logo
Trump warns Elon Musk he could be forced out of US as he threatens to unleash DOGE ‘monster' to ‘eat' tech billionaire

Trump warns Elon Musk he could be forced out of US as he threatens to unleash DOGE ‘monster' to ‘eat' tech billionaire

Scottish Suna day ago
FEUD REIGNITES Trump warns Elon Musk he could be forced out of US as he threatens to unleash DOGE 'monster' to 'eat' tech billionaire
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
DONALD Trump has warned Elon Musk he could be forced out of the US.
The president said he could consider deporting Elon Musk after the South African-born billionaire slammed his flagship One Big Beautiful Bill.
Sign up for Scottish Sun
newsletter
Sign up
2
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn before boarding Marine One
Credit: Getty
2
President Donald Trump listens as Elon Musk, joined by his son X Æ A-Xii, speaks in the Oval Office
Credit: AFP
When White House reporters asked if he would deport the South African-born entrepreneur and US citizen, Trump replied: 'We'll have to take a look.'
More to follow... For the latest news on this story, keep checking back at The U.S. Sun, your go-to destination for the best celebrity news, sports news, real-life stories, jaw-dropping pictures, and must-see videos.
Like us on Facebook at TheSunUS and follow us on X at @TheUSSun
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Another blow for Elon Musk after Trump gives $10b to his worst nightmare
Another blow for Elon Musk after Trump gives $10b to his worst nightmare

Daily Mail​

time8 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

Another blow for Elon Musk after Trump gives $10b to his worst nightmare

President Donald Trump is just one stroke of a pen away from handing another major blow to Elon Musk 's plans for space exploration. On Tuesday, the US Senate passed its version of the 'Big, Beautiful Bill,' a massive piece of spending and tax cut legislation, which also set aside $10 billion for NASA's Artemis program. Artemis aims to return humans to the moon and establish a permanent US presence there by the end of the decade. Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, has been a vocal opponent of continued funding for missions to the moon, repeatedly lobbying for the Trump Administration and NASA to focus on colonizing Mars. If signed into law by Trump, the allotment to NASA would primarily go to pay for the Space Launch System (SLS), which utilizes single-use rockets to send the Artemis vehicles to the moon. The SLS rockets completely fly in the face of Musk's vision for space travel, as his company mainly relies on reusable rockets during crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS). Before their very public falling out in May, it seemed as though Musk had convinced the president to phase out SLS rockets, with Trump proposing to slash NASA's budget and replace the SLS after Artemis' third planned mission in 2027. However, the new Republican-led megabill has reprioritized the moon missions and left Musk's dream of a crewed mission to Mars out on the White House lawn. Musk, the former head of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, has blasted both the use of billion-dollar, single-use rockets and the president's controversial spending bill as a waste of taxpayer money. 'Fundamental issue with SLS is that it's not reusable, which means that a billion-dollar rocket is blown up every launch!' the billionaire wrote on X in 2020. On June 3, Musk called the Big, Beautiful Bill a 'disgusting abomination' and urged Americans to contact their representatives to oppose it, citing how it would leave the US budget with more 'crushing' debt. Later that month, he described the Senate's draft of the spending bill as 'utterly insane and destructive' and 'political suicide' for the Republican Party. Musk also claimed that Trump signing the bill would destroy millions of jobs and harm industries of the future while favoring outdated ones. Despite his ongoing objections, the Big, Beautiful Bill will pay for the increasingly expensive disposable rockets, which NASA's Inspector General estimated will now cost as much as $2.5 billion per use. Through the 2025 fiscal year, NASA has already spent $93 billion on the Artemis program, with most of that money going towards the rockets, the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, and a 'Human Landing System' so the astronauts can reach the moon's surface. Since the start of the Artemis program in 2019, only the unmanned Artemis I test flight in 2022 has reached space. The next mission, Artemis II, is scheduled for 2026, with Artemis III to follow in 2027. NASA has not conducted a manned moon mission since 1972. However, the 'Big, Beautiful Bill' has allocated $10 billion in new funding for NASA's Artemis program Roughly $2.6 billion of the funds would be allocated to the Lunar Gateway, a planned space station that will orbit the moon and help sustain NASA's future Artemis missions. Approximately, $20 million will go to the Orion spacecraft, specifically for building the fourth crew capsule for Artemis IV in 2028 and future lunar missions after that. If Trump signs this current version of the spending bill, he'll also be reviving a program he and Musk previously looked to kill before their friendship unraveled. The new funding includes $700 million for a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, which would support Martian core sample return missions. That project has already cost NASA billions as the agency has aimed to bring rock samples collected by the Martian rovers back to Earth to be studied. However, Trump's May 1 spending proposal for NASA slashed $6 billion from their budget, which would have paid for that research. Following the Senate's passage of the bill, that money is back in NASA's pockets. Another $1.25 billion would go to operating costs on the ISS, money that was also slashed by the president and Musk earlier this year. It's not all bad news for Musk, however, as SpaceX is still slated to receive $325 million to build a spacecraft that will help de-orbit the ISS by the end of the decade. The decommissioning of the ISS has been another of Musk's major talking points when it comes to space exploration. The head of SpaceX has even called for the de-orbiting mission to be moved up to 2027, citing safety concerns raised by a former physicist and engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In June 2024, NASA awarded SpaceX a $843 million contract to build the deorbit vehicle, or USDV, that will be used to safely guide the ISS into the Pacific Ocean by 2030. The funding for continued ISS operations runs through 2029, essentially ending Musk's dream of bringing down the station earlier. Decommissioning the ISS ahead of schedule would not have been that simple anyway, and would require an agreement from all the space station's partners, not just the approval of President Trump.

Tesla vehicle deliveries drop sharply as Musk backlash affects demand
Tesla vehicle deliveries drop sharply as Musk backlash affects demand

The Guardian

time11 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Tesla vehicle deliveries drop sharply as Musk backlash affects demand

Tesla posted another big drop in quarterly deliveries on Wednesday, putting it on course for its second straight annual sales decline as demand falters due to backlash over CEO Elon Musk's political stance and an aging vehicle lineup. Tesla said it delivered 384,122 vehicles in the second quarter, down 13.5% from 443,956 units a year ago. Analysts had expected it to report deliveries of about 394,378 vehicles, according to an average of 23 estimates from financial research firm Visible Alpha, though projections went to as low as 360,080 units based on estimates from 10 analysts over the past month. Analysts use the number of vehicles delivered to customers as a metric of success to evaluate both automotive sales and production. 'The market is reacting to the deliveries not being as bad as potentially thought with multiple analysts cutting their forecasts over the past week,' said Seth Goldstein, senior equity analyst at Morningstar. The stock has lost 25% of its value so far this year as investors feared brand damage in Europe, where sales have slumped most sharply, and in the US from Musk's embrace of rightwing politics and his role in spearheading the Trump administration's cost-cutting effort. The day Trump and Musk split publicly in early June, Tesla lost some $150bn in market value. Its share price has somewhat recovered in the ensuing month, but Trump and Musk have likewise reignited their feud as they spar over Trump's sweeping tax bill. Tesla's plummeting deliveries in a steadily growing global EV market come despite Musk saying in April that sales had turned around. The company refreshed its top-selling Model Y crossover earlier this year to boost demand, but the redesign forced a production halt and prompted some buyers to delay purchases in anticipation of the updated version. Most of Tesla's revenue and profit come from its core EV business, and much of its trillion-dollar valuation hangs on Musk's big bet on converting its vehicles into robotaxis. Tesla last month rolled out a robotaxi service in limited parts of Austin, Texas, for a select group of invitees and with several restrictions, including having a safety monitor in the front passenger seat. The pilot was limited, though, with only about a dozen Robotaxis on the road. The US National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration opened an investigation into the launch of the autonomous ride service. Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion The automaker had said it would start producing a cheaper vehicle, expected to be pared-down Model Y, by June's end. While a cheaper model might help bolster sales, Wall Street expects a second consecutive annual sales decline this year. To achieve Musk's target of returning to growth this year, Tesla would need to hand over more than a million units in the second half - a record and a tough challenge, according to analysts, despite typically stronger sales in the second half.

Fears AI factcheckers on X could increase promotion of conspiracy theories
Fears AI factcheckers on X could increase promotion of conspiracy theories

The Guardian

time13 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Fears AI factcheckers on X could increase promotion of conspiracy theories

A decision by Elon Musk's X social media platform to enlist artificial intelligence chatbots to draft factchecks risks increasing the promotion of 'lies and conspiracy theories', a former UK technology minister has warned. Damian Collins accused Musk's firm of 'leaving it to bots to edit the news' after X announced on Tuesday that it would allow large language modelsto write community notes to clarify or correct contentious posts, before they are approved for publication by users. The notes have previously been written by humans. X said using AI to write factchecking notes – which sit beneath some X posts – 'advances the state of the art in improving information quality on the internet'. Keith Coleman, the vice president of product at X, said humans would review AI-generated notes and the note would appear only if people with a variety of viewpoints found it useful. 'We designed this pilot to be AI helping humans, with humans deciding,' he said. 'We believe this can deliver both high quality and high trust. Additionally we published a paper along with the launch of our pilot, co-authored with professors and researchers from MIT, University of Washington, Harvard and Stanford laying out why this combination of AI and humans is such a promising direction.' But Collins said the system was already open to abuse and that AI agents working on community notes could allow 'the industrial manipulation of what people see and decide to trust' on the platform, which has about 600 million users. It is the latest pushback against human factcheckers by US tech firms. Last month Google said user-created fact checks, including by professional factchecking organisations, would be deprioritised in its search results. It said such checks were 'no longer providing significant additional value for users'. In January, Meta announced it was scrapping human factcheckers in the US and would adopt its own community notes system on Instagram, Facebook and Threads. X's research paper outlining its new factchecking system criticised professional factchecking as often slow and limited in scale and said it 'lacks trust by large sections of the public'. AI-created community notes 'have the potential to be faster to produce, less effort to generate, and of high quality', it said. Human and AI-written notes would be submitted into the same pool and X users would vote for which were most useful and should appear on the platform. AI would draft 'a neutral well-evidenced summary', the research paper said. Trust in community notes 'stems not from who drafts the notes, but from the people that evaluate them,' it said. But Andy Dudfield, the head of AI at the UK factchecking organisation Full Fact, said: 'These plans risk increasing the already significant burden on human reviewers to check even more draft Notes, opening the door to a worrying and plausible situation in which Notes could be drafted, reviewed, and published entirely by AI without the careful consideration that human input provides.' Samuel Stockwell, a research associate at the Centre for Emerging Technology and Security at the Alan Turing Institute, said: 'AI can help factcheckers process the huge volumes of claims flowing daily through social media, but much will depend on the quality of safeguards X puts in place against the risk that these AI 'note writers' could hallucinate and amplify misinformation in their outputs. AI chatbots often struggle with nuance and context, but are good at confidently providing answers that sound persuasive even when untrue. That could be a dangerous combination if not effectively addressed by the platform.' Researchers have found that people perceived human-authored community notes as significantly more trustworthy than simple misinformation flags. An analysis of several hundred misleading posts on X in the run up to last year's presidential election found that in three-quarters of cases, accurate community notes were not being displayed, indicating they were not being upvoted by users. These misleading posts, including claims that Democrats were importing illegal voters and the 2020 presidential election was stolen, amassed more than 2bn views, according to the Centre for Countering Digital Hate.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store