Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk are under attack for his influence on the Trump administration. A handful of judges are halting a number of Trump’s executive actions, setting up numerous legal showdowns. And a Daily Wire investigation into a recently shuttered federal agency uncovers rampant waste and abuse.
It’s Thursday, March 20th, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
Attacks On Tesla
(Photo via the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)
Topline: Elon Musk remains in the spotlight this week, with attacks on Tesla facilities continuing nationwide as the tech mogul worked to bring home NASA astronauts who had been stuck in space for more than nine months.
Once the darling of the Left, Musk and Tesla are under attack by Democrats. This week alone, we saw a Tesla facility attacked with Molotov cocktails and firearms in Las Vegas. In that incident, the perpetrators spray painted the word “RESIST” across walls and doors. The day before, we saw similar vandalism at a dealership in Kansas City, with multiple cars being set ablaze. A week earlier, a shooter fired more than a dozen times at a dealership in Oregon. There were separate attacks at dealerships and charging stations in Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Washington.
It’s not just Tesla dealerships being hit; individual owners have also been targeted. Social media has been flooded with security footage showing Teslas being keyed, spray painted, or having their windows busted. Musk says he has received numerous death threats in recent weeks, including from an Indiana man who was arrested.
“They basically want to kill me because I’m stopping their fraud,” Musk said in a recent interview on Fox News, referencing Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative that he leads. “And they want to hurt Tesla because we’re stopping this terrible waste and corruption in the government. I guess they’re bad people and bad people will do bad things.”
This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a statement saying the DOJ is treating attacks on Tesla dealerships and Tesla owners as domestic terrorism because they are political in nature. Bondi says perpetrators will be hit with five-year mandatory minimum sentences, and there will be severe consequences for “those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”
The White House Slams Judicial Overreach
(Photo by Creativeeye99 via Getty Images)
Topline: Several of President Trump’s executive orders have been halted or hampered by injunctions made by district court judges, sparking a heated constitutional dispute about the separation of powers.
A series of court orders issued by relatively junior federal judges are attempting to reverse the Trump administration’s executive actions on issues ranging from deportation to DOGE. These decisions, often issued before a formal trial, have led to allegations of judicial overreach and activism by the president and his allies.
“We will continue to comply with these court orders and fight the battles in court,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday. “But it’s incredibly apparent there is a concerted effort by the far Left to judge shop to pick judges who are clearly acting as partisan activists from the bench to derail this president’s agenda. We will not allow that to happen.”
Federal judges serve for life and are largely insulated from political blowback, although in extreme circumstances, they can be impeached and removed by Congress.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) introduced articles of impeachment against Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee, after he attempted to block the deportation of more than 250 illegal aliens to El Salvador. The move drew a rare public condemnation by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who said “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
Other prominent Republicans have proposed different means of checking the power of nationwide injunctions. Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has suggested that Congress strip the federal courts of their jurisdiction.
“Jurisdiction stripping statutes are [constitutionally] permitted.” Daniel Huff, Senior Legal Fellow at the American Path Initiative and former attorney in the Trump White House, told Morning Wire. “However, as a practical matter, you can’t get that through the Senate.”
The relevant cases are likely going to be settled before the Supreme Court, and the scope of the judiciary’s power to issue nationwide injunctions could come before the court as well, but while the court has a 6-3 conservative majority, even temporary delays can have meaningful repercussions on the president’s agenda. “The Supreme Court conservative majority has not always been reliable,” Huff said. “These things take time. And in the meantime, momentum is lost.”
DOGE Downsizes, Shutters 7 Agencies
(Photo by Bill Oxford via Getty Images)
Topline: Trump ordered seven small federal agencies downsized or eliminated, including one that might be the poster child for waste, fraud, and abuse. A new Daily Wire investigation reveals just how deep the corruption went.
The agencies include the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees the Voice of America; the Minority Business Development Agency; and four smaller boards. Daily Wire’s investigative reporter Luke Rosiak spent a year scrutinizing the final target, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS).
“The first thing to understand is that these are “independent” agencies, which means their top person nominally reports directly to the president, but also that they’re so tiny that no one, including the president, ever looks at them,” Rosiak told Morning Wire. “That has made them really susceptible to all the worst impulses of bureaucrats. And I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a more wild example of out-of-control unaccountability than FMCS.”
For more details, you can read the full investigation here. Highlights include a few dozen bureaucrats maintaining a luxurious 9-story office building in Washington, D.C., hiring friends and family for plumb positions and contracts, silencing whistleblowers, billing personal expenses such as housing and luxury vacations to Uncle Sam and generally living like “reigning kings.”
“Let me give you the honest truth,” one anonymous employee told Rosiak. “A lot of FMCS employees don’t do a hell of a lot, including myself. Personally, the reason that I’ve stayed is that I just don’t feel like working that hard.”
