Finance news
Elon Musk professed his love for Donald Trump through an effusive social media post on Friday. The billionaire businessman had emerged as a key ally during the US election campaign — from attending campaign rallies to donating more than $100 million to Republican causes. He later joined the Trump administration to oversee a drastic downsizing and reshaping of the federal government.
“I love Donald Trump as much as a straight man can love another man,” Musk declared on X.
The message prompted cheers from supporters — with one user calling it the “greatest bromance in history”.
“Together they are gonna Make America Great Again,” assured another.
The remarks came even as a federal judge dealt President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk their first big setback on Friday. Efforts to dismantle the US Agency for International Development have now hit a roadblock — with the judge ordering a temporary halt to plans to pull thousands of agency staffers off the job.
District Judge Carl Nichols — who was incidentally nominated by Trump — sided with two federal employee associations in agreeing to a pause in plans to put 2,200 employees on paid leave as of midnight on Friday. Nichols stressed that his order was not a decision on the employees’ request to roll back the administration’s swiftly moving destruction of the agency.
“CLOSE IT DOWN,” Trump said on social media of USAID before the judge’s ruling.
The Trump administration and Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have made USAID their biggest target so far in an unprecedented challenge of the federal government and many of its programs.
Administration appointees and Musk’s teams have shut down almost all funding for the agency, stopping aid and development programs worldwide, placed staffers and contractors on leave and furlough and locked them out of the agency’s email and other systems. According to Democratic lawmakers, they also carted away USAID’s computer servers.
