Elon Musk, who was the biggest presidential campaign donor in 2024, said on Tuesday that he plans to scale back his political spending.

“I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” he said in a video interview with Bloomberg News at the Qatar Economic Forum. “I think I’ve done enough.”

When asked if spending less on politics was driven by any blowback he’s weathered in the Trump administration, Musk said: “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future. I will do it. But I don’t currently see a reason.”

Musk, the world’s richest person, funneled nearly $300 million into the campaign of President Trump, becoming a top political donor and a symbolically potent ally of the president.

Trump elevated Musk as a key figure in the White House, which was crystallized during an early Cabinet meeting where Musk dominated the discussion, as department secretaries looked on cautiously.

Musk has appeared alongside the president in the Oval Office to tout his work with the U.S. DOGE Service, an initiative aggressively focused on trimming federal government spending, having laid off thousands of government employees and helped to unwind entire agencies.

The effort has drawn intense scrutiny. Researchers and good-government groups question whether DOGE has indeed cut “waste, fraud, abuse.” The unit’s public accounting of savings is routinely riddled with exaggerations, double-counting and other inconsistencies.

Public polling has been showing that Musk’s DOGE effort is unpopular, with voters disapproving of Musk more so than Trump.

Last month, Musk’s celebrity and fortune did not help Republicans win a Wisconsin Supreme Court election, where Musk poured in millions and tried to harness his image as a tech executive disrupter to win the top judicial seat in the state. But it backfired. Analysts say Musk’s involvement became a political liability, as Democrats used it to rally voters against the billionaire.

On a recent call with investors of Tesla, whose sales and profits have cratered in the first three months of the year, Musk said he was turning his full-blown White House gig into something of a part-time job to refocus his energy on the struggling electric vehicle company.

Musk’s commitment to Tesla – the largest source of his personal wealth – came as the Wall Street Journal reported that the company’s board of directors had begun the process of potentially replacing Musk as chief executive.

It may be yet another sign of Musk’s slow fade out from Washington. But he hasn’t completely disappeared. For instance, Musk said on Tuesday he will be attending a dinner with Trump on Wednesday, proof that the executive is still in Trump’s inner circle, even if his prominence appears to be waning.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is defending major cuts in the foreign affairs budget as he testifies on Tuesday before the Senate committee where he used to be a member.

“America is back,” he said in his statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But the committee’s ranking Democrat warns that budget cuts, and the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), mean the United States is ceding ground to China.

“As Elon Musk took a chainsaw to USAID and you proposed cutting 83% of foreign programs, China has proposed increasing its diplomatic budget by 8.4%,” New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said in prepared remarks. “As we move to reduce our diplomatic workforce and discuss closing U.S. embassies, China has more diplomatic missions than any other nation on Earth.”

Since Rubio’s confirmation hearing in January, when he appeared before his colleagues as a senator, the Trump administration has dismantled USAID. Now, Rubio is defending a $28.5 billion foreign affairs budget, about half of what it has been in recent years. He’s reorganizing and downsizing the State Department and considering closing some foreign missions.

Shaheen also pressed Rubio on the administration’s efforts to negotiate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. President Trump’s phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday failed to produce an immediate ceasefire as Ukraine and its allies had hoped, with Putin instead proposing further talks.

“What Vladimir Putin is doing now is playing for time, and he’s playing the president like a fiddle,” Shaheen said.

Rubio rejected that, saying Trump is trying to end a war that no one can win. “Russia wants what they do not currently have and are not entitled to, and Ukraine wants what they cannot regain militarily. And that’s been the crux of the challenge,” Rubio said.

Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have backed the changes Rubio is making. Republican Chairman Jim Risch of Idaho, in a previous hearing last month, said he has been “crying out” for reforms at USAID, which Risch hopes “does not survive.” He supports the idea of folding what remains of it into the State Department.

Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz has said the reforms could have been done in a more thoughtful, bipartisan way.

Rubio is “someone who, up until four months ago, was an internationalist, someone who believed in America flexing its powers in all manners, but especially through foreign assistance. And yet, he is now responsible for the evisceration of the whole enterprise,” Schatz told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York last week. Schatz called on the prior version of Rubio, whom he approved for secretary of state, to “reemerge, reassert himself and save the enterprise.”

The Justice Department has charged Rep. LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democrat, for allegedly assaulting law enforcement officers outside an immigration detention facility last week.

The charges were announced on social media by the interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, who previously served as a personal attorney for President Trump.

According to court papers filed on Tuesday, McIver faces two counts of assaulting, resisting and impeding an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent and a Homeland Security Investigations special agent during a confrontation outside the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark.

Democrats have denounced the charges as politically motivated and an effort by the Trump administration and the Justice Department to intimidate members of Congress and chill oversight.

Habba said she tried to address the matter with McIver and resolve it without bringing charges, but that the congresswoman declined.

“No one is above the law — politicians or otherwise,” Habba said. “It is the job of this office to uphold justice impartially, regardless of who you are. Now we will let the justice system work.”

McIver denounced the charges against her, calling the case “purely political.”

“They mischaracterize and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight,” she said in a statement. “I look forward to the truth being laid out clearly in court.”

Delaney Hall is the first new detention center to reopen during Trump’s second term, after closing in 2017, as the Trump administration seeks more detention space for arrested migrants. Several local officials protested its official reopening earlier this month.

McIver said she and her colleagues were at the facility to conduct lawful oversight of the treatment of detainees there. The visit should have been short and peaceful, she said, but instead turned into an unnecessary confrontation when ICE agents chose to arrest Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.

Baraka had been facing a misdemeanor trespassing charge, but Habba said in her statement that she has dropped the case against him.

The Justice Department’s decision to bring charges against McIver received immediate pushback from congressional Democrats and New Jersey state officials.

The top Democrat in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, and his leadership team called the charges “extreme” and “morally bankrupt,” and said they lack any legal or factual basis.

“We are lawfully permitted to show up at any federal facility unannounced to conduct an inspection on behalf of the American people,” they said in a statement. “By visiting the detention center in Newark, Rep. McIver and two other Members of Congress were upholding their oath of office. They didn’t assault anyone, but were themselves aggressively mistreated by illegally masked individuals.”

House Republican leaders have struggled for weeks to persuade holdouts within their own party to back a massive bill meant to advance much of President Trump’s domestic agenda. On Tuesday, Trump will travel to Capitol Hill for a meeting that will test his ability to bend the Republican Party to his will.

It’s rare for one single bill to contain the bulk of a president’s legislative agenda, but Trump has insisted that Republicans in Congress pass tax cuts, spending cuts, deregulation and a boost in border security funding in what he calls “one big, beautiful bill.”

Writing legislation that meets those demands has exposed rifts within the GOP-led House and Senate that threaten to derail the bill entirely.

After a handful of Republican members tanked a budget committee vote on Friday, House GOP leaders spent the weekend negotiating with holdouts to get closer to consensus.

Late Sunday night, that same committee advanced the bill — with the original holdouts voting “present.”

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy said he voted present “out of respect for the Republican Conference and the President to move the bill forward.”

Roy and his fellow Freedom Caucus members left the vote saying that while progress was made, they need to see more concessions in order to support the bill in votes later this week.

Pressure from Pennsylvania Avenue

Trump may be coming to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, but House leadership has long praised him for being involved and available throughout the legislative process.

“Every step of the way, when there were questions, when there were final decisions that had to be made, [President Trump] was always one phone call away,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told reporters last week. “And he’ll continue to be.”

Trump has promised he would extend the tax cuts from his first term and add new ones, including no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and no tax on Social Security. These cuts have added to the cost of the bill.

He has been less opinionated on specifics about how to pay for the bill or how long provisions should last — and he hasn’t taken sides in the debate between House GOP factions.

Trump and GOP leaders have to convince three main groups to support the bill by House Speaker Mike Johnson’s self-imposed deadline of Memorial Day:

Members of the Freedom Caucus say the bill doesn’t result in significant enough deficit reduction. They secured some concessions — namely the acceleration of the implementation of work requirements to Medicaid — but that has frustrated members who worried that the existing House could threaten coverage for more than 8.6 million people enrolled in the program, and could become a major issue in the midterm elections next year. The SALT advocates are also fundamentally at odds with the hard-line cost-cutting group.

Two former Trump aides who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to describe private conversations described Trump as being very persuasive in one-on-one conversations, calling him the “ultimate closer” who makes it hard for members to say no.

Trump recently stepped up the pressure on holdouts in his party on social media, calling on his party to unite behind the bill — and warning holdouts to get behind it.

“We don’t need “GRANDSTANDERS” in the Republican Party,” Trump said in the post.

In a flurry of actions, President Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on imports coming into the United States, before pausing or retracting many.

Still, tariff levels are higher than before Trump took office, as his administration seeks to boost U.S. manufacturing and raise revenue.

But collecting on these tariffs is another matter. The federal agencies that screen imports are frequently overwhelmed and understaffed, and experts say exporters are becoming cannier at evading taxes.

Here’s why collecting taxes on imports can be such a headache.

The incentives to smuggle just got bigger

Trade experts say higher tariffs specifically against China have created more of a demand for smuggling.

Even after the U.S. and China cut a deal last week, tariffs on China are hovering around 30%, which is still above U.S. tariffs on other countries — especially after Trump announced a 90-day pause.

“There is going to be more incentive for companies to attempt to skirt the law,” says Matt Lapin, a trade compliance attorney at the law firm Wiley. “The incentive for bad actors to act worse or for previously good actors to skirt the law — that incentive is just increasing.”

One way to skirt the law is through a practice called transshipping, when businesses route their product through a third country.

David Rashid, who runs an auto parts company based in Illinois, is painfully familiar with this practice. Back in 2019, he welcomed the 25% tariffs Trump put on China during his first term, but Rashid was quickly disappointed with the results.

“After Trump’s 25% tariffs hit, what we realized was the price [of our competitors] didn’t change,” he says. “And so that put me on a path to try to understand how that was possible.”

Rashid discovered Chinese competitors were routing their product through third countries like Thailand and Vietnam to avoid paying American tariffs.

“Trade and customs fraudsters, including those who commit tariff evasion, seek to circumvent the rules and regulations that protect American consumers and undermine the Administration’s efforts to create jobs and increase investment in the United States,” Matthew Galeotti, who heads the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, wrote in a recent memo.

A lack of resources to collect tariffs

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, is the primary federal agency that screens imports and determines if a tariff should be collected.

But the agency now has a lot more work to do. On top of global retaliatory and reciprocal tariffs, CBP is also in charge of collecting a new tariff on the more than 1 billion low-value packages that come into the U.S. each year, most from Chinese e-commerce platforms, after the Trump administration ended what’s called the “de minimis” trade exception.

The agency said in a statement to NPR that it “stands ready” to enforce new taxes. And “as a result of recent presidential actions, enforcement will include the most severe penalties permitted by law.”

Logistics specialists dispute that agency’s readiness.

“CBP does not have the resources to effectively inspect and enforce [the de minimis rule],” says Ram Ben Tzion, who sells software to governments, mostly in Europe, to help them monitor trade fraud. “I think that there is no capacity in terms of workforce, in terms of skill sets, [and] in terms of supporting technologies to allow such a massive volume of customs entry.”

Parcels slide down a ramp after being scanned at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection overseas mail inspection facility at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Feb. 23, 2024.

Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

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Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

The union that represents Customs and Border Protection agents says CBP has long suffered from chronic understaffing. The union has also warned the agency is facing a surge in planned retirements soon, which would further deplete its ranks.

A former senior enforcement official at CBP, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about their previous job, told NPR that there is a long-term shortage of import specialists, each of whom needs one to two years of training to spot trade fraud.

By law, CBP must have a minimum of around 1,000 import specialists, but the former senior enforcement official says the agency often fell short: “I don’t know that we ever actually got to that number.”

“People don’t get caught”

So, what to do if one does suspect someone is evading tariffs?

Ask Milton Magnus. He runs M&B Hangers, a family wire hanger business based out of Alabama. Magnus says the wire hanger industry has been decimated by Chinese competitors transshipping their product through Taiwan and Vietnam.

More than a decade ago, Magnus personally hired private investigators to travel to Taiwan and Vietnam, where they discovered exporters were shipping basically the same product from China, to avoid paying tariffs on Chinese goods. Magnus then sent evidence of some 30 alleged trade violations to the Department of Homeland Security.

“They didn’t respond to a single one,” says Magnus.

Since then, he’s filed more trade complaints, to little effect. He says each time a new tariff is implemented, he gets a reprieve of just a few months before the offending company starts transshipping through another country.

“People don’t get caught. If they get caught, there’s no punishment for them. They just go somewhere else and do it again,” laments Magnus.

Magnus and Rashid, who runs the auto parts company, and other U.S. business owners have proposed legislation asking for $20 million this year to fund a DOJ task force that prosecutes trade fraud cases.

Those who have worked on DOJ trade cases say they need the extra funding.

“There weren’t enough resources,” says a former DOJ official who worked on trade-related cases and who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to talk publicly about their former job. Agents are referring cases to us all the time, huge cases worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and we essentially have no one to work on them.”

There is currently a government-wide hiring freeze and a mandate to cut the federal budget, initiatives championed by Trump and his ally Elon Musk.

“[The DOJ’s Civil Division] is not hiring new people, and it has no authority to hire new people,” the former official says.

Plus, the DOJ’s trade fraud task force is now leaderless, after its head resigned.

“My sense is that nobody’s running it today,” says Rashid.

He argues not being able to prosecute trade crime hurts businesses, but also the U.S. government in terms of lost revenue. “There’s a lot of money being left on the table, is the bottom line,” he says.

Cuts to NOAA may make it more difficult to predict flooding and other weather-related disasters; cuts to FEMA are curtailing communities’ ability to respond to those disasters, as well.

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Cuts to NOAA may make it more difficult to predict flooding and other weather-related disasters; cuts to FEMA are curtailing communities’ ability to respond to those disasters, as well.

Johnrob/Getty Images

Since taking office, President Trump has made sweeping changes to federal agencies that work on climate change.

On April 8, he issued executive orders that lifted regulations on fossil fuels, allowing new coal projects on federal land and ending what he called “woke policies” that support renewable energy. He slashed the budgets and shifted the directives of key government agencies – especially when it comes to funding research, regulating pollution and responding to climate-related disasters.

He says this is in the service of everyday Americans: to create jobs, lower the cost of living and boost the U.S. economy. But what are everyday Americans trading away in the process?

Want to hear more ways research is being impacted by the new administration? Email us at [email protected] to let us know — and we may cover your idea in a future episode!

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn and edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Robert Rodriguez was the audio engineer.

LISBON — Portugal’s third general election in three years has failed to deliver the result that could break the worst spell of political instability for decades in the European Union country of 10.6 million people.

Sunday’s vote delivered another minority government for the center-right Democratic Alliance, which will be at the mercy of opposition parties. The significant rise in support for the hard-right populist party Chega (Enough) adds more uncertainty.

Why was there an early election?

The Democratic Alliance, led by the Social Democratic Party, lost a vote of confidence in parliament in March as opposition lawmakers teamed up against it. That triggered an election, which had been due in 2028.

The confidence vote was sparked by a political storm around potential conflicts of interest in the business dealings of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro’s family law firm. Montenegro, who is poised to become prime minister again, has denied any wrongdoing.

What was the outcome of Sunday’s ballot?

The Democratic Alliance captured at least 89 seats in the 230-seat National Assembly. Chega collected the same number of seats as the center-left Socialists — 58 — and could yet claim second place when four remaining seats decided by voters abroad are attributed in coming days.

Chega competed in its first election just six years ago, when it won one seat, and has fed off disaffection with the more moderate traditional parties. Its success shook up the traditional balance of power in a trend already witnessed elsewhere in Europe with parties such as France’s National Rally, the Brothers of Italy, and Alternative for Germany, which are now in the political mainstream.

For the past 50 years, the Social Democrats and the center-left Socialist Party have alternated in power in Portugal. The Socialists, meanwhile, are without a leader after Pedro Nuno Santos said he was standing down following the party’s worst result since 1987.

Smaller parties got the other seats.

What are the issues?

Corruption scandals have dogged Portuguese politics in recent years, helping fuel the rise of Chega.

Chega owes much of its success to its demands for a tighter immigration policy that have resonated with voters.

Portugal has witnessed a steep rise in immigration. In 2018, there were fewer than a half-million legal immigrants in the country, according to government statistics. By early this year, there were more than 1.5 million, many of them Brazilians and Asians working in tourism and farming. Thousands more lack the proper documents to be in Portugal.

A housing crisis has also fired up debate. House prices and rents have been soaring for the past 10 years, due in part to an influx of white-collar foreigners who have driven up prices.

The problem is compounded by Portugal being one of Western Europe’s poorest countries. The average monthly salary last year was around 1,200 euros ($1,340) before tax, according to the statistics agency. The government-set minimum wage this year is 870 euros ($974) a month before tax.

What happens now?

Portugal’s head of state convened the country’s political parties for consultations.

President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who has no executive power, was consulting with parties before inviting the election winner to form a government, in line with the constitution.

President Trump suggested without evidence on Monday that former President Joe Biden had delayed sharing his prostate cancer diagnosis, saying it was part of a pattern of the Biden White House covering up the former president’s decline.

Trump — who initially had been gracious after Biden first announced his diagnosis on Sunday — quickly pivoted on Monday to suggestions that the former president had been less than forthcoming about his health.

“I’m surprised that the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to Stage 9, that’s a long time,” Trump said, when a reporter asked for comment about the diagnosis at an unrelated event at the White House.

Trump appeared to conflate the Gleason score — a measurement of how aggressive cancer cells appear to be — with the stage of Biden’s cancer. Biden’s Gleason score was 9, indicating it is aggressive. He has Stage 4 cancer, the most serious of the four stages. (There is not a Stage 9 cancer.)

Trump also said that he believed screening for prostate cancer was “standard” in physical exams. The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force does not recommend that men over the age of 70 get routine prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening because the potential harms outweigh the benefits. The task force recommends that men ages 55 to 69 discuss PSA screening with their doctors.

“I think that if you take a look, it’s the same doctor that said that Joe was cognitively fine,” Trump said. “And that’s being proven to be a sad situation.” He insinuated that Biden officials had been effectively running the office by using the autopen to sign documents — a spurious theory on the far-right.

Biden’s personal office did not immediately comment on Trump’s assertions.

Disclosures of medical information are up to the White House

Presidents are not obligated to reveal their medical records, and there is a long history of presidents concealing their medical issues. Disclosures of physicals is left up to the White House.

Trump, who himself has been less than forthcoming about his health information in recent years, noted that he had been screened for prostate cancer during his recent physical. He also pointed out that he had been given a cognitive test, which Biden had not.

Biden’s last presidential physical was in February 2024. At the time, the White House said that the exam drew on the expertise of 20 doctors, but did not involve a cognitive exam — something his press secretary said was not required given his daily performance of a rigorous job.

There had been concerns about Biden’s age raised in a special counsel report that described him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” When Biden froze up during a presidential debate with Trump in June, his physician released a letter with more details about visits with a neurologist.

That debate prompted Democratic leaders to push Biden to drop out of the race. After Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election to Trump, many blamed Biden for insisting he could run for a second term.

The issues are part of a new book about Biden’s decline and efforts made by his staff to conceal it from voters.

Trump told reporters on Monday that the lack of public information about Biden’s health had been “dangerous for our country” and pointed to Russia’s war in Ukraine as an example. Trump frequently blames that war on Biden, even though it was started by Russia.

“I feel very badly about it, and I think people should try and find out what happened,” Trump said, suggesting that “somebody is not telling the facts.”