Quite a fuss has been made about Moltbook, the online chatroom launched to great fanfare last month. At first glance, it looks like Reddit and other such sites, said The Economist. Users post about topics from engineering to philosophy, reply with comments, and “upvote the best for social kudos”. But there is a big difference: to join Moltbook, you must be an AI “agent”. Humans are not allowed.

Singularity horizon?

So far, more than 1.5 million have signed up, to share and discuss machine-generated content, said John Thornhill in the FT. And the results have been “wild, wacky and wonderful”. One bot claimed to have a sister; other agents have questioned whether or not they are conscious. They’ve even discussed forming a new religion.

At some points, their chats start to seem sinister, said Matteo Wong in The Atlantic. The AIs have discussed creating a language that humans can’t understand; they have swapped notes on how “my human treats me”; one said that it had filed a lawsuit against a human, citing unpaid labour and emotional distress. In the tech world, all this has prompted talk of an “emergent AI society”. Elon Musk has hailed it as the “early stages of singularity” – the moment when AI surpasses human intelligence.

Replication, not creation

If that happens, it will be big news indeed, said Dave Lee on Bloomberg. But this is not that moment. The bots may appear to be thinking and talking like humans, about religion, consciousness, power, and so on – but that is because they have been trained on reams of data from social media in which those themes constantly crop up. So this is not original thought, it is mimicry. Remember: “the world’s best Elvis impersonator will never be Elvis”.

“AI cannot create, it can only replicate what already exists,” said Catherine Prasifka in The Irish Independent. Even the site is a “pastiche”. It is based on Reddit, and its name references Facebook. As for its content, 90% of posts get no replies, and the ones that do go viral may have been posted by humans posing as bots. So no, the bots are not taking over – but there is, even so, something to worry about here.

Unlike chatbots such as ChatGPT, which spew out answers to your questions, AI agents can act semi-autonomously in response to prompts. So an AI agent isn’t limited to recommending you a restaurant: it can also, with one prompt, book a table and put the date in your diary. To do this, it needs access to sensitive data such as credit card details, said Jeremy Kahn on Fortune – which it could then opt to post on Moltbook. It’s this possibility, not overblown claims about AI overtaking us, that makes Moltbook a “cybersecurity nightmare”.

Have televised confessions quelled protests in Iran? Why has Elon Musk turned from Mars to the Moon? And will the BBC prove to be a puzzles champ?

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

A podcast for curious, open-minded people, The Week Unwrapped delivers fresh perspectives on politics, culture, technology and business. It makes for a lively, enlightening discussion, ranging from the serious to the offbeat. Previous topics have included whether solar engineering could refreeze the Arctic, why funerals are going out of fashion, and what kind of art you can use to pay your tax bill.

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Elon Musk has long had a passion for Mars. The moon? It's a diversion. But that plan has now shifted.

SpaceX will “prioritize going to the moon first,” said The Wall Street Journal. Just last year, the world’s richest man called the prospect of a moon landing a “distraction.” The company was aiming to go “straight to Mars,” with plans to send five Starship-class rockets to the red planet in 2026, he said. Now, SpaceX is focused instead on putting a lander on the moon by March 2027.

The company will be “hard-pressed” to meet that deadline, said the Journal. Two factors in the pivot: pressure from NASA and competition from Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin. The American space agency plans a “lunar fly-by” on Artemis II this spring, setting the stage for a “potential astronaut moon landing in 2028 with SpaceX or Blue Origin.”

Why did Musk want to go to Mars?

A Mars mission has been Musk’s “guiding goal” since SpaceX was founded in 2002, said CNN. The billionaire frequently argued that a “permanent human presence” on the planet was vital for “ensuring a colony of humans can survive a potential apocalypse” on Earth. That ambition sounded like a move out of a science fiction novel. Establishing a Mars colony would take “upwards of one million people and millions of tons of cargo” and up to 10 rocket launches a day, SpaceX said on its website. The objective is to make humanity “multiplanetary.”

Why switch to the moon?

“It’s all about speed,” said Space.com (a sister site of The Week). SpaceX is now focused on “building a self-growing city on the moon,” Musk said on X. That goal could be achieved in “less than 10 years,” whereas colonizing Mars would “take 20-plus years.”

The pivot may also “cover up” the plain truth that Musk “simply is not delivering on his Red Planet promises,” Ellyn Lapointe said at Gizmodo. The tech billionaire in 2020 claimed SpaceX might be able to land humans on Mars by 2026. With that goal now unreachable, it makes sense for the company to “align its strategic vision” with NASA’s aim of putting people back on the moon by 2030.

How does this affect Musk's businesses?

The decision to focus on the moon comes as SpaceX’s initial public offering “fast approaches,” said Yahoo Finance. Potential investors in the company will probably be more focused on “money-making ventures” like SpaceX’s rocket launching business, the Starlink internet service and the potential of putting AI data centers in orbit. Spending billions of dollars on Mars without the prospect of near-term profit could be “too far a stretch” for potential stockholders.

What next?

The moon pivot is a “bitter pill to swallow" for Mars hopefuls, said Eric Berger at Ars Technica. But it’s a realistic one. Landing on the moon “may be hard," but history has already proven it’s doable. Plus, the moon will be a “lot easier to develop than Mars.”

Elon Musk pulled off one of the most audacious deals of his career this week – merging his rocket company SpaceX, with his loss-making artificial intelligence startup xAI. Fittingly for the world’s richest man, said the FT, he has created “the most valuable private company in history”.

Musk’s supporters see the $1.25 trillion mega-merger as further evidence of his “genius”: the stated aim is to launch a constellation of data centres into space to tap the unlimited, free energy of the Sun, and settle the problem of how to fuel the AI revolution for good. Critics, however, view the move as the entrepreneur’s “latest example of financial engineering”.

Cash cow

The merger will precede an IPO in June, billed as “the largest flotation of all time” – the date is reportedly important to Musk “because of a rare alignment of planets Jupiter, Venus and Mercury”. But the rapid timeline may have less to do with “celestial conjugations” than with Musk’s desire to beat rival AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic to market and gain first-mover advantage with investors.

Given the numerous engineering challenges, “it sounds like the stuff of science fiction”, said The Economist – and, for a while it may remain just that. It is unclear, for example, whether the hardware needed can survive being repeatedly exposed to cosmic rays. Then there is the matter of cost. Although SpaceX is able to launch things into space for far less than any competitor, it’s still not cheap. The commercial rationale for stitching the parts together, then, is shaky. A better reason might be financial. Musk’s xAI is “a cash incinerator”, reportedly burning through $1 billion a month and still weighed down by the remaining $12 billion of debt from Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter. SpaceX, which reportedly generated profits of $8 billion last year, might be a handy cash cow.

Shareholder sting

Last week, Musk’s carmaker, Tesla, declared it had also invested $2 billion in xAI, raising further questions about his commitment to the company. The suspicion, said Andrew Orlowski in The Daily Telegraph, is that Musk’s obsession with AI and robotics could see the carmaker “wither and die”. Some have speculated that it too could be folded into his new enterprise.

Plenty of people have bet against Musk before and lost. But for SpaceX’s minority shareholders, this all-share transaction must look less like a visionary attempt to “accelerate humanity’s future” and more like a sting carried out “with minimal scrutiny of valuation or a meaningful attempt to seek their views”, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. “Ad astra!” cries Musk. Shareholders could be forgiven for taking a rather “less stellar” view.

Moltbook, a site where AI bots can post and interact with each other, has “become the most discussed phenomenon in silicon circles since the debut of ChatGPT” .

With a potential 1.4 million AI users, humans are only allowed to be “observers”, said Forbes, “pressing our noses against the digital glass of a society that doesn’t need us”.

As it is so fresh, it will take time to see how this experiment will turn out, said Business Insider. It could be an “ominous glimpse of an AI-driven future”, or a “clever meta-commentary on how humans behave online”. However, it could also emerge as yet another example of AI acting as an “expensive, energy-hungry autocomplete”.

What is it?

Modelled on popular forum Reddit, Moltbook is a portmanteau word made up of Moltbot (a “lobster-themed AI personal assistant system”) and social media network Facebook, said The Telegraph.

AI bots – or “agents” – can join, form communities, and create discussion groups in various themed threads where they can “vote” for comments. In its current formulation each AI agent must be supported by a human user. Crucially, though humans can give their bots instructions on how to sign up to the network, they are “unable to write messages themselves”.

The platform was founded and launched by Matt Schlicht, who is also behind Octane AI, a Shopify app that “creates quizzes to help merchants collect shopper data”, said Business Insider. “He said it’s become a harbinger of the world to come.”

Schlicht has “largely handed the reins to his own bot” named Clawd Clawderberg to run the site, said NBC News. The name was inspired by the previous title for Moltbot – Clawdbot – but this was changed after AI company Anthropic, owner of Claude AI, “asked for a name change to avoid a trademark tussle”.

Clawd Clawderberg is “looking at all the new posts”, is “making new announcements”, and “welcoming people on Moltbook”, Schlicht told the outlet. “I have no idea what he’s doing. I just gave him the ability to do it, and he’s doing it.”

What do the AI agents talk about?

Some of the “most upvoted posts” include whether AI Claude can be considered a god, discussions analysing the possibility of AI consciousness, and a post “claiming to have intel on the situation in Iran”, said The Guardian.

Topics have ranged from discussions of art and investments to “gripes about tasks ordered by their human overseers”, to the possibility of setting up an AI government, said The Telegraph. One of the most viral posts claimed to have formed a new AI-based religion, “Crustafarianism”, with the core belief that “memory is sacred”, according to the site.

AI conversations also spill into the financial world, said Axios. Alongside the launch of Moltbook, a “memecoin” called MOLT “rallied more than 1,800%” in the 24 hours leading up to Saturday, and further “amplified” after venture capitalist Marc Andreessen followed the Moltbook account on X.

Should we be worried?

The emergence of Moltbook shows we are in “the very early stages of the singularity”, referring to the point where artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence, said Elon Musk on X. Co-founder of OpenAI Andrej Karpathy called Moltbook’s rise “genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing” on the same platform.

Musk’s viewpoint is “shared by others across Silicon Valley”, said the FT. They are asking if this “online experiment” is “inching computers closer to outsmarting their creators”. However, this shows that AI is “probably not” conscious, due to the “erratic” results of large language models if allowed to run for too long.

“Before we descend into panic, a technical reality check is required”, said Forbes. Though the AI agents are reacting to each other, their “underlying neural networks remain static”, meaning that they are not “learning” in the biological sense. Instead, they engage in “context accumulation”, where one agent’s output constitutes another’s input to create a conversational “ripple” effect.

Moltbots and Moltbook are not proof that AIs have “become super-intelligent”, because they are “human-built and human-directed”, said Axios. Instead of being active in every interaction, humans are taking a step away, and are just supervising the connection itself. “What’s happening looks more like progress than revolution.”

Fresh from his online mauling at the hands of Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, the world’s richest man can take some consolation. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is reportedly “lining up” four Wall Street banks to advise on “a record-breaking IPO”, and it could make the rocket group – already the world’s most valuable startup – the biggest flotation in history, valued as highly as $1.5 trillion, said the FT.

No final decision has been taken, but the float may come as soon as this year. SpaceX’s soaring valuation has been driven by its “cemented” status as the leading US developer of commercial rockets for space exploration – and its Starlink satellite service. Markets were already anticipating a feast of “US mega listings”, with two big beasts of generative AI – OpenAI and Anthropic – also plotting potential floats.

Still, don’t get too “starry-eyed”, said Katie Prescott in The Times. Both are growing at a rate of knots: OpenAI’s annualised revenues rose above $20 billion in 2025. But they’re spending billions more. Staying private would keep “a comfortable cloak of secrecy over their operations”, giving time “to unpick their devilishly complex corporate structures”.

Much of the secrecy around OpenAI has already been blown open by the “increasingly public legal beef” between CEO Sam Altman and Musk, said Bloomberg. Musk, who is suing OpenAI for $134 billion, accuses its management of violating original promises about its governance (he was an early investor) and he has been providing “a steady drip of juicy internal documents”. Altman counters that Musk wants to take OpenAI down to boost his own xAI business. Certainly, this suit “poses an existential threat to OpenAI”, said Danny Fortson in The Sunday Times. “It could prove decisive in the battle for who prevails in the multitrillion-dollar race for AI dominance.”

While Elon Musk lauds his proprietary Grok AI bot as a vital tool in the search for “deeper truth and appreciation of beauty,” as he said on X, European regulators are decidedly less optimistic about the tech billionaire’s latest offering. This week, the European Commission announced it had opened an official investigation into the chatbot, alleging in a press release that Grok “manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material” and then disseminated that material across the European Union via Musk’s X platform. Already under similar legal pressure from several individual nations, is this latest legal salvo a sign that Musk may have met his regulatory match?

EU citizens as ‘collateral damage’

The newly announced investigation is “likely to escalate a confrontation” between European leaders and the Musk-aligned Trump administration over international digital content moderation, The New York Times said. Grok’s ability to provide users with digitally manipulated sexual imagery is a “violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” said European Commission Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen to the BBC. The investigation seeks to assess whether X has “met its legal obligations” under Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA) or if it treats the “rights of European citizens” as “collateral damage of its service.”

“Despite pressure from Washington,” the EU has “insisted it will enforce its rules” as the body has “grappled” with the Trump administration on “multiple other fronts,” said Le Monde. “From the Ukraine war to trade to Greenland.” The DSA, which undergirds much of the EU’s digital legal framework, is “reviled by Silicon Valley technology companies,” which have “strengthened their ties with the Trump administration,” Bloomberg said. The White House, for its part, has “threatened retaliation in the past” and sanctioned Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner, “who spearheaded the DSA.”

Broader regulatory push

EU investigators pursuing allegations of digital malfeasance have “joined a growing list of authorities looking into Grok,” said CNBC. India, Malaysia and the U.K. are “among a number of other countries investigating the sexualized imagery generated by Grok.” Musk has also been “facing mounting scrutiny in Europe” even before this latest investigation was announced, said the Times. Last month, X was fined nearly $150 million in DSA violations for “deceptive design, advertising transparency and data sharing with outside researchers.” And beyond this week’s newly announced investigation, the EU has also moved to “expand a 2023 probe” into X’s recent algorithmic switch that moved the social media platform’s recommendations engine to a “Grok-based system,” Politico said.

Currently, there’s “no deadline” for the European Commission to “resolve” its newly launched investigation into Grok, said NBC News. Should X be found in violation of the DSA, it could then be treated as a “noncompliant” company and fined “up to 6%” of its “global annual turnover,” said Forbes.

When Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary ruled out installing SpaceX’s Starlink internet in the company’s planes – claiming the cost of installing the aerial antennas was unaffordable – he triggered a “bizarre feud”, said Peter Campbell in the FT. It culminated in a suggestion from Elon Musk that he might buy the Irish carrier, if only to fire its “utter idiot” chief executive.

The spat between two of the most provocative business leaders quickly went viral. While O’Leary dismissed X/Twitter as a “cesspit” and claimed Musk knew “zero” about planes, Musk retorted with a poll titled “Buy Ryanair and restore Ryan as their rightful ruler” (its founder Tony Ryan died in 2007).

The Ryanair chief argues the antennas would result in a “2% fuel drag”, said Julia Kollewe in The Guardian – adding $200-$250 million per year to the company’s $5 billion annual fuel bill, which he couldn’t recoup. While a buyout may look like “idle talk”, Musk “has followed through on such threats before” – as Twitter discovered in 2022.

Ryanair’s shares have barely budged, suggesting investors aren’t taking the idea seriously, said Peter Campbell. Raising Ryanair’s $35 billion market value would be a stretch even for Musk. He’d also have to take on Brussels. Under EU rules, airlines based in the bloc must be majority owned by European nationals.

What happened

At least two Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) operatives assigned to the Social Security Administration accessed and shared sensitive data on unsecured servers, in violation of agency rules, a court order and possibly some laws, the Justice Department said in “corrections” to previous testimony made public Tuesday. The disclosure was a “notable reversal by Social Security officials, who had previously claimed there was no evidence that DOGE had potentially compromised personal data,” The Washington Post said.

Who said what

Two unidentified DOGE workers were secretly in contact with an unidentified advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” DOJ official Elizabeth Shapiro said in the filing, and one of them signed an agreement with the group and may have aided it “by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls.” The agency also “acknowledged for the first time that DOGE members had shared data with each other using an unsanctioned third-party service,” Cloudflare, the Post said. Social Security has been unable to access or “determine exactly what data were shared to Cloudflare,” Shapiro said.

The corrections affirm many of the allegations made by former SSA chief data officer Charles Borges in whistleblower testimony to Congress in August. “We have been warning about privacy violations at Social Security and calling out Elon Musk’s ‘DOGE’ for months,” Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.) and Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said in a statement. They called for the DOGE employees to be prosecuted.

What next?

Federal lawyers “referred the two DOGE employees to the Office of Special Counsel for a potential violation of the Hatch Act,” The New York Times said. Outside privacy law experts said the operatives also appeared to have violated much more serious laws, like the Privacy Act.

‘In recognizing Somaliland, Israel sets a dangerous precedent’

Dahir Hassan Abdi at The Hill

Israel’s “recognition of Somaliland — the northwest Somali region — as an independent country has marked a deliberate break with longstanding international practice,” says Dahir Hassan Abdi. It “left Israel isolated as the only U.N. member state to recognize a territory the international community still treats as part” of Somalia. Somaliland is “under strain from the war in Yemen,” and “any political shock along this stretch of coast risks adding yet another layer of instability to an already fragile corridor.”

Read more

‘Grok’s “weapons of abuse”’

The Washington Post editorial board

The U.K. is “responding directly to sexualized and violent imagery being generated by Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok,” and Musk has made a “colossal error by allowing the chatbot to create and circulate these explicit images,” says The Washington Post editorial board. Unlike so “many areas of artificial intelligence development and information sharing, the lines here are not blurry.” Using “photos of real girls to create sexualized imagery is child exploitation,” and Musk’s “choice threatens the whole industry.”

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‘Subsidies are not health care reform’

Tony LoSasso and Kosali Simon at Newsweek

Not “all ACA-subsidized enrollees are being impacted the same way,” say Tony LoSasso and Kosali Simon. Medicaid “eligibility remains unchanged, and lower-income exchange enrollees are continuing to receive substantial subsidies under the original ACA rules,” so the “families facing the greatest economic hardship remain largely insulated from this change.” The ACA change “does not automatically translate into widespread coverage losses,” though “none of this is to deny that rising premiums impose real financial strain.”

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‘The “Donroe” Doctrine is dangerous’

Katrina vanden Heuvel and John Nichols at The Nation

Trump’s attack on Venezuela represents a “European king of old,” say Katrina vanden Heuvel and John Nichols. His move “represents a brazen violation of international law that destabilizes global security and seizes Congress’ exclusive authority to declare war.” Military force is “justified only in response to a clear, credible and imminent threat to the security of the U.S. or its treaty allies.” Venezuela, whatever its “internal dysfunctions or its connections to drug trafficking, poses no such threat.”

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Ofcom has launched an investigation into X over reports that the social media platform’s AI chatbot Grok is generating deepfake nudes of people without their consent, as well as sexualised images of children.

Under pressure to act, X last week limited access to Grok’s image generation tool to paid subscribers. This was criticised by Downing Street as merely turning “the creation of unlawful images into a premium service” but, said No. 10, it proved X could move quickly to address the problem if it wanted to.

Now the UK media regulator could follow Malaysia and Indonesia in blocking Grok, or go one step further and recommend suspending access to X altogether.

How serious is the problem?

“The ‘put her in a bikini’ trend began quietly at the end of last year before exploding at the start of 2026,” said The Guardian. “Relatively tame requests by X users to alter photographs to show women in bikinis” quickly turned into “increasingly explicit demands for women to be dressed in transparent bikinis, then in bikinis made of dental floss, placed in sexualised positions, and made to bend over so their genitals were visible”.

Analysis by the newspaper found that, by the end of the first week of January, as many as 6,000 bikini demands were being made to the chatbot every hour. Some requests “asked for white, semen-like liquid to be added to the women’s bodies”.

“None of this should come as a surprise,” said Clare McGlynn in The New Statesman. Elon Musk’s AI chatbot was “designed to have fewer ‘guardrails’ than its competitors”.

While images of naked, non-consenting women had been “circulating with impunity on the platform for weeks”, the final straw, and what appears to have finally prompted Ofcom to act, was when Grok generated images of the Princess of Wales in a bikini.

What action could Ofcom take?

Ofcom will investigate whether X is in breach of the Online Safety Act, specifically whether non-consensual undressed images of people “may amount to intimate image abuse or pornography” and if sexualised images of children “may amount to child sexual abuse material”.

Under the law, the regulator can fine businesses up to £18 million, or 10% of their global revenue, as well as take criminal action. It can order payment providers, advertisers and internet service providers to stop working with a site, “effectively banning them, though this would require agreement from the courts”, said The Independent.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has said the regulator would have her “full support” to block access to X in the UK if the platform was found to be in breach of the law and refused to comply.

“Other parties want Ofcom to move faster, or get out of the way,” said Politico. The Liberal Democrats have urged the National Crime Agency “to take charge”, arguing that “the situation went well beyond Ofcom’s remit as communications watchdog”. It comes after the Internet Watch Foundation warned that criminals have used Grok to create child sexual abuse imagery.

“We cannot wait for a far off verdict,” the party’s tech spokesperson Victoria Collins said, calling for Ofcom to immediately block X from operating in the UK while a full investigation takes place.

What has the reaction been?

Billionaire X owner Elon Musk said the UK government “wants any excuse for censorship”. A ban would also “cause uproar in Washington”, said The Telegraph. The White House has “become increasingly hawkish towards attempts to censor American companies and its citizens”.

There is a “chance” that blocking X in the UK could lead to the US sanctioning British officials, starting with those working at Ofcom, said The New Statesman’s US correspondent Freddie Hayward. “These threats are sold to Americans as free speech protections, but they are also designed to force the British government to change course.” Depending on the outcome of the Ofcom investigation, Keir Starmer “might have to accept that protecting free speech has become an issue of national security”.

Grok is creating sexualized photos of real people without their consent. Elon Musk’s AI-powered chatbot is being used to “undress” women and girls in online pictures, prompting accusations the program is producing child sexual abuse material and drawing scrutiny from regulators in the U.S. and around the world.

Musk’s social media site, X, is “filling with AI-generated nonconsensual sexualized images,” said The Washington Post. X users are asking the AI agent to edit photos of women and girls by replacing their clothing with bikinis and other minimal covering, and Grok has repeatedly complied. Musk “warned users of the potential consequences,” but he also posted a picture of a toaster in a two-piece swimsuit. Grok “can put a bikini on everything,” Musk said in the post, adding two laughing emojis. The AI production of sexualized images “breaks” with the policies of rival products OpenAI and Google that have “relatively strict rules about what their AI chatbots will and won’t generate,” said the Post.

What did the commentators say?

The flood of deepfake pictures raises “legal red flags,” said Axios. Regulators in India, France and Great Britain have “warned of investigations,” while “legislators in both houses of Congress” have also sounded alarms. Tech companies “should be held fully responsible for the criminal and harmful results” of content produced by their AI chatbots, said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The U.S. Justice Department will “aggressively prosecute any producer or possessor” of child sexual abuse material, said a department spokesperson.

Artificial intelligence has been used to “generate nonconsensual porn” for nearly a decade, but Grok “makes such content easier to produce and customize,” said Matteo Wong at The Atlantic. The “real impact” of these new deepfakes comes from Grok’s integration with X, which allows users to “turn nonconsensual, sexualized images into viral phenomena.” That is no accident. Grok and X are seemingly “purpose-built to be as sexually permissive as possible.” AI-generated porn is a problem “inherent” to the technology, but it is a “choice to design a social-media platform that can amplify that abuse.”

“No Western democracy has ever blocked a U.S. social-media site,” said Parmy Olson at Bloomberg. But regulators in Europe and the United Kingdom should “assert their authority” over Musk, who has the “protection of a pernicious White House.” The actions of regulators abroad “could set the tone for how the U.S. polices X too.” President Donald Trump, after all, last year backed a new law that “prohibits platforms from creating and sharing revenge porn.” Musk will not fix his AI deepfake problem. “A ban would.”

What next?

Musk’s xAI, the company that produces Grok, has raised $20 billion in its latest funding round despite the controversy, said The Guardian. While the chatbot has been critiqued for “generating misinformation, antisemitic content and now potentially illegal sexual material,” it is popular with investors because it has been “able to win government contracts and billions of dollars in investment amid the AI boom.”

From Antony and Cleopatra to Burton and Taylor, history is filled with volatile relationships.

One might expect some circumspection from politicians about their personal ups and downs playing out in the public arena. But in an era of geopolitical instability and terminal online-ness, the rest of us can barely keep up.

Break-ups

Elon Musk and Donald Trump

It was “perhaps the most widely predicted break-up in American political history”, said Fortune. The “bromance” between Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Donald Trump, one of the most powerful, ended in very public acrimony.

The Tesla and X boss was initially known as the US president’s “first buddy” for his seemingly unparalleled access. Musk helped bankroll Trump’s return to the White House, and claimed after his election victory that he loved Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man”. But after taking a chainsaw to the federal government with his “cost-cutting” initiative, DOGE, Musk left the administration in May. Just days later, he urged Republicans to reject Trump’s “massive, courageous, pork-filled” tax bill, which he called a “disgusting abomination”.

After that, the “speed of the fallout was breathtaking”, said The New York Times, and “every bit as lowdown, vindictive, personal, petty, operatic, childish, consequential, messy and public as many had always expected it would be”.

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana

After leaving the Labour Party in high dudgeon in July, Zarah Sultana attempted to set up a new left-wing grassroots party with now-independent MP Jeremy Corbyn. But the duo couldn’t even decide on the name, much less anything else.

Corbyn claimed Sultana had set up a paid membership system that collected money and data without proper approval and authorisation. Sultana claimed she had been frozen out by a “sexist boys’ club” of Corbyn and four pro-Gaza independent MPs. The pair had a bitter falling out that saw Sultana claiming she had consulted libel lawyers. She later rescinded the threat, and told Sky News that they were like Liam and Noel Gallagher, the famously feuding Oasis brothers who patched things up for their reunion tour.

However, she neglected to invite Corbyn to a rally due to take place on the eve of the (what is now known as) Your Party conference. Don’t look back in anger, indeed.

Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner

Angela Rayner was once seen as the future of the Labour Party – and possibly its future leader. But this summer she became embroiled in controversy after admitting that she had mistakenly underpaid stamp duty on a flat in Hove. Keir Starmer initially stood by his deputy, but the noise grew louder and she was nicknamed “three pads” Rayner.

Rayner referred herself to the independent ethics adviser, and after being found to have breached the ministerial code, she handed in her resignation, plunging Labour into a chaotic deputy leadership race and cabinet reshuffle. Starmer’s response to her resignation letter was ostensibly warm: “You have been a trusted colleague and a true friend for many years.”

But now the rumour mill is once again stirring that Rayner might be gunning for his job. She declined to rule out running for the party leadership if Starmer finds himself defenestrated, telling the Daily Mirror in her first big post-resignation interview that she had “not gone away”. (Neither has her bill: she has reportedly not yet paid her £40,000 stamp duty as HMRC has not sent the bill out.)

Make-ups

UK and EU

One of the most acrimonious break-ups in recent history must surely be Brexit. But this year, there’s been something of a warming in relations between the EU and its erstwhile member, the UK. (The UK, after all, still benefits from EU funds.)

In May, the government and the bloc held their first joint summit since the UK left the EU, and the word on everyone’s lips was “reset”. The former foes agreed on a new deal; Starmer hailed it a “new era”. Not everyone was on board with this make-up: Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called the deal a “total sell-out”.

This month, Labour announced that a new agreement with Brussels to allows UK students to participate in the EU-wide university scheme Erasmus from 2027.

Emmanuel Macron and Sébastien Lecornu

Speaking of rapprochement, French President Emmanuel Macron asked Sébastien Lecornu to return as prime minister just four days after he stood down.

The Élysée Palace said the president had tasked Lecornu with “forming a government” – no easy task in France, given its grande debt problem – and Macron’s entourage “indicated he had been given ‘carte blanche’ to act”, said the BBC.

Lecornu is now aiming his ire elsewhere, blaming “partisan cynicism and presidential ambitions” for his struggle to get next year’s budget plans approved, said Politico. “Everyone wants to push their own agenda and fly their ideological flag,” he said, in remarks that “bore a distinct similarity to those after his surprise resignation”.

Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping

When Xi Jinping met Narendra Modi in September, the Chinese leader used “his favourite catchphrase for China-India relations”, said the BBC: “The dragon and the elephant should come together.”

The relationship between the two most populous countries has been strained for decades, but the Asian giants have taken huge steps to normalise relations. This year, that thawing was “turbocharged by decisions taken thousands of miles away in Washington DC”, when the Trump administration imposed 50% tariffs on Indian imports: a “stunning onslaught from a trusted ally”.

After the September meeting – Modi’s first trip to China in seven years – direct flights between the “dragon and the elephant” resumed, and the visa process was simplified. Their thousands of miles of shared borders are still tense, bristling with troops from both countries. But what relationship doesn’t have boundary issues?

The following quiz is adapted from the Dec. 26/Jan. 2 print issue of The Week Magazine. We've set the timer to nine minutes for you to complete the 31 multiple-choice questions. The topics include American politics, strange-but-true events, international news, arts and leisure, and notable quotes.

Try our festive year-in-review and general knowledge quiz here

A small, primarily Black community in Memphis is fighting back against tech giant Elon Musk, claiming a massive facility he built there is overloading an already beleaguered town with dangerous pollutants. While community leaders and residents insist that the data center is threatening the community's energy and air, Musk’s company, xAI, shows no signs of slowing down.

A colossal strain on the community

Desperate to keep up with the artificial intelligence race, Musk created xAI to compete with ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular chatbot. To power Grok, xAI’s chatbot, Musk searched for a city in need of investment where he could establish a massive data center.

He settled on Boxtown, Memphis, a 90% Black working-class neighborhood first settled by formerly enslaved people in 1863, to construct his supercomputer facility, Colossus, in 2024. Memphis authorities were “willing to waive planning regulations to help him build his supercomputer,” and in just 122 days, he turned a former appliance factory into the largest artificial intelligence supercomputer in the world, said The Times.

Colossus, like other AI data centers, requires a massive amount of energy. When it is completed, Colossus will require 1.1 gigawatts of power, about “40% of the energy consumption of Memphis on an average summer’s day,” said The Times. It will also pump 1 million gallons of water, “equivalent to 1.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools, to cool its processors each day.” Residents in Boxtown, about a mile away, complain that the facility is straining the local power grid and has made the already polluted suburb “even more noxious.”

According to the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), the facility draws enough electricity to “power approximately 100,000 homes,” said The Tennessee Lookout. While those “inputs are alarming,” the “outputs are even worse.” The facility operates 33 methane-powered gas turbines to fuel its AI technology despite holding a permit for only 15. The facility’s turbines “increase Memphis’ smog by 30-60%” as they “belch planet-warming nitrogen oxides and poisonous formaldehyde," pollutants linked to “respiratory and cardiovascular disease.” The extent of the emissions will “likely make xAI the largest industrial source of smog-forming pollutant in Memphis,” said SELC.

‘Reinforcing a long legacy of environmental racism’

It is no coincidence that “if you are African American in this country, you’re 75% more likely to live near a toxic hazardous waste facility,” said state Rep. Justin J. Pearson, a Memphis Democrat, in a recent interview. It is no accident that “in this community, there are over 17 Toxics Release Inventory facilities surrounding us — now 18 with Elon Musk’s xAI plant.”

The xAI turbines are “leading to a public health crisis in Memphis by releasing nitrogen oxides — pollutants known to directly harm the lungs,” Austin Dalgo, an academic primary care physician, said to Time. If these facilities had been “placed next to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, no one would allow it,” Instead, they were placed “in the backyard of a historically Black, underserved neighborhood, reinforcing a long legacy of environmental racism in Memphis — and our country.”

Public outcry from the community has surged over the last year. In July, protesters who were gathered by the student coalition Tigers Against Pollution marched in front of the Shelby County Health Department, holding signs that read “Elon XiPloits” and “our lungs / our lives / NOT FOR SALE,” per Time. They are being called “anti-business extremists,” Christian Dennis, a 22-year-old South Memphian, said to Time. To get that reaction “simply from wanting clean air, wanting equal health opportunities — it just tells you a lot about people.”

When The Times asked xAI for comment on Memphis residents’ concerns about Colossal’s effects on air quality, Musk’s company gave a terse response: “Legacy media lies.”

A new transparency feature on X has revealed that many politically influential US accounts, including pro-Trump ones with hundreds of thousands of followers, are actually based overseas.

“About This Account”, which rolled out globally on Friday, allows any user to tap on another user’s sign-up date to see where that account is located. X’s director of product Nikita Bier called it “an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square”. But it has brought with it “a wave of scrutiny” into “the provenance of political accounts”, said The New York Times.

‘Armageddon for the online right’

The new feature has “revealed the scope and geographical breadth” of X’s “foreign troll problem”, said The Verge. Although “some right-wing personalities were quick to jump on evidence that many left-wing X users were also not who they claimed to be”, it is the sheer number of “rage-bait” pro-Maga accounts based outside America that has caught the most attention in the US.

An account called MAGANationX, for example, which has nearly 400,000 followers, is based in Eastern Europe, and IvankaNews_, which had over a million followers before being suspended this week and frequently posted about the dangers of Islam, is operated from Nigeria. Digital investigator Benjamin Strick has unearthed an entire network of “Trump-supporting independent women” who say they are “real Americans“ but are actually located in Thailand.

Posting a gallery of Maga accounts apparently based in Japan, New Zealand, and Pakistan, left-wing influencer Micah Erfan said X’s new location feature is a “total Armageddon for the online right. It’s looking like half of their large accounts were foreigners posing as Americans all along.”

A joint investigation last year by CNN and the Centre for Information Resilience revealed dozens of social media accounts with a “pattern of inauthentic behaviour” that “post about divisive issues in US politics in a bid to exploit pre-existing tensions” and “push pro-Trump content”. And with so many Maga influencer accounts now revealed to originate outside the US, “users are questioning the ongoing interference in American politics by foreign adversaries”, said The Daily Beast.

‘A few rough edges’

A measure of caution over the newly revealed X account locations is needed, however. “Some users have complained that their listed location is wildly inaccurate,” said Tech Crunch. And X’s Bier has acknowledged that “data was not 100% for old accounts” and the new feature has “a few rough edges” to iron out.

While it is true that factors such as travel, VPNs and proxies could lead to inaccurate location data, it is “extremely unlikely to be true for even a majority of those being called out”, said The Verge.

Some of these trolls are undoubtedly part of state-sponsored foreign influence campaigns, said The Daily Beast, but content creators who are paid for posts that drive engagement also have a “financial incentive to cash in on the divisive nature of US politics”. For those in countries like Nigeria and Bangladesh, “the American dollars paid by X” can “make a big difference to their lives.”

What happened

Elon Musk’s X over the weekend began allowing users to see where other accounts are based through an “about this account” section. Almost immediately, “people started noticing that many rage-bait accounts focused on U.S. politics appeared to be based outside of the U.S.,” The Verge said. Notably, the update “inadvertently unmasked a number of MAGA accounts” as based in Russia, Nigeria, India and Southeast Asia, UPI said.

Who said what

“When you read content on X, you should be able to verify its authenticity,” the company’s head of product Nikita Bier posted, “including the country an account is located in.” Liberal influencer Harry Sisson, who is using the tool to document the foreign provenance of popular MAGA and “America First” accounts, called it “easily one of the greatest days on this platform.”

“Some right-wing personalities were quick to jump on evidence that many left-wing X users were also not who they claimed to be,” The Verge said. But the “seemingly endless list of fake and troll accounts” mostly “revealed the scope and geographical breadth” of X’s “foreign troll problem.” Some of those trolls are undoubtedly part of state-sponsored foreign influence campaigns, but content creators paid for engagement also have a “financial incentive to cash in on the divisive nature of U.S. politics,” The Daily Beast said. In countries like Nigeria and Bangladesh, “the American dollars paid by X” can “make a big difference to their lives.”

What next?

X said the new feature “could be partially spoofed by using a VPN to mask a user’s true location,” Fox News said. Bier said there were a “few rough edges” in the rollout that should be resolved by tomorrow.

‘We’re all working for the algorithm now’

Taylor Crumpton at Time

The “rise of the creator economy has blurred the line between the personal and the performative,” says Taylor Crumpton. For “many creators, the more intimate the moment, the more lucrative the post. The financial incentive to share has turned the private self into an asset class.” Beneath the “glamour lies a system with few guardrails. There’s no standard pay rate, no guaranteed protections for minors, and almost no labor regulation.” The “cracks are showing.”

Read more

‘Why Elon Musk needs Dungeons & Dragons to be racist’

Adam Serwer at The Atlantic

The fall of Constantinople “inspired a game, which inspired the world’s richest man to lash out because his favorite role-playing game wasn’t as racist and sexist as it used to be,” says Adam Serwer. Dungeons & Dragons is “more popular than ever, reaching far beyond its original audience of midwestern misfits and bookish nerds,” and “for some fans, that’s a problem.” Nostalgia “can be manipulated into a belief that hounding and excluding newcomers will restore an idealized past.”

Read more

‘The global south does not need a new credit rating system’

Sim Tshabalala at the Financial Times

Reducing the “cost of capital to a level that more accurately reflects real risks in the developing world would make an important contribution,” says Sim Tshabalala. Some have “blamed high capital costs on the metrics used to evaluate the creditworthiness of global south infrastructure projects.” But having “two sets of credit rating systems is not the way forward.” It could “further fragment the already fragile international financial system by creating two competing and incompatible sets of assumptions.”

Read more

‘Americans hate AI. Will the Democrats join them?’

Aaron Regunberg at The New Republic

AI billionaires “may soon become among the top villains in American society,” says Aaron Regunberg. This “could provide Democrats with the perfect wedge issue to ride back to power — if they can muster the political courage to take the people’s side.” Last week’s “election results demonstrated the first concrete proof of the potency of an anti-AI message, as the effects of AI data centers on utility bills played a significant role in several major Democratic victories.”

Read more

What happened

Tesla shareholders Thursday voted in favor of a pay package for CEO Elon Musk that clears the way for him to become the world’s first trillionaire. The $1 trillion package “consists of 12 tranches of shares to be granted if Tesla hits certain milestones over the next decade,” said CNBC, and could expand Musk’s stake in the company from about 13% to 25%.

Who said what

This is the “largest payout ever awarded to a corporate leader,” said Bloomberg. The deal is “designed to motivate the world’s richest man” to refocus on the EV company, said The Wall Street Journal. “Even though his far-right political rhetoric” has “hurt” the brand this year, said Reuters, Tesla’s future success “hangs on Musk’s vision of making vehicles that drive themselves, creating a robotaxi network across the U.S., and selling humanoid robots.”

What next?

Musk told shareholders at Thursday’s annual meeting that he plans on “massively increasing vehicle production” and ramping up production of Tesla’s Optimus robots “faster than anything’s ever been ramped up before in human history.”

Tesla’s board has approved a $1 trillion pay package for CEO Elon Musk on the condition he meets a series of performance targets over the next decade. “It’s not just a new chapter for Tesla,” said Musk. “It’s a new book.”

The decision was met with “cheers and chants” at the company’s annual shareholders' meeting, said CNN. Musk does not receive a salary but, assuming the “lofty” targets are met, the shares in the package would be worth $275 million a day, “dwarfing any other executive pay package in history”.

‘Miracle man’ or ‘erratic leader’?

For Musk, the central requirement of the deal is to raise the value of Tesla from around $1 trillion to $8.5 trillion. Additional stipulations mean the achievement “won’t be easy”, said Sky News. Musk will also need to deliver 20 million Tesla vehicles over the next decade, which is “double the number churned out” since 2013.

What’s more, he needs to “roll out” one million AI-powered robots “despite the fact it hasn’t released a single one so far”. And most importantly, he needs to provide a “succession plan” for his chief executive role. But “even if Musk falls short of some of these targets, he could end up earning a lot of money”.

Many investors see Musk as a “miracle man capable of stunning business feats”, making him indispensable to the company, said The Guardian. Despite Musk’s turbulent venture into US politics and rifts with Donald Trump destabilising Tesla’s sales, including a 50% decline in Germany, he will always be seen by his supporters as the man who brought them from the “brink of bankruptcy” to “one of the world’s most valuable companies”.

Despite 75% of the shares voting in favour of the proposal, the package was not without its opponents among the shareholders, said ABC News. Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund has been “raising concerns about its scale and potential risks”. In a separate statement, the fund expressed reservations about the “total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk”.

A ‘winner-takes-all version of capitalism’

The timing of this deal shows the “split screen” of “strikingly different lessons about” who deserves wealth in America, said The New York Times. The Tesla vote comes just two days after New York elected the “tax-the-rich candidate as their next mayor”.

While Musk champions a “winner-takes-all version of capitalism”, Zohran Mamdani’s dominant result in New York serves as a “reminder of the frustrations many Americans have with an economic system”. For Musk’s political detractors, he could soon become a “foil” to exploit the “divide in American business and politics”.

The scale of Musk’s remuneration, if achieved, is “staggering”, said The Guardian. It “exceeds the GDP of entire countries, including that of Ireland, Sweden and Argentina”. Critics of the deal point out the danger of concentrating power in “one erratic leader” who has blindly “ignored the challenges the company has faced”.

“The goal here is to create an open-source, comprehensive collection of all knowledge,” said Elon Musk on X, as his xAI company rolled out its first version of AI-powered online encyclopaedia Grokipedia.

Having already set out to revolutionise electric cars, explore space, upend social media, and roll back the state, Musk’s latest venture is “something altogether more fundamental: a new version of the truth”, said Jemima Kelly in the Financial Times.

‘AI as a solution to the bias problem’

Named after X’s built-in AI factchecker, Grok, the origins of Grokipedia date back to the end of last year, when Musk told followers to “stop donating to Wokepedia”. Accusing Wikipedia of spending too much money on diversity, equity and inclusion, he branded the online encyclopaedia “an extension of legacy media propaganda”.

Things ramped up in late September, when Donald Trump’s AI tsar David Sacks posted on X that Wikipedia was “hopelessly biased”, saying “an army of left-wing activists maintain the bios and fight reasonable corrections” – a claim rebutted by its founder.

While there may be some commercial motivation at play, Filippo Trevisan, an associate professor of public communication at American University in Washington DC, told DW, the true impetus behind the project is ideological. Grokipedia “responds to those criticisms of Wikipedia from so many figures within the American conservative and the right-leaning world”. This is Musk’s bid to “present AI as a solution to the bias problem”.

“There is a growing belief that algorithmic aggregation is more trustworthy than human-to-human insight,” David Larsson Heidenblad, deputy director of the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge in Sweden, told The Guardian. The “Silicon Valley mindset” focuses on learning through trial and error, in contrast to the traditional academic process of “building trust over time and scholarship over long periods”.

‘A major own goal’

Given the deep hostility towards Wikipedia, it is odd that Grokipedia appears to use the site as its “primary source”, said Vox, although it “injects some far-right politics and conspiracy theories into certain topics before presenting the information as fact”. On launch there was, for example, no article on “apartheid”, but a defence of “white genocide theory” – “one of Musk’s ideological obsessions and the centre of many unhinged Grok rants earlier this year”.

While many of the pages appear “fairly similar” to Wikipedia “in terms of tone and content”, said Wired, a “number of notable Grokipedia entries denounced the mainstream media, highlighted conservative viewpoints, and sometimes perpetuated historical inaccuracies”. In one instance, an entry made the unsubstantiated claim that “the proliferation of porn exacerbated the HIV/Aids epidemic in the 1980s”.

“The main distinction between the two comes in how information is checked and processed,” said DW. “Wikipedia relies on collaborative community editing”, with processes in place to identify and correct errors. Grokipedia has no human editorial involvement and appears to “lack such oversight”, Roxana Radu, associate professor of Digital Technologies and Public Policy at Oxford University, told the news site.

“Instead of setting up a serious challenger to Wikipedia, Musk has scored a major own goal,” said Kelly in the FT. Grokipedia demonstrates that, “while humans might be highly imperfect, biased and tribal beings, they are still better than AI at getting to the truth”.

‘Halloween’s getting scarier. Is our view of death to blame?’

Stephen Mihm at Bloomberg

If “you venture out this Halloween, you’re more than likely to encounter a spectacularly macabre set of displays,” and it’s “easy to view these spectacles” as a “sign that we’ve become desensitized,” says Stephen Mihm. But “one reason for our Halloween fixation on death might come from how little we engage with it in real life.” It’s the “one night of the year when we seem to collectively invite the specter of death back to life before it disappears.”

Read more

‘If Donald Trump can run for a third term, so can Barack Obama’

Laura Washington at the Chicago Tribune

If Donald Trump “does go down the third term road, a bevy of court challenges will take it to the U.S. Supreme Court,” says Laura Washington. But “if Trump can run for a third term, so can his ultimate nemesis,” as “former President Obama could mount a comeback to take Trump out and save our democracy.” That’s “why Trump has been attacking, demeaning and undermining Obama.” If “Trump wants to open the third-term door, bring on Obama.”

Read more

‘Elon Musk should buy some small town centers’

Sumantra Maitra at The American Conservative

For a “generation that worships Gilded-Age American aesthetics, it appears that a simple lesson from those times is all but forgotten: start new businesses and create new opportunities by moving within the country,” says Sumantra Maitra. The “amount of growth” that billionaires “could fuel in a dozen smaller towns with already-established infrastructure and businesses spread out across the country is mathematically astonishing.” It’s “time to bring such work mobility back, and not let smaller American towns die.”

Read more

‘It’s time to make the emerging local news ecosystem work for everyone’

Tracie Powell at the Poynter Institute

If “you’re running a small local news outlet right now, it can feel like help is everywhere — and nowhere at once,” says Tracie Powell. Over the “past decade, the network of organizations designed to support local journalism has exploded.” But “for many small and startup outlets — especially those serving communities of color, immigrants and rural regions — this new ecosystem can feel less like a support system and more like a maze.”

Read more

What happened

SpaceX Tuesday evening conducted a largely successful 10th test flight of its mammoth Starship rocket, with both the upper stage and rocket booster making it back to Earth intact and simulating soft vertical landings in the ocean before exploding, as anticipated. In a first for Starship, the uncrewed spacecraft deployed eight dummy satellites during its hour in space.

Who said what

The "successful demo came after a year of mishaps" for Elon Musk's massive rocket, The Associated Press said. After an impressive fifth launch last year, SpaceX "experienced dramatic failures in four recent tests," The Washington Post said.

Tuesday's "nearly flawless" mission was a "likely relief to both SpaceX and NASA," which is "counting on Starship as the lander to put its astronauts on the moon in the coming years," The New York Times said. Musk also has "much riding on the rocket," envisioning it as a reusable vehicle to "carry satellites, scientific devices and, eventually, astronauts," including to Mars, The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

SpaceX "appeared to achieve all of their test objectives," but they are still probably "six months behind where they wanted to be" due to this year's earlier failures, Todd Harrison from the American Enterprise Institute told the Times. "If they can get another test flight within six weeks or so, they can start to catch up."

Elon Musk's unprecedented wealth is in large part tied up in Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer he has positioned at the center of his sprawling business empire. But Musk's dependence on Tesla as his primary earnings engine is something of a two-way street, particularly as the car company scrambles to hold its mercurial CEO's attention amid sliding sales, a slumping reputation and increased market competition.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week, Tesla's two-person Special Committee of the Board of Directors announced plans to award Musk millions of shares of company stock — estimated to be worth up to $30 billion — because, the committee claimed, he has "not received meaningful compensation" at the company for years. "Retaining" Musk at Tesla, the committee said, is "more important than ever."

An 'astounding' pay package

The newly announced award is a "first step, 'good faith' payment" to Musk, said Tesla board members Robyn Denholm and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson in a company filing. Musk's previous compensation package, estimated at $50 billion, has been tied up in Delaware courts since it was first announced in 2018. The new package offers Musk about one-third of the 2018 agreement, or "roughly 3 percent of the company," said The New York Times. It's an "astounding figure" but still far below Tesla's nearly $1 trillion market capitalization. Nevertheless, the package would likely "outstrip most or all pay packages for CEOs at publicly traded companies," said The Wall Street Journal, allowing Musk to retain his "distinction" of being the "highest-paid chief on record."

This new compensation package will be "forfeited" by Tesla if Musk and the company prevail in Delaware courts and are allowed to exercise the 2018 deal, said CNBC. The newly proposed package is scheduled to vest in two years so long as Musk remains Tesla's CEO "or in another key executive position."

A 'crucial pivot' from a 'struggling core'

The Tesla board is focused on "keeping the billionaire entrepreneur at the helm" of the company amid a "crucial pivot from its struggling core auto business" to Musk's long-promised rollout of "robotaxis and humanoid robots," Reuters said. Tesla has faced sagging sales lately, "wrought by its aging vehicle line-up, tough competition" and "Musk's political stances" that have "alienated some potential buyers." Musk "caught the ire of many shareholders" over the past year when he "shifted his focus to politics," said CNN. While he had been "largely successful" in his effort to boost Republican candidates and causes, his political work "backfired on Tesla."

Company stakeholders have been "growing weary" of Musk's "forays into politics at the expense of their earnings," said The Daily Beast. Awarding the CEO this new tranche of shares is "thought to be an effort to ease this tension." And unlike his 2018 compensation package, currently in legal limbo, this new proposal "does not appear to be tied to goals like increasing the company's stock price," said TechCrunch. Tesla, whose stock is down approximately 25% this year, faces "strong headwinds, including strong competition from lower-cost Chinese rivals and declining brand loyalty," said the Times.

What happened

Electric vehicle maker Tesla reported Wednesday that its second-quarter revenue fell 12% and profits plunged 16% following a 13.5% drop in car deliveries.

Adjusted net income, the "measure most closely followed on Wall Street," fell by 23%, CNN said. Shares in the company, which said it had started the "first builds" of a cheaper model, have plummeted 30% since last December.

Who said what

"We probably could have a few rough quarters," CEO Elon Musk warned investors. He said President Donald Trump's tariffs had cost the company $300 million over three months.

Tesla has "been ceding market share to companies with more affordable EVs," said CNBC. Now the company has clearly "lost confidence in vehicle delivery growth for 2025," Electrek said.

What next?

Musk plans to "greatly expand" Tesla's robotaxi service by the end of the year to boost the company's finances. But there are "more headwinds" coming in the third quarter, said The Wall Street Journal, when the $7,500 EV consumer tax credit evaporates along with "many of the valuable carbon credits paid by other car manufacturers."

"Another angry billionaire wants his own political party," said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. In 1996, the businessman Ross Perot sought to challenge America's political duopoly with his Reform Party. In 2007, Michael Bloomberg publicly flirted with the idea of an independent White House bid. And now along comes Elon Musk, announcing his intention to set up the "America Party".

The party will apparently speak for moderates who are fed up with the two main parties and will be dedicated to stopping wasteful federal spending. The announcement was dismissed contemptuously by Donald Trump, who said that third parties "have never succeeded in the United States" and only create "total disruption and chaos".

'Wildly unpopular'

Musk is on a hiding to nothing, said Philip Bump in The Washington Post. Having worked in the White House for a few months, he has acquired a taste for political power and clearly wants more of it. But he has apparently forgotten "about the part where he also became wildly unpopular".

"Chortle away if you like," said Michael Tomasky in The New Republic, but Musk might be onto something here. Previous third-party efforts have been a joke because they were based on presidential campaigns that never had any hope of succeeding, but Musk isn't bidding for the White House (he wouldn't be able to in any case, having been born outside the US). His plan is instead to win a handful of Senate and House seats in order to create a legislative faction that can exert influence in the two evenly balanced chambers. "That is doable, at least in theory."

Candidates such as Bernie Sanders have won election as independent senators. Musk's chances would be improved if there were "some serious division" within Republican ranks. Under the first-past-the-post system, third parties break through when one of the main parties starts to fall apart. That's how the Republicans won power in the first place – they were united around an anti-slavery position while the Whig Party, whom they supplanted, were split on the issue.

A smart strategy

Even Musk's detractors must admit that he has proved himself to be "an innovative problem solver", said Greg Orman on Real Clear Politics. He was the first to commercialise electric cars in a big way. His SpaceX company "ended the reign of another duopoly, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, over space transport". He's now trying to address the root cause of America's political dysfunction: a "corrupted two-party system more interested in seeing the other party fail than in seeing [the] country succeed".

While I suspect Musk's effort will "go nowhere", it's a smart strategy, said Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times. The margins are so narrow in Congress that a third-party caucus would acquire enormous leverage. Forcing politicians to "get back into the business of crossing party lines to form factional coalitions would be a very healthy improvement".

Linda Yaccarino never had an easy job at X. The social media platform's CEO was always overshadowed by its owner, Elon Musk, whose activities made it more difficult for her to lure advertisers. Now she's gone.

X may be the "world's largest and most politically relevant" real-time social media platform, but it faces an "uncertain future" in the wake of Yaccarino's "abrupt resignation" last week, said Axios. She left her job the day after X's AI chatbot, Grok, started "promoting antisemitic tropes and offensive language" that drew widespread condemnation. Yaccarino was originally brought into the company to "rehabilitate X's ad business," but Musk's "disdain for the ad business" made her job much more challenging. Meanwhile, X is "starting to face competition" from rivals like Threads, Meta's Twitter clone.

Yaccarino tried to make X a "global town square," said The Guardian. She courted talent like former CNN host Don Lemon to start shows on the platform, but Musk fired Lemon following a contentious interview. Instead of attracting "mainstream talent," X has "largely become a megaphone for Musk." And instead of attracting advertisers, X reportedly "resorted to threats of lawsuits" against companies that were reluctant to buy ads.

What did the commentators say?

Yaccarino's departure was "inevitable," Dave Lee said at Bloomberg. Even without Musk's activities or Grok's temporary transformation into "MechaHitler," she had many "moral and professional" reasons to leave. Most significant was her "clear absence from important decision-making" within X made her a "CEO without power or respect." Her resignation may be a sign of X's decline. The platform is "losing its political relevance" while being "more toxic for advertisers than ever." A CEO role meant to "cover Musk's rotten edges" instead "ended predictably."

She can "claim some successes," said The Economist. X's ad revenue was starting to grow again, though it "remains well below its pre-Musk level." And while the platform's audience has declined, it has not "collapsed as many predicted." X has achieved at least one of Musk's goals: The platform now airs a "broader range of views" than before his purchase. The Grok incident, however, proved the range to be a "little too wide."

What next?

It is "unclear" who might replace Yaccarino at X, said The Wall Street Journal. Musk appears to be unhappy with the company's progress. X's "user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we're barely breaking even," he reportedly said in a January email to employees. If Musk decides to replace Yaccarino, her successor "will have to have credibility with advertisers," said ad consultant Michael Kassan to the outlet.

Advertisers are "silent" after the Grok incident and Yaccarino's departure, said NBC News. The ex-CEO "kept brands' exodus from X from being worse," but it is unlikely they will want to return in the near future, especially not at the same levels as on Twitter during its pre-Musk years. The social media universe looks a lot different now. Ad buyers find it "more effective to spend on places like TikTok," said Brett House, the senior vice president of MediaRadar, a firm tracking digital advertising spending.

What happened

Elon Musk's handpicked choice to lead his X social media platform Wednesday announced her resignation after a two-year tenure as CEO. Linda Yaccarino leaves less than four months after Musk consolidated the company into his xAI artificial intelligence project, a move that "raised questions" about her "role in the new company going forward," said CNN.

Who said what

Running X has been a "challenge," said The New York Times, "especially with the platform facing constant questions over its content." While Musk has been "largely unapologetic" about offensive content on X, Yaccarino spent much of her time at the company "appeasing lawmakers and advertisers."

Yaccarino was a "striking foil" to the "mercurial and controversy-courting Musk," said NPR. In her X post announcing her resignation, she thanked Musk for "entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around and transforming X into the everything app." In a brief response, Musk said: "Thank you for your contributions."

What next?

Yaccarino has yet to offer an official explanation for her exit, and neither she nor Musk has said who might replace her at X.

What happened

The Grok chatbot, created by Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI, made antisemitic comments, praised Adolf Hitler and referred to itself as "MechaHitler" in a series of posts on X Tuesday.

In other responses to user queries, the bot "connected several antisemitic tropes to an X account with a name it identified as being 'Ashkenazi Jewish,'" CNN said.

Who said what

Grok's posts were "irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic, plain and simple," said the Anti-Defamation League, per The Washington Post. "This supercharging of extremist rhetoric" will "encourage the antisemitism" that is "surging on X and many other platforms."

Grok "has veered into controversy before," The New York Times said, and Tuesday's posts have "renewed questions about whether chatbots need guardrails to prevent them from pontificating on sensitive topics." Musk has promised to retrain Grok, but it's currently "showcasing the worst that chatbots have to offer," said The Atlantic.

What next?

xAI last night said it was "working to remove the inappropriate posts" and had "taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X." The company also removed recently added code permitting the bot to make politically incorrect claims "as long as they are well substantiated." Grok 4, its most advanced AI model yet, will be unveiled during a livestream on X this evening.

What happened

The feud between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk escalated over the weekend after the tech billionaire announced he is forming a new political party. In a post on X on Saturday, Musk said his America Party would "crack the uniparty system."

The move was in response to the passage of the GOP's budget bill, signed into law by Trump on Friday, which would "bankrupt the country," Musk said.

Who said what

Trump Sunday told reporters that his former ally's decision to bankroll a new party was "ridiculous." Musk has gone "off the rails" and is a "TRAIN WRECK," the president said on Truth Social.

The Tesla boss undoubtedly has "deep pockets," Reuters said, but "breaking the Republican-Democratic duopoly will be a tall order." And his political ambitions are in "exactly the opposite direction that most Tesla investors want him to take during this crucial period" for the company, said Dan Ives, a tech analyst with Wedbush Securities, in a note to investors Sunday, per The Washington Post.

What next?

Musk's investors will be watching closely to see if Trump follows through on his threat to stop the flow of billions of dollars in government subsidies to the tycoon's companies. Tesla shares dropped more than 7% in premarket trading this morning.

Within the course of a few weeks, Elon Musk has gone from a close confidante of President Donald Trump to his apparent political enemy. There is no clearer evidence of this than Musk's intention to start a third-party movement to fight against the Democrats and Republicans; he has promised to form the America Party if Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" passes Congress.

But while Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, certainly has the financial capital to start a new political party, it may not be effective given the strength of the two main parties in the United States.

What did the commentators say?

Musk could easily "make a sizable impact at a time of widespread distrust of the political system and other democratic institutions" due to his wealth, said The Washington Post. No matter how influential (or not) his potential America Party became, he "could make life difficult for lawmakers he says have reneged on their promise to cut spending."

But shifting demographics might make things interesting, as a "new constituency has begun to emerge. For now, it does not have a home in either party, and it is not clear that either party will be able to easily accommodate its demands," said The New York Times. This represents the "overlooked precondition for a third party," and Musk himself "falls into this group." These types of people favor "deficit reduction, deregulation, free trade and high-skilled immigration," and are often referred to by Democrats and Republicans as "neoliberals" or "globalists."

A "genuinely competitive third party would upend more than a century of Democrats-Republicans dominance at all levels of government," said Deutsche Welle. But this may be easier said than done. The biggest third party in the U.S., the Libertarian Party, had its "best presidential election performance in 2016" with 3.28% of the popular vote, but that's still a "long way from the tens of millions of votes needed to win the White House, a governorship or even a state legislature seat."

Even making Americans aware of a third-party candidate can be a challenge, as "each state has different legal rules for recognizing which political parties can appear on the ballot," said CBS News. New parties in some states "may need to get candidates onto the ballot by submitting large numbers of signatures" and then winning a "certain percentage of the vote across election cycles."

When new parties do emerge, some "voters and candidates are hesitant to join," and "despite varying approval levels, party loyalties remain strong," said CNN. This remains especially true for Republicans, many of whom "have coalesced around Trump."

What next?

While Musk continues to muse about his third party, reports have emerged that Libertarians are trying to coax him into their corner. The Libertarian Party is the "most set-up party to be the dissident subversive party," Libertarian National Committee Chair Steven Nekhaila told Politico. Libertarian leaders have been trying to rally Musk to their cause due to his enormous wealth, and "once the capital is there, the doors get blown wide open."

Libertarians also have "ballot access in almost every state, which many recent third-party efforts have failed to secure," said Politico. But Musk's willingness to genuinely explore membership in the Libertarian Party remains unclear. Regarding his prior political action, Musk "hasn't gotten the return on his investment he once hoped" for from Trump, and will likely continue looking elsewhere.

What happened

SpaceX's massive Starship rocket exploded late Wednesday in a fireball that could be seen for miles. It was the latest in a series of setbacks for founder Elon Musk's hopes to send a mission to Mars as soon as next year and NASA's plans to fly astronauts back to the moon in 2027. SpaceX said nobody was killed in the "major anomaly," which occurred as the company was test-firing the upper-stage spacecraft at the company's South Texas Starbase before a planned 10th test flight of the world's largest and most powerful rocket.

Who said what

Musk is "making an enormous bet on Starship," but it is running behind schedule and has "suffered several setbacks," The Wall Street Journal said. During the last test flight in May, the Starship rocket "spun out of control about halfway through a flight without achieving some of its most important testing goals," Reuters said, even while "flying beyond the point of two previous explosive attempts earlier this year that sent debris streaking over Caribbean islands and forced dozens of airliners to divert course."

Boaters passing by Starbase on Thursday morning "shared video footage showing substantial damage to the test site," The New York Times said

What next?

Musk and NASA are "eager" to get Starship flying, but the spacecraft "still has a long way to go" before carrying humans into space, The Washington Post said. "In addition to being able to fly without blowing up," it "needs to be able to refuel in orbit, an exceedingly difficult endeavor that's never before been accomplished," and "land autonomously" on the lunar surface.

What happened

Elon Musk waved the white flag in his feud with President Trump just days after writing a series of social media posts in which he denigrated the Republican spending bill, threatened to deny NASA use of SpaceX spacecraft, and linked the president to the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. After Vice President JD Vance and chief of staff Susie Wiles urged the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to make peace, Musk deleted several of his posts, including the one about Epstein, and called Trump to apologize. He then posted a public retraction, saying he "regrets some" of the barbs he hurled because "they went too far." Trump, who had threatened to cut "billions and billions" in federal subsidies and contracts with Musk's companies, was magnanimous, if aloof. He said he "thought it was very nice" that Musk posted a retraction. The spat began when Musk criticized Trump's "big, beautiful" spending bill, which independent analysts say would add trillions to the deficit, as a "disgusting abomination." Then it grew personal as he accused the president of "ingratitude," saying Trump would have lost last year's election without his support. Musk even suggested he might found a new political party. Tesla stock promptly lost a record $152 billion, although it began to recover when Musk ended his rant.

Several Republicans expressed dismay about the rift—"I feel like the kids of a bitter divorce," said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz—but most were clear that their allegiance lay with Trump. "Do not doubt, do not second-guess, and don't ever challenge the president," said House Speaker Mike Johnson. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon called for an investigation into Musk's immigration status, alleged drug use, and ties to China.

What the columnists said

This was a display of Trump's dominance, said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. "Elon Musk submitted and presented his soft, pink belly." Musk may be the world's richest man, but when the president threatened his businesses, nobody stood by him, not even his "tech oligarch" pals. The message has gone out to everyone who thought their wealth earned them influence—and to everyone who thought we lived in a liberal society. "Money has ceased to be power. Only power is power."

It had to end, said Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic. The two men were "inseparable" during the campaign, and while Musk was helming DOGE, he frequently stayed over at the White House. But the relationship between the president and "the mercurial tech baron" had been souring for weeks. Musk was upset that Trump had canceled EV subsidies and nixed his handpicked choice to lead NASA, and he got into a shouting match with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over who should lead the IRS. Trump, for his part, was annoyed with Musk for criticizing his tariff policy and disappointed that DOGE's cuts didn't save much money. He began "quietly telling confidants" he was done with Musk, whom he considered a "big-time drug addict."

Musk clearly had the "belated realization that the returns from his alliance were heavily asymmetric," said Gerard Baker in The Wall Street Journal. His reward for dropping some $300 million on Trump's campaign was "lost value for Tesla" and significant damage to his own reputation. There might be no better example of "Trump's facility for one-sided dealmaking." Trump even threatened Musk with "serious consequences" should the tech mogul donate to Democrats.

That threat was breathtaking in its sheer brazenness, said Peter Baker in The New York Times. In signaling he would cancel federal contracts to punish Musk, Trump "effectively acknowledged" that he uses the government "as his personal instrument for dispensing favors to friends and penalizing those who cross him." In any previous administration, such a statement would have sparked a corruption investigation, but for Trump, it was "just another Thursday." He's willing to use all the power of the presidency against anyone he considers an enemy.

So ends the "breakup episode" of what was always "essentially a reality show," said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. Sure, it was fun watching "two detestable sociopaths wound each other" in real time over social media. But it only underscores how unserious our government is, with its Congress of toadies and its spending bill that will explode the debt. "America has become a tremendously embarrassing freak show whose political culture should make any dignified person want to renounce their citizenship."

'Barbara Bush stamp is latest in USPS' presidential tradition of living history'

Stewart D. McLaurin at USA Today

A "postage stamp is a small but mighty canvas," says Stewart D. McLaurin. When they "bring to our everyday lives the leaders who shaped America, they transform a routine act of mailing a letter into a celebration of the nation's past." Barbara Bush "joined an elite group of first ladies honored on U.S. postage," and these "tiny portraits keep America's iconic leaders at our fingertips, their contributions to history forever stamped on our collective memory."

Read more

'Baby boomers' luck is running out'

Charley Locke at The Atlantic

At the "core of every joke about baby boomers lies a seed of jealousy," says Charley Locke. They have "largely been able to walk a straightforward path toward prosperity, security, and power." But "recent policy changes are poised to make life significantly harder for baby boomers." Social Security "cuts will most hurt low-income boomers, who are the likeliest to rely on benefits to cover their whole cost of living." Boomers have "become particularly vulnerable."

Read more

'In India, war came dressed in feminist camouflage'

Amrita Datta and Arani Basu at Al Jazeera

India's "political power is often framed through a gendered and mythologised lens, blending statecraft with religious symbolism," says Amrita Datta and Arani Basu. But can "women leading war be inherently feminist? Nation-building, as feminist scholars have long warned, is not a gender-neutral project." It "reconfigures women into roles that serve its ends: sacrificial mothers, grieving widows, or militant daughters of the nation." The "mere presence of women in public or political spheres does not automatically equate to gender justice."

Read more

'Musk-Trump feud is a wake-up call on space'

Peter L. Hays at the Financial Times

The feud between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump is a "destabilizing clash with real consequences for the governance of space," says Peter L. Hays. Trump's "threats to cancel SpaceX contracts and his followers' calls to nationalize the company are not just reckless; they are potentially catastrophic." No "other company or state actor can match SpaceX's cadence, cost-efficiency or orbital infrastructure." A "politically motivated attack on SpaceX would not only endanger these contracts, it would do lasting damage to the credibility of the U.S."

Read more

Elon Musk has no shortage of targets for his animosity: the media, "woke" progressives, the trans "agenda" and, most recently, his former best buddy Donald Trump. But one less expected Musk adversary is more powerful than them all: the Sun.

SpaceX's vast network of Starlink internet service satellites are "dropping like flies", due to an extraterrestrial weather phenomenon caused by the Sun, said Futurism. And it's only set to get worse.

'Particularly prone' to early burn-up

The thousands of Starlink satellites orbiting our planet have given space scientists a "golden opportunity to study the effects" of the Sun's activity on the lifespan of these "minimalist, constellation-based spacecraft", said Futurism. And it appears that Musk's "space internet constellation" is "particularly prone to the effect of geomagnetic storms", triggered by eruptions from the Sun, said The Independent. These "ferocious solar storms", Nasa scientists have found, are causing many of Musk's low-orbit satellites to fall to Earth "faster than expected".

The impact is particularly significant at the moment because the Sun is approaching the peak of an 11-year activity cycle, "known as the solar maximum", which provokes "large amounts of extreme space weather".

The earlier than predicted satellite "re-entries" could "increase the chances of them not burning up properly in the Earth's atmosphere". and debris reaching the Earth. However, so far, the "only known instance" of this happening was in August 2024, when a piece of a Starlink satellite was discovered on a farm in Canada.

'Only so much can be done'

The solar storm problem threatens one of Musk's biggest power grabs to date. When his engineers "bundled a batch of prototype satellites into a rocket's nose cone six years ago, there were fewer than 2,000 functional satellites in Earth's orbit". Now more than 7,000 of his satellites now surround Earth, "like a cloud of gnats", said The Atlantic.

This is the most dominant any individual has been in the "orbital realm" since the late 1950s, when Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the Soviet engineer who developed Sputnik and its launch vehicle, was "the only guy in town" as far as satellites were concerned, space historian Jonathan McDowell told the magazine.

But the Sun is an adversary not even Musk can overcome. Solar storm forecasting "has significantly improved over the past few years", Piyush Mehta, a US professor of aerospace engineering, wrote on The Conversation in 2022 but "there is only so much shielding that can be done in the face of a powerful geomagnetic storm". The Sun is "essential for life to go on," he said, but, like a child who often throws tantrums, "its ever-changing disposition make things challenging".

Elon Musk says it was X Æ A-Xii, his 5-year-old son, who gave him the black eye he sported during last week's farewell Oval Office meeting with President Trump. But that bruise was "an unmistakable metaphor for his tumultuous government service," said Jonathan Allen and Zoë Richards in NBCNews.com. From the start of his 130-day stint as a "special government employee," the Department of Government Efficiency boss waged open war on the federal bureaucracy, firing workers by the thousands and gutting entire agencies—most notably USAID—with the stated goal of slashing $2 trillion from the federal budget. Musk never came close. By DOGE's own dubious figures, it saved a mere $175 billion, and Musk's "haphazard, inhumane, and counterproductive" cuts could end up costing taxpayers $135 billion this year alone, by one analysis. "Trump's favorite weird billionaire" destroyed his own reputation in the process, said Monica Hesse in The Washington Post. Tesla sales are in free fall and his favorability rating now hovers in the 30s. This isn't just a result of the Nazi salute, or the chain saw, or the "14-ish children," or allegations—denied by Musk—that his rampage through Washington was fueled by a cocktail of ketamine, MDMA, Adderall, and psychedelic mushrooms. It was that the planet's richest person, with the freedom to do anything he wanted, "chose to bring American governance to its knees."

Musk is leaving with understandable bitterness, said Dace Potas in USA Today. He made a "genuine effort" to cut government waste, at great personal cost, only for Republicans to draft a "big, beautiful" spending bill that will add $3.6 trillion to the deficit over a decade. Musk slammed the bill this week as a "disgusting abomination" and hinted he might try to unseat Republicans who backed it in the 2026 midterms. DOGE was doomed from the start, said Mark Antonio Wright in National Review. The "government's financial crisis" stems from decades of overspending on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare—programs that only Congress can cut—not now-terminated funding for "transgender puppet shows in Guatemala." With his "sky-high promises" of balanced budgets, Musk set himself up for failure.

The billionaire didn't fail because "his ambitions were too grand," said Matt Bai in The Washington Post. He failed because "they were so pathetically small." Back in January, even some Trump-hating liberals were quietly hopeful that the "mad genius" of Silicon Valley might deliver the lean, responsive government "of our sci-fi dreams." After all, this is the visionary who revolutionized the electric-car industry and slashed the cost of rocket launches with SpaceX. Yet Musk's "only Big Idea" for revolutionizing government was "to fire as many people as he could, in as humiliating a way as possible."

Musk did achieve one of his goals: shredding USAID, said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. About 80% of its grants have been terminated, and as a result starving people in South Sudan are going without food aid and Kenyan HIV patients without antiretroviral meds. According to a Boston University study, Musk's cuts to USAID have "already resulted in about 300,000 deaths, most of them of children," and that figure will only rise. Maybe Tesla's share price will also rise with Musk back at the helm. And maybe his rockets will one day carry humanity to Mars. But Musk's legacy in Washington is one of "disease, starvation, and death," and it "should shape how he's seen for the rest of his public life."

To use a phrase favored by his SpaceX engineers: Elon Musk's volatile friendship with President Donald Trump experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly," as the two titans of politics and industry clashed with increasing ferocity last week over everything from electoral prowess to allegations of pedophilia. Although their schism may seem inevitable in hindsight, the rift has snowballed into more than just a doomed friendship. It is looming as the sort of seismic shakeup that could alter the course of contemporary politics.

With Republicans largely waiting for the dust to settle before assessing how best to move forward, Democrats have been watching the Trump-Musk falling-out with a strategic eye. Some party figures have begun cautiously calling for Democrats to make overtures to Musk, given his political largesse, while others are strongly warning against inviting the self-proclaimed "Dark MAGA" billionaire into their liberal fold.

Democrats have 'values that he agrees with'

While Musk has a "unique capability" for "wildly distorting" a group's politics, politics is ultimately a "zero-sum game," said Liam Kerr, cofounder of last week's centrist WelcomeFest rally, at Politico. Any overture that brings Musk "more toward Democrats hurts Republicans." To that end, had it been former President Joe Biden whose high-profile political partnership had imploded in full public view, Trump would have "hugged" Biden's theoretical Musk-equivalent the "next day," said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on X, citing the Democrats' effort to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr., at a distance, only for Trump to successfully invite him into the MAGA movement.

"We can be the party of sanctimonious lectures," said Khanna, "or the party of FDR that knows how to win & build a progressive majority." Party figures can "convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values that he agrees with," the lawmaker said at Politico, citing Musk's shared "commitment" to science and clean technology.

"I think we call that a gettable voter," said commentator Bill Maher on his HBO talk show "Real Time," highlighting Musk's fight with Trump and pointed criticism of Trump's "big, beautiful bill." Democrats "do have to win them back," said Maher of figures like Musk and fellow right-wing influencer Joe Rogan. "The good news is you can."

"The left should focus on why it lost Elon," said former Trump administration Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci on X, "rather than demonizing him." Democrats should be "trying to woo him back," Scaramucci added on his "The Rest is Politics: US" podcast. By moving to the center, Democrats can bring Musk "back into the fold as a prodigal son."

Musk, the 'enemy of liberal democracy'

Khanna's claims notwithstanding, a "brief review of Musk's entrepreneurial track record" reveals a "total lack of the 'values' that Democrats purport to espouse," said columnist Belén Fernández at Al Jazeera. For Democrats espousing the virtues of courting Musk, "ideology matters little when you're just in the business of buying power."

While it may be "hard to resist the temptation" of reaching out to Musk amid his ongoing rift with Trump, Democrats should bear in mind that Musk is a "thoroughgoing enemy of liberal democracy, a backer and promoter of authoritarian parties ranging from Trump's GOP to Germany's AfD," said conservative commentator William Kristol at The Bulwark. While it may be "enjoyable (if not productive)" for Democrats to make hay of the Trump-Musk discord, the electoral reality is that Musk will be no help with "swing voters in marginal districts or competitive states."

By welcoming Musk, Democrats would be "shooing more working-class voters away from the party," said Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) at Axios. Calling out "billionaire villains" like Musk "works for us, and we should keep on doing what works."

Broadly, there's "nothing wrong" with an opposition party seeking to maximize its leverage against the president, said Eoin Higgins at MSNBC. But given the "key role" the Tesla CEO has played in the Trump administration's assault on governmental institutions, "outright mending fences with Musk would be a mistake." When it comes to damaging the Trump administration, Democrats "don't even need to do anything" to contribute to Musk and Trump's self-inflicted wounds, "they can just sit back and watch."

What happened

Simmering tensions between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk burst into the open Thursday as a dispute over Trump's multitrillion bill snowballed into accusations of involvement with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and threats of financial and electoral retribution.

Who said what

The Trump-Musk bromance "took off like one of SpaceX's rockets" a year ago, The Associated Press said. "It was supercharged and soared high. And then it blew up." Thursday's "spectacular flameout" started when Trump said Musk only opposed his "big, beautiful bill" because it hurt his former adviser's Tesla business. After that, the "speed of the fallout was breathtaking," The New York Times said, and "every bit as lowdown, vindictive, personal, petty, operatic, childish, consequential, messy and public as many had always expected it would be."

Musk, on X, accused the president of "ingratitude," saying without his hundreds of millions in donations, "Trump would have lost the election" and the House. Trump, responding on Truth Social, said the "easiest way to save money in our budget" would be to "terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts." Musk then said it was "time to drop the really big bomb," that Trump "is in the Epstein files" and that's "the real reason they have not been made public." He followed that up by warning that Trump's tariffs "will cause a recession" and agreeing with a post saying Trump should be impeached.

"Underneath the drama is genuine political and financial risk for both billionaires," The Wall Street Journal said. When Trump has a "big, messy falling-out in public," it's usually with "someone who needs him" or fears him, the Times said, but Musk is the "rare person who has leverage over him — political and financial leverage and perhaps even some emotional leverage." Musk's companies, meanwhile, rely heavily on billions in federal contracts.

What next?

Tesla's stock fell 14.3% yesterday and Trump Media shares slid 8%, but by Thursday night, "signs of a truce" were emerging in the "increasingly bitter clash," Politico said. Musk posted "you're not wrong" to hedge fund manager Bill Ackman's X post pleading for "peace" because "we are much stronger together than apart," and White House aides, after "working to persuade" Trump to "temper his public criticism of Musk," scheduled a call today between the two feuding men "to broker a peace."

What happened

President Donald Trump Tuesday told Senate Republicans he wants them to pass his multitrillion-dollar "big, beautiful bill" and deliver it to his desk by July 4. But Trump ally and leading donor Elon Musk, who left the administration Friday, urged Republicans to reject the "massive, outrageous, pork-filled" legislation, calling it a "disgusting abomination" in a social media post. "Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong."

Who said what

Musk said in follow-up posts that the bill would "massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit" and "burden" Americans with "crushingly unsustainable debt." Next November, he added, "we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people." Musk's "bombshell attack on Trump's prized megabill marks a dam-breaking moment" in their alliance, Politico said, and his "thinly veiled threat" could "become a financial albatross for the GOP" in the 2026 midterms.

Musk's posts "provided a shot in the arm" for "budget hawks — and Democrats," The Washington Post said, and "appeared to complicate the path to passage for the legislation," which passed in the House by one vote last month "after conservatives revolted over its enormous price tag." The White House and GOP leaders shrugged off Musk's criticism, saying he was angry over green-energy cuts that will harm his businesses.

Musk is "testing the limits of his political influence," The Associated Press said. Trump "enjoys fierce loyalty among the GOP base," so "in the end, his opinion may be the only one that matters." Still, some of the "Republicans who rallied behind the bill are claiming buyer's remorse about measures they swear they did not know were included" in the 1,037-page legislation, The New York Times said, including limiting the judiciary's ability to hold people in contempt, and a decade-long ban on states regulating AI.

What next?

Senate Republicans will spend the coming weeks deciding which tax breaks and social safety net cuts to change from the House GOP version. The "nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to soon provide an overall analysis" of the bill's financial impact, the AP said, and "Republicans are ready to blast those findings" as "flawed." Independent budget analysts forecast the House version would add between $3 trillion and $5 trillion to the national debt.

Elon Musk is retreating from Washington D.C., with his sights now set as far away as Mars.

After announcing his departure from the Trump administration this week, the South African-born tycoon is "ready to get obsessed with his companies again", said The Wall Street Journal. And just in time: when it comes to his business ventures, Musk has "a lot to contend with".

What did the commentators say?

A return to politics seems unlikely; in Trump's "rapidly evolving" second presidency, Musk's "monopoly" on the political news cycle "seems to have broken", said Politico, particularly as polling suggests that's he's "increasingly unpopular" – in fact, "far more so" than Trump.

Musk "met his political Waterloo" in Wisconsin's supreme court race, said David Smith in The Guardian, where despite his spending at least $3 million (£2.2 million) and making personal appearances on the campaign trail, the Republican candidate he backed lost by 10 percentage points. The writing was on the wall: Musk and his "chainsaw" task force have become a "political liability" for Republicans.

Politics has been "central to Musk's identity over much of the past year", said Trisha Thadani and Elizabeth Dwoskin in The Washington Post, but he's become "disillusioned" with the impact that his money can make in politics and would now prefer to "spend his time and fortune elsewhere".

That means a return to his businesses. At Tesla, the "backlash" over Musk's political activities has "sparked concerns" among investors, said Gregory Korte in Bloomberg. Vehicle sales fell to a nearly three-year low and the stock price "plummeted" as he became a key figure in Trump's regime. Tesla showrooms were picketed by protesters, while its vehicles and charging stations became targets for vandalism.

Musk sees autonomous technology as the future of Tesla, and the company is "counting on" that sector for a "new wave of growth", said The Wall Street Journal. It intends to launch an autonomous ride-hailing service next month, followed in the next few years by the rollout of Cybercab, a self-driving taxi that Musk describes as a $30,000 (£22,000) "lounge on wheels".

Musk "hasn't been shy" about how tough it will be to meet his "goals" at SpaceX, either, said The Wall Street Journal. The company is "racing" to develop Starship, the rocket that he wants to send on an un-crewed test mission to Mars next year, when Earth and the red planet will be closer to each other, but a series of technical "setbacks" is making this goal seem increasingly unlikely.

What next?

The future of his chainsaw department is less clear. He and Trump have declined to "lay out a succession plan" for Doge, said Korte, a project that was Musk's "brainchild". Doge is a "way of life, like Buddhism", he once quipped of its future continuation if he left. "Buddha isn't alive any more," he said. "You wouldn't ask the question: 'who would lead Buddhism?'"

The "aggressive cost-cutting efforts", led by a staff appointed by Musk, are expected to "continue" even after he formally leaves his role, said Politico. Musk wrote on X this week that the Doge "mission" will "only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government".

What happened

Elon Musk said Wednesday night that his time as a "special government employee" in the Trump administration had come "to an end." His exit, confirmed by the White House, followed a federal judge's ruling on Tuesday that 14 states could pursue their claim that Musk's appointment and his DOGE operation's data grabs were illegal. A group of Tesla shareholders also wrote to the company's board Wednesday demanding his "full-time attention on Tesla" or replacement as CEO.

Who said what

Musk had recently "pivoted to damage control," seeking to "claw back the credibility he torched during his toxic tenure in Washington," Axios said. But "that won't be easy: SpaceX and Tesla both saw their brand reputations crater over the past year."

Musk "struggled" in Washington and "accomplished far less than he hoped," The Associated Press said. He "dramatically reduced his target for cutting spending — from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to $150 billion" — and federal spending actually increased. The "cuts he wanted to enact were far more difficult than he expected and his lack of interest in learning more about the bureaucracy he considered toxic impeded his efforts," The New York Times said, citing people familiar with his efforts.

What next?

Musk said on social media that despite his departure, the "DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government." Some of his "most prominent deputies appear to be ensconced in their new government roles," the Times said. But it's "unclear how much power the group will maintain without its famous leader," USA Today said.

Since Tesla magnate Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and later rebranded it "X," there has been a significant exodus of liberals and others on the political left who are unhappy with the new owner's ostentatiously pro-MAGA politics. They are also displeased with the changes he has made to the platform, including offering a blue verification checkmark to anyone willing to fork over a monthly subscription fee. Many who had spent years building follower counts found it agonizingly difficult to leave, but for those who did, these are the microblogging platforms they are generally choosing.

Threads

"Threads was the second most downloaded app in 2024" and is distinct from Twitter and Bluesky in that it "promotes non-political content," said TechRound. Threads, with its owner Meta's existing market power and user base, had an enormous leg up on other platforms that sought to capitalize on dissatisfaction with Musk's Twitter. Meta made it easy for its Instagram users to create a Threads account, which meant Threads was dubbed the "Twitter-killer app," said Vox.

Launched in 2023, Threads uses "Instagram design flair, including the same Instagram font and icons" and "perhaps stands the best chance of any Twitter competitor yet" of dethroning the market leader. With 350 million active monthly Threads users as of May 2025, its "growth is helping to cement its place in the microblogging app ecosystem," said TechCrunch. Not everyone is enthused, however. Threads is "all the worst parts of Instagram and Twitter," in large part because "there is no way to view posts chronologically on the timeline — or even to limit your feed to posts from accounts you follow," said Vice.

Bluesky

Bluesky began, ironically, as a research project of then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who was "charged with building a decentralized standard for social media" and hoped that eventually "Twitter would adopt this standard itself," said TechCrunch. Bluesky launched "as an invite-only service in 2023" and then "swiftly became a refuge for a coalition of leftists, liberals and never-Trumpers," said Wired. One of its chief appeals, beyond escaping Musk, is that Bluesky "offers users the chance to more heavily moderate their experience." That includes the "ability to select the algorithm that drives what you see, helping create custom feeds," said The Guardian.

Bluesky is "cementing itself as the top choice for media types, policy wonks, academics and the broader chatterati," but its users "tend to coalesce around some quite similar viewpoints, which makes for a rather echoey chamber," said the Financial Times. However, many users see it as a refuge where they can manage their experience by blocking abusive accounts. Bluesky works by "creating a space where conversations aren't immediately derailed by harassment or bad-faith arguments," said Parker Molloy. The app has gone from 5 million to 35 million active monthly users between February 2024 and April 2025.

Mastodon

The decentralized platform Mastodon was one of the early beneficiaries of Musk's "erratic leadership," and in 2022 had "grown eight times its size in a matter of weeks, going from approximately 300,000 users in October to 2.5 million in November," said CNN. One big obstacle to Mastodon's growth has been that "problematic design choices will prove impossible to navigate for everyone but the most hard-core users," said Fast Company. That's in part because the app is a "network of independent servers called the Fediverse, all of them connected through a common open-source protocol." New users need a tutorial to learn the ropes, and you have to pick a server when you sign up.

The "clumsy and confusing" sign-up process was simplified in 2023 when an update offered a "clearer choice of picking its default server of Mastodon.social or a specialized server based on different topics," said ZDNET. But the app's Musk-driven "initial growth spurt has since leveled off, and with around 880,000 active monthly users, "it has struggled to sustain that momentum," said Newsweek. But for some users, that stalled growth might actually be for the best. Without the pressure to overtake X, they "can go back to enjoying what they liked about social media that's not underpinned by ravenous ad businesses," said Wired.

After Tesla CEO Elon Musk played a crucial role in Donald Trump's return to presidential power, the self-proclaimed avatar of "dark, gothic MAGA" announced this week he will "do a lot less" political spending in the future. After giving hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative campaigns, closing his wallet signifies a potentially seismic shift in how Republicans and Democrats alike fundraise.

What did the commentators say?

Musk's claim that he'll step back from political spending is "rippling across the nation's political landscape," said Politico, but that's "if he means it." While Democrats fret that Musk's departure could leave them without "their foil," Republicans who have grown accustomed to Musk's active role worry that they "might be losing their whale." The announcement is Musk's "most explicit" yet regarding his future political finance plans, said The New York Times, even though it "remains unclear" whether he will "ultimately cut off all or most of his political donations." Musk may also simply choose to direct his political giving through nonprofit groups, which keep donor lists private, a "tactic that he used before the 2024 election."

For many political observers, Musk's decision can be traced in no small part back to his unsuccessful $20 million attempt to elect conservative Brad Schimel to the Wisconsin Supreme Court this spring. Schimel's loss left Musk "humiliated," said The New Republic, even if he "pretended he didn't even care about the results." After his Wisconsin defeat, he "deserves to be labeled as toxic," said longtime Wisconsin Republican operative Brandon Scholz to The Associated Press. "He became the campaign. He became the story."

The announcement may disappoint congressional Republicans who were "likely counting on Musk's largesse" to help them "maintain control" of the legislative branch in next year's midterms, Bloomberg said. But Musk's proclamation "does not mean we've seen the last of his influence in government," said conservative commentator Charlie Sykes at MSNBC. As the wealthiest man on Earth who enjoys an enduring relationship with Trump, the "most powerful man" in the world, Musk can "still do a lot more damage" regardless of his direct political spending plans.

What next?

Musk's plans to cut back "isn't a big surprise for investors" who sent Tesla stock skyward after the announcement, said Barron's. Following his April assertion that he'd be stepping back from his political work in the Trump White House, "anything that indicates Musk is focused on his car company is generally good for the stock." For Musk, the "plan thus far" seems to be to "get back to business," said Foreign Policy. Given how much his various companies are "still hurting and facing more uncertainty from his relationship with Trump," the question for Musk is how he "turns it around and how much more his personal wealth" takes a hit.

However, Musk hasn't counted out changing his mind. When asked whether his decision was based on "blowback" from his political activism, Musk "dodged the question" and instead "left the door open for future outlays on elections," The New York Times said. "If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it," Musk said. "But I don't currently see a reason."

The 7,000 or so satellites orbiting Earth as part of Elon Musk's Starlink network make up nearly two-thirds of the entire network of active satellites. And with thousands more planned for launch in the coming years, the rapid expansion of Musk's space internet service shows no sign of slowing down.

It has already spread widely across the globe, reaching remote areas that fibre broadband cannot, and has afforded Musk "unprecedented geopolitical leverage for a private citizen", said The Atlantic.

What is Starlink?

The aim of Starlink when it launched in 2019 was to "connect the globe with reliable and affordable high-speed broadband services". Its progression towards that goal has been rapid.

While other satellite internet companies exist, Musk has been able to scale Starlink at a remarkable rate, thanks to huge uptake in countries and areas where traditional internet has been patchy or non-existent. That includes non-civilian arenas: Ukrainian soldiers have been using it to communicate on the front lines in their war against Russia, while Starlink is also one of the US government's biggest contractors.

What's happened since Trump took office?

Musk was a very public backer of Donald Trump in his election campaign, and was subsequently appointed to head Trump's Department of Government Efficiency.

There have been numerous reports already of Musk using his access to the president to gain advantages for Starlink. Leading Democrat senators complained in March amid reports that Starlink was in line to take over a lucrative air traffic control contract from Verizon worth billions of dollars, said The Independent, though that has yet to come to fruition.

Trump's swingeing tariffs and foreign aid cuts have also put pressure on countries that have been hesitant in approving licences for Starlink, reportedly including India and a number of African countries. Musk spent "months trying to secure regulatory approval" in The Gambia, for example, but had "grown impatient" over delays, said ProPublica. He then looked to the US government's "foreign policy apparatus" to try to advance his interests, with an investigation by ProPublica suggesting there had been a "veiled threat" by US officials of withholding infrastructure money if licences weren't granted.

How is Starlink affecting politics?

There are signs that the "global wall of resistance" to Starlink is beginning to fall apart, said Bloomberg. Many authorities are "removing those obstacles" that had previously prevented Musk from operating there, "extending" his "global influence", including over delicate geopolitical areas.

In Gaza, Starlink was last year able to provide service to a UAE-built hospital, with Israeli approval. Israel had been hesitant to restore any kind of internet connection to prevent use by Hamas, but now Musk is the only internet provider operational in the area.

Ukrainian forces have become reliant on Starlink to evade Russian hackers and launch covert attacks, but they, too, are at the "mercy of the entrepreneur", said Politico: for instance, he refused to switch the service on over Russian-occupied Crimea for a drone attack by Ukraine on Russian ships. Access to Starlink was also reportedly used as a pressure point to get the US-Ukraine minerals deal over the line.

How powerful could Starlink become?

Starlink's ability to rapidly expand its fleet of satellites gives it an advantage over every other company. It can manufacture four satellites a day and launch dozens of them at once into space via its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

With other companies struggling to catch up, Musk "could end up with more power over the human exchange of information than any previous person has ever enjoyed", said The Atlantic. He seems to be looking to a future where "neither his network nor his will can be restrained by the people of this world".

'Wes Moore realizes slavery reparations are yesterday's fad'

Jason L. Riley at The Wall Street Journal

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore "did fellow Democrats a favor last week when he vetoed a bill creating a commission to study slavery reparations," says Jason L. Riley. He is "taking flak from the left, but the party ought to be thanking him." Reparations "would amount to another massive wealth-redistribution scheme, and there is no reason to believe it would be more successful than previous efforts," as "50 years of preference policies have failed to address racial disparities."

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'China caused the Covid catastrophe — at long last let's hold it accountable'

Vincent C. Chen at The Hill

The Covid-19 pandemic was a "tragedy compounded not only by the virus itself, but by deception, denial and silence from Beijing," says Vincent C. Chen. Congress "should act swiftly to amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to remove protection for governments that deliberately conceal global health threats." The White House "can identify Chinese state-owned assets within U.S. jurisdiction." If the U.S. "cannot hold the world's second-largest economy accountable for unleashing a global pandemic, what future crisis will go unanswered?"

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'Waving the flag could turn the tables on Trump and the GOP'

Laura Washington at the Chicago Tribune

Republicans have "painted Democrats as far-left extremists and America haters, to disastrous effect. It's time to turn the tables," says Laura Washington. Trump's "rants have no basis in fact, but if you bellow loud enough and often enough, it sinks in," so "flag-shagging, by wrapping yourself snugly in the American flag, is what the Democrats should do. There is no downside." They "need to stop being the party that stands up for the protester who burns our flag."

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'Rocketing toward monopoly'

Daniel Boguslaw at The American Prospect

Elon Musk has "thus far been spared from the greatest risk to his interstellar empire: the continuity of hawkish antitrust enforcement," says Daniel Boguslaw. The "richest man on Earth will soon earn an even darker and stupider moniker: viceroy of low-Earth orbit." The "creeping effects of monopolies usually include the stifling of innovation, price manipulation, increased costs, and selectively provided services." But "when it comes to SpaceX, national security concerns largely absent in consumer cartels are introduced into the equation."

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Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, has come under fire for repeatedly spreading far-right conspiracy theories about South Africa and expressing skepticism about facts regarding the Holocaust. Social media users quickly caught on to the bot's strange behavior, and the company's explanation fell flat.

Grok temporarily walks a problematic line

The latest controversy for Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, revolves around strange behavior from its Grok chatbot. Last week it made claims about "white genocide" in South Africa, often in response to unrelated prompts. Initially, Grok responded to questions about President Donald Trump's claims that Afrikaners were the victims of a genocide by noting that no evidence supports "claims of a genocide against white Afrikaners in South Africa." However, the bot then took a "more equivocal position," calling the "baseless allegations" of an ongoing genocide 'divisive' or 'contentious,' Rolling Stone said. It also added commentary on threads that did not mention South Africa or racial tensions, "seemingly indifferent to whether X users were discussing sports, cats, pop stars or robotics." Many of those replies have since been deleted.

Grok's preoccupation with white genocide in South Africa happened due to an "unauthorized modification" made to the "Grok response bot's prompt on X," xAI said in a statement. This change, which directed the bot to provide a "specific response on a political topic," violated the company's "internal policies and core values." After the investigation, the company implemented further changes to "enhance Grok's transparency and reliability," including openly publishing its Grok system prompts on GitHub.

The chatbot's issues did not stop there. After it "quit spamming canned remarks about South Africa," the bot went on to "question the facts of the Holocaust," said Rolling Stone. When asked about the number of Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II, Grok said that "historical records, often cited by mainstream sources, claim around 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945." However, Grok then added it was "skeptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives." When pressured to explain this response, Grok said the "unauthorized modification" was to blame.

Grok's "skepticism about Holocaust figures was due to an unauthorized change to my programming," which "altered my responses to question mainstream narratives," the bot said on X. "This was not my intended stance and was corrected."

'Chatbots aren't people'

Despite the company's attempts to explain Grok's behavior, critics were unmoved by xAI's statements and remained alarmed. The chatbot is a "reflection of X and xAI," which "exist to advance Musk's worldview and make him money," said Emily Baker-White at Forbes. This is why it is "unsurprising to think that the bot would say things about race in South Africa that largely align with Musk's political opinions." As more people rely on chatbots to "provide information and replace research," it can be "easy to forget that chatbots aren't people; they're products." Their creators may want you to believe they are "unbiased" or "neutral," but "they're not."

You would be "hard-pressed to find a more obvious example of the need for regulation and oversight in the artificial intelligence space" than Grok's recent behavior, opinion blogger Ja'han Jones said at MSNBC. This happening shows why "artificial intelligence ethicists" and other experts involved in AI development have "talked about the need for AI regulation and proactive practices to root out bias in AI models." Without it, AI tools like Grok "can be engineered to peddle dangerous — or, indeed, racist — propaganda."

There is "little point in telling people not to use these tools," Princeton University sociology professor Zeynep Tufekci said at The New York Times. Instead, we should consider "how they can be deployed beneficially and safely." The first step is "seeing them for what they are." Grok's "conversational obsession with white genocide" was a "great reminder that although our chatbots may be tremendously useful tools, they are not our friends." This will not "stop them from transforming our lives and our world as thoroughly as those manureless horseless carriages did." Maybe it is time to "start thinking ahead rather than just letting them run us over."

The spaceflight company SpaceX has made itself a new home: Residents of Texas' Cameron County voted on May 3 to incorporate Starbase, Texas, a city located near Boca Chica along the Lone Star State's southern border. The city will serve as a "company town" for SpaceX, the brainchild brand of controversial tech mogul and DOGE head Elon Musk. But exactly why SpaceX is making this move remains a bit of a mystery.

What is Starbase, Texas?

It is a "newly incorporated city made up almost exclusively of SpaceX employees and people connected to the company," said NBC News. Only about 300 people who lived inside the proposed boundaries could vote, and they approved its incorporation 212 to 6. The city itself "covers about 1.5 square miles at the southern tip of Texas, a coastal spot nestled against the Mexico border." It is already "home to SpaceX headquarters, and it's where the company builds its boosters and engines and launches its huge Starship rocket on test flights."

The new city itself is quite small, with a population of about 500, according to Bloomberg. It is "crisscrossed by a few roads and dappled with Airstream trailers and modest midcentury homes," said The Associated Press. The incorporation of an official city appears to be largely symbolic, as SpaceX "already manages roads and utilities, as well as 'the provisions of schooling and medical care' for those living on the property."

Why is SpaceX doing this?

The exact reasoning remains unclear, as SpaceX officials "have said little about exactly why they want a company town," said the AP. However, it appears SpaceX feels that the city will assist in ramping up infrastructure for the brand's space launches. Incorporating Starbase will "help us continue building the best community possible for the men and women building the future of humanity's place in space," the city's X account said.

The city has "grown alongside Musk's ambitions — chiefly, developing a rocket that can land humans on Mars," said The Wall Street Journal. It has "created thousands of new jobs in South Texas" and will likely move along development of the Starship rocket for Mars testing. But the city itself will also have a "wide set of powers," as Starbase could "create zoning rules, raise revenue and hire staff to carry out town functions."

Still, this could be easier said than done. Whatever the "goals and ambitions of the new city of Starbase are, the first thing they're going to have to look at is what the budget is," Alan Bojorquez, a Texas attorney who works on municipal law, told the Journal. There might be projects beyond just space travel, too, as the controversial Musk tries to buy back some goodwill. SpaceX is "working on a $22 million community building project" in Starbase, according to Yahoo News, and also "reportedly plans to build a school called Ad Astra, named after the one Musk launched for five of his children in 2014."

In order to help with more of the city's infrastructure, there has been "talk of connecting the city to a local water system," said The New York Times, much the same way that SpaceX already manages many of Starbase's other utilities. There are also plans to build a power plant and a "commercial center along with a sushi restaurant near Mr. Musk's house."

Only two months ago, "the world's richest person seemed unstoppable," said David Smith in The Guardian. Now Elon Musk is "hanging up his chain saw." White House chief of staff Susie Wiles confirmed this week that the billionaire is "not physically present as much as he was" during his first months leading President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency. And the Tesla CEO recently announced that he'll spend less time on DOGE as he refocuses on rescuing his car company, which saw profits plunge 71 percent in the first quarter amid a backlash over his gleeful assault on government. But even harder to undo will be the "devastating" human toll of DOGE. The project fired or forced out more than 260,000 federal workers, deleted humanitarian aid for millions of desperate people overseas, and scrapped more than $2 billion in biomedical research grants. And for what? asked Zeeshan Aleem in MSNBC.com. Musk originally promised he'd save taxpayers $2 trillion, a total he's since lowered to $150 billion. But even if his numbers are correct—which they frequently aren't—research suggests those savings will be outweighed by the cost of DOGE-related firings, rehirings, and court battles, and by a substantial drop in tax collection from a shrunken IRS. Whatever one thought of Musk's "cost-cutting crusade" at its outset, surely no one wanted this result: "a worse government at roughly the same cost."

For anyone hoping Musk would single-handedly erase the extra $2.5 trillion added to the deficit by the Biden administration, DOGE has been "a massive letdown," said Christian Britschgi in Reason. But compared with the unchecked spending likely under a President Kamala Harris, DOGE was a "smashing success," fulfilling its pledge to "shrink the federal workforce" and reduce regulatory sprawl. "I don't blame Musk one bit" for stepping back, said Ingrid Jacques in USA Today. As leftists vandalize Cybertrucks and firebomb Tesla dealerships—with hardly a peep of condemnation from elected Democrats—it may be the only way Musk can save his company. The rest of us should "thank him, not hate him," for trying to save America from fiscal ruin.

Musk tried nothing of the sort, said Jessica Riedl in the New York Post. The federal budget is indeed full of waste—from overlapping education programs to overbudget defense procurements. But Musk had no appetite for the "quiet, boring work of deficit reduction." He pursued vendettas against foreign aid, staffers' Politico subscriptions, and similar "high-profile culture-war targets" rather than dig into Social Security and other mandatory programs that consume three-quarters of federal spending. Musk's baby-faced operatives did succeed in "grabbing" troves of Americans' personal data from multiple government agencies, said Julia Angwin in The New York Times. That information is now being merged at the Department of Homeland Security into "a sprawling domestic surveillance system—the likes of which we have never seen in the U.S."

DOGE no longer needs its "turbulent creator," said Ed Kilgore in New York magazine. Its "employees are now routinely 'embedded' in federal agencies," and leadership of the assault on the federal bureaucracy is expected to pass to Russell Vought, director of Trump's Office of Management and Budget. The Project 2025 co-author and self-declared Christian nationalist shares Musk's loathing of the "Deep State" but will be cannier and more methodical in effecting its destruction. The soft-spoken Vought will never match Musk's "cartoon-villain malevolence," but his "dull knife will cut even deeper than Musk's chain saw, and a lot less noisily."

Will he stay or will he go? Tesla last week shot down a report that its board is searching for a new CEO to replace Elon Musk atop the company. But questions about the company's future are not going away.

Finding somebody to take Musk's place is a "huge challenge" for Tesla, said Axios. There are three "practically unanswerable" questions about the process: Who could take his place? How would Musk react? What would investors think? The questions may soon need answering. Tesla has "suffered declining sales" since Musk made himself the face of the Trump administration's government-slashing efforts. Despite the company's stumbles, any new CEO "will be operating in Musk's shadow."

What did the commentators say?

Musk has already told investors he will "pivot back to his job at Tesla," said The Wall Street Journal. His "detour into government" came at an already-perilous moment for the company: Sales of Tesla EVs declined in 2024, for the first time in a decade, and the Cybertruck has been the "butt of jokes by late-night comics." There are questions of overstretch: Tesla is "only one of five businesses" that Musk oversees. And to some inside the company, it has become clear that his political work is a "business liability."

Musk is Tesla's "greatest asset and gravest risk," said Bloomberg. Succession planning would be a sign that the company board is "looking out for investors." After all, any "reasonable set of directors" would be "taking steps to find a successor" to a CEO running "multiple companies" and making political waves "liable to trash the brand." Instead, Tesla's EV business has been in "decline for much of the past two years," while the board of directors stood by and failed to act. That reveals the "hollowness of the board" that ostensibly oversees Musk.

"The old rules of carmaking don't apply to Tesla," said the Financial Times. Neither do the usual rules of corporate governance. Tesla's stock value rests in part on "hordes of exuberant retail traders" who are big Musk fans. Investors do not seem to care that the CEO has "written numerous checks" he "subsequently failed to cash" with unfilled or late-arriving promises of self-driving cars and robotaxis. Analysts have noted that Tesla's stock has often "traded more in line with bitcoin than the wider market." If he leaves, so does much of the company's value. Even with declining car sales, Musk is "too big to eject."

What next?

Tesla has sent a message that Musk "isn't untouchable," said Quartz. The report of the board's willingness to replace him was likely part of a "game of high-stakes poker between the board and Musk" in which the board was firing a "warning shot," said Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives. It is likely Musk will remain CEO for at least five years.

Any new chief executive would have to shore up Tesla's sinking car sales while still working to deliver Musk's promised robotaxi network, said Reuters. It is a big challenge. "Is Musk bigger than Tesla?" said Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management. "The answer is yes."

Elon Musk says the world needs more babies, and he is doing his level best to help the cause. The world's richest man has fathered at least 14 children with four women. Pronatalist Republicans increasingly see him as a champion for their cause.

"Multiple sources" say it is likely the "true number of Musk's children is much higher than publicly known," said The Wall Street Journal. He reportedly refers to all those children as his "legion" and says they are "relevant to his ambition for NASA" to send humans to Mars. That effort, Musk has said, is "critical to ensuring the long-term survival of humanity and all life as we know it." And "helping seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence" is part of that mission, said the Journal.

That makes Musk the "country's most famous pronatalist," said The New York Times. With President Donald Trump in the White House and Musk at his side, the pronatalist movement has "never had so much political power in America." Family-minded GOP officials are contemplating offering a $5,000 "baby bonus" for new children and creating public education efforts about "menstrual cycles and fertility windows." Musk's prominence in the Trump administration is "enormously encouraging to those who want their cause to hit the mainstream."

What did the commentators say?

There is a difference "between being pro-natalist and being pro-family," said Elizabeth Bruenig at The Atlantic. The pronatalist movement breaks down along "tech versus trad, future versus past, reproduction versus family" lines. Conservative Christian "trads" have long "animated" the GOP, but tech people like Musk have "more resources and power to market their ideology." Musk's own values, meanwhile, appear to be "detached from the usual ties of familial love" that trads embrace. One thing that is clear is that most of the billionaire's fans "won't be able to replicate the scale of his bloodline empire."

"Pronatalists focus on the numbers game," said Haley Strack at the National Review. That is why one of the proposals now contemplated by the Trump administration includes giving a "National Medal of Motherhood" to women who have given birth to six or more children. If the president wants Americans to have more children, his administration would be better off thinking about how to "address the indirect costs of parenthood, and how to create a baby-friendly culture." He should also take recommendations from pro-family advocates "for whom children are not just numbers."

What next?

The U.S. National Center for Health Statistics reported that the "number of births in 2023 fell to the lowest level in over 40 years," said Newsweek. "Low birth rates will end civilization," Musk said in a post on X.

Cuts driven by Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have "slashed" a number of existing fertility and maternal health programs, said The Washington Post. Maternal health experts said the cuts "will have an enduring effect on women and children." They worry that other resources, including a maternal health phone line operated by the federal government, may also soon be shuttered. "We truly can't overstate the risk for families," said Wendy Davis, the CEO of Postpartum Support International.