Alan Cole, senior economist at the Tax Foundation, took that bet, telling WSJ reporter Richard Rubin how and why he dropped $342,195.63 into a prediction-market wager on the Kalshi platform. Cole said that he looked at the terms of the Kalshi wager and saw an opportunity, because he did not believe anything Musk would do would significantly curtail spending on interest on the national debt or entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, especially as America's population continued to age.
Driving the news: Musk took to X on Friday to celebrate the release of Medicaid data on claims, medical procedures and payments from January 2018 through December 2024. "Medicaid data has been open sourced, so the level of fraud is easy to identify," Musk wrote. "DOGE is not a department, it's a state of mind." The Department of Health and Human Services collects Medicaid claims data from states that administer the program. Until now, much of the information has been fragmented and difficult to access.
It worked for my life because I'm in my car all the time, says the realtor, who drives weekly from Los Angeles 80 miles north to Ojai, California. It felt efficient. It was zippy. It was intuitive. It was exactly what I needed. But she didn't love the reputation of Tesla co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who's polarized consumers by engaging in public spats with presidents and endorsing an antisemitic post on X, the social media site he owns.
U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang wrote that there was "no alternative" to the depositions, citing plaintiffs' inability to obtain information through documents or lower-ranking officials, whose deposition requests went unanswered. Chuang also pointed to earlier rulings finding that Musk made decisions to dismantle USAID despite lacking formal authority or official approval. Zoom in: USAID's former workforce of 10,000 managed some $43 billion in appropriations and assisted approximately 130 countries with disaster relief and economic development in fiscal year 2023.
The government is preparing a series of measures including a social media ban for under-16s, the prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, said, promising to protect children from the digital wild west and hold tech companies responsible for hateful and harmful content. Sanchez said on Tuesday that urgent action was needed because social media was a failed state where laws are ignored and crimes are tolerated.
PayPal ( NASDAQ:PYPL ) shares are falling 18% in morning trading today after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings that missed expectations . Adjusted earnings came in at $1.23 per share, below the $1.29 consensus estimate, while revenue reached $8.68 billion against forecasts of $8.79 billion. The shortfall stemmed from softer consumer spending and slower growth in its branded checkout business, which rose just 1% year-over-year. For 2026, PayPal guided for adjusted profit to decline in the low single digits or be slightly positive, well under the 8% growth analysts expected.
The French offices of Elon Musk's X are being raided by local police, according to the Paris prosecutor's office. The search is being carried out by a cybercrime unit in relation to an investigation opened in January 2025, the Paris Prosecutor's office said in an X post on Tuesday. X has faced investigations and backlash in Europe over sexual images generated by its AI chatbot Grok.
