President Trump marked his six-month anniversary of his second term in office by touting that the United States is the “hottest” and “most respected country anywhere in the world.” “Wow, time flies!” the president began his message on Truth Social on Sunday morning. “Today is that Sixth Month Anniversary of my Second Term. Importantly, it’s…
It’s tough to keep track of all the ways in which billionaire Elon Musk has enriched himself with your tax dollars. But that windfall seemingly wasn’t enough for Musk, whose brain-chip company Neuralink reportedly lied on federal forms, falsely calling itself a “small disadvantaged business.” The outlet Musk Watch unearthed the filing, dated April 24, which was when Musk was still a “special government employee” of the federal government. Hello, DOGE? Here is some apparent fraud and waste for you to discover! To qualify as a small disadvantaged business, the majority ownership of a company must be held by members of a “socially and economically disadvantaged” group. According to the Code of Federal Regulations, socially disadvantaged people are those “subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias within American society.” Economically disadvantaged individuals are those with a net worth of less than $850,000. As of midday Friday, Musk’s net worth is over $413 billion. He’s a white, straight man and is not subject to any prejudice, which means he meets neither prong of the SDB requirements. To be fair, perhaps Musk’s company thought it could claim Musk was suffering ethnic prejudice because he is a white South African, given that both he and Trump believe so fervently that white South Africans are the most persecuted people in existence, basically the only people oppressed enough to get refugee status these days. Demonstrators protest against Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency outside a Tesla dealership on April 12 in Kansas City, Missouri. This doesn’t appear to be a onetime error, either. Musk Watch found that Neuralink has claimed this same designation in 11 different federal filings since 2017. It isn’t clear if Neuralink has actually received any money from the government via this apparent scam, but that isn’t really the point. The mere act of signing off on the federal forms would be fraud—the exact sort of fraud that the administration has pretended it is rooting out. All of this is especially ironic given that Musk otherwise actively scorns diversity efforts. Things at Tesla, his electric vehicle company, have allegedly been so racist that last year a California state judge ruled that 6,000 of its Black workers could jointly sue the company as a class because they alleged Tesla had a “pattern or practice” of failing to address and prevent discrimination against Black workers. Additionally, under then-President Joe Biden in 2023, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Tesla for allegedly tolerating racist harassment and retaliating against workers who opposed the harassment. It’s unclear what will happen with that suit, but Tesla already got a gift from the Trump administration, which reportedly dropped a Department of Labor investigation into discrimination at the company. Musk has also been eager to attack any diversity efforts and has gleefully slashed funding for related initiatives. He turned Twitter into X, a neo-Nazi hangout whose chatbot turned so antisemitic that Musk had to shut it down. This is not a person who believes the government should lend a helping hand to people who have suffered racial, ethnic, or cultural prejudice. That said, Neuralink’s reported actions make perfect sense within the paradigm of the Trump administration. In that worldview, the people who actually qualify for the small-disadvantaged-business designation don’t deserve it, because they weren’t chosen on the basis of merit. To them, the real racism is anything that doesn’t reward white people. So why shouldn’t Musk’s company seemingly engage in a little light fraud to get the advantage it believes it so richly deserves?
Justin Fulcher, an adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said in a statement that he had planned to work in the federal government for only six months.
An investigation at National Taiwan Normal University found blood sampling had taken place for “research projects”.
That’s the title of a report by the Trump administration CEA earlier this month. It’s an interesting question whether this is the relevant question or not. What the CEA analysis does is to use the 2017 Input-Output tables to determine what the final goods prices (in CPI or PCE deflator) do, taking into account the amount of imports used in each category. This seems like a reasonable way to proceed, until one thinks about how tariffs work. Consider the simplest case, where the US is a small country. Source: Chinn and Irwin, International Economics (2025). Then using the methodology of the Trump CEA, the importance of tariffs for final demand prices is denoted by M×(Pw(1+τ)-Pw.) [I hold import quantity at pre-tariff level M because CEA uses 2017 IO tables]. However, as is known from basic economics (like the kind one learns in first course econ in undergrad, or even high school), import competing domestic firms also raise their prices. Hence, the prices are raised for quantity M, as well as quantity Qs. In the figure above, this doesn’t change much. However, consider an alternative, where domestic production is much larger relative to imports: Now, price increases apply to quantities 0 to Qs and M. In other words, a much larger share of final production. In other words, the CEA calculations are ignoring the presence of domestic alternatives. For some products (think coffee), there is virtually no domestic production. But for others, there are. Consider steel — Nucor raised their prices when tariffs were announced, even before they were implemented. By the way, if the imported goods are durables, I would expect that domestic, import-competing firms would raise their prices before tariffed goods entered (recall, the universal 10% tariff was only implemented in April, and the CEA analysis applies to final prices through May). The CEA report cites a Fed analysis which uses similar methodology to theirs. I will merely observe that in the case of imported Chinese goods, there are fewer import-competing domestic firms, so the preceding critique need not apply as forcefully.
Counter terror officers are also investigating logos of a banned organisation being displayed at a protest in Edinburgh.
Belgian road champion Tim Wellens claims his first Tour de France stage victory with a breakaway win on stage 15.
Rachel Booth, 38, was last seen on Saturday morning at a petrol station in Northwich, police say.
At least five people died in the fire and more than 280 were rescued off the coast of Sulawesi island.
Anna Rutherford finished so far ahead in the Bamburgh to Edinburgh race that she was home by the time her rivals crossed the finish line.
