Breaking News
Breaking News
from Washington and beyond

Tesla Recalls Nearly Every Cybertruck as Musk’s Week Just Gets Worse

Tesla has recalled almost all Cybertrucks after using the wrong glue.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk stand in front of a Tesla Cybertruck on the South Lawn of the White House. Trump points at Musk and speaks, while Musk zones out.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speak to the press, standing next to a Tesla Cybertruck, outside the White House, on March 11.

More bad news for Elon Musk and Tesla: Nearly every single Cybertruck is being recalled because the large panel near the front of the truck’s body falls off while in motion.

The recall covers 46,000 Cybertrucks on the road, or every car made from November 13, 2023, when the Cybertruck was first released, to February 27.

The panel, known as a cant rail assembly, is attached to the truck with an adhesive that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration describes as susceptible to “environmental embrittlement.”

“If the cant rail stainless steel panel separates from the vehicle while in drive, it could create a road hazard for following motorists and increase their risk of injury or a collision,” Tesla wrote, while also claiming it is “not aware of any collisions, fatalities or injuries that are or may be related to the condition.” Musk’s company says the defect only impacts 1 percent of Cybertrucks.

This comes as Tesla stocks are collapsing, losing half their value in the wake of Musk’s DOGE purges and his Seig heil-ing. There was also an attack in Las Vegas earlier this week that resulted in multiple empty Teslas blowing up. “It’s just fully terrorism at this point,” Musk wrote on X. “This level of violence is insane and deeply wrong. Tesla just makes electric cars and has done nothing to deserve these evil attacks,” he continued, infantilizing his massive company.

This is the eighth Cybertruck recall since the car’s release.

Trump Hints U.S. Could Go to War With Allies Someday in Wild Presser

Donald Trump called the press conference to unveil a new fighter jet.

Donald Trump speaks to reporters while sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stands next to him
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Donald Trump announced a new investment in military aircraft production Friday, revealing that he had contracted Boeing to develop “the world’s first sixth-generation” fighter jet, named the F-47. And he managed to threaten America’s allies in the process.

“It’s something the likes of which nobody has seen before, in terms of all of the attributes of a fighter jet, there’s never been anything even close to it, in terms of speed to maneuverability to payload,” Trump said during the Oval Office press briefing.

The pseudo-advertisement for the forthcoming fleet followed a tumultuous week for America’s military industrial complex, in which U.S. arms-makers were shut out of the European Union’s $800 billion defense spending plan. It also came after Canada and Portugal revealed they were similarly wobbling on whether to replace their aging air forces with American-made products.

By all means, the reveal of the F-47 needed to go well for America’s stressed defense industry—but Trump couldn’t stop himself from throwing water on the pitch.

“Our allies are calling constantly, they want to buy them all,” Trump continued, before claiming that America’s allies would get “toned-down versions.”

“We like to tone them down about 10 percent, which probably makes sense because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right?” the president said.

Foreign sales are crucial to the American arms industry, but Trump’s repeated aggression against America’s strongest alliances has made world leaders waver on whether the continued investment is worth it.

The sales pitch from American arms manufacturers simply isn’t as persuasive as it was under previous administrations. For decades, purchasing American fighter jets and weapons came with an added bonus of U.S. protection. But as global leaders have witnessed Trump defy long-standing military treatises and aggress U.S. allies, that promise no longer feels like a guarantee.

Trump’s shocking hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during critical peace negotiations, his nonsensical trade war, his threats to annex Greenland, his whiplash decisions to suspend and un-suspend military resources and intelligence with Kyiv, his venom toward NATO, and his insistence on making Canada the nation’s fifty-first state have all called the reliability of American protection into question.

FBI’s Biggest Office Reduced to One Job: Redacting Epstein Files

One of the most critical FBI offices in the country was ordered to focus on the Jeffrey Epstein files above all else.

Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump pose together at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1997.
Davidoff Studios/Getty Images
Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump pose together at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1997.

The FBI’s New York field office normally handles counterintelligence, counterterrorism, public corruption, international drug trafficking, and financial crime investigations. Right now, though, it has been ordered to prioritize redacting sensitive information in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Vanity Fair reports, citing multiple sources, that nearly a thousand agents, who normally work on national security issues in the bureau’s largest field office, are working night and day combing the documents instead of on their regular jobs.

“It’s literally all hands on deck,” one unnamed source told the magazine. “I even saw an agent walking in with a pillow.” One former agent called the situation “ludicrous.”

Trump said on the campaign trail last year that he’d consider releasing Epstein’s client list, which purportedly includes the names of rich and powerful people who participated in the disgraced financier’s sexual crimes. The administration’s release of “phase one” of the files on February 27, containing previously published information, enraged Trump’s supporters who were expecting the juicy stuff incriminating Democrats and liberals. Trump himself, however, showed up seven times in the released material.

Later, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel complaining that she was told that the Justice Department had received all of the Epstein documents, only to find that the FBI’s New York office still had thousands of unreleased pages. Presumably, that’s what the agents in that office are currently working their way through and painstakingly redacting.

Bondi claimed earlier this month on Fox News that she was rushing to get a “truckload” of Epstein documents released to the public, which one longtime FBI agent told Vanity Fair didn’t make sense.

“There’s no master file in the New York office. That doesn’t exist,” the former agent said. ”There’s not some crusty agent with his feet on bankers’ boxes.”

What sensitive information could the FBI be redacting from the Epstein files? Bondi claims that any new redactions would only be to “protect grand jury information and confidential witnesses” as well as national security information. But Trump’s mention might be slowing things down, particularly if his relationship with Epstein was deeper than he has claimed. The Justice Department and FBI are now run by his loyalists, who very likely could be putting his interests ahead of the public’s.

Republican Rep. Who Ousted Liz Cheney Booed Mercilessly at Town Hall

Representative Harriet Hageman had a tough time at her own town hall.

Representative Harriet Hageman speaks with a U.S. flag in the background. She seems distressed or shocked.
Michael Smith/Getty Images

Even the deep-red Wyoming constituents who booted out Liz Cheney are upset with the wanton way in which DOGE has gone about “eliminating fraud.”

“I’m a retired military officer.… At 18, I rose my hand to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic,” a woman said at Representative Harriet Hagemen’s town hall on Thursday. “I am still a Republican. I am—bless his heart—a Simpson Republican that believes in working together across the aisle,” she continued, referring to the recently deceased longtime Senate whip Alan Simpson from Wyoming.

“My question: Having looked at … DOGE … you are a lawyer, where is this fraud? What company, what organization, what personnel are we going after?”

“I’ll just start reading some of it, I’ll just start reading it right now if you’d like me to,” Hageman responded. “I’ll just focus on USAID spending right here.”

“I didn’t say spending, I said actual fraud!”

“This is what it is, this is the spending associated with the fraud. This is the fraud, spending is the fraud.… This is fraudulent spending,” Hageman retorted as the crowd yelled at her in disagreement.

The “fraud” that Hageman is referring to is money that was legally allocated by Congress for a variety of different programs like international aid and research grants. This is the language the Trump administration has adopted to make their federal purge seem like a positive thing. “Fraud” has been attributed to everything from contraceptives to Habitat for Humanity.

Elon Musk Is Openly Trying to Buy Votes in Crucial Supreme Court Race

Elon Musk is once again interfering in a pivotal election.

Elon Musk looks up while walking in the Capitol
Graeme Sloan/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Elon Musk is paying Wisconsin residents $100 each to sign a petition denouncing “activist” judges, collecting troves of voter data in the final days before a crucial state Supreme Court election.

Donald Trump and the billionaire bureaucrat leading the Department of Government Efficiency have spent the last week railing against one federal judge who dared to question the administration’s deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, who were transported to a prison in El Salvador without due process and in defiance of a federal court order.

Now Musk is attempting to artificially shift public opinion by circulating a petition against “activist” judges and offering compensation in return.

“By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role—interpreting, not legislating,” the petition said, according to Axios.

Musk’s petition comes little over a week before Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, in which Musk has already put a whopping $20 million behind conservative candidate Brad Schimel.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is set to weigh questions on hot-button issues, including the use of voter drop boxes in elections, abortion access, and redrawing congressional maps. A Republican majority on the court could influence the outcome in any of these cases, which would have national repercussions.

While Musk won’t know how respondents to the petition answer, after they receive their $100 credit, Musk will walk away with their information and be able to contact them again in the future. Like, in the days before the election on April 1.

“No District Court Judge, or any Judge, can assume the duties of the President of the United States. Only Crime and Chaos would result. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday.

“Unlawful Nationwide Injunctions by Radical Left Judges could very well lead to the destruction of our Country! These people are Lunatics, who do not care, even a little bit, about the repercussions from their very dangerous and incorrect Decisions and Rulings,” he wrote in another post Thursday. He urged judges to stop placing injunctions on his potentially unlawful actions.