Editorials from Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and others

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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June 8 – The Washington Post on Musk, Trump and green subsidies

Elon Musk last week slammed President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" for the trillions in new federal debt it is projected to cost - a subject well worth the nation's attention. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), however, pointed to a different possible motive for the tech billionaire's dissatisfaction with the bill: It "has an effect on his business," the speaker said.

Johnson suggested that Musk began his campaign against the bill after they spoke about an obscure policy the act would roll back - one that has directed billions of dollars to Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle company.

Johnson's claims provide a revealing look at the side effects of well-meaning - but not all that well designed - government mandates (in this case, for the automobile industry to reduce emissions in specific ways), and how they can distort both politics and the economy. While the bill has many flaws, Republicans are right to object to the Tesla gravy train. Rather than keep it, as Musk would probably prefer, they should replace it with clean energy policies that promote competition and choice.

Tesla heavily depends on selling automotive regulatory credits to traditional automakers. Manufacturers of gas-powered cars are failing to produce as many zero-emissions vehicles as national and state-level mandates from Washington, Sacramento and Brussels require. Consumers' appetite for EVs has grown, but not enough for traditional carmakers to transition off gas as quickly as the mandate-writers would have liked. So those companies must buy credits from EV-makers such as Tesla, which produces only zero-emissions vehicles.

In 2024, Tesla made $2.76 billion on emissions deals, a 54 percent increase from the year before. During the first quarter of 2025, Tesla reported earning $595 million in regulatory credits, even as its total net income for the period was only $409 million.

A February Post analysis found that Musk and his businesses received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits over the years, including $11.4 billion through automotive regulatory credits. "About a third of Tesla's $35 billion in profits since 2014 has come from selling federal and state regulatory credits to other automakers," The Post tabulated. "These credits played a crucial role in the company's first profitable quarter in 2013 and its first full year of profitability in 2020. ... Without the credits, Tesla would have lost more than $700 million in 2020, marking a seventh-consecutive year with no profits."

If you haven't heard of these regulatory credits, you're not alone. Even for those paying close attention, the EV policy fight that has attracted the most attention has been the One Big Beautiful Bill's proposed phaseout of $7,500 tax credits for electric car-buyers. Musk has expressed openness to eliminating the policy; analysts speculate that doing so could entrench his dominance in the U.S. EV market by making it harder for new entrants to break in.

Such are the arcane politics and weird incentives that complex government regulations can promote, as companies compete for the profits that can flow from getting a clause inserted or deleted from the federal code.

To be sure, the federal EV mandate's writers were well-intentioned. They wanted to accelerate the needed transition to electric vehicles, as transportation overtook electricity generation as the country's largest source of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. They used various policy levers available to them - from the Clean Air Act to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards - because Congress failed to enact more efficient clean energy policies.

Republicans can change that, eliminating the mandates, tax credits and other subsidies that riddle federal law and replacing them with a robust and rising carbon tax. This policy would empower consumers and companies - each acting according to what makes the most sense for themselves, without government micromanagement - to decide how to green the economy.

Maybe consumers would prefer to buy more plug-in gas-electric hybrid cars that eliminate "range anxiety" before fully moving to EVs, which will be easier when electric car technology is more mature and charging infrastructure more ubiquitous. That's the beauty of a carbon tax: The emission costs from consumers' decisions would be reflected in the sticker prices they pay, maximizing choice and minimizing federal micromanagement - all while reducing the overall expense of a green energy transition.

Admittedly, carbon taxes have been less politically successful than other policies that disguise their costs to consumers. (EV mandates boost car prices across the board; renewable electricity requirements increase power bills; etc.) But the politics cannot be as unflattering as the Musk-Trump meltdown the country had to endure last week.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/08/musk-trump-tesla-regulatory-credits/

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June 6 – The Wall Street Journal says that Trump’s immigration crackdowns may be shrinking the work force

The White House hailed Friday's jobs report for May, and it did beat market expectations with a net gain of 139,000 in payrolls. But there are signs of weakness under the labor-market hood that bear watching.

The unemployment rate stayed low at 4.2% for the third straight month. Employers are holding onto their workers despite the uncertainty over tariffs. Wage gains were also healthy, rising 3.9% over the last 12 months.

The weaker news is that the jobless rate stayed the same because some 625,000 people left the job market. As a result, the labor participation rate fell 0.2% in the month, and the employment-population ratio by a highly unusual 0.3%. Some 71,000 more people were jobless in May, and Labor Department revisions showed 95,000 fewer new jobs in March and April than previously reported.

Our friend Don Luskin of Trend Macro notes another concern, which is two months in a row of shrinking foreign-born employment. Leaving aside the legal and other problems with Joe Biden 's border failures, there's no doubt that immigrant labor buoyed the job market over his Presidency. That seems to be going into reverse, as you'd expect with the Trump Administration's crackdown.

In the four months of Trump II, Mr. Luskin calculates that the immigrant population has shrunk by 773,000, or 193,000 a month. Fewer immigrants mean fewer workers to fill job openings, so there will be a cost in future growth from the Trump Administration's border closure and deportation roundups.

None of this heralds recession, but these are notes of caution for the Federal Reserve as the Open Market Committee meets this month to consider whether to resume cutting interest rates. Inflation remains above the Fed's 2% target, though there's little sign so far that tariffs have produced a broad-based increase in prices.

Mr. Trump keeps banging away at the Fed, which won't help. But he can do more himself by setting aside his tariffs, or at least completing what he says will be those great trade deals. Also, support the Senate effort to make the business tax provisions in the House tax and budget bill permanent, rather than phasing out in 2028 and 2029. The May job market isn't signaling the boom Mr. Trump promised voters.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/signs-of-a-weaker-labor-market-a012f4a1

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June 6 – The Guardian on the feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk

It would have taken a heart of stone to watch the death of the Trump-Musk bromance without laughing. Democrats passed the popcorn on Thursday night as the alliance between the world's most powerful man and the world's richest imploded via posts on their respective social media platforms.

Less than a week ago they attempted a conscious uncoupling in the Oval Office. Then Elon Musk's attacks on Donald Trump's "big, beautiful" tax and spending plan escalated to full-scale denunciation of a "disgusting abomination" - objecting to its effect on the deficit, not the fact it snatches essential support from the poor and hands $1.1tn in tax cuts to the rich.

The president said that Mr Musk had "gone crazy" and was angry that electric vehicle subsidies were being removed, claimed he had fired him, threatened to terminate his government contracts, and mocked the billionaire's recent black eye. Steve Bannon chipped in, suggesting that Mr Musk should be deported.

Mr Musk said Mr Trump should be impeached and alleged the government had not released files on the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein because the president was in them. He threatened to immediately start decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft - now key to Nasa's programme - and suggested it was time for a new political party. The ultimate insult: "Without me, Trump would have lost the election," he wrote.

Mr Musk later appeared minded to limit the damage, backing away from the spacecraft threat - not surprising, perhaps, when he had just watched $152bn wiped off Tesla's value. Each man knows that the other could hurt him, via government fiat or political war chest. Yet both are so unpredictable that the row could still reignite.

Two narcissists used to imposing their will were never likely to coexist happily for long, despite the advantages of doing so: this was less a marriage of convenience than of naked self-interest. Mr Trump loathes sharing the limelight; the Tesla boss frequently grabbed it. The president is surely as resentful of as he is dazzled by Mr Musk's spectacular wealth. He was angered to discover that Mr Musk had arranged private briefings on the Pentagon's plans for any potential war with China - not only a blatant conflict of interest, but perhaps more upsettingly, a sign of his growing power. Mr Musk's behaviour has also appeared increasingly erratic. A recent New York Times report alleged he took large amounts of drugs including ketamine while advising Mr Trump prior to the election. Mr Musk has described the story as "bs".

His departure from the president's orbit is good news. Mr Musk implausibly claimed he would save $2tn annually - approaching a third of the federal budget - by taking a chainsaw to bureaucracy. Wild decisions by the so-called department of government efficiency are mired in the courts. But he has nonetheless caused real damage which will not easily be remedied, gutting agencies and departments which took decades to build. People are dying because of his demolition of USAID.

Yet while the bond between the peak of power and the peak of wealth has been severed, politics remains in thrall to money. Mr Trump's approach is particularly noxious, turning wealth directly into political favours and power, and power into further wealth. This is the new oligopoly. He oversees a cabinet of billionaires, and has directed his real estate tycoon friend Steve Witkoff, a man with no diplomatic experience, to bring peace in the Middle East and Ukraine. But though megadonors are heavily skewed towards the Republicans, Democrats too depend on billionaires. Mr Musk is a symptom of the underlying malaise. Democracy requires better safeguards against the unhealthy marriage of wealth and power than the rampant egos of those who command them.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/06/the-guardian-view-on-the-trump-musk-feud-we-cant-rely-on-outsized-egos-to-end-oligopoly

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June 8 – The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the effects of delegitimizing government

The question of whether damage from the tornado that tore through St. Louis on May 16 merits a federal disaster declaration shouldn't really be a question to anyone who has seen the devastation on the city's north side - five people dead, thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed, countless residents left homeless or housed in undermined and unsafe structures with nowhere else to go. This is exactly what federal disaster designations were designed for.

Yet fully three weeks after the tornado struck, and almost two weeks after Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe formally requested a disaster declaration from the Trump administration, no such declaration has been forthcoming. Meaning the spigot of crucial, even lifesaving federal emergency funding remains closed for the moment.

This federal foot-dragging in response to a natural disaster isn't unusual by the standards of the new Trump administration. But it is absolutely not normal by any previous modern standards. It is, in fact, the new normal offered by this president: a stingy approach to federal aid that is consistent with his instinct toward shrinking the federal government's responsibilities to its citizens.

It is, simply put, your tax dollars not at work. No one should be surprised: This is what happens when an administration sets out to delegitimize government's legitimate functions, as President Donald Trump has with his DOGE hatchet job and the rest.

As the Missouri Independent reported in a recent analysis, the administration's slow-walking treatment of what is a continuing, life-threatening emergency in St. Louis stands in sharp contrast with earlier administrations' approaches to disasters.

The Obama administration, for example, took exactly one day to issue a disaster declaration after the deadly 2011 tornado that struck Joplin. That kicked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) into action, opening up more than $37 million in individual emergency aid and more than $160 million in recovery and rebuilding funds. This is the federal government doing what no other entity reasonably can in the wake of tragedy.

Compare that to the federal response (or lack thereof) to the recent St. Louis tornado. Even as the tornado struck on May 16, Missouri was waiting on requested federal disaster declarations from not one but two earlier emergencies stemming from storms and flooding in March and April.

Both those declarations finally were made on May 21 - almost 50 days after the initial request. As the Missouri Independent notes, it was the slowest federal response to a Missouri emergency in 15 years.

Every day the administration twiddles its thumbs in response to last month's tornado, St. Louis victims are missing out on badly needed emergency funding, including potentially individual funds for immediate needs such as food and shelter, home repair costs, federal food aid and unemployment aid.

Those who have cheered on the administration's attempts to pare down the government (while pushing a budget-busting tax-cut package for the rich ) might accept this lack of action as a necessary component of that project. We suspect most St. Louisans, however, want their federal government to step up in this crisis.

ONLINE: https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/article_137ea375-6f6f-4c11-99f4-f869be412293.html

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June 8 – The New York Times on Trump calling the National Guard to Los Angeles

The National Guard is typically brought into American cities during emergencies such as natural disasters and civil disturbances or to provide support during public health crises - when local authorities require additional resources or manpower. There was no indication that was needed or wanted in Los Angeles this weekend, where local law enforcement had kept protests over federal immigration raids, for the most part, under control.

Guard members also almost always arrive at the request of state leaders, but in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom called the deployment of troops "purposefully inflammatory" and likely to escalate tensions. It had been more than 60 years since a president sent in the National Guard on his own volition.

Which made President Trump's order on Saturday to do so both ahistoric and based on false pretenses and is already creating the very chaos it was purportedly designed to prevent.

Mr. Trump invoked a rarely used provision of the U.S. Code on Armed Services that allows for the federal deployment of the National Guard if "there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States." No such rebellion is underway. As the governor's spokesman and others have noted, Americans in cities routinely cause more property damage after their sports teams win or lose.

The last time this presidential authority was used over a governor's objections was when John F. Kennedy overruled the governor of Alabama and sent troops to desegregate the University of Alabama in 1963. Supporters of states' rights and segregation howled at the time and, in the usual corners, are still howling about it.

"To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States," Mr. Trump wrote in an executive order, which is not a law but rather a memo to the executive branch. Yet the closest this nation has come to such a definition of rebellion was when Mr. Trump's own supporters (whom he incited, then mostly pardoned) sacked the U.S. Capitol in 2021.

Past presidents, from both parties, have rarely deployed troops inside the United States because they worried about using the military domestically and because the legal foundations for doing so are unclear. Congress should turn its attention to such deliberations promptly. If presidents hesitate before using the military to assist in recovery after natural disasters but feel free to send in soldiers after a few cars are set on fire, the law is alarmingly vague.

Some legal experts note that Mr. Trump's order goes even further. He "has also authorized deployment of troops anywhere in the country where protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement are occurring or are likely to occur, even if they are entirely peaceful," Liza Goitein, the senior director at the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said in a social post. "That is unprecedented and a clear abuse of the law."

There is, however, a long tradition of political protest making America stronger. And protesters will do nothing to further their cause if they resort to violence. But Mr. Trump's order establishes neither law nor order. Rather it sends the message that the administration is interested in only overreaction and overreach. The scenes of tear gas in Los Angeles streets on Sunday underscored that point: that Mr. Trump's idea of law and order is strong-handed, disproportionate intervention that adds chaos, anxiety and risk to already tense situations.

In 2020 it was Gen. Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Attorney General William Barr who stepped in and overruled Mr. Trump in his pursuit of using active-duty troops to bring a violent end to demonstrations in Lafayette Square, much to the president's frustration. His current attorney general, Pam Bondi, and secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, have shown little reservation about potentially putting troops in a position where they might have to decide whether to follow an illegal or immoral order or unnecessarily endanger civilians. These are men and women who have sworn an oath to something more powerful than the current commander in chief: the Constitution. With little leadership, it appears they themselves will have to become students of the law and ethics that should guide their conduct. One can only hope they choose the right path.

The biggest challenge posed by Mr. Trump federalizing the National Guard is this: What's the limiting principle? Could any president order federalized combat troops to enforce his or her whims? And ultimately, who and what is the U.S. military in service to - the American public or the president's political agenda?

With this Trump White House, there's a strong guarantee that the answer will not be sought in the rule of law, longstanding values or established norms. Instead, it will come down to - as it always does with this administration - whatever most serves the president's interests and impulses.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/opinion/los-angeles-protests-national-guard-trump.html