lundi 31 mars 2025
Tesla Protests Turn Violent: Pro-Musk Demonstrator Struck With Car, Woman Beaten On Side Of Road
With all of the leftwing vitriol against billionaire Elon Musk over his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, violence targeting his supporters was bound to happen. In a disturbing incident, 70-year-old Christopher Talbot of Meridian was arrested after allegedly striking a counter-demonstrator at a Tesla Takedown protest near a Tesla dealership. According to the Meridian Police Department (MPD), Talbot is said to have hit a 49-year-old man after making an “obscene gesture” toward the victim around 1:00 pm on Sunday.
The victim, who was reportedly driving a vehicle with a flag in support of President Donald Trump, had parked when Talbot allegedly assaulted him. KTVB reports that the victim received medical treatment at a nearby hospital and was later released with non-life-threatening injuries. Law enforcement subsequently tracked down Talbot at his home in Meridian, where they took him into custody peacefully. He was then transported to Ada County Jail, where he was charged with a single count of aggravated battery.
The Tesla Takedown protest, consisting of a meager 30 demonstrators, was overshadowed by a counter-protest organized by the Idaho Liberty Dogs, which drew nearly 200 participants, according to KTVB. In a hyperbolic social media post, organizers of the anti-Tesla protest declared, "Elon Musk is destroying our democracy, and he's using the fortune he built from Tesla to do it. We are taking action at Tesla to stop Musk's illegal coup," highlighting the intensity of their opposition to Musk's initiatives.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) have launched a task force to investigate attacks on Tesla property. In a recent post on X Musk called the attack “domestic terrorism,” which was subsequently echoed by President Trump.
"We have taken additional steps to crack down and coordinate our response. This is domestic terrorism. Those responsible will be pursued, caught, and brought to justice,” Musk wrote.
The Justice Department revealed last week that three people are now confronting "severe accusations" after reportedly employing Molotov cocktails to ignite Tesla vehicles and their associated charging stations.
The charges from the DOJ are as follows:
- One defendant, also armed with a suppressed AR-15 rifle, was arrested after throwing approximately eight Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership located in Salem, Oregon.
- Another was arrested in Loveland, Colorado after attempting to light Teslas on fire with Molotov cocktails. The defendant was later found in possession of materials used to produce additional incendiary weapons.
- In Charleston, South Carolina, a third defendant wrote profane messages against President Trump around Tesla charging stations before lighting the charging stations on fire with Molotov cocktails.
- Each defendant faces serious charges carrying a minimum penalty of five years and up to 20 years in prison.
“The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.”
Meanwhile - a 61-year-old woman driving a Tesla in Flagstaff, Arizona was boxed in by another driver and beaten while still inside her car - only to bite the assailant.
"I’m just appalled," she told AZ Family, adding "I didn’t buy my car for a political statement. I bought my car because its really fun to drive. My politics have nothing to do with that. I’m ashamed of our society and what they are doing."
It shows a green car pulling up next to her Tesla and then swerving in front of it to box it in.
The driver then walks over to the 61-year-old woman in the Tesla and, reportedly, starts hitting her while she’s behind the wheel.
“I started to say, you cut me off what’s your problem, but I didn’t know how much he heard me,” said Susan. “He got out and started to punch me with a closed fist.”
At one point, the victim said she bit the man’s hand. Moments later, the passenger of the green car appears to walk over and pull the attacker away. Finally, they get back in their car and drive off.
Watch:
(Prenons l'Angleterre, mittal (aciéries) annonce quitter l'Angleterre ce qui signifie que l'Angleterre ne pourra même plus fabriquer son propre métal et cela sera toujours la même histoire, ils ne pourront pas vérifier la qualité des produits qu'ils utiliseront pour leur industrie de pointe de l'armement. note de rené)
B-21 "Bomber On A Budget"
Authored by Rebecca Grant via RealClearDefense,
Even in the era of DOGE, President Donald J. Trump is doubling down on American investment in sixth-generation aircraft. The Air Force F-47 fighter and a new Navy carrier plane will restock American airpower. While air dominance is priceless, the fact remains that experience with the B-21 Raider bomber has quietly given Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg, and the new leadership team the confidence to invest in advanced aircraft programs. Saving money and executing on a predictable schedule is now a must for the survival of Pentagon programs.
The B-21 is a “bomber on a budget.” One of the most overlooked insights from the recent Air Force budgets is that the B-21 program is proving a new business case by keeping costs under control. During the 2025 budget cycle, smooth progress on the production line enabled the Air Force to negotiate lower rates for the B-21 bombers now in production. The Air Force trimmed about $1 billion off the B-21 program’s cost for Fiscal Year 2025 alone and bagged additional savings for future years.
Coming in under budget is a first for a stealth aircraft – and quite a victory for the bomber leg of the nuclear deterrence Triad. Contrast that with the snarls affecting nuclear shipbuilding and the Columbia-class submarine program. It is also a great vote of confidence for future sixth-generation programs for both the Air Force and the Navy.
The B-21 was planned from the outset to “bend the cost curve” for advanced aircraft procurement. A cost cap of $550 million per bomber (averaged over 100 aircraft, and in 2010 dollars) was set as a performance parameter for the competition. Northrop Grumman was widely believed to have won the B-21 program due to the combination of its experience in stealth bombers and its low bid price. However, executing the B-21 plan has been a testament, first and foremost, to the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO), the team that ran the B-21 from source selection onward but likes to stay out of the limelight.
The Air Force is also capitalizing on progress with digital design, open software approaches, sophisticated aerospace composites, and a host of other advances in the American aerospace industry. The net effect is smoother progress through design and early production. For example, in 2021, a “major redesign” of the B-21 engine inlets was completed while the first two B-21s were being assembled, without incurring cost or schedule overruns. “There’s nothing going on in that program that is leading to either a cost or schedule breach,” Air Force Lieutenant General Duke Richardson said at the time.
New approaches to software are also paying off. One example is the shorter time anticipated for weapons integration. “It would take me years to integrate a new standoff missile on the B-2,” Air Force Global Strike Command chief General Timothy M. Ray said in March 2021. “It will take me months with the B-21.”
By 2022, the Air Force announced that the engineering and manufacturing development contract was producing a quality build B-21, with significant design maturity. “The B-21 test aircraft are the most production-representative aircraft, both structurally and in its mission systems, at this point in a program, that I’ve observed in my career,” concluded Randy Walden, who was then the Director of the RCO.
This was a critical time period. The B-21 achieved its roll-out at Palmdale, California, in December 2022 and its first flight in November 2023.
Of course, inflation in the wake of the COVID pandemic hit the B-21 along with other defense programs, leading to increased costs for wages and supplies for both prime contractors and their hundreds of suppliers. The B-21 program quickly digested those costs. In January 2024, Northrop Grumman reported that it had taken a one-time after-tax charge of $1.2 billion due to macroeconomic factors that increased the costs of manufacturing the B-21. The cost was swallowed as the first low-rate production lot began.
As a result, by spring 2024, the Air Force was reporting success in lowering costs for the next four lots of B-21s. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall informed the Senate that B-21 unit costs had decreased during contract negotiations with Northrop Grumman. The Air Force saved money on the B-21 without reducing the planned quantity.
In turn, the Air Force was able to reduce its own procurement line for the B-21 down from $6.3 billion to $5.3 billion for the enacted Fiscal Year 2025 budget. The Air Force was also confident enough to harvest the B-21 cost savings across the out-years. An Aviation Week report noted nearly 28% savings across the five-year defense plan.
The situation was very different for the B-2 Spirit back in the 1980s. The Air Force requested significant design changes, including the requirement for low-altitude flight capabilities. The Northrop engineers responded with “a miracle a day” to build the bomber. Meanwhile, President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, received personal briefings every three months on the progress of the B-2 and often had to allocate additional funds to keep the program going.
Forty years later, stealth bomber manufacturing is leading the way for efficient production of sixth-generation aircraft. With the B-21, the Air Force has a robust program that is delivering on schedule and is ready for a production increase if the Trump administration decides to increase quantity. As other sixth-generation programs follow the discipline of the B-21 Raider, America won’t lose a step in dominating the skies.
Dr. Rebecca Grant is a national security analyst and vice president, defense programs for the Lexington Institute, a nonprofit public-policy research organization in Arlington, Virginia. She has held positions at the Pentagon, in the private sector and has led an aerospace and defense consultancy. Follow her on Twitter at @rebeccagrantdc and the Lexington Institute @LexNextDC.