Musk campaigning: There should be no need for FOIA, because all government records should be public by default.

Musk governing: My “efficiency” team isn’t subject to FOIA and if we are, we’ll need three years to produce records.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/us/politics/musk-doge-foia-lawsuit.html

The CHIPS Act was one of the few things to unite much of Washington in recent years,
as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle worked with private companies to draft a bill that would funnel $50 billion to rebuild the U.S. semiconductor industry,
which makes the foundational technology used to power cars, computers and coffee makers.

After President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed it into law in 2022, companies found sites in Arizona, New York and Ohio to construct new factories.

The Commerce Department vetted those plans and began to dole out billions of dollars in grants.

Now, Trump is threatening to upend years of work.

Chip company executives, worried that funding could be clawed back, are calling lawyers to ask what wiggle room the administration has to terminate signed contracts,
said eight people familiar with the requests.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/04/chips-act-office-lays-off-about-a-third-of-its-staff-sources-say.html

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Friday sent a letter to Donald Trump’s crypto and AI czar #David #Sacks
raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest in his role
and asked him to make his financial disclosures with the government public,
days after Trump announced the creation of an American “crypto strategic reserve

In her letter, the senator asks Sacks how he has addressed his
“conflicts of interest”
and how he intends to prevent “the President and other private individuals from directly profiting off of the Trump Administration’s efforts to selectively pump the value of certain crypto assets.”

Warren’s letter raises alarm at several moves made by the Trump administration on crypto recently,
including the SEC’s assertion that meme coins are not securities,
the regulator dropping its case against Coinbase
and the pause in the case against crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun.

Warren, who is a ranking member on the Senate’s banking committee,
asks Sacks to reveal whether he has filed any financial disclosures with the Office of Government Ethics, if he has recused himself on any matter after accepting the role and how long he intends to serve as a “special government employee.”

Warren’s letter also seeks disclosure on the exact dates Sacks divested Bitcoin,
Ether, and Sol tokens from his portfolio
(as per his claims)
and the exact date his firm Craft Ventures divested from crypto asset manager Bitwise investments.

Warren also wants Sacks to make several other disclosures covering his potential advanced knowledge of Trump’s crypto reserve announcement and how the Trump administration picked the tokens to be included in the reserve, among other things.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/03/07/sen-elizabeth-warren-raises-conflict-of-interest-concerns-in-letter-to-trumps-crypto-czar-seeks-financial-disclosures/

Ontario slaps 25% tax increase on electricity exports to US in response to Trump’s trade war
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/03/10/ontario-electricity-trump-tax/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Nation & World @nation-world-chicagotribune

“They were accusing me of every unsolved crime on the planet.”

Despite numerous oversights and concerns with his case highlighted by his attorneys, David Wood is scheduled to be executed on Thursday. https://www.texasobserver.org/david-wood-execution-desert-killer/

#DeathPenalty #CriminalJustice #politics #USpol #news #Texas #prison #HumanRights