Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, said on Tuesday that he will dial back his spending on future political campaigns.
Asked about his plans for political contributions at Bloomberg&#8217;s Qatar Economic Forum, Musk said over video that he&#8217;s &#8220;going to do a lot less in the future.&#8221; Musk <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-277-million-trump-republican-candidates-donations/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">spent</a> nearly $240 million through his political action committee, America PAC, helping Trump and Republicans in the 2024 election cycle. His comments on Tuesday, however, indicate that he won&#8217;t be as aggressive in pushing Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections.
&#8220;I think I&#8217;ve done enough,&#8221; Musk said, adding, &#8220;If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason.&#8221;
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Along with his major donations to the Republican effort last election cycle, Musk was also a major fixture on the campaign trail, appearing multiple times alongside Trump. After Trump took office in January, Musk led the effort, alongside the Department of Government Efficiency project, to find waste and fraud within the federal government.
After joining Trump in the White House, Musk got behind the conservative candidate in the closely watched Wisconsin Supreme Court election, saying the race could affect the &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/musk-says-wisconsin-supreme-court-election-is-a-vote-for-which-party-controls-the-house" target="_blank" rel="noopener">entire destiny</a>&#8221; of humanity. Musk&#8217;s America PAC spent millions of dollars on race, but conservative candidate Brad Schimel <a href="https://apnews.com/projects/election-results-2025/wisconsin/?r=50888" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lost</a> to liberal candidate Susan Crawford by 10 percentage points, and the liberals maintained a majority on the court.
Musk, who was regularly seen with the president during the Trump administration&#8217;s first 100 days, has taken a step back from overseeing Trump&#8217;s DOGE initiative.
“I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla&#8230;&#8221; Musk <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-significantly-cut-back-doge-time?author=Daniel+Chaitin&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Elon+To+%E2%80%98Significantly%E2%80%99+Cut+Back+On+DOGE+Time" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> last month.
The Tesla CEO added in his interview on Tuesday that he is committed to leading the electric car company for at least the next five years, <a href="https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1924835630858543332" target="_blank" rel="noopener">saying</a> that he wants “sufficient voting control” to keep Tesla from falling into the hands of activist investors.
“It’s not a money thing,” Musk said. “It’s a reasonable control thing over the future of the company.”
Musk&#8217;s shift back to focusing on Tesla comes after the company saw a drop in revenue and net income over the first quarter of 2025. Tesla stock dropped from $379 at the beginning of January to $222 at the beginning of April. Since then, however, the stock has climbed back up to $349. After Musk became a senior adviser to Trump and pushed for major government spending cuts, Tesla has been targeted by leftist activists who have set fires to and vandalized vehicles and threatened Tesla dealerships.
&#8220;Firing bullets into showrooms and burning down cars is unacceptable. Those people will go to prison, and the people that funded them and organized them will also go to prison. Don&#8217;t worry, we&#8217;re coming for you,&#8221; Musk said on Tuesday&#8217;s video call to the applause of the crowd.
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Elon Musk

‘I’ve Done Enough’: Musk Says He Will Spend ‘A Lot Less’ On Future Political Campaigns

Bloomberg News

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Donald Trump

General

Politics

Qatar

Republicans

Tesla

On Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confronted the question of whether Elon Musk tried to fire air traffic controllers.
The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/us/politics/trump-musk-doge-power.html?campaign_id=190&amp;emc=edit_ufn_20250307&amp;instance_id=149417&amp;nl=from-the-times&amp;regi_id=78841373&amp;segment_id=192873&amp;user_id=2c0c856b2ce44b95592cc8015e73caee" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> back in March that there was a clash in which Duffy vented about staffers from Musk&#8217;s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort trying to lay off air traffic controllers at a time when the Transportation Department was dealing with multiple plane crashes. Musk reportedly denied the claim.
&#8220;Did Elon Musk ask you to cut air traffic controllers directly?&#8221; NBC&#8217;s Kristen Welker asked Duffy during a &#8220;Meet The Press&#8221; <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/transportation-sec-duffy-says-elon-musk-never-asked-him-to-cut-air-traffic-controllers-239336517927" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interview</a>.
&#8220;So, listen, we were having a conversation about, &#8216;Who do we preserve?&#8217; And, again, I wanted in those probationary employees to preserve air traffic controllers,&#8221; Duffy said. &#8220;We went back and forth, and Elon agreed, the president agreed. Of course you want to keep air traffic controllers. We&#8217;re trying to hire more of them.&#8221;
He added: &#8220;But I think the key is, &#8216;Can your government be more efficient?&#8217; We&#8217;ve had a massive expansion of government. You can actually be more efficient and still accomplish the mission of safety, which is what I think we can do. And actually, we are doing that.&#8221;
Welker pressed Duffy again.
&#8220;Did Elon Musk, though, initially ask you to cut air traffic controllers?&#8221; she asked.
&#8220;No,&#8221; Duffy said.
&#8220;And did you dispute that?&#8221; Welker asked.
&#8220;No,&#8221; Duffy replied.
&#8220;Did you have a disagreement with him about that?&#8221; Welker followed up.
&#8220;So, Elon and I get along really well. He never called me and said, &#8216;Cut air traffic control.&#8217; He would never do that. This was a broader conversation about what positions are going to be preserved, right? So if we&#8217;re going to let probationary employees go, again, they’ve – they&#8217;re new employees. They just were hired on. Some might have been there for a month, some of them 10 months,&#8221; Duffy said.
&#8220;It was the new employees that we were going to let go,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;Many of them have come back. But this is not the institutional knowledge of the FAA that&#8217;s being let go. Elon Musk understands the importance of the airspace and the need to have good controllers. Actually, [Musk&#8217;s] SpaceX launches through the airspace and the FAA. We want good controllers that know the airspace to navigate all the issues that come up.&#8221;

Sean Duffy

Transportation Secretary Clears Air On Whether Elon Tried To Fire Air Traffic Controllers

Air Travel

Executive

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

U.S.

Editor&#8217;s Note: This is part two in a series of investigative reports on the African Development Foundation, which gained notoriety for resisting a review by the Department of Government Efficiency. 
—
When Department of Government Efficiency aides showed up at a small USAID-linked federal agency called the African Development Foundation in March, its management locked the doors and refused to let them in. A fired board member <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278118/gov.uscourts.dcd.278118.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued</a> to stop DOGE, and the group was <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/united-states-african-development-foudation-doge-lawsuit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lauded</a> for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/federal-workers-block-musks-doge-africa-development-agency" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resisting</a> DOGE&#8217;s demands for “access to USADF systems including financial records, payment and human resources systems.”
But the objection, several former employees told The Daily Wire, might not have been on principled grounds, but rather because those records amounted to a crime scene.
The African Development Foundation has an annual budget of just $45 million. But, operating out of sight and out of mind, it might have been the most corrupt agency in Washington, a Daily Wire investigation found. Its employees have been sounding the alarm for years about a culture of self-dealing, abuse, and anti-white discrimination, while those who now object to DOGE’s shuttering of the agency did nothing to help fix it.
By <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/96/hr6942/text" target="_blank" rel="noopener">law</a>, the agency is only allowed to give grants to Africa-based groups. But it moved money through African entities and then back to the United States to pad salaries of D.C. bureaucrats and pay their friends and former employers, employees said.
Until the DOGE takeover, which culminated in U.S. Marshals ordering building security to let Trump administration officials in, the agency was led by CEO Travis Adkins, who arrived in 2021 after a short stint as a Biden appointee at USAID. An assistant to Adkins said after she asked why her paycheck was lower than agreed upon, Adkins informed her that the remainder would be coming from an overseas account.
He “sent me an email connecting me with this guy in Africa who asked for my banking information. Within a few days this guy wired me $17,000,” she told The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity. The Daily Wire reviewed bank paperwork showing the transfer from an account in Kenya.
Another longtime employee, she said, was eventually “put on the payroll of an African partner and was informed she was being paid through an entity in Mauritania. No payroll, state or federal taxes were withheld from her paychecks.”
“The contracts don’t make sense and they know [DOGE] will find lots of wrongdoing and illegal activity,” she said. “I’m not a fan of DOGE, but some of the things they’re doing need to be done. They have been operating like this for years and no one did anything about it.”
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Getting more dramatic now. They are trying to get into the office but the agency won&#8217;t let them. Here is a video, shared with permission, of Marocco and some of the DOGE folks outside the elevators <a href="https://t.co/VkLmw3hodW">pic.twitter.com/VkLmw3hodW</a>
— Brett Murphy (@BrettMmurphy) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrettMmurphy/status/1897356477725278340?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 5, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Video shows DOGE aides locked out of the African Development Foundation&#8217;s office. / @BrettMmurphy
<h3>International money-laundering?</h3>
As the Trump administration dismantled USAID and contractors in D.C.’s affluent suburbs complained about the job losses it would cause, some speculated about whether international charity funding was being laundered to politically-connected Washingtonians.
That is not dissimilar to what the African Development Foundation did regularly, according to The Daily Wire’s interviews with employees as well as videotaped internal interviews that became part of a lawsuit.
In one instance, it awarded a grant to a Kenyan journalism group called Africa 24 and directed that group to, in turn, pay the salaries of Americans at the federal agency’s D.C. headquarters. That meant Congress thought it was a charitable grant to Africa, and that the agency had a low overhead rate. In reality, the money was being spent on D.C. bureaucrats.
Chief Financial Officer Mathieu Zahui acknowledged and defended the arrangement.
“The grant was provided to an African organization&#8230;A grant can pay for people,” he told The Daily Wire in an interview at his home, where he has been spending his days after being locked out of the office. “Yeah, granted, they were in D.C.”
Part one of this series revealed that last year, the USAID inspector general seized Zahui’s phone and found that he had received <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Foreign+Aid+Official+Who+Resisted+DOGE+Took+Secret+Payments+After+Steering+Africa+Money+To+Friend%C2%A0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">payments to his personal bank account</a> from the owner of a company to which he steered contracts, but he has not been charged with a crime.
<blockquote>
<h1>“We’re in that murky territory of like, is this legal?” a staffer said. “The CEO specifically directed it.”</h1>
</blockquote>
The agency hired many workers as contractors instead of official government employees, making it possible to pay them using creative funding mechanisms. Once they were hired, executives drew no distinction between contractors and government employees, even having contractors supervise employees, possess government credit cards, and make decisions about money in violation of federal rules, the agency’s former general counsel, Mateo Dunne, told The Daily Wire.
Its CEO from 2016 to 2021, C.D. Glin — a former Peace Corps DEI officer and later an Obama political appointee to the Peace Corps — reverse-engineered African grants to steer money to friends in the United States, employees said.
The agency gave grants to the Association of Ghana Industries on the condition that the African group pay Pyxera Global, a D.C. organization where Glin previously worked as director of business development, to “do a study of the artisan sector in Ghana,” agency program manager Kate Ristroph said in a videotaped internal investigative interview with Dunne.
“We’re in that murky territory of like, is this legal?” she said. “The CEO specifically directed it.”
Glin attempted to foist grants addressing nonexistent problems on African groups as a way to steer money to an affiliate of the Aspen Institute, the left-wing Colorado nonprofit, called Artisan Alliance, Ristroph said. The head of Artisan Alliance at the time “flat out tells us she’s a close personal friend of C.D. Glin,” she said.
The agency offered a grant to the Heva Fund, an African group, on the condition that it send a portion to Artisan Alliance. The grant was ostensibly to produce personal protective equipment like face masks, even though Heva told the agency there was no demand for such a thing because affordable personal protective equipment was readily available in the region.
Heva was so uncomfortable with the proposition that it asked to cancel the grant, Ristroph said. So the agency pushed the plan on a Kenyan group called Ustadi, which also balked, saying “We don&#8217;t need to pay Artisan Alliance, an American company, to help Kenyans learn how to sell masks,” she said.
In another case, a grant to the African group CS Consulting was used to pay the <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/supporting-small-and-medium-enterprises-sub-saharan-africa-through-blended-finance" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Center for Strategic and International Studies</a>, a D.C. think tank. “It’s all basically a pass through to CSIS,” Ristroph said.
She said the agency trains African grantees to avoid third-world style corruption by only giving out contracts that have been competitively bid at arm&#8217;s length, yet she was forced to tell them that the Americans were ordering them to do the opposite.
“I was on the phone with them…saying we’re signing a new grant to [the Association of Ghana Industries], and there will be a component that is a contract with Pyxera Global that is not competed. It’s already been decided,” she said. “It puts me in a compromising position.”
READ PART ONE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Foreign+Aid+Official+Who+Resisted+DOGE+Took+Secret+Payments+After+Steering+Africa+Money+To+Friend%C2%A0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend</a> 
PART THREE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aid-agency-pushed-officials-for-profit-pyramid-scheme-on-poor-africans?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Aid+Agency+Pushed+Official%E2%80%99s+For-Profit+Pyramid+Scheme+On+Poor+Africans">Aid Agency Pushed Official’s For-Profit Pyramid Scheme On Poor Africans</a>
PART FOUR: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/them-white-motherf-ers-racist-agency-framed-its-lawyer-after-he-discovered-lawbreaking-he-says?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=‘Them+White+Motherf-ers’%3A+Racist+Agency+Framed+Its+Lawyer+After+He+Discovered+Lawbreaking%2C+He+Says">‘Them White Motherf-ers’: Racist Agency Framed Its Lawyer After He Discovered Lawbreaking, He Says</a>

African Development Foundation locked the doors when DOGE tried to gain access

African Aid Agency Used Foreign Pass-Throughs To Hide Money That Went To D.C. Staff

Africa

USAID

Editor&#8217;s Note: This is part one of a series of investigative reports on the African Development Foundation, which gained notoriety for resisting the microscope of the Department of Government Efficiency.
&#8212;
A foreign aid official who refused the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to his agency&#8217;s financial records may have had a reason to keep auditors out: he steered illicit contracts to a friend who sent him secret payments, according to a law enforcement affidavit obtained by The Daily Wire.
Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, refused to <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69711562/20/4/brehm-v-marocco/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">grant</a> DOGE access to its books and told the White House that the agency would not acknowledge President Donald Trump’s appointee as chairman of the board. After a dramatic showdown in March, DOGE physically took over the building with U.S. Marshals, but control of the agency is now the subject of a lawsuit objecting to “swooping in with DOGE staff, demanding access to sensitive information systems” — an objection that reads differently in light of the criminal probe.
For years, workers at the small, USAID-adjacent federal agency focused on Africa have told oversight bodies about allegations of self-dealing, procurement violations, and mysterious offshore bank accounts, many of them involving Zahui. But little was done about it, several told The Daily Wire.
One action that raised eyebrows was Zahui’s insistence on directing both grants and contracts to a company in Kenya called Ganiam Ltd. According to <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/search/?hash=974d7f91d366380036f5f1029bc26978" target="_blank" rel="noopener">spending records</a>, it was awarded nearly $800,000 in contracts without competition. For example, a one-year, <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_20341920P00003_2036_-NONE-_-NONE-" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$350,000</a> contract for “transport, travel, relocation” services was executed in March 2020, when few people were traveling or holding conferences because of coronavirus.
According to a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.274261/gov.uscourts.dcd.274261.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">search warrant application</a> uncovered by The Daily Wire, USAID’s inspector general established by August 2024 that the company’s owner had secretly wired money to Zahui’s personal bank account at times that matched up with the federal contracts. To date, the Department of Justice has not charged either man with a crime.
Ganiam Ltd. is owned by Maina Gakure, whom Zahui has known for decades. Both worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs in San Diego and later moved to Fairfax, Virginia. Gakure had been in charge of awarding contracts at the VA, then created his own company designed to get government <a href="http://www.ganiam.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">construction contracts</a> by taking advantage of a minority preference program. It was called Ganiam LLC and was based out of a house in Virginia. Gakure similarly created a company based in Kenya called Gakure Ltd. The African Development Foundation is permitted by <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/96/hr6942/text" target="_blank" rel="noopener">law</a> to give grants only to African entities.
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Earlier this week, a briefing with Pete Marocco (the architect of Trump’s illegal dismantling of USAID) left us with more questions than answers. Worse, he left early to take DOGE staffers and federal marshals to try and forcibly close the U.S. African Development Foundation. <a href="https://t.co/Sxyf2gqL2g">pic.twitter.com/Sxyf2gqL2g</a>
— Senator Brian Schatz (@SenBrianSchatz) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenBrianSchatz/status/1898391541594419261?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2025</a></blockquote>
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In January 2024, inspector general agents interviewed Zahui about the Ganiam contracts, and he acknowledged having known Gakure personally since 1999, and having been to his apartment. He “could not explain why the contract with Ganiam was sole-sourced instead of being competitively bid,” the agents wrote.
Zahui — who was named chief financial officer of the federal agency after he declared bankruptcy and had his house foreclosed on — acknowledged to investigators that the travel contract was executed after COVID had already shut down travel. He told them the contract was actually used for IT services, but since Ganiam had no expertise in IT, it subcontracted it to a different company. A Department of the Treasury contracting official told the agents that was not allowed.
Zahui continued to give more contracts to Ganiam without competition, which he justified by saying he was “lazy” and didn’t want to find a new vendor. “Zahui stated that he did not receive any direct or indirect benefits from Gakure,” agents wrote.
But in February 2024, the agents seized Zahui’s work phone and examined a subset of the data.
“Agents found text messages showing at least eight instances of wire transfers or electronic payments from Gakure to Zahui’s Bank of America account, totaling over $10,000. These payments coincide with USADF’s awarding of sole-source contracts to Ganiam,” they wrote.
“After identifying these payments, the agents stopped their review. Based on the aforementioned evidence, there is probable cause to believe that there are additional relevant communications and instances of payments on the TARGET DEVICE in the applications that have not been reviewed,” they told a judge on October 29, 2024, eight months after seizing the device. They asked for a warrant to examine the rest.
On November 4, 2024, the day before the presidential election, they executed the search warrant.
This February, President Trump fired the African Development Foundation’s board members, and its CEO, Travis Adkins, resigned. A three-person committee, including Zahui, took over the duties of CEO.
On February 21, DOGE “demanded immediate access to USADF systems including financial records and payment and human resources systems,” but Zahui <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69711562/31/brehm-v-marocco/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stalled</a> them. On February 28, the White House emailed Zahui that Pete Marocco, the Trump operative tasked with dismantling USAID, had become acting chairman of the African Development Foundation. Zahui told the White House that agency staff would not honor the appointment because Marocco had not been confirmed by the Senate.
When DOGE returned, staff locked the doors and refused to let them in, creating a dramatic showdown, according to a <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69711562/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit</a> filed against DOGE by the now-fired board. DOGE eventually gained access to the building using U.S. Marshals, and put the staff on leave.
In an interview with The Daily Wire at his home, Zahui said DOGE changed the locks, but that they didn’t know about a back door, and he had gained access since the takeover.
He acknowledged that he selected Gakure’s firm because of their personal relationship, and said Gakure moved to Kenya before COVID.
During the same time period that Ganiam Ltd. was paid as an African company, Ganiam LLC received roughly <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/search?hash=175860208aca119e74e2819f7a2dd58a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$90,000</a> in U.S. coronavirus assistance designed to prevent the loss of American jobs. Gakure did not return a request for comment.
Zahui told The Daily Wire that Ganiam performed IT services during COVID instead of the travel services advertised on contracting documents. Contracting records show that the agency, with only 30 employees, was separately paying astronomical sums for IT, including <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_IDV_20341920D00002_2036" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$865,000</a> to another minority-owned contractor called Etranservices Corp. between 2020 and 2022, with the option to bill up to $4 million.
A former agency employee told The Daily Wire that on top of the $800,000 in contracts to Ganiam, the African Development Foundation also awarded it grants. Zahui initially denied that to The Daily Wire, then conceded it was true. He said it gave grants to Ganiam, which it was required to use to buy airline tickets for the agency’s African partners to attend events on the continent and to take a trip to the United States, where they visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The amount of “grants” to the company is unknown.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Africa Aid Standoff
Workers at the US African Development Foundation, a self-described independent agency, refused building access to the agency’s new acting director on Wednesday.
Marshalls came with DOGE Thurday for attitude adjustment
Is this a peaceful transition of power? <a href="https://t.co/ySOwWbZYNW">pic.twitter.com/ySOwWbZYNW</a>
— Jim DaBink (@JimDaBink) <a href="https://twitter.com/JimDaBink/status/1898862332631306499?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Offshore bank accounts
In November 2023, Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), then the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, asked the USAID inspector general, which has oversight of the African Development Foundation, to open an “immediate investigation” into what he said was a slew of whistleblower complaints about financial irregularities at the agency. Those included “misuse of official funds; fraudulent and corrupt spending practices; conflicts of interest [and] gross mismanagement.”
Among the irregularities cited was “an alleged $2 million deposit by [Zahui] into a bank account in Ghana in February 2023 — that typically would require signature by at least two presently responsible fiduciary agents of the agency,” Risch wrote. “This may also explain why a senior USADF official was unable to account for major financial discrepancies included in the agency&#8217;s FY2024 budget request.”
In an internal videotaped interview obtained by The Daily Wire, regional portfolio manager Jeff Gileo, who was tasked with supervising projects in Africa, said, “a lot of those projects, we never actually saw them. They were managed by [the CFO’s office] directly.” For example, he said he asked for information about a grant in the country of Mauritius and was “told no, because there might be some other information in there that people don&#8217;t need to know about, being run by finance.”
Zahui strongly denied to The Daily Wire that there was a $2 million deposit. He said it was true that there are accounts throughout Africa with money sitting in them, some in countries where the agency hadn’t been active in years. He also said that he had traveled to open and close such bank accounts, but that the money was all accounted for.
“We’ve not operated in Guinea for a long time, it&#8217;s been more than eight years now, but the bank account is there. There&#8217;s money there. When we attempted to transfer the fund to the U.S. Treasury, it didn&#8217;t work. We tried three times,” he said. “I went to Botswana, I close it, I take the money out. I went to Swaziland&#8230;.I close it, and the funds are accounted for today. I couldn&#8217;t bring it here because I couldn&#8217;t cross the — so we put it where we transfer them in an account, what we call ADF — I forget the name, but we have an account in Kenya.”
“We call it funds ‘outside of treasury,’” he said, adding that he planned to help Congress locate the money, but that he hasn’t pointed it out to DOGE because no one has made contact with him. According to its 2022-2023 <a href="https://oig.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/0-ADF-24-003-C.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">financial statement</a>, the agency had $9.7 million “held outside treasury.”
Mateo Dunne, the agency’s former general counsel, told The Daily Wire that he provided the USAID inspector general with extensive documentation of violations of procurement, personnel, and ethics regulations by African Development Foundation officials beginning in 2021, but that even clear-cut violations didn’t appear to be acted upon.
Sen. Risch warned USAID’s inspector general in the 2023 letter that if it didn’t urgently reform the African Development Foundation, Americans might lose trust in USAID and foreign funding as a whole.
“Development assistance plays an important role in U.S. foreign policy. Turning a blind eye to alleged fraud, corruption, and mismanagement in any single development agency or program would undermine the credibility of U.S. development assistance across the board,” he wrote.
Now, just over 3 months into the Trump administration, USAID and the African Development Foundation are gone.
This is Part 1 in a series.
READ PART TWO: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/african-aid-agency-used-foreign-pass-throughs-to-hide-money-that-went-to-d-c-staff-friends?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=African+Aid+Agency+Used+Foreign+Pass-Throughs+To+Hide+Money+That+Went+To+D.C.+Staff%2C+Friends">African Aid Agency Used Foreign Pass-Throughs To Hide Money That Went To D.C. Staff</a>
PART THREE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aid-agency-pushed-officials-for-profit-pyramid-scheme-on-poor-africans?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Aid+Agency+Pushed+Official%E2%80%99s+For-Profit+Pyramid+Scheme+On+Poor+Africans">Aid Agency Pushed Official’s For-Profit Pyramid Scheme On Poor Africans</a>
PART FOUR: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/them-white-motherf-ers-racist-agency-framed-its-lawyer-after-he-discovered-lawbreaking-he-says?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=‘Them+White+Motherf-ers’%3A+Racist+Agency+Framed+Its+Lawyer+After+He+Discovered+Lawbreaking%2C+He+Says">‘Them White Motherf-ers’: Racist Agency Framed Its Lawyer After He Discovered Lawbreaking, He Says</a>

Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation

Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend 

A student at Brown University is facing disciplinary charges for emailing thousands of non-faculty employees in a “Doge-like” email asking, &#8220;What do you do all day?&#8221;
Alex Shieh created a database of 3,805 administrative employees to attempt to understand why the Ivy League has become so expensive after the latest tuition hike brought annual costs for students up to $93,000.
Shieh’s email attempted to identify three particular jobs: &#8220;DEI jobs, redundant jobs, and bulls*** jobs,&#8221; but in the end, Shieh only received several dozen largely profane, belligerent responses from irate bureaucrats in addition to possible repercussions from Brown.
&#8220;Brown is retaliating against me for exposing that the exorbitant tuition costs are going to a bloated bureaucracy, not educating students,&#8221; Shieh <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/brown-university-student-who-angered-non-faculty-employees-doge-like-email-faces-punishment-from-school">told</a> Fox News.
&#8220;Because Brown can’t outright punish me for calling out their hypocrisy, they are instead accusing me of committing obscure conduct violations that are not applicable to my situation, in order to scare other students from speaking out,” he added.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/brown-university-gop-crosshairs-after-students-doge-like-email-kicks-off-frenzy">sent</a> a letter to Brown University Friday morning urging the school to &#8220;reconsider any disciplinary action&#8221; against the Brown sophomore, first reported by Fox News.
&#8220;Reports indicate that Mr. Shieh engaged in a journalistic act of contacting university administrative employees to inquire about their roles and responsibilities. This action, it appears, stemmed from his perspective as a student paying a substantial tuition fee and experiencing concerns regarding university facilities, leading him to question the allocation of administrative resources,&#8221; Nehls <a href="https://nehls.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/nehls.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/05.02.2025-rep-troy-e-nehls-letter-to-brown-university.pdf">wrote</a>.
&#8220;Penalizing a student for what appears to be an attempt to understand the university&#8217;s administrative structure raises serious questions about the institution&#8217;s commitment to open inquiry and the tolerance of dissenting viewpoints.&#8221;
The congressman demanded information on how Brown uses its $7.2 billion endowment, which boasts a 10% annual return, to reduce student costs.
Annual expenses to attend Brown for 2025-2026 are estimated at nearly $96,000, including tuition, fees, food, and housing. Nehls previously introduced legislation that would significantly increase excise taxes on larger colleges&#8217; endowment funds from 1.4% to 21%.
Brown University spokesman Brian Clark denied free speech was the issue, writing in a statement to Fox News, &#8220;At the center of Brown&#8217;s review are questions focused on whether improper use of non-public Brown data systems and/or targeting of individual employees violated law or policy.&#8221;
The controversy emerges as Ivy League schools face scrutiny from the Trump administration over both tuition rates and anti-Semitism concerns.
Shieh’s concerns regarding inflated college bureaucracies are <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulweinstein/2023/08/28/administrative-bloat-at-us-colleges-is-skyrocketing/">reflected</a> in a larger trend amongst universities, as according to Forbes, “Between 1976 and 2018, full-time administrators and other professionals employed by those institutions increased by 164% and 452%, respectively,” and “the number of full-time faculty employed at colleges and universities in the U.S. increased by only 92%, marginally outpacing student enrollment which grew by 78%.”
Shieh is planning to bring his campaign to other Ivy Leagues such as The University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and Cornell University &#8220;to expose wasteful expenditures there&#8221; and release &#8220;an online tool to demand that schools cease and desist DEI.&#8221;

GettyImages-548776411 (1)

University Student Faces Discipline For Emailing 3,800 Staff: ‘What Do You Do All Day?’

Brown University

Education

Free Speech

Ivy League

The United States economy added more jobs than expected in April, while government positions continued to decline, according to the April jobs report.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_05022025.htm">report</a> on Friday, showing that jobs had increased in April by 177,000, much more than the 133,000 that had been projected by the Dow Jones. At the same time, federal jobs declined by around 9,000 while the healthcare, transportation and warehousing, financial activities, and social assistance industries all saw growth. 
&#8220;This is the second month in a row where the jobs report has beat expectations,&#8221; <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/05/jobs-boom-more-americans-working-for-higher-pay/">said</a> White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. &#8220;Wages are continuing to rise and labor force participation is increasing. This is exactly what we want to see. More Americans working for higher wages. More winning is on the way!”
The healthcare industry added 51,000 jobs, including 22,000 in hospitals and 21,000 in ambulatory services, while transportation and warehousing increased by 29,000, according to the report. The 177,000 jobs were lower than the 185,000 jobs that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-cant-lose-march-job-growth-vastly-outpaces-expectations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">were added</a> in March, which also beat job growth expectations. 
Unemployment remained at 4.2%, and the labor force participation rate changed little. This was the first jobs report released after President Donald Trump announced &#8220;Liberation Day&#8221; tariffs. Most of those tariffs have been lowered to 10% across the board, with a 145% tariff on China.
The markets responded positively to the jobs report, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&amp;P 500, and the Nasdaq all jumping more than 1%.
Responding to the news, the White House&#8217;s official &#8220;Rapid Response&#8221; X account celebrated the job gains made in the private sector and the decline in government employment. According to the White House, more than 95% of the jobs added to the economy under President Donald Trump have come from the private sector, while around 25% of the jobs created during President Joe Biden&#8217;s final two years were government jobs.
&#8220;Federal employment has already shrank by 26,000 jobs under Trump after ballooning by 139,000 jobs in Biden’s last two years. President Trump is right-sizing government while unleashing private-sector growth,&#8221; the account posted.
Trump and his top donor, Elon Musk, have pushed for a variety of cuts across the federal workforce — from the IRS to the State Department — through Musk&#8217;s Department of Government Efficiency project. Some of the cuts have come through firings, while other departments have pushed federal employees to accept buyouts to vacate their jobs.
The White House also celebrated the job gains made among native-born Americans during President Trump&#8217;s first three months in office.
&#8220;Biden relied on government jobs and foreign-born workers. Native-born workers have fueled 97.6% of job growth under President Trump,&#8221; the White House posted. &#8220;In Biden’s final two years, native-born Americans accounted for only HALF (56.9%) of employment gains.&#8221;

President Trump Announces Aviation Safety Executive Orders In The Oval Office Of White House

Solid April Jobs Report Shows Govt Employment Drops As Private Sector Growth Beats Expectations

Economy

Jobs

Karoline Leavitt

Stock Market

Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed during Wednesday&#8217;s cabinet meeting that former President Joe Biden&#8217;s State Department had kept dossiers on the social media posts of American citizens — including one person who was &#8220;sitting at this table today.&#8221;
Rubio explained that the office — which appeared to have been created for the sole purpose of censoring American citizens — had been monitoring the social media posts of numerous individuals who were referred to as &#8220;vectors of disinformation.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨This is NUTS: Secretary Rubio just announced that he found DOZENS of files kept by Joe Biden&#8217;s State Department that classified American citizens as &#8220;vectors of disinformation&#8221; — with the intention of censoring them.
That&#8217;s not all.
Marco Rubio says that there&#8217;s someone in… <a href="https://t.co/Q8FcrNp9M9">pic.twitter.com/Q8FcrNp9M9</a>
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) <a href="https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1917630441546240121?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans,&#8221; Rubio said. &#8220;And by the way, I&#8217;m not going to say who it is, I&#8217;ll leave it up to them, there&#8217;s at least one person at this table today who had a dossier in that building of social media posts to identify them as purveyors of disinformation. We have these dossiers. We are going to be turning those over to these individuals —&#8221;
Vice President JD Vance interrupted with a question: &#8220;Was it me or Elon?&#8221;
Laughter erupted around the table as Rubio continued, &#8220;Well, we are going to turn over these dossiers to the individuals, and they will decide whether they want to disclose it or not. But just think about it — the Department of State of the United States had set up an office to monitor the social media posts and commentary of American citizens, to identify them as vectors of disinformation, when we know that the best [way] to combat disinformation is freedom of speech and transparency.&#8221;
&#8220;And so that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re going to be in the business of doing, we&#8217;re not going to have an office that does that,&#8221; Rubio concluded.

Marco Rubio Sworn In As US Secretary Of State

Rubio Says Biden State Dept Had A Dossier On ‘One Person At This Table,’ And JD Vance Has Questions

Rubio Says Biden State Dept Had A Dossier On 'One Person At This Table,' And JD Vance Has Questions

Censorship

JD Vance

Joe Biden

Marco Rubio

State Department

Neil Young is facing criticism for a new song he wrote about “fascists” buying Teslas.
The 79-year-old singer-songwriter debuted the song, reportedly titled “Let’s Roll Again,” at the Light Up the Blue charity concert in Los Angeles over the weekend. 
“If you’re a fascist, get a Tesla / It’s electric, it doesn’t matter / If you’re a Democrat, taste your freedom / Get whatever you want, taste your freedom,&#8221; Young could be heard singing in clips circulating on social media. 
“Come on Ford, come on GM / Come on Chrysler, let&#8217;s roll again,&#8221; the song continued. &#8220;Build something special that people need / Build us a safe way for us to meet / Build something that won&#8217;t kill our kids / Runs real clean.&#8221;
“Come on America, let’s get in the race / China’s way ahead, they’re making clean cars,” Young sang.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Neil Young attacks Elon Musk: “If you’re a fascist, get a Tesla &#8211; It’s electric, it doesn’t matter. If you’re a Democrat, taste your freedom &#8211; get whatever you want, taste your freedom.” <a href="https://t.co/Gva6vtb1BK">pic.twitter.com/Gva6vtb1BK</a>
&mdash; Unlimited L&#39;s (@unlimited_ls) <a href="https://twitter.com/unlimited_ls/status/1917538359062462668?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Responses on social media have been full of mockery.
“Neil Young waddling up to a mic like a deranged scarecrow, screeching out his geriatric fever dream of a protest song, is peak washed-up hippie cringe,” one X user <a href="https://x.com/SchoenPhotog/status/1917622372800290880">wrote</a>. &#8220;Neil, you sound like a college freshman who just discovered Reddit and thinks quoting China makes them deep… Time to unplug his amp and his internet, he’s gone full granola lunatic.”
“Imagine 25-year-old Neil Young seeing what a boorish square he would become,” another person <a href="https://x.com/NolteNC/status/1917669704660910416">agreed</a>.
“Another washed up slob,” political commentator Mark Levin <a href="https://x.com/marklevinshow/status/1917759301646504311">said</a>.
The new song comes as Elon Musk’s car company <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-significantly-cut-back-doge-time?author=Daniel+Chaitin&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Elon+To+%E2%80%98Significantly%E2%80%99+Cut+Back+On+DOGE+Time">reported</a> a 71% earnings drop over the past three months when compared to the first quarter of last year. This decline was driven in part by frequent protests over Musk working with President Donald Trump on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative.
Recently, Young said he was afraid Trump wouldn’t allow him back into the country after his upcoming European tour.
“When I go to play music in Europe, if I talk about Donald J. Trump, I may be one of those returning to America who is barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminum blanket,” he wrote on his <a href="https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/3">website</a>. “That is happening all the time now. Countries have new advice for those returning to America.”
&nbsp;

Neil Young

Neil Young Slammed For New Anti-Tesla Song: ‘Peak Washed-Up Hippie Cringe’

Neil Young Slammed For New Anti-Tesla Song: 'Peak Washed-Up Hippie Cringe'

Celebrities

Entertainment

We have been hearing for a while that the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) under the tutelage of Elon Musk has been a giant failure.
We’ve been hearing this from the legacy media, who have been saying that all the cuts are basically fake, that nothing is happening, that it&#8217;s chaos that&#8217;s wrecking the country.
It is true that not one Social Security check has been stopped. The Medicaid and the Medicare checks are also still going out. The government, unfortunately, is still running much as before.
But — much spending has really been stopped. There&#8217;s been an open question as to how much spending will be stopped, how much can be temporarily frozen versus actually just cut. Will firing these employees actually stick?
But Democrats are caterwauling because, as it turns out, DOGE has been quite effective in stopping an enormous amount of spending. Trillions of dollars? No. Is it hundreds of billions of dollars? Yes.
According to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-withholding-43687-billion-approved-spending-top-democrats-2025-04-29/">Reuters</a>:
<blockquote>U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has so far withheld at least $436.87 billion of congressionally approved funding, the top Democrats on the U.S. Congress&#8217; appropriation committees said on Tuesday. The frozen allotments span the federal government, according to the first estimate of the potential impoundments in the project led by Senator Patty Murray from Washington and Representative Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut. Almost $42 billion was frozen or canceled for the State Department, including the frozen support for USAID, along with another $62 billion-plus in competitive grant funding for the Transportation Department, according to the estimate. The Democrats also detailed $943 million frozen for the Head Start early-education program.</blockquote>
Head Start is one of the great failures in federal history. The data on Head Start has been pretty solid for a long time, showing effectively no difference between kids who go to Head Start and kids who do not. There&#8217;s also been some $10 billion frozen and canceled for the Natural Resources Conservation Service as well.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2189-member-exclusive?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
Democrats, of course, are very angry about all of this. All of the spending is going to have to be put permanently into the “no-spend” category by Congress. They can do so with a simple 50 vote majority in the Senate. That is presumably the path Congress is going to have to take.
The focus needs to move to Congress, because the truth is that President Trump and DOGE can temporarily freeze a lot of this funding, but unless it&#8217;s rescinded by Congress, it will go right back into place after a certain period of time.
This is the reason why Democrats are freaking out about all of this.
They&#8217;re worried that Republicans are going to start passing rescission bills that would make many of the freezes permanent and then turn the freezes into cuts.
According to Reuters, “The administration has cited Musk&#8217;s Department of Government Efficiency and the undoing of the federal government&#8217;s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as reasons for blocking congressionally approved funding.”
The question is how much the executive branch can actually block that funding under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. Usually the president has to tweak levels by proposing cuts. That would be the rescission. That has not happened so far.
Which brings us to Congress. Right now it would be an act of political magic. Every time you get a Republican majority together, it&#8217;s a bit of political magic. The reason for that is because the Republican House majority is unbelievably narrow.
Even in the Senate of the United States, you have to acknowledge that senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are likely to go the other way on major legislation. That cuts the GOP majority to 51 votes. There are still holdovers like Mitch McConnell (D-NY), who may vote against something President Trump wants. There are a wide variety of other senators with various interests.
So getting this whole thing together is an attempt to herd cats by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), as well as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA).
Can they do it? That&#8217;s the question.

President Trump Holds “Make America Wealthy Again Event” In White House Rose Garden

It’s Up To Congress Now

Ben Shapiro

Congress

DOGE

Federal Government

John Thune

Mike Johnson

Opinion

President Trump

On Wednesday, Elon Musk declared a &#8220;tremendous amount&#8221; has been accomplished during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump&#8217;s second term, a message the tech guru delivered as he prepares to spend less time working on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative.
Musk — who has said he plans to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-significantly-cut-back-doge-time" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rededicate</a> himself to his electric car and energy company, Tesla, starting next month — trumpeted the Trump administration&#8217;s achievements during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
&#8220;The American people voted for secure borders, safe cities, and sensible spending, and that&#8217;s what they have gotten. A tremendous amount has been accomplished in the first 100 days,&#8221; Musk said, adding later, &#8220;This portends very well for what happens for the rest of the administration. I think this could be the greatest administration since the founding of the country.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a>: &quot;The people voted for secure borders, safe cities, and sensible spending and that&#39;s what they&#39;ve gotten. A tremendous amount has been accomplished in the first 100 days.&quot;<a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>: &quot;You have been treated unfairly but the vast majority of people in this country really… <a href="https://t.co/I6X1WINZew">pic.twitter.com/I6X1WINZew</a>
&mdash; Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1917623036351488445?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
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After helping Trump get elected last year, Musk <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/13/upshot/musk-doge-1-trillion-goal.html">endeavored</a> to remove $1 trillion in waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal budget via the DOGE initiative. With cuts to programs and jobs across the bureaucracy, DOGE&#8217;s website now says &#8220;estimated savings&#8221; have <a href="https://doge.gov/savings" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reached</a> $160 billion.
Musk&#8217;s involvement with DOGE sparked controversy. There have been protests at Tesla locations across the United States and abroad, as well as incidents that the FBI says have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-issues-warning-over-left-wing-terrorist-attacks-against-tesla" target="_blank" rel="noopener">involved</a> vandalism, arson, and gunfire, resulting in charges being filed against some alleged perpetrators.
During the Cabinet meeting, Trump said Musk &#8220;sacrificed a lot&#8221; and has been &#8220;treated very unfairly,&#8221; to which Musk quipped that people burning his cars is &#8220;not great.&#8221; The president also insisted that the &#8220;vast majority of people in this country really respect and appreciate you,&#8221; although recent polls show public support for Musk has <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/elon-musk-approval-low-reflecting-opposition-trump-cuts/story?id=121199149" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dropped</a> since the DOGE effort began.
Musk <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-significantly-cut-back-doge-time" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> in a Tesla earnings call that he believed &#8220;starting probably in the next month, May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly&#8221; while he planned to put more focus back on Tesla, which has just <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/22/tesla-tsla-earnings-report-q1-2025.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> a 71% net income drop in the first quarter, compared to one year ago.
Trump acknowledged that Musk wanted to &#8220;get back&#8221; to his cars, but he also told Musk, &#8220;You&#8217;re invited to stay as long as you want.&#8221; The president also said &#8220;a lot of stuff is being worked on&#8221; and contended that DOGE&#8217;s $160 billion savings figure &#8220;could be doubled and even tripled&#8221; as &#8220;a lot of things are being worked on that we don&#8217;t count because it&#8217;s not quite there.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a>: &quot;Elon, I love the double hat by the way.&quot;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a>: &quot;Well, Mr. President, you know they say I wear a lot of hats. Even my hat has a hat!&quot; <a href="https://t.co/iwlSpTDQVl">pic.twitter.com/iwlSpTDQVl</a>
&mdash; Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) <a href="https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1917622693215756416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
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A light-hearted moment took place when Trump first began speaking to Musk and took note of how the tech executive was wearing multiple hats on his head. The top hat was a red one that read, &#8220;GULF OF AMERICA.&#8221;
&#8220;Elon, I love the double hat, by the way,&#8221; Trump said. Laughter erupted in the room as Trump added that Musk was &#8220;the only one that can do that and get away with it.&#8221; Musk replied, &#8220;Well, Mr. President, you know they say I wear a lot of hats. That&#8217;s true. Even my hat has a hat!&#8221; More laughs ensued.

Elon Salutes Trump’s First 100 Days: ‘Could Be The Greatest’ Ever

Cabinet

Elon Musk says he will soon reduce his time overseeing the Trump administration&#8217;s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, a role that has taken a toll on his electric car and energy company, Tesla.
&#8220;The large slug of work necessary to get the DOGE team in place and working in the government to get the financial house in order is mostly done,&#8221; Musk said during a Tesla earnings call on Tuesday.
&#8220;And I think starting probably in the next month, May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,&#8221; Musk continued, adding later, &#8220;I&#8217;ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla&#8230;&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
BREAKING: Musk says he&#39;ll be cutting down time at DOGE starting in May to dedicate more time to Tesla but will spend a couple of days at DOGE a week for Trump&#39;s entire presidency.
&quot;The large amount of work necessary to get the DOGE team in place&#8230; is mostly done.&quot;
&quot;Starting… <a href="https://t.co/S6cy9kUB5m">pic.twitter.com/S6cy9kUB5m</a>
&mdash; Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) <a href="https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1914800041354781078?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 22, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Musk suggested that he will continue working in DOGE for the remainder of President Donald Trump&#8217;s term, &#8220;a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so.&#8221;
Tesla reported a 71% earnings drop over the past three months when <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/04/22/tesla-earnings-elon-musk-politics-stock/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">compared</a> to the first quarter of last year. But the company&#8217;s stock rose approximately 5% in after-hours trading as Musk reassured investors.
&#8220;Musk just made a huge step forward on call. DOGE work basically ending (1-2 days a week)…now his focus back on Tesla. Street needed to hear this,&#8221; Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a <a href="https://x.com/DivesTech/status/1914797271855648909" target="_blank" rel="noopener">post</a> on X.
As the U.S. national debt approaches $37 trillion, Musk endeavored to remove $1 trillion from the federal budget. DOGE&#8217;s website says &#8220;estimated savings&#8221; have <a href="https://doge.gov/savings" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reached</a> $160 billion amid cuts to programs and jobs across the bureaucracy.
However, Musk&#8217;s involvement with DOGE has sparked controversy, including protests at Tesla locations across the United States and abroad, as well as incidents that the FBI says have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-issues-warning-over-left-wing-terrorist-attacks-against-tesla" target="_blank" rel="noopener">involved</a> vandalism, arson, and gunfire.
Musk said DOGE led to &#8220;some blowback,&#8221; but he stressed, &#8220;I think the work that we&#8217;re doing there is actually very important for trying to rein in the insane deficit that is leading our country, the United States, to destruction.&#8221;
DOGE has &#8220;made a lot of progress&#8221; addressing &#8220;waste and fraud,&#8221; Musk said. He also noted it is &#8220;natural&#8221; that those receiving &#8220;wasteful dollars and the fraudulent dollars&#8221; would try to &#8220;attack&#8221; him and those associated with him.

Elon To ‘Significantly’ Cut Back On DOGE Time

&#8220;The Office&#8221; star Rainn Wilson gave MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle some pushback during a recent interview, after she attempted to claim that public distrust in media could be traced directly back to President Donald Trump and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Wilson actually posed the question, citing poll data and saying that some &#8220;40% of Americans don&#8217;t trust mainstream media.&#8221; He then pressed Ruhle to address that distrust and explain what she believed to be at the root of that problem.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨NEW: &quot;The Office&quot; Co-Star Rainn Wilson refutes MSNBC Host Stephanie Ruhle for blaming Trump and <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a> for why faith in media has PLUNGED🚨
WILSON: &quot;I would push back: when I see this kind of insight and passion being directed at the current administration and the lack of… <a href="https://t.co/X9coaOMoGU">pic.twitter.com/X9coaOMoGU</a>
&mdash; Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/1914674413779243036?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 22, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Why is that? How did we get here?&#8221; he asked.
&#8220;Listen, we are seeing a huge loss of trust in all of our institutions. It&#8217;s the media. It&#8217;s medicine. It&#8217;s banking. It&#8217;s a huge problem because when you think about democracy and all of these pillars, they need to stand tall, they need to stand strong,&#8221; Ruhle replied, pivoting to blame Trump almost immediately.
&#8220;And sort of losing that trust is not by accident, it&#8217;s by design,&#8221; she claimed. &#8220;If you remember when President Trump was running the first time, Steve Bannon once said, &#8216;The goal is to blow the whole thing up.&#8217; And so I think that you&#8217;ve got mistakes made or things starting to slip while at the same time there&#8217;s a concerted effort to destroy the media. Because the media — the news media — is, in my opinion, the last line of defense of holding power accountable.&#8221;
Ruhle went on to say that the &#8220;perfect storm&#8221; of Trump getting reelected and Musk drawing people away from traditional media had ultimately been what had brought about such high levels of distrust.
&#8220;This is where I would push back,&#8221; Wilson interrupted, adding, &#8220;When I see this kind of insight and passion being directed at the current administration and the lack of this kind of insight and passion being directed at the previous administration — where, again, I&#8217;m not talking about you, I&#8217;m talking about left-leaning news media organizations were kind of like, &#8216;La la la la, everything&#8217;s fine. Look, the environment&#8217;s — look, the economy is great, la la la, immigration’s not that much of a problem,&#8217; and really being Cleopatra, queen of denial. Thank you. Boom.&#8221;

Rainn Wilson

‘The Office’ Star Mocks Lefty Media For Digging Their Own Graves: ‘Cleopatra, Queen Of Denial’

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