All posts tagged "elon musk"

Here's how we supercharge attempts to hold Elon Musk to account

I’ve been struggling to imagine Elon Musk might do if he gets his trillion-dollar payday. He could spend a million dollars a day for 3,000 years. Or, more realistically, $100 million a day for 30 years. He could spend the $290 million he invested in Donald Trump’s re-election and do it 3,400 times, wherever and whenever he pleases. Or buy more media properties, spending up to 20 times the $44 billion it took to buy Twitter and make it into a misinformation swamp, key to Trump’s success.

But the money the Tesla board just handed Musk isn’t guaranteed. He has to meet goals like delivering 20 million Tesla vehicles and dramatically increasing Tesla’s stock price.

Ordinary citizens can prevent that, but we need to take our efforts to another level.

The global Tesla Takedown campaign has spearheaded the challenges to Musk with protests at showrooms and charging stations. So signs, chants, music, inflatable animals, and a clear message that driving a Tesla means supporting all that Trump and Musk have done. They brought people out who’d never participated before and, as people have followed their lead globally, helped:

Drop European Tesla sales nearly 40 percent in a year.
Drop US sales 19 percent from two years ago, despite lowering prices and margins.
Despite EV sales increasing overall, drive Tesla’s US share to an eight-year low,.
Led Cybertrucks to sell just 16,000 in the US through September, despite Musk saying they’d sell 250,000 and having his other companies buy them.
Drop Tesla’s stock price to 71 percent from its January high, before rebounding in part due to third quarter sales, when people grabbed EV’s of all kinds to buy them before Trump’s tax bill ended the $7,500 tax credits.

The campaign did lose some momentum after DOGE, and as Musk left the White House and feuded with Trump. Musk became less visible and maybe seemed less toxic.

But he just joined fellow tech lords at a lavish White House dinner for Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman, bone saws optional. And he’s continued promoting ultra-right wing parties globally, like the German Alternative für Deutschland, while his Grokipedia praises White Supremacists and French Grok promotes Holocaust denial. Add to that an estimated 400,000 children and 200,000 adults who’ve died because of DOGE’s USAID cuts.

Whether Musk gains or loses power remains hugely consequential.

Tesla showroom protests remain a powerful way for citizens everywhere to push back. But they need to put more energy into engaging America’s 2 million existing Tesla drivers as allies, by asking them to display anti-Musk stickers, magnets, or vinyl decals. Without them, Teslas on the street function as de facto advertisements. People see the cars. It’s the EV brand people have heard of most and their owners seem content. Their presence seems uncontroversial, and they do have a great charging network, so why not buy one if you’re considering an EV.

But when Teslas display anti-Elon statements, this changes the message.

“I BOUGHT THIS BEFORE ELON WENT CRAZY.”

“HERE FOR THE CLIMATE, NOT ELON.”

“ANTI-ELON TESLA CLUB.”

“FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS BUY NEW TESLAS.”

Such stickers proclaim clearly that drivers bought the cars to help address climate change, not to promote would-be dictators. When most bought their cars, Musk really was an environmental hero, particularly when Tesla also bought the leading rooftop solar installer, Solar City.

The bumper stickers, magnets and decals make clear that the drivers won’t buy a Tesla again, and neither should others. They become rolling advertisements against purchasing the car.

Tesla Takedown has sometimes linked to particularly clever stickers. But their prime push for existing Tesla owners is to pressure them to sell their cars to undercut new sales.

That’s fine when it happens. But especially with Trump killing EV credits, switching to a new equivalent EV, like replacing any car, is costly. Like $5,000-10,000 costly, despite all the great new EVs on the market. Most Tesla owners won’t switch just to make the political point, and that cuts them off as potential participants in the campaign. The bumper sticker approach invites them in.

If the anti-Tesla campaign and its volunteers want to enlist more existing Tesla owners, they could:

Highlight links to inexpensive stickers, magnets, and decals that anti-Tesla activists could send to or give to friends with Teslas. They can even ask vendors to add Tesla Takedown QR codes.
Post template letters and emails that people can send friends and neighbors who own Teslas. Or, where legal, put them under Tesla windshields.
Publicize alternatives. We bought a Chevy Bolt for $20,000 after the $7,500 tax credits that Musk has now helped kill, and it’s been great.
Press companies and municipalities not cancel Tesla fleet orders, boycott Starlink, support alternatives to Tesla high speed charging stations, and to have their pension funds divest from the company. The latter might also ell pay off financially — even Peter Thiel just sold three-quarters of his holdings.

The campaign is pushing on those more institutional demands, but the more they existing Tesla owners they can bring in, the more impact they’ll have. If we want to limit Elon’s destructive power, the Tesla owners can play a key role

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, with nearly 300,000 copies in print between them

This sinister setup is essential to Trump's power. Here's how it ends

The richest man on earth owns X.

The family of the second-richest man owns Paramount, which owns CBS — and could soon own Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.

The third-richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fourth-richest man owns The Washington Post and Amazon MGM Studios.

Another billionaire owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.

Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic — some might say sinister — reason.

As vast wealth concentrates in the hands of a few, this small group of the ultra-wealthy may rationally fear that a majority of voters could try to confiscate their wealth — through, for example, a wealth tax.

If you’re a multibillionaire, in other words, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth. New York real estate and oil tycoon John Catsimatidis, whose net worth is estimated at $4.5 billion, donated $2.4 million to support Trump and congressional Republicans in 2024 — nearly twice as much as he gave in 2016.

Why? “If you’re a billionaire, you want to stay a billionaire,” Catsimatidis told The Washington Post.

But rather than rely on Republicans, a more reliable means of stopping majorities from targeting your riches might be to control a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets.

As a media mogul, you can effectively hedge against democracy by suppressing criticism of yourself and other plutocrats and discouraging any attempt to tax away your wealth.

And Trump has been ready to help you. In his second term of office, Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the presidency to punish his enemies and reward those who lavish him with praise and profits.

So it wasn’t surprising that the owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos — the fourth-richest person — stopped the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris last year, as Trump rose in the polls. Or that, once Trump was elected, Bezos decreed that the Post’s opinion section must support “personal liberties and free markets.” And that he bought a proposed documentary about Melania Trump — for which she is the executive producer — for a whopping $40 million.

Bezos’s moves have led several of the Post’s top editors, journalists, and columnists to resign. Thousands of subscribers have cancelled. But the Post remains the biggest ongoing media presence in America’s capital city.

Bezos is a businessman first and foremost. His highest goal is not to inform the public but to make money. And he knows Trump can wreak havoc on his businesses by imposing unfriendly Federal Communications Commission rulings, or enforcing labor laws against him, or breaking up his companies with antitrust laws, or making it difficult for him to import what he sells.

On the other hand, Trump can also enrich Bezos — through lucrative government contracts or favorable FCC rulings or government subsidies.

It’s much the same with the family of Larry Ellison, the second-richest man.

Paramount’s CBS settled Trump’s frivolous $16 million lawsuit against CBS and canceled Stephen Colbert, much to Trump’s delight. Trump loyalist flak Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, then approved an $8 billion merger of Paramount Global, owner of CBS, and Skydance Media.

Larry Ellison’s son, David, became chief executive of the new media giant, Paramount Skydance.

In the run-up to the sale, some top brass at CBS News and its flagship Sixty Minutes resigned, presumably because they were pressured by Paramount not to air stories critical of Trump. No matter. Too much money was at stake.

I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS, and when the top management of CBS felt they had independent responsibilities to the American public.

Like Bezos, Larry Ellison is first and foremost a businessman who knows that Trump can help or hinder his businesses. In 2020, he hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his home. According to court records, after the 2020 election, Ellison participated in a phone call to discuss how Trump’s defeat could be contested. In June 2025, he and his firm, Oracle, were co-sponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington.

After taking charge of CBS, David Ellison promised to gut DEI policies there, put right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein into a new “ombudsman” role, and made anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or newsrooms.

The Guardian reports that Larry Ellison has told Trump that if Paramount gains control of Warner Bros. Discovery — which owns CNN — Paramount will fire CNN hosts whom Trump doesn’t like.

Other billionaire media owners have followed the same trajectory. Despite his sometimes contentious relationship with Trump, Elon Musk has turned X into a cesspool of right-wing propaganda. Rupert Murdoch continues to give Trump all the positive coverage imaginable. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce and owner of Time magazine, has put Trump on the cover.

It is impossible to know the extent to which criticism of Trump and his administration has been chilled by these billionaires, or what fawning coverage has been elicited.

But we can say with some certainty that in an era when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who have bought up key media, and when a thin-skinned president is willing and able to violate laws and norms to punish or reward, there is a growing danger that the public will not be getting the truth it needs to function in this democracy.

What to do about this? Two important steps:

1. At the least, media outlets should inform their readers about any and all potential conflicts of interest, and media watchdogs and professional associations should ensure they do.

Recently, The Washington Post’s editorial board defended Trump’s razing of the East Wing of the White House to build his giant ballroom, without disclosing that Amazon is a major corporate contributor to the ballroom. The Post’s editorial board also applauded Trump’s Defense Department’s decision to obtain a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors but failed to mention Bezos’s stake in X-energy, a company that’s developing small nuclear reactors. And it criticized Washington, D.C.’s refusal to accept self-driving cars without disclosing that Amazon’s self-driving car company was trying to get into the Washington, D.C. market.
These breaches are inexcusable.

2. A second step — if and when America has a saner government — is for anti-monopoly authorities to block the purchase of a major media outlet by someone with extensive businesses that could pose conflicts of interest.

Acquisition of a media company should be treated differently from the acquisition of, say, a company developing self-driving cars or small nuclear reactors, because of the media’s central role in our democracy.

As The Washington Post’s slogan used to say, democracy dies in darkness. Today, darkness is closing in because a demagogue sits in the Oval Office and so much of America’s wealth and media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few people easily manipulated by that demagogue.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

‘More radical than ever’: Elon Musk’s wrecking ball leaves behind awful legacy

Elon Musk's now shuttered Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has left a grim legacy with millions of deaths expected by 2030 and more than 200,000 jobs slashed, analysis shows.

DOGE's purge "has ended its reign of terror eight months earlier than mandated" after Musk took a wrecking ball to medical research, international aid and other life-saving programs, Salon's Heather Digby Parton wrote in an opinion piece published Tuesday.

Musk's "pet project" hired a "collection of young nerds Musk imported from his other companies, led by a couple of trusted aides, and the first thing they did was dig into data the government collects on companies and individuals. (Why that access was so vital has never been fully explained)," Digby Parton wrote.

Some have suspected that Musk used this material to help build Grok, his artificial intelligence project, she added.

The cuts have had a cruel global impact.

"Foreign aid was of particular interest to Musk, who is originally from South Africa, so he immediately targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and programs that were keeping people alive around the world. They were abruptly halted," she wrote.

A Lancet study published in July projects that DOGE cuts could result in 14 million deaths by 2030 — four million of those deaths are expected to be children.

These cuts were proven have "negligible" benefit for American taxpayers. DOGE had claimed it would bring savings, but an August Politico analysis found it to be less than 5% of what it had promised.

"The story of the department’s dissolution is a testament to how dysfunctional it was — and how Musk’s supposed business genius is clearly overrated," she wrote.

The dramatic relationship between President Donald Trump and Musk has shifted from "bromance" to a dramatic falling out and now a "rapprochement."

"Like so many wealthy men — including Donald Trump and most of his Cabinet — he was convinced that because he had been successful at running a company and making money, he was a genius who could do anything. And like so many who erroneously believe that government should be run like a business, Musk failed to understand that it is a completely different animal, requiring political skills, coalition building and finding consensus," she wrote.

"Like most people who spend too much time on X, Musk has become more radical than ever," Digby Parton wrote. "His AI experiments get more bizarre by the day, and his SpaceX projects, which include driverless cybercabs, have been repeatedly delayed. Tesla shareholders just agreed to pay him a trillion dollars, but considering the stock price, maybe they should have taken a page from DOGE and cut their losses like Trump did."

'Ignorance and incompetence': Nobel Prize winner lays into DOGE's vow to continue cuts

A Nobel Prize winner has denounced the DOGE section of Trump's administration as the "damage" from their internal cuts "persists."

Economist Paul Krugman believes the Department of Government Efficiency, initially headed up by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has been more damaging than anything for the country and the president's plans for his second term.

It was reported earlier this week that DOGE was dead, with lead staff members reshuffled into different departments, but the official DOGE account on X confirmed the department is still working on government cuts.

In post in response to a Reuter's report Sunday claiming the agency was dead, DOGE responded, "President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to modernize the federal government and reduce waste, fraud and abuse. Just last week, DOGE terminated 78 wasteful contracts and saved taxpayers $335M. We’ll be back in a few days with our regularly scheduled Friday update."

But Krugman believes the ongoing cuts made by the department are more damaging and have "wreaked havoc" throughout the government. He wrote, "Arguably DOGE’s biggest 'achievement' was shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development. And the dismantling of USAID has left a legacy of death.

"Back at home, DOGE wreaked havoc on the U.S. government through a combination of arrogance, ignorance and sheer incompetence. Musk is gone, at least for now, from the Trump administration. So are many of the young acolytes he parachuted into temporary positions of power in government agencies, although some have managed to worm their way into longer-term positions."

Other political commentators believe DOGE has been a complete failure for the government as none of the changes made by Musk and his team stuck when implemented. The Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson suggested DOGE has "created more costs than it saved."

He said, "I was told that DOGE was going to create trillions and trillions of dollars in cuts from wasteful government spending and as it turns out it was a net negative. It created more costs than it saved."

Speaking to Reuters, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor confirmed the department no longer exists.

He said, "That doesn't exist. There is no target around reductions." Kupor would go on to say it's no longer a "centralized entity" in the administration.

DOGE did not provide any details of what they had cut, when they had cut it, or how much they had effectively saved but did claim to have cut government expenditure down by tens of billions of dollars.

'None of it stuck': Elon Musk's DOGE now dubbed a complete failure by former GOP analyst

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has been dubbed a complete failure by a former GOP analyst.

The Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson joked Donald Trump is "sick of winning" and pointed out the shortcomings of Musk's DOGE project. The Tesla CEO had been tasked with cutting government spending and promised the department would be closed within the first two years of the presidency.

DOGE has since been shut eight months short of its expiry date, but not because of its successes in cutting expenditure, according to Wilson, who appeared on Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast.

"I was told that DOGE was going to create trillions and trillions of dollars in cuts from wasteful government spending and as it turns out it was a net negative," Wilson said. "It created more costs than it saved. It was, from the very start, Muskian bulls**t."

Wilson went on to suggest Musk's strategy was more about cutting what he did not like in government rather than actively pursuing government spending oversights.

Musk's strategy according to Wilson was, "an aesthetic dislike of X, anything that's woke, and because of his hatred of the woke he wanted to slash things that included words like 'justice, equity, climate, bias,' the usual things that trigger the MAGA."

The government has since confirmed DOGE is no longer operating, with its key players shifted to different parts of government. Speaking to Reuters, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor confirmed the department no longer exists.

He said, "That doesn't exist. There is no target around reductions." Kupor would go on to say it's no longer a "centralized entity" in the administration. DOGE did not provide any details of what they had cut, when they had cut it, or how much they had effectively saved but did claim to have cut government expenditure down by tens of billions of dollars.

White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Reuters, "President Trump was given a clear mandate to reduce waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government, and he continues to actively deliver on that commitment."

Under Musk's leadership of DOGE, tens of thousands of federal employees were fired, though hundreds were offered their jobs back in September.

According to The Daily Beast, the General Services Administration was cut so heavily they had to call on ex-employees to return to work as they were left "broken and understaffed".

'That doesn't exist': Elon Musk's DOGE quietly dumped by Trump administration

Elon Musk's government body, DOGE, has been quietly dumped by the Trump administration, eight months before it was set to close.

The Tesla CEO had initially headed up a directive in the president's administration to cut government spending. But it seems the Department of Government Efficiency has ended with a dud, closed down with eight months left on its mandate. Musk had said the aim of the department was to be so cost effective it made itself redundant by the halfway point of the president's second term.

But it seems the slashes made by DOGE weren't working out as well as the administration had hoped. Speaking to Reuters, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor confirmed the department no longer exists.

He said, "That doesn't exist. There is no target around reductions." Kupor would go on to say it's no longer a "centralised entity" in the administration. DOGE did not provide any details of what they had cut, when they had cut it, or how much they had effectively saved but did claim to have cut government expenditure down by tens of billions of dollars.

The main figures of the DOGE team appear to have been moved to new jobs within the government also. Musk had a major fallout with Trump in May but this appears to have been patched up after the tech billionaire was spotted at a recent White House gathering attended by soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo and Saudi Arabian Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Zachary Terrell was part of the DOGE team given access to government health systems but has since been moved to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Another major player in the DOGE project was Jeremy Lewin, who is now overseeing foreign assistance at the State Department, according to the agency's website.

Under Musk's leadership of DOGE, tens of thousands of federal employees were fired, though hundreds were offered their jobs back in September. According to The Daily Beast, the General Services Administration was cut so heavily they had to call on ex-employees to return to work as they were left "broken and understaffed".

John Roberts' 'corrupt bargain' exposed in eye-popping new analysis

The Supreme Court’s John Roberts' ‘corrupt bargain’ reveals what led to President Donald Trump's "abusive reign," a new analysis found.

Roberts and the high court are in a "love triangle" with Republicans and billionaires, Mother Jones wrote Wednesday.

" Trump needed Roberts to win, and Trump’s victory came just in time for Roberts," according to Mother Jones.

"His corrupt bargain has had an exorbitant cost, both for the nation and the court’s reputation," the outlet reports.

The conservative majority justices have paved the way for the president's "lawless second term."

“The court has traded public legitimacy as a significant basis for its authority in favor of just alignment with the GOP," Harvard Law professor Ryan Doerfler told the outlet.

And the justices appear to be on Trump's side, allowing the courts to be used as a shadow docket while "the Roberts court had handed Trump almost unlimited power to defy the law without accountability. And once Trump was back in office, it weaponized the shadow docket to bless his lawless actions, reversing lower court findings, often without a word of explanation. As of this writing, the right-wing majority has used the shadow docket to uphold Trump’s actions roughly 90 percent of the time, repeatedly bailing him out of any obligation to follow the law."

It's puzzled lower courts and added more questions to the high court's decisions.

"As the justices keep rushing to Trump’s aid, Democrats grow more open to reform if they return to power—and thus Roberts lashes himself more tightly to Trump’s mast," Mother Jones reports.

“It seems like what the court is trying to do is maximize the likelihood of future GOP control,” said Doerfler, who studies the judiciary's role in democracy.

With a legal attack on the Voting Rights Act in the current term, the court will also consider "the last remaining limits on billionaires financing campaigns; it’s no mystery how the justices are likely to rule."

It's now a matter of whether the Roberts court will push to secure a permanent GOP court.

"Roberts didn’t just strip political power from ordinary people—he handed it to billionaires," Mother Jones reports. "His decisive vote in 2010’s Citizens United v. FEC lifted restrictions on political spending, while ludicrously insisting it would not 'lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption.' Political spending by billionaires has since increased 160-fold. There’s a direct line between the ruling and Elon Musk buying Trump the White House with more than $290 million and being given free rein to fire his companies’ regulators in return."

'Great job, Elon': Billionaire bashed for setting the stage for Trump war threats

Donald Trump's saber-rattling, with a threat to send the military into Nigeria to stop “horrible atrocities” against Christians, is directly related to billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ending aid to the troubled African nation.

That was the conclusion of an MSNBC panel on Friday morning, with “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough calling out the tech billionaire who is no longer whispering in Trump’s ear.

At the beginning of November, Trump wrote a menacing post on Truth Social, where he claimed, “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities. I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”

That led New York Times columnist Nick Kristof to write a column where he claimed, “He [Trump] has expressed such outrage at attacks on Christians in Nigeria that he has threatened military intervention there, and the Pentagon has obligingly prepared plans for attack. Trump’s concern for Nigerians is welcome, but here’s the awkwardness: Trump’s aid cuts are killing far more Nigerian Christians than Islamic terrorists are.”

Using that as springboard, Scarborough remarked, “Let's underline what Nick Kristof has said here, and this is what we warned when Mr. Chainsaw-man was running around cutting U.S. aid and celebrating it: The number of deaths in Africa, in places like Nigeria were going to be explosive.”

“Nigeria is the most populous country on the African continent and nearly 200 million people,” MSNBC contributor Eugene Robinson contributed. “I think this is a very substantial country that he's talking about wading into somehow. It's just it's a ridiculous idea. The much better idea, yes, is to restore the aid programs that really did save millions of lives. And again, for a pittance, for money that was returned to the United States in a million ways, not just through good will but through economic development and everything.”

“This U.S. aid that we have been giving for years, we've done it because America has fed and freed more people on this planet than any other nation ever. But we also did it for our own self-interest by handing out aid. We got intel that helped us know what jihadists' next move, what they were going to be. And now that's cut off,” host Scarborough added before sarcastically exclaiming, “Great job Elon. Hope you enjoyed your moment with your chainsaw.”

“We need to get the aid flowing again to save lives and to get intel on the ground that will help us save more lives; when Islamic terrorists want to strike,” he added before exclaiming, “So stupid what they have done on the slashing of aid on so many levels.”

- YouTube youtu.be

The trillion-dollar question: When will we have had enough of this guy?

Tesla’s profit fell 37 percent in the third quarter. Yet Elon Musk is demanding a pay package of $1 trillion.

A trillion dollars is hard to envision. It’s a thousand billion. It’s a million million. It’s almost the entire GDP of Indonesia, a country of 284 million people. It’s the annual output of North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia put together. It’s close to Tesla’s entire current market value.

Elon is demanding $1 trillion even as the legal battle continues over his 2018 pay package, then valued at a relatively paltry $56 billion. (He’s now seeking a package that’s roughly 18 times the size of that contested plan.)

Tesla’s shareholders will be voting on this absurd pay package next week, but it’s not just other Tesla shareholders who’ll be shafted if Elon gets what he’s seeking. Musk is moving the national goal posts for CEO pay all the way to Mars, at a time when American CEOs are already getting paid far more than they’re worth by any reasonable accounting of their contributions to the U.S. economy.

Tesla’s board — handpicked by Elon — is telling Tesla shareholders that the trillion-dollar pay package is necessary to keep Musk “focused and incentivized.” The board’s words in proposing the $1 trillion package are worth repeating:

“Musk also raised the possibility that he may pursue other interests that may afford him greater influence. Simply put, retaining and incentivizing Elon is fundamental to Tesla … becoming the most valuable company in history.”

But he’s already Tesla’s largest shareholder. He’s raking in billions. He’s the richest person on the planet. If he’s not already adequately motivated to stay focused on Tesla, why the hell does his board believe a trillion dollars will do the trick?

What are the “other interests” that could possibly “afford him greater influence?” He might devote more time to supporting authoritarian movements around the world, such as his favored far-right AfD party in Germany. Or the right-wing leaders in Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, and Argentina who he’s been pushing for. Or to his makeover of X into a cesspool of right-wing bigotry.

If not adequately paid to stay focused on Tesla, his attention might drift to one of his other businesses, such as the Boring Company, which is now digging a tunnel under Nashville for a Tesla-powered “people mover.”

That tunnel, by the way, doesn’t have the approval of Nashville officials, who are worried about it with good reason. Boring has dug one such tunnel under Las Vegas, where Nevada officials have charged the company with violating environmental regulations nearly 800 times over the last two years for such things as releasing untreated water onto city streets, spilling muck from its trucks, and flooding. Nashville officials worry that flooding there could be far worse because Nashville gets 10 times the amount of rainfall as Vegas.

Musk’s Boring Company says it will eventually do an environmental impact study, but excavation is already underway. Sort of like taking a wrecking ball to the East Wing after promising you’ll leave it intact.

Or Musk could be distracted by his SpaceX business, which is so behind on its moon landing contract that Trump is reopening bidding on it, causing Musk to go on an epithet-laden social media tirade.

I naively assumed that once he stopped running Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE) and went back to the private sector, Musk would pose less of a hazard to humanity. I was wrong.

Some say that even with his faults — his greed, his support for right-wing regimes, his public-be-damned approach to everything he does, the mess he made at DOGE, the cesspool he’s made of X — Musk is so innovative that he’s still a net positive for humanity.

What do you think?

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.

‘Loyalties are being tested’ as 'another MAGA power struggle spills into view': analyst

An analyst says that a MAGA power struggle has ensued over President Donald Trump's pick and Elon Musk — and now "loyalties are being tested."

Musk, the richest man in the world who has previously called himself "first buddy," criticized Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Trump's pick for interim administrator of National Aeronautics and Space Administration, writes Salon's Sophia Tesfaye. The move reveals how "the team he assembled has been besieged by a series of internal disputes. Now another MAGA power struggle has spilled into public view, laying bare the movement’s dissonance about power and progress."

"Musk, who had a rather messy departure from his official government role in May, is once again making waves with a social media broadside against another Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy," Tesfaye writes. "With Trump’s man is under attack by the MAGA movement’s favorite billionaire, loyalties are being tested."

At the center of the friction is Musk's Spacex 2021 $2.9 billion contract for the Human Landing System (HLS) technology and NASA's decision last year to delay further moon missions.

"The agency’s current plan requires SpaceX’s Starship to be refueled in space, a feat that has never been accomplished. The company has tested Starship 11 times," Tesfaye writes. "'SpaceX had the contract for Artemis III,' Duffy said. 'The problem is they’re behind. They push their timelines out, and we’re in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the Moon in this president’s term.'"

SpaceX and Blue Origin reportedly have until this Wednesday to ramp up the project. But the timing — with midterms coming — adds an additional challenge as the Republican Party tries to maintain its control in Congress.

" Trump loyalists in the White House are picking Musk’s side in this duel, blaming Duffy for biting the multi-billion-dollar hand that bankrolls MAGA," Tesfaye writes.

It's further created in-fighting among MAGA and “those closest to the president appear to be livid,” according to NOTUS.

“Duffy picking a fight with Elon doesn’t sit well with a lot of people because Elon is going to be a pretty big factor in the midterms,” a senior White House official told the Washington Free Beacon.