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Elon Musk’s outfit is running into opposition from Donald Trump’s appointees

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ON FEBRUARY 22nd Elon Musk posted 158 times on X, his social-media platform. But that was not his only communication. Over the course of that afternoon, a Saturday, all civilian federal employees—some 2.3m people—were sent an email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) telling them to reply by midnight on February 24th with “approx” five bullet points listing “what you accomplished last week”, leaving out any classified information. Mr Musk reckons some government employees are doing so little work that “they are not checking their email at all”. Some government workers, in fact, he suggested are not even real people. According to his X posts, any employee who does not reply will be considered to have resigned.

Economics

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says recession is still on the table for U.S.

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Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., speaks during the 2025 National Retirement Summit in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.

Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Wall Street titan Jamie Dimon said Thursday that a recession is still a serious possibility for the United States, even after the recent rollback of tariffs on China.

“If there’s a recession, I don’t know how big it will be or how long it will last. Hopefully we’ll avoid it, but I wouldn’t take it off the table at this point,” the JPMorgan Chase CEO said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Specifically, Dimon said he would defer to his bank’s economists, who put recession odds at close to a toss-up. Michael Feroli, the firm’s chief U.S. economist, said in a note to clients on Tuesday that the recession outlook is “still elevated, but now below 50%.”

Dimon’s comments come less than a week after the U.S. and China announced that they were sharply reducing tariffs on one another for 90 days. The U.S. has also implemented a 90-day pause for many tariffs on other nations.

Thursday’s comments mark a change for Dimon, who said last month before the China truce that a recession was likely.

He also said there is still “uncertainty” on the tariff front but the pauses are a positive for the economy and market.

“I think the right thing to do is to back off some of that stuff and engage in conversation,” Dimon said.

However, even with the tariff pauses, the import taxes on goods entering the United States are now sharply higher than they were last year and could cause economic damage, according to Dimon.

“Even at this level, you see people holding back on investment and thinking through what they want to do,” Dimon said.

— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed reporting.

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Economics

Are American Catholics ready for an American pope?

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Pope Benedict XVI held a synod in 2012 to discuss evangelisation in an increasingly secular world. One of the most dynamic speakers was an American priest named Robert Prevost. The then-leader of the Augustinian order delivered a brief but profoundly countercultural speech, criticising “Western mass media” for fostering sympathy with anti-Christian practices like “abortion, homosexual lifestyle, euthanasia”. With time the future pope evolved. “Doctrine hasn’t changed,” he told Catholic News Service after Pope Francis made him a cardinal in 2023. “But we are looking to be more welcoming and more open.”

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Economics

Why a vote dispute in North Carolina should worry Americans

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IT WAS almost a normal concession. On May 7th Jefferson Griffin, a Republican candidate for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat, thanked his family for giving “a lot to this campaign” and said he would pray for his opponent’s success. But the timing of the statement was unusual. It came a full six months and two days after election day.

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