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The State Department said Thursday it is abandoning plans of purchasing $400 million worth of armored Tesla vehicles after a public document detailing federal contracts for fiscal year 2025 gained wide attention. That expected purchase of Teslas, which was slated for September of this year, is now on hold, according to the State Department, which now says it has no plans of fulfilling the contract. The potential federal purchase drew scrutiny since Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk is also a top White House official who has been leading the Department of Government Efficiency, a unit focused on shrinking the federal workforce and ferreting out corruption. The document did not specify what Tesla vehicles would be purchased by U.S. officials, but Musk’s Cybertruck, with its militaristic design and stainless steel exterior, could have been an option. After reports circulated Wednesday night of the State Department’s intent to purchase Tesla vehicles, NPR noticed that the document was edited, at 9:12 p.m., to say the federal contract is for $400 million worth of “armored electric vehicles,” but the word “Tesla” was removed. Responding to a segment by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about the $400 million contract, Musk wrote on X on Wednesday night: “Hey @Maddow, why the lie?” The Tesla contract started in the Biden administration “to explore interest from private companies to produce armored electric vehicles,” a State Department spokesperson said on Thursday. Tesla was the only company to express interest in the department’s request at the time. Typically the next step would be “an official solicitation” for vehicle manufacturers to compete for the contract. But now, the solicitation is on hold, according to the State Department spokesperson. Musk did not return a request for comment. Musk, who spent more than a quarter-billion dollars to help elect Trump, has used an X account devoted to DOGE to highlight what he views as excessive or unnecessary federal contracts.

via npr: Trump administration says it has no plans to fulfill $400 million ‘armored Tesla’ contract

An American replication of Israel’s defense system doesn’t make sense. But, experts say, it will likely set up SpaceX for big government contracts. When I first reported on President Donald Trump’s promise to “BUILD A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD,” an expert summed up the idea as “the insane ramblings of a senile old person.” But, with Trump in office, the “Iron Dome for America” plan is seemingly happening—and the project’s benefits for some of the most powerful people in the world are coming into focus. In late January, Trump announced details for the Dome. A land-based missile-interceptor system—like the one Israel has—would not be possible to build for a country the size of the United States. Instead, military commentators coalesced around another plan: build a cloud of “satellite missile interceptors” similar to former President Ronald Reagan’s ill-fated 1980s “Star Wars” proposal. In turn, the US Missile Defense Agency asked defense companies on January 31 to pitch space-based sensors and interceptors that could detect and defeat “advanced aerial threats” from low-space orbit. That means the proposed Iron Dome would almost certainly require thousands of satellites for putting interceptor weapons in space. The company that currently dominates the market for such equipment? Elon Musk’s SpaceX. “SpaceX is the only company that currently has the capacity to launch that many things,” Dr. Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists told Mother Jones. “They’re such a critical resource at this point that…if you’re going to launch a lot of things, SpaceX is going to be in the mix.”  There are—according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who maintains a count of pretty much everything orbiting this planet—just over 11,000 working satellites in orbit. 6998 of them are Starlink satellites. That means 62 percent of all working satellites orbiting this planet belong to a company started byElon Musk, a drastic increase from only 5 years ago. More critically: SpaceX has the necessary launch capacity to send thousands of load-bearing satellites into orbit. They already handle the majority of NASA’s launches, for billions of dollars each year.  “So, yeah, they’d make a ton of money,” Grego said. “And companies building these interceptors would make a ton of money.”

via mother jones: Trump’s “Iron Dome” Looks Like Another Payday for Elon Musk

Fair Election Fund has yet to reveal evidence of voter fraud despite deep-pocketed backers – and has now gone silent. In May 2024, a flashy ad went viral on social media warning that “across the country, there are real cases of fraud and abuses of the [election] system that have eroded our trust”. The ad pledged that “whistleblowers” who shared evidence of election fraud “will be rewarded with payment from our $5m fund”. This reward was courtesy of a just-announced group, the Fair Election Fund, which has deep connections to Elon Musk’s political network, according to materials obtained by Documented. The Fair Election Fund pledged that “the bulk of the group’s budget will be devoted to paying whistleblowers” for sharing their stories, and that it would launch “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns” that would “highlight these cases”. It was followed by another ad that ran in swing states during the Olympics and told viewers “you could be eligible for compensation” for sharing evidence of election fraud. Despite the group’s high-profile, deep-pocketed backers and lucrative bounty offers, it never revealed any evidence of voter or election fraud. Instead, the group took a series of unrelated detours into tangential areas like third-party ballot access, and its effort to uncover fraud reaffirmed what numerous studies, court rulings and bipartisan investigations have concluded: voter fraud is extremely rare. The lack of evidence has not stopped Republicans in Congress and state legislatures from continuing to push restrictive voting laws aimed at addressing this phantom threat. Meanwhile, Musk is claiming that “fraud” justifies his efforts to slash government operations, but similarly has not revealed much evidence. The Fair Election Fund has now gone radio silent. Sitemap data shows that the website has not been updated since October, and the X/Twitter account for the group has not posted since November. The group’s spokesperson, former representative Doug Collins, became Trump’s veterans affairs secretary, and is now also leading the office of government ethics. Close ties to world’s richest man The Fair Election Fund is a fictitious name for another 501(c)(4) non-profit, Documented can reveal, and operates within a network run by Musk’s top political advisers. The group received funding from the same dark-money vehicle Musk has used to channel his political spending, and also routed funds to another Musk-backed non-profit. The group is housed within a non-profit now called Interstate Priorities, formerly known as the For Which It Stands Fund. Formed on 3 January 2023, the non-profit raised $8,226,000 from a single donation in 2023. The group is led by Victoria “Tori” Sachs, a Republican operative who was also executive director of And to the Republic, a group also formed in January 2023 that supported Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, including by funding DeSantis’s private jets and hosting quasi-campaign events. The naming of the two Sachs-led groups – And to the Republic and the For Which It Stands Fund – and the timing of their creation in January 2023 suggests that the group that now houses the Fair Election Fund was originally intended to support DeSantis’s run, which Musk initially supported.

via guardian: Musk-linked group offered $5m for proof of voter fraud – and came up with nothing