'This is so unusual': NYT reporter wonders how long Trump is stuck with Elon Musk

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'This is so unusual': NYT reporter wonders how long Trump is stuck with Elon Musk
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk reacts next to Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump during a campaign rally, at the site of the July assassination attempt against Trump, in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

A New York Times reporter capped off a discussion about the House budget bill by wondering how long Donald Trump would be saddled with Elon Musk.

House Speaker Mike Johnson notched a legislative win late Tuesday with a framework for the "big, beautiful bill" on the budget that Trump has called for. The president personally pressured Republican holdouts, and Times journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro gave Trump credit for it passing the House during a discussion on "CNN This Morning."

"I actually think what you saw was very impressive," she said. "I mean, you saw Trump really actually being incredibly engaged, calling up lawmakers, getting them to the table. This is actually where a president matters. This is actually something that was a big question whether Trump was going to engage in at this granular level, and we've seen him do it."

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) decided to back the bill after Trump called him, but the congressman insisted that he wasn't threatened or promised anything.

"That to me when there's no quid pro quo means 'I am not going to fund a challenger against you moving forward,'" said panelist Meghan Hayes, a former communications aide to Joe Biden. "So I think that's a little bit, you know, they're getting to the table for different reasons, and it will be interesting to see how this all plays out."

She then veered to Elon Musk and his federal government cuts.

"But back to your question about [are Musk's budget cuts] being done respectfully and firing [federal workers]? It is not being done respectfully. But I do agree with you that Donald Trump's term is going to be defined in what happens in this bill."

History tends to focus on a president's first 100 days, but Trump's term may be defined by the 130-day term that Musk has pledged to serve in an undefined but overarching role, she said.

"Well, we don't know how long he's going to be serving as a special government employee," Garcia-Navarro said. "Let's be clear, but yes, Eon Musk has become a focus, and this is where I'd push back a little because this is so unusual, when have we ever seen someone like this, the richest man in the world, coming in and having such sway over the government, over the president, and over the first term of a new administration? We've never seen it before, and so, therefore, it is legitimately fascinating, important and worthy of scrutiny."

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'Complete madness': Trump DHS expert warns of 'catastrophe' with 'woefully' prepped agents

Department of Homeland Security expert and whistleblower Miles Taylor warned that the Trump administration plans to use "woefully unequipped" agents for elections.

During a Tuesday appearance on CNN, Taylor responded to reports that DHS plans to launch voter fraud investigations into nine states, mostly blue states, and use Homeland Security Investigations agents to pursue leads and conduct field interviews to support prosecutorial review.

"This is complete madness," Taylor warned. "I've spent 20 years working with this department. I've worked with almost every homeland security secretary of every presidential administration of both parties, and most of them would tell you their immigration agents are absolutely, woefully unequipped to jump into an election and play a critical role in an election."

According to CNN, the agents that the sources say DHS is planning to use for elections typically track down cartels and human trafficking leads. Taylor said that DHS would need to train agents, including those from the Coast Guard or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, before sending them on an assignment from one agency to another. However, that's not the case here, Taylor said.

"They need to understand the left and right parameters of the law and what they are getting into," Taylor said. "These agents are not trained to do this. This is a catastrophe waiting to happen."

Taylor said that Trump's DHS has sent in agents without the necessary training before. "This is something that's actually now been going on for months," he said.

"The administration has had USCIS agents that are supposed to be investigating visa fraud — it retasked them this summer, almost everyone who was working on visa fraud, to start combing through voter rolls," Taylor said. "This is entirely inappropriate. I'm not going to send a baker into a hospital to do brain surgery on someone, yet that's what this administration is doing."

Summing up the Trump administration's strategy, he said, "they're just taking warm bodies in the department and throwing them at elections, and it's just, again, it's a recipe for disaster where people's rights may very well be violated."

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Trump DOJ retreats by walking back affirmative action hiring lawsuit

The Justice Department is invoking a landmark civil rights law as it walks back a lawsuit seeking to dismantle a state's affirmative action hiring policy.

In a memorandum filed on Tuesday, the DOJ asked a three-judge panel for leave to amend its complaint in a lawsuit it first brought against the state on January 14.

The suit accuses Minnesota of maintaining a "race- and sex-based affirmative action policy" for its state civil service that amounts to a "pattern or practice" violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the very statute written to bar discrimination in employment.

The Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, says its rewritten complaint would sharpen the case into a purely "facial challenge" and seek only forward-looking relief. The rewritten complaint would instead seek a "declaratory judgment that Minnesota's affirmative action policy violates Title VII" and a "permanent injunction" barring the state from enforcing it, the DOJ wrote.

DOJ lawyers cast the revision as an effort to streamline the fight and pointed to the court's instruction that the parties "work cooperatively throughout this litigation to narrow the issues in dispute."

The DOJ insisted it had a "legitimate, good faith reason for bringing this Title VII lawsuit" and that it "in no way singled Minnesota out for enforcement action." The proposed complaint "lists various other active investigations to demonstrate that the United States is not selectively enforcing Title VII against Minnesota," the DOJ added.

The new court filing complains that Minnesota's affirmative action rules "remained in effect following the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's rescission of its affirmative action guidance," referring to guidance the government withdrew.

The DOJ argued that the rewrite should cost the state nothing and told the court that its amended complaint is "likely to narrow (if not eliminate) the need for discovery" as the "case remains in its infancy."

James Comey guts Trump prosecutors' case by turning their own law against them

Attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey argued that federal prosecutors charged him under the wrong law, dooming their case.

In a Tuesday court filing, Comey's attorneys contended that the Trump administration's case against him cannot survive its own legal theory. The Department of Justice is accusing Comey of threatening President Donald Trump after he posted a photo showing seashells arranged to read "86 47."

According to the Trump administration, an "objective viewer" could read the post to mean "Kill President Donald Trump," the court filing noted. Comey's lawyers argue the charge fails even if that reading were correct.

"On the actual question before the Court, the government has little to offer," Comey's lawyers wrote. "A call for others to commit violence can only be incitement—which the indictment does not charge."

The defense accuses prosecutors of trying to run one kind of case through the wrong kind of charge. "The government's attempt to prosecute an incitement case through a threats indictment violates settled law," Comey's lawyers wrote. "The indictment must be dismissed."

Comey's lawyers added that prosecuting him under the wrong law would unconstitutionally "broaden the possible bases for conviction beyond those included in the indictment."

The defense leans on Fourth Circuit precedent, including United States v. White, in which the court held that posts "'to the public generally'" calling on others to kill an activist amounted to "'political hyperbole,'" not a true threat.

Comey's lawyers also attacked the DOJ's evidence that "86" means "to kill." Prosecutors rely on "a 2005 edition of Cassell's Dictionary of Slang" and a 1991 New York Times article that itself had to clarify that the term was "military jargon for killed in action." The need to define it shows "the ordinary meaning of '86' is not 'to kill,'" Comey's lawyers wrote, contending that "86 47" is "a statement of nonviolent political opposition."

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