Tesla’s “self-driving” cars may be about to get a whole lot more dangerous.
Elon Musk’s efforts ingratiating himself into Trumpworld are about to pay off.
Donald Trump’s presidential transition team has recommended that the president-elect quash a crash reporting requirement for self-driving vehicles. In an internal document obtained by Reuters, the team described the safety reporting condition as a mandate for “excessive” data collection, advising that the president-elect abolish the requirement entirely.
Doing so would radically alter the playing field for the burgeoning automated vehicle industry, decreasing transparency and making it more difficult for federal regulators to spark inquiries into dangerous practices. And Tesla would be the new policy’s biggest benefactor.
Former Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Conahan, along with another former judge, was accused of shutting down the county’s juvenile detention center and then receiving more than $2 million from for-profit detention facilities as part of a “kids for cash” scheme, according to The Citizens’ Voice.
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People online were really not impressed by Conahan’s inclusion in Biden’s massive list.
“Wow. I think Biden’s commuting the sentence of this disgraced Pa judge is a big mistake. I covered this in my Pa media days. He was one of 2 judges receiving $$ to sentence kids to lengthy sentences in a for-profit juvenile prison,” wroteThe Washington Post’s Heather Long in a post on X. “He ruined a lot of kids’ lives.”
Warren Stephens. Credit: The Golfer’s Journal / YouTube
Campaigners warn that the UK will face “pressure from American fossil fuel interests” to slow its energy transition.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be UK ambassador runs a firm with investments in several oil and gas companies, DeSmog can reveal.
Billionaire Warren Stephens, a major Trump donor who was nominated on Monday to be the next UK ambassador, is chairman, president, and CEO of Stephens Inc., one of the largest privately-owned investment banks in the U.S..
The firm’s portfolio includes at least five companies that make their money from oil and gas exploration and production, including one, Stephens Natural Resources, which is “solely owned” by the Stephens family business.
“President-elect Trump’s promise to boost U.S. fossil fuel production is reflected in his choice of UK ambassador, raising concerns about the potential impact on the UK’s own climate leadership”, said Fossil Free Parliament campaigner Carys Boughton.
Tessa Khan, executive director of the environmental campaign group Uplift, told DeSmog the appointment was a sign that “the UK is going to be under pressure from American fossil fuel interests to slow its transition away from oil and gas”.
Trump has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” for oil and gas in the U.S. while his presidential campaign received the backing of major fossil fuel interests. The president-elect has called climate change a “hoax” and is expected to once again pull the U.S. out of the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement, which established a global ambition to limit warming to 1.5C above industrial levels.
The Stephens hire comes just weeks after the UK Labour government unveiled an ambitious new climate target to cut emissions by 81 percent by 2035. The move was criticised by Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who this week flew to Washington DC reportedly to build ties with senior Republicans ahead of a second Trump presidency.
As DeSmog revealed last week, Badenoch has hired advisors who have criticised climate action and have links to fossil fuel-funded think tanks. Badenoch, who describes herself a “net zero sceptic” has also received donations from the head of Net Zero Watch, a climate science denial group.
Oil and Gas Investments
Stephens Inc.’s investments in oil and gas include Stephens Natural Resources, a company run by Warren’s uncle Witt Stephens.
The company, which trades as Stephens Production, “has a rich history of drilling and producing both oil and natural gas”, according to its website, and “continues to expand its production and reserves in the continental U.S. and offshore Gulf of Mexico”.
The company is “solely owned” by the Stephens family, whose investment stretches back to 1953, according to the website.
Stephens Inc.’s other current investments, which date back to the mid-2010s, include Four Corners Petroleum, an oil exploration and production company based in Colorado.
Stephens Inc. lists RK Supply in its portfolio, a “leading distributor of piping, oil and gas valves, fittings, and other oilfield service equipment” based in Texas. It also lists Dakota Midstream, a company that “provides infrastructure support to oil and gas exploration and production”, based in Colorado.
Another company in the Stephen Inc. portfolio, Texas-based Basin Oil & Gas, buys “non-operating oil and gas interests”, and is developing carbon capture and sequestration projects. Carbon capture is a favoured climate solution of the oil and gas industry, and is often used simply to extract more fossil fuels.
Stephens Inc. lists a firm called Capture Point in its portfolio, which specialises in enhanced oil recovery – a method for extracting hard-to-get oil. Capture Point told DeSmog that Stephens Inc. was not an investor in the company, though did not respond when asked if Stephens Inc. was previously an investor.
All the companies cited were approached for comment.
Trump Tensions
Stephens’s appointment comes at a critical time for the UK’s energy transition, and highlights the differences between the new Labour government and the incoming Trump administration.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer last month attended the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, pledging that the UK would restore its role “as a climate leader on the world stage”. In its 2024 election manifesto, Starmer’s Labour Party pledged to ban all new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. However, after five months in office, the government has yet to implement that promise.
“While the UK government has pledged to turn the UK into a ‘clean energy superpower’, it has not enacted its manifesto commitment to ban new licenses, nor provided a plan for a just transition away from fossil fuels”, Carys Boughton told DeSmog.
“Trump’s choice of ambassador will gift the fossil fuel industry yet more influence within UK politics, which is particularly concerning while the government is still wavering on the future of fossil fuels.
“It is therefore yet more important that the government take action to restrict fossil fuel industry influence – to protect its developing climate and energy policy from the industry’s polluting interests.”
As DeSmog has reported, Trump’s would-be energy secretary Chris Wright, chief executive of fracking company Liberty Energy, has praised Danish climate crisis denier Bjorn Lomborg as a friend. Wright’s nomination was welcomed by the CO2 Coalition, a climate science denial group which has received funding from the Koch Industries oil dynasty.
Analysis by the climate outlet Heated found that all of Trump’s cabinet picks have made misleading statements about climate change.
Science denial and an enthusiasm for fossil fuels are also views shared by Trump’s UK supporters. In September, DeSmog reported that Trump ally Nigel Farage, the Clacton MP and leader of Reform UK, was a keynote speaker at an event in Chicago run by the Heartland Institute, where he called on the U.S. to “drill, baby, drill” for more fossil fuels.
“It’s no surprise that this appointment – like the rest of Trump’s administration – is shot through with oil and gas interests”, Uplift’s Tessa Khan, told DeSmog.
“Fossil fuel companies will prove extremely influential in the incoming U.S. government, and they want nations across the world to remain hooked on oil and gas for years to come just so they can keep profiting.
“The UK is going to be under pressure from American fossil fuel interests to slow its transition away from oil and gas. To succumb would be against the UK’s national interest”.
Amazion founder Jeff Bezos participates in a discussion during a Milestone Celebration dinner September 13, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The total wealth of billionaires increased by 121% from 2015-24.
Driven largely by the accumulation of massive wealth by the richest people in the United States, the Swiss wealth manager UBS said Thursday the assets of billionaires around the world more than doubled over the past decade.
Between 2015-24, the total wealth of billionaires increased by 121%, from $6.3 trillion to $14 trillion.
Meanwhile, the MSCI AC World Index of global equities, which measures the performance of more than 3,000 stocks from both developed and emerging markets, rose by 73%.
The planet’s total gross domestic product is about $105.4 trillion, with a population of just over 8 billion, underscoring the extreme concentration of wealth among the very richest people.
The number of billionaires rose from 1,757 to 2,682 over the past decade, while the wealthiest people in the world boasted significant gains over just the past year.
Billionaires’ wealth jumped by about 17% in 2024, with the accumulation of wealth among the richest people in the U.S. offsetting a decline in China.
U.S. billionaires amassed wealth gains that were 27.6% higher than the previous year, accumulating a total of $5.8 trillion—more than 40% of international billionaire wealth.
The tax cuts pushed through by President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party in 2017 are still in effect in the U.S. Tax policy analysts have found that the law was skewed to the rich, with households in the top 1% of incomes expecting to receive an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025 compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for people in the bottom 60%.
As Common Dreams reported this week, the top 12 U.S. billionaires now control $2 trillion. The wealth of the four richest people in the U.S.—Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—has hit $1 trillion.
Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin speaks with billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos during The New York Times Dealbook Summit on December 4, 2024 in New York City. (Photo: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for The New York Times)
“Shockingly another one of the richest guys on Earth wants to defund our government and scrap regulations.”
Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Wednesday expressed his optimism about U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s next term and suggested he would “help” the Republican gut regulations.
“If we’re talking about Trump, I think it’s very interesting, I’m actually very optimistic this time around… I’m very hopeful about this—he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation,” Bezos told The New York Times‘ Andrew Ross Sorkin during the newspaper’s DealBook Summit.
“And my point of view, if I can help him do that, I’m gonna help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country. This country is so set up to grow,” he continued, suggesting that regulatory cuts would solve the nation’s economic problems.
After complaining about the burden of regulations, Bezos added, “I’m very optimistic that President Trump is serious about this regulatory agenda and I think he has a good chance of succeeding.”
The comments came during a discussion about Bezos’ ownership of The Washington Post, which also addressed the billionaire’s recent controversial decisions to block the newspaper’s drafted endorsement of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and have it stop endorsing presidential candidates.
Bezos said Wednesday that he is “very proud” of the move, that the Post “is going to continue to cover all presidents very aggressively,” and the decision did not result from fears about Trump targeting his companies.
As Inc. reported Thursday: “Trump had railed against Bezos and his companies, including Amazon and The Washington Post, during his first term. In 2019, Amazon argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the company harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract. The Biden administration later pursued a contract with both Amazon and Microsoft.”
Bezos owns Blue Origin, an aerospace company and a competitor to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Musk—the world’s richest person, followed by Bezos, according to the Bloomberg and Forbes trackers—has been appointed to lead Trump’s forthcoming Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.
Bezos’ remarks at the Times summit led Fortune‘s Brooke Seipel to suggest that he may be the next billionaire to join DOGE.
Musk and Ramaswamy headed to Capitol Hill on Thursday to speak with GOP lawmakers about their plans for the government.
“Despite its name, the Department of Government Efficiency is neither a department nor part of the government, which frees Musk and Ramaswamy from having to go through the typical ethics and background checks required for federal employment,” The Associated Press noted. “They said they will not be paid for their work.”
