President brings in ban for visitors from 12 countries and restricts travel from a further seven
Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into Joe Biden’s actions as president, alleging top aides masked his predecessor’s “cognitive decline”.
The investigation will build on a Republican-led campaign already under way to discredit the former president and overturn some of his executive actions, including pardons and federal rules issued towards the end of his term in office.
Continue reading...US president presents top ally with golden key as Musk says Doge unit ‘will only grow stronger over time’
Donald Trump saw Elon Musk off from the White House on Friday, as the Tesla chief concluded his more than four months leading the so-called department of government efficiency’s disruptive foray into federal departments that achieved far fewer cost savings than expected.
Standing alongside Trump in the Oval Office, Musk, who faced a 130-day limit in his tenure as a special government employee that had ended two days prior, vowed that his departure “is not the end” of Doge.
Continue reading...The ruling says Trump exceeded authority in imposing sweeping tariffs. Plus, Elon Musk confirms government exit
Good morning.
A federal trade court has ruled Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs regime illegal, a dramatic twist that could block the president’s controversial global trade policy.
What was the ruling? Tariffs typically need to be approved by Congress but Trump has so far bypassed that requirement by claiming that the country’s trade deficits amounted to a national emergency. The court’s ruling said Trump’s tariff orders “exceed any authority granted to the president … to regulate importation by means of tariffs”.
How are markets reacting? Global markets cheered the ruling, with the US dollar rallying along with indexes in France, Germany, Japan, and futures for the US S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq indexes rising.
What’s next? The Trump administration has already filed to appeal. White House officials attacked the court, calling it “unelected”.
Continue reading...The billionaire mogul is signaling far and wide that he’s back to business, and even criticizing Trump’s tax bill
Elon Musk really wants the public – and investors – to know that he’s leaving Washington DC behind.
In a series of interviews and social media posts this week, Musk has criticized Donald Trump’s marquee tax bill and emphasized his recommitment to leading SpaceX, Tesla and the artificial intelligence company xAI. The world’s richest person claimed that he was back to working around the clock at his companies – to the point of sleeping in conference rooms and factory offices once again.
Continue reading...Marion council votes to seek state government approval for battery factory in Adelaide despite hundreds of submissions opposing it
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Elon Musk’s Tesla is one step closer to opening a factory in an Adelaide suburb despite overwhelming community opposition from “anti-Tesla and anti-Elon Musk sentiment”.
On Tuesday night the City of Marion council voted to seek state government approval to sell the site to a developer who will build the factory.
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Continue reading...The deals stand to enrich tech CEOs substantially by opening up new audiences for their products
On his tour of the Middle East this week, Donald Trump announced a slew of multibillion-dollar tech deals with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. With the sale of the US’s most advanced technology, he also sold the American model of the industry that made it: enormous amounts of power concentrated in the hands of a few men.
The announcements poured in last week: the US and the United Arab Emirates agreed on Abu Dhabi as the site of the largest artificial intelligence campus outside the US. The deal reportedly allows the UAE to import half a million Nvidia semiconductor chips, considered the most advanced in the world for the creation of artificial intelligence products. Saudi Arabia struck a similar deal for semiconductors, obtaining the promise of the sale of hundreds of thousands of Nvidia Blackwell chips to Humain, an AI startup owned by its sovereign wealth fund. Cisco said it had signed a deal with a UAE AI firm to develop the country’s AI sector. The agreements also directed some investment by Saudi firms into US technology and manufacturing. Amazon Web Services and Qualcomm likewise announced deals on cloud computing and cybersecurity.
Continue reading...xAI’s Grok bot repeatedly referred to widely discredited claim about South Africa that has been touted by Donald Trump
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company has blamed an “unauthorised modification” for a glitch in its Grok chatbot that resulted in the tool ranting about “white genocide” in South Africa.
In a post on Musk’s X platform, xAI said new measures would be brought in to ensure its employees cannot modify the bot’s behaviour without extra oversight.
Continue reading...Although Musk has pivoted from Doge, the Saudi summit shows how he’s retaining proximity to the US president
Over the course of an eight-minute interview, Elon Musk touted his numerous businesses and vision of a “Star Trek future” while telling the crowd that his Tesla Optimus robots had performed a dance for Donald Trump and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, to the tune of YMCA. He also announced that Starlink, his satellite internet company, had struck a deal for use in Saudi Arabia for maritime and aviation usage; looking to the near future, he expressed his desire to bring Tesla’s self-driving robotaxis to the country.
“We could not be more appreciative of having a lifetime partner and a friend like you, Elon, to the Kingdom,” Saudi Arabia’s minister of communications and IT, Abdullah Alswaha, told Musk.
Continue reading...Residents – most of them SpaceX workers – in remote Texas community approve plan to create new city
Voters in a small patch of south Texas voted on Saturday to give Elon Musk a town to call his own, officially creating a new city called Starbase in the area where Musk’s SpaceX holds rocket launches.
A couple of hundred residents of what was previously known as Boca Chica decided to make their unincorporated neighborhoods into a town that will grant them the authority to pass city ordinances.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Insiders sound alarm over ‘catastrophic’ impact of widespread departures and cuts under Trump
A “catastrophic” exodus of thousands of employees from the US Department of Labor threatens “all of the core aspects of working life”, insiders have warned, amid fears that the Trump administration will further slash the agency’s operations.
The federal agency has already lost about 20% of its workforce, according to employees, as nearly 2,700 staff took retirement, early retirement, deferred resignation buyouts or “fork in the road” departures earlier this year.
Continue reading...Trump and Musk have gut National Institutes of Health and experts are wary of private efforts’ ability to replicate public service
The federal government has slashed research since Donald Trump took office – hacking away at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its grants, staff and long-held partnerships with academia.
Now, some private companies said they want to pick up strands of research that might have otherwise been funded by the federal government. The effort has stoked little optimism among experts, who caution that private efforts cannot remotely replicate the breadth, depth or public service provided by federal funding.
Continue reading...Musk’s Doge targets National Labor Relations Board with cuts and terminated leases as union speaks out
Democrats have warned that cuts to the US’s top labor watchdog threaten to render the organization “basically ineffectual” and will be “catastrophic” for workers’ rights.
The so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has targeted the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for cuts and ended its leases in several states.
Continue reading...Tech billionaire plans to hang up the chainsaw as he steps away from ‘efficiency’ role amid Tesla sales slump
“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!” screamed Elon Musk, wielding the power tool before a cheering crowd at a rightwing political conference. The tech titan promised to slice and dice the US federal government and save taxpayers a trillion dollars. Oozing confidence, the world’s richest person seemed unstoppable.
That was February. Last week Musk announced that he is hanging up his chainsaw and stepping back from his role overseeing the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, to focus on Tesla, his beleaguered electric vehicle company. The news led some to hope the chaos unleashed by Doge is finally waning.
Continue reading...CEO to pare back White House work to one to two days weekly as analysts say role has caused branding crisis
The Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, said he will start pulling back from his role at the so-called “department of government efficiency” starting in May. Musk’s remarks came as the company reported a massive dip in both profits and revenues in the first quarter of 2025 amid backlash against his role in the White House.
On an investor call, Musk said the work necessary to get the government’s “financial house in order is mostly done”.
Continue reading...Treasury secretary Scott Bessent reportedly complained that Gary Shapley had been chosen without his knowledge
Donald Trump is replacing the acting commissioner of the US Internal Revenue Service after treasury secretary Scott Bessent reportedly complained to the president that the agency head had been appointed without his knowledge and under the instruction of Doge leader Elon Musk.
According to a report from the New York Times published on Friday, Bessent believed that the Doge head “had done an end-run around him” to get Gary Shapley installed as the interim head of the IRS, despite the fact that the IRS reports to Bessent. The report cited five anonymous sources with knowledge of the situation.
Continue reading...Visit by Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen comes as a federal appeals court rules against the Trump’s administration’s efforts to block return to the US
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.
We start with news that Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen met in El Salvador with Kilmar Ábrego García, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.
James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, and Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican leadership, have launched an investigation into Harvard University, accusing the university of a “lack of compliance with civil rights laws”.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield.
The supreme court said it will hear arguments next month over Donald Trump’s bid to restrict automatic birthright citizenship.
In their unanimous opinion issued today, a US appeals court warned the Trump administration that battles against the judiciary could undermine public confidence.
After weeks of strong rhetoric, the president told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday that he thought trade deals could be finished in the “next three or four weeks”.
Trump on Thursday extended a government-wide federal hiring freeze that was set to expire this weekend.
The Washington DC headquarters for the Department of Housing and Urban Development may soon be up for sale.
Continue reading...SpaceX-led group is pitching the Pentagon on a ‘subscription model’ for missile defense
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter said.
Musk’s rocket and satellite company is partnering with the software maker Palantir and the drone builder Anduril on a bid to build key parts of Golden Dome, the sources said, which has drawn significant interest from the technology sector’s burgeoning base of defense startups.
Continue reading...Vera, an independent organization, says Musk’s team demanded meeting as administration expands targets
Staff at Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) demanded to meet with an independent non-profit to discuss embedding a team within their organization, according to the non-profit, stating that refusal to take the meeting would mean a violation of Donald Trump’s executive order empowering Doge.
Doge staff member Nate Cavanaugh emailed the Vera Institute of Justice, a criminal justice reform non-profit that is independent from the government, on 11 April to demand the meeting, according to a copy of the email. Vera’s staff was confused by the request, as its government funding had been canceled a week prior, but agreed to a call which they said took place on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Some aren’t even fraud but rather known attempts by states to protect victims of identity theft, former top official says
In a series of late-night posts on X last week, Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” revealed the seemingly startling findings of their “initial survey” into unemployment benefits.
They cited examples of claimants who were deceased, between one and five years old, or not born yet. They even cited one case of someone with a listed birthday in 2154 allegedly claiming $41,000.
Continue reading...Musk’s Doge team announced in March it had canceled about $577m in grants for programs it labeled ‘America last’
Labor groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s abrupt termination of international labor rights programs aimed at ending child labor and other abuses.
The Solidarity Center, Global March Against Child Labour, and the American Institutes for Research (AIR), filed the lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to stop the cuts, enacted by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), and arguing the programs were authorized by Congress and that the secretary of labor has no authority to cancel the funds.
Continue reading...