Trump Press Secretary Reacts to Report That Musk Is on His Way Out

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt thinks that reports of Elon Musk’s potential leave of absence from the Trump administration are “garbage.”

A story Wednesday from Politico’s Rachael Bade posits that Trump has communicated to his inner circle that although he isn’t displeased with Musk’s performance as the federal government’s malevolent auditor, the two men mutually decided that it was time for Musk to “return to his businesses and take on a supporting role,” according to three anonymous insiders.

Some speculate that Musk’s current business failings are the cause for the shift. Others note that it might be intended to preempt any future liability Musk and his strangeness may pose to the administration. Either way, Leavitt swears that none of it is true.

“This ‘scoop’ is garbage,” Leavitt wrote on X about an hour after Bade’s story broke. “Elon Musk and President Trump have both *publicly* stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete.”

There are no further details on the timeline of Musk’s departure, what exactly Musk’s “supporting role” would be, or how it’s any different from what he’s doing now.

The Trump administration is currently in talks with several countries to find a new place to deport immigrants, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Officials are seeking countries willing to accept deportees whose native countries are slow to take them back. The countries currently in talks with U.S. immigration officials are reportedly Benin, Eswatini, Kosovo, Libya, Moldova, Mongolia, and Rwanda, the Journal reported Tuesday night.

Ricardo Zuniga, a former senior State Department and National Security Council official, told the Journal that most countries willing to go along with U.S. demands would likely be “problematic.”

“But even they are asking, ‘What’s in it for us? Who’s going to pay for it? How am I going to explain the political burden of accepting people on behalf of the United States?’” Zuniga said.

Talks are currently being spearheaded by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect behind Trump’s inhumane plan for massive deportations and known for his emotionally volatile run-ins with the press.

“Friendly reminder: If you illegally invaded our country the only ‘process’ you are entitled to is deportation,” Miller wrote on X Tuesday, advocating for the Trump administration to suspend due process to expedite the removal of alleged members of gangs the administration deems terrorist groups, as it did last month with the sudden removal of 261 alleged members of Tren de Aragua to El Salvador.

Deals with other countries may have been in the works for some time. U.S. conservatives began plotting to send deportees to Rwanda before Trump was even elected, copying a contentious plan from the U.K.’s conservative leadership to offload asylum-seekers there. The U.K.’s Rwanda plan, which has been in motion since 2022, has proved both inefficient and expensive, according to The Guardian.

Additionally, the U.S. government has previously raised concerns about human rights conditions in Rwanda, including reports of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrest and detainment, disappearances, and torture. The State Department reported similar conditions in Benin and Libya.

While these plans may have already been in the works, there may be a renewed sense of urgency after a judge’s decision barring the Trump administration from deporting people to El Salvador without first giving them an opportunity to challenge their removal.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary restraining order requiring the government to provide written notice and an opportunity for detainees to apply for protection before deporting them to a third country.

The order was a clear rebuke of Trump’s $6 million deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to accept deportees at the Latin American country’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, a prison notorious for human rights abuses.

This wasn’t the first time that a judge challenged El Salvador as a destination for deportees. In a filing late last month, Judge James Boasberg said that by sending the prisoners to CECOT, the Trump administration had likely violated the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, which states that “it shall be the policy of the United States not to expel … any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

The government admitted Monday that it had wrongly deported one Salvadoran national to El Salvador as a result of an “administrative error.” ICE was aware that a judge had previously ruled that the man could not be removed there for concerns that he’d be targeted by gang violence, but his name was mistakenly included as an alternate on a manifest for removal. A judge ruled that there would be no way to rescue the man from CECOT, as he was no longer in U.S. custody.

Despite dubbing himself the “Father of IVF,” Donald Trump actually won’t be funding federal infertility research.

The administration fired a team of researchers focused on infertility research and assisted reproductive technology Tuesday afternoon, the latest group to lose their jobs in sweeping new cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It is vital that the CDC, our nation’s public health agency, employs doctors and scientists who understand infertility, a disease that impacts one in six people worldwide,” Barbara Collura, president and CEO of the national infertility group RESOLVE, said in a statement. “Following today’s layoffs at the CDC, there will be no experts on infertility who will be able to inform public policy, brief members of Congress, publish articles and reports, and advance public awareness on the causes and treatments for infertility.”

The team was responsible for tracking in vitro fertilization cycles and creating and maintaining infertility-related databases. Speaking with HuffPost’s Alanna Vagianos, Collura said that questions remain regarding the future of that data—if it will be updated, and who would be doing the updating.

“That’s a lot of information and knowledge that walked out the door today,” Collura said.

The cut comes barely a week after Trump referred to himself as the “fertilization president” during a Women’s History Month event. Trump bragged about his purported efforts to expand IVF access and promised that there would be “tremendous goodies in the bag for women,” including “the fertilization and all the other things we’re talking about.”

So far, the Trump administration—directed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency—has fired more than 100,000 federal employees. But tens of thousands more government jobs are expected to be on the chopping block as Trump pursues a second round of “voluntary” buyouts.

More than 10,000 jobs are expected to be cut at the Department of Health and Human Services, which encompasses the CDC. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proposed downsizing the agency’s 82,000-person workforce by nearly a quarter. Other shuttered departments were responsible for research and policy recommendations on older adults, disabilities, HIV, minority health, mine safety, and smoking.

Sales of Elon Musk’s Tesla fell 13 percent in the first quarter of this year, representing the largest drop in deliveries in the company’s entire history. Deliveries dropped by more than 50,000 cars, to just 336,681 vehicles.

This was the worst quarter since 2022 for Tesla, as the company’s market cap also fell by $460 billion. 

The electric vehicle company has attributed the horrendous development to changes in the production for the Model Y that negatively affected deliveries. But this flop has been brewing for weeks. Tesla’s stock has lost 36 percent of its value since the year started. In March, it got so bad that Musk and Trump had a gaudy Tesla-themed photo op at the White House. The president even promised to buy one himself as a “show of confidence.” That confidence may be starting to erode. And it’s not just domestically: European Tesla sales have fallen by a staggering 43 percent.

This all comes as Musk’s far-right antics and DOGE’s hostile government takeover have (unsurprisingly) become synonymous with the prominent E.V. company he is in charge of. It might finally be catching up to him—and his pockets. The world’s richest man has lost over $100 billion from his own personal net worth since December.  

It’s also been reported that Musk may be stepping away from the Trump administration, a possible clue into just how urgent his business struggles are. But what “stepping away” actually means—and in what capacity—has yet to be determined.

Trump-backed Brad Schimel’s loss in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election Tuesday has Republicans in the state freaking out. 

Schimel, who enjoyed $25 million in funding from tech oligarch Elon Musk in the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history, lost handily to liberal Susan Crawford, with Musk’s involvement probably hurting Schimel’s chances. Nearly every county in the state, even ones that voted for Schimel, shifted several percentage points to the left compared to the 2024 presidential election, when the battleground state delivered a narrow victory to Trump.  

As a result, the Badger State’s Republicans are worried. 

“I’m honestly shocked. I thought we had it in the bag,” Pam Van Handel, the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s Outagamie County chair, told Politico. “I thought [Musk] was going to be an asset for this race. People love Trump, but maybe they don’t love everybody he supports. Maybe I have blinders on.”

The race “throws up a bunch of warning signs for the midterm election,” said Rohn Bishop, the GOP mayor of Waupun, Wisconsin, and former chair of the Republican Party of Fond du Lac County.

“I thought maybe Elon coming could turn these people to go out and vote,” Bishop said, adding “I think [Musk] helped get out voters in that he may have turned out more voters against [Schimel].”

Musk also handed out $1 million checks to select voters in the state and paid cash for people to sign a petition against “activist” judges and to canvas for Schimel, but all of it was for nought. He and Trump still tried to spin the loss as a victory, claiming that a ballot measure enshrining voter ID laws into Wisconsin’s Constitution was the real contest, despite the fact the measure was already state law. 

A major election loss in a battleground state that went for Trump in 2024 is a major warning to Republicans everywhere, not just in Wisconsin. It shows how toxic the GOP has become with Musk in tow, and offers a playbook for Democrats to win in 2026 and beyond.