Elon Musk retains speaking about Social Safety.
Two weeks in the past, he referred to as it a Ponzi scheme. This week, he instructed that his Division of Authorities Effectivity would scrutinize the company’s spending. And he has repeatedly instructed, with out proof, that Social Safety funds are flowing to undocumented immigrants and lifeless individuals.
The most recent signal of his curiosity within the company got here right this moment, when my colleagues Theodore Schleifer, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac reported that one in all Musk’s closest advisers had taken a place there.
The adviser is Antonio Gracias, a non-public fairness investor who lent Musk $1 million throughout Tesla’s early days and has vacationed along with his household in locations like Jackson Gap, Wyo. Gracias’ involvement often is the clearest signal but that Musk considers the company a key precedence. He’s one in all 9 members of the Division of Authorities Effectivity who’ve arrived there in latest days, my colleagues wrote. Two others work at Gracias’ funding agency.
We don’t know precisely what Gracias’ position is. However a court filing final week supplied one glimpse of DOGE’s early actions within the company. Within the submitting, which The Washington Post covered in detail, Tiffany Flick, a profession company official who retired in mid-February, stated the group’s representatives seemed to be looking for delicate info and information that fell into three classes: allegations about advantages being paid out to deceased individuals; considerations about a number of advantages going to a single Social Safety quantity; and funds going to individuals with out a Social Safety quantity.
Flick stated all of these considerations had been “invalid.” However they do align with the false allegations about fraud that Musk and President Trump have been making in public — which Democrats say Republicans intend to make use of as a pretense for scrutiny and cuts.
Trump and his allies have repeatedly denied that they’ve plans to chop Social Safety advantages, which Republicans have lengthy prevented doing for worry of political blowback.
“They’re not going to chop Social Safety. They’re not going to chop Medicare. They’re not — that’s simply fearmongering from the left,” stated Chris LaCivita, one in all Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign managers, in an interview with Politico published this morning.
LaCivita didn’t declare that Musk wasn’t fascinated about cuts to these packages. As a substitute, he argued that Musk wasn’t as influential as Democrats have instructed.
“He’s not president, he’s not president” LaCivita stated, referring to Musk. “He doesn’t get to make these choices.”
AGENCY REPORT
Musk goes to the N.S.A.
It appears as if Musk has been all over the place in Washington — however, till yesterday, he was not identified to have visited a spy company.
In response to a spokesman for the Nationwide Safety Company, Musk paid a go to to that company on Wednesday. It’s a notable go to, my colleague Julian Barnes, who covers intelligence, defined:
The N.S.A. is among the two most essential intelligence companies. It’s is all about penetrating laptop and telecom networks. Nobody is healthier at it. Musk could have concepts about the way it might do its work higher, or he may wish to be taught extra about how they do what they do.
The N.S.A. is a hulking bureaucratic company, Julian stated, and there could be methods for it to work extra effectively. There are additionally potential conflicts of curiosity as Musk enters the company.
The N.S.A. has know-how and cyber instruments that may profit virtually any of Musk’s corporations. The N.S.A. additionally has a few of the most delicate — and most present — secrets and techniques the federal government has collected. There isn’t any indication but that Mr. Musk needs entry to that materials, however historically the company has been reluctant to permit anybody unfettered entry to its materials.
Learn extra right here.
Extra on authorities companies
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The U.S. Postal Service has agreed to work with Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity. The service plans to chop 10,000 of its workers via a voluntary-retirement program.
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The American Federation of Authorities Workers, the most important federal worker union, is suing the Homeland Safety Division to stop the Trump administration from canceling its contract with Transportation Safety Administration staff.
MEANWHILE on X
Musk shared, then deleted, a publish excusing dictators
Musk is utilizing his X account as a megaphone. My colleague Kate Conger is listening intently and guiding you thru his most essential messages.
Early right this moment, Musk shared a publish written by an X person in regards to the actions of three Twentieth-century dictators — then rapidly deleted it after it prompted a backlash.
The publish falsely claimed that Joseph Stalin, the communist chief of the Soviet Union till 1953; Adolf Hitler, the chief of the Nazi celebration in Germany; and Mao Zedong, the founding father of the Individuals’s Republic of China, didn’t trigger the deaths of thousands and thousands of individuals beneath their watch. As a substitute, the publish stated, their public-sector staff did.
Musk shared the publish with out every other remark. He eliminated it quickly after customers on X criticized the publish, saying it was antisemitic and dismissive of genocide. Historians have broadly chronicled that thousands and thousands of individuals died beneath Stalin within the Fifties, that thousands and thousands of Jews had been massacred beneath Hitler in the course of the Holocaust and that thousands and thousands of Chinese language had been displaced or killed throughout Mao’s cultural revolution.
It was the newest publish by Musk to devolve into controversy. In 2023, Musk endorsed an antisemitic publish on X as “the precise fact” of what Jewish individuals had been doing, prompting advertisers to flee. And after an assassination try on Trump final 12 months, Musk wrote — then deleted — a publish suggesting it was odd that no person had tried to kill former President Joe Biden or former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Musk has lengthy appeared to favor strongmen and has promoted right-wing modern-day leaders. He has repeatedly used X to assist politicians like Javier Milei of Argentina, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Narendra Modi of India, leaders in international locations the place he additionally has enterprise pursuits. Most not too long ago, he threw his assist behind the hard-right Various for Germany celebration.
“It’s deeply disturbing and irresponsible for somebody with a big public platform to raise the form of rhetoric that serves to undermine the seriousness of those points,” the Anti-Defamation League stated in a press release about Musk’s sharing of the publish.
Musk didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Learn extra right here.
— Kate Conger
AROUND THE COUNTRY
The politics of Musk warmth up
Democrats are planning a nationwide sequence of city halls as they search to attract consideration to Republicans’ reluctance to carry such occasions. In the event that they’re something just like the city corridor that one Republican, Consultant Chuck Edwards of North Carolina, held final evening, Musk’s title goes to return up quite a bit. Right here’s what my colleague Katie Glueck heard from voters there:
Democrats across the nation consider that speaking about Musk might help them reconnect with voters who’re uninterested in listening to about Trump. And in Asheville, N.C., a Democratic stronghold, I noticed some proof that they may be proper.
An overwhelmingly liberal crowd packed right into a neighborhood school auditorium to register its displeasure with Edwards, a second-term Republican who represents western North Carolina.
These current introduced up Musk time and again, complaining about him particularly and criticizing the federal work power cuts initiated by his Division of Authorities Effectivity, whilst Edwards defended the necessity to scale back wasteful spending.
“You’re afraid of Musk!” one attendee shouted on the congressman. One other requested if Edwards can be keen to chop his personal employees.
As Edwards gamely tried to work the room, one other voter, Chris Boehme, 78, informed the lawmaker that he was deeply apprehensive by DOGE-led cuts to the Veterans Affairs Division.
“You’ve obtained to stay up for vets,” stated Boehme, who wore a hat studying “Grumpy Outdated Vet.”
“You’ve obtained an ideal V.A. hospital right here,” he stated. “It must be funded.”
— Katie Glueck
