đŸ”” X Sold

Author

Citizen Frank
March 29, 2025

Good morning. It’s Saturday, March 29.

 

Elon Musk said on Friday that his startup xAI has merged with X, his social network, in an all-stock transaction that values the artificial intelligence company at $80 billion and the social media company at $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” Musk, the world’s richest person, wrote in a post on X. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.”

He added that the merger would, “unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.” The purchase price, he said, was $45 billion less $12 billion in debt.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a Friday press conference that he won’t recognize past US military aid as loans, after Washington sent a new draft of the minerals deal to Kiev.

“Ukraine received a new agreement project from the U.S. regarding mineral resources, which is an entirely different document from the previous framework agreement,” said Zelensky, adding “Ukraine will not recognize U.S. military aid as debt.”

“We are grateful for the support, but this is not a credit, and we will not allow it,” Zelensky continued.

Elon Musk doubled down on his pledge to cut government spending by $1 trillion — an amount that would slash the federal budget deficit in half and, if implemented, put the U.S. much closer to stabilizing the growth of its debt burden relative to the size of the economy.

“Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars,” Musk told Fox News Thursday evening — adding that he hoped to reduce overall federal spending by 15% solely through “eliminating waste and fraud,” a goal he said “seems really quite achievable.”

He pointed to a number of examples of wasteful spending, including a survey that Musk claimed was done for the Interior Department at a cost of $830 million to collect Americans opinions’ of national parks. Musk said that the survey could have been done by another vendor for just $10,000.

The State Department announced Friday it will officially dismantle the bloated U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), folding select operations into its own ranks by July 1.

The long-overdue decision puts an end to a multi-billion-dollar bureaucratic behemoth that has squandered taxpayer dollars on questionable overseas handouts for decades.

The Trump administration, fulfilling promises to drain the swamp and slash government overreach, accused USAID of gross mismanagement and funding foreign programs that do little to advance American interests.

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk said late Thursday he will be giving a talk to voters in Wisconsin this weekend ahead of the state’s highly anticipated state Supreme Court election.

“On Sunday night, I will give a talk in Wisconsin. Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X.

The billionaire said he would “personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”

Marine Le Pen, the frontrunner for the 2027 French presidency, could be sent to prison and banned from office as early as next week. Prosecutors allege that Le Pen and more than 20 National Rally (RN) members misused 2.5 million euros (ÂŁ2 million) in EU parliamentary funds between 2004 and 2016 by redirecting them to pay party staff rather than accredited parliamentary assistants in Brussels.

There is no allegation that Le Pen embezzled the funds or used them for personal gain: this was a matter of internal staffing allocation, not misappropriation for personal benefit. But nonetheless, if the court decides against Le Pen, it could spell the end of her career: prosecutors seek a five-year prison term (three suspended), a 250,000 euro (£200,000) fine, and a five-year public office ban with ‘provisional execution’: a pre-appeal axe that could fell her 2027 bid, despite her lead in the polls.

Provisional execution is a procedural tool in French law that allows a sentence to be carried out immediately, even while appeals are ongoing. Traditionally reserved for urgent civil matters or cases involving serious criminality, it is rare in political or financial contexts. Applying it to Le Pen’s case – involving alleged misuse of assistant budgets – would be an extraordinary move. Le Pen calls it a ‘political lynching’. Her supporters smell Macron’s hand. The charges – reallocating funds for political ends – shrink beside the stakes of neutralising a frontrunner, exposing the flimsiness of the pretext.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced a new investigation into “DEI practices” at Disney and its flagship company ABC via X Friday.

“I have asked the @FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to open an investigation into Disney & ABC,” Carr wrote. “While Disney started as an iconic American company, it recently went all in on DEI.

“I am concerned that their DEI practices may violate FCC prohibitions on invidious forms of discrimination.”

More than 1,000 people have been killed in Burma after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck the country on Friday.

The death toll in Burma (also known as Myanmar) jumped to 1,002 with 2,376 injured and 30 others missing, the military government said in a statement on Saturday, up sharply from the 144 dead that state media reported on Friday.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter of the earthquake—which was 6.2 miles deep—was close to the city of Mandalay in Burma.

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