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Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk Learns a Lesson About Washington
Sign up for the Surge, the newsletter that covers most important political nonsense of the week, delivered to your inbox every Saturday. Welcome to this week's edition of the Surge, a newsletter that is to American politics what Brigitte Macron's hand is to her husband's face. Congress was out of town this week, so President Donald Trump and the judicial branch threw a rager in their absence. One court was so disrespectful to Trump's tariffs regime—rude, frankly—that Trump denounced the conservative legal movement. Also rude to Trump: A reporter who introduced him to an acronym making fun of him. Some people are shamefully begging for pardons, while Joni Ernst is shamefully lobbying for the Grim Reaper's endorsement. But first, bye to this guy! What became of Elon Musk over the last month or two? After being embarrassed in a Wisconsin election and struggling to cloak his displeasure with Trump's global tariffs, Musk drifted away from full-time Washington work to boost his lousy stock prices. This week, Musk's official time in Washington was formally severed, and he expressed regret for getting so deeply involved in politics in the first place. The announced exit came shortly after he gave one interview too many, telling CBS that he was 'disappointed' with House passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act—OBBBA—and that it 'increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.' This was very far from the message the administration is trying to present. Musk expressed frustration in some exit interviews. 'The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,' he told the Washington Post. 'I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.' We'd like to add here: Duh. Next time, he should consider learning how representative democracy works. You cannot waltz in and cancel whichever congressionally appropriated funding or shutter whatever bureau that doesn't float your boat, calling all those who disagree evil. You have to make a public case and persuade Congress to act. We wish him the best blowing up rockets in the Texas sky and taking his beloved drugs. The New York–based federal court struck down most of Trump's tariffs on Wednesday, arguing that the emergency law Trump had invoked—the International Emergency Economic Powers Act—does not confer to the president the 'authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world.' This means that both the 'Liberation Day' 'reciprocal' tariffs Trump placed on nearly every country in April and the 'fentanyl' tariffs he had announced for Mexico, Canada, and China in February would be 'vacated and their operation permanently enjoined.' An appeals court temporarily paused the ruling from going into effect the next day. This will play out in court over the coming weeks and months. And Trump still has other laws he can abuse for certain tariffs. But even if the tariffs were paused for good, something about this win against the dumbest economic decision a president has made in many years still wouldn't sit right with us. It leaves too many powerful grown men off the hook. Congress can use this as another excuse to wimp out on taking back its tariff authority, which it is obligated to do. The Trump administration can dodge the consequences of its actions, and can blame evil globalist judges once again for not letting True Trumpism be tried. We have little doubt the court's decision is right—IEEPA certainly wasn't meant to be used this way—but our leaders are being denied the more bruising education they deserve. Trump did indeed blame these evil globalist judges for not letting True Trumpism be tried, asking, in a lengthy social media post, 'How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of 'TRUMP?' ' The administration has been on the losing end of a lot of court decisions these past few months, but this one snapped something in the president. He ranted about what a mistake it was to use the conservative Federalist Society's appointment recommendations, saying he was 'disappointed' in their 'bad advice,' and called its architect for remaking the judiciary, Leonard Leo, 'a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America.' Trump has only just begun nominating judges for his second term, and the first handful were fairly run-of-the-mill conservative lawyers. This week, though, he made his most controversial pick so far: Emil Bove, Trump's former personal attorney who's served in the Justice Department since the start of the administration, for a circuit court vacancy. You may recall Bove from his role in orchestrating the corrupt pardon of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a move that prompted numerous prosecutors to resign from the DOJ. He also ordered a purge of Jan. 6 prosecutors and an investigation of FBI agents who worked the cases. He's widely understood to be unpleasant—but loyal to Trump. We expect this to be the new model going forward. No longer will Trump rely solely on impeccable conservative credentials as presented by the Federalist Society or another outside group. Instead, he'll turn to his pool of henchmen and try to browbeat them through Senate confirmation. There's been a meme (truism?) going around financial circles about the 'TACO' trade, which stands for 'Trump Always Chickens Out.' First coined by the Financial Times, it refers to the reliable pattern that Trump will always back off of his shocks to the market once the pressure becomes too much. For example: Implementing 145 percent tariffs on China, and then relaxing that because an effective trade embargo between the world's two largest economies is unsustainable. Bless the White House reporter who finally asked Trump what he thought about the term this week. 'Oh, I chicken out. Isn't that nice? I've never heard that,' Trump began. He told called the question 'nasty' and told the reporter, 'don't ever say what you said,' because 'that's a nasty question. To me, that's the nastiest question.' It may only be a matter of time before the Justice Department announces that usage of this term is a hate crime punishable by death. Paul Walczak was a nursing home executive who pleaded guilty late last year to charges of using his employees' withheld earnings to buy a yacht, fancy clothes, and things of that nature. He was sentence to 18 months in the slammer and ordered to pay $4.4 million in restitution. Then his mother—who was separately intimately involved in exposing Ashley Biden's diary—donated $1 million to have dinner with Donald Trump. Walczak was pardoned a few weeks later. Not great. In fact, some would call this bad. Trump's pardons were frequent this week. He gave clemency to an Illinois gang leader, a former governor of Connecticut, an ex–Staten Island congressman, and a tax-fraud reality television couple. If you're MAGA—and ideally if you put a chunk of money into a Trump fund—a pardon has never been more available. Just look, for example, at the debasement that former Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, scheduled to report to jail in June, is subjecting himself to. This spree comes as the former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, 'Eagle' Ed Martin, assumes his new role as a pardon attorney at the DOJ. And his message this week? 'No MAGA left behind.' It's all out in the open. The good ol' boy life is alive and well in Alabama. Consider Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who this week announced that he would run for governor instead of another term in the Senate. Will he face a difficult primary? Will he have to work? Without even googling, we're going to guess: No. He'll be fine. He always is! Tuberville, a former college football coach, first won his seat in 2020. He went on to achieve very little, and earned his most public attention by holding up military promotions for months at a time. But he slapped a lot of backs, gave a folksy 'I'm just a football coach' response when asked policy questions he didn't understand, and never once questioned Trump on anything. He'd show up for hearings and votes, sure, so long as they didn't conflict with golf tournaments he was either attending or playing in. It's unclear whether he spends more time at his modest house owned by family members in Alabama or his $6 million beachfront mansion in Florida, but … given the way we just described the difference between the two houses, is it that unclear? That could make him vulnerable to a residency challenge ahead of his gubernatorial candidacy, but he could always just set the challengers up with some nice football tickets and make it go away. He'll be fine. Once he's governor, having won on a platform of getting boys out of girls' sports, bathrooms, and other girl stuff, he'll get to play golf six times a week without having to worry about flying to Washington every few days. It's his destiny. We'd like to thank the Iowa senator for stepping up at the end of the week to provide us with a solid seventh entry. At a town hall event in her home state, Ernst—who's up for reelection in 2026 in a state that Democrats, given their limited pickup options, haven't entirely given up on—was being jeered and heckled by the usual sorts of 'TRUMP'-haters and losers, largely about the OBBBA's proposed cuts. In what was a perfect moment of an elected official losing her patience with the rabble and their slogans, an audience member said that people would die because of the cuts, and Ernst replied, 'Well, we all are going to die.' We strongly encourage you to watch the clip, maybe 50 or 60 times like we have. She is so annoyed with these people! Congratulations to the Democrats on securing a clip for the next year and a half of campaign ads; they should be able to cut her winning margin from 11 to 8 now.
Eyewitness News
2 days ago
- Business
- Eyewitness News
Musk to exit US government role after rare break with Trump
WASHINTON - Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday announced he was leaving his role in US government, intended to reduce federal spending, shortly after his first major break with President Donald Trump over his signature spending bill. "As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending," he wrote on his social media platform X. "The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government," he added. The South African-born tech tycoon had said Trump's bill would increase the deficit and undermine the work of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has fired tens of thousands of people. Musk -- who was a constant presence at Trump's side before pulling back to focus on his Space X and Tesla businesses -- also complained that DOGE had become a "whipping boy" for dissatisfaction with the administration. "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 in an interview with CBS News, an excerpt of which aired late Tuesday. Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act" -- which passed the US House last week and now moves to the Senate -- offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts and is the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. But critics warn it will decimate health care and balloon the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade. "A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion," Musk said in the interview, which will be aired in full on Sunday. The White House sought to play down any differences over US government spending, without directly naming Musk. "The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill," Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Musk's social network, X, after the tech titan's comments aired. READ: Trump praises Musk as chief disruptor eyes exit All DOGE cuts would have to be carried out through a separate bill targeting the federal bureaucracy, according to US Senate rules, Miller added. But Musk's comments represented a rare split with the Republican president whom he helped propel back to power, as the largest donor to his 2024 election campaign. - 'Whipping boy' - Trump tasked Musk with cutting government spending as head of DOGE, but after a feverish start Musk announced in late April he was mostly stepping back to run his companies again. Musk complained in a separate interview with the Washington Post that DOGE, which operated out of the White House with a staff of young technicians, had become a lightning rod for criticism. "DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything," Musk told the newspaper at the Starbase launch site in Texas ahead of Space X's latest launch on Tuesday. "Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it." Musk blamed entrenched US bureaucracy for DOGE's failure to achieve all of its goals -- although reports say his domineering style and lack of familiarity with the currents of Washington politics were also major factors. "The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized," he said. "I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least." Musk has previously admitted that he did not achieve all his goals with DOGE even though tens of thousands of people were removed from government payrolls and several departments were gutted or shut down. Musk's own businesses suffered in the meantime. Protesters against the cost-cutting targeted Tesla dealerships while arsonists even torched a few of the electric vehicles, and the firm's profits slumped. "People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That's really uncool," Musk told the Post. Musk has also been focusing on Space X after a series of fiery setbacks to his dreams of colonizing Mars -- the latest of which came on Tuesday when its prototype Starship exploded over the Indian Ocean. The tycoon last week also said he would pull back from spending his fortune on politics, having spent around a quarter of a billion dollars to support Trump.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Evans, Boebert tout ‘Big, Beautiful, Bill' amid boos from Coloradans
DENVER (KDVR) — Members of Congress are back home this week. Many are checking in with their constituents across the Centennial State. Coloradans weigh in on what police should do about street racing Two Republican members of the congressional delegation stopped by the state capitol to discuss the 'One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act' making its way through Congress with members of the press. The visit did not go exactly as planned. Congressman Gabe Evans and Congresswoman Lauren Boebert came to the state capitol to answer questions about the president's so-called big beautiful bill. A handful of others showed up with concerns of their own. 'The plan is just to observe, we're not here to disrupt. We're just here to observe and to listen. We want to hold them accountable for the lies they are gonna tell today,' said Wynn Howell, Colorado director of the Working Families Party. 'This bill passed out of the House last week and it is a win for Coloradans and we're gonna talk about why it is a win for people in Colorado,' said Evans amid a swarm of boos from disgruntled Coloradans. There were disruptions during Evans and Boebert's stop at the state Capitol. Angry Colorado residents came out to voice their frustrations with the representatives who voted to pass the measure. Both representatives maintain the bill will only cut off benefits for people who should not be in the system. 'The president himself has said no cuts to lawful beneficiaries of Medicaid. That is absolutely correct under this bill. Again, we just ran through the categories of people that will be impacted by these reforms. It's people that are ineligible, it's illegal immigrants, and it's able-bodied working-aged adults who, with no dependents who choose not to work, volunteer or go to school part-time. That is their choice,' the congressman said as the crowd chanted about democracy. 'Waste, fraud and abuse, improper payments, that is what we are eliminating. We are not eliminating lawful use of Medicaid. This is was never supposed to be something that American citizens lived on for their lives,' Boebert said. Democrats at the state capitol fear the bill will have unintended consequences for other Coloradans, increasing premiums for people outside of Medicaid and disenrolling hundreds of thousands of people already in the system. 'People will get dropped in that process, but they aren't necessarily people who shouldn't be on there. They are people who are disabled, who are working at the margin, who are barely hanging in there and they are the ones who have trouble complying with these regulations,' said state Senator and Joint Budget Committee member Judy Amabile. 'Having a robust, strong Medicaid system that is ensuring that providers are reimbursed, at least in some way, Medicaid doesn't reimburse the costs- it reimburses the under costs. Ensuring that medical providers have some kind of reimbursement for this lowers costs for healthcare across the board. We've had a laser focus in the state on reducing premiums for Coloradans. This bill will increase premiums,' said state Senator and Joint Budget Committee Chair Jeff Bridges. Measles case confirmed in vaccinated Coloradan who flew into DIA State lawmakers said they still have not decided if they will come back in for a special session if the bill passes as it stands, but they are projecting the state will feel some major fiscal impacts from the legislation. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Citizen
2 days ago
- Business
- The Citizen
Elon Musk could shake up SA's government
Elon Musk's departure from US politics may offer South Africa a shot at reform if he returns with his disruptive energy and ideas. Elon Musk looks on as US President Donald Trump meets with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) The bromance between Donald Trump and tech mega-billionaire Elon Musk hit the rocks this week, when Musk left his job as head of the department of government expenditure (Doge), accusing the US president of increasing the country's deficit rather than reducing it as he promised. Musk has a point about Trump's 'One Big, Beautiful Bill Act' – which offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts and is the centrepiece of his domestic agenda. But, according to AFP, critics warn it will decimate health care and balloon the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion (about R71.5 trillion) over a decade. ALSO READ: Elon Musk unceremoniously steps down from Trump administration However, there's no doubt the SA-born oligarch underestimated the global backlash which followed his commitment to Trump and then with his wild moves at Doge and what looked suspiciously like a Nazi salute at a public rally. Sales of his Tesla electric vehicles have gone flat across the globe as buyers baulked at the anti-green, fascist-leaning actions of the new regime in Washington. Musk will, no doubt, bounce back from this ill-considered foray into right-wing politics. But, if you are at a loose end, Elon, come home for a while, set up Starlink (if the ANC lets you) and take your chainsaw to our bloated government.
Kuwait Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Kuwait Times
Musk to exit US govt role after rare break with Trump
WASHINGTON: Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday announced he was leaving his role in US government, intended to reduce federal spending, shortly after his first major break with President Donald Trump over his signature spending bill. 'As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,' he wrote on his social media platform X. 'The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,' he added. The South African-born tech tycoon had said Trump's bill would increase the deficit and undermine the work of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has fired tens of thousands of people. Musk — who was a constant presence at Trump's side before pulling back to focus on his Space X and Tesla businesses — also complained that DOGE had become a 'whipping boy' for dissatisfaction with the administration. '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 in an interview with CBS News, an excerpt of which aired late Tuesday. Trump's 'One Big, Beautiful Bill Act' — which passed the US House last week and now moves to the Senate — offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts and is the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. But critics warn it will decimate healthcare and balloon the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade. 'A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion,' Musk said in the interview, which will be aired in full on Sunday. The White House sought to play down any differences over US government spending, without directly naming Musk. 'The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill,' Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Musk's social network, X, after the tech titan's comments aired. All DOGE cuts would have to be carried out through a separate bill targeting the federal bureaucracy, according to US Senate rules, Miller added. But Musk's comments represented a rare split with the Republican president whom he helped propel back to power, as the largest donor to his 2024 election campaign. Trump tasked Musk with cutting government spending as head of DOGE, but after a feverish start Musk announced in late April he was mostly stepping back to run his companies again. Musk complained in a separate interview with the Washington Post that DOGE, which operated out of the White House with a staff of young technicians, had become a lightning rod for criticism. 'DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,' Musk told the newspaper at the Starbase launch site in Texas ahead of Space X's latest launch on Tuesday. 'Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.' Musk blamed entrenched US bureaucracy for DOGE's failure to achieve all of its goals — although reports say his domineering style and lack of familiarity with the currents of Washington politics were also major factors. 'The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,' he said. 'I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.' Musk has previously admitted that he did not achieve all his goals with DOGE even though tens of thousands of people were removed from government payrolls and several departments were gutted or shut down. Musk's own businesses suffered in the meantime. Protesters against the cost-cutting targeted Tesla dealerships while arsonists even torched a few of the electric vehicles, and the firm's profits slumped. 'People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That's really uncool,' Musk told the Post. Musk has also been focusing on Space X after a series of fiery setbacks to his dreams of colonizing Mars — the latest of which came on Tuesday when its prototype Starship exploded over the Indian Ocean. The tycoon last week also said he would pull back from spending his fortune on politics, having spent around a quarter of a billion dollars to support Trump. – AFP
