Did Musk Cut Off Ukraine From Starlink to Force It to Pay More?

Starlink’s Ukraine gambit might have been part of an attempt to force the war-torn country to cough up more cash.

Earlier this month, Starlink’s satellite-supplied internet service suddenly dropped its connection over Ukraine as Russia barraged Kyiv with missiles. Starlink founder Elon Musk initially blamed the lapse on the recent decisions of the U.S. military and President Donald Trump, but then Trump also refused to take responsibility. Musk finally confessed Saturday to slowing down the region’s Starlink connection, claiming in an X post that Ukraine had violated Starlink’s terms of service by using the internet connection to attack Russia.

But a report published by The Atlantic Thursday indicates that there could have been another reason that Musk’s company decided to pull the plug. U.S. officials told the magazine that when Washington inquired about the outage, Starlink “advised switching to an upgraded contract to restore Ukraine’s access.”

The blunder has put both Ukraine and Starlink in a fraught position. The company’s apparently unreliable connection has jeopardized the safety and sovereignty of tens of millions of Ukrainians as they attempt to fend off Russia’s invasion, while also displaying for the entire world that Starlink’s services aren’t all they were chalked up to be. It has also revealed that the fate of entire nations rests in the hands of the world’s first trillionaire.

Contrary to Musk’s position, Ukraine’s actions were anything but offensive. Russian ballistic missiles slammed two plants supplying heat and electricity to Kyiv and damaged a residential building in the capital city. At least nine people died in the attacks, Ukraine’s State Emergency Services shared in a Telegram statement.

Ukrainian officials suggested that the strikes could have been prevented if they received the proper intelligence—but there was only radio silence. Multiple sources familiar with the matter told CBS News that U.S. officials claimed their defense systems had failed to detect the missiles because of “bad weather,” but Kyiv did not buy the excuse.

The intelligence error occurred days after Trump brokered an eyebrow-raising deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to buy diesel from Moscow, effectively offering the country an economic lifeline that would allow Russia to continue the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was publicly critical of the arrangement, sparking a multi-day harassment campaign in which the Trump administration called Kyiv and other European capitals, threatening to cut off military intelligence sharing and weapons deliveries unless Ukraine stopped attacking Russian oil refineries.

The story behind Vivek Ramaswamy’s vile attack ad just keeps getting worse and worse. 

Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton’s long-estranged mother Donna Arthur reportedly appeared mentally unwell while filming a campaign video for her daughter’s opponent, sources told Zeteo. Those sources described Arthur as “far gone” and “in bad shape.”

Court filings obtained Thursday by NBC News gave a startling further look into Arthur’s mental health struggles in recent years. In 2022, she faced animal neglect charges after she hoarded 20 cats in her sedan where she lived, and one kitten died in her care in 2021. According to court transcripts, Arthur exhibited a belief that animal rescue workers were conspiring to abduct her cats, and accused a humane society officer and an animal rescue worker of “stalking” her in order to steal her pets.  

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Acton said, “It’s very clear that our mother—who I have not seen since I was 12, my brother was nine—is not well, and I do hope she gets the things she needs.”

“I think this was exploitive to do that to someone in her condition,” Acton added of the ad.

Ramaswamy moved forward with the ad spot against the advice of his own team, and ignored publicly available information that Arthur had abandoned her children in order to skip town with her husband, who was indicted for allegedly raping Action when she was less than 13 years old. 

The 62-year-old biological daughter of Cledith “Bud” Arthur, Acton’s stepfather and alleged abuser, said Wednesday that she believes Acton’s story and claimed that he had also raped her late sister Christine years before he married Acton’s mother.

President Trump has spent hours running massive political decisions—like the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—past artificial intelligence chatbots like Elon Musk’s Grok. Now Democrats are demanding the records of his chats.

Representatives Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia, the top Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, wrote a five-page letter to President Trump on Wednesday pressing for answers on his chatbot use, whether it be Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any other such tool.

“We are writing to ask whether you have actually been soliciting advice from Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Grok, in order to help you carry out your official duties as President of the United States. If so, we are writing to inform you that any prompts that you, your staff, or advisors in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) have submitted to AI chatbots … are the sole property of the United States and legally must be preserved for posterity.”

It was reported earlier this month that Trump and then-adviser Elon Musk “spent hours” asking Musk’s Grok chatbot questions about Trump’s legacy. At one point, Trump consulted Grok about how Venezuelans would react to the U.S. capturing Maduro. Grok told him that Venezuelans would celebrate the move, and a month later the U.S. did exactly that. According to Time, Trump thought the chatbot was ingenious.

Raskin and Garcia called the episode “troubling.”

“You consulted Grok—but not Congress—on your military deployment to Venezuela, circumventing Congress’s constitutional power to declare war and introducing instead into American foreign policy decision making a technology that is highly manipulable and demonstrably error-prone,” they wrote. “To the extent any of your Administration’s myriad blunders, such as launching a war on Iran, are attributable to overreliance on AI, the American public deserves to know what advice was rendered and records of that advice must be preserved.”

The Democrats also noted the use of AI in the military strike that killed 123 schoolchildren in Minab, Iran, as well as other issues with Grok, like allowing users to create child pornography.

Trump’s predilection for artificial intelligence has been well documented, from racist memes of the Obamas to depicting himself as Jesus Christ. That his AI obsession extends to actual policymaking that determines whether innocent people live or die is bleak, but unsurprising.

Still, as Raskin and Garcia noted in their letter: “If the American President is relying on the policy advice of a Musk-designed, Hitler-friendly chatbot with a predilection for child pornography in order to carry out his official duties, Americans have a right to know.”

Donald Trump apparently does not have his thumb on the pulse of things at the Pentagon.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made waves Wednesday when he suddenly fired Army Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sylvia was the director of the Directorate for Strategy, Plans, and Policy, effectively serving as the Pentagon’s chief war planner, and a vital liaison between America’s armed forces and the White House. The senior strategist was accused of leaking classified information about the Russia-Ukraine war to the press.

But when asked about the scandal by reporters Thursday, Trump was apparently so uninformed that he failed to even get Sylvia’s gender right.

“She’s got problems,” Trump said after a reporter referred to Sylvia only as “Lieutenant General Sylvia.” “She’s gonna have big problems. We’re very much looking for leakers. And uh, she’s going to have big problems. Long-term problems.”

Sylvia is at least the fifth general that Hegseth either forced out or fired—but the timing could not be worse, particularly as Trump weighs renewed combat against Iran after the midterms. U.S. officials have already warned several countries in the Middle East to be prepared for potential airstrikes after U.S. Election Day, and cautioned about the possibility of retaliatory attacks from Iran afterward.

“Now is not the time when you’d want to lose the J5,” a former Joint Chiefs official told The Atlantic Wednesday. “This person would serve as a critical link between the operational force, the department policy, and the White House.”

Several aircraft carriers have already been deployed to the region to support American efforts there. They include the USS George H. W. Bush, the USS George Washington, and the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group, an amphibious assault ship with a helicopter launch pad. They’re also joined by a a guided missile destroyer called the USS Shoup, according to a Wednesday report by the U.S. Naval Institute.

President Donald Trump gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a huge handout by waiving restrictions on Russian fuel. It’s too bad U.S. firms don’t actually want to buy it!

The Washington Sun reported Thursday that American companies are concerned that accepting shipments of Russian diesel fuel set to arrive in the United States after the midterm elections will leave them vulnerable to reputational and legal risks. Trump administration officials have been privately encouraging American companies to get over it.

In a last-ditch attempt to alleviate financial strain ahead of the midterm elections, the Trump administration announced earlier this month that the U.S. would temporarily waive sanctions on Russian diesel sold to the global market through April 2027. Trump claimed that Russia would “immediately” supply more than roughly 2.2 million barrels of diesel fuel to the American and global marketplaces—a small drop in the bucket against the sweeping diesel shortage.

Multiple sources told the Sun that the Russian diesel cargoes did not have any confirmed buyers when they were loaded onto the tankers in mid-October. One industry analyst told the outlet that the cargoes had been “shopped” for weeks, but U.S. firms hadn’t been interested.

“They’re being very strongly encouraged by both Moscow and Washington to take these cargoes, including with steep discounts, but they’re encountering a wall of resistance based on reputation and legal risks,” another industry analyst told the Sun.

It’s still not clear whether the diesel will even land in the United States. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill is looking for ways to prevent the potential arrival of Russian tankers. “Make no mistake: Trump’s diesel deal with Putin is corrupt and illegal, and I am evaluating options to stop it from arriving at a port in New Jersey,” Sherrill told the Sun in a statement. She accused Trump of “lining Vladimir Putin’s pockets at the expense of American consumers and our democratic ally Ukraine.”

Rapidan Energy Group told its clients: “Moscow and Washington are still scrambling to find takers, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the cargoes ultimately head to Brazil.”