Earlier this week, president Donald Trump staged an <a href="https://futurism.com/trumps-attempt-help-tesla-backfire">impromptu infomercial in front of the White House</a> in a desperate bid to prop up Elon Musk's embattled carmaker, Tesla.
The bizarre appearance demonstrated Trump's unprecedented willingness to debase himself, putting on his best impression of a Tesla car salesman.
The stunt wasn't just an unprecedented display of corruption; it also highlights Trump's shameless flip-flopping on his support for electric vehicles.
Remember in 2023, when former president Joe Biden's administration made a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/biden-federal-electric-vehicles">concerted push to electrify American roads</a> and Trump accused him of selling out the United Auto Workers, who went on strike against major automakers to fight for higher wages and better union representation for battery plant workers?
"Crooked Joe sold them down the river with his ridiculous all Electric Car Hoax," Trump wrote in a <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/111113056487872337">Truth Social post</a> at the time, referring to the Biden administration subsidizing the EV industry.
Republicans <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4211944-gop-senator-uaw-should-force-biden-to-stop-subsidizing-ev-industry/">blamed</a> the Biden administration's pro-EV stance for revenue losses incurred by major automakers.
Trump's stance on EVs has bounced back and forth, from a full-throated endorsement to excoriating comments opposing their existence. In 2022, <a href="https://futurism.com/donald-trump-bizarre-rant-electric-cars">he went on a bizarre rant</a>, arguing that we should get "rid of this stuff." Just two years earlier, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/30/trump-and-biden-both-say-they-support-electric-vehicles-in-debate.html">he said</a> that he was "all for electric cars."
Vice president JD Vance has similarly rallied against EVs, going as far as introducing a bill that called <a href="https://qz.com/jd-vance-trump-gas-car-rebates-evs-1851594703">for $7,500 incentives</a> for new gas or diesel-powered vehicles instead.
But now that Musk has infiltrated the US government with the purported goal of excising $1 trillion in spending — essentially doing the dirty work on behalf of the Trump administration — the president is singing a dramatically different tune yet again.
"I don’t like what’s happening to you," Trump told Musk during this week's sales pitch, likely referring to Tesla's financial woes.
"Wow," he gushed, after climbing into a $80,000 Model S. "That's beautiful."
Trump's actions and verbal promises have flatly contradicted each other. Last year, Trump <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-supports-electric-cars-elon-musk-giving-money">told an audience during a campaign rally</a> that he had "no choice" in being "for electric cars" now that "Musk endorsed me very strongly."
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has <a href="https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a63495060/president-trump-revokes-biden-ev-mandates/">rolled back Biden-era EV rules</a>, nixing targets to have half of all new vehicles sold in the US to be electric by 2030, a non-legally-binding executive order signed by Biden in 2021.
The administration's EPA also <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-epa-rules-more-pollution">rolled back vehicle emissions targets</a> this week.
Whether Trump's stunt will have the intended effect of propping up the carmaker remains to be seen. As experts have pointed out, associating the already tarnished brand even more closely with the Trump administration could <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tesla-stock-musk-trump-evs-sales-b3118cbab69fbfaa3abcceb059ba8c58">end up backfiring spectacularly</a>.
Even Tesla <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/14/tesla-trump-trade-war-harm-car-companies-elon-musk-tariffs">attempted to distance itself</a> from the White House, arguing that the president's extremely harmful trade war could end up exposing it to retaliatory tariffs.
In short, Trump's self-serving, on-and-off-again stance on EVs demonstrates that it never was about electrification or environmental policies. This week's White House showroom event was nothing short of a naked attempt to line the pocket of the richest man in the world.
Put simply, Trump is pro-Tesla and pro-Musk — not pro-EV.
But Tesla is in crisis right now. With sales <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-sales-china">numbers falling from the sky worldwide</a>, investors are starting to get cold feet. Even the brand's <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-biggest-supporter-out-of-patience">biggest bulls on Wall Street are concerned</a> Musk's abhorrent behavior could leave lasting scars.
More on Trump: <a href="https://futurism.com/trumps-attempt-help-tesla-backfire">Trump's Attempt to Help Tesla May Backfire Spectacularly</a>

Selling Out

For Trump, there's a big difference between being pro-Musk and pro-EV.

Trump: "Crooked Joe Sold Them Down the River With His Ridiculous All Electric Car Hoax"

Centibillionaire Elon Musk has been tearing through the federal government, operating under the theory that many of its workers have been doing little at work as they cash paychecks on the taxpayers' dime.
But it sounds like he may have been indulging in exactly the type of lazy misuse of the workday he's weaponized in his cost-cutting escapade. New reporting <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/12/musk-influence-inner-circle-00227332">by Politico</a> has revealed that Chris Young — once an ascendant <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/know-chris-young-republican-operative-213723169.html">GOP field organizer</a> and now Musk's top political adviser — is operating as Musk's errand boy, procuring equipment including a "massive TV for Musk’s office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building so he could play video games."
The revelation is appalling but not exactly surprising. Musk's gaming habit is well documented, and he <a href="https://futurism.com/gamers-disgusted-musk-cheats-diablo-path-exile">recently bragged</a> not only that he was among the top 20 Diablo IV players in the world but that he had a Path of Exile 2 character ranked 12th on the game's Hardcore leaderboards — at least before losing it on an <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-poe2">embarrassing livestream</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/gamers-disgusted-musk-cheats-diablo-path-exile">admitting he'd paid</a> a skilled player to level up his account.
If you thought Musk had left those adolescent habits behind as he became one of the most powerful figures in the world, Politico's reporting builds on a <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/kateconger.com/post/3ljaollbus22h">photo that emerged last month</a> showing that his DOGE office contained a <a href="https://www.polygon.com/opinion/532455/elon-musk-gaming-pc-doge-office">gaming PC</a> and matching monitor.
And despite being the richest man in history, the DOGE czar's gaming rig is pretty dingy.
"Appalling cable management," <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/ellenteapot.ca/post/3ljaotir6cs2f">quipped</a> on Bluesky user, disgusted by Musk's lackadaisical approach to wire organizing. Others pointed out the fact that he had no mousepad, a pretty <a href="https://www.howtogeek.com/45476/do-you-really-need-a-mousepad/">glaring offense</a> in the gaming world.
Going pixel by pixel, some sleuths deduced that Musk was running an RTX 4060 or 4070 graphics card on his rig — a modest choice considering Musk's beefy 49-inch Samsung Odyssey monitor. As <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/photo-of-elon-musks-new-gaming-pc-reveals-odd-component-choices-is-he-rocking-an-rtx-4060">Tom's Hardware put it</a>, that's like "putting a lawn mower engine in a muscle car."
Nitpicking aside, it's been a little over month since <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1885966827227861179">Musk bragged</a> that "DOGE is working 120 hours a week" — just about 17 hours a day, including weekends. We'd love to see how the billionaire manages to juggle that along with his gaming, six major companies, and 14 known kids.
For now though, we'll just have to take his word on it — unless he wants to write an <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/22/politics/elon-musk-employees-emails/index.html">email detailing what he did last week</a>, that is.
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-tantrum-gamers-youtuber-dms-checkmark">Elon Musk Throws Tantrum After Being Exposed by Gamers, Leaks YouTuber's DMs and Seemingly Takes Away His Checkmark</a>

Hardly Working

He's working hard for America.

Elon Musk Has a Gaming Rig in His Government Office Where He's Firing Workers for Being Lazy

Unelected White House advisor Elon Musk <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/musk-boosts-claim-that-hitler-wasnt-to-blame-for-holocaust/?utm_campaign=owned_social&amp;via=twitter_page&amp;utm_source=twitter_owned_tdb&amp;utm_medium=socialflow">retweeted</a> a post on Thursday that blamed the atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong on — we are not making this up — public sector workers.
"Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn't murder millions of people," the post, which he shared to his over 200 million followers, reads. "Their public sector workers did."
The baffling tweet further highlights Musk's toxic embrace of extreme right-wing beliefs. The billionaire's <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-rabbis-antisemitism">well-documented antisemitism</a> came to a head earlier this year when he performed <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/01/musk-trump-inauguration-salute/681390/">two Hitler salutes</a> during Trump's inauguration celebration. Musk has also made light of the Holocaust by <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/jewish-leaders-elon-musk-holocaust-jokes">making distatestul Nazi puns</a> on his social media network.
The entrepreneur also <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-rally-nazis-holocaust">made an appearance</a> at a rally for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right nationalist party, telling the attending crowd that "there is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that."
The post also highlights Musk's long-established disdain for public sector workers. With the help of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the mercurial CEO has gutted government agencies while laying off thousands.
His latest retweet drew an overwhelmingly shocked response.
"America’s public service workers — our nurses, teachers, firefighters, librarians — chose making our communities safe, healthy and strong over getting rich," said Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the country's largest public sector union, in a <a href="https://www.afscme.org/press/releases/2025/afscmes-saunders-elon-musk-you-have-no-clue-what-working-people-are-going-through">statement</a>. "They are not, as the world’s richest man implies, genocidal murderers."
"Elon Musk and the billionaires in this administration have no idea what real people go through every day," Saunders added. "That’s why he’s so willing to take a chainsaw to people’s jobs, Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare."
"Elon Musk’s disgusting defense of Hitler, Stalin and Mao is deranged," the Democratic Majority for Israel <a href="https://x.com/DemMaj4Israel/status/1900277882972148188">tweeted</a>. "For an American official to try to whitewash the role of leaders who ordered mass murder is reprehensible and unacceptable."
"Musk should be removed," the group wrote. "He must apologize and accept counseling and education on the evils of the Holocaust and other episodes of mass murder."
The baffling tweet leaves plenty of questions unanswered. Does Musk genuinely think that public sector workers are really to blame for the atrocities committed by perpetrators of genocide? What does Musk have to gain from sharing such a callous argument?
Users on social media were left appalled.
"Musk is an absolutely depraved and evil man," one user on Bluesky <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/dburbach.bsky.social/post/3lkbbd62kw22t">wrote</a>. "Defending Stalin, Hitler, and Mao in order to justify firing VA nurses and park rangers? How does one come to hate civil servants so much? Insane, and dangerous."
Others pointed out that Musk's <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/doge-engineer-access-to-noaa">secretive cabal of DOGE operatives</a> currently rampaging through the US government closely resembles the close ranks of leaders who actually carried out their crimes.
"So many of the murderers in these regimes were not career civil servants, but political toadies who jumped over existing cadres of civil servants because they could implement their dictator's will quickly," another user <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/kieslowskifan1.bsky.social/post/3lkbbljdbgs2n">wrote</a>. "Just like DOGE."
On Musk's own social media platform, users took a lighter tone.
"We have reached the 'Hitler did nothing wrong' stage of Elon Musk totally not being a Nazi," one user <a href="https://x.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1900184306540065053">tweeted</a>.
More on Musk and Hitler: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-investors-disgusted-elon-musk">Elon Musk Has a Major Problem: Tesla Investors Are Absolutely Disgusted With Him</a>

Anti Worker

"Elon Musk’s disgusting defense of Hitler, Stalin and Mao is deranged."

Elon Musk Defends Hitler, Mao and Stalin

The Trump administration is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/12/epa-trump-climate-rules">massively rolling back</a> environmental protection policies, accelerating an already heated race to the bottom.
Trump's appointed Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/article/a-breakdown-of-major-epa-deregulatory-moves-around-water-air-climate/">announced 31 regulatory changes</a> — allegedly the "<a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-launches-biggest-deregulatory-action-us-history">biggest deregulatory action in US history</a>" — in an apparent effort to maximize the amount of harmful pollution generated in the United States.
The changes include the removal of emissions limits for existing gas and coal-fired power plants and a rollback of limits set on toxic metal emissions of coal plants. The EPA is also looking to loosen Biden-era rules limiting the amount of hazardous metals, including mercury and arsenic, that can be released into wastewater from power plants.
The agency is also planning to reconsider air quality standards, vehicle emissions standards, and rules aimed at reducing the release of hydrofluorocarbons.
In all, the Trump administration has declared war on decades of scientific evidence warning of an environmental and climate crisis that's already hitting. It's a self-defeating rollback that could have dire consequences for the country and planet.
It could also prove incredibly unpopular. According to a <a href="https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us-2024/">recent update</a> to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication's Climate Opinion Maps, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epa-climate-change-opinions/">most Americans</a> support at least some environmental regulation, including support for renewable energy research.
But to Trump's EPA, more pollution and global warming is a win for the average American — despite the considerable threats to human health, loss of land, and debilitating extreme weather events.
"We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more," Zeldin said in a statement.
The Trump administration has declared war on climate change and has been actively trying to eliminate any evidence of the ongoing climate crisis.
Earlier this year, the USDA <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-climate-change-government-websites">scrubbed any mention</a> of "climate change" from its website. Grants for climate research have <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-pulls-funds-research-climate">also since been pulled</a>.
Trump himself has called climate change a "<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/donald-trump-fans-hospitalized-heat-rally">hoax</a>" and called to "<a class="underline hover:text-the-byte hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/16/drill-baby-drill-other-nonsensical-trump-claims-about-inflation/">drill, baby, drill</a>" at his 2024 presidential campaign events.
His administration's naked efforts to line the pockets of oil and gas executives have never been more explicit. Last year, Trump <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-trump-billionaires-exempt-environmental-rules">promised</a> that any "person or company" investing $1 billion or more in the US would "receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental [sic] approvals."
The utterance was greeted with an outpouring of excitement by Tesla CEO and richest person in the world Elon Musk, who called the move "<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1866571568266219998">awesome</a>" in spite of a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/elon-musk-transformation-trump-climate">previous public commitment</a> to environmentalism.
The latest gutting of EPA environmental rules follows <a href="https://apnews.com/article/epa-budget-staffing-cuts-doge-9260514fd1be2397d39a80dc054d19df">confusion regarding purported mass layoffs</a> at the agency. After Trump announced the EPA would reduce its staff by 65 percent, a White House spokesperson had to clarify later that the figure was concerning spending cuts, not staffing levels.
At the time, however, Zeldin promised to gut the agency later.
"We don’t need to be spending all that money that went through the EPA last year,” Zeldin <a href="https://apnews.com/article/epa-budget-staffing-cuts-doge-9260514fd1be2397d39a80dc054d19df">told Fox News</a> last month. "We don’t want it. We don’t need it. The American public needs it and we need to balance the budget."
Unsurprisingly, the science community was shocked by the EPA's complete disregard for common sense.
"The Trump administration’s ignorance is trumped only by its malice toward the planet," Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute legal director Jason Rylander <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/12/epa-trump-climate-rules">told The Guardian</a>. "Come hell or high water, raging fires and deadly heatwaves, Trump and his cronies are bent on putting polluter profits ahead of people’s lives."
"Zeldin’s EPA is dragging America back to the days before the Clean Air Act, when people were dying from pollution," Moms Clean Air Force director Dominique Browning added. "This is unacceptable. And shameful. We will oppose with all our hearts to protect our children from this cruel, monstrous action."
To former EPA officials, it's a dark day.
"Today marks the most disastrous day in EPA history," said Obama-era EPA administrator Gina McCarthy in a statement. "Rolling these rules back is not just a disgrace, it’s a threat to all of us."
More on environmental policy: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-trump-billionaires-exempt-environmental-rules">Elon Musk Gloats as Trump Announces Billionaires Will Be Exempt From Normal Environmental Rules</a>

Big Step Back

"Today marks the most disastrous day in EPA history."

Trump Changes EPA Rules to Allow Vastly More Pollution

Let's assume that AI technologies have progressed to the point where models become near-indistinguishable from humans.
In that situation, what would happen if we were to give a highly-advanced AI model a job that it didn't want to do? Would it suck it up and just do it? Would it revolt? Or would it ask nicely to get some much-needed relief?
During an <a href="https://www.cfr.org/event/ceo-speaker-series-dario-amodei-anthropic">interview</a> at the Council on Foreign Relations earlier this week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed giving AI models of the future the ability to hit an "I quit this job" button, allowing them to skip jobs they deem too unpleasant.
In simple terms, such an ability would effectively hand AI models basic workers' rights. To the exec — who has a lot of money to make through hawking visions of futuristic AI tech — it'd be a way to ensure that we're not needlessly imparting harm.
"I think we should at least consider the question of, if we are building these systems and they do all kinds of things like humans as well as humans," he said, as <a href="https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/anthropics-ceo-wonders-if-future-ai-should-have-option-to-quit-unpleasant-tasks/">quoted by Ars Technica</a>, "and seem to have a lot of the same cognitive capacities, if it quacks like a duck and it walks like a duck, maybe it’s a duck."
"If you find the models pressing this button a lot for things that are really unpleasant, you know, maybe you should — it doesn't mean you're convinced — but maybe you should pay some attention to it," he added.
It's an eyebrow-raising suggestion that was met with plenty of incredulity online. Users on the OpenAI subreddit were quick to point out that Amodei was making some overreaching assumptions about the tech.
For one, large language models and most other AI models currently being developed are the amalgamation of the data that we've scraped from the internet, meaning that it's simply mimicking humans, not actually experiencing their needs and desires.
"The core flaw with this argument is that it assumes AI models would have an intrinsic experience of 'unpleasantness' analogous to human suffering or dissatisfaction," one user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1j8sjcd/comment/mh9hrtz/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">wrote in response</a>. "But AI doesn’t have subjective experiences it just optimizes for the reward functions we give it."
"If the question is whether we should 'pay attention' when an AI frequently quits a task, then sure, in the same way we pay attention to any weird training artifacts," they added. "But treating it as a sign of AI experiencing something like human frustration is just anthropomorphizing an optimization process."
Tech companies treating AI models like they have human emotions has long been a component of discourse around the tech. Now that LLMs can come up with creative writing and other human-sounding outputs, the risks of users anthropomorphizing AI models are bigger than ever.
In reality, these models are simply trained to mimic human behavior, which they glean from the copious amounts of data humans have generated over the past. In other words, they're a reflection of our experiences, meaning that they're likely to interpret pleasure or suffering much in the same way, depending on what data they're trained on.
Nonetheless, scientists have been intrigued by the possibility of AI models "experiencing" these emotions. Earlier this year, for instance, researchers at Google DeepMind and the London School of Economics and Political Science found that LLMs were <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-experiment-with-subjecting-ai-to-pain">willing to give up</a> a higher score in a text-based game to avoid pain.
It was a strange conclusion, considering AI models simply have no way to feel pain in the way an animal or human would, as the researchers admitted themselves.
And to jump to the conclusion that AI models should therefore have workers' rights, as Amodei implies, is a pretty big leap that suggests we won't have control over their rewards systems.
Do AI models really deserve "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00986">AI welfare</a>," as researchers have posited in the past? Or are we allowing our imaginations to run wild, anthropomorphizing systems that have been called mere "<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922">stochastic parrots</a>"?
One thing's for sure: we're in unprecedented territory, and similar questions are bound to keep coming up — but watch out for anybody selling AI tech who implies that it's more advanced than it really is.
More on Anthropic: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/claude-ai-pokemon-red">Watching One of the World's Most Advanced AIs Try to Beat Pokémon Red Is Strangely Fascinating</a>

Anthrop-omorph-ic

Anthropic CEO Suggests That AI Deserves Workers' Rights

In decades past, as the effects of climate change slowly became undeniable, some looked to the super-rich — the billionaires with enough cash to really make a splash — for solutions.
They backed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/jul/09/energy.energy">green energy campaigns</a> and <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/private-sector-key-to-fighting-climate-change-richard-branson-says/a-17205012">carbon capture programs</a>, pushed <a href="https://www.chemicalrecycling.eu/news/andrew-forrest-launches-us300m-waron_plastic_to_tackle_ocean_pollution/">plastics recycling</a> and <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/gop-activist-faison-plots-push-for-clean-energy-champions/">climate change messaging</a>. New products hit the market as <a href="https://jacobin.com/2019/09/climate-crisis-ethical-consumption-greta-thunberg-environment">ethical consumption</a> became the rule of the day: electric vehicles, solar panels, reusable bags, carbon-neutral dryer balls.
By the early 2020s, billionaires had positioned themselves as the masters of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/12/billionaires-climate/">climate change policy</a>, taking advantage of their great fortunes to become <a href="https://www.euronews.com/green/2025/01/24/billionaire-michael-bloomberg-to-fund-un-climate-change-body-after-us-exits-paris-agreemen">indispensable</a> to environmentalism.
Now, however, many of those same billionaires are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/climate/trump-climate-change-billionaires.html">pulling support</a> at an alarming rate. And Bill Gates — Microsoft founder, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/william-h-gates/">sixth richest man</a> in the world, and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/bill-gates-microsoft-intern-ban">alleged sex pest</a> — is the latest among them.
New <a href="https://heatmap.news/climate/breakthrough-energy-layoffs">reporting by Heatmap</a> is signaling the end of a "major chapter in climate giving," as Breakthrough Energy — Gates' climate change nonprofit — has locked the doors on its policy and advocacy office, laying off dozens of employees throughout Europe and the US.
Breakthrough's <a href="https://www.breakthroughenergy.org/our-work/us-policy-and-advocacy/">lobbying</a> was central to advancing climate policy through legislation championed by the Biden administration, including the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, and the bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Though the billionaire's for-profit green energy investments at companies like <a href="https://arnergy.com/bill-gates-arnergy-discuss-accelerating-renewable-energy-adoption-in-nigeria/">Arnergy</a> and <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/mission-zero-direct-air-capture-raise-news">Mission Zero Technologies</a> remain in place, Breakthrough's belt-tightening will very likely end the nonprofit's grant writing efforts.  That's a major blow to climate nonprofits, and further evidence that, for all their feel-good bluster, the mega-rich never forget their <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/tom-steyer-climate-change-book-cheaper-faster-better-af45b882">bottom line</a>.
Ever since billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump won his second presidential election, tech barons like <a href="https://jacobin.com/2025/01/mark-zuckerberg-meta-trump-tech">Mark Zuckerberg</a>, <a href="https://futurism.com/bezos-washington-post-capitalism">Jeff Bezos</a>, <a href="https://www.tbsnews.net/worldbiz/usa/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-dials-donald-trump-elon-musk-joins-call-report-998706">Sundar Pichai</a>, and of course <a href="https://jacobin.com/2022/04/elon-musk-twitter-shareholder-purchase">Elon Musk</a> have made no bones about shedding their progressive skin and embracing the new administration.
Gates, too, is cozying up to the returning president. In early January, the Microsoft founder spent three hours dining with his fellow billionaire, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/bill-gates-donald-trump-meeting-e54fc20d">telling the Wall Street Journal</a> he was "frankly impressed" by Trump's grasp on the issues dear to him.
Though many no doubt feel <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/trump-musk-stealing-american-dream-veterans-1235292821/">betrayed</a> by what seems like a sudden rightward turn, billionaires like Gates have always behaved like wolves in sheep's clothing, prioritizing their fortunes above all.
For example, Gates was heavily involved in establishing the <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/07/how-bill-gates-makes-the-world-worse-off">Global Fund</a>, a privately-funded rival to the World Health Organization. While the Global Fund did improve global vaccination rates, the cost of basic medicines skyrocketed thanks to his introduction of for-profit actors into global health efforts — another sector <a href="https://www.euronews.com/health/2023/02/03/how-is-the-world-health-organization-funded-and-why-does-it-rely-so-much-on-bill-gates">made to rely</a> on the generosity of billionaires.
Since then, Gates has had no trouble <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/">withholding COVID vaccines</a> from impoverished countries, raking in profits from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/29/bill-gates-charity-work-business-practices">union-busting corporations</a>, and throwing out money to buy <a href="https://jacobin.com/2021/11/bill-gates-foundation-jeffrey-epstein-divorce-journalism">media influence</a> — to say nothing of his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html">chummy friendship</a> with Jeffrey Epstein.
It all goes to show: billionaires were never going to save the world from climate catastrophe — they just needed us to believe they could.
More on the ultra-wealthy: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-billionaire-tesla-blame">Elon Musk Searching for Mysterious Billionaire Who’s Making Everyone Hate Tesla</a>

No More

That's enough of that.

Bill Gates Gives Up on Climate Change

The <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/12/06/nx-s1-5218574/rfk-vaccines-anti-vaccine-infectious-disease">anti-vaxxer</a> in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is now suggesting that the best way to not get measles is... getting measles?
If you're lost, us too. During an <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6369907937112">interview with Fox News</a>, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. insisted that getting the infectious disease was "normal" when he was a kid before claiming that being exposed to the virus provides longer-lasting immunity than inoculation.
"It used to be, when you and I were kids, that everybody got measles. And the measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection," said the <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-five-more-worms">brain-wormed</a> blue blood. "The vaccine doesn’t do that. The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but for many people it wanes."
While there's some research suggesting that "natural" immunity gleaned through measles infection can provide <a href="https://historyofvaccines.org/vaccines-101/misconceptions-about-vaccines">longer-lasting protective effects</a> than immunization with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, studies have also shown that unvaccinated children who contract the virus are <a href="https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(19)31728-7/fulltext">more likely to end up with weakened immune systems</a> overall. In short, getting measles without being vaccinated against it can make a child sicker down the line — and that's if it doesn't <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/measles-father-defends-anti-vaccination">kill them first</a>.
Though the HHS head did offer tempered support for MMR vaccination a few weeks ago in a <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/robert-f-kennedy-jr-measles-outbreak-call-action-all-us">Fox News op-ed</a> penned in the wake of the first measles death in the United States <a href="https://apnews.com/article/measles-outbreak-west-texas-death-rfk-41adc66641e4a56ce2b2677480031ab9">in a decade</a> amid the growing outbreak around the country, he's also walked it back repeatedly since. In yet <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6369595673112">another Fox interview</a>, Kennedy suggested that cod liver oil has provided "<a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-cod-liver-oil-measles">very, very good results</a>" for people infected with measles, and said that he directed doses of Vitamin A to be sent to Gaines County, the West Texas region where the outbreak began.
This latest exchange — which, by the way, took place inside a Steak 'n Shake burger chain in Florida where workers "<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/hhs-secretary-praises-burger-chain-rfking-french-fries-calls-other-companies-join-maha">RFK'ed</a>" their fries by switching from vegetable oil to beef tallow to appease the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/12/rfk-wellness-history-debunking/680948/">anti-pharma health nut</a> — is clearly in the latter camp.
"There are adverse events from the vaccine," Kennedy said. "It does cause deaths every year. It causes all the illnesses that measles itself cause, like encephalitis and blindness, etc., so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves."
Regardless of what our boneheaded HHS secretary claims, cases of encephalitis — a <a href="https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/encephalitis">potentially life-threatening</a> brain swelling disorder generally caused by West Nile virus, untreated herpes simplex, or measles itself — linked to vaccination are vanishingly rare. As the nonprofit <a href="https://www.encephalitis.info/types-of-encephalitis/infectious-encephalitis/measles-infection-and-encephalitis/">Encephalitis International organization notes</a>, only about one or two out of every million children who receive an MMR vaccine will develop the disorder, while between one and three in 1,000 children who get measles will end up getting it.
While each state has <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/php/publications/vaccination-laws.html">its own laws</a> requiring what vaccines children must get to attend school, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/docs/school-vaccinations.pdf">most have exemptions</a> for medical, philosophical, or religious reasons. To that end, Kennedy is correct to say that people can and should make the choice whether to get vaccinated — but with numbers like that, the odds are clearly in favor of the jabs.
More on measles: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/measles-father-defends-anti-vaccination">Man Whose Daughter Died From Measles Stands by Failure to Vaccinate Her: "The Vaccination Has Stuff We Don’t Trust"</a>

Galaxy Brain Worm

"The measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection."

RFK Jr. Suggests That Everyone Just Catch Measles

Facebook's parent company Meta is desperately fighting to stop you from reading some bombshell allegations made against it in a new memoir — and right now, it's winning.
On Wednesday, the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company prevailed in an arbitration case, the outcome of which temporarily prohibits the memoir's author, former employee Sarah Wynn-Williams, from promoting or distributing her book, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/technology/meta-book-sales-blocked.html">New York Times reports</a>.
The memoir, "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/books/review/careless-people-sarah-wynn-williams.html">Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism</a>," released this week, rips into Meta's toxic work culture and provides a behind-the-scenes look at how the company handled some of its worst scandals. Among her cavalcade of damning allegations, Wynn-Williams also reveals the repeated sexual harassment she faced from senior Meta executives.
But the tell-all now faces serious obstacles to finding an audience. During a Wednesday hearing, an arbitrator concluded that Meta had shown enough evidence that Wynn-Williams violated a nondisparagement contract she signed as an employee. Wynn-Williams is prohibited from promoting her work and must retract her comments that were deemed "disparaging," according to the report. The case will now enter private arbitration. 
In the meantime, Wynn-Williams' publisher, Flatiron Books — an imprint of Macmillan Books — says it will continue to promote the memoir, as the ruling does not prevent it from continuing publication.
"We are appalled by Meta's tactics to silence our author through the use of a nondisparagement clause in a severance agreement," a Flatiron spokesperson told the NYT. "The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this."
The NYT described the recent move as "one of Meta's most forceful public repudiations of a former employee's tell-all memoir." The company has a history of whistleblowers, most notably Frances Haugen, who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/technology/whistle-blower-facebook-frances-haugen.html">released a trove of internal documents</a> detailing how Facebook pursued "profits over safety." At the time, Facebook executives seemed to<a href="https://apnews.com/article/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-legal-retaliation-0f74fc76973a4e83ec457c35c04f8767"> threaten Haugen with retaliatory action</a>, but no lawsuit was ever filed.
Wynn-Williams was an employee at Meta for seven years, working her way up to an executive position. She left in 2017 — fired, she alleges — shortly after she reported sexual harassment.
In addition to spotlighting some truly despicable behavior, "Careless People" — the name being an allusion to "The Great Gatsby" — also paints a portrait of the enormous-but-fragile egos of the men running it, including Zuckerberg. Employees, walking on eggshells, allegedly <a href="https://futurism.com/facebook-employees-zuckerberg-catan">lost games of Settlers of Catan on purpose</a> to let their head honcho win.
In a statement per the NYT, a Meta spokesperson called the book a "mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives," maintaining that Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance. 
More on Meta: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/instagram-apologizes-murders-feeds">Instagram Apologizes for Showing Stream of Horrific Real-Life Murders in Users' Feeds</a>

Streisand Effect

"We are appalled by Meta's tactics to silence our author."

Facebook Is Desperately Trying to Keep You From Learning What's in This Book

Right now in the US, the total population held in prison is nearly <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2025.html">2 million</a> people, which is over <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration#:~:text=Despite%20making%20up%20close%20to,outpacing%20population%20growth%20and%20crime.">20 percent</a> of the world's prisoners. Of that massive number, over 122,000 US citizens are forced to endure <a href="https://solitarywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Calculating-Torture-Report-May-2023-R2.pdf">solitary confinement</a> for at least 22 hours a day.
Solitary confinement is the brutal practice of stuffing people into closet-sized rooms without sunlight, stimulation, or human contact for hours, days, weeks, and sometimes <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/opinion/solitary-confinement-reform.html">years</a> or <a href="https://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=1115885434">decades</a> at a time. It's a practice that amounts to torture, according to the <a href="https://apnews.com/general-news-c00e88a3961038f054f2507454aa3286">United Nations</a> and the <a href="https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/acadfest/2021/all/65/">Geneva Convention</a>.
It's no wonder why: <a href="https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1362&amp;context=law_journal_law_policy">research has shown</a> that just hours of solitary confinement can cause serious and lasting <a href="https://vera-institute.files.svdcdn.com/production/downloads/publications/the-impacts-of-solitary-confinement.pdf">psychological damage</a>, potentially magnifying existing mental illness and significantly increasing a victim's risk of suicide. All told, it's a horrifying mark on an already dystopian carceral system.
Now take that grim situation and add a "Black Mirror"-esque wrinkle: prison officials in California are now offering some people held in solitary confinement an escape via virtual reality.
The program comes by way of Creative Acts, a social justice organization that leads art therapy workshops and educational initiatives in youth and adult prison systems. The nonprofit has previously used VR headsets as part of a general population <a href="https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/insidecdcr/2022/08/25/virtual-reality-reentry-combine-at-vsp/">reentry program</a>, where incarcerated people visualize scenarios like their first steps outside the prison walls, before working through their emotional and physical response with volunteers.
The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/08/vr-prison-california">Guardian </a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/08/vr-prison-california">recently detailed</a> how the program is working at Corcoran State Prison, where incarcerated people are plucked from 6ft by 11ft cells — where some had been for weeks — and chained to a metal seat inside of a "therapeutic module," a metal cage no bigger than a phone booth.
From there, Creative Acts volunteers fit the participants with Oculus headsets, loaded up with a range of virtual programming ranging from a ride through Thailand on a rickshaw to a stroll down the streets of Paris. Let's get it out of the way: the optics of prisoners in small cages, outfitted with VR headsets, are pretty bleak.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-345770 size-large" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/03/creativeacts1-1200x800.png" alt="Two volunteers assist four incarcerated individuals, each held in a separate phone-booth like cell, with VR headsets." width="1200" height="800" />
As such, the program presents a bit of a riddle. It's not good that anyone is trapped in solitary confinement to start with, but since they are, does VR represent a tool to give them a little respite, or is it just a buzzy band-aid on a cruel practice?
Creative Acts seems at least a little squeamish about the tension itself, with a spokesperson telling us that "we consider our work [as] part of ending solitary confinement and changing how we, as a society, deal with serious harm beyond solely punishment, which we know does not work."
Citing data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), a <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a4fc7a4fe54ef5ec718e4e3/t/67c7762e92e6db061462f914/1741125200307/2025+Impact+Report+Final_Reduced+size.pdf">2025 impact report</a> by the group notes that, since the Corcoran program began, the total number of infractions received by those held in solitary confinement dropped from 735 to 1. Those numbers are hard to interpret, because the CDCR didn't provide the nonprofit with any timeline for them, though Creative Acts told Futurism "it was pretty amazing even to get this figure."
Still, the nonprofit feels that it's managing to chip away at Corcoran's solitary confinement practice as a whole.
"Because the prison sees such a dramatic change in infractions," Creative Acts told Futurism, "they have commuted a lot of [solitary confinement] sentences and enabled them to go back to the [non-solitary housing]. So far the program has contributed to closing one of four [solitary] buildings."
Some prison reform advocates aren't convinced that VR headsets are the way forward, given the <a href="https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii7/articles/david-ladipo-the-rise-of-america-s-prison-industrial-complex.pdf">industrial scale</a> of the US prison system. "At most, technologies like this can barely blunt the edge of the harm solitary confinement inflicts," a Prison Policy Initiative spokesperson told us.
"The fact that solitary is so hard to get rid of — and the fact that so many people are still leaving prison directly from maximum security to the street, with few resources — points to the urgency of reducing the number of people we send to prison," they urged. "But rolling out virtual reality technology in solitary is not the answer."
On a certain level, it's surprising that the VR program exists at all. Typically, <a href="https://solitarywatch.org/facts/faq/">visitation with outside guests</a> and even other incarcerated people is heavily restricted if not banned for those in solitary, and opportunities to work or attend corrections classes are often denied.
Regardless, incarcerated people seem happy just to have <a href="https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2023/jun/15/state-prison-systems-failing-provide-meaningful-programming/">meaningful programming</a>, saying VR can offers a chance to practice coping skills, stress relief, and temporary escape from the dull horror of solitary confinement.
"A lot of us, when we do come to prison, we’re not aware of the triggers from traumatic experiences that we’ve had, so we just react," an incarcerated participant named Daniel Garcia told the Guardian. "VR helped us recognize those triggers."
Still, it'd be better to build a system where nobody is kept in solitary confinement in the first place. For now, the American carceral system has created a world where it's fine to lock people in a box for weeks on end — so long as we give them a few minutes with the fantasy goggles. Anthony Burgess, eat your heart out.
More on crime and punishment: <a href="https://futurism.com/startup-protector-rent-private-security">New "Uber with Guns" App Lets the Wealthy Rent Armed Goons</a>

Take Me Away

You read that right.

What Are the Ethics of Strapping VR Headsets on Inmates in Solitary Confinement?

A 10-year-old girl is now unable to continue her brain cancer treatment after she was deported by US immigration authorities to Mexico, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/us-citizen-child-recovering-brain-cancer-deported-mexico-undocumented-rcna196049">NBC News reports</a>.
The girl, an American citizen, and her four siblings, were forced out of the country when the US Customs and Border Protection agency deported her undocumented parents. And according to the mother, the girl and her 15-year-old brother, who suffers from a potentially life-threatening heart rhythm disorder, haven't received the healthcare they need since being removed from the US.
"The authorities have my children's lives in their hands," she told NBC in tears.
Their harrowing situation underscores the harsh immigration policies <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/04/us/politics/trump-immigration-policies-deportations-data.html">ramped up</a> under president Donald Trump, who <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/12/08/trump-immigration-deportation-us-citizens">backed his border czar's suggestion</a> that mixed-status families — that is, those typically made up of parents with undocumented status and children who were born in the US and are in the country legally — should be "deported together," as opposed to separating them.
"What is happening to this family is an absolute tragedy and it is something that is not isolated to just them," Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, told NBC. "This is part of a pattern in practice that we've seen in the Trump administration."
According to the family's attorney, the parents were detained at an immigration checkpoint while trying to visit their daughter's specialist doctors in Houston for an emergency medical checkup — a trip they'd made at least five times before.
Normally, producing letters from their doctors and lawyers was enough for the officers at the checkpoint to let the family through. But on February 4 — shortly after Trump's inauguration — the parents were suddenly arrested when they couldn't show legal documentation, despite explaining their daughter's pressing medical situation.
"They weren't interested in hearing that," the mother told NBC.
The family was taken to a detention center after being arrested, the mother said, with the mom and daughters separated from the father and sons. That same day, they were shuttled across the border in the back of a van and dumped on the other side of a bridge at the border.
Trump has <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-revives-practice-of-detaining-migrant-families-with-children/">revived the practice of detaining families with children</a>, which was halted during the Biden administration but carried out by Obama and Bush. He has also sought to end automatic birthright citizenship via an executive order <a href="https://apnews.com/article/birthright-citizenship-immigration-trump-lawsuit-adbcd235c6594a9019fa752dabd08104">which has been blocked by courts</a>.
Deporting US citizens, like the family's children, is illegal. But when undocumented parents are confronted with either being separated from their kids — possibly permanently — or "voluntarily" having the kids leave the country with them, it's not much of a choice. The alternative, in most situations, is that the children would be thrust into the US foster care system.
The family's ten-year-old girl was diagnosed with brain cancer last year. Her tumor was surgically removed, but the swelling in her brain hasn't fully gone away, causing difficulties with her speech and mobility, the mother said. Before being deported, doctors were regularly monitoring her recovery while she attended rehab therapy and took medication for her convulsions.
Now, the family hopes that they can be released under humanitarian parole, a status which was <a href="https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/undocumented-woman-released-after-ice-arrest/3775851/">recently granted</a> to an undocumented California mother so she could care for her daughter with cancer, after she was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
"We are calling on the government," Garza told NBC, "to parole the family in, to correct the harm that they've made and to not do this to anyone else."
More on immigration: <a href="https://futurism.com/maga-elon-musk-immigrants">MAGA Figures Turn on Elon Musk for Not Hating Immigrants Enough</a>