Real Genius
Moral courage.
Trump Tells Inner Circle That Musk Will Leave Soon
Politico says Musk is out. Or he is half out. Or he is still in. According to unnamed officials.
‘Musk’s looming exit comes as some Trump administration insiders and many outside allies have become frustrated with his unpredictability and increasingly view the billionaire as a political liability, a dynamic that was thrown into stark relief Tuesday when a conservative judge Musk vocally supported lost his bid for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat by 10 points.
‘It also represents a shift in the Trump-Musk relationship from a month ago, when White House officials and allies were predicting Musk was “here to stay” and that Trump would find a way to blow past the 130-day time limit.
‘One senior administration official said Musk is likely to retain an informal role as an adviser and continue to be an occasional face around the White House grounds. Another cautioned that anyone who thinks Musk is going to disappear entirely from Trump’s orbit is “fooling themselves.”’
More fuel for the anti-elitist fire from Elon Musk.
‘Elon Musk on Tuesday called for the arrest of leaders of “fake” organizations that receive federal funds — saying they represent a politically connected “uniparty” that’s engaged in “money laundering” of taxpayer resources.’
We’re not going to know the DOGE savings until the actual expenditures start going out the door in coming years.
‘I can’t fact check DOGE savings. I tried. Head over to the website and it tells you that it saved $130 billion, up from $120 billion a week ago. The President claimed $2 trillion of savings over 10 years in his address to Congress. The latest CBO projections call for government spending of $54 trillion over the next 10 years and $37 trillion of revenues so a saving of $2 trillion would come in handy.’
The pushback for DOGE has arrived.
‘The National Institutes of Health told employees Thursday it was rolling back directives from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to probe worker productivity and limit purchases and travel on company cards, according to messages obtained by POLITICO.
‘It’s a possible sign that the agency’s recently confirmed director, Jay Bhattacharya, is willing to break with Musk and DOGE.’
Bloomberg’s Matt Levine discusses the call for a suit against Tesla by the head of New Yor City’s pension funds.
‘This is my own fault — I am constantly writing that “everything is securities fraud” — but probably the most frequent reader question that I have gotten over the last couple of months is “can Tesla shareholders sue for securities fraud because Elon Musk is doing DOGE stuff and hurting the stock?” And, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. This is not a successful lawsuit, or a lawsuit at all; it’s just a politician musing about suing. There are lots of ways for this to come to nothing. But it is the case that Tesla, unlike the rest of Musk’s empire, is a public company, which means that:
It has a stock price that can go down, and
The stock is not owned solely by carefully vetted Elon Musk fans: Anyone can buy it, and lots of index-y investors, including New York City pension funds, do.
‘So here you go. The theory of “everything is securities fraud” is:
A company does a bad thing.
The stock goes down.
The company somehow misled shareholders about the bad thing, so they bought the stock when it was high and have losses now that it went down.’
What about the Ministry of Silly Walks?
‘Musk: Any government institution is most likely to be the opposite of its name’
‘DOGE: The DOGE team fought for days to gain access to the United States Institute of Peace. Eventually, with help from the FBI and Metro Police DOGE was able to access the agency and discovered massive fraud, waste and abuse-including payments to Taliban and Iraq.’
Doge’s job cuts at US traffic safety regulator hit self-drive experts
Was this intentional?
‘Job cuts at the US traffic safety regulator instigated by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency disproportionately hit staff assessing self-driving risks, hampering oversight of technology on which the world’s richest man has staked the future of Tesla.
‘Of roughly 30 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration workers dismissed in February as part of Musk’s campaign to shrink the federal workforce, many were in the “office of vehicle automation safety”, people familiar with the situation told the Financial Times.
‘The cuts are part of mass firings by Doge that have affected at least 20,000 federal employees and raised widespread concern over potential conflicts of interest for Musk given many of the targeted agencies regulate or have contracts with his businesses.’
Top oversight Dem files resolution to demand answers from DOGE on AI use
Is DOGE using AI? If so, what protections are in place?
‘According to a one-pager of the resolution provided by Democrats on the panel, the measure is described as being necessary because multiple reports have claimed that DOGE and Musk are using AI “to mine data, make unsanctioned decisions regarding federal contracts, payments, and personnel, and potentially download data to external sources.”
‘In a statement, Stansbury said the resolution will require that the Trump administration “provide answers about what it is doing with our data and how it is using Artificial Intelligence to data mine our systems.”’
Can AI help DOGE slash government budgets? It’s complex.
What is the purpose of bureaucracy in government? That’s a central question now that AI is on the scene.
‘Critics of Musk, like the tech and democracy group Tech Policy Press, argue that his zeal for government AI discards established procedures and is based on a false idea “that the goal of bureaucracy is merely what it produces (services, information, governance) and can be isolated from the process through which democracy achieves those ends: debate, deliberation, and consensus.”’