One Big Loser of Trump’s Second Term: Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s Tesla stock is falling on Thursday after Reuters reported that the Trump transition team plans on axing Biden-era tax credits on electric vehicle purchases.

The president-elect wants to kill the $7,500 tax credit along with a larger tax reorganization. This will likely do damage to the E.V. industry and cause prices to spike. E.V. companies Rivian and Lucid, along with Tesla, have each taken hits on the stock market. Rivian fell by over 12 percent, Lucid fell by 3 percent, and Tesla fell by 5 percent.

And while this move does seem contradictory to his interests, the richest man on earth remains bullish. His aides parroted earlier points he made about this move, calling it “devastating” for his competitors, while Tesla would only take a small blow.

Smoother sailing was expected for Musk and his companies given his proximity to Trump this campaign cycle. The billionaire was a constant presence on the trail and has been with the president-elect constantly since his win, even joining Trump on diplomatic phone calls. Trump also placed Musk, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, a position that little is known about at this time.

Two former staffers from Donald Trump’s first presidential term are now vying to be his deputy national security adviser. 

Politico reports that Sebastian Gorka and Michael Anton are top contenders for the post, which would not require Senate confirmation. On Monday, Trump asked Florida Republican Representative Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser.

Both Gorka and Anton would be controversial picks. Gorka reportedly believes that violence is inherently part of Islam, and vehemently supported Trump’s Muslim ban. Born in London to Hungarian parents, Gorka lived in Hungary from 1992 to 2008, and at one point had an arrest warrant on gun charges in the country. 

In 2016, while also a consultant for Trump’s first presidential campaign, Gorka worked for the FBI, but was fired for his anti-Muslim diatribes. Gorka also was accused of having ties to a Nazi-allied organization in Hungary, Vitzi Rend, a charge he denies, although he has been photographed wearing a medal from the antisemitic group.  

From January 2017 until August of that year, Gorka worked in the Trump administration as a strategist and deputy assistant to the president and was supposed to work on national security issues. However, he was unable to obtain a security clearance, raising questions about what he was actually doing in the White House. Even Gorka’s academic credentials have been called into question, as he claims to have a doctorate, which experts say was awarded on weak standards.  

Anton worked as a speechwriter for conservative figures including Rudy Giuliani, Condoleezza Rice, and Rupert Murdoch before joining the Trump administration as a deputy assistant to the president for strategic communications in 2017. He has also espoused anti-Muslim views, criticized the Black Lives Matter movement, and even claimed in 2020 that George Soros was planning a coup with the help of the Democratic Party. He is arguably best known as the author of “The Flight 93 Election,” a 2016 manifesto that urged conservatives to support Trump. 

Of the two, Anton is more likely to get the post, according to one of Politico’s sources. But if either gets the job, they will have access to vital national security information, will craft policy, and will likely also target American citizens they disagree with. That’s a scary prospect, especially with a president who has repeatedly threatened to use the military against “the enemy within.”  

Donald Trump tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday, effectively handing the reins of the nation’s health policies to a renowned conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic who has admitted to having brain-eating worms in his head.

“I am thrilled to announce Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as The United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS),” Trump announced on X. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation.”

Kennedy’s nomination was always on the horizon, despite the insistence of Trump’s transition co-chair that it would not be the case.

In his first speech after being declared the winner of the 2024 election, Trump promised that Kennedy would take on a role in his second administration that would “help make America healthy again.”

“He’s a great guy, he really means it, he wants to do some things and we’re going to let him go to it,” Trump said.

During an interview with NBC News’s Dasha Burns earlier this month, Trump refused to promise that he wouldn’t ban vaccines, instead outlining his intentions to talk to Kennedy and “talk to other people” and make a decision. “He’s a very talented guy and has strong views,” Trump said of Kennedy.

During the same interview, Trump signaled that he would be open to RFK Jr.’s recommendation to remove fluoride from all public water systems—a 1945 public health decision that has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association.

The choice will likely draw the ire of medical professionals across the nation, as Kennedy reportedly has plans to strip even long-standing vaccines from the market.

Vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The jabs are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox, a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

This story has been updated.

Senate leadership seems all mixed up about giving Donald Trump the power to straight-up bypass Congress and appoint Matt Gaetz as his attorney general.

Ahead of Trump’s recent Cabinet picks (a crew of loyalists so unqualified it feels more like trolling than anything else), the president-elect laid out his shady plan to get them appointed without Senate approval.

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump wrote Sunday on X.

Unlike typical official appointments, recess appointments don’t require a Senate vote, and allow the president to unilaterally decide who will fill a role. The appointment wouldn’t be permanent; it might only last until the end of that session, which is no more than two years. At the end of that time, the president could just renominate their pick and appoint them again.

This would be particularly useful in the case of Gaetz, an antagonistic MAGA acolyte currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for alleged sexual misconduct, among a slate of other charges.

CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju asked several top Republicans whether they actually supported Trump’s request for recess appointments.

Florida Senator Rick Scott, a staunch Trump ally, said that he supported Trump’s request. “Well I believe in recess appointments, so I was very clear,” said Scott. “And I think John Cornyn and John Thune are committed to recess appointments.”

That would have been all well and good if Scott had won his bid to become the Senate majority leader earlier this week. But he didn’t, Thune did. And it’s not clear that Thune or Cornyn agree with Scott at all.

“Well that’s another whole issue; obviously I don’t think we should be circumventing the Senate’s responsibilities, but I think it’s premature to be talking about recess appointments right now,” Cornyn replied, when asked about possibly allowing recess appointments.

Scott claimed that he, Thune, and Cornyn had agreed on recess appointments ahead of the Senate GOP election Tuesday. Cornyn said that no such discussion had taken place.

Cornyn added that “there should not be any limitation” on the Senate’s investigation into Gaetz. Separately, he told ABC’s Rachel Scott that he “absolutely” wanted to see the Ethics report on Gaetz.

As for Thune, he claimed that whether he would allow Trump to make recess appointments hadn’t even crossed his mind.

“I haven’t given that any thought yet,” Thune added. “I just know that the nomination isn’t formalized yet, but when it is, we’ll process it in the way we typically do and provide our advise and consent.”

On Wednesday, Thune signaled that he hoped to put nominees through standard confirmation hearings. “I’m willing to grind through it and do it the old-fashioned way,” Thune told South Dakota reporters.

Another member of Republican Senate leadership, Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, who became vice chair of the Senate GOP Policy Committee Tuesday, also pushed back on Trump’s request for recess appointments.

“I think the Supreme Court would even step in on those roles,” Lankford said, adding that he wouldn’t favor recess appointments.

Elon Musk is holding open auditions for employment at his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Applicants simply must be willing to work grueling hours for zero compensation. 

DOGE made the announcement Thursday from its official account on X, writing:

We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE. We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.

Musk then quote-tweeted a message regarding the “monumental amount of tedious super-high quality work” that would be required to run the department.   

“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero,” Musk wrote. “What a great deal!” The billionaire attached a laughing emoji at the end of the tweet. 

Musk is familiar with these kinds of absurd labor demands. He warned Twitter employees to either be “extremely hardcore” or leave when he bought the platform in 2022. He also told them they’d have to work “long hours at high intensity.” Eighty percent of the staff left soon after.

Musk was one of Donald Trump’s most prominent advocates (and donors) on the campaign trail, and he hasn’t left the president-elect’s side since his victory. In return Trump gifted Musk the Department of Governmental Efficiency—or DOGE, a stale reference to an ancient internet meme—along with Vivek Ramaswamy. How the department will operate, and what the jobs there will even look like, remains to be seen.