Nvidia reported more eye-catching numbers for its fiscal third quarter Wednesday, with net income jumping 65% and revenue increasing 62% from a year earlier.
The ravenous appetite for the Silicon Valley company’s chips is the main reason that the company’s stock price has increased so rapidly since early 2023.
Nvidia carved out an early lead in tailoring its chipsets known as graphics processing units, or GPUs, from use in powering video games to helping to train powerful AI systems, like the technology behind ChatGPT and image generators. Demand skyrocketed as more people began using AI chatbots. Tech companies scrambled for more chips to build and run them.
Nvidia’s journey to be one of the world’s most prominent companies has produced some extraordinary numbers. Here’s a look.
$31.9 billion
Nvidia’s net income for the third quarter, up from $19.3 billion a year ago.
38.9%
Nvidia stock’s gain for the year, as of the close of trading Wednesday. That follows gains of 171% in 2024 and 239% in 2023.
$4.53 trillion
Nvidia’s total market capitalization as of the close of trading Wednesday, tops in the S&P 500.
Apple at $3.98 trillion and Microsoft at $3.62 trillion were next among the most valuable companies in the S&P 500. In all, nine companies in the index have market cap’s above $1 trillion.
$4.28 trillion
The gross domestic product of Japan, the world’s fourth largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.
79
The number of trading days it took for Nvidia’s market cap to grow from $4 trillion to $5 trillion earlier this year. The market cap had jumped from $3 trillion on May 13, to $4 trillion on July 9 (41 trading days), although Nvidia had crossed and fallen back below the $3 trillion threshold a number of times between June 2024 and May 2025 before making the run to $4 trillion.
19.8%
The company’s contribution to the gain in the S&:P 500 this year as of Oct. 31, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
$162 billion
The net worth of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, according to Forbes, putting him eighth on its Real-Time Billionaires List. Elon Musk is No. 1 at $467.7 billion.
Elon Musk made some wild claims at the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, insisting that his Optimus robot would fix poverty, people wouldn’t have to work in the future, and money would eventually become irrelevant. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, was also on stage and joked that he’d like Musk to give him a heads up just before currency no longer becomes a thing.
“AI and humanoid robots will actually eliminate poverty,” Musk claimed on Wednesday. “And Tesla won’t be the only one that makes them. I think Tesla will pioneer this, but there will be many other companies that make humanoid robots. But there is only basically one way to make everyone wealthy, and that is AI and robotics.”
The Tesla CEO has frequently insisted in recent months that his robots will deliver a kind of post-scarcity future where nobody has to work. The billionaire said it explicitly on Wednesday when asked about what he thinks the future holds for those who are concerned about AI and robots replacing jobs.
“My prediction is that work will be optional,” Musk said, noting that he was talking about 10-20 years from now.
The billionaire went on to take his now-common prediction even further, claiming that in such a world where robots are doing all the labor, money won’t exist anymore.
“I’d always recommend people read Iain Banks’ Culture books to get a sense for what a probable positive AI future is like. And interestingly, in those books, money is no longer… doesn’t exist. It’s kind of interesting,” Musk said.
“My guess is, if you go out long enough, assuming there’s a continued improvement in AI and robotics, which seems likely, the money will stop being relevant at some point in the future,” Musk continued.
The moderator of the discussion asked, “Jensen, any thoughts?” as the crowd laughed. “By the way, the Nvidia earnings call is later today,” Musk said, joining the laughter.
Huang shifted uncomfortably in his seat and laughed to himself with a kind of bewildered look. “And by the way, since currency is irrelevant…” Huang joked, trailing off. “Elon just wants to share with you breaking news.”
After a good laugh, Huang got serious again and sort of hedged on what Musk was saying. Huang has previously taken the opposite view of the crowd that insists there won’t be any work in the future. Back in August, Huang said that AI and automation will actually make everyone busier. Huang acknowledged that things would be different, including things like how students learn and how people do their work. But he stuck to his guns in predicting that people will actually just be busier because they can accomplish more of their goals.
“It is my guess that Elon will be busier as a result of AI. I’m gonna be busier as a result of AI,” said Huang. “And the reason for that is because we have so many ideas we wanna pursue, so many things that we still have in our backlog inside our company that we can go pursue. If we were more productive, we can get to those things faster, and so in the near term, I would say that there’s every evidence that we will be more productive and yet still be busier because we have so many ideas.”
Huang then joked that since he texts with Musk often, he hopes the Tesla CEO will give him a heads up before currency is no longer relevant. Musk said, “You’ll see it coming.”
Musk is constantly talking about how the robots he’s developing at Tesla, known as Optimus, are the key to eliminating poverty. But, as we’ve written before, this is probably his most ridiculous lie. Improving efficiency doesn’t redistribute wealth. Musk never addresses who will be paying Americans to just sit around and do nothing while billions of robots actually perform the labor. Is it the government? Because that would require a massive change in political and economic structures.
And why should we believe Musk, of all people, wants to pay people for sitting around? This is the man who stormed into the federal government earlier this year with his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and decided that too many people were taking advantage of government benefits. He’s also the guy who has called the word homeless a “propaganda word” for “violent drug addicts.”
Musk frequently tries to suggest that people experiencing homelessness don’t have jobs, even though somewhere between 40 and 60% of people who don’t have housing are employed, according to government estimates. He does not give a fuck about poverty. He cares about making more money and is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire. And he never talks about the mechanism by which his utopian idea for a leisure society would actually work.
The ideas Musk promotes were extremely common in 20th-century futurism. And it’s clear that’s where he’s drawing his inspiration, even citing Iain Banks and his utopian Culture series of books on Wednesday. But none of it makes sense unless you establish some kind of radical socialist or communist entity at the heart of this vision to distribute the necessities to live.
Musk wants to sell you his robots, and that makes sense in our current economic system. But after he sells you a robot, it doesn’t follow that the person who owns that robot would no longer have to work. It’s a bit like imagining that all of the appliances in your home right now are somehow paying for themselves. They’re not. They may improve your life, but they don’t institute a political or economic system whereby people no longer have to work. If all wealth is derived from robots in this imaginary system Musk creates, he would have to be the one redistributing his wealth to pay for everyone else not working.
The end of the discussion with Musk and Huang was a good reminder of where we’re actually situated here in 2025. The Saudi moderator said “my boss and your bosses is going to talk next,” referring to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and President Donald Trump. The two tech executives didn’t vocally object to Donald Trump being called their “boss.” But it stripped away the fantasy Musk seemed to be engaged in about robotics and AI delivering utopia anytime soon.
Trump and MBS have no plans to let people sit around and get paid for doing nothing. And they’re building a future where that could never conceivably happen.
Elon Musk attended a dinner Tuesday at the White House, held by President Donald Trump in honor of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). And it seems like we can officially call it. The public spat between Musk and Trump is done. For now.
How can anyone be sure the messiness between the two men is over? When President Trump entered the room with MBS, he gave Musk a pat on the stomach.
Trump gave a speech at the dinner, livestreamed by major media outlets, praising Saudi Arabia’s pledge to invest $1 trillion in the U.S. The president also announced he was elevating the country to a “major non-NATO-ally,” which means the two countries will work on economic and military issues more closely.
Trump also gave a shout out to Nvidia and Apple CEO Tim Cook from the stage for “all of the money that you’re investing in the United States.” The president didn’t mention Musk in his speech, but who needs a shout-out when you’ve got yourself a belly pat.
The White House dinner landed on a particularly odd day, with the U.S. House of Representatives voting overwhelmingly Tuesday to release Department of Justice files on late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The House voted 427-1 in favor of releasing the files, with Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana, as the lone vote against. Soon after, the Senate agreed to deem the legislation as passed without even a vote, and it’s now on its way to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.
It’s unclear when Trump might sign the Epstein Files Transparency Act since he’s a little busy tonight. But Musk’s presence at the East Room event is amusing, given how the billionaire oligarch exited his formal role in government on May 30. Musk was the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) before he left in a bizarre spectacle witnessed by reporters in the Oval Office of the White House.
Musk’s supposed “exit” from government was about personal relationships more than professional ones. SpaceX didn’t lose any contracts, for example, but he did briefly lose the respect of the man he’d helped install at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It started when Musk showed up to the White House on May 30, with a black eye and an awkward demeanor (Musk stared up at the ceiling at one point), though the two men tried to make it sound like they were parting ways amicably.
Musk spent the next few days tweeting his criticism of the Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill,” arguing it didn’t do enough to restrict spending. And Trump eventually started pushing back at Musk, explaining by June 5 that he must have “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and ridiculing his black eye.
Later that day, Musk exploded on X, accusing Trump of being in the Epstein files. You don’t need to take Musk’s word for it, given the fact that reporting from the Wall Street Journal indicates Pam Bondi has told Trump he’s in the files. The question is what being in the files actually means for Trump. The president’s name was in many of the emails recently released by a House subcommittee investigating Epstein.
After Musk’s public blow-up with Trump (he eventually deleted the tweets about Epstein), the billionaire pledged to start his own political party. Musk positioned his new party, dubbed the America Party, as something that would be more reasonable than the current Democratic and Republican parties. Musk, despite being a far-right kook, has often branded himself as a centrist in a world that’s gone too “woke,” with suggestions that the Overton Window has shifted to only make it look like he’s an extremist.
Not long after his falling out with Trump, Musk was asked on X where he would use his new political party to release the Epstein files, and he replied with an emoji reading “100.” However, Musk has let the idea for his party fizzle out completely. Perhaps Musk realized that third parties rarely make a dent in the U.S. system, which is designed to favor the two major parties. The best demonstration of this bias is the fact that Ross Perot won 19% of the popular vote in the 1992 presidential election and didn’t receive a single Electoral College vote. The system is simply rigged against third parties.
Musk’s expected arrival at the White House on Tuesday won’t be his first physical brush with Trump since their messy break-up in June. The two men were seen talking at a memorial service for MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk in September. Members of DOGE are reportedly planning a party in Austin, Texas, this weekend to celebrate the thawing of Musk and Trump’s relationship, according to the New York Times. Though it seems unclear whether Musk himself will show up for that one.
Other notable attendees of the dinner at the White House on Tuesday, according to the New York Times: Paramount CEO David Ellison, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman, and General Motors CEO Mary Barra. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. is also slated to attend.
Musk is firmly back on the Trump train, no matter what he said in their months apart. The billionaire told allies back in August that he’s worried a political party would siphon off Republican voters and hurt the Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections, according to the Wall Street Journal. It might seem weird for Musk to cozy up with Trump again after all that’s happened with the Epstein files, but as Gizmodo has frequently argued, these guys need each other. They clearly dislike each other personally, but oligarchies make for strange bedfellows.
Trump has built a powerful political machine and he holds the keys to federal contracts in the world’s wealthiest country. Musk is the world’s wealthiest person and he needs those federal contracts to keep his empire afloat. They don’t have to like hanging out together, but they have to work in tandem if they’re going to build the world they both want to see. It’s a world where they stay at the top in business and government. And it’s a world where masked men round up tens of thousands of immigrants (and the occasionalNative American) in a quest to make America more white.
Although she effortlessly whacked Musk multiple times, Oates isn’t overly concerned with the billionaire. She posts frequently on both BlueSky and X about a range of topics, and is more than happy to respond to fans and critics alike on the platforms. Since publicly humiliating Musk and sending him to a tizzy, she’s gone on to tweet political musings about Zohran Mamdani, and Charlie Kirk, as well as less fraught fare about Faulkner and Hemingway and a photo of her beloved cat.
Those who are new to the online life of Joyce Carol Oates may be surprised to learn that she’s been doing these for years. At this point, she’s arguably as prolific a poster as she is a novelist, logging more than 180,00 posts on her official X account @JoyceCarolOates as of the publication of this story. Years ago, she was more likely to be the dunker than a dunkee: Oates experienced the other side of viral fame in 2014, when she loosed this hot take on another prolific but controversial writer. “Though Woody Allen has been much denounced, very likely many of his denouncers greatly admire Nabokov’s ‘Lolita.’” No contradiction?” she tweeted (it was still called tweeting back then). The false equivalency didn’t go over well; at the time, the public flogged Oates for her support of Allen. “Thats not the same at all thats terrible youre terrible but thank you for inventing oatmeal,” read one viral response, which ratioed Oates’s original tweet. (And yes, despite her last name, Joyce Carol Oates didn’t invent oatmeal.)
Years later, Oates made another Twitter faux pas, taking a gravely serious stance on innocent Halloween decorations. “You can always recognize a place in which no one is feeling much or any grief for a lost loved one & death, dying, & everyone you love decomposing to bones is just a joke,” posted Oates on October 1, 2021, drawing a wide variety of scornful reactions.
Oates kept posting through it—and now it seems that was the correct strategy. Time heals all wounds on the internet—time, and banger tweets that eviscerate the world’s richest man. Joyce Carol Oates? More like Joyce Carol Roasts.
As scam compounds in Southeast Asia continue to rake in billions of dollars in stolen funds from victims around the world, United States law enforcement aims to cut scammers off at the source by issuing seizure warrants for Starlink satellite internet terminals that provide cybercriminals with connectivity. Two US warrants and affidavits seen by WIRED detail how Starlink devices are allegedly being used by cybercriminals running scam compounds in Myanmar.
One warrant, issued on Wednesday by US magistrate judge G. Michael Harvey, authorized the seizure of nine Starlink terminals and two Starlink accounts allegedly used in scam compounds in Payathonzu, near Three Pagodas Pass at the Myanmar-Thai border. A linked affidavit, written by FBI investigators, claims that the Starlink devices and accounts played a “substantial role” in an alleged money laundering and wire fraud operation targeting US citizens—saying Starlink parent company SpaceX should “disable service” to the devices. It also claims that at least 26 Starlink dishes appeared to be on the roofs of several buildings making up one scam center of several in the Three Pagodas Pass area.
The second warrant and affidavit—which was not issued to Starlink but focused on seizing websites used in scamming—also claims that “at least” 79 Starlink dishes appear on the roofs of buildings at the notorious Tai Chang compound in Myanmar, which US officials say is controlled by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, an armed group in Myanmar that was sanctioned by the US government this week. The warrant was signed on Monday by US magistrate judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh.
Both sets of legal documents cite a WIRED investigation from earlier this year, which revealed that scam compounds in Myanmar have been using Starlink for internet access. Starlink, which is owned and operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is a high-speed satellite internet service available in more than 150 countries around the world.
The action comes as part of a new US law enforcement initiative known as the District of Columbia Scam Center Strike Force that was announced by the Justice Department, FBI, and Secret Service on Wednesday. The effort aims to combat cryptocurrency scams targeting Americans, specifically fraud that originates from an ecosystem of systematized scamming that has evolved in multiple Southeast Asian countries and is often linked to Chinese organized crime. The “Strike Force” is already operational, and the Justice Department says it has seized roughly $400 million in cryptocurrency so far that was stolen in scams.
“The Department of Justice will not stand by while Chinese organized crime victimizes Americans and bleeds dry the hard-earned investments of American citizens,” Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a press conference. “We have seized websites being used by these compounds in Southeast Asia that are used to victimize Americans. We are seeking warrants to see satellite terminals and accounts being used by the perpetrators to connect to the internet.”
Earlier this month, Musk, 54, won a shareholder vote that would give the Tesla CEO stock worth US$1 trillion if he hits certain performance targets over the next decade. More than 75 per cent of voters approved the plan as shareholders gathered for the annual meeting.
Following the reports, Eilish, 23, took to her Instagram stories on Nov. 13 and referred to Musk, who is already the richest person in the world, as a “f—ing pathetic p—- b—- coward.”
The Ocean Eyes singer shared infographics originally posted by My Voice, My Choice suggesting what Musk could do to help global crises with his vast fortune.
“Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire here’s what he could do with it,” the first photo read.
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The next slides suggested ways that Musk could help assist the world, including “end world hunger” and “choose to spend $40 billion every year to end world hunger by 2030 or provide universal safe clean water for $140 billion for the planet for the next seven years.”
A screenshot of Billie Eilish’s Instagram Stories.
@BillieEilish/Instagram
The following slide said that Musk could “save all 10,443 Critically Endangered species” by paying “$1-2 billion annually to bring all of them down to Endangered status.”
The last slide suggested that Musk could pay $53.2 billion to “rebuild Gaza and the occupied West Bank according to the EU.”
“Although the UN predicts this could be upwards of $70 billion for Gaza alone. If he wanted to spread the wealth, and aid further, he could also rebuild Ukraine and Syria at a cost of $793.2 billion,” the post read.
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A screenshot of Billie Eilish’s Instagram stories.
@BillieEilish/Instagram
In her final post, Eilish wrote: “etc…. f—ing pathetic p—- b—- coward.”
A screenshot of Billie Eilish’s Instagram stories.
@BillieEilish/Instagram
Musk has not publicly responded to Eilish’s comments as of this writing.
Elon Musk’s $1T Tesla pay plan approved by shareholders
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Eilish’s criticism of Musk comes weeks after she suggested billionaires need to donate more when she accepted the music award at this year’s WSJ Magazine Innovator Awards in October.
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“We’re in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than, kind of, ever, especially in our country,” Eilish said to an audience that included Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, as well as Star Wars creator George Lucas.
“I’d say if you have money, it would be great to use it for good things, maybe give it to some people that need it,” she added.
Late-night host Stephen Colbert introduced Eilish on stage at New York’s Museum of Modern Art by announcing that she would donate $11.5 million of the proceeds from her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour to causes dedicated to food equity, climate justice and reducing carbon pollution.
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In accepting the award, the Bad Guy singer added a polite-but-direct call to others in the room, saying that a lot of people, especially in the U.S., could use some help right now.
“Love you all, but there’s a few people in here who have a lot more money than me,” she said, as the room erupted in applause. “And if you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? And no hate, but give your money away, shorties.”
Billie talking to billionaires about donating money for causes during her speech at the @WSJ Innovator Awards tonight in New York! 💙 pic.twitter.com/GY5aUQRIdU
Blue Origin launched its second heavy-lift New Glenn rocket Thursday, putting two small NASA satellites onto a long, looping course to Mars to learn more about how the sun has slowly blown away the red planet’s once-thick atmosphere.
The centerpiece of Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos’ space ambitions, the towering 321-foot-tall New Glenn rocket’s seven methane-burning main engines ignited at 3:55 p.m. ET, majestically pushing the booster skyward atop 3.8 million pounds of thrust.
A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025.
John Raoux / AP
The launch came three days late due to stormy weather on Earth and in space, where a powerful solar storm buffeted Earth’s atmosphere with a torrent of high-energy radiation that could have caused electrical problems with the rocket or its payloads.
The storm had abated by launch time Wednesday, and Blue Origin employees, looking on from viewing sites several miles from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station launch pad, cheered and applauded as the booster climbed skyward, followed moments later by the booming roar of its engines sweeping across the Space Coast.
The intense blue-white flame from the seven methane-fueled BE-4 main engines powering the New Glenn first stage indicates good performance as the rocket climbs out of the lower atmosphere.
Blue Origin
The New Glenn’s maiden flight last January successfully boosted a Blue Origin payload into orbit, but the reusable first stage failed in its attempt to reach an offshore landing ship, named after Bezos’ mother Jacklyn.
The 188-foot-tall first stage launched Wednesday, nicknamed “Never Tell Me The Odds,” featured a variety of upgrades to improve performance. This time around, the big rocket flew itself to an on-target touchdown, prompting more cheers and applause from Blue Origin workers.
Much like returning SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, the larger New Glenn booster will be hauled back to Port Canaveral and, depending on its condition, be refurbished and readied for use on an upcoming New Glenn flight.
The New Glenn first stage, moments after a successful touchdown on a Blue Origin landing barge. The landing marked a major milestone for Blue, which plans to haul the booster back to Port Canaveral for inspections, refurbishment and re-launch on an upcoming mission.
Spaceflight Now/Blue Origin
The second stage, meanwhile, pressed ahead, carrying out two firings of its twin engines to reach the planned Earth-escape trajectory. Thirty-three minutes after liftoff, the ESCAPADE satellites were released to fly on their own.
The NASA-sponsored payload, managed by the University of California, Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, is made up of two small, low-budget satellites known as Blue and Gold that make up the heart of the ESCAPADE mission. The acronym stands for Escape, Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers.
The probes were built for UC Berkeley by Rocketlab under a NASA program intended to develop lower-cost, fast-track planetary missions.
ESCAPADE cost $107.4 million, a bargain compared to the cost of more traditional, more sophisticated planetary spacecraft that can cost hundreds of millions to well over a billion dollars each.
The ESCAPADE probes were originally expected to hitch a ride to Mars a few years ago with NASA’s Psyche asteroid probe. But for a variety of reasons, the Mars satellites mission ultimately ended up on New Glenn’s second flight.
Mars launch windows typically open every two years when Earth and the red planet reach favorable positions in their orbits to permit direct flights using current rockets. The next such window opens in 2026.
An artist’s impression of the twin ESCAPADE probes in orbit around Mars.
UC Bereley/NASA
To make Wednesday’s New Glenn launch work in 2025, mission planners with Advanced Space LLC came up with an innovative flight plan, one that will take Blue and Gold longer to reach Mars but will enable more flexible trajectories for future missions.
The probes were deployed on a trajectory that will carry them a million miles out, well past the moon’s orbit, where they will loiter for the next 11 months before heading back toward Earth.
Passing within 600 miles of Earth in November 2027, the ESCAPADE probes will make velocity-boosting gravity assist flybys, augmented by onboard propulsion, to finally head for Mars.
In all, the twin spacecraft will spend a full year in that initial kidney bean-shaped orbit out past the moon and back, and another 10 months in transit to Mars. The probes won’t reach the red planet until September 2027.
“We are using a very flexible … approach where we go into a loiter orbit around Earth in order to sort of wait until Earth and Mars are lined up correctly in November of next year to go to Mars,” said Robert Lillis, the principal investigator.
“This is an exciting, flexible way to get to Mars because in the future … we could potentially queue up spacecraft using the approach that ESCAPADE is pioneering” without having to wait for a planetary launch window to open, Lillis said.
While the ESCAPADE mission is modest compared to Mars rovers and more sophisticated orbiters, the probes are designed to answer key questions about the evolution of the Martian atmosphere.
Mars once had a global magnetic field like Earth, but its molten core, which powered that field, mostly froze in place long ago, leaving only patchy, isolated remnants of that once-protective field in magnetized deposits.
Without a protective global field like Earth’s, the Martian atmosphere faces a constant barrage of high-speed electrons and protons blown away from the sun and from dense clouds of charged particles erupting from powerful solar storms.
Working in tandem, first in the same orbit at different distances from each other and then from different altitudes, Blue and Gold will measure how the solar wind and energetic electrons and protons from solar storms interact with the Martian atmosphere.
Data from earlier Mars satellites showed the planet’s atmosphere is constantly being stripped by those interactions, but exactly how that happens over time is not fully understood.
“We really, really want to understand the interaction of the solar wind with Mars better than we do now,” Lillis said. “We know that atmospheric escape from Mars is a major driver for the evolution of the Martian climate. We know that Mars at least was episodically warm and wet for a couple billion years, but hasn’t been so for about 2 billion years or so. And we think atmospheric escape is a major reason for that.”
Blue and Gold will provide what amounts to a stereo view of those processes.
“If you only have one spacecraft, you can either measure what the sun is throwing at Mars, the so-called space weather environment upstream of Mars, or you can measure the conditions close to Mars in its upper atmosphere, where the atmosphere is escaping,” Lillis said.
“You can’t be in two places at once. But we can, because we have two spacecraft to do this. So we can really get that cause-and-effect at the same time. We’ve never had that before, and that’s really exciting,” Lillis said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump boasts that his tariffs protect American industries, lure factories to the United States, raise money for the federal government and give him diplomatic leverage.
Now, he’s claiming they can finance a windfall for American families, too: He’s promising a generous tariff dividend.
The president proposed the idea on his Truth Social media platform Sunday, five days after his Republican Party lost elections in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere largely because of voter discontent with his economic stewardship — specifically, the high cost of living.
The tariffs are bringing in so much money, the president posted, that “a dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.’’
Budget experts scoffed at the idea, which conjured memories of the Trump administration’s short-lived plan for DOGE dividend checks financed by billionaire Elon Musk’s federal budget cuts.
“The numbers just don’t check out,″ said Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.
Details are scarce, including what the income limits would be and whether payments would go to children.
Even Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, sounded a bit blindsided by the audacious dividend plan. Appearing Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,’’ Bessent said he hadn’t discussed the dividend with the president and suggested that it might not mean that Americans would get a check from the government. Instead, Bessent said, the rebate might take the form of tax cuts.
The tariffs are certainly raising money — $195 billion in the budget year that ended Sept. 30, up 153% from $77 billion in fiscal 2024. But they still account for less than 4% of federal revenue and have done little to dent the federal budget deficit — a staggering $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2025.
Budget wonks say Trump’s dividend math doesn’t work.
President Donald Trump speaks during an event to mark Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump speaks during an event to mark Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
John Ricco, an analyst with the Budget Lab at Yale University, reckons that Trump’s tariffs will bring in $200 billion to $300 billion a year in revenue. But a $2,000 dividend — if it went to all Americans, including children — would cost $600 billion. “It’s clear that the revenue coming in would not be adequate,’’ he said.
Ricco also noted that Trump couldn’t just pay the dividends on his own. They would require legislation from Congress.
Moreover, the centerpiece of Trump’s protectionist trade policies — double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country in the world — may not survive a legal challenge that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a hearing last week, the justices sounded skeptical about the Trump administration’s assertion of sweeping power to declare national emergencies to justify the tariffs. Trump has bypassed Congress, which has authority under the Constitution to levy taxes, including tariffs.
If the court strikes down the tariffs, the Trump administration may be refunding money to the importers who paid them, not sending dividend checks to American families. (Trump could find other ways to impose tariffs, even if he loses at the Supreme Court; but it could be cumbersome and time-consuming.)
Mainstream economists and budget analysts note that tariffs are paid by U.S. importers who then generally try to pass along the cost to their customers through higher prices.
The dividend plan “misses the mark,’’ the Tax Foundation’s York said. ”If the goal is relief for Americans, just get rid of the tariffs.’’
In January, Borges started a new job as the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, overseeing some of the most sensitive data systems in the federal government—including databases containing Social Security numbers, addresses, citizenship status, and benefits records of nearly every American.
Or at least that was the job description. Instead, he spent seven months struggling to get basic visibility into the systems he was statutorily responsible for, at times learning about how Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was operating at the agency in press reports rather than internal discussions. By this summer, he filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that DOGE had copied and moved sensitive American data to an unsecure cloud environment. Borges was quickly forced to resign.
Now, Borges is launching his campaign for Maryland state senator.
In his first interview since the campaign began on Tuesday, Borges describes his clashes with DOGE, being sidelined at his own agency, and why he thinks technologists are needed to help steer this new era of government.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
WIRED: Why did you decide to run for office? And how did working under DOGE influence your decision to run?
Chuck Borges: I left SSA in late August, and the next month was very trying, both personally and professionally. There was a lot of congressional interaction. There was some media outreach. We had a lot of documentation to work on. I started to express to various local groups that they should be concerned about data privacy. This is not a partisan issue. It’s a nonpartisan issue that your data privacy should be concerning to you and that there’s risk involved.
In early October, the local Democratic Party reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in running for office. The reason I’m running is pretty simple—I worked at the highest levels of federal government and through that process I saw a lot of interactions with Congress. There’s a lot of concerns in the country today around government dysfunction and a lot of things just aren’t working.
DOGE didn’t influence my decision, but the dysfunction I experienced this year in general continued to motivate me to find ways to serve the public better.
When you first heard about DOGE involving itself at SSA, what did you expect would happen?
Elon Musk went on stage on Thursday night during Tesla’s annual shareholders meeting and made some big claims and promises. The company is “almost comfortable” letting owners with Full Self-Driving (FSD) “text and drive,” he said. At the moment, its vehicles are still strictly monitoring drivers to make sure their eyes are on the road, but Musk said that Tesla will enable unsupervised FSD that will allow texting and driving within “a month or two.”
To note, Tesla’s FSD is currently capable of level 2 autonomous driving. Musk is promising at least a level 4 capability, in which the driver can be disengaged as the car performs all driving tasks for them, within a short span of time. While he said that Tesla will look at its safety data first, he didn’t discuss the steps it’s taking to enable texting while driving and whether it’s already discussing the legalities of it with regulators.
Talking about the Cybercab, Musk said production of the robotaxis will begin by April next year. Since it will be specifically built with autonomy in mind, it will not have pedals, a steering wheel and even side mirrors. The Cybercab’s manufacturing process, he explained, is vastly different from typical car production and is more comparable to phone manufacturing. That’s why he thinks the company will be able to produce one unit every 10 seconds.
Musk also talked about the flying car he teased on Joe Rogan’s show. When asked at the event, he said the demo will now take place on April 1, 2026, instead of this month or the next like he told Rogan. It remains to be seen whether we’re going to get April Fooled, but Musk claimed that production of Tesla’s flying vehicle will happen a year or so after its unveiling. As always, take Musk’s claims with a grain of salt, as he’s pretty infamous for being overly ambitious with his timelines.
While Musk was on stage talking about Tesla’s plans, an Optimus humanoid robot was standing by the side. The CEO said Optimus is bound to become the “biggest product of all time,” bigger than cellphones, “bigger than anything.” Tesla will start with a 1-million production line and then a 10-million production line, but he said the company expects to eventually produce 100 million to a billion Optimus robots a year. He envisions a world wherein the humanoid machines will provide people with medical care… as well as a world wherein instead of being jailed, Optimus follows criminals around to stop them from committing more crimes.
Before Musk went on stage, Tesla’s shareholders had voted to approve his pay package worth up to $1 trillion over the next 10 years. Tesla has to hit several goals for Musk to become the first trillionaire, though, including reaching a market value of $8.5 trillion from its current worth of $1.4 billion and selling a million Optimus robots.
Tesla’s shareholders have voted in favor of a compensation plan that could see CEO Elon Musk become the world’s first trillionaire. The potential incentives were laid out in September, and the company’s shareholders have agreed to allow this all-or-nothing package for its chief exec, who spent the first half of this year decimating the US federal government rather than working on any Tesla-adjacent projects.
The compensation plan lists several targets that the company must reach for Musk to reap the vast rewards. Tesla must reach a market value of $8.5 trillion, compared with its current worth of about $1.4 billion. Other requirements are metrics-based, such as selling a million robots with humanoid qualities, while others are strategic, such as establishing a succession plan for future Tesla leadership. Musk also has a lot of other irons in the fire across SpaceX and xAI, so the incentives may be an effort to keep the CEO focused on generating more money for this specific group of supporters.
Presently, most times the Tesla name makes headlines, it’s not for good press. The company coupled record-high revenue with tumbling profits in its Q3 2025 financial results. Just during October, it was the subject of multipleinvestigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and incurred the wrath of the California Department of Insurance.
Tesla shareholders on Thursday approved a new pay package for CEO Elon Musk that is potentially worth up to $1 trillion over a decade, despite some prominent investors criticizing the size of the compensation plan.
The plan, one of the richest compensation packages in corporate history, would be delivered to Musk — the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $437 billion — if Tesla hits certain performance goals under his leadership. Meeting such targets would make him the world’s first trillionaire.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which holds a stake in Tesla, on Tuesday said it would vote against the pay package, while investment advisory firms Glass Lewis and ISS also recommended shareholders vote against it.
The vote comes at a delicate time for Tesla, with the electric car maker’s sales tumbling earlier this year after Musk spearheaded the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. His role overseeing the layoffs of thousands of government workers antagonized some consumers, with Yale University researchers saying Muks’s actions reduced Tesla’s sales by as many as 1.2 million vehicles over the past three years.
Musk stepped back from DOGE in May, promising to refocus on Tesla.
One prominent Wall Street analyst, Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, said the generous pay package is necessary to ensure Musk remains committed to Tesla.
“Tesla’s board members have asked shareholders to approve a long-term incentive package for Musk to retain and motivate the CEO to remain in his current leadership role with a new share package where he will only be paid if he attains ‘extraordinary financial returns,’” Ives said in a Nov. 5 research note.
The package requires Tesla to hit certain milestones, such as reaching a market cap of $8.5 trillion, or about six times its current valuation of $1.4 trillion, shipping 20 million vehicles and delivering 1 million of Tesla’s humanoid “Optimus” robots.
Despite Musk’s controversial leadership, the company’s sales and stock price have soared over the years. Since it went public in June 2010, the company’s stock has returned almost 35,000%, compared with a roughly 550% gain in the S&P 500 over the same time period.
On Thursday, Tesla shareholders approved an unprecedented $1 trillion pay package for CEO Elon Musk. The full compensation plan will go into effect by 2035—assuming Musk and the company successfully hit ambitious financial and production targets. If that happens, Musk will also get control of some 25 percent of the business, up from the 12 percent he controls currently. More than 75 percent of Tesla shareholders approved the move in a preliminary vote.
Musk celebrated the news onstage at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, appearing alongside two dancing humanoid robots, the company’s Optimus products. “Look at us, this is sick,” he said.
To meet its goals, however, Tesla will have to lead in industries well beyond electric cars—and guarantee that Optimus can do much more than dance. It will also have to beat all competitors in autonomous driving technology and robotics. “Tesla will have to be the market leader not just in the US but also Europe and other regions,” says Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, a financial services firm.
Specifically, Tesla needs to hit an$8.5 trillion valuation over the next 10 years, deliver 20 million vehicles to customers, send out 1 million robots, operate 1 million robotaxis, and sell 10 million subscriptions for its “Full Self-Driving” software over a three-month period—in addition to other financial targets.
Still, the vote marks a win for Musk, whose previous package, a $50 billion payday laid out in 2018, has been caught up in litigation after a shareholder alleged that the CEO had too much influence over the company’s board and that Tesla was therefore failing to uphold its legal obligations to shareholders. The lawsuit, brought in Delaware’s Chancery Court, led to Tesla reincorporating in Texas. A panel of judges heard the case on appeal in October; they’ll likely make a final decision in the coming months.
Before the vote, Tesla’s board argued the sky-high pay package was necessary to retain Musk as CEO—and keep him focused on the car company. In a call with investors last month, Musk suggested that he would have a hard time pushing Tesla ahead in robotics and autonomy if he didn’t have a strong sway over the automaker. “If we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over this robot army?” he asked. “I don’t feel comfortable building that robot army unless I have a strong influence.”
Following Thursday’s vote, Musk told investors gathered in Texas that production of the Cybercab, a self-driving vehicle that lacks a steering wheel or sideview mirrors, would begin in April. The company will need permission from the federal government to put the unconventionally designed car on the road.
WASHINGTON (AP) — IRS Direct File, the electronic system for filing tax returns for free, will not be offered next year, the Trump administration has confirmed.
An email sent Monday from IRS official Cynthia Noe to state comptrollers that participate in the Direct File program said that “IRS Direct File will not be available in Filing Season 2026. No launch date has been set for the future.”
The program developed during Joe Biden’s presidency was credited by users with making tax filing easy, fast and economical. However, it faced criticism from Republican lawmakers, who called it a waste of taxpayer money because free filing programs already exist (though they are difficult to use), and from commercial tax preparation companies, which have made billions from charging people to use their software.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is also the current IRS commissioner, told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that there are “better alternatives” to Direct File. “It wasn’t used very much,” he said. “And we think that the private sector can do a better job.”
The Center for Taxpayer Rights filed a Freedom of Information Act request for IRS’ latest evaluation of the program and the report says 296,531 taxpayers submitted accepted returns for the 2025 tax season through Direct File. That’s up from the 140,803 submitted accepted returns in 2024.
Direct File was rolled out as a pilot program in 2024 after the IRS was tasked with looking into how to create a “direct file” system as part of the money it received from the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by Biden in 2022. The Democratic administration spent tens of millions of dollars developing the program.
Last May, the agency under Biden announced that the program would be made permanent.
But the IRS has faced intense blowback to Direct File from private tax preparation companies that have spent millions lobbying Congress. The average American typically spends about $140 preparing returns each year.
The program had been in limbo since the start of the Trump administration as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency slashed their way through the federal government. But The Associated Press reported in April that the administration planned to eliminate the program, with its future becoming clear after the IRS staff assigned to it were told to stop working on its development for the 2026 tax filing season.
As of Wednesday, the Direct File website states that “Direct File is closed. More information will be available at a later date.”
The Washington Post and NextGov first reported on the email to state comptrollers confirming the program would not be offered next year.
Adam Ruben, a vice president at the liberal-leaning Economic Security Project, said “it’s not surprising” that the program was eliminated.
“Trump’s billionaire friends get favors while honest, hardworking Americans will pay more to file their taxes,” he said.
It’s official: Elon Musk is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire.
Tesla shareholders approved a new executive pay package Thursday afternoon that would give Musk nearly $1 trillion in stock over the next decade, a record-shattering deal for the world’s richest man.
The total award depends on whether Musk can meet ambitious performance targets for the struggling electric-vehicle company, including growing Tesla’s market cap to $8.5 trillion—a more than 500% increase from today’s valuation. The goals also include delivery of 20 million Tesla vehicles and 1 million bots in addition to 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation.
“While we believe Elon is the only person capable of leading Tesla at this critical inflection point, changing the world is neither an overnight process nor the work of a single person,” Tesla’s Board wrote in a letter to shareholders in August. “So, we also want your help in securing the team and strategy needed to achieve goals that others will perceive as impossible but that we know are possible for Tesla.”
Musk’s net worth is estimated at about $473 billion.
Reining Musk back in
If all goes to plan, Musk’s stake in Tesla will rise from about 13% to nearly 29%—a level of control he’s long sought.
Having voting control in the “mid-20s” percent range would help secure a “strong influence,” but gives shareholders enough control to fire him if he goes “insane,” Musk said during Tesla’s earnings call last month.
“It’s called compensation, but it’s not like I’m going to go spend the money,” Musk added. “It’s just, if we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army, not current control, but a strong influence? That’s what it comes down to in a nutshell. I don’t feel comfortable wielding that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence.”
Tesla’s stock fell as much as 43% between January and March as Musk devoted much of his time to leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Since stepping back, shares have recovered to being up 16% year-to-date.
Many shareholders hope the new incentives will keep Musk focused on Tesla.
Ron Baron, the founder and CEO of Baron Capital, which holds a 0.39% stake in Tesla, said in a post on X that he supported the plan because without Musk, Tesla wouldn’t exist.
“Elon is the ultimate ‘key man’ of key man risk,” Baron wrote. “Without his relentless drive and uncompromising standards, there would be no Tesla.”
From Pope Leo to Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Musk’s pay package had its haters
Not every Tesla investor was on board with the extravagant deal.
Glass Lewis and ISS, two proxy advisory services, urged Tesla shareholders to vote against the proposal, with the latter group citing “unmitigated concerns” with its magnitude and design. Musk then fired back during Tesla’s October earnings call, calling them “corporate terrorists.”
Meanwhile, Norges Bank Investment Management, the group behind Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund which holds a 1.14% stake in Tesla, said it voted against the pay package.
“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk — consistent with our views on executive compensation,” the group said in a statement this week.
Pope Leo XIV, though not a Tesla investor, also recently expressed his concern for the message sent by Musk becoming a trillionaire—and the growing divide between the rich and the poor.
“CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving, the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times more than what average workers are receiving,” the pontiff told Catholic news site Crux in an interview released in September.
“Yesterday, the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world: What does that mean and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.”
A recent report from Oxfam found that the 10 richest Americans—which include Musk as well as Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, Amazon cofounder Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—gained $69.8 billion over the past year. That’s 833,631 times more than what the typical American household takes home.
While Musk still trails John D. Rockefeller’s $630 billion inflation-adjusted fortune, hitting his new performance targets could make him the richest person in modern history.
On Thursday, Tesla shareholders approved CEO Elon Musk’s pay package worth as much as $878 billion, an outcome that was widely expected. Musk received 75% approval in the vote. The compensation plan will hand over that wealth in 12 tranches of stock, provided various milestones are hit over the next decade.
The vote occurred at Tesla’s annual shareholder’s meeting in Austin, Texas, and the first milestone that would unlock one of Musk’s 12 payments would be Tesla reaching a market cap of $2 trillion. The company’s market cap currently sits at $1.4 trillion.
Other metrics include delivering 20 million Tesla vehicles, as well as deploying 1 million robotaxis and 1 million humanoid robots. Musk currently holds about 13% of Tesla shares and, if all of the milestones are hit, he would increase his stake to about 25%, according to CNBC.
There’s a broad consensus that Musk’s association with far-right politics in 2024 and 2025 has harmed Tesla’s brand among the company’s more liberal customer base, but shareholders are still convinced that the electric carmaker would be much worse off if he wasn’t around.
Musk had threatened to turn his attention elsewhere if he didn’t get his payday, but he’s already distracted by ostensibly running many other companies, including SpaceX, The Boring Company, xAI, and X. Officially, X doesn’t have a CEO right now, but Musk is largely seen as the one in charge and there doesn’t appear to be any real urgency to find a new head to replace Linda Yaccarino, who left in the summer.
Musk hitched his wagon to President Donald Trump, spending nearly $300 million to get him elected in 2024. Musk was the head of DOGE and took a chainsaw to the federal government, while also throwing up Nazi-style salutes. As a result, many potential Tesla customers were turned off and started placing bumper stickers on their cars like “I bought this before Elon went crazy.” Tesla has seen steep declines in sales across most of Europe, with sales in Norway down 50%, sales in the Netherlands down 48%, and sales in Spain down 30%, according to Bloomberg.
Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, insisted in the lead up to the vote that he deserved the pay package and it wasn’t actually about the money. The billionaire claimed that he needed the vote from shareholders to have influence over Tesla’s “robot army,” trying to suggest that his developments with the Optimus robot could be dangerous if they fall into the wrong hands. Musk has made similar claims about AI potentially destroying humanity if not guided correctly against what he calls the “woke mind virus.”
Musk has tried to pivot Tesla in recent years from an electric car company into something much harder to define. The billionaire CEO wants people to think of Tesla as a technology company, investing in AI and robotics, but Musk’s carnival barker attitude often means he promises big things and delivers something much more humble.
For example, Musk promised to build a mass transit system called the Loop in 2018 which initially included autonomous 16-passenger vehicles zipping around underground at speeds of 155 miles per hour. The concept video, which was originally posted to Vimeo before being deleted years later, was quite impressive.
But when it came time to actually build the thing Musk had promised, he created a short tunnel underneath Las Vegas. No special new vehicle, no high speed, no autonomy. It was just regular old Teslas slowly driven by humans in a short tunnel.
Musk loves to create hype when his companies are struggling. And then, when the sugar rush wears off, he moves on to the next thing. What’s the next over-hyped promise? Robots, for sure. But he’s also teasing the idea of a flying car, which he told podcaster Joe Rogan last week could be demonstrated before the end of this year.
Shareholders voted to give Musk a $56 billion pay package in 2018 that was also dependent on hitting 12 different milestones, including increased market capitalization of $50 billion up to $650 billion. But a judge in Delaware has shot down that compensation plan because it had misleading and incomplete information. That package is still being fought over in the courts. Musk said the judge was a “radical far left activist cosplaying as a judge,” an accusation he often makes of anyone to the left of Augusto Pinochet.
Elon Musk is worth $492 billion, according to the latest estimates by Forbes. Tesla’s stock closed down 3% to $445 per share on Thursday, but ticked up 3% in after hours trading after the announcement.
NEW YORK (AP) — For many years, New York voters have found candidates listed twice, three times or even more on their ballots when they go to the polling booth.
It isn’t an error — it’s a practice known as fusion voting that allows candidates to appear under multiple political parties.
But such intentional duplications on the New York City ballot this year, along with other layout choices, have some outside observers around the country wondering whether they are seeing evidence of rigged voting in Tuesday’s widely-watched mayoral race.
Billionaire X owner Elon Musk, who briefly served as a top advisor to President Donald Trump, was among those criticizing the ballots.
“The New York City ballot form is a scam!” he wrote in an X post. “No ID is required. Other mayoral candidates appear twice. Cuomo’s name is last in bottom right.”
But there is nothing amiss about the ballots, which are in keeping with New York’s voting laws.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: New York City ballots are proof of election fraud because some candidates appear twice and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is listed low in the order.
THE FACTS: This is false. Candidates may appear more than once on ballots in New York if they are nominated by multiple political parties — a practice called fusion voting. Cuomo is in the eighth spot because he filed to run as an independent later in the process.
New York, along with Connecticut, is one of few states where fusion voting is legal and commonly used. The practice has existed in New York since at least the mid-20th century. It is also legal in Oregon, Vermont and Mississippi.
“This occurs pretty frequently and it enables the Democratic candidate to get the votes of people who don’t normally vote for Democrats and Republicans to get the vote of people who don’t vote Republican etc.,” said Richard Briffault, an expert on election administration and a professor at Columbia Law School, said of fusion voting in New York.
Two mayoral candidates appear twice this year on New York City ballots. Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani is also the nominee of the Working Families Party, while Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa is also the candidate for the independent “Protect Animals” party.
Fusion voting does not allow candidates to receive more than one vote from the same voter, as voters may only vote for a candidate under one party.
Cuomo is a Democrat, but is running as an independent under a new party he created called “Fight and Deliver” after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June.
Under state law, there are currently four official parties on the ballot in New York — Democratic, Republican, Conservative and Working Families Party — based on the number of votes their candidate received in the most recent gubernatorial and presidential elections. That vote count also determines the order they appear on the next ballot, from highest to lowest.
Candidates must file a petition to run as an independent. Boards of elections determine the ballot order of independent parties, which must appear below the official parties.
“In the case of the New York City Board of Elections, this is determined by the date and time stamp when the independent nominating petition was filed with that board,” said Kathleen McGrath, a spokesperson for the New York State Board of Elections.
According to McGrath, Cuomo’s “Fight and Deliver” party was the fourth out of five independent parties to submit a nominating petition, meaning that Cuomo is listed eighth on the ballot.
Mamdani is listed first under the Democratic Party and fourth under the Working Families Party. Sliwa appears second under the Republican Party and fifth under the “Protect Animals” party. Two other candidates running as independents — incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and attorney Jim Walden — dropped out of the race too late to be taken off the ballot.
“In short, Cuomo is only listed once because he was only nominated once, and he is low in the order because no recognized political party nominated him,” said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting. “Surely Elon Musk has people who could have looked this up for him.”
New York City does not require voters to show ID to vote unless they did not provide identification with their registration. The nation’s multilayered election processes provide many safeguards that keep voter fraud generally detectable and rare, the AP has reported.
Representatives for Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Tesla’s fading momentum may have less to do with its cars and more with its CEO’s politics. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
How did Tesla go from the world’s fastest-growing automaker to a company beleaguered by slowing sales and shrinking market share? According to a team of Yale researchers, the answer lies in the polarizing and partisan behavior of CEO Elon Musk.
Sure, Tesla has faced headwinds from aging models, rising competition, and a saturated customer base. But an analysis of county-level data shows that its declining demand is also linked to Musk’s increasingly political actions. The study’s authors estimate that Tesla would have sold between 1 million to 1.26 million more cars in recent years without what they call the “Musk partisan effect.”
During the most recent quarter, Tesla’s profit plunged 37 percent year-over-year. Revenue fell for two consecutive quarters this year. (The most recent quarter saw a rebound thanks to tax credits-fueled buying rush.)
The Yale researchers argue that much of Tesla’s decline stems from the alienation of its traditional consumer base. Drawing on vehicle registration data from S&P Global and county-level voting records, they found that Tesla’s customer base has long leaned Democratic and environmentally conscious.
That began to change in 2022, when Musk acquired X and rolled back content moderation policies. The shift deepened amid his involvement in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and his subsequent appointment as head of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “Musk’s actions antagonized his most loyal customer base,” the authors wrote.
The trend has only grown more pronounced. Between October 2022 and April 2025, Musk’s partisan behavior caused Tesla to lose between 67 percent and 83 percent of its potential car sales, according to the study. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, that figure jumped to 150 percent.
Musk himself has acknowledged the backlash. During an April earnings call, he said his DOGE role had led to “blowback” and announced plans to scale back his time with the agency to refocus on Tesla.
The fallout hasn’t even benefited Tesla’s competitors. The study found that, absent Musk’s partisan behavior, sales of other EV and hybrid models would have been 17 to 22 percent lower over the past three years and 25 percent lower in early 2025, suggesting his actions helped rival automakers.
Musk’s controversies have also had unintended policy consequences, the researchers noted. In California, which aims for zero-emission vehicles to make up 25 percent of new sales by 2026, 68 percent by 2030, and 100 percent by 2035, progress has stalled. The study estimates that without Musk’s partisan impact, California would have added 139,700 more EV sales in the first quarter of 2025. The reality is that California fell short by 28,000 vehicles in that quarter to stay on track.
This study highlights just how impactful a CEO’s partisan actions can be,” the authors concluded.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, one of Tesla’s biggest investors, said Tuesday that it will vote against a proposed compensation package that could pay CEO Elon Musk as much as $1 trillion over a decade.
There will be more than a dozen company proposals up for a vote Thursday during Tesla’s annual meeting, but none have generated more division than Musk’s potentially massive pay package.
“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk consistent with our views on executive compensation,” said Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the country’s Government Pension Fund Global. “We will continue to seek constructive dialogue with Tesla on this and other topics.”
The fund has a 1.16% stake, the sixth largest holding among institutional investors.
AP AUDIO: Big Tesla investor will vote against Musk’s massive pay package
A proposed compensation package is getting a lot of attention ahead of Tesla’s annual meeting. AP correspondent Mike Hempen reports.
Baron Capital Management, which holds about 0.4% of Tesla’s outstanding shares said Monday that it will vote in favor of the compensation package.
“Elon is the ultimate “key man” of key man risk. Without his relentless drive and uncompromising standards, there would be no Tesla,” wrote founder Ron Baron. “He has built one of the most important companies in the world. He’s redefining transportation, energy and humanoid robotics and creating lasting value for shareholders while doing it. His interests are completely aligned with investors.”
Musk is the company’s largest investor, holding 15.79% of all outstanding shares.
Tesla management has proposed a compensation arrangement that would hand Musk shares worth as much as 12% of the company in a dozen separate packages if the company meets ambitious performance targets, including massive increases in car production, share price and operating profit.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he has decided to nominate Jared Isaacman to serve as his NASA administrator, months after withdrawing the tech billionaire’s nomination because of concerns about his political leanings.Trump announced in late May that he had decided to withdraw Isaacman after a “thorough review” of his “prior associations.” Weeks after the withdrawal, Trump went further in expressing his concerns about Isaacman’s Republican credentials.At the time, Trump acknowledged that he thought Isaacman “was very good,” but had become “surprised to learn” that Isaacman was a “ blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before.”Isaacman had the endorsement of Trump’s former DOGE adviser and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. The president and Musk had a very public falling out earlier this year but are now on better terms.Last week, Trump told reporters he and Musk have spoken “on and off” since sitting together at conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s funeral last month in Arizona and that their relationship is “good.”Trump made no mention of his previous decision to nominate and then withdraw Isaacman in his Tuesday evening announcement of the re-nomination on his Truth Social platform. And the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s decision to reverse course.“This evening, I am pleased to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of NASA,” Trump posted. “Jared’s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era.”Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been serving as interim NASA administrator. The president on Tuesday praised Duffy for doing an “incredible job.”Isaacman, CEO and founder of credit card-processing company Shift4, has been a close collaborator with Musk ever since buying his first chartered flight with SpaceX.He also bought a series of spaceflights from SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk. SpaceX has extensive contracts with NASA.The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved Isaacman’s nomination in late April and a vote by the full Senate had been expected when Trump announced he was yanking the nomination.In his own social media post Tuesday, Isaacman thanked Trump for the nomination and the “space-loving community.” He made no mention of the earlier turmoil.
WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he has decided to nominate Jared Isaacman to serve as his NASA administrator, months after withdrawing the tech billionaire’s nomination because of concerns about his political leanings.
Trump announced in late May that he had decided to withdraw Isaacman after a “thorough review” of his “prior associations.” Weeks after the withdrawal, Trump went further in expressing his concerns about Isaacman’s Republican credentials.
At the time, Trump acknowledged that he thought Isaacman “was very good,” but had become “surprised to learn” that Isaacman was a “ blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before.”
Isaacman had the endorsement of Trump’s former DOGE adviser and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. The president and Musk had a very public falling out earlier this year but are now on better terms.
Last week, Trump told reporters he and Musk have spoken “on and off” since sitting together at conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s funeral last month in Arizona and that their relationship is “good.”
Trump made no mention of his previous decision to nominate and then withdraw Isaacman in his Tuesday evening announcement of the re-nomination on his Truth Social platform. And the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s decision to reverse course.
“This evening, I am pleased to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of NASA,” Trump posted. “Jared’s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been serving as interim NASA administrator. The president on Tuesday praised Duffy for doing an “incredible job.”
Isaacman, CEO and founder of credit card-processing company Shift4, has been a close collaborator with Musk ever since buying his first chartered flight with SpaceX.
He also bought a series of spaceflights from SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk. SpaceX has extensive contracts with NASA.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved Isaacman’s nomination in late April and a vote by the full Senate had been expected when Trump announced he was yanking the nomination.
In his own social media post Tuesday, Isaacman thanked Trump for the nomination and the “space-loving community.” He made no mention of the earlier turmoil.
