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Elon Musk’s financial disclosure will not be made public

(NYT) — Elon Musk plans to file a financial disclosure report to the White House, but it will remain confidential, a White House official said Tuesday.

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There has never been a White House staff member with the vast potential for conflicts like Musk, the world’s richest person and the head of leading companies in electric vehicles, space exploration and artificial intelligence.

But Musk is serving President Donald Trump as an unpaid “special government employee,” which means his financial disclosure is not required to be made public.

Special government employees, like all federal employees except the president and vice president, are prohibited under federal criminal law from taking actions that directly benefit themselves or their families, unless they have an ethics waiver.

Musk’s companies have billions of dollars in federal contracts and are the subject of more than a dozen pending federal regulatory investigations or lawsuits, so he will almost certainly need an ethics waiver, several former White House lawyers said.

Trump rolls back standards for water-using appliances, light bulbs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday moved to revert to older standards for light bulbs as well as toilets, showers and other water-using appliances, a day after signing an order promoting plastic straws and rescinding a plan to reduce single-use plastics.

Trump said he would call on the Environmental Protection Agency to go back to water standards from his first White House term that would also affect sinks, washing machines and dishwashers.

In a post on his private social media platform, Trump wrote that he was directing EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin “to immediately go back to my Environmental Orders,” calling them common sense.

On Monday, Trump signed an executive order encouraging the U.S. government and consumers to buy plastic drinking straws, part of a broader weakening of environmental commitments by the Republican president after taking office on Jan. 20. Trump first served in the White House from 2017-2021.

Bannon pleads guilty to fraud in border wall case but will serve no time

NEW YORK (NYT) — A long legal saga for Steve Bannon, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, ended Tuesday when he pleaded guilty in Manhattan criminal court to a single felony count of defrauding donors who had sought to help build a wall at the southern border.

Bannon had been charged by the Manhattan district attorney’s office with five felony counts, including money laundering and conspiracy charges, and could have faced between five and 15 years in prison on the most serious charge. Instead, he received a three-year conditional discharge, meaning he will serve no prison time if he does not reoffend.

It was the second time Bannon had avoided a trial on charges connected to a group called We Build the Wall, a seeming grassroots effort to fulfill a key promise of Trump’s first term. In 2021, in the hours before he left office, Trump pardoned Bannon in a similar federal case.