. China analysts were quick to outline the stakes of miscalibration. 'US academic institutions attract top talent globally, and many from China remain in the US and continue to make valuable contributions to research and development in their fields. This is a 'brain drain' from China that benefits the US,' said Jeremy Daum, a senior research scholar at Yale Law School. Daum recalled the Justice Department's China Initiative, a controversial and deactivated programme begun in the first Trump administration, saying that in the name of protecting against economic espionage, its investigations focused more on individuals' connections to China rather than on criminal acts related to the transfer of intellectual property. 'Naturally, crimes should be investigated, and confidential materials in businesses and universities should be protected,' Daum said. 'There is no basis, however, for suspecting anyone based solely on their nationality, ethnicity, affiliations, or the affiliations of their affiliations – such as where they only attended a school that had military research ties unrelated to their own work.' Levine said that, left unchecked, broad classifications would 'cast a net so wide that non-sensitive programmes that benefit Americans will be inadvertently affected'. That has already happened in states across the country. Florida International University, for instance, in 2023 cancelled a two-decade-old hospitality programme with the Tianjin University of Commerce after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law restricting US-China partnerships. Since the start of Trump's second term, efforts targeting US-China education exchanges based on sweeping criteria have picked up. Last month, the full House of Representatives passed a bill that incentivises US universities to cut partnerships with a broad group of universities in China. Last week, the State Department declined to provide details on what areas of study or type of link to the Communist Party would make a Chinese citizen subject to greater visa scrutiny. Washington has already set rules that prevent foreign students and scholars from gaining access to sensitive information on university campuses, such as 'export administration regulations' on certain advanced technologies. And in 2020, the US government cancelled visas for graduate programme students from Chinese universities believed to have close research relationships with China's military. For proponents of exchange, the benefits include deep country expertise that Wilder says has been instrumental to US policy on China for decades. While there were more than 11,000 American students in China as recently as 2019, the latest available estimate, from 2024, hovers around 1,000. Experts say government oversight of US-China exchanges is often shaped by broad or inaccurate assumptions. 'American students are not as naive as the congressional committees seem to want to believe they are,' Wilder said, noting that they are often aware that they may be targets for Beijing's espionage or propaganda before heading to China. Andrew Polk, founder of the Trivium China consultancy, noted that US scrutiny often hinged on whether an institution has ties to the Chinese Communist Party – but in China, 'everything is linked to the CCP'. That ubiquity, he argued, makes such a standard too blunt to be meaningful. Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), said reports about Chinese intelligence gathering often 'make little effort to convey a sense of proportion, either in the risks or benefits of having Chinese students'. The Stanford report, for instance, 'uses language like 'existential' without acknowledging that more than 90 per cent of Chinese-born doctoral students in STEM stay in the US ... And it assumes that the US can stay ahead if we prevent Chinese IP theft, whereas China is in the lead on many technologies', she said. Ho-fung Hung, another professor at SAIS, said clear parameters should be established for research areas that are off-limits. 'Even at the height of the Cold War, US and USSR scientific and technological cooperation continued. But a clear boundary needs to be set,' he said. 'Without such boundary, universities are going to be cautious and reluctant to continue working with Chinese scholars and students in all fields,' he continued, adding that China could help the situation by 'rethinking, revising, or refining the law that obliges all individual citizens, companies and organisations to spy for the state'. - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST