What happened
President Donald Trump yesterday held an elaborate Tesla showcase on the White House lawn to support CEO Elon Musk, who he said was being "treated very unfairly" for "being a patriot" and working to slash the size of the federal government as the head of DOGE Services. Hours later, the Education Department laid off 1,315 employees, effectively cutting its workforce in half ahead of an expected Trump executive order to shutter the department. NOAA also began laying off another 10% of its workforce, or 1,029 weather and storm forecasters, marine scientists and other workers, The Associated Press said.

Who said what
With yesterday's Education Department cuts, Trump is "effectively gutting the agency that manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools," The New York Times said. Eliminating it entirely would take an act of Congress, and Trump is "unlikely" to "find enough support to do so," particularly as recent polls have "consistently shown roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose closing the department."

Senior Education Department officials said the layoffs, and closure of offices around the country, "wouldn't affect department functions," The Wall Street Journal said. But "critics said it was impossible to reduce staff so dramatically without affecting the services that states, school districts and students have come to rely on," The Washington Post said.

What next?
Agencies across the government "need to submit plans for large-scale layoffs" by Thursday, as stipulated in Trump's Feb. 11 executive order and a subsequent directive from the Office of Personnel Management, USA Today said. DOGE and other part of the administration have already laid off more than 100,000 probationary workers, gutted USAID and scheduled at least 76,000 cuts at the Veterans Affairs Department.

What happened
Southwest Airlines said yesterday it will start charging most passengers for checked baggage, ending a longtime free-luggage policy that the company had touted as an important differentiator as recently as last fall. The new policy, which follows other quirks recently discarded by the idiosyncratic airline, applies to flights booked starting May 28. 

Who said what
Southwest has "struggled recently and is under pressure from activist investors," The Associated Press said, and the budget airline is "betting that the added bag fees will outweigh the loss of business from travelers who look closely at the costs on top of ticket prices." Southwest is "playing a dangerous game," Thrifty Traveler executive editor Kyle Potter told The Washington Post, lamenting "the end of an era" and of "maybe the single most popular policy in the entire U.S. airline industry."

Passengers loved Southwest's "quirks and perks," including its "'Hunger Games' open seating policy," never-expiring flight credits, "flight attendant jokes" and "especially the free checked bags," Hannah Sampson said at the Post. Now "much of that is about to be gone." That's "what happens when a hedge fund takes over," aviation journalist Benét J. Wilson told the newspaper. "They dismantle everything that made Southwest special. And it's going to be just another legacy airline."

What next?
Southwest was one of several airlines that "flashed an early-warning signal" yesterday, "suggesting that consumers and businesses were starting to get nervous amid wider economic and political uncertainty," The New York Times said. But while shares of United, American and Delta fell, Southwest's stock closed up more than 9%.