Vesper

Kepa! saved on Håland

pen for citeh

https://www.vipleague.pm/fa-cup/afc-bournemouth-vs-manchester-city-1-live-streaming https://www.vipleague.pm/fa-cup/afc-bournemouth-vs-manchester-city-2-live-streaming https://redditsoccerstreams.org/event/afc-bournemouth-manchester-city/1509528 https://soccer-100.com/event/eng-fa/man-city-vs-bournemouth-live-soccer-stats/733959

because Emery is a proper WC manager who is a master at in-game tactical changes

nil 2 Trashford on a hat trick

pen now for Villa

nil 1 Trashford his first goal for Villa

Deepdale is the oldest continuously used football stadium in the world

https://www.vipleague.pm/fa-cup/preston-north-end-vs-aston-villa-1-live-streaming https://www.vipleague.pm/fa-cup/preston-north-end-vs-aston-villa-2-live-streaming https://redditsoccerstreams.org/event/preston-north-end-aston-villa/1509530 https://soccer-100.com/event/eng-fa/aston-villa-vs-preston-live-soccer-stats/733957

first mention of him here on TC

it's a no-brainer next season his salary would go back to £13m (£250K PW), all paid by us he is shite pay the £5m beak penalty and we are £8m ahead versus keeping him IF we pay the £25m and then immediately sell him, we will never get that £25m for him, plus he will never agree to give up that salary as we are legally obligated to pay him we would have to cut a deal with the buying club to cover a large part of his salry for the 2 years left on his contract, plus German and Italian teams will try and fuck us on the transfer fee, probably only be willing to pay 20m euros (£16.5m qyuid) at most we will probaly have to pick at least half his salary for 2 years (so 13m quid of the 26m quid he is owed) PLUS take a £8.5m loss or so on the transfer fee That is a £21.5m loss in toto versus a £5m break penalty (and zero salary from us will ever have to be paid to him going forward)

Forest have won via pens almost every round Sels is a beast at pens

Forest win Sels stopped 2

pens

https://www.vipleague.pm/fa-cup/brighton-hove-albion-vs-nottingham-forest-1-live-streaming https://www.vipleague.pm/fa-cup/brighton-hove-albion-vs-nottingham-forest-2-live-streaming https://redditsoccerstreams.org/event/brighton-hove-albion-nottingham-forest/1509529 https://soccer-100.com/event/eng-fa/nottm-forest-vs-brighton-live-soccer-stats/733960

Geovany Quenda is going places. Fast. ‘I see similarities with Lamine Yamal’ https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6235533/2025/03/28/geovany-quenda-Chelsea-signing-sporting-lisbon-profile/ https://archive.ph/sDHqP Training was already starting when Geovany Quenda turned up. He was new to the neighbourhood — new to the country, in fact — and he wanted to play some football. He approached the coaches and asked if he could join in. In normal circumstances, they would have let him. SF Damaiense, based in the Lisbon suburb of Amadora, is a community club. Turning away bright-eyed local kids is not really the done thing. On this occasion, though, there was a small issue. Quenda, who had just turned nine, didn’t have any kit. “He was wearing jeans and trainers — social clothes,” recalls Edmundo Silva, Damaiense’s president. “He clearly had the football bug and was desperate to play, but the coaches said no.” Quenda, disappointed, might just have walked home. Instead, he hung around. He found a spare ball and started kicking it around by himself. He surely knew what he was doing, just as you surely know where this is going. “The coaches saw his touch, his relationship with the ball,” says Silva. “It wasn’t typical for a kid of that age. They decided to make an exception and let him train. They were curious to see more. And he was astonishing.” Curiosity and astonishment: these have been recurring themes in Quenda’s journey to this point. It is not a long story — he is only 17, barely halfway through his breakout season at Sporting CP — but it has moved quickly, hurtling along with the same momentum that defines Quenda’s wing play. Chelsea may have won the race to sign him for £40million ($51.8m) — he will move to Stamford Bridge in 2026 — but excitement about his potential goes beyond club affiliations. In Portugal, there is a growing conviction that Quenda will be a genuine global star, not to mention a fixture of the national team for years to come. “A good news story for Portuguese football,” Portugal coach Roberto Martinez called him in November. Bernardo Silva, one of the stalwarts of Martinez’s side, was even more effusive: “He might steal my place. It’s impressive how good he is at that age.” Edmundo Silva recognises that sentiment. “He had so much quality in his left foot, even back then,” he says. “After three or four training sessions, we all agreed that the boy was special.” Age, as they say, is just a number. And denim is a just a material. Quenda was born in Guinea-Bissau, west Africa. He moved to Lisbon in 2016, joining his father, who had relocated there for work a couple of years prior. One of his early mentors in Portugal was Basaula Lemba, a former international footballer for Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo). Lemba had spent much of his club career in Portugal and was working as youth coordinator at Damaiense when Quenda arrived. “He had never played organised football, but he was playing passes with both feet, making it look easy,” Lemba told Portuguese website ZeroZero in 2023. “He was the guy starting every attack. He had extraordinary potential.” Off the field, Quenda was not the most ebullient. “He was still getting settled into a new life, finding new friends,” explains Silva, the Damaiense president. “He was observant, not a big talker, but very calm and respectful. And he quickly demonstrated that he was a very attentive, smart kid.” Quenda as a child with former Sporting CP player Yannick Djalo (Photo courtesy of Geovany Quenda) Quenda’s talent was so obvious that Silva knew it would be tough to hang onto him for long. He told the youth coaches to hold off on using the youngster in tournaments so scouts from bigger clubs wouldn’t catch sight of him before he was fully registered at Damaiense. It was a smart plan. It didn’t work. “The coaches couldn’t resist playing him,” says Silva. “They took him to a competition in another neighbourhood. After five minutes of the first match, I was getting calls from the two big Lisbon clubs asking me where we had unearthed this diamond.” Silva resisted. “We didn’t want to give him up immediately,” he says. “Geovany was still adapting to a new environment, establishing friendships. Damaiense is a small club, but it has a strong social role in our community. We succeeded in keeping him for a year. It was a fight at times, but it was important for him to be happy.” His next destination was Benfica. He entered their academy in 2017, impressing his new coaches with his dribbling ability and maturity. “He wasn’t scared and he didn’t feel pressure,” David Sousa, who managed him at under-11 level, told Portuguese newspaper Record. “That helped him a lot. He would make difficult things look easy.” After two seasons at Benfica, there was a rift. Quenda and his family expected an offer of a place in the club’s on-site boarding house. When it did not materialise, he left, joining rivals Sporting. Tiago Teixeira arrived at Sporting in summer 2022. He became assistant coach of the under-23 side, later taking up the same role with the senior team. He remembers the buzz about Quenda. “Everyone was talking about Geovany,” Teixeira tells The Athletic. A year later, Teixeira got a closer look at what the fuss was about. Quenda was only 16 when he moved up to under-23 level, but you would never have known it. “He had a fantastic season for us,” says Teixeira. “He found it easy to adapt.” Teixeira’s impressions are recent enough that he quickly abandons the past tense. The player Quenda was in 2023 and 2024 is the player he is today, give or take a little refinement. “He is a very, very good dribbler,” Teixeira says. “He’s impressive physically and can beat his man on the outside or on the inside.” Case in point: his goal for Portugal Under-17s against Morocco in September 2023, a ludicrous solo effort that left a trail of dazed defenders scratching their heads and wondering what the hell had just happened. Teixeira, though, is at pains to point out that Quenda has plenty more arrows in his quiver. “He’s a very intense player, very committed,” he says. “But I think his greatest strengths are his decision-making and his ability to play the final ball. He reads the game brilliantly.” It is telling that the players Quenda looked up to in his early teens — Franco Cervi at Benfica, Marcus Edwards at Sporting — were not hug-the-touchline wingers, but tricksy creators. Many of his assists at youth level and for Sporting’s B team came from through balls rather than crosses. He is currently playing on the left flank for Sporting, but it is not a given that he will end up there. “He has a great capacity to learn new positions,” says Teixeira. “Sometimes with the under-23s, he was close to being a No 10. He can operate in small spaces, be that out wide or in central areas. He is very switched on defensively, so he really contributes out of possession, too. In the long term, I think he will end up playing through the middle.” It seems fair to say that Quenda’s career would not have progressed quite this quickly were it not for Ruben Amorim. It was the latter’s willingness to promote youth players that propelled the teenager into Sporting’s first team last summer. “We see him as a big project,” Amorim said in March 2024. “We will take it slowly and look at the big picture.” Quenda has impressed since breaking into Sporting’s first team (Filipe Amorim/AFP via Getty Images) Quenda quickly put paid to the careful approach. Playing slightly out of position at right wing-back, he found the net in the Portuguese Super Cup against Porto — a goal that made him Sporting’s youngest-ever scorer — and never left the side thereafter. “He got an opportunity and didn’t give me any way to leave him out,” Amorim said after watching Quenda net his first league goal against Famalicao in October. “No reason for doubt, nothing. I think he’s going to be a great player.” It is to Quenda’s credit that his level did not dip when Amorim departed to join Manchester United in November. He has arguably been even more effective under the new coach, Rui Borges; witness the superb assists against Vitoria Guimaraes and Porto this year. Borges, clearly, likes Quenda a lot — and not just the cutting edge he provides. “Individual quality isn’t enough and he understands that, understands that he has to be committed,” Borges said after a recent victory. “He’s a kid who likes to learn.” Quenda in action against Dortmund in the Champions League (Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images) His team-mates, meanwhile, increasingly look to him for inspiration. “He’s an enormous talent,” Sporting captain Morten Hjulmand told Record last week. “What stands out is the way he carries the ball. It’s hard to stop him because he changes direction at great speed. He’s really hard to mark.” Like any 17-year-old, Quenda is not a perfect player. Amorim once expressed exasperation at his finishing, which could generously be characterised as scattershot. “He is often more interested in setting others up than shooting himself,” says Teixeira. “I think he could also be more aggressive in one-on-one situations. He could go at his marker more, be a bit more incisive and ambitious, maybe alternate more between going left and right.” The extra year in Lisbon should work to his advantage. He is still living at the Sporting academy, still in school. There are plans for extra English lessons to soften his landing when he moves to London in 15 months’ time. Teixeira, for one, doesn’t believe he will have any problem adapting to a new league. Of greater concern will be the precise circumstances he encounters at his new club. It is not just that Chelsea already have a huge cadre of wingers and creative midfielders; it is also that two more players with very similar profiles to Quenda — Kendry Paez and Willian Estevao — are also due to arrive before him. Paez and Estevao are both left-footed attackers who can play wide or centrally. Both will arrive with significant fanfare. Both are still teenagers. You could easily see Chelsea signing a couple more wonderkids before 2026, too. Quenda will join Chelsea in 2026 (Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images) What’s the plan here? Not for Chelsea, whose modus operandi under Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly at least has the benefit of being transparent, but for Quenda? There is a lot to be said for backing yourself, but the route to regular first-team starts at Stamford Bridge does look unusually congested. There is a danger that at least one of the new guys is going to go the way of Angelo Gabriel, the much-hyped Brazilian winger who was flogged to Al-Nassr — still, somehow, at a profit — in September after precisely zero appearances in Chelsea blue. You can understand, perhaps, why some saw Manchester United — and a reunion with the coach who first took a chance on him — as a better fit. “The Amorim factor could have been a big help,” Sousa, Quenda’s old coach at Benfica told Record. “Maybe it would have been easier for him to adapt.” It is Quenda’s task — and Chelsea’s — to make those hypotheticals irrelevant. The talent, clearly, is there. And for all that we must exercise caution when we talk up 17-year-olds, for all that that it is our duty to highlight the possible pitfalls, to point out that players rarely follow a linear development path, there is a degree of confidence about Quenda’s ability to surf the waves. “I see similarities with Lamine Yamal,” says Teixeira. “Both of them started playing senior football at 16, 17. Yamal is already playing for Spain but Quenda has just been called up by Portugal for the first time and I’m certain he’s going to be a regular in the national team for years to come, and a star of the Champions League. “He will get better with age and keep growing in confidence. He has everything he needs.”

Trump Quietly Threatens U.S. Automakers Over His New Tariffs Donald Trump clearly knows his tariffs will hurt consumers. https://newrepublic.com/post/193298/trump-threatens-us-automakers-tariffs-cars Trump is holding U.S. automakers hostage by scaring them into not raising prices while he puts massive 25 percent tariffs on all of the materials they need to make their product. The Wall Street Journal reported that the president told automakers at an event earlier this month that he would look “unfavorably” on any price increases after his tariffs, causing automakers to fear retribution unless they just grin and bear the incoming cost increases. He also told them that they should be happy and thankful for him ridding them of Biden’s electric vehicle mandate, and that the tariffs would actually just be “great.” “You’re going to see prices going down, but going to go down specifically because they’re going to buy what we’re doing, incentivizing companies to—and even countries—companies to come into America,” Trump told the CEOs. This is a huge contradiction. The president claims he’s trying to lower inflation and reinvigorate the domestic manufacturing industry while simultaneously making everything more expensive. Trump’s new 25 percent automobile tariffs will go into effect on April 2. Almost half of all passenger cars in the U.S. are manufactured outside of our borders in places like Mexico and Japan. Carmakers already have begun to stockpile new, completed cars to try to offset the tariffs until May. “It is difficult to see how imposed tariffs over time would not have some impact on prices,” American Automotive Policy Council President Matt Blunt, who represents General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford Motor, told the Journal. It’s unclear how the Trump administration will punish car companies that do indeed raise prices—something they’ve been forced into doing by Trump himself. Trump’s Latest Tariffs Are Already Wreaking Havoc on the Auto Industry Automotive stocks are crashing following Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs. https://newrepublic.com/post/193263/donald-trump-executive-order-auto-tariffs-stocks U.S. auto stocks opened down on Thursday after Donald Trump announced “permanent” 25 percent tariffs on “all cars that are not made in the United States.” The Big Three automakers took an immediate hit as the market digested the announcement, with tariffs on vehicles expected to go into effect on April 3 and vehicle parts one month later. General Motors stock fell more than 7 percent in morning trading on Thursday, and continued to fall to roughly 9 percent down. Deutsche Bank analysts noted that General Motors is likely to be hit the hardest by Trump’s announcement because it has “the most exposure to Mexico.” A little over half of General Motors vehicles sold in the U.S. during the first three quarters of 2024 were assembled in the U.S., according to Barclays analyst Dan Levy. Thirty percent were assembled in Canada and Mexico, and 18 percent were brought in from other countries. While a lot of General Motors cars are assembled in the U.S., they rely heavily on imported parts. Ford saw a smaller dip, losing only 2 percent in trading. “Tesla and Ford appear to be the most shielded given location of vehicle assembly facilities although Ford does face incremental exposure on imported engines,” wrote the Deutsche Bank analysts. Seventy-eight percent of Ford vehicles are assembled in the U.S., while only 21 percent of U.S.-sold units are assembled in Mexico or Canada. Stellantis, which assembles roughly 57 percent of its vehicles in the U.S., lost less than 2 percent in morning trading. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Tesla saw a bump of 5 percent in morning trading, after Trump’s last round of tariff announcements and reference to a seemingly imminent economic recession sent the stock cratering earlier this month. Trump told reporters Wednesday that tariffs, which have already started to tank the valuations of the Big Three automakers, would “continue to spur growth.” Trump’s tariffs on vehicles and auto parts is the latest move in his escalating trade war with both Mexico and Canada, which is very likely to have dire and long-lasting economic impacts on America’s border states. Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers union, applauded Trump’s move, saying that the new tariffs were a step to “end the free trade disaster that has devastated working-class communities for decades.” In a separate statement, the union expressed optimism that Trump’s announcement could help bring back automanufacturing jobs to the states.

https://newrepublic.com/article/193290/trump-musk-cancer-nuclear-bird-flu Perhaps, in retrospect, the most important turning point in the evolution of the contemporary far-right elite occurred in April 2020, just a month into a pandemic that would ultimately become a mass extinction event, killing more than seven million people worldwide. Condemning public health restrictions, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said, “There are more important things than living.” Patrick, who has proudly stood by that ghoulish statement, meant that the government had a higher obligation to keep the capitalist economy moving than to save any of its citizens from premature death. This sounded shocking to many people at the time, but it’s a philosophy that Trump, Musk, DOGE, and company have now fully embraced. Our nation’s founders would not have agreed. The point of human society and government, wrote John Locke, the seventeenth-century Enlightenment theorist from whom Thomas Jefferson and other American founding thinkers got many of their ideas, was that people need to band together in community to protect each person’s “life, liberty and property.” Screw that—especially the “life” bit, is what the political right has been saying for a while. Contemporary conservativism has largely jettisoned the notion of a government’s “duty to protect” its citizens, a phrase that goes back to the Reconstruction era. But never has the rejection of the “duty to protect” found such vivid and chilling expression as it has in Trump’s second term. The Trump–Musk administration has morbidly committed itself to an enthusiastically pro-death agenda. Let’s take fatal illnesses. On Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he was cutting 10,000 HHS employees, including those tasked with responding to disease outbreaks. (Another 10,000 employees already took “voluntary” buyouts.) Agencies affected by those cuts include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—which will lose an estimated 18 percent of its staff—the National Institutes for Health, the Food and Drug Adminstration, as well as Medicare and Medicaid. Meanwhile, bird flu rages among the nation’s poultry and experts fear that it could turn into a deadly human pandemic. Yet the Trump administration has not even staffed the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, established by Biden in 2022, and his administration is reportedly rethinking a contract with Moderna to develop a bird flu vaccine, as RFK Jr. publicly floats just letting the virus run wild among the nation’s flocks. Speaking of deadly diseases, this administration seems to have a special vendetta against cancer research, a priority that has long enjoyed bipartisan popularity. Trump–Musk cuts have abruptly ended lifesaving research supported by the Defense Health Research Consortium on pancreatic, kidney, and lung cancers and left much other cancer research—and cancer care centers—in the lurch. Cancer kills more than 600,000 Americans a year, but the mortality rate for the disease has been steadily decreasing for decades, due in part to improved research and treatment, mostly funded by the government. That’s progress that RFK, Trump, and Musk are working hard to undo. Another major cause of untimely demise for Americans is car accidents, and these deaths too have been declining. Yet that may change: The agency charged with researching, tracking, and finding solutions to traffic safety problems, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, has been targeted aggressively by Musk, perhaps related to the agency’s investigations into deadly Tesla crashes and its efforts to monitor the safety of “self-driving vehicles.” He’s cut 5 percent of the NHTSA’s staff, including people who research prevention of auto deaths. Experts agree these cuts could kill people. Perhaps that should be the new tagline for 2020s America: Come for the bird flu and deadly self-driving cars, but don’t miss the looming apocalypse. Can’t imagine why tourism is on the decline. Nuclear war—or some kind of nuclear disaster—is likewise becoming an increasingly alarming possibility, with Musk’s firings and buyouts also hammering the National Nuclear Safety Administration, the agency that oversees the nation’s nuclear weaponry. The NNSA struggles to maintain staff, and those departing include scientists, engineers, and people trained to transport dangerous materials securely. Last month, many of those fired were rehired after some members of Congress objected to the cuts. But some of the most important experts there are gone for good, having left for better-paying private-sector jobs. Not to mention, the instability of Trump’s foreign policy is inspiring more countries, including South Korea and Germany, to consider getting nuclear weapons of their own, increasing the risk of nuclear holocaust even more. This seeming indifference to the risk of mass extinction also sheds light on this administration’s catastrophically destructive approach to climate policy: It’s not that they are climate denialists, or foolish yokels who don’t “believe in science.” Instead, perhaps Trump and Musk simply don’t care if any of us live or die. Perhaps that’s why they are working to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, exit the Paris treaty, and undo the Biden administration’s best climate policies, including the green energy projects—mostly in Republican districts—funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. Not satisfied with ensuring that the government won’t address any root causes of climate change—or even mention the words—Trump–Musk doesn’t even want to protect us from the climate disasters that are already coming: This week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be eliminated. As with so many of these changes, it’s not clear that the administration has the authority to do that. But given the increase in deadly climate disasters, from superstorms to wildfires, the effort to kill FEMA seems almost certain to also kill people. It’s ironic that the tech bro class is seeking to live forever, while at every turn divesting the government of its responsibility to save lives. Although Musk has in the past distanced himself from this childish quest, he seems to be coming around; hawking his weird brain-chip implant start-up on Monday, he said immortality through brain implants was “definitely possible.” Just as with all other resources, billionaires are trying to hog longevity—living absurdly long lives, and even talking about abolishing death altogether (for themselves). But for the rest of us, what a challenging time to try to stay alive! One can imagine delightful and fitting ends to this story—Trump and Musk drive off together, to their doom, in a unregulated self-driven car, a 2025 version of Thelma and Louise. But most likely, things won’t conclude in such a simple and satisfying manner. This regime won’t last forever, but political change will take time. Meanwhile, be careful out there.

same thing has been said since 2023

and it has only gotten worse since this article from a month ago.............................. Elon Musk’s conflicts of interest ‘should scare every American’, experts say Doge’s work allows Musk to keep control of companies with billions in federal contracts as he guts government agencies https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/elon-musk-conflicts-of-interest Thu 27 Feb 2025 As Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk work zealously to slash tens of billions in federal spending by axing thousands of jobs and gutting some government agencies, Musk faces mounting claims he has conflicts of interest and no oversight, legal and ethics experts say. Trump’s largest campaign donor and the world’s wealthiest man, Musk was tapped by the president to lead the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) in a radical and opaque cost-cutting drive that allows him to keep control of SpaceX, Tesla and other huge companies with billions of dollars in federal contracts. Critics note that Doge, which Musk touted broadly to Trump in August as he was writing seven figure checks to help him win, is gutting agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has investigated complaints about the car company’s debt collection and loan policies. Meanwhile, Tesla, SpaceX and other Musk businesses have been investigated or fined by about a dozen regulatory agencies including the CFPB, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration, which suggest how Doge’s work at these agencies and others could benefit Musk financially, say critics. Both Trump and Musk have downplayed critics’ concerns about conflict of interest issues for the Doge leader, with Musk simply asserting if there’s a conflict: “I’ll recuse myself.” For his part, Trump has moved broadly to rein in independent oversight by firing key ethics and corruption watchdogs, including the head of the office of government ethics (OGE), and at least 18 agency watchdogs known as inspectors general who have long monitored waste, fraud and abuse in spending. Legal experts express alarm about Musk’s conflicts and lack of oversight. “The Office of Government Ethics is needed to enforce compliance, but Trump abruptly fired the office’s director,” said Kedric Payne, the senior director of ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign legal Center. “The OGE needs a director committed to the agency’s mission to help restore public confidence that Doge is not involved in corrupt activities to benefit Musk.” “Ethics compliance for government employees like Musk usually requires ethics lawyers providing advice and pre-approval of any actions taken that involve the employee’s financial interests,” Payne added. “It is a red flag that the White House has not said that any ethics professionals are involved in reviewing Musk’s actions. “More transparency and accountability are needed. Voters have a right to know that government employees are serving the public interest and not their own personal interest.” Payne’s points are underscored by the potential financial gains for Musk’s businesses as he leads Doge. SpaceX, Tesla and other Musk companies, for instance, have won at least $18bn in federal contracts from Nasa, the defense department and other agencies during the last decade. Overall, six Musk companies have been investigated or fined 32 times by 11 agencies, according to the New York Times, raising more red flags about potential conflicts involving Musk’s businesses and Doge. “Musk is now a federal officer subject to the criminal conflict of interest statute, 18 USC 208,” said Richard Painter, George W Bush’s ethics counsel who now teaches law at the University of Minnesota. “He cannot own stock in Tesla which offers car loans and at the same time participate in dismantling the CFPB. Also he cannot have X [formerly Twitter] go into consumer finance and at the same time participate in dismantling the CFPB.” Likewise, given Musk’s artificial intelligence business xAI, Painter stressed: “AI will have a big role in making the government more efficient, However, federal officers working for Doge cannot legally have an equity stake in an xAI company that will very likely make money from the government shifting toward AI.” Meanwhile, Democratic state attorneys general have mounted legal challenges to Doge’s extensive agency operations and its efforts to obtain vast amounts of sensitive private data. A lawsuit by 19 Democratic attorneys general to block Doge from accessing US treasury systems with millions of private documents about social security and tax payments won a victory on 20 February, when a New York judge upheld another court’s temporary restraining order. Last weekend, Musk ignited a political firestorm that brought opposition from key cabinet officials at state and the FBI, when he sent an email to some two million federal employees demanding they explain what they had accomplished in the previous week by late Monday. Musk warned darkly on his social media platform X: “failure to respond would be taken as a resignation”, which sparked more chaos and criticism. Later, the office of personnel management indicated that employees didn’t have to comply with Musk’s dictum, but with Trump’s backing, he reiterated his demands. Other concerns about Musk’s work have been prompted by Doge claims of identifying $55bn in wasteful federal spending, a large chunk of which has been wildly exaggerated. Exhibit A: one Doge document boasted of cutting an $8bn program that turned out to be closer to $8m, according to multiple news reports. Musk’s cost cutting modus operandi seems to be generating public dismay, according to new polls. One Washington Post-Ipsos poll showed that Americans disapprove (52 to 26) of Musk “shutting down federal government programs that he decides are unnecessary”. Perhaps in response, Musk and the Trump administration have recently offered conflicting statements about Musk’s exact role with Doge that seem aimed at masking his unprecedented clout. One White House official in a sworn statement this month responding to a lawsuit against Doge, referred to Musk as just another “employee” with no decision-making authority. But Musk’s enormous sway with Trump was palpable when the mogul attended and spoke at length at the first cabinet meeting on Wednesday where both he and Trump talked up their far reaching cost cutting mission; Wearing a modest “tech support” tee shirt, Musk said deferentially that “I do what the president asks.” Earlier in a bizarre joint interview with Sean Hannity, of Fox News, on 17 February, Trump and Musk offered mutual admiration, while belittling concerns of conflicts of interest or the need for independent ethics oversight. When Hannity asked Trump how he would react if he saw a conflict for Musk, Trump said simply: “He wouldn’t be involved.” In turn, Musk blithely claimed if there are conflicts: “I’ll recuse myself. I mean, I haven’t asked the president for anything, ever.” At another well-choreographed event on 11 February, Musk popped up in the Oval Office with Trump nearby to boast with scant details that Doge is doing what “the people want”, with broad brush claims of cutting wasteful spending; Musk has also faced fire for making unproven and glib allegations that he’s cutting “corruption”. Despite their cavalier attitude about the need for transparency, experts say Musk’s myriad business ties while leading Doge merit strong oversight. “The power and influence Musk is exercising over government agencies and operations while his companies have billions of dollars in government contracts and have been subject to government regulation, financial penalties and oversight presents wide-ranging and dangerous conflicts of interest,” said former Federal Election Commission general counsel, Larry Noble, who now teaches law at American University. Noble stressed Musk has only indicated “that he would recuse himself if he saw a conflict and Trump said he doesn’t want Musk involved in conflicts of interest. “Given that Trump, who recently suggested he’s a king, has decimated the ethics oversight function of the government by firing inspectors general as well as the director of the office of government ethics, and Musk has been less than transparent about what he’s doing, no one who truly cares about waste, fraud and abuse should be comforted by these hollow assurances.” Similarly, Craig Holman, an ethics expert and lobbyist with Public Citizen, stressed that six Musk companies “have been under 32 investigations by 11 governmental agencies”. “These are the same agencies, and the same investigators, that Musk is in the process of terminating. The Federal Aviation Administration, which has fined SpaceX on numerous occasions for safety violations, is facing severe cutbacks championed by Musk,” he said. Holman added that “the SEC is seeking $150m from Musk companies for securities violations, and is now being neutered by Musk. The National Labor Relations Board is investigating labor conditions at Musk companies, and it is now being dismantled under Musk. The CFPB has been investigating safety violations with Tesla cars and that agency is now on the chopping block.” Payne voiced other concerns about Musk’s freewheeling Doge operation given his official role as a “special government employee”. “Criminal law prohibits special government employees from making government decisions where they have financial conflicts of interest,” Payne said. “Musk’s decisions may violate criminal law when they involve agencies that regulate or contract with his companies, [including] agencies such as the FAA, CFPB, EPA and defense department.” Payne noted too that “Musk’s conflicts of interest include the potential use of his AI company to support Doge’s review of sensitive government data. The problem is that he may personally benefit if he uses government information unavailable to competitors to train his AI system. He can also become the federal government’s primary AI service provider, leading to lucrative government contracts.” Likewise, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and a few other senators plus Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland wrote to Musk on 13 February calling for public disclosure of a confidential disclosure form that Musk was required to submit as a special government employee. The letter charged Musk was exploiting a loophole in ethics law to avoid disclosing his financial interests. The White House has said Musk will file a confidential financial disclosure report given that he is serving as an unpaid special government employee (SGE). But the letter stressed that “Given the scale of your power to carry out sweeping administrative policies and your vast personal financial interests, the American people deserve to know how you stand to profit from your role in the Trump Administration.” On Tuesday, the White House indicated that a former US digital service official named Amy Gleason was Doge’s acting administrator, but just last week, Trump at a Miami financial conference declared that he had “put a man named Elon Musk in charge” of Doge. Notably, Doge’s genesis seems to have come in a two-hour streamed interview that Trump did with Musk on X last August where Musk suggested a similar notion to Doge. Trump quickly voiced strong interest in the tech mogul’s idea as he was starting to donate a record $288m to boost Trump’s campaign. “I need an Elon Musk – I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts,” Trump said during their talk on X. The next month, Trump spoke about the need for a new efficiency commission in a speech to the Economic Club of New York, prompting Musk to write on X: “I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises. No pay, no title, no recognition is needed.” But the recognition Musk is now receiving has become much more critical, with calls mounting for tough oversight of his conflicts and serious questions about Doge’s operations. Matt Platkin, New Jersey’s Democratic attorney general, who has joined a few of the state AG lawsuits targeting Musk and Doge actions, said that he thinks Musk’s “conflicts are astounding and deeply concerning, and the disregard for the rule of law should scare every American”.

OPEN???? LOLOLOL You, my freind are 100 per cent gaslit, you have drunk the koolaid by the gallon. It is actually depressing to see it real time, as I do not find you to be a stupid person by nature. You are just wilfully blind.