Elon Musk’s New Plan for Twitter Is Going So Well He’s Now Firing Half of Its Employees

Last week, ahead of acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk visited the company headquarters. “Meeting a lot of cool people at Twitter today!,” he tweeted.

Turns out he’s going to fire half of those “cool people.”

Bloomberg reports that Musk plans to lay off about 3,700 people on Friday, in an effort to drive down costs of an acquisition that has placed about $13 billion worth of debt onto the company. The exact number of cut jobs and amount of severance to be offered is still in flux, according to the report—but the 3,700 number would cut the company’s staff in half.

Musk also plans to require all employees to work in person, reversing Twitter’s work-from-anywhere policy instituted amid the pandemic. The billionaire has suggested that people who prefer remote work should “pretend to work somewhere else.”

The news comes after reports that numerous companies—including Coca-Cola, Spotify, and HBO—are considering suspending advertising activity on Twitter, amid concerns that Musk’s “maximalist” approach to free speech may make the platform unsafe. The social media platform nets some 90 percent of its revenue from advertising. General Motors has already suspended its advertising for the time being.

And while Twitter’s primary source of revenue is threatened, Musk has pushed employees to work day and night on a haphazard plan to generate enough money to keep the platform afloat. The largely-formulated-through-tweets plan would charge users $8 a month, so they can receive benefits like account verification and visibility priorities. Such a plan could lead to further issues involving misinformation and hate speech, potentially encouraging more companies to cut advertising.

“The expectation is literally to work 24/7 to get this out,” Musk reportedly said in an internal company message. While employees throw themselves into making Musk’s financially unsound vision become reality, there’s no guarantee they’ll even have their job in the coming days.

Right-wing activists showed up to protest President Joe Biden’s speech Wednesday night warning that the future of U.S. democracy was at stake in next week’s midterm elections.

But things didn’t quite go to plan: there were only six of them.

“Outside of Union Station, six low-energy right-wing activists have gathered to protest Biden‘s speech,” Daily Beast reporter Zachary Petrizzo said on Twitter, alongside a photo of the group.

The protesters had two flags and posters with photos of people who had died during the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

In his speech, Biden slammed “extreme MAGA Republicans” who he said are already trying to undermine the election results. “We can’t take democracy for granted any longer,” he said.

While he spoke, protesters tried to get a chant going, but there weren’t enough of them to make an impact. Later, when Biden left, they missed the motorcade and thus another opportunity to complain that the 2020 election had been stolen or that those arrested for the January 6 insurrection were political prisoners.

One of the oddest details, though, was the people the protesters chose to feature on their signs. The victims included Ashli Babbitt, who was shot dead by Capitol police while trying to enter the building on January 6; and Rosanne Boyland, who appeared to have been trampled to death by the crowd of insurrectionists, but a later medical examination revealed she had died of an amphetamine overdose.

Another poster featured Brian Sicknick, a Capitol police officer who was violently assaulted by rioters on January 6. He suffered two strokes the next day and died.

His mother, Gladys Sicknick, is actively campaigning against election deniers running for office. In a recent ad targeting Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Sicknick charges that “my son died because of people like Kari Lake.”

Lake “is very dangerous for our country. She saw what happened on January 6 and continues to spread the big lie,” Sicknick says in the ad.

Former Capitol police officer Michael Fanone, who was also brutally attacked on January 6, praised the ad.

Gladys Sicknick is “out there, I think trying to do what all of us are trying to do here, which is bring accountability for January 6,” he told MSNBC. “And, you know, I also support the fact that Kari Lake’s a piece of shit.”

On Wednesday, Politico published eight emails showing Donald Trump’s legal team discussing how Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was their “only chance” to stop the certification of the 2020 election.

How did Politico get those emails? A Trump lawyer forgot to deactivate a Dropbox link.

The emails illuminate efforts by Trump lawyer John Eastman and other members of the former president’s legal team to challenge the 2020 election results. Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a December 31, 2020 email that Justice Thomas was their “only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress.”

“I agree with this,” Eastman replied, writing that court action would help “kick the Georgia legislature into gear.”

District Judge David O. Carter had ordered Eastman to turn over these and other emails to the House select committee investigating the January 6 riots by October 28, determining that they showed evidence of potential criminal activity.

On the day of the deadline, Eastman’s legal team sent an email to the 9th Circuit Judge, requesting an emergency stay. But after Carter had refused a deadline extension, Eastman’s lawyers folded, sending a Dropbox link including the emails to the committee, seven minutes before the deadline.

They also requested the panel not actually read the emails until the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the request for a stay. But Eastman’s legal team didn’t formally file for the stay until later that evening—after the email was already sent.

And so it seems by continuing to try keeping the emails away from the January 6 committee, Eastman’s team accidentally exposed them to the public. When the appeals court asked for filings from both parties in response to Eastman’s request for a stay, the January 6 committee sent over Eastman’s email, which had the for some reason still active Dropbox link.

The House general counsel did not know that the link in his emails was still active, when filing with the court:

“Some media outlets have been able to access the Dropbox link that counsel for Dr. Eastman created to share documents with the Select Committee and that was included in the attachments to the brief we filed with the Court last night in response to Dr. Eastman’s emergency motion. We were not aware that the links in Dr. Eastman’s email remained active…”

In similar fashion to Alex Jones’ lawyers accidentally leaking the entire contents of his phone as the Infowars founder was being sued for defamation, it seems that the legal team of the former president’s legal team have cast a major blunder for their client.

Read more at Politico.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced an interest rate hike of 75 basis points for the fourth consecutive time.

With inflation at a 40-year high, the Fed has been scrambling to get interest rates high enough that people stop spending money, slowing the economy down in turn. If spending goes down, then so will demand and eventually prices, too.

But the risk is that growth will slow while prices and borrowing rates stay high, sending the economy into a recession.

Ryan Sweet, chief economist at Oxford Economics, and Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research, answered four questions about what this means going forward.

What will the decision mean for Americans?

Both economists said that the higher interest rates will mean higher mortgage rates and higher rates on personal loans, car loans, and credit card debt.

But “it’s not all bad news as savers will receive a higher interest rate,” said Sweet.

Why is inflation still so high, even with all the rate increase?

“The issue for the Fed is that the Fed funds rate is a blunt tool and can affect the demand side of the economy, but this isn’t responsible for the bulk of the U.S. inflation issues,” Sweet explained. Supply chain snarls caused by the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are the major contributors to the record-high inflation.

Unfortunately, the U.S. central bank’s policies can’t do anything about the supply issues. The policies also take a long time to go into effect.

Fortunately, according to Baker, “there is a lot of evidence inflation is already slowing. The price of many items, like appliances, used cars, and TVs are already falling.”

This many consecutive rate hikes is uncharted territory for the Fed. Should we be concerned?

“Definitely,” said Baker. “The full effect of the rate hikes to date will not be felt until well into 2023. The Fed may well have gone too far.”

The Fed is scrambling to achieve a so-called soft landing, or a decrease in inflation without tipping the U.S. economy into a recession. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that the time to slow rate hikes “is coming,” but he did not give a time frame for when that would happen.

Sweet warned that any easing will be “contingent on inflation moderating, job growth slowing and financial market conditions.”

Given how many variables there are in avoiding a recession, it’s unclear what the Fed will do next or whether they will be successful. And unfortunately, “risks of a recession are uncomfortably high,” Sweet said.

Is a soft landing still possible?

All hope is not lost.

Sweet said that, based on his firm’s analysis, the central bank likely can’t contain economic growth sufficiently, but “the Fed still has a shot”—so long as job growth slows, indicating the economy is slowing, as well.

Baker warned that a lot will depend on whether there are “further major economic disruptions,” such as another Covid-19 wave or an expansion of the war in Ukraine.

“A soft landing is very much possible, but we really are in uncharted waters,” he said.

This article has been updated.

On October 11, Tulsi Gabbard proudly announced her departure from the Democratic Party. Calling on “fellow common sense independent-minded Democrats” to join her, Gabbard did not indicate where exactly she was going. Her recent activity gives enough of an idea.

The former Hawaii congresswoman and 2020 Democratic presidential contender has exclusively endorsed at least 12 Republican candidates across the country. Many of these races are high-stakes. Among Gabbard’s endorsements are several election-denialists and conspiracy theorists.

Less than a week after her announcement that she was leaving the Democratic Party, Gabbard endorsed Republican Don Bolduc in the New Hampshire Senate race. Threatening to unseat incumbent Senator Maggie Hassan, Bolduc is an election denialist who has repeatedly—and bizarrely—falsely claimed children are using litter boxes in schools. A day after that, Gabbard endorsed Republican Kari Lake, the conspiracy theorist and election denialist running for governor in Arizona.

Gabbard has also endorsed JD Vance against Tim Ryan in Ohio’s Senate race, Adam Laxalt against Catherine Cortez-Masto in Nevada’s Senate race, and Tudor Dixon against Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan’s gubernatorial election.

On Monday, Gabbard waded into the country’s most expensive House race, endorsing election denialist Tom Barrett in Michigan, rebuking Liz Cheney’s earlier endorsement of Democrat Elissa Slotkin.

On Wednesday, Gabbard tweeted a video endorsing Blake Masters, citing a need to “rein in big tech companies.” (Masters and Vance have both enjoyed financial support from the venture capital and technology industry they were a part of, including from tech billionaire Peter Thiel.) Also on Wednesday, Gabbard appeared at a rally for South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who days earlier she had called her “close friend.”

Gabbard has also endorsed Illinois gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey, Utah Senate incumbent Mike Lee, candidate for Washington’s third congressional district Joe Kent, and candidate for Michigan’s third congressional district John Gibbs (an election denialist who in the past suggested that women should not have the right to vote).

Gabbard’s shift is not surprising. Beyond appearing at CPAC this year, she has found a home in right-wing media. There, she has focused less on bringing conservatives closer to her, and more on bringing herself closer to them—criticizing the impeachment inquiry into former President Donald Trump as “partisan,” complaining about “open borders,” and even filling in for Tucker Carlson on his show.

If Gabbard is just preparing for 2024, she can take comfort knowing support is already bubbling. David DePape, the man who attacked Paul Pelosi last week, has endorsed Gabbard to be Trump’s running mate.

This piece has been updated.