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  • Luka Doncic making Lakers better, one no-look pass at a time

    Luka Doncic making Lakers better, one no-look pass at a time

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    “This is gonna make me look bad, isn’t it?”

    Unfortunately, Jaxson Hayes, yes, it will. But only in the beginning.

    The play, one Hayes did not remember, came last season, on Dec. 12, 2023, when he was in his first months with the Los Angeles Lakers and Luka Dončić was still starring for the Dallas Mavericks. It was midway through the fourth quarter of a tight game, with the Mavericks down by two.

    Dončić — as he loves to do — called for a pick-and-roll to draw a matchup against the opposing team’s center. In this case, it was Hayes. Dončić dribbled his way into the low left block, drove his shoulder into Hayes to create space, a space Hayes closed quickly — maybe a little too quickly.

    With Hayes in his face, Dončić took a moment, gathered his feet and then whipped the ball with his left hand right behind Hayes’ head to a wide open Dante Exum, who was waiting patiently behind the 3-point line at the top of the key. The pass fell right into Exum’s shooting pocket and the shot barely hit net, one of Dončić’s 17 assists that night.

    “Ugh, bro, come on,” Hayes told USA TODAY Sports with a smile recently after being shown the highlight on a smartphone. “I’m just glad he’s making those plays on our side now.”

    In his 31 games with the Lakers, Dončić has done exactly that, feeding role players with no-look dishes, over-the-head scoops and full-court darts, providing scoring opportunities for those who might otherwise struggle to claim those chances.

    Yet, Dončić is just one of the generational passers on the Lakers. Throughout his 22 seasons in the NBA, no player has dazzled with his vision, ball location and creativity more than LeBron James. With the attention that Dončić and James draw, often sucking additional defenders into the paint when they attack, players like Hayes, guards Austin Reaves, Gabe Vincent and forward Rui Hachimura have all benefitted.

    “He has such great court vision as a player,” Hayes said of Dončić. “He draws so many defenders and gets so much attention, so it gets me a lot of open baskets. It has been awesome. I just need to make sure I’m in the right positions. Luka and LeBron — they do all the rest.”

    Hayes, in particular, has seen his efficiency soar. When Dončić drives, opposing bigs often abandon Hayes to try to alter Dončić’s shots, which has led to dozens of easy lobs for Hayes to dunk through the rim.

    In the 25 regular-season games that both Dončić and Hayes played, Hayes recorded a perfect shooting percentage in seven of them. In that span, Hayes shot 76.5% from the field, representing an increase of nearly 10 percentage points compared to the 29 games Hayes played prior to Dončić’s arrival, in which he shot 67.6%.

    “You just always have to have your hands ready,” Hayes said.

    It has become a nightly occurrence for Dončić to laser a highlight-worthy pass to a teammate. The pressure, then, falls on his teammates to make good on their end and drain the open shots.

    Earlier this month, in a 126-99 April 6 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder, Dončić flipped a no-look pass behind his head to an open Vincent, who flushed a 3. When asked after the game how he comes up with these passes in the moment, Dončić practically shrugged.

    “I don’t think you can practice that pass, honestly,” Dončić said then. “It’s just sometimes I decide some stuff, then I don’t know how I make it.”

    Yet, the Lakers are currently in a 2-1 hole in their first-round series against the Timberwolves, and Dončić struggled through a Game 3 loss with a stomach bug. The Lakers wasted a 38-point showing from James with turnovers and missed opportunities.

    Game 4 tips off Sunday in Minnesota, and a 3-1 deficit would put the team’s season in a precarious spot. Whether Dončić recovers from his stomach ailment or not, the Lakers will need more from him, starting with that Luka magic, the no-look dishes that destabilize a defense.

    “Nobody is faster than the ball,” James said recently of Los Angeles’ passes. “It comes to ball movement and things of that nature that combat a lot of the ball pressure.

    “When that ball is popping, that’s always a key to success.”

  • China's Huawei develops new AI chip, seeking to match Nvidia, WSJ reports

    China's Huawei develops new AI chip, seeking to match Nvidia, WSJ reports

    China's Huawei develops new AI chip, seeking to match Nvidia, WSJ reports

    Huawei has approached some Chinese tech companies about testing the technical feasibility of the new chip, called the Ascend 910D, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. The Chinese company hopes that the latest iteration of its Ascend AI processors will be more powerful than Nvidia’s H100, and is slated to receive the first batch of samples of the processor as early as late May, the report added. Reuters reported on Monday that Huawei plans to begin mass shipments of its advan
  • Trump approval ratings at record low almost 100 days in

    Trump approval ratings at record low almost 100 days in

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    WASHINGTON − President Donald Trump’s favorability continued to dip, as he reaches 100 days of a second term and voters weigh in on his approach to issues like the economy and immigration.

    Trump’s approval rating was 39% in a new poll from The Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos released April 25. That’s down six percentage points from a similar survey released mid-February.

    It’s the lowest approval rating for any president at their 100-day mark going back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third term, according to the outlets.

    Another recent poll, published April 27 from CNN, found Trump’s approval rating at 41% − down four points from their poll in March and seven points since February. It’s the lowest mark dating back to at least Dwight Eisenhower’s administration, according to CNN.

    Both surveys found that voters have soured on the president’s handling of the economy.

    Sixty-one percent of respondents in the Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos poll said they disapprove of how Trump is managing the nation’s economics. The number comes as Trump’s varying tariffs plan has led to market turmoil and raised fears about an impending recession.

    Fifty-two percent of respondents in the CNN poll said they have at least some confidence in Trump’s handling of the economy, but that’s down from five points from early March.

    Trump also is in the negative with voters on a handful of issues that defined his reelection campaign last year, according to The Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos. From immigration policy to managing the federal government, more than half of those surveyed said they disapproved with Trump’s actions to date.

    The Republican president is not the only entity under scrutiny in the new polls, though.

    Almost 70% of voters said the Democratic Party, which has grappled with how to oppose Trump’s second term, is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans. Sixty-four percent said the same about the GOP.

    The Post-ABC-Ipsos poll was conducted online April 18-22 among 2,464 adults in the U.S. It has a margin of error of +/- two percentage points.

    The CNN poll was conducted from April 17-24 among 1,678 adults, using online and telephone interviews. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

  • ‘Of course’ all people in the U.S. are entitled to due process

    ‘Of course’ all people in the U.S. are entitled to due process

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s agenda of deporting undocumented immigrants but said that “of course” all people in the U.S. are entitled to due process.

    “Yes, of course,” Rubio told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” when asked whether citizens and noncitizens in the U.S. are entitled to due process.

    His comments come as the Trump administration has pressed the courts to allow the immediate deportations of immigrants it accuses of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the Alien Enemies Act without giving them a chance to plead their case before a judge.

    Last week, the Supreme Court asked the administration to pause deportations of some Venezuelan men based in Texas who the Trump administration said were members of Tren de Aragua, with attorneys for the immigrants asking for them not to be deported “before the American judicial system can afford them due process.”

    That decision came after the Supreme Court in early April allowed the Trump administration to move forward with some deportations under the AEA as long as detainees “receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act.”

    “The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” the Supreme Court justices added.

    On Sunday, the secretary of state defended the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, which have included deporting three children who are U.S. citizens — ages 2, 4 and 7 — alongside their mothers, according to The Washington Post.

    “Their mothers, who were illegally in this country, were deported. The children went with their mothers,” Rubio told moderator Kristen Welker.

    “If those children are U.S. citizens, they can come back into the United States if there’s their father or someone here who wants to assume them. But ultimately, who was deported was their mother, their mothers who were here illegally. The children just went with their mothers,” the secretary of state added.

    Rubio called the story “misleading,” saying that “you guys make it sound like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed the 2-year-old and threw him on an airplane.”

    According to the Post, attorneys for the deported mothers were not given opportunities to contact their lawyers or their families while in custody in the U.S.

    In a December interview with “Meet the Press,” then-President-elect Donald Trump previewed his approach to deportations involving mixed-status families, or those where some family members are in the U.S. legally and others aren’t.

    “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” Trump told Welker at the time.

    Rubio also defended the Trump administration’s broader approach to deporting undocumented immigrants, calling the strategy a departure from decadeslong norms in the U.S. that allowed undocumented migrants to remain in the country while pursuing asylum claims.

    “Once you come into our country illegally, it triggers all kinds of rights that can keep you here indefinitely. That’s why we were being flooded at the border, and we’ve ended that,” Rubio said.

    He also spoke about the ongoing negotiations to reach a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, just one day after Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome.

    Rubio said the deal was “closer in general than they’ve been any time in the last three years, but it’s still not there.”

    Speaking about the state of negotiations, the secretary of state told Welker, “There are reasons to be optimistic and there are also reasons to be concerned.”

    “If this was an easy war to end, it would have been ended by someone else a long time ago,” Rubio added.

    Trump told reporters on Sunday that Zelenskyy has a “tough road ahead,” but still maintained that the two countries have “the confines of a deal.” He said he’d like to see Putin imminently commit to an agreement to end the war and implement a ceasefire.

    “I want him to stop shooting, sit down and sign a deal,” Trump said, adding that he was “very disappointed that they did the bombing of those places after discussions.”

    Trump suggested to reporters that his relationship with the Ukrainian leader has improved since the the two leaders’ confrontational Oval Office clash in February.

    “I think he understands the picture, and I think he wants to make a deal,” Trump said.


  • Reclaiming critical thinking in the Age of AI

    Reclaiming critical thinking in the Age of AI

    Reclaiming critical thinking in the Age of AI

    As we increasingly depend on AI to understand the world, we open ourselves up to manipulation by entities that don’t have our best interests in mind.
  • ‘This is how Elon operates’: David Sacks on Musk gradually stepping away from DOGE

    ‘This is how Elon operates’: David Sacks on Musk gradually stepping away from DOGE

    'This is how Elon operates': David Sacks on Musk gradually stepping away from DOGE
    David Sacks said he’s familiar with how Elon Musk manages his companies and so it’s not surprising to him that Musk would cut down his DOGE time now.

    Elon Musk’s close confidant and White House crypto czar David Sacks revealed what he interprets from the speculations of Elon Musk apparently stepping down from the Department of Government Efficiency. Elon Musk announced during this week’s Tesla earnings call that he will be scaling back his time and DOGE and focus more on Tesla.
    In the latest All-In podcast, David Sacks said this is how Elon Musk operates; first he delves into something to get a mental model and then when he gets that model, he moves to more of a maintenance mode. Sacks said the same thing happened when Musk acquired Twitter and for the first three months or so, Elon Musk was always at the Twitter HQ.
    “I saw this before when I was part of the Twitter transition — is that for the first three months or so he was basically full time at Twitter HQ, learning the business down to the database level. I mean, every nook and cranny of that business, he learned about,” Sacks said. “Once he felt like he had a mental model and he had the people in place that he trusted, he could move to more of a maintenance mode.”
    Sacks said this is how Elon Musk manages several of his companies and now he can step back from DOGE.
    Musk “has these intense bursts where he focuses on something, gets the right people and structure in place, feels like he understands it, and then he can delegate more,” Sacks said. “And I think that he has reached that point with DOGE.”

    ‘Neither DOGE nor Elon is going anywhere’

    Sacks said he thinks DOGE is going to continue and Musk will just ration his time in the White House. “My sense is that DOGE is going to continue, it’s just that Elon is shifting to a mode where he can manage it one day a week or two days a week as opposed to being there five days a week,” he said.
    Musk’s announcement that his involvement in DOGE will reduce came as his Tesla had to bear to brunt of the public anger. Tesla cars were set on fire, Tesla stores were vanadalized in a major anti-Musk movement inside and outside the country.

  • Trump’s first 100 days bring litany of lies from gas to eggs

    Trump’s first 100 days bring litany of lies from gas to eggs


    As we approach the end of President Trump’s first 100 days in office, let’s review all the ways he’s lied to our faces.

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    President Donald Trump will hit the 100th day of his second presidential term on April 30, and two things are already pretty clear: he will offer an intentionally inaccurate review of his own performance and then kvetch about anyone who refuses to swallow and regurgitate his self-aggrandizing delusions.

    From the price of eggs to immigration to the war in Ukraine, nothing Trump has done comes close to what he bragged last year about planning to accomplish if voters sent him back to the White House.

    The “100 day” milestone has always been an arbitrary marker in politics, amounting to less than 7% of the 1,461 days in Trump’s term. But his move-fast-and-break-things approach has garnered plenty of attention in a short period, while fundamentally breaking many of the promises he made while campaigning for reelection.

    Trump promised to lower costs. Now groceries are more expensive, and gas isn’t cheaper.

    Trump pegged his 2024 win on “groceries” in a December interview with NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” after spending more than a year complaining about inflation and rising costs for food and fuel.

    He bragged in an April 24 social media post that costs are now “WAY DOWN” while claiming that the cost of eggs has dropped 87%.

    This encapsulates Trump’s approach to proclamations ‒ if they can’t be accurate, make them flashy.

    Consumer price index data shows that a trip to the grocery store in April will be more expensive than it was 12 months ago. And, while the prices of eggs have been fluctuating, they hit a record high in March.

    Trump also promised while campaigning in September to reduce the cost of gasoline to below $2 per gallon. Right on schedule, he claimed during April 17 remarks at the White House that gasoline had dropped to $1.98 “in a couple of states.”

    A CNN fact-check found that claim to be bunk, as the national average for gas that day was $3.17 per gallon and the lowest known price was $2.19 at one gas station in Texas. Don’t expect the White House to stick to the facts. Trump’s media team circulated his lie on social media.

    Trump said he would improve Biden’s economy. Instead, he made it worse.

    Trump’s reelection campaign pledges to constrain inflation and enrich Americans through trade-war-inducing tariffs have not panned out as he promised, either.

    His tariffs, which hit America’s allies just as hard, if not harder, than geopolitical foes, had the net result of erasing serious gains in American retirement investment accounts while tanking the stock market and raising legitimate concerns about a recession. Trump is acting in contravention of conventional wisdom for most economists.

    The results are in. Americans prefer the conventional wisdom. The Pew Research Center, in a survey released April 23, found that 59% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s tariffs, matching the number for people who disapprove of his performance overall so far.

    On inflation, Trump has chosen to publicly feud with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, demanding a reduction in interest rates while musing about firing him, which caused havoc in the stock market until Trump backed down.

    Americans did not find any of that reassuring.

    Opinion newsletter: Sign up for our newsletter on people, power and policies in the time of Trump from columnist Chris Brennan. Get it delivered to your inbox.

    A Fox News poll released April 23 found that 82% of registered voters are very or somewhat concerned about inflation, while 59% disapproved of how Trump handles the issue.

    Trump, a day after the Fox News poll dropped, lashed out on social media at his slavishly loyal cable television allies and their pollster while offering a concise summation of them that inadvertently reflected the state of the economy with him in power — “It sucks!!!”

    Trump lied about his mass deportations and deported legal US residents

    Trump also campaigned aggressively on a pledge of the “largest deportation” of undocumented migrants in American history. He has, so far, missed that mark.

    The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, in an April 24, report, said Trump is on pace to deport about 500,000 people this year, compared with the 685,000 people deported during fiscal year 2024, when Joe Biden was president.

    Trump could pass the blame here to Kristi Noem, his Homeland Security secretary who has proved adept at cosplaying as a heavily armed enforcer, if less adroit at guarding her own purse in public.

    Trump was not satisfied with scooping up people off the streets for deportations, including some with a legal right to be here, tourists and others who are American citizens. He wanted to go after babies born here, too.

    Trump promised to end “birthright citizenship” granted in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment to anyone born in America. A federal judge in Seattle called Trump’s executive order to undo birthright citizenship “blatantly unconstitutional.”

    An appellate court refused to let Trump move forward with his plans. Now the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the issue on May 15.

    Americans have already weighed in, with 56% opposing Trump’s plans to end birthright citizenship, according to a February survey from the Pew Research Center.

    Trump even lied about his foreign policy influence. Now he’s begging Putin to ‘STOP!’

    Trump’s failures have not been limited to domestic issues. He has enraged foreign trading partners. He single-handedly revived Canada’s Liberal Party ahead of April 28 elections with anti-tariff fervor.

    And his promise to end Russia’s war in Ukraine even before taking office? Welp, that didn’t happen.

    Instead, Trump started waffling about ending that war even before taking office. His diplomatic approach to peace has consisted entirely of blaming Ukraine for being invaded while acting annoyed that the country will not sacrifice more to make Russia happy.

    The arc of Trump’s Ukraine pledge has been ‒ I will fix it, to I’ll try to fix it, to I might just give up on fixing it.

    His most strident comments for Russia, the aggressor that started all this, was a pathetic April 24 social media plea for that country to “STOP” killing Ukrainian civilians. Somewhere, Vladimir Putin is likely giggling at the absurdity of it all.

    Trump has two simple tactics when dealing with promises he failed to keep ‒ deny the failure, or stomp away while blaming anyone but himself. He might try both if he can’t end Russia’s war in Ukraine. He’ll likely use one or both on any other promises he made on the campaign trail, as he fails to follow through while in power.

    Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.

  • Musk is unpopular and most think he has too much influence in Washington

    Musk is unpopular and most think he has too much influence in Washington

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Elon Musk spent years building cachet as a business titan and tech visionary, brushing aside critics and skeptics to become the richest person on the planet.

    But as Musk gained power in Washington in recent months, his popularity has waned, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

    Just 33% of U.S. adults have a favorable view of Musk, the chain-saw-wielding, late-night-posting, campaign-hat-wearing public face of President Donald Trump’s efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government. That share is down from 41% in December.

    “It was a shame that he crashed and burned his reputation,” said Ernest Pereira, 27, a Democrat who works as a lab technician in North Carolina. “He bought into his own hype.”

    The poll found that about two-thirds of adults believe Musk has held too much influence over the federal government during the past few months — although that influence may be coming to an end. The billionaire entrepreneur is expected to leave his administration job in the coming weeks.

    Musk is noticeably less popular than the overall effort to pare back the government workforce, which Trump has described as bloated and corrupt. About half of U.S. adults believe the Republican president has gone too far on reducing the size of the federal workforce, while roughly 3 in 10 think he is on target and 14% want him to go even further.

    Retiree Susan Wolf, 75, of Pennsylvania, believes the federal government is too big but Musk has “made a mess of everything.”

    “I don’t trust him,” she said. “I don’t think he knows what he’s doing.”

    Wolf, who is not registered with a political party, said Musk’s private sector success does not translate to Washington.

    “He thinks you run a government like you run a business. And you don’t do that,” she said. “One is for the benefit of the people, and the other is for the benefit of the corporation.”

    Much of the downsizing has been done through so-called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which was Musk’s brainchild during last year’s campaign. Thousands of federal employees have been fired or pushed to quit, contracts have been canceled and entire agencies have been brought to a standstill.

    Musk has succeeded in providing a dose of shock therapy to the federal government, but he has fallen short of other goals. After talking about cutting spending by $1 trillion, he has set a much lower target of $150 billion. Even reaching that amount could prove challenging, and DOGE has regularly overstated its progress.

    He is expected to start dedicating more time to Tesla, his electric automaker that has suffered plummeting revenue while he was working for Trump. Musk told investors on a recent conference call that “now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency is done,” he expects to spend just “a day or two per week on government matters.”

    Musk, in his work for the administration, has continued a political evolution toward the right. Although the South African-born entrepreneur was never easy to categorize ideologically, he championed the fight against climate change and often supported Democratic candidates.

    Now he criticizes “the woke mind virus” and warns of the collapse of Western civilization from the threats of illegal migration and excess government spending.

    Musk’s increasingly conservative politics are reflected in the polling. Only about 2 in 10 independents and about 1 in 10 Democrats view Musk favorably, compared with about 7 in 10 Republicans.

    In addition, while about 7 in 10 independents and about 9 in 10 Democrats believe Musk has too much influence, only about 4 in 10 Republicans feel that way.

    Mark Collins, 67, a warehouse manager from Michigan who has leaned Republican in recent years, said Musk “runs a nice, tight ship” at his companies, “and the government definitely needs tightening up.”

    “He’s cleaning up all the trash,” he said. “I love what he’s doing.”

    Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to be worried about being affected by recent cuts to federal government agencies, services or grants. Just 11% said they are “extremely” or “very” concerned that they or someone they know will be affected, while about two-thirds of Democrats and 44% of independents have those fears.

    ___

    The AP-NORC poll of 1,260 adults was conducted April 17-21, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

  • At least nine killed in Vancouver after vehicle plows into festival

    At least nine killed in Vancouver after vehicle plows into festival

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    At least nine people were killed when a man drove through a crowd at a Filipino community festival in Vancouver on Saturday evening, Canadian police said in an X post on Sunday.

    Police said they had arrested a 30-year-old Vancouver man at the scene, who was “known” to them. The suspect was initially chased down and held by people at the scene. A number of people were also injured.

    “At this time, we are confident that this incident was not an act of terrorism,” Vancouver police said in an X post.

    The incident happened shortly after 8 p.m., as the Lapu-Lapu Day Block Party, celebrating a Philippine national hero, was taking place.

    Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on X: “I am devastated to hear about the horrific events at the Lapu-Lapu festival in Vancouver earlier this evening.”

    Canada’s federal election takes place on Monday.

    Vancouver’s Mayor Ken Sim and British Columbia Premier David Eby posted similar comments on X.

    The government of British Columbia officially recognised April 27 as Lapu-Lapu Day in 2023, acknowledging the cultural contributions of the Filipino-Canadian community, one of the largest immigrant groups in the province.

    One witness told CTV News he saw a black vehicle driving erratically in the area of the festival just before the crowd was struck.

    ‘Horrific’

    Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, was among the attendees at the event, but left minutes before the vehicle arrived, CTV News said.

    “This is so horrific, I don’t even know what to say,” CTV quoted Singh as saying. “I was just there, and I just imagine the faces of the kids that I saw smiling and dancing.”

    Another witness, who did not wish to be identified, said he had seen about 15 people lying on the ground after the dark SUV plunged into the crowd. The witness said the driver had tried to run but was chased down by festival-goers and held against a fence for about 10 minutes until police arrived.

    Vancouver city councillor Peter Fry told CTV News he had also been at the event earlier in the day.

    “This was a great day. A wonderful event. Huge community event. And to have it end in tragedy like this, it won’t break us or the community but it’s horrible,” he said.

    The festival, celebrated especially in the central Philippines, honors Datu Lapu-Lapu, a Filipino chieftain who defeated Spanish forces led by Ferdinand Magellan in the Battle of Mactan in 1521.

    The centerpiece of the festivities in Vancouver is a multi-block street party in the Sunset neighborhood featuring Filipino food and traditions, live performances and cultural displays.

    The Vancouver Sun said thousands of people had been in the area.

    “I didn’t get to see the driver, all I heard was an engine rev,” Yoseb Vardeh, co-owner of food truck Bao Buns, said in an interview with Postmedia.

    “I got outside my food truck, I looked down the road and there’s just bodies everywhere,” said Vardeh, his voice breaking with emotion. “He went through the whole block, he went straight down the middle.”

    (Reporting by Harshita Meenaktshi, Devika Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Kim Coghill, Alex Richardson and Ros Russell)

  • Opinion | The DOGE Days Are Over: Elon Musk and the End of the Techno-Fantasy

    Opinion | The DOGE Days Are Over: Elon Musk and the End of the Techno-Fantasy

    Elon Musk’s political and cultural influence—once feared as dystopic, transformative, and totalizing—is beginning to resemble a flash in the pan.

    Not long ago, Musk seemed poised to remake the world—or at least to meme it into submission. His presence felt not only pervasive but inescapable. He was the heir apparent to techno-authoritarian chic: a “dark MAGA” demigod in a zip-up jacket, preaching a gospel of Martian salvation and machine-learning rapture.

    But today, his standing is slipping. Recent reports suggest Musk has fallen out with U.S. President Donald Trump’s inner circle. Cabinet members reportedly clashed with him over his interference in federal agencies; others took him to task for rogue public statements. He drew further public ire for what many saw as a graceless and callous approach to mass firings. Polls show that while many Americans still express interest in Dogecoin, they overwhelmingly disapprove of Musk at the helm.

    Unlike traditional MAGA, Musk’s vision doesn’t look backward into the past. It projects forward—into the void.

    Then came his public rebuke in Wisconsin, where a $20 million effort to influence a state Supreme Court election—complete with Musk handing out million-dollar checks at a rally—was soundly rejected by voters. All the while, Tesla faced mounting scrutiny from regulators, and average Americans started attacking the cars themselves.

    Now, his jokes have gone stale. X (formerly Twitter) is drifting into irrelevance, and his once-magnetic pull over public discourse feels more like static than signal. The man who once stormed a stage wielding a chainsaw is now being quietly uninvited from the party.

    But if this does mark the end of Musk’s political career, it shouldn’t be remembered as a sideshow. Musk represents a recurring fantasy: a transgenerational techno-messianic dream that imagines salvation through systems, transcendence through circuitry.

    To understand Musk’s rise and fall, it helps to look backward—specifically, to his grandfather, Joshua Haldeman. A Canadian chiropractor and political dreamer, Haldeman led the Canadian chapter of Technocracy Inc., a gray-uniformed movement in the 1930s that believed engineers—not politicians—should rule the world. It was a post-democratic fantasy of optimized control, an early prototype of what we now call algorithmic governance.

    When that didn’t pan out, Haldeman joined the Social Credit movement around the time its Quebec chapter began promoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and flirting with homegrown fascism. Censured and disillusioned, he moved his family to apartheid South Africa, a country he praised in his writings as a stronghold of Western Christian values and white self-governance. There, Musk’s father, Errol, built wealth through engineering and real estate ventures, and later acquired part ownership in an emerald mine in Zambia.

    Elon Musk inherited this worldview and polished it. His own techno-utopianism is just a shinier version of this old settler dream. The medium changed. But the fantasy didn’t.

    Unlike traditional MAGA, Musk’s vision doesn’t look backward into the past. It projects forward—into the void. His vision is of a world run by smart people and smarter machines, with little room for emotional irregularity, biological vulnerability, or democratic friction. In this model, emotion is treated as a bug. The body becomes obsolete.

    It’s not just Musk. His outlook is broadly shared among a certain class of technocratic elites who, despite appearing ideologically opposed, converge on a shared goal: the construction of a post-human world. Whether framed as innovation, inevitability, or progress, the underlying premise is the same—merge biology with technology, and minimize the complications of the human condition.

    Klaus Schwab, the recently investigated (and likely former) head of the World Economic Forum—and an advocate of implantable microchips—summarized this new paradigm in a 2022 interview with Swiss broadcaster RTS: “In this new world, we must accept transparency—total transparency. You have to get used to it. It must become integrated into your personality.” He added, “But if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be afraid.”

    That same year, Yuval Noah Harari, a senior advisor to the WEF, declared: “We are now hackable animals… The idea that we have a soul, this spirit, and free will—that’s over.”

    As the AI wave crested, the tech industry followed suit. Meta launched a child-friendly AI therapist. Microsoft patented chatbot technology to simulate the dead. Apple’s VisionOS 3.0 began muting family group chats based on an “emotional volatility index.” Emotional honesty gave way to managed vibes.

    Amid it all, Musk tweeted: “It has become increasingly clear that humanity is the biological bootlicker of AI.” A curious comment from a man who has actively helped to tighten the laces.

    But now, the music seems to have stopped. Musk appears increasingly out of step with the moment. For all his bluster and noise, he never figured out how to meet people where they are.

    Utopian tech visions rarely do. They tend to hover above the friction of daily life—above labor, land, and limits—before, inevitably, they come crashing back to Earth.