Musk threatens to primary members of Congress who vote for Trump’s megabill
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(WASHINGTON) — Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, on Monday said he would back challengers to members of Congress who vote for President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
Musk broke his short-lived X silence about the bill over the weekend, unloading on it for being “utterly insane.” On Monday, Musk criticized “every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history,” vowing that “they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday both continued to counter a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment that the attack on three Iranian nuclear facilities did limited damage by saying it was incomplete and claiming news accounts were demeaned the B-2 pilots who dropped the bombs.
Speaking at a news conference as he was set to leave the NATO summit in the Netherlands, Trump claimed the pilots are “devastated” by the suggestion the strikes were not a complete success.
He was asked several times on Wednesday about the Defense Intelligence Agency’s initial assessment that the bombings of the Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo facilities likely set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months. He acknowledged the receipt of the report but noted it was incomplete.
He snapped back at reporters raising questions about it, repeating his claim Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated,” and shifted the focus to the pilots who carried out the strike.
“You should be praising those people instead of trying to find out by getting me by trying to go and get me. You’re hurting those people,” Trump told reporters.
Later Wednesday, in a Truth Social post, he said Hegseth would hold a news conference Thursday morning “in order to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots.”
“They felt terribly! Fortunately for them and, as usual, solely for the purpose of demeaning PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP,” he said in part. “The News Conference will prove both interesting and irrefutable.”
During that news conference Thursday, Hegseth angrily slammed reporters for “undermining” the success of the pilots.
“There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did and, because of the hatred of this press corps, are undermined because your people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn’t successful. It’s irresponsible,” he said.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also explained he operation and said he was not pressured by the president.
“I’ve never been pressured by the president or the secretary to do anything other than tell him exactly what I’m thinking, and that’s exactly what I’ve done in the highway. There’s nothing that I’ve seen that suggests that we didn’t get exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations,” he said.
Trump later said in a Truth Social post that the news conference was “the greatest, most professional, and most ‘confirming.'”
Hegseth’s comments amplified his and Trump’s vocal opposition to the press the day before.
The president claimed in his Netherlands news conference that he had received a call from Missouri, where the pilots are based, about the intelligence report and the news accounts about it, saying he had been told they were “devastated, because they were trying to minimize the attack.”
“I spoke to one of them. He said, ‘Sir, we hit the site. It was perfect. It was dead on,’ because they don’t understand fake news,” Trump said.
The Pentagon referred questions from ABC News to the White House.
Trump added about the pilots that “they were devastated. They put their lives on the line.”
Since Saturday’s attack, Trump and his officials have repeatedly praised the B-2 pilots for the mission but stepped up referencing them as part of the pushback on Wednesday. Hegseth, standing next to Trump, came to the microphone to argue news reporters and outlets “don’t care what the troops think.”
“These pilots, these refuelers, these fighters, these air defenders, the skill and the courage it took to go into enemy territory flying 36 hours on behalf of the American people in the world to take out a nuclear program is beyond what anyone in this audience can fathom,” Hegseth said.
At the same time, Hegseth and Trump downplayed the report’s initial findings about the damage.
“The report said what it said and it was fine. It was severe, they think, but they had no idea. They shouldn’t have issued a report until they did, but we’ve got the information,” Trump said.
Trump earlier cited an Israeli intelligence report that he insisted assessed the “strike on Fordo destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility totally inoperable.”
Military officials have said there is no doubt the sites sustained significant damage, but that a “battle damage assessment” would take time to complete, as no Western officials have been able to personally inspect the sites as of Wednesday.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a statement posted on X late Wednesday that “Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed,” and also slamming the news media. A source with knowledge of Gabbard’s assessment told ABC News her description came from new U.S. intelligence.
“The propaganda media has deployed their usual tactic: selectively release portions of illegally leaked classified intelligence assessments (intentionally leaving out the fact that the assessment was written with “low confidence”) to try to undermine President Trump’s decisive leadership and the brave servicemen and women who flawlessly executed a truly historic mission to keep the American people safe and secure,” she posted in part.
Hegseth contended that the preliminary reports and images spoke for themselves.
“So, if you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordo, you better get a big shovel and go really deep because Iran’s nuclear program is obliterated and somebody somewhere is trying to leak something to say, ‘Oh, with low confidence we think maybe it’s moderate,” he claimed.
-ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson, Kelsey Walsh and Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy. Howard Schnapp/Newsday RM via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Nuclear power on the moon is critical to the United States’ space exploration and national security goals, and the U.S. government should “move quickly” to build reactors there before its terrestrial rivals, according to a directive issued by Transportation Secretary and acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy, which was obtained by ABC News.
One full “day” on the moon is two weeks of light followed by approximately two weeks of darkness (in Earth time). Nuclear energy, referred to as fission surface power, or FSP, in the directive, is a “sustainable” and “high-powered” energy source that can survive through the lunar night and be deployed on other celestial bodies, like Mars, according to Duffy.
“We’re in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon,” Duffy said at a press conference on Tuesday. “And to have a base on the moon, we need energy. And some of the key locations on the moon, we’re going to get solar power. But this vision technology is critically important, and so we’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars studying.”
“Can we do it? We are now going to move beyond studying, and we are going,” Duffy continued. “We have given direction to go. Let’s start to deploy our technology, to move to actually make this a reality.”
When reached for comment by ABC News, NASA said, “We’ll let these directives speak for themselves.”
The directive, dated July 31, calls for a “Fission Surface Power Program Executive” to be named within 30 days, who will implement and oversee the project and will report directly to the NASA administrator. It does not say what exactly the nuclear reactors would power on the moon.
“Since March 2024, China and Russia have announced on at least three occasions a joint effort to place a reactor on the Moon by the mid-2030s,” Duffy said in the directive. “The first country to do so could potentially declare a keep-out zone which would significantly inhibit the United States from establishing a planned Artemis presence if not there first.”
Politico was the first to report on this directive.
A second directive, issued on the same day by Duffy, aims to speed up the development of replacements for the International Space Station, which is set to retire by 2030.
While NASA has never used a fission nuclear reactor in space, it has been using nuclear material to power spacecraft since the 1960s. Known as radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, these systems use the heat generated by the decay of plutonium-238, a nuclear element, to create electricity for powering spacecraft and rovers. Currently, NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars is using an RTG system for its power.
In recent years, billions of dollars have been spent developing a new kind of nuclear reactor called Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). These reactors produce less power than traditional reactors, but are significantly smaller in size. SMRs are still being developed in the U.S. and there are no units currently in operation.
“There’s a certain part of the moon that everyone knows is the best. We have ice there, we have sunlight there. We want to get there first and claim that for America,” Duffy said Tuesday.
(CANTON, Ohio) — Speaking in Canton, Ohio, on Monday, Vice President JD Vance was asked about the Jeffrey Epstein files and took an opportunity to defend President Donald Trump and his handling of the ongoing saga, which has caused controversy among his base.
Vance went straight to Trump’s defense, saying the president has been transparent about the situation.
“First of all, the president has been very clear. We’re not shielding anything,” Vance said. “The president has directed the attorney general to release all credible information and, frankly, to go and find additional credible information related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. He’s been incredibly transparent about that stuff, but some of that stuff takes time.”
“The attorney general is hard at work on that issue right now,” Vance said of Bondi, adding that the task takes time.
“You’ve got to assemble that stuff, you’ve got to compile that stuff, you’ve got to redact some victims names so that you protect the victims,” he said.
Vance continued, claiming that the Justice Departments under former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush went “easy” on Epstein and that they didn’t thoroughly investigate the case.
“Where is this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump,” Vance wrote on X in July.
Trump continues to navigate the fallout of the Epstein files. During his bilateral meeting Monday with British Prime Minister Kier Starmer in Scotland, Trump told reporters he has not been interested in anything related to the Epstein files, again, baselessly calling it “a hoax.”
“Well, I haven’t been overly interested in it. You know, it’s something. It’s a hoax that’s been built up way beyond proportion,” Trump said.
Trump continued, claiming without showing evidence that the Epstein files were handled by people who he said were his enemies.
“But think of it, those files were run by these people. They were run by my enemy. If there was anything in there, they would have used them for the election,” Trump said.
Epstein was charged with sex trafficking and died by suicide in jail in 2019.
