Politics
Musk gets big cheers — and a chainsaw — at CPAC
Elon Musk was hailed as a chainsaw-wielding slasher of the government at his debut at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Appearing on stage in a gold chain, black MAGA hat and sunglasses, the tech mogul on Thursday boasted about taking on the federal bureaucracy and dismissed the Democratic opposition as fake during a sit-down interview with Newsmax host Rob Schmitt. Asked to give the audience a picture of the inside of his mind, he called it “a storm.”
“I am become meme,” he told the crowd outside Washington.
At one point, Argentine President Javier Milei delivered a gilded chainsaw to Musk on the stage. At another, Musk was handed a sci-fi-themed painting of himself.
The crowd ate up the eccentric appearance, giving Musk a standing ovation in some of the most raucous applause at the gathering.
In the month since President Donald Trump took office, Musk has energized Republicans as he’s worked to cut federal grants, reduce the size of the government workforce, and hobble agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The conservative base cheering on Musk at his first CPAC appearance marks a critical moment for the billionaire who previously voted for Democrats and even recently has come under fire from key leaders in the MAGA movement.
Steve Bannon, the former top Trump adviser, has called Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant” who “wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions.” Musk has said Bannon is “a great talker, but not a great doer.”
On Wednesday, Bannon continued to press his case against Musk, saying “the oligarchs” will abandon the right.
Conservative activists also lit up Musk in December when he threw his weight behind H-1B visas, which are for workers who are deemed highly skilled, in a debate on his social media site X.
Bannon spoke immediately after Musk at CPAC, setting up the potential for a high-profile clash between two factions of the Republican Party at the annual gathering. But during his Thursday talk, Bannon largely pulled punches against Musk.
“How did I draw the card to follow Elon Musk? Come on, man,” he said, calling him “the world’s wealthiest guy” and “Superman.” In comparison, he added, “I’m just a crazy Irishman.”
Bannon only tweaked Musk somewhat, saying that when the history books are written about this age, “ain’t gonna remember me or Elon Musk or Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity — they’re gonna remember two things, Donald Trump and MAGA, OK?”
Despite fiery attacks from Bannon in recent days outside of his CPAC speech, Musk has been a figure of near universal praise from other speakers of the conference.
Former Trump aide Ric Grenell hailed Musk at CPAC’s international summit on Wednesday, saying, “Thank God he is saving my money and the world is going to benefit.”
International figures at the confab also praised Musk. Liz Truss, who was briefly the British prime minister in 2022, said, “We want Elon Musk and his nerd army of Muskrats examining the British deep state.” Mateusz Morawiecki, who was Polish prime minister from 2017 to 2023, told reporters “we have to really have our European DOGE initiative.”
During the conversation with Schmitt, Musk dismissed Democratic protests as “fake rallies” and said “at this point, I’m not sure how much of the left is even real.” He also lamented the challenges of managing his own security, saying, “I’m open to ideas for improving security, I have to tell you.”
Musk talked about his political transformation, saying it took place “when I realized I was a fool.”
Musk also positioned himself as above being influenced by money.
Musk shrugged off critics who are concerned about the possibility of him accessing data for profit, joking, “If I steal some Social Security, I can finally buy nice things.” Of those who say he’s an asset of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said, laughing, “He can’t afford me.”
Politics
Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.
President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.
In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.
Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.
Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.
“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.
Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.
“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.
He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”
Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.
“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”
The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.
In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.
“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.
He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”
The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.
Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.
“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.
He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”
While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.
“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”
Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.
Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.
“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.
He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”
Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.
Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.
Construction crews could begin the excavation process for what will be President Donald Trump’s massive 250-foot-tall arch in as soon as the next two weeks, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced on Thursday.
The monument — which will be erected in a traffic circle at the head of the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River, coming between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery — has generated controversy as concerns emerged about the design and traffic congestion during construction.
The arch would take two to three years to construct on the proposed schedule, according to documents released in June.
“We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck,” Burgum said in a social media post.
The 250-foot-tall arch will be among Trump’s most visible projects, as the administration continues its attempts to remake Washington. Critics, however, have voiced fears that the structure may be too large, and overshadow other monuments, like the Lincoln Memorial on the other side of the Potomac River.
The proposed arch will dwarf the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in size. It is unclear at this time how much construction will cost; the National Endowment for the Humanities earmarked $15 million for the monument.
“This will be one the the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington National Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World,” Burgum said.
The monument will be constructed on land overseen by the National Park Service, and critics have argued Trump’s latest project requires explicit congressional approval. However, the Interior secretary continues to rebut these claims.
Instead, Burgum echoed previous statements and said historically “Congress and various congressionally chartered commissions decreed that a monumental work should adorn Columbia Island,” the traffic circle where the monument is planned to be constructed.
“Despite Congress’s intent, the site became and remains today a barren traffic circle lacking any monumental treatment and significant historic value,” he said.
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