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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.
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Why the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Just Had Their Best Month Since 2023
May was the best month for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite since November 2023, with the indexes rising 6.2% and 9.6%, respectively. Investors entered the month cautiously optimistic. Employment data at the beginning of the month suggested the economy remained on solid footing. Meanwhile, White House officials were signaling a desire to ease tensions with China, whose imports at the time were subject to a minimum 145% tariff. Stocks surged mid-month when the U.S. and China agreed to slash their respective tariff rates for 90 days while officials negotiate a broader deal. Stocks got additional boosts from President Trump's dealmaking tour of the Middle East and progress in Congress on Trump's tax-cutting 'One Big, Beautiful Bill.' The AI trade came back into vogue in May, thanks to solid big tech earnings reports and the flurry of AI-focused deals coming out of Trump's Middle East trip. AI favorites Constellation Energy Group (CEG) and Super Micro Computer (SMCI) were the S&P 500's second and third-best performing stocks, rising 37% and 26%, respectively. Nvidia (NVDA) stock gained 24% in May. Much of those gains came on the U.S.-China trade reprieve, but a strong quarterly earnings report near the end of the month helped. Tesla (TSLA) stock advanced nearly 23% as CEO Elon Musk distanced himself from the Trump administration and reassured Wall Street he's committed to leading the electric vehicle maker through a tumultuous time. Tesla is expected to take a major step toward refashioning itself as an AI company when it launches its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June. May was a difficult month for the health sector. Shares of UnitedHealth Group (UNH) lost about a quarter of their value as the healthcare conglomerate withdrew its full-year guidance, announced the departure of its CEO, and reportedly came under Justice Department investigation for Medicare fraud. UnitedHealth was the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500. It also weighed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which rose a relatively modest 3.9% over the month, which wasn't even its best monthly performance of 2025. Eli Lilly (LLY) was the second-worst performer, falling about 18% during the month. Lilly is in a race with Denmark's Novo Nordisk (NVO) to dominate the GLP-1 market, but the weight-loss drugs' high prices have drawn scrutiny. A May 12 executive order targeting drug prices, while less severe than expected, was an additional headwind for pharmaceutical stocks this month. Read the original article on Investopedia
Axios
a day ago
- Business
- Axios
Behind the Curtain: The Great Fusing
America's government and technology giants are fusing into a codependent superstructure in a race to dominate AI and space for the next generation. Why it matters: The merging of Washington and Silicon Valley is driven by necessity — and fierce urgency. The U.S. government needs AI expertise and dominance to beat China to the next big technological and geopolitical shift — but can't pull this off without the help of Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Nvidia and many others. These companies can't scale AI, and reap trillions in value, without government helping ease the way with more energy, more data, more chips and more precious minerals. These are the essential ingredients of superhuman intelligence. The big picture: Under President Trump, both are getting what they want, as reported by Axios' Zachary Basu: 1. The White House has cultivated a deep relationship with America's AI giants — championing the $500 billion "Stargate" infrastructure initiative led by OpenAI, Oracle, Japan's SoftBank, and the UAE's MGX. Trump was joined by top AI executives — including OpenAI's Sam Altman, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Amazon's Andy Jassy and Palantir's Alex Karp — during his whirlwind tour of the Middle East this month. Trump sought to fuse U.S. tech ambitions with Gulf sovereign wealth, announcing a cascade of deals to bring cutting-edge chips and data centers to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Trump and his tech allies envision a geopolitical alliance to outpace China, flood the globe with American AI, and cement control over the energy and data pipelines of the future. 2. Back at home, the Trump administration is downplaying the risks posed by AI to American workers, and eliminating regulatory obstacles to quicker deployment of AI. Trump signed a series of executive orders last week to hasten the deployment of new nuclear power reactors, with the goal of quadrupling total U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Congress that AI is "the next Manhattan Project" — warning that losing to China is "not an option" and that government must "get out of the way." The House version of Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill," which passed last week, would impose a 10-year ban on any state and local laws that regulate AI. AI companies big and small are winning the U.S. government's most lucrative contracts — especially at the Pentagon, where they're displacing legacy contractors as the beating heart of the military-industrial complex. Between the lines: Lost in the rush to win the AI arms race is any real public discussion of the rising risks. The risk of Middle East nations and companies, empowered with U.S. AI technology, helping their other ally, China, in this arms race. The possibility, if not likelihood, of massive white-collar job losses as companies shift from humans to AI agents. The dangers of the U.S. government becoming so reliant on a small set of companies. The vulnerabilities of private data on U.S. citizens. Zoom in: The Great Fusing has created a new class of middlemen — venture capitalists, founders and influencers who shuttle between Silicon Valley and Washington, shaping policy while still reaping tech's profits. Elon Musk could become the government's main supplier of space rockets, satellites, internet connectivity, robots and other autonomous technologies. And with what he's learned via DOGE, Musk's xAI is well-positioned to package AI products and then sell them back to the U.S. government. David Sacks, Trump's AI and crypto czar, acts as the premier translator between the two worlds — running point on policy, deals, and narrative through his government role, tech network, and popular "All-In" podcast. Marc Andreessen, whose VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has stakes in nearly every major AI startup, has been a chief evangelist of the pro-acceleration, anti-regulation doctrine at the core of Trump's AI agenda. Reality check: The Great Fusing has been led more by Silicon Valley iconoclasts (Musk) than the incumbent stalwarts (including Mark Zuckerberg), who have rushed to align with the emerging gravitational pull. Tech-education nexus: Silicon Valley, facing a new race for AI engineers, cheered during the campaign when Trump floated automatic green cards for foreign students who graduated from U.S. colleges. But so far, tech moguls have been relatively quiet as Trump halted all student visa interviews and tried to ban international matriculation to Harvard. New defense reality: Palantir, Anduril and other advanced defense tech companies have more Pentagon traction than ever, robotics companies are surging and entire industries are being born — including undersea drones and space-based weapons.
Axios
a day ago
- Business
- Axios
Elon Musk's DOGE savings dwarfed by deficit-ballooning Trump bill
Elon Musk bemoaned President Trump's signature legislative effort in an interview with CBS News this week, saying he was "disappointed to see the massive spending bill," which is projected to add trillions to budget deficits. Why it matters: Musk and his businesses were walloped by backlash to his leadership of DOGE. Now the fruit of those efforts — more government savings — are at risk of being washed away by Trump's "One, Big Beautiful Bill." The big picture: Elon Musk claims that his DOGE team saved $175 billion in taxpayer spending, though an outside analysis estimates the verified savings are closer to $16 billion. The "One Big, Beautiful Bill," which passed the House this week, is projected to add $3 trillion to 5 trillion to budget deficits over the next 10 years. Even using Musk's most generous estimate, those DOGE savings would amount to just 6% of the projected increase to the deficit from the bill. Between the lines: The primary driver of deficits in the bill is the extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which Republicans aim to partially offset with cuts to Medicaid, green energy tax breaks and other programs. The bill also includes significant new spending on border security and the military. The White House argues the bill will reduce the deficit by $1.6 trillion, claiming that tax cut extensions shouldn't count as new costs — and that Trump's policies will supercharge economic growth.
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.
