I’m doing one thing just a little completely different with the e-newsletter right this moment: delving into some reporting left over in my pocket book that exhibits how Elon Musk — and the robust emotions that working for him can engender — can come between even the closest of mates.
Final month, my colleagues and I printed a story about Steve Davis, a longtime Musk lieutenant who has labored for the billionaire for greater than 20 years, at three completely different corporations, and is now one of the vital highly effective individuals main his cost-cutting effort in Washington.
When Davis moved to Washington as a SpaceX worker greater than 15 years in the past, he developed a busy extracurricular life, working a well-liked frozen yogurt store and bar; organizing kickball and aggressive karaoke groups; and internet hosting sport nights and Shabbat dinners. A lot of that he did aspect by aspect with an in depth good friend and roommate named Stephen Richer. (Right here they’re performing together in a flash mob for Davis’s Mr. Yogato yogurt store. Richer is the tall redhead.)
Mates referred to as the 2 inseparable. Richer sang the praises of SpaceX and the Boring Firm, the Musk-founded tunneling startup that Davis would go on to steer.
And some years later, after Richer had gone again to regulation college in Chicago after which moved to Arizona, Davis backed his buddy when, of all issues, Richer — a Republican — ran for and received the 2020 election for Maricopa County recorder, which oversees voting within the state’s largest county.
In the event you’ve been studying the On Politics e-newsletter for awhile, chances are you’ll already guess the place that is going.
In his new position, Richer battled towards allegations of voter fraud, as conspiracy theorists on X pushed deceptive details about undocumented immigrants registering to vote.
Among the many greatest spreaders of that misinformation was none apart from Musk.
Perusing Richer’s posts on X over time exhibits a person struggling to keep up — and exhibit — his admiration for the billionaire.
“So pleased with all my @SpaceX mates,” Richer tweeted in 2021, with a photograph of himself at a SpaceX facility. The following yr, he credited Musk with having revolutionized digital finance, the house trade, electrical autos and battery know-how.
Then, final April, Musk promoted the concept that tons of of 1000’s of undocumented immigrants had registered to vote in Arizona. And in September, Musk accused Arizona of “refusing to take away illegals from voter rolls,” in a submit that has been considered 38 million occasions.
At first, Richer tried to strike a conciliatory tone, at the same time as he stated there was “0 validity” to the concept that so many undocumented individuals had registered to vote. “We beloved the latest rocket launch that we might see within the Arizona sky,” he wrote as a part of an eight-point post final April rebutting Musk’s misinformation. He added that he was the “proprietor of many, many Musk-related merchandise.”
But, as Musk has leaned into conspiracy and posted extra about supposed voter fraud in Arizona, Richer has change into much less fawning and firmer in his pushback. He lost a Republican primary in his bid to retain his seat final August, after he denied that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump. In September, Richer posted that Musk had been unsuitable in each one among his posts about Arizona elections, however “by no means corrected any of them.”
And in an interview on MSNBC a couple of days later, Richer spoke extra sharply. “When individuals like Musk submit on Twitter or converse to information retailers, and it’s simply full of innuendo, or full of lies, or full of inaccurate info, then it’s workplaces like mine and the 150 full-time workers which are in my workplace who see the downstream results of that,” he stated.
Richer, who didn’t remark for this piece and is now a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy Faculty, has now change into an everyday critic of the Trump administration and the Division of Authorities Effectivity, the company that his previous roommate helps lead. On X, Richer has expressed issues that Trump’s actions have undercut the facility of the legislative department, and cracked jokes about DOGE’s elimination of pointless positions when its co-head, Vivek Ramaswamy, left to run for governor of Ohio.
Davis additionally didn’t reply to a request for remark. However he has asserted himself in his DOGE position, which at first was saved underneath wraps, and sat for his first public interview every week after we printed our story. On Fox News, with greater than a dozen different people who find themselves collaborating within the cost-cutting effort, Davis defended the workforce’s slashing overhaul of the federal authorities.
He sat straight subsequent to Musk.
MEANWHILE on X
A continued fixation on Social Safety
Musk is utilizing his X account as a megaphone. My colleague Kate Conger seems at how he’s fixating on Social Safety not too long ago.
Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed of late that Social Safety has been a goal of huge fraud, with out offering a lot proof. On the similar time, he has pushed the unfounded principle that Democrats have allowed immigrants into the US as a part of a scheme to shift voter demographics, echoing a white-nationalist conspiracy principle often known as the Nice Substitute.
On Wednesday, Musk appeared to attempt to mix these two threads, taking to X to revive his issues about Social Safety and sharing knowledge from his Division of Authorities Effectivity workforce that he stated confirmed immigrants had more and more been issued Social Safety numbers whereas they waited for his or her asylum circumstances to be heard.
“Insane,” Musk wrote, sharing a Fox Information clip that mentioned the findings. He additionally shared a number of posts from different X customers who amplified the identical Fox Information video. After one person prompt that members of the Biden administration must be arrested, Musk replied, “Completely.”
Immigrants who’re approved to work in the US are given Social Safety numbers as a result of they should pay taxes, although they don’t seem to be robotically eligible to obtain advantages.
Proposals to chop Social Safety have been a few of the most contentious concepts from Musk’s workforce. This system is extensively well-liked, and plenty of Republicans concern that Musk-backed cuts might upset their constituents. However Musk has continued to concentrate on Social Safety, sending one among his oldest and most trusted buyers, Antonio Gracias, to the company to supervise DOGE’s work there.
Different notable posts:
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Musk criticized Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority chief, for condemning the federal cuts pushed by DOGE whereas refusing to touch upon protests towards Musk’s electric-vehicle producer, Tesla. “Horrible,” Musk wrote.
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The billionaire additionally re-shared a submit of his from earlier this week, wherein he stated anybody who “financed assaults towards Tesla” ought to face jail time.
— Kate Conger
BY THE NUMBERS
314
That’s what number of separate fields of data about people living in the United States are contained in info techniques to which Musk’s associates on the Division of Authorities Effectivity are in search of entry, in keeping with a New York Instances evaluation.
That knowledge might embody a citizen’s mom’s maiden identify, checking account quantity or quantity of scholar debt — and an entire lot extra. The classes of knowledge within the evaluation come from 23 knowledge techniques holding private details about the general public throughout eight businesses.
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A pilot sues an X influencer for defamation
Jo Ellis, a 35-year-old transgender pilot within the Virginia Military Nationwide Guard, grew to become the middle of a conspiracy principle after well-liked accounts on X unfold the false rumor that she had been on the helm of a helicopter that collided with a passenger jet in Washington in January. To the net mob, her suspected involvement within the incident was proof that range initiatives within the federal authorities had performed a task within the crash.
None of it was true. On Wednesday, she filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday towards Matt Wallace, an influencer on X with greater than two million followers who helped unfold the falsehood.
“My life was turned upside-down at that time,” Ms. Ellis said in an interview with my colleague Stuart A. Thompson. “Without end on, I’m often known as ‘that trans terrorist.’”
