The Week in Musk: "Truly a moron"

Elon Musk (right) sits next to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer during a Cabinet meeting on April 10, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

In public outbursts and private pleas, Elon Musk has spent the past week opposing Donald Trump’s protectionist policies. Over the weekend, Musk, a top Trump adviser and head of the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, privately urged the president to drop the sweeping tariffs he had implemented against top U.S. trading partners, according to the Washington Post.

Musk has also used X, his social media platform, to insult White House senior trade counselor Peter Navarro. “Truly a moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” are two of the colorful ways Musk described Navarro online. Those slights came after Navarro, in a CNBC interview, said the Tesla chief is “not a car manufacturer, he’s a car assembler” who wants “cheap foreign parts.” The White House has avoided picking a side. “Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

It’s unclear what effect Musk’s appeals had on Trump. But on Wednesday afternoon, the president opted to place a 90-day pause on the smothering “reciprocal” tariffs — with the exception of Chinese imports, which will now be subject to a 145% tariff.

For what it’s worth, Musk seems to think that he won the fight with Navarro. On Wednesday afternoon, as Tesla’s share price recovered some of its post-tariff losses, he shared a winking emoji on X. Included in the post was a meme depicting Musk as a Pepe the Frog-themed Captain America.

DOGE using AI to surveil federal workers

Reuters reported on Tuesday that DOGE is using artificial intelligence to spy on federal workers in an effort to uncover anti-Trump or anti-Musk sentiment shared on workplace channels.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, some EPA managers were told by Trump appointees that Musk’s team is rolling out AI to monitor workers, including looking for language in communications considered hostile to Trump or Musk, the two people said…

Trump-appointed officials who had taken up EPA posts told managers that DOGE was using AI to monitor communication apps and software, including Microsoft Teams, which is widely used for virtual calls and chats, said the two sources familiar with these comments. “We have been told they are looking for anti-Trump or anti-Musk language,” a third source familiar with the EPA said.

The Trump administration has already placed hundreds of EPA employees on leave and plans to slash 65% of the agency’s budget.

In the same report, Reuters revealed that DOGE team members use Grok — the chatbot built by Musk’s AI company — in the workplace, though it is unclear what they’re using it for.

Government Accountability Office is auditing DOGE

The Government Accountability Office, an independent agency led by the U.S. Comptroller General, has launched an audit of DOGE. The audit will review DOGE’s work at the Departments of the Treasury, Education, Labor, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and the Social Security Administration, according to Wired.

Records show that the GAO—an independent auditing, research, and investigative agency for Congress—appears to be requesting comprehensive information from the agencies in question, including incident reports on “potential or actual misuse of agency systems or data” and documentation of policies and procedures relating to systems DOGE operatives have accessed, as well as documentation of policies for the agency's risk assessments, audit logs, insider threat programs, and more.

While a number of Democratic officials have sounded the alarm on DOGE’s activities, this audit is one of the first real signs of possible accountability and oversight.

The GAO’s review is expected to be completed by the end of spring, according to records reviewed by WIRED. Congressional sources say it will yield a report that will be made public.

Separately, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday that the GAO has been “engaged with some of the Department of Government Efficiency efforts, and they’re actually using our recommendations to help carry out their activities.”

Tesla’s sole growth division hamstrung by tariffs; demand for Model Y refresh lags

Tesla’s energy storage division, its only growing business, could be severely affected by Trump’s trade war with China. In last week’s Q1 report — in which Tesla disclosed a 13% decline year over year in vehicle deliveries — the company reported delivering 10 GWh of energy storage. That was a first-quarter record. However, Tesla’s Megapack and Powerwall battery storage products rely heavily on Chinese imports. From Electrek:

The company is believed to almost exclusively use LFP battery cells from China’s CATL in its stationary energy storage products. With the upcoming [battery specific tariffs] in 2026, Tesla was likely preparing for the change. Last year, there were rumors that Tesla was looking to establish a LFP battery plant in the U.S. in partnership with CATL, but the plans have yet to materialize.

Also from Electrek, there appears to be limited demand for the less expensive version of the new Model Y, which Tesla began delivering in the U.S. on Friday. “[We] found several zip codes on both the West Coast and the East Coast where Tesla claims it can deliver the new vehicle ‘today,’” wrote Electrek’s Fred Lambert. “This would point to Tesla already having vehicles in inventory despite launching it just four days ago.”

Investors have been banking on the refresh of the Model Y, Tesla's bestselling product, to remedy the company’s sales slump. But demand was already lagging following the March release of the $60,000 Model Y Launch Edition. The version released last week is $11,000 cheaper.

SpaceX lands lucrative Pentagon contracts; Democrats probe Musk’s NASA conflicts; FCC weighs new rules that would benefit Starlink

Last week, Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, was awarded the largest portion of a Pentagon procurement program to launch its most critical satellites. SpaceX’s share of the program is worth $5.9 billion. Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s United Launch Alliance was awarded $5.3 billion, and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin was awarded $2.3 billion. The announcement marks a reversal from the previous phase of the program, when “SpaceX won 40% of the missions while ULA got 60%,” according to Reuters.

At NASA, U.S. Representatives Gerry Connolly and Maxwell Frost have launched an investigation into Musk’s potential conflicts of interest involving SpaceX and NASA. "At NASA, where Mr. Musk has both benefited from significant contracts and has the potential to receive vast amounts of new business, his defiance of recusal laws and control of operations directly benefit his businesses," the Democratic lawmakers wrote in an information and document request to NASA’s chief legal officer. "The known conflicts of interest presented by this arrangement are illegal and must be addressed immediately." (On Wednesday, Jared Isaacman, Trump’s nominee to lead NASA, told a Senate committee that SpaceX works for NASA, “not the other way around.” Isaacman, a billionaire, is a former SpaceX astronaut and owes much of his fortune to SpaceX.)

At the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), chairman Brendan Carr has opened the door to easing radio emission constraints — a change that would benefit Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite broadband provider. “We will look to update our rules in the frequencies commonly known by satellite aficionados (read: nerds) as the Ka- and Ku- bands,” Carr said in a memo previewing the FCC’s April agenda, according to PC Mag.

“Innovations have been held back by FCC technical rules that we adopted thirty years ago,” he continued. “Power limits developed in the 1990s to protect geostationary satellite systems from interference continue to restrict the performance of non-geostationary satellite systems, even though advancements in sharing technology arguably make the rules of the past no longer necessary.” Carr did not mention SpaceX or Starlink specifically, but the broadband provider uses both bands and asked the FCC to change its radio emission regulations in August.

SpaceX is also lobbying the FCC to unwind a rule hindering older smartphone models from accessing the direct-to-cell service Starlink is launching with T-Mobile in July.

While there is no indication that DOGE has impacted FCC policies that relate to SpaceX, staffers for the Musk-led initiative have been installed at the agency, the Verge reported last week.

X restricts parody accounts; White House legitimizes platform’s “news” division; E.U. considers massive fine

On Thursday, X, Musk’s social media platform, imposed new restrictions targeting “parody” accounts. Musk's policy of purchasable verification badges has exacerbated the problem, allowing anyone to easily impersonate another user by copying their profile photo and username and throwing in a blue checkmark to make the profile appear legitimate. Scammers have used the process to great effect — a fake Musk account recently earned hundreds of thousands of interactions by advertising a Tesla giveaway — and famously, one X user crashed Eli Lilly’s stock by making an account impersonating the pharmaceutical company and promising free insulin.

Under X’s new policy, parody accounts must include keywords like “parody” or “fan” at the beginning of their usernames and cannot use “identical avatars to the entities they depict.”

In other X news, the platform’s head of news content, former Wall Street Journal editor John Stoll, has been granted a rotating seat in the White House’s press briefing room. While introducing Stoll at his first briefing last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt lauded X as “home to hundreds of millions of users, a large contingent of independent journalists, and news organizations across geographies and political spectrums.” On Thursday, the “new media” seat was awarded to Zero Hedge, the mendacious financial blog that fueled Musk’s obsession with Fort Knox’s “missing” gold bars.

For those wondering what X’s news division does, the platform recently launched a “Today’s News” tab, which automatically appears on user feeds and is populated by a trio of AI-written news summaries.

In Europe, meanwhile, regulators are preparing to fine X for violating the Digital Services Act, a new law aimed at restraining social media disinformation. From the New York Times:

The fine could surpass $1 billion, one person said, as regulators seek to make an example of X to deter other companies from violating the law…

The investigation began in 2023, and regulators last year issued a preliminary ruling that X had violated the law. The European Union and X could still reach a settlement if the company agrees to changes that satisfy regulators’ concerns, the officials said.

X also faces a second E.U. investigation that is broader and that could lead to further penalties. In that investigation, two people said, E.U. officials are building a case that X’s hands-off approach to policing user-generated content has made it a hub of illegal hate speech, disinformation and other material that is viewed as undercutting democracy across the 27-nation bloc.

Musk has previously said he would contest an E.U. fine against X in “a very public [court] battle.”

Elon’s disastrous gaming session

On Sunday, aboard one of his private jets, Musk used Starlink to stream himself playing Path of Exile 2 (POE2) on X. Although he recently admitted to having other players pilot his POE2 accounts for him, Musk has long tried to sell himself as one of the top gamers in the world. But during the stream, Musk died several times, his frustration rising after each demise. Since he was playing the game on the "hardcore" difficulty setting, that meant that every time his character died, he had to create a new one.

Amid these deaths — against the tutorial level boss, no less — Musk was barraged with insults from other players. “YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND YOU WILL DIE ALONE,” read one message. “YOU WILL ALWAYS FEEL INSECURE AND IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY,” read another. While Musk rarely spoke during the stream, he did take a moment to utter his favorite slur. “There’s a lot of retards in the chat,” Musk complained as he muted a player continuously asking why Tesla is “falling apart.”

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Musk Minutes

The National Institutes of Health has told employees to “disregard” DOGE’s efforts to monitor worker spending and productivity at the agency. (Politico)

Trump has sicced DOGE on the U.S. Navy, ordering the initiative to investigate the service branch’s extensive history of shipbuilding fiascos. (Politico)

At the Internal Revenue Service, DOGE is hosting a “hackathon” next week to merge the agency’s disparate databases, making it easier to access taxpayer data. (Wired)

Also at the IRS, the agency’s acting chief plans to leave the agency next month amid DOGE’s efforts to use tax data to hunt down undocumented migrants. (Wall Street Journal)

DOGE is in the process of virtually shuttering a Department of Justice division dedicated to investigating tax fraud. (Talking Points Memo)

A Housing and Urban Development contract for inspections of low-income and federally assisted housing was canceled by DOGE. The inspections are necessary to find potentially life-threatening flaws, including gas leaks and broken smoke detectors. Canceling the contract — which DOGE falsely claimed was for “software modification” — likely won’t save taxpayers any money, as HUD will now have to arrange for new contractors to conduct the inspections. (ABC News)

DOGE plans to enact sizable cuts to personnel at the Department of Homeland Security, including the Secret Service. (CNN)

In a 2-1 ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restored DOGE’s access to databases housed by the Education Department, the Treasury Department, and the Office of Personnel Management. The access — challenged by a lawsuit led by the American Federation of Teachers — was previously revoked by a federal judge. (Associated Press)

The government of Yukon, a northwestern Canadian territory, is responding to Trump’s tariffs by canceling consumer incentives that benefit Tesla and is exploring scrapping its contracts with Starlink. The announcement comes a few weeks after Ontario canceled a deal with Starlink valued at $100 million. (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

In Washington state Monday night, another Tesla charging facility was damaged in a suspected act of vandalism involving a small explosive device. The FBI and local police are investigating the incident, according to Tesla. (Electrek)