<The thirty-eight-year-old father dropped his son at preschool and set off for work. He’d recently purchased a Tesla Model XP100D, an SUV with a six-figure price tag that boasted falcon-wing doors, the dream car he’d saved up for and bought himself as a birthday gift.

Walter Huang believed in Tesla. His lawyers would later say that he thought his car, when placed in Tesla’s Autopilot mode, was safer than one driven by a human driver.

He was such a dedicated enthusiast that he joined a Facebook Model X ownership group and regularly talked to a friend about the performance of the Autopilot software. His wife said he would watch YouTube videos of Autopilot in his spare time.

This reconstruction of Huang’s drive is based substantially on documents from the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) accident docket.

Lately, Huang had been having problems with his Model X. The car, which he regularly used in Autopilot mode, repeatedly veered toward a highway barrier on U.S. 101 that he passed daily on his way to work, prompting him to correct its course.

At around 9 a.m. on March 23, 2018, minutes after dropping off his son Tristan at preschool, Huang, an Apple software engineer, flicked on Autopilot and headed south on 101 toward work. At around the same time, he fired up a mobile strategy game he had been playing — Three Kingdoms.

Noting his lack of attention, the car repeatedly prompted him — a visual warning escalating to an annoying beep, the kind meant to provoke a reaction. Tesla detected whether a driver was holding the steering wheel, but Huang didn’t nudge it in response to the warnings — a phenomenon familiar to drivers who tend to tune out alerts from the automated systems. Autopilot, programmed to follow lane lines and keep its distance from vehicles ahead, stayed engaged.

At around twenty-seven minutes into his drive, near the interchange between U.S. 101 and State Route 85 north of San Jose, Huang reached the spot where his car had veered off before. Apparently, he did not react quickly enough, and the car lost its lane. From there, it followed a “faded and nearly obliterated” lane line into an empty space between two lanes; ahead, the bustling U.S. 101 and the on-ramp for Route 85 were separated by a concrete highway median.

Once in that no-man’s-land and with no traffic ahead of it, Huang’s SUV did what it had been programmed to do — it accelerated to the maximum speed the driver had set. It climbed from the 62 mph speed of traffic up to 65 two seconds later, then 68 a second later, then 70 in the final second.

It never reached the speed of 75 mph to which Huang’s Autopilot had been preset. Huang’s car was an unstoppable force about to meet an immovable object. Huang crashed into the median at around 71 mph, investigators said, spinning “the SUV counterclockwise and [causing] the front body structure to separate from the rear of the vehicle.” It also struck two other vehicles, leaving the twenty-five-year-old driver of a Mazda 3 with minor injuries — and the car’s front driver’s side fender heavily damaged — when the Tesla rotated into the lane of traffic before coming to a rest. The Tesla, its battery compartment ripped open, erupted in flames.

Bystanders found Huang strapped into the driver’s seat. They pulled him out of the wreckage, and he was taken by ambulance to Stanford Health Care Hospital.

At 1:02 p.m., Walter Huang was pronounced dead.

A tense phone call

Robert Sumwalt’s job had sent him to the sites of devastating plane crashes, train derailments, and infrastructure failures over amore than decade-long career at the NTSB.

But seated at a conference table in his sixth-floor Washington, DC, office, one corner in the labyrinth of federal agencies known as L’Enfant Plaza, the nation’s top federal safety investigator looked at his iPhone and was stunned as never before.

“He hung up on us.”

“Yeah, he did,” said Dennis Jones, a nearly forty-year veteran of the agency sitting across the table, also trying to process the ordeal.

Over twenty-seven contentious minutes on April 11, 2018, in Sumwalt’s later recollection, Elon Musk had fumed, protested, threatened to sue, and abruptly exited the conversation when safety investigators refused to bend to his will. It was a textbook example of Musk’s disregard for a public that had imbued him with godlike power — and his contempt for the safety establishment charged with ensuring he didn’t abuse it....>

<....Autopilot, Musk believed, would play a pivotal role in advancing traffic safety, ushering in a future where people no longer had to die on the road. Its very origins were tied to an internal meeting at Tesla where the subject of eradicating road deaths had gripped the engineering staff as one of them wrote out the annual number of yearly road deaths on a whiteboard. Already, major tech companies such as Google and Uber were envisioning populating the roads with self-driving fleets, but Tesla would be unique in pursuing autonomy through privately owned personal vehicles. And the company wanted to make it happen as quickly as possible.

Autopilot is a set of driver-assistance features that enable Teslas to maneuver from highway on-ramps to off-ramps without the driver’s physical input, a type of hyper-advanced cruise control that gave consumers a tangible demonstration of Tesla’s technological lead over other automakers. It controls the cars’ speed and distance from other cars, follows lane lines, and can even make lane changes along a route. Full Self-Driving, meanwhile, sought to bring those capabilities to city and residential streets, adding the ability to make turns, halt for red lights and stop signs, and follow turn-by-turn directions.

Tesla had developed a handy talking point for its discussions of Autopilot: it was safer than normal driving when crash data was compared. (The argument carried a fundamental flaw: Autopilot was intended for highways, and highway driving was inherently less complicated.) But even years later, Musk’s position had hardly evolved. He applied the same logic to Full Self-Driving, Tesla’s more advanced iteration of Autopilot, designed for use during much more complicated city and residential street driving. Musk’s arguments here were at best unproven and at worst reckless: he was encouraging drivers to view systems geared at convenience as lifesaving breakthroughs that could prevent crashes.

Regardless, Musk seemed to believe that even if some lives were lost in the process, those who opposed his vision of the future were roadblocks to progress. He fully articulated this philosophy at an autonomy-focused event years later, in 2022: “At the point of which you believe that adding autonomy reduces injury and death, I think you have a moral obligation to deploy it even though you’re going to get sued and blamed by a lot of people. Because the people whose lives you saved don’t know that their lives were saved, and the people who do occasionally die or get injured, they definitely know — or their state does.”

His position was that the processes established by society to prevent automotive calamities were ineffective or, worse, obstacles to this moral imperative. Musk had legions of admirers and online fanboys who validated this belief; his methods were the right ones, and his way was the only path forward. Who was the government to stand in the way? How could they possibly possess the requisite knowledge, technological know-how, and raw data to undermine him? What had they ever built?

Musk’s beef with Washington

Musk and Tesla already had a fraught history with regulators in Washington. Tesla was staking its future on the artificial intelligence bet of the century: putting a fully autonomous vehicle in the hands of customers, a moon shot that differed from the mostly commercial ambitions of the robotaxi projects from Big Tech competitors like Google and Apple. Regulators and safety officials in the federal government who were building a set of rules to regulate Silicon Valley’s lab experiments — small-scale testing in a highly regulated space — were caught largely flat-footed when Tesla started adding features that resembled autonomy to its cars beginning in late 2014.

Musk may have resented Washington’s meddling, but he also owed much of Tesla’s success to it. In 2009, the company was on the verge of collapse as the Great Recession promised to wipe out demand for its pricey electric cars. Tesla had produced a sleek sports car, the Roadster, which offered the thrill of instant torque combined with an electric power train, in part inspired by the mid-engine Lotus Elise. That thrill came at a price: the vehicle cost around $100,000, or more than double the sticker price of the Elise. Faced with a souring economy that threatened its ability to produce the Model S — the car that would later make the company a household name — Tesla found two saviors. Daimler, the auto group that encompassed Mercedes-Benz, approached Tesla to build power trains for its electric Smart cars. Meanwhile, the U.S. government, aiming to bring electric cars to the masses, made a bet on Tesla. The Department of Energy provided the company with a $465 million loan, critical cash at a time of existential uncertainty....>

<....In a 2011 interview with The Atlantic, Musk acknowledged Tesla’s reliance on the government.

“Tesla has received a loan from the government,” he said. “If Tesla is to compete effectively against GM, Ford, Chrysler and others and those guys are getting massive amounts of money from the government at zero cost of capital and we don’t participate in that game it makes a very difficult job even harder. And so it just would be really unwise if we didn’t do that.”

In the coming years, Tesla would secure another coup. The government was encouraging big automakers to go electric, but they didn’t have the capacity or willpower to do so, especially in a declining economy. Tesla, on the other hand, would pump out thousands of electric vehicles per quarter. Why couldn’t Detroit simply take credit for their work? Automakers such as Chrysler started buying what were called “regulatory credits” from Tesla so they could surpass state emissions requirements under the federal Clean Air Act. This arrangement propelled Tesla to the profitability that helped make Musk the world’s richest person. Not only would his company get a years-long head start on the competition, it could also cash in on their failure to adapt.

Musk may have outmaneuvered competitors in Silicon Valley and Detroit, but the threat of regulation still hung over him. Though the safety investigators with the NTSB had a different mandate from their counterparts at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Sumwalt felt that Musk lumped all the DC suits together. Musk had been irate when NHTSA regulators called him after another, similar crash in 2016; a Tesla in Autopilot had slammed into a tractor-trailer at 70 mph after failing to distinguish the rig from the sky behind it, in Tesla’s explanation, killing the driver. Musk yelled on the phone and threatened a lawsuit when he was told regulators were getting involved, a former safety official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said.

Musk’s view was simple: “We’re all beating up on him,” Dennis Jones, the former NTSB managing director, recalled.

Musk’s relationship with regulators and safety officials fully eroded during the five most critical years in his self-driving push. As he promoted his vision of consumer robotaxis, Musk tested a strategy of harnessing online armies of fanboys — oftentimes, enthusiastic investors whose toxic digital personas were aimed at silencing short sellers or naysayers — against those who threatened to slow the progress of Autopilot and its companion mode, Full Self-Driving, making life a nightmare for those who stood in his way. All in the name, Musk argued, of safety. One official was forced to flee her home in response to what local authorities regarded as a dangerous threat after Tesla fans erupted over her appointment as an NHTSA adviser, and Musk joined in the public attack. In another instance, authorities had to get involved after criticism of a government official escalated into personal threats from online trolls.

A real-life Tony Stark

On April 6, 2018 — the Friday before Musk would angrily hang up on him — Robert Sumwalt knew that he was faced with a potentially unpleasant task: calling the CEO about the latest deadly crash involving a Tesla on Autopilot. Things began quite cordially, but Sumwalt would soon learn the same lesson as so many who have crossed Musk’s path over the years: the mercurial billionaire can charm and play nice with those who have power over his empire, but he can turn on them just as quickly if he feels they’re threatening to stand in his way.

Federal safety investigators have a duty to the public: ensuring that the errors contributing to fatal crashes are not repeated or, worse, built into safety-critical systems. Many feel this responsibility deeply. Sumwalt — an easygoing but direct communicator who had spent decades as a commercial pilot — certainly did. Even so, he was starstruck as he first dialed Musk’s cellphone to discuss the matter.

“In fact, I was amazed … I thought ‘this was pretty cool, I’m talking to Elon Musk,’” said Sumwalt, now retired from the safety board, recalling the conversation after a dinner at Cracker Barrel in Florida....>

<....The two men exchanged pleasantries. Sumwalt, flanked by a coterie of Washington officials huddled around a speakerphone on a sofa outside his office, explained to Musk that he wanted Tesla to be a party to the investigation. This was an especially critical step for a company with vast amounts of internal data, whose technical understanding of its own systems far outmatched that of safety officials. Dennis Jones, the NTSB’s longtime managing director, liked to joke that the agency was charged with investigating airplane manufacturers who could pay for its whole budget with a single airliner. In Tesla’s case, investigators were helpless in retrieving and decoding the proprietary data from the company’s on-board computers without internal assistance. Musk should have been well aware of this knowledge gap.

But the investigative process also benefited Tesla: if the company played a part in the investigation, it would be aware of potentially damaging information and could offer input and clarity about possible damning investigative findings. The ultimate goal was to keep the public safe — and a company that didn’t want to mask wrongdoing had little reason not to cooperate.

There were also rules: a party to a federal investigation could not unilaterally release information that might factor into the NTSB probe. The NTSB was “unhappy” with Tesla’s release of investigative information in the Huang crash, which had implied Huang’s inattention was a factor.

Basically, Tesla wasn’t allowed to spin its own version of the crash if it wanted to collaborate with safety officials in good faith. Sumwalt had been concerned about Tesla preemptively disclosing data that was subject to the investigation and wanted to make sure Musk understood the rules. On that spring day, Musk was polite and professional on the phone with Sumwalt — and he expressed openness to cooperating. He wanted Tesla to be part of the probe, he said. Sumwalt took that as an indication that Musk intended to follow the rules. So Elon Musk and the country’s top transportation safety investigator agreed to work together.

With the business portion of their conversation concluded, Sumwalt had more questions.

Musk had yet to become the richest person on earth, but he was quickly becoming a household name, a celebrity CEO whom many already regarded as the real-life Tony Stark.

What’s a day in the life of Elon Musk? Sumwalt asked.

Musk sounded tired to Sumwalt as he explained that his work schedule was intense. He had been sleeping on the floor of Tesla’s factory. The year 2018 had been the most painful of his career, as the company tried to sort out production problems with its mass market Model 3. He told Sumwalt that around 75 to 80 percent of his time was dedicated to Tesla, around 20 percent to SpaceX, and the rest — a figure over the remaining 5 percent or less — was devoted to his other companies. “I think that was intentional,” Sumwalt told me of Musk’s description exceeding 100 percent.

The conversation lasted thirty minutes. Sumwalt left feeling good about it.

But over the next few days, as Tesla continued to release information about the crash, even speculating on its cause, the situation deteriorated. Tesla was under pressure as the gruesome details of the crash were revealed. Other crashes had garnered NTSB attention, of course: a later case in Delray Beach, Florida, and an earlier one in Williston, Florida, which was among the most troubling: the Tesla, operating in Autopilot mode, failed to distinguish the side of a tractor-trailer from a bright-colored sky.

In that crash, forty-year-old Joshua David Brown was killed when a truck turned across the path of his 2015 Tesla Model S, which failed to slow down. The top of the Tesla was sheared off in a crash safety officials attributed to distraction after the driver ignored at least seven visual safety warnings, on-screen prompts to pay attention. Investigators cited both Brown’s overreliance on the software and a more novel concept, the car’s “operational design domain,” or the set of conditions and locations in which Autopilot could be activated. Regulators at NHTSA, meanwhile, held Tesla largely free from blame, and Musk called their findings “very positive.”

A PR crisis and broken trust

But in the crash involving Huang, Tesla risked losing control. Musk was on the verge of positioning Autopilot as the most important product in Tesla’s portfolio, with potential value exceeding that of the company’s automotive business. He had seemed to realize the company’s image was taking a hit, so Tesla chose a strategy that most big automakers in its position wouldn’t think of: it started running interference. Again.

Suddenly, days after the call in which Musk agreed to the ground rules, details of the crash that were under investigation by the NTSB started pouring out of Tesla, directly from its PR department....>

<....“According to the family, Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect and, specifically, he told them it was not reliable in that exact location, yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location,” the company said in a press statement reported by outlets such as Fortune and ABC News. “The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, which means that the only way for this accident to have occurred is if Mr. Huang was not paying attention to the road, despite the car providing multiple warnings to do so.”

When his agency stumbled on the press clippings a day after Tesla’s statement went out, Sumwalt couldn’t believe it. Tesla was blaming the driver for the crash that had killed him, after Sumwalt had explicitly warned Musk about the rules. It was beyond inappropriate; it was unconscionable.

He picked up the phone and dialed Musk, who wasn’t immediately available.

Later that day, Jones had been visiting with Sumwalt in his office when a call popped up on Sumwalt’s screen.

Jones remembers the moment vividly. “Wow, that’s Elon Musk,” Sumwalt said.

Sumwalt signaled for Jones to stay — they’d finish their conversation once the call had concluded. He knew it would serve him well to have a witness to their exchange.

They put Musk on speakerphone, and Sumwalt quickly got to the point.

“What you did, Elon, was a violation of our party agreement. We spoke about this last week. You agreed that you would abide by our requirements.”

There was nothing but silence for almost ten seconds.

Then Musk, growing agitated and shorter with his words, launched into a tirade. Sumwalt recalled him arguing: “You’re making a bad mistake. More people [will] die because of this, because of what you’re doing.”

The investigators were out of line, he indicated, behind the curve with their slow bureaucratic process, as Tesla had already drawn conclusions about the crash using its vast amounts of data, and there was no doubt that the driver had been at fault.

“He goes into a diatribe,” Sumwalt said, “about ‘well you’re decreasing safety by virtue of the fact that our car is safer when it’s on Autopilot, we’re saving more lives because of Autopilot than people are lost but by your removing us from the investigation you’re decreasing safety.’”

Musk then threatened to sue, though it was not clear what standing he would have had.

“That’s fine, go ahead,” Sumwalt responded.

Musk launched back into his argument about the safety of Autopilot, reminding them of its potential lifesaving capabilities. Sumwalt wondered: How many times do I need to tell you this?

After Musk had finished, Sumwalt signaled for Jones to weigh in. The managing director explained how the parties were expected to work collaboratively, how the agency maintained productive relationships with automakers subject to its investigations, and he noted the harmonious relationship the agency had had with SpaceX in the past. Musk didn’t respond right away.

“I don’t want us to be removed from the investigation,” Musk finally said, as if the prior twenty-seven minutes hadn’t happened.

“It’s too late for that,” Sumwalt said, at no small risk to his agency, which relied on Tesla’s expertise to decode its data.

The line went dead.

Sumwalt and Jones looked at each other in shock, trying to process what had happened. It wasn’t just being hung up on; Musk’s demeanor and attitude and his unconvincing argument — a repetition-filled script — had left Sumwalt thoroughly unimpressed. There simply wasn’t enough evidence to demonstrate that Autopilot, a suite of driver-assistance features with a catchy name, was the transformative and revolutionary system with the lifesaving capabilities Musk touted; in this particular instance, it was at the center of a fatal crash, a high-tech calamity that safety investigators could examine to uncover new findings about the intersection of technology, driver distraction, and speed.

It was clear to them both that Musk didn’t even recognize the difference between the roles of the safety investigators from the NTSB and the regulators from NHTSA, an important distinction that the head of an automaker should understand.

Tesla would later claim it hadn’t been booted from the investigation — it had withdrawn on its own. In a statement reported by outlets including CNBC, Tesla elaborated on its apparent decision to withdraw. “It’s been clear in our conversations with the NTSB that they’re more concerned with press headlines than actually promoting safety,” the company said. “Among other things, they repeatedly released partial bits of incomplete information to the media in violation of their own rules, at the same time that they were trying to prevent us from telling all the facts.”

<An adviser to interim U.S. Attorney in Washington Ed Martin had a message for a Democratic strategist over a recent MSNBC appearance: “Careful son. Choose your words wisely.”

The message on X from Michael R. Caputo was to Andrew Bates, the former Biden White House deputy press secretary who now has his own political strategy firm.

During the MSNBC segment, Bates criticized Martin for firing FBI agents and prosecutors “because they investigated January 6th criminals.” He also attacked Martin as someone “who presented an award to a neo-Nazi who stormed the Capitol, and said he was an extraordinary leader.”

In an email response to Deadline about what he meant by his warning to Bates, Caputo sent a Webster’s Dictionary link to the word “defamation.” Caputo later repeated his warning to a post from another Democratic strategist, Chris D. Jackson.

Bates also is advising a group of prosecutors who oppose Martin’s nomination to be confirmed to the U.S. attorney post, in what already is a contentious battle. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has urged its chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (D-IA), to hold a hearing on the nomination.

Among other things, Durbin wrote that at a Trump Bedminster Club ceremony last fall, Martin gave an award to Janaury 6th defendant Timothy Hale-Cusanelli and called him “an extraordinary man, an extraordinary leader.” Democrats also have posted video of Martin’s remarks at the event. In the January 6th case, prosecutors described Hale-Cusanelli as a Nazi sympathizer with a history of anti-semitic remarks. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.

More recently, Durbin has cited reports that Martin did not disclose 150 appearances on Russian state TV in a Senate questionnaire. A Martin spokesperson later told The Washington Post that Martin “disclosed all the identified links” in supplemental letter to the Senate.

Caputo is a longtime Trump ally who described himself as a “smashmouth politician,” in a Politico profile, which detailed his battle with throat cancer. Martin told The New York Times this week about his hiring, “Because Michael has known President Trump for over 40 years, he's uniquely positioned to help us make America great again.”

As interim U.S. attorney, Martin has fired off letters to various lawmakers and institutions on topics ranging from their diversity, equity and inclusion programs and Elon Musk’s DOGE. In February, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) appeared on CNN to talk about how Democrats could challenge Elon Musk, (and the) lawmaker said, “What America wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy.” Martin sent Garcia a letter, asking him to clarify his comments and warning “we take threats against public officials very seriously.”

Garcia responded, “So if you criticize Elon Musk, Trump's DOJ will send you this letter. Members of Congress must have the right to forcefully oppose the Trump Administration. I will not be silenced.”

Martin also has taken part in defending the administration against the Associated Press after Trump officials banned the news organization from the pool because its style guidance did not switch the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. That drew criticism that Martin was acting as the president’s personal lawyer rather than an official with the Justice Department.>

<A routine gesture of remembrance devolved into an ugly brawl on the Texas House floor Thursday, as hardline Republicans successfully blocked a memorial resolution honoring Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood and a Texas native. Richards died earlier this year.

Normally, memorial resolutions to honor Texans who have died are passed without controversy. They are usually the House’s quietest business: a list of names read aloud, a gavel strike, no partisan debate. But the resolution for Richards sparked a cascade of outrage from conservatives who accused their colleagues of “honoring a woman who perpetrated the murder of children.”

After a morning of protest and delays, Republicans appear to have won, for now. After a lengthy debate, the resolutions were being pulled from consideration for the day effectively torpedoing the entire slate of memorials, which included tributes to U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Houston who died last year from pancreatic cancer, and Jill Glover, a local conservative activist who died last year from cancer. The calendar was withdrawn and returned to committee.

“WE WON!” Rep. Nate Schatzline, a Republican from Fort Worth, posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Texas will never honor those who mass murder our unborn children!”

The debate began earlier in the morning when a knot of conservative lawmakers stood at the back, while others took the mic to interrogate Speaker Dustin Burrows.

“Do you, as speaker, believe it’s appropriate that on Easter weekend we’re honoring Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood?” asked Rep. Brian Harrison, a Republican from Midlothian.

Rep. Wes Virdell, R-Brady, chimed in and asked the speaker, “Is it standard procedure to honor people who have killed millions of unborn babies?”

Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, urged his Republican colleagues not to “drink a little bit of poison.”

A hand-drawn sign reading “FOR JILL” referring to Glover, also memorialized that day, was raised in the background.

Emotions were high. Rep. Keresa Richardson, R-McKinney, wept behind the podium.

Rep. Ramon Romero Jr., D-Fort Worth, sang Las Mañanitas, the Spanish Happy Birthday song that’s typically also sung to mothers on Mexican mother's day.

“We're going to disagree on a lot of things. ... But if somebody meant something to you or to me, the tradition of this house is that we honor those persons, whether we agree with that person's life or not," he said.

Rep. Donna Howard, the Democrat from Austin who brought forward the resolution, gave a heartfelt speech honoring Cecile Richards, describing her as a dedicated advocate who worked to ensure equal access to education and affordable health care.

Howard noted that Richards was known for her tenacity, grit, wisdom and heart and that she made a positive impact on the state and nation. She added that due to online controversy, the Richards family chose not to attend the memorial resolution.

"We all deserve the opportunity to come before this chamber to recognize, celebrate our constituents and know that we and they will be met with the utmost respect. That is what I expected when I filed HR 236," she said. "The Richards family was denied that opportunity."

Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, tried to restore order. “This is supposed to be the least political thing we do today,” she said.

But politics flooded every corner of the chamber.

Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, dryly noted, “Are you aware that by having spent the amount of time that you've spent up there, you've actually honored Cecile?” and smirked after his comment, which got some claps and cheers.

Richards was the daughter of former Texas Gov. Ann Richards. Before leading Planned Parenthood, she worked as a labor organizer and founded America Votes, a coalition of progressive grassroots organizations that register, educate and turn out voters. When she stepped down from Planned Parenthood in 2018, she co-founded Supermajority, a group working to get more women into Democratic politics. She died from brain cancer in January.

“One of my life goals is to haunt Texas politicians the way Cecile Richards does,” said Shellie Hayes-McMahon, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes. “They can try to erase her, but her vision and impact on the state of Texas will outlive their petty political games.”

It remains unclear when the memorial calendar will return — and whether Richards' name will be on it.>

<The Department of Justice wants to stand in for President Trump in his ongoing appeal of a defamation case that could cost him tens of millions of dollars.

Lawyers for the taxpayer-funded agency and Mr. Trump's personal attorneys said in a filing on April 11 that the Justice Department believes the federal Westfall Act shields Mr. Trump in the case, which has pitted him against the writer E. Jean Carroll.

A federal jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in January 2024, after concluding that Mr. Trump made defamatory statements when denying that he sexually abused Carroll. That award came less than a year after a separate federal jury concluded Trump was liable for sexual abuse, and instructed him to pay her $5 million.

Mr. Trump has denied all of Carroll's allegations and appealed both cases.

The Justice Department asserts that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he made the allegedly defamatory statements about Carroll in 2019, and therefore the court is required to substitute the United States for Mr. Trump in the case. Under the Westfall Act, federal employees are entitled to absolute immunity from personal lawsuits for conduct occurring within the scope of their employment.

Legal scholar James Pfander said Mr. Trump still needs to show that his actions, publicly denying Carroll's claims, were within the scope of the presidency.

"As a legal issue ultimately for the courts, the [Justice Department's] certification alone does not decide the question," said Pfander, a Northwestern School of Law professor.

Pfander noted that the Westfall Act says it permits government employees to petition courts to certify they were acting within the scope of their office "at any time before trial."

"By allowing an employee to pursue certification but limiting the time to 'before trial,' the statute would seem to suggest that a motion to substitute at the appellate stage of the litigation comes too late," Pfander said.

A longtime advice columnist, Carroll published a book excerpt in New York magazine in 2019 accusing Mr. Trump of sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Mr. Trump denied the allegations and called Carroll a "whack job." He claimed he had never met Carroll, accused her of "totally lying" and said, "she's not my type."

Mr. Trump would go on to repeat similar denials in public appearances, social media posts and depositions.

The Justice Department initially supported Mr. Trump's effort to have the case dismissed, arguing the Westfall Act protected Mr. Trump from liability because he was acting as a federal employee when he denied Carroll's allegations.

A lawyer for the department argued in 2021 — while Mr. Trump was out of office after losing the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden — that even though Mr. Trump "made crude and offensive comments in response to the very serious accusations of sexual assault" the law protecting employees from such a suit should be upheld.

The agency reversed its position in July 2023. An official for the Justice Department wrote at the time that the decision factored in the jury's conclusion in the $5 million case that Mr. Trump was liable for sexual abuse.

"The allegations that prompted the statements related to a purely personal incident: an alleged sexual assault that occurred decades prior to Mr. Trump's Presidency," former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton wrote. "That sexual assault was obviously not job related."

Paul Figley, a former deputy director of the Justice Department's Torts Branch, said Boynton's decision was unexpected.

"I was very surprised by the withdrawal because we always viewed the president as behaving within the scope of office for anything he did," said Figley, an American University professor emeritus who worked at the Justice Department for more than three decades....>

<....An exhibit included with the case's latest filing shows that the Justice Department, now under the purview of Mr. Trump, has again reversed course.

"I find that Donald J. Trump was acting within the scope of his office or employment at the time of the incidents out of which the plaintiff's claims arose," wrote Kirsten Wilkinson, the director of the agency's Torts Branch Civil Division.

Columbia Law School professor Caroline Polisi said she believes the decision fits a pattern within the Trump administration.

"This is not at all a surprising move for this Justice Department. Trump has shown time and time again that he considers this DOJ to be his personal attorney," said Polisi, a federal criminal defense attorney

"On their face, the comments at issue were purely personal in nature, and therefore outside of his scope of duties as president, thus excluding him from governmental immunity," said Polisi. "However, the fact that the former administration took the same position - at least initially - shows that the argument is not entirely frivolous, and that a court may entertain arguments on the issue."

The highest ranks of the Justice Department are filled with lawyers who just last year were Mr. Trump's personal attorneys, but Figley said Wilkinson does not fit that description. He noted she's risen steadily while serving through multiple administrations, before being appointed director in January.

"That appointment was an obvious choice, she'd been the deputy director in that office for many years, and the previous director retired," Figley said.

A lawyer for Mr. Trump also argued last year that the case should be dismissed due to a Supreme Court ruling granting presidents immunity from criminal prosecution for "official acts"while they are in office.

Roberta Kaplan, an attorney for Carroll, argued in a January brief that the Supreme Court's ruling did not apply to Carroll's claims.

"If there were ever a case where immunity does not shield a president's speech, this one is it," Kaplan wrote.

Kaplan declined to comment Wednesday on Mr. Trump's latest move, telling CBS News her response was forthcoming in opposition papers she expects to file next week.>

<Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana accused an Obama-appointed federal judge of exceeding her authority Tuesday by blocking the revocation of parole for over 500,000 illegal immigrants.

United States District Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts imposed a nationwide injunction barring the Trump administration from deporting migrants who entered the country during the Biden administration under the “CHNV program.” Kennedy said that Talwani “doesn’t know the law” while blasting her for using a nationwide injunction.

“The judge is wrong. He or she, obviously, doesn’t know the law book from a J.Crew catalog. I believe this judge issued a national injunction. In my judgment, those are illegal,” Kennedy told “America Reports” co-host Sandra Smith and guest co-host Bill Melugin. “A national injunction is when two parties go to court, plaintiff and defendant and that federal judge issues a ruling that doesn’t just apply to those two parties in court. It applies to the whole country.”

“Now, there is no basis in statutory law for that. There is no basis in Supreme Court precedent for that. There is no basis English common law for that, on which our justice system is based. The Supreme Court could fix it, and I hope it does quickly,” Kennedy continued.

The Trump administration announced it was ending the program, which allowed Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to receive parole and enter the country, in March. These migrants may not have been able to secure visas through a normal process, according to the America First Policy Center.

Prior to discussing the injunction by Talwani, Kennedy also defended President Donald Trump’s decision to deport certain violent illegal immigrants to El Salvador. Trump issued several executive orders upon taking office on Jan. 20 to address illegal immigration, including designating Mexican drug cartels, the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) and the El Salvadoran prison gang MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations.

“I think the president is right. If you are in our country illegally, you are a criminal. Illegal immigration is illegal, duh. And I think there are plenty of laws President Biden ignored to allow us to deport you,” Kennedy said. “I mean, to me, it is straightforward and people who oppose that approach, it seems to me, are not being intellectually honest and ought to go ahead and admit they support open borders.”>

<Central bank independence has been an article of faith among high-income economies for at least three decades now, and longer still in the United States. So no surprise that Donald Trump should take aim at it as one of the economic orthodoxies he’s minded to rattle.

Termination of Jerome Powell’s position as chairman of the US Federal Reserve “cannot come fast enough”, the US president thundered last week after accusing Powell of failing to cut interest rates fast enough.

“I don’t think he’s doing the job,” he said. “He’s always too late, a little slow. And I’m not happy with him. I’ve let him know it and if I want him out, he’ll be out real fast, believe me.”

Kevin Hassett, the White House economic adviser, confirmed on Friday that the president was studying whether he had the power to sack Powell.

Cue sharp intake of breath. Cue also the sight of wagons being circled by central banks around the world in defence of their role as overlords of the international monetary system.

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, quickly leapt to Powell’s defence, as if to say to Trump “how dare you”.

If any other political leader had said this of their central bank chief, there would have been uproar. The UK gilts market, for instance, would have gone into a tailspin had Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, similarly criticised Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England.

Commentators like me say these things all the time. Lord knows, central banks generally deserve whatever brickbats they get. But for the presiding government to be seen to be interfering in the mechanics of monetary policy is considered beyond the pale.

Independent determination of interest rates is a cornerstone of pretty much all advanced economies these days, and on the whole it has served them well, lending governments a degree of credibility in financial markets they wouldn’t otherwise enjoy.

There’s a good reason why. It is because when the politicians are in unbridled control of monetary policy, they almost always abuse it.

Yet this is Donald Trump, where riding roughshod over establishment thinking comes with the territory.

He’s got plenty of form when it comes to trashing the Federal Reserve. He similarly criticised Janet Yellen as Fed chair during his first term in office.

Claims that she was politically motivated in refusing his demands for lower interest rates seemed to be vindicated after she was later appointed Joe Biden’s Treasury Secretary. Ah ha, said Maga enthusiasts. Evidence that she was out to get Trump all along.

As a Trump appointee, Powell was meant to be a more pliable chairman, but as generally happens with anyone who joins the Fed, he soon went native, and by the end of Trump’s first term, the two were no longer on speaking terms.

Today’s standoff is an almost exact replica of what happened in the 1970s when there was a similar battle of wills between the White House and the Fed over interest rate policy.

When Richard Nixon appointed his economic adviser, Arthur Burns, as chairman of the Fed, it was with the clear understanding that he would ease monetary conditions and bolster credit provision ahead of the 1972 presidential election.

But once in office, Burns resisted. Despite relentless bullying by the White House, including a steady stream of negative press briefings against him, he refused to play ball, initially at least.

The parallels are striking.

Trump’s latest outburst was sparked by remarks Powell made at an Economic Club of Chicago event in which rather than proclaiming Trump’s tariff policies as the most beautiful thing in the history of economics, he gave a textbook rendition of their likely negative consequences.

It might have been better to have played shtum, for just as it is convention for government ministers not to criticise the central bank in its independent determination of monetary policy, it is similarly taboo for central banks to pass judgment on fiscal and trade policy, which is rightly thought the preserve of the politicians....>

<....Powell should have known that Trump would not take it lying down. Indeed, it looked to me like deliberate provocation.

As it happens, Trump may be right about US interest rates in that the US economy is quite plainly cooling fast. Consumer and business confidence is plunging and the jobs market is beginning to splutter. Yet still the Fed sits on its hands and does nothing.

That this slowdown may actually have more to do with Trump’s tariff policy than anything else – a self-induced recession, in other words – is by the by. Trump is entitled to expect support from the Fed in countering the disruptive effects of his tariff wars.

The problem the Fed is grappling with is that unlike almost everywhere else, tariffs are almost bound to be inflationary in the US in that they will raise the price of foreign goods to consumers.

It’s different in Europe, which has been more aggressive in cutting official policy rates. Here, the effects, by reducing export demand, are going to be purely contractionary. By diverting goods once bound for the US to European markets, moreover, the effect at the coal face of consumer prices will be overtly disinflationary.

The consequences for the US economy, by contrast, are classically stagflationary. Growth will fall and prices will rise. Quite how much is at this stage unclear, not least because we still don’t know precisely either what the tariff policy is or what it is trying to achieve. Trump seems to be making it up as he goes along.

He may be right in thinking the Fed is being too slow to cut rates, but he is playing with fire in attacking the institution’s integrity. Credibility is all in financial markets, and like it or not, the Fed is a key part of the framework that sustains it.

With public debt at well in excess of 100pc of GDP, and in the absence of remedial action, deficits of 6pc plus stretching long into the future, things have rarely looked more fragile.

Trump seems to think that by forcing the Fed to cut the official policy rate, he will drive interest rates down across the board. In practice, it is likely to have the opposite effect.

Once trust in the Fed is shot, market interest rates will shoot up, raising borrowing costs for companies and consumers alike, and further undermining the government’s ability to fund itself.

One of the few restraining forces in the Trump cabinet is Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary. By convincing Trump to pause his tariff assault, he’s already managed to head off one threatened bond market rout.

Now he’s said to be warning the president privately on the dangers of attempting to sack Powell. His job is one of constant fire fighting. One can but hope that his counsel once more prevails.>

<McDowell County, West Virginia, can be a brutal place.

In February, massive floods killed three people including a two-year-old boy who was found 10 miles downriver from the truck he was travelling in with his grandparents and sisters.

The remains of a bridge are still violently twisted across the river by the road into Welch, the county seat. Some places became so inaccessible that – in the richest country in the world – emergency services had to use pack mules to deliver supplies.

Sandi and Tony Blankenship’s kitchen table is stacked high with paperwork for families Sandi is helping to get flood recovery money to repair their wrecked homes.

Sandi, 53, grew up as a coal miner’s daughter in McDowell, before becoming a nurse, mother, foster mother, Christian missionary and Donald Trump voter.

The 47th US president’s surprisingly comfortable victory in last year’s election came in part from his ability to reach people like her. While the Republicans have traditionally been the party of the wealthy, Trump managed to win over a large proportion of working-class voters by channelling their rage against globalisation and a system they felt had left them behind.

“They voted for Trump to get even with those who broke their promises,” says Frank Luntz, a veteran US political analyst.

Telegraph analysis shows McDowell County is the poorest Republican county in America that has a population of more than 10,000 people. Household income here averages $29,980 (£22,600) a year. Of the 3,142 US counties, it is one of only eight where household income is less than $30,000.

After decades of voting staunchly Democrat, McDowell County is now part of Trumpland. The president won 79.4pc of the vote here in 2024.

“We’ve had enough politicians to destroy this country and we needed a businessman,” says Sandi. “And his business model is wonderful, impeccable. It cannot be argued with.”

To Sandi, Trump is bringing winds of change to Washington that will bring jobs back to America and lift up places like McDowell County.

But far away on Wall Street, economists and investors fear the US president’s wildly aggressive and unpredictable trade war is about to drive up inflation and tip America into recession.

McDowell County is at the heart of the question of just how far Trump can push the economy before he faces the wrath of his own supporters, many of whom may find themselves at the sharp end of any downturn.

“What Trump is doing is so dangerous for his own political future,” says Luntz. “These are people who went all in on him. They cannot afford higher prices, and they will punish him if these tariffs lead to higher prices.”

For now, Sandi and her husband are unfazed. “We’re already so poor and we’re already so stressed in this county and in this state, at this point, we won’t hardly notice,” she says.

But it is early days in the president’s trade war and sentiment may change.

“I don’t know what breaks them, but I think the tariffs thing could,” says Luntz.

On April 2, when he announced enormous “reciprocal” tariffs on America’s trading partners and launched a massive escalation in his trade war with China, Trump sent a wrecking ball through markets and economic forecasts.

Although some of the $10 trillion or so that was wiped off global stock markets in the days after has since been regained, the benchmark S&P 500 US stock index is still down by about a tenth since the start of the year. The Nasdaq is down by more than 15pc.

Goldman Sachs has slashed its forecast for US growth this year from 2.4pc to just 0.5pc and says the probability of a recession is now 45pc. JP Morgan, America’s biggest bank, puts it at 60pc. Larry Fink, the boss of the world’s biggest money manager BlackRock, has warned the US economy may already be in recession.

Such probabilities are unlikely to matter to the working folk of West Virginia. But what they do care about are prices.

“They’re pay cheque to pay cheque voters. They struggle at the end of the week or the end of the month,” says Luntz.

John Williams, head of the New York Federal Reserve, has warned that tariffs will push US inflation from its current rate of 2.4pc to as high as 4pc.

Consumer expectations for inflation have hit their highest level since 1981, according to the University of Michigan’s index.

“It’s not the tariffs themselves, it’s whether or not they lead to higher prices at Walmart or Target,” says Luntz. The bosses of both these American retail giants have warned explicitly that this will happen.

Inflation is abstract but what voters care about is “affordability, that’s a day-to-day situation”, Luntz explains. “It’s how much their food and fuel and their automobile costs them every day.”....>

<....A breakdown of expectations by political affiliation shows that since Trump’s inauguration, even Republican voters are now expecting higher prices. Republican economic sentiment is also in decline.

Higher prices could have potentially huge implications for the voters who carried Trump to victory in 2024.

“There’s about 40pc of the country that will hate everything he does. There’s about 40pc of the country that will love everything that he does,” says Luntz. “It’s that 20pc in the middle.”

This group is politically independent and alienated from politics in general.

“They tend to be less educated, less likely to consume news. And a number of them voted for Trump because they did not like [Kamala] Harris and she never told them what they were going to do,” Luntz says.

“They tended to vote Democrat in the past. They’re not Republicans at all. Those who voted for Trump, they voted for him, not the party.

“I know these people. I talk to them all the time, and they’re really angry because they feel like they did what they were supposed to do and life just did not turn out well for them.”

Squeezed budgets become most evident during national holidays, when people have to shop for family occasions and have time to reflect outside the daily grind. It was Thanksgiving in 2021 when voters first started to feel the toll of inflation under President Joe Biden.

The next major US holiday this year is Memorial Day on May 26. After that is Independence Day.

“On July 4, picnics happen,” says Luntz. “I think Trump has another three months before voters will turn on him.”

That is not the sentiment in McDowell County.

“If anybody would actually understand what world trade is and understand how we’re getting screwed right now, they would be praising the man,” 36-year-old Justin Beavers says of Trump.

“The reason why people have a bad opinion about him is that he has just done too much, too fast. But I told my wife that. I said, I guarantee you when he comes to office that he’s going to do basically a shock. It’s going to be bad for at least six months.

“But as a country we must be doing something right because we’ve had over 50 or 60 countries come to us and say ‘let’s negotiate this now’.”

People in McDowell County are resilient.

When Beavers was crushed under a concrete block at work he went back down the coal mines the next day with a broken ankle. Beavers has since been left unable to work by his injuries, but still backs Trump to the hilt despite the fact he is slashing the social security net.

“I agree with everything that he’s doing, I just don’t agree with how we’re going,” he says.

The Blankenships similarly think Trump is on to a good thing. Sandi is particularly pleased with the drastic government cuts that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) is making.

“If they get rid of the IRS [Internal Revenue Service], we won’t have to pay income taxes,” she says.

While disappointed that Trump has not brought prices down already, Sandi argues he has not had enough time yet to do so. For voters like her, they are still in the honeymoon period of their political love affair with Trump.

The Skygusty Highway through the mountains into McDowell County is a road that puts the pin in hairpin turns.

A seemingly endless coal freight train runs slowly across the cast iron bridge above the town of Maybeury and then on a rail track through the trees next to the road.

Take the road long enough and you reach Gary, a “city” where only around 800 people live.

Outside Gary, a huge iron structure supports an industrial coal conveyor belt that runs from the top of the mountainside down to the mounds of coal and trucks beside the rail tracks.

McDowell has some of the richest coal seams in the world and for several decades in the early 20th century was America’s biggest coal producer.

Coal production here is still going, but mechanisation means the number of jobs needed to support it have cratered – and so has the population. In the 1950s, 100,000 people lived in McDowell County. Now, just 18,000 call it home.

The county does not have enough people to sustain its buildings. In Welch, a shredded American flag flutters in the wind outside a shopfront with a plastic skeleton hanging in the window. Entire streets are similarly dilapidated.

Some clapboard houses are pristine with owners mowing their front lawns. But many are vacant and collapsed.

Among the trees and wisteria growing out of the hillside are the brick columns of old chimneys, standing naked and bizarrely tall – the last remains of homes that have long ago disintegrated around them. Far more coal trucks rumble through the town than people.

The County Commission has identified some 5,000 structures across McDowell that are long-term vacant. It is possible to buy a five-bedroom house for $15,000....>

<....Politicians have tried to speak to the area for decades. In 1960, John F Kennedy gave a speech from the Welch Municipal Parking Garage, the year before he became president.

“Washington, DC – the nation’s capital – is only a few hundred miles from McDowell County. But the administration in Washington has less understanding of your problems, less concern over your distress, than it displays for peoples and lands on the other side of the globe,” Kennedy said.

“Had the president come to McDowell County he would have seen a once-prosperous people – the people of the largest and most important coal-mining county in the world – who were now the victims of poverty, want and hunger.”

Kennedy made McDowell County the first site of his pilot food stamps programme when he became president.

However, Kennedy and all the presidents since have failed to stop the area’s long-term decline.

In lieu of coal jobs came opioids. West Virginia’s drug overdose mortality rate is a mile above any other state.

Jackie, 50, did not vote in the 2024 election because she was in prison. “No, ma’am. I was locked up.”

If she had voted, she would have voted for Trump. “Absolutely. He’s very smart. He’s intelligent,” Jackie says. But she trails off. “I’ve had no Ritalin today so I might bounce around a bit.”

This is the only drug she takes these days.

“I used to take everything, everything. Ecstasy, acid, cocaine. I used to shoot up heroin, and oxycontin. I went to prison for that, for distribution,” says Jackie. She takes off her jacket to show the track marks on the insides of her elbows.

“I started when I was 12. They kept me on morphine when I was 12 because I had a head injury. Then the oxycontin came out.”

Today, she’s 50 and carrying a heavy bag of her belongings around the empty streets of Welch.

Locals point out houses where junkies have overdosed. Waif people with caved mouths and hoods over their heads shuffle around the edges of petrol stations.

“The biggest thing we’ve had is a lot of our friends and a lot of their kids are gone. They’ve overdosed,” says Sandi.

“We keep Narcan, the antidote, in all of our vehicles and all of our pockets. Almost everybody carries Narcan. It’s just the way of life here now. The coal went out and the opioids came in. It was the perfect recipe for disaster here and it did its job.”

The car park where Kennedy spoke is now populated only by a smattering of abandoned cars with deflated tyres.

Sixty-five years after Kennedy’s speech, it is Trump who McDowell County residents feel is speaking to them. And he is not talking about food stamps, but overturning the world order.

In the 72-year period from 1936 to 2008, McDowell County voted Democrat in every single election bar 1972. However, the area started voting Republican in 2008.

Sandi grew up as a Democrat and voted for Obama in his first term. “The change that he spoke of was everything I wanted,” says Sandi. “After about a year and a half of Obama I realised I really screwed that up.”

Trump has won in the county’s last three elections with an ever-increasing majority. The biggest draw is the way he talks about coal.

“A lot of the registered Republicans in McDowell County are registered Republican because Hillary Clinton said she was going to close the coal mines,” says Pat McKinney, a member of the local Republican Party committee.

During a fateful town hall in Columbus, Ohio, in 2016, Clinton touted her plan to replace fossil fuel energy production with renewables.

“I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country,” she said. “Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

She added that “we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people”. But the damage was done. In her 2017 book What Happened, Clinton said it was the campaign mistake that “I regret the most”.

“Both the Obama and Biden administrations put a big hurt on coal in the county, so the Trump administration was seen as an escape from that,” says McKinney.

“Trump is pushing coal. And we have been taught that he who supports coal is who we support, regardless of what else they do. Because we have to keep the coal mines open.”....>

<....On April 8, Trump signed an executive order titled Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry. It stated: “We must encourage and support our nation’s coal industry to increase our energy supply, lower electricity costs, stabilise our grid, create high-paying jobs, support burgeoning industries and assist our allies.”

Under the executive order, officials must now identify coal reserves on federal lands and propose policies to extract them.

While Trump is vocal in his support for the industry, his broader policies appear to threaten it. Most of McDowell County’s coal is exported and much of it goes to China, which has imposed 125pc tariffs on US imports in response to Trump’s trade war.

Sandi and Tony were born and raised in McDowell County. They met when they were teenagers and have been married for 34 years.

They left for 19 years but came back eventually. “We’re happier here at home. It was hard to make it out there in other places where there’s so many rules. We didn’t have a ton of rules growing up here, you know what I’m saying?” says Sandi.

“Even if you wanted to visit somebody, you know how you call your friend and say ‘can I come over on Saturday?’. Here you don’t do that, you just show up.”

People in McDowell feel far removed from government and public services. Signs in the Blankenships’ hallway read: “I’d rather have a gun in my hand than a cop on the phone” and “We don’t call 911”, with bullets marking each “1”.

While it may sound threatening to cosmopolitan readers, it is a community where people do not lock their front doors and in which people are used to doing things for themselves.

Recession is not such a scary word here. Neither is inflation.

When prices rise, people simply go without, says Sandi. Her household has already stopped buying orange juice after bad harvests sent orange prices soaring in 2024.

“We haven’t bought orange juice in a year. We used to buy orange juice every week, but we just quit buying it. Actually the grocery store here quit carrying it,” says Sandi.

Tony has to google when a recent recession was and tells me there was one in 2007 and 2008. “We didn’t notice.”

Harold McBride, the mayor of Welch, is hopeful Trump can change things. But the long history of broken promises made to lift up West Virginia leaves him cynical.

“If it doesn’t work, but he has enough guts to say ‘I messed up, let’s try something else back up here’, then you know he’s got the best interest of this country,” says McBride.

But he adds: “If he doesn’t, it’s time to go.”

McDowell County may have had a large Trump majority, but it is devoid of political signage. There are no posters outside houses, no signs in windows, no bumper stickers.

Voter apathy is a big problem, says McKinney. Many people simply did not vote at all. Trump’s support has been building here but it may prove fickle if he cannot deliver meaningful change or sends prices soaring.

However, if the president does turn things around, then he will be loved.

Either way, it is clear McDowell County is not a place filled with hope. One Chevrolet pickup parked in Gary has a sign emblazoned across the back that says “We’re F---ed”. A map of the United States sits in place of the “u”.>

<Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) has been referred to the Justice Department for criminal charges by House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Comer accused Cuomo, who is now running for New York City mayor, of making "criminally false statements" about how his state managed nursing homes during the pandemic.

Comer demanded Cuomo be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.”

“Andrew Cuomo is a man with a history of corruption and deceit, now caught red-handed lying to Congress during the Select Subcommittee’s investigation into the COVID-19 nursing home tragedy in New York,” he said. “This wasn’t a slip-up—it was a calculated cover-up by a man seeking to shield himself from responsibility for the devastating loss of life in New York’s nursing homes.”

Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, told Politico in a statement that Comer wrote "nothing more than a meritless press release that was nonsense last year and is even more so now."

“As the DOJ constantly reminds people, this kind of transparent attempt at election interference and law-fare violates their own policies," Azzopardi said.

Cuomo became a national fixture during the early days of the pandemic in a state that saw more than 800 COVID-19-related deaths a day at one point, and which once considered using military beds to treat patients.

But Cuomo was eventually accused of deliberately underreporting and covering up the actual number of COVID-19-related deaths in state nursing homes. Congressional investigations and House Republicans have said Cuomo and his administration oversaw the drafting, editing, and review of a 2020 state Department of Health report that undercounted nursing home deaths by as much as 46 percent.

They also said he lied to Congress about his role in producing the report and the extent of his knowledge regarding the report's preparation and peer review.>

For other, well documented reasons, I am no fan of Cuomo, but this would be risible if it were not so pernicious and dangerous in the hand of this backwards-looking regime, intent on crushing all before it.

<Children and families were expected to use 30,000 real eggs at the White House Easter Egg Roll on April 21 as retail egg prices remain higher than normal and egg supplies continue their recovery amidst a bird flu crisis.

Wholesale egg prices have continued to drop, as they have since mid-March, but the steep decreases have not yet fully been reflected at the grocery store. The eggs used at the White House event were donated by farmers and are not in sizes normally meant for retail and grocery channels, the American Egg Board said.

The annual White House tradition dates back to 1878 when Rutherford B. Hayes issued an order that allowed children to roll eggs down the White House lawn after banning them from using the White House Grounds as a playground two years earlier, USA TODAY has reported.

The White House South Lawn is opened once a year for families and children, who participate in an online lottery, to roll colorfully painted eggs and participate in other activities. President Donald Trump, in remarks during the roll, said about 42,000 guests were expected throughout the day, USA TODAY reported.

Families with children under 13 were drawn from an online lottery to join Trump, the first lady, White House staff and their families for the 147th edition of the egg roll.

In a new controversial twist that has raised ethics concerns, the 2025 egg roll is the first iteration of the tradition to be open to corporate sponsorships. The decision caused Trump critics to suggest it is an ethics violation. Proceeds from companies that paid for their names to be attached to the event benefit the nonprofit White House Historical Association, the lead organizer of the egg roll.

The country's largest tech companies make up some of the corporate sponsors, according to a list released by the White House, including Amazon, Meta and YouTube.

NBC News reported that the White House Easter egg roll would use real eggs even as bird flu continues to cause supply constraints that have sent prices soaring.

"They were saying that for Easter ‘please don’t use eggs. Could you use plastic eggs?’ I say we don’t want to do that," NBC quoted Trump as saying in early April.

The 30,000 real eggs, or 2,500 dozen, are donated yearly by egg farmers represented by the American Egg Board.

In a press release, American Egg Board President and CEO Emily Metz said the eggs used in the White House event would "not create additional strain on the nation's egg supply or egg prices."

The eggs represent a small percentage of the nearly 9 million dozen eggs, or 108 million eggs, that are sold at retail stores each day, Metz said.

"Additionally, the eggs used for the White House Easter Egg Roll will be in sizes small and medium, which are not meant for the retail and grocery channels,” she said.

The price of eggs in the U.S. has continued to be volatile, even as wholesale egg prices in recent weeks have declined and demand for eggs increased with the recent Passover and Easter holidays. The rise in prices and supply issues have been largely driven by the highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu, outbreak.

But egg prices at the grocery store, prices reported in some data reports like the consumer price index, and prices on the wholesale market don't always match, USA TODAY previously reported.

For instance, the latest CPI released on April 10 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows the highest price for a dozen large grade A eggs since the recent price crisis began.

But that price and the CPI cost of eggs overall, which was up 5.9% in March, may not accurately reflect the drop in wholesale prices that started in the middle of the month. The index is an average of data collected through the month and retail prices were higher at the beginning of March, one expert said.

Additionally, retailers may not have dropped prices of eggs proportionately with the drop in the wholesale egg market, which may have to do with retailers wanting to take advantage of recent worries about scarcity to keep prices high, particularly with the recent demand for Easter, some experts say....>

<....According to the CPI, the average U.S. city price of a dozen large grade A eggs at retail stores, not seasonally adjusted for March, was $6.23. That's up from $5.90 in February and $4.95 in January.

In the latest weekly report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on April 18, the average wholesale price of loose, white large shell eggs was $3.14 per dozen, up slightly from $3.08 per dozen reported on April 11, but lower than the $3.26 per dozen reported on April 4.

The CPI is a lagging indicator and it takes some time for wholesale prices to reflect in the grocery store, industry experts have told USA TODAY. Plus, some retailers are using pricing strategies to keep egg prices elevated or aren't reducing prices to match lower wholesale costs as quickly as other goods, some said.

How much you pay for eggs varies widely depending on where you live. Data gathered by USA TODAY shows the prices on April 21 at several retail stores in Wildwood, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, for instance, are lower than the U.S. city average reported in the March CPI, released on April 10.

Prices for a dozen large Grade A eggs at an Aldi, Costco, Kroger, Target, Sam's Club, Walmart and Whole Foods on April 21 ranged from a low of $4.19 at Whole Foods to a high of $5.49 at Aldi. The Whole Foods price was taken from the grocer's website and the Aldi price was from Instacart. Instacart prices are set by the grocer. The high and low prices match the prices gathered on April 10.>

<Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he’d be reducing his time with the Department of Government Efficiency beginning next month after the company reported disappointing earnings, missing Wall Street expectations.

Musk said in a Tuesday earnings call that he would begin stepping back from his Trump administration role next month and return his focus to his ailing EV brand.

He added that the ongoing Tesla blowback, consisting of nationwide protests and violent vehicle attacks, left him with two options: Let the government’s waste and fraud continue or fight it.

“I believe the right thing to do is to fight the waste and fraud and get the country back on the right track,” Musk said, announcing he’d be reducing his time with the agency in May, though he’s determined to stay on for a day or two a week for the remainder of Trump’s term.

“Starting next month, I'll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla,” he said.

On Tuesday, the company reported its lowest revenue since Q3 2021, with a double miss EPS of $0.27 vs an estimated $0.39 and revenue of $19.34 billion vs a $21.11 billion estimate.

Net income fell 71 percent in the first quarter. The stock is down approximately 40 percent year-to-date, but rose four percent in the after-hours market.

Tesla had been plagued with a series of bad headlines ahead of earnings, with reports of declining sales, customers looking to ditch their cars and the price of used vehicles plummeting.

About half of Americans view Musk and the company negatively following his slashing of federal bureaucracy while running DOGE, a new CNBC poll found. Violent attacks against the company have become so heightened that the Justice Department recently announced a Tesla investigative task force.

Hours before the call, climate activists spray-painted a Tesla showroom in Manhattan with the words “F*** DOGE.”

As Musk spoke, he appeared to imply demonstrations against the brand were “paid for” and supported by those benefitting from “wasteful largesse.”

But that’s not where the company’s troubles end.

Shortly after President Donald Trump announced tariffs on China, the country imposed a retaliatory 125 percent tariff, forcing Tesla to stop taking new orders for its Model S and Model X from Chinese customers.

Musk, who was initially considered one of the biggest winners of Trump’s tariffs, said he will continue to advise the president on financial policy but emphasized Trump’s decisions are his alone.

Though the majority of a Tesla car is US-made, the company relies on parts from China and Mexico that are subject to tariffs. Company higher-ups acknowledged challenges as a result of the financial headwinds.

Long-term investors are hoping the company pulls through on its artificial intelligence and robotic ambitions. Tesla is debuting its first robotaxi pilot in June in Austin, Texas.

“Future of the company is fundamentally based on large-scale autonomous cars and...vast numbers of autonomous humanoid robots,” Musk said Tuesday.

However, Tesla’s auto sector accounts for most of the company’s overall revenue, and sales slumped 13 percent during the first three months of the year. Last week, Reuters reported Tesla delayed its US launch of an affordable electric vehicle, which was supposed to debut in the first half of the year.

“I continue to believe that Tesla, with excellent execution, will be the most valuable company in the world by far,” Musk continued, encouraging investors to look beyond the “bumps and potholes of the road immediately ahead of us” and toward a “bright, shining citadel on a hill.”>

Time to exit <DOG****>, a move that was bound to come once facing resistance.

<Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Wednesday used a DOGE subcommittee hearing to call for the defunding and dismantling of the company that provides NPR and PBS with federal funds.

For Taylor Greene and other House Republicans, today’s hearing was about tarnishing PBS and NPR with accusations of bias and targeting them for defunding. For the broadcasters, today was about defending their existence.

The hearing, titled “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable,” started at 10 am ET, and featured testimony from NPR CEO Katherine Maher and PBS CEO Paula Kerger, as well as a local station operator and a conservative critic of taxpayer-funded media.

The hearing, which was chaired by Taylor Greene, was meant to advance long-held Republican arguments against PBS and NPR, including that their programming is “communist.”

In the final minutes of the two-hour hearing that saw repeated conservative attacks on the public broadcasters, Taylor Greene said that “we can look no further than the Corporation for Public Broadcasting” as the culprit for US debt.

“After listening to what we’ve heard, today, we will be calling for the complete and total defund and dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Taylor Greene said.

President Donald Trump on said Tuesday that the networks are a “waste of money” and claimed “he would love to” defund them. And yet the funding bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump earlier this month included $535 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that disburses funds to 1,500 local radio and TV stations. Congress budgets money for CPB two years in advance, so the recent bill means public broadcasting is funded through 2027.

Throughout the hearing, legislators pressed Maher and Kerger on their roles in allegedly circulating disinformation, accusing the pair of fostering newsrooms that cater to elite audiences.

“NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white urban liberals and progressives who generally look down on and judge rural America,” Taylor Greene said at the hearing’s overture before accusing the pair of “grooming and sexualizing” children, using DEI for listener demographics, and wasting taxpayer dollars.

Maher and Kerger also faced attacks from Rep. James Comer, who, in addition to accusing NPR and PBS of peddling “disinformation” and “propaganda,” claimed the public broadcasters are obsolete in an age marked by a “menu of media options” that includes podcasts and satellite radio.

Congressional Republicans repeatedly peppered Maher and Kerger with accusations regarding their coverage of the COVID-19 origins lab leak theory, Russian collusion, and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Maher said that the public broadcaster was “mistaken” in “failing” to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story sooner and more aggressively. When Cloud asked Maher about the lab leak theory, the NPR boss emphasized that the outlet’s current editorial leadership recognizes that “the new CIA evidence is worthy of coverage,” stressing that it has reported just that.

Maher and Kerger spent the two-hour hearing defending their respective organizations, pushing back against conservative claims by stressing that most Americans trust public broadcasters to service local communities and provide a wide variety of reporting and educational programming. To elucidate her point, Maher noted that more than 60% of all Americans — and more than half of Republicans — trust public broadcasting to deliver fact-based news. Kerger noted “there’s nothing more American than PBS as a membership organization.”

Local TV and radio stations also used the opportunity to justify their federal funding. From North Country Public Radio in upstate New York, to New Mexico PBS in Albuquerque, to Hawaiʻi Public Radio in Honolulu, publicly supported stations are using the right’s political attacks to galvanize grassroots support and raise money from donors.

Hawaiʻi Public Radio CEO Meredith Artley, the former editor in chief of CNN Digital, wrote that her news and classical music stations are “94% community supported,” with the remaining 6% coming from CPB. If the federal funds were diminished, the Hawaii stations would survive, but “there would likely be damage to the nationwide system that provides programming and infrastructure that HPR and many other stations rely on,” she wrote.

That’s the key point: It’s a system. And smaller stations tend to need more help from the system. At KTOO Public Media in Alaska, for example, fully 30% of the budget comes from CPB. “This federal funding is essential in ensuring that Juneau’s only local-owned newsroom can continue to deliver you the news from our community,” the station said....>

<....Congressional Democrats came to the public broadcasters’ aid throughout the hearing, stressing that journalism and the free press are currently under attack by “extremists” and are needed “more than ever.”

“Public broadcasting is a tool for education, for emergencies, and a cherished part of our national fabric,” Rep. Robert Garcia said. “The majority and our chairwoman should drop this attempt to silence media voices they don’t like.”

Rep. Greg Casar chastised the committee for focusing on defunding NPR and PBS instead of DOGE’s head, Elon Musk, whose companies — which include X, SpaceX, Tesla, and Starlink — make billions each year while still taking home $3 billion per year in government contracts.

“That’s six times the money that goes to all of public broadcasting. Private insurers and Medicare Advantage overcharged taxpayers $83 billion,” Casar said. “Just last year, that could pay for public broadcasting 160 times over.”

“To borrow a phrase from Sesame Street, the letter of the day is C and it stands for corruption,” he said.

Press freedom groups have also defended the public broadcasters. Ahead of the hearing, the Center for Democracy & Technology’s president and chief executive, Alexandra Reeve Givens, called the meeting an attempt by the Trump administration “to bully their perceived enemies and silence legitimate journalism.” Reporters Without Borders executive director Clayton Weimars said he was “deeply concerned the House hearing on bias in NPR and PBS is a political stunt that will create a slippery slope towards politicians dictating the programming of public news outlets.”

Stations large and small also highlighted their local responsibilities.

“Whatever happens in Washington, DC — WQED is not going anywhere,” Jason Jedlinski, CEO of Pittsburgh’s PBS station, wrote on LinkedIn. His post listed recent features (segments about a local farm, a reading club, and so on) that, quite frankly, few other media outlets would spend time on.>

<Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito leapt into proselytizing from the bench on Wednesday — and in doing so, he "revealed his own homophobia" as well as that he didn't understand the basic plot of the children's book he wants to allow parents to force schools to embargo, court watcher Mark Joseph Stern wrote for Slate in an analysis published on Wednesday.

The case in question was Mahmoud v. Taylor, a potential landmark decision about the right of parents to censor LGBTQ content from school curricula.

"In 2022, Maryland’s Montgomery County Board of Education chose to include it on the curriculum for young students, prompting some religious parents to 'opt out' their children from seeing the books," wrote Stern. "The board eventually scrapped its opt-out policy, finding that it had become unworkable: So many parents were objecting that the policy gave them a veto power over the curricula, with educators scrapping materials rather than managing the logistics of endless opt-outs. The parents then sued, alleging that the board violated their First Amendment right to free exercise by denying them the chance to shield their children from LGBTQ+ literature."

During the arguments, Alito took particular aim at "Uncle Bobby's Wedding," a 2008 picture book about a child reacting to her uncle's same-sex wedding.

But in the process, Alito revealed he didn't even understand the central conflict of the book, Stern wrote.

“I’ve read that book,” Alito proclaimed, with what Stern called the bravado of "a homophobic uncle at Thanksgiving dinner preparing to lecture his family about something he saw on Fox News." “I don’t think anybody can read that and say, well, this is just telling children that there are occasions when men marry other men, that Uncle Bobby gets married to his boyfriend, Jamie. And everybody’s happy and … everyone accepts this — except for the little girl, Chloe, who has reservations about it. But her mother corrects her: ‘No, you shouldn’t have any reservations about this.’ As I said, it has a clear moral message.”

At this point, Stern noted, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was forced to step in and correct him, saying, "Wait a minute, the reservation is about..." only for Alito to talk over her.

"Sotomayor felt it was urgently important to address Alito’s claim — and rightly so, because he was wrong," wrote Stern. "Alito claimed that Chloe had moral 'reservations' about Uncle Bobby marrying his boyfriend — as if her 'reservations' were about a man marrying another man. But the book makes it abundantly clear that Chloe’s reservations are not about Uncle Bobby’s sexual orientation. Rather, she frets that he won’t have as much time to spend with her."

Alito's "butchering" of the message of a children's book, concluded Stern, "cuts to the rotten core of Mahmoud itself."

"The plaintiffs frame these books as propaganda designed to brainwash their children into supporting LGBTQ+ rights. But all that books like Uncle Bobby’s Wedding actually do is depict LGBTQ+ families as they exist in the real world. Is it propaganda to see two moms with their child at the grocery store? To see a transgender dad with his son on the playground? Are parents’ religious beliefs really offended when their child is exposed to different kind of families?">

This heah boy clearly labours under antediluvian prejudices.

<Far-right activists, including Laura Loomer, saw their engagement on X plummet after they criticized the site’s billionaire owner Elon Musk, according to The New York Times.

Critics feared that Musk, who promised to unleash free speech on the app when he bought it in 2022, would use the platform to amplify or suppress users based on his personal preferences.

Now, new analysis from The Times shows three users who targeted Musk over his views on visas in December 2024 subsequently saw a significant drop in their reach.

Loomer, a far-right influencer with close ties to President Donald Trump, has attracted more than a million followers by sharing lies, conspiracy theories, and racist posts. In December, she wrote that Musk was “exposed” over his support for certain visa programs.

Musk responded that Loomer was “looking for attention” and urged his followers to “ignore” her. Loomer’s reach on the platform dropped to lower levels for a few weeks before she saw her engagement rise again as Musk started responding to her posts. Her average daily views were over 200,000 in late December before they suddenly dropped to around 50,000 in early January. In February, they were back up to nearly 300,000 as the pair interacted more.

After her feud with Musk, she also lost access to X Premium for a short period, which may have contributed to her declining popularity on the platform. However, there was no obvious connection between the reach of her posts and her access to the program, according to The Times. Losing access to the premium program also meant losing access to the platform’s revenue-sharing program, which distributes advertising funds to premium users.

As with any social network, the algorithms X use to control a post’s distribution are not public.

Loomer told The Times that she estimates that she lost $50,000 from X during the suppression of her account.

“I think it’s wrong to say it’s a free speech platform and then shut off people’s ability to monetize,” she told the paper.

Loomer’s fellow right-wing agitator Anastasia Maria Loupis also saw her reach plummet in late December from over 200,000 average daily views to the low tens of thousands in early January amid her own feud with Musk over his stance on visas for skilled workers.

Loupis opened another account which, despite having a smaller number of followers compared to her original account, reaches a wider audience. In January, she said she would sue X and Musk.

“It has turned out to be all lies from him,” Loupis told The Times. “It's disappointing because we supported him and believed in him very, very much.”

Infowars host Owen Shroyer also mocked jobs handed to visa holders and saw his reach on the platform decline, from hundreds of thousands of views in December to the low tens of thousands in early January.

“My theory is that someone is manipulating reach based off of personal, political or issue based bias,” he told The Times.

However, he didn’t directly blame Musk, saying that “some of the powers he has delegated could be being abused.”

Musk, who has described himself as a “free speech absolutist,” wrote on X that if large accounts blocked or muted others, their reach would be reduced. The tech mogul is the top user on the platform with 219 million followers, meaning he could hold significant sway in this regard. He has also indicated that he may have removed some users from the X premium program, which would limit their reach and profitability on the platform.

“People may express themselves on X as long as they do not violate our X Rules,” the X help center states. “We do not block, limit, or remove content based on an individual’s views or opinions.”

Musk wrote in November last year that “there is no shadowbanning anymore.” However, he has also said that he believes in “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.”

“There will always be critics,” said Musk in February 2024. “What is perhaps notable is that I don’t attempt to silence them even on a platform that I own.”>

Um, yeah.

<President Donald Trump has ripped into Harvard University, accusing the Ivy League college of being a “threat to democracy” following the school president’s refusal to comply with his demands.

“Harvard is an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution, as are numerous others, with students being accepted from all over the World that want to rip our Country apart,” the president posted.

The Truth Social post references Harvard’s ongoing legal dispute with the administration, which it is suing after it was stripped of $2.2 billion in federal funding earlier this week.

Trump went on to say that Harvard had hired a lawyer who is also affiliated with the Trump Organization.

“Harvard is a threat to Democracy, with a lawyer, who represents me, who should therefore be forced to resign, immediately, or be fired. He’s not that good, anyway, and I hope that my very big and beautiful company, now run by my sons, gets rid of him ASAP!” Trump said.

CNN’s Kaitlin Collins confirmed that the Trump Organization has ended its relationship with prominent conservative attorney Bill Burck.

This is following complaints from Trump about Burck representing both the organization and Harvard in its legal battle against the Trump administration.

Eric Trump confirmed to CNN that Burck will no longer serve as an outside adviser, stating, “I view it as a conflict and I will be moving in a different direction.”

Trump’s public denouncement of the school was perhaps sparked by Garber’s NBC News interview Wednesday evening, when Garber declared he “will not compromise on certain issues.”

“We are defending what I believe is one of the most important lynchpins of the American economy and way of life—our universities,” Garber said.

The Trump administration demanded Harvard change its hiring and admissions practices and eliminate its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The university says it won’t comply.

The U.S. president also came after Harvard’s tax-exempt status, while his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) threatened to eliminate its control over enrolling international students.

“The place is a Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER AND HATE. It is truly horrific! Now, since our filings began, they act like they are all ‘American Apple Pie,’” Trump’s post continued.>