I have to admit that Im a natural born sucker (in more than one sense, some would argue, and they will be right). I have an irresistible inclination to put things in my mouth to see how they taste, which is why today Im glad I dont have a Nintendo Switch. Apparently, Nintendo has coated the Switchs thumb-size game cartridges with a demonic, bitter compound known as denatonium benzoate since it launched its handheld console in 2017. And it has done it again with the Switch 2s new $70 cartridges.
The human body has a natural aversion to bitter tastes. Its a survival mechanism product of millions of years of evolution. Many poisonous substances in nature are bitter, so animals developed a sense of disgust for the flavor. Some humans were able to overcome this to willingly intoxicate themselves with gin and tonics, yes, but bitterness turns out to be a great way to deter kids from ingesting harmful substances and potential choking hazards.
Which is why Nintendo decided to dip its games in this inert, nontoxic chemical. Marketed under the brand name Bitrex, denatonium benzoate is the worlds most bitter compound, 1,000 times more intense than quininethe compound that gives tonic water its bite. While quinine becomes detectable at 0.77 parts per million, Bitrex registers at just 0.05 parts per million. This means that a single 1-milligram drop of this substance can make an entire liter of water absolutely inedible. Nintendo uses concentrations of 1050 ppm, ensuring immediate, overwhelming disgust.
What does Bitrex taste like?
Bitrex has a long track record. Its origin story traces back to 1958, when Edinburgh-based pharmaceutical firm T. & H. Smith stumbled upon it while researching local anesthetics derived from lidocaine. The compounds name blends bitter and the Latin rex (king), cementing its status as the undisputed monarch of aversion. Initially used to denature industrial alcohol, its applications exploded by the 1970s as a safety additive in household cleaners, automotive fluids like antifreeze and windshield washer (which apparently taste sweet without this additive), pesticides, and even cables, where it gets applied to avoid rodents from chewing on them. Today, it is still widely used in those products and others like marker pens, liquid laundry packets, and cosmetics like nail polish.
The sensory experience is a sharp, lingering bitterness devoid of any other flavor, designed to trigger instant rejection. The bitterness of coffee, pure chocolate, or medications like antibiotics taste like candy compared to a Switch cartridge. I licked an original Switch game once. Never again, Switch 2 producer Kouichi Kawamoto told Gamespot. We dont want anybody to be at risk of unwanted consumption, Switch 2 director Takuhiro Dohta told the gaming outlet.
But while the Japanese company has doubled down on this compound for the Switch 2s cartridges, most toy manufacturers dont rely on taste aversion to avoid choking hazards. Instead, brands adhere to size regulations, which establish that parts must be over 1.25 inches in toys targeted at kids 3 years old and younger.
Companies like Lego took a structural approach to avoid the effect of potential ingestion with its minifigure heads. From 1978 to 1992, the iconic minifigs featured solid studs on the top of their heads but the company redesigned them with hollow, three-armed lattices to create air passagesa move that mirrored BICs pen cap safety holes. The logic was simple: If a child swallowed a head, airflow might prevent suffocation. By 2010, however, Lego abandoned the design, claiming that the tiny holes were ineffective for breathing, which is suspicious to say the least (some people say online it was all a matter of cutting down costs, as the design was more expensive to make than the regular heads).
But I digress. Having learned all this, Im surprised that there are not more toys that use denatonium benzoate. Why do I know this? I told you, Im a natural born sucker and none of the toys Ive ever had or my kid was bitter. While adults might instinctively avoid mouthing cartridges, toddlers are always at risk. The potential for choking for little kids lurks around many homes, as there could be older siblings with toys that have smaller parts even if the toddlers toys are too big to be ingested. Frankly, as a parent, Im surprised they dont sell 5-gallon Bitrex sprays at Walmart to coat the entire bloody house with it.
Founders and CEOs typically use social media to etch a human face onto their brand, forge a personal connection with potential customers, and put some pizzazz into product launches.
With the thundercloud of steep global tariffs looming overhead, though, many business owners have lately turned to TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit to explain the economic havoc those tariffs are poised to wreak on their brandsand in some cases, to search for a path forward.
@antiplasticlady Replying to @Melanie not sure how any retailer is going to stay in business after this #trumptariffs #smallbusinessowner original sound – Beatrice the Anti-Plastic Lady
I wanted to make a video about tariffs and how it impacted my small business because I have continued to see incomplete information being shared onlineand in legacy print media, too, says Beatrice Barba, the Bay area-based owner of Tabor Place, which sells nontoxic cups and lunch boxes for kids.
On her personal TikTok account, where shes built a healthy following under the handle Antiplastic Lady, Barba addressed customers and fans directly last Friday about the new financial reality. Without mincing words, she detailed how Trumps then-54%, now-104% tariff on Chinese imports stands to completely wipe out her profit margin.
As the owner mentions in her TikTok, Tabor Place manufactures sippy cups and the like out of borosilicate glass, the same durable, nontoxic material used in Pyrex. She sources it from China, not for the regions low pricing or out of convenience, but because she simply cannot find borosilicate glass in the U.S., having searched some 80 domestic manufacturers since starting the business in 2018, with none of them panning out.
Barbas video quickly amassed over 600k views on TikTok, where she says the response has been mostly positivewith thousands of commenters surprised to learn the harsh math of the tariffs impact from a nontheoretical example.
Elsewhere on the platform, Heather Pavone took a different tact.
@haley_pavone I wish this was even remotely exaggerated. Small business owners are so. Freakin. Tired. #entreprenuer #smallbusiness #tradewar #founder #businessnews #usa #government original sound – Haley Pavone
Last Friday, the Pashion Footwear founder posted a video playfully using the familiar visual vocabulary of a certain flavor of viral TikTok: the single-performer two-hander. In it, she poses as a supplicant trying to coax some relief from an authority figurealso played by the CEOseated on the other side of an office desk. Pavone comes across like a worker asking her boss for a raise, only the worker is revealed in a caption to represent all small business owners, while the boss represents the U.S. government.
Without anything resembling a Trump impression, Pavone as government avatar smugly steers her adversary toward domestic manufacturing, rather than imports. Each time, Pavone, speaking for her fellow owners, rebuts the suggestion. (We actually dont have scaled footwear manufacturingor, really, apparel manufacturing of any kindin the U.S., she clarifies at one point.) Throughout the video, she makes clear how difficult it would be to ever rebuild sufficient manufacturing infrastructure in the U.S. starting from scratch, not to mention the impossibility of somehow doing so fast enough to survive sky-high import costs from the tariffs.
At no point does the character representing the U.S. government seem moved in the slightest.
The five-and-a-half minute TikTok quickly earned a whopping 3.5 million views. Pavone isnt the only owner of an apparel company to make such a video this week, though. Over on Instagram, the CEO of denim company 3sixteen posted a comprehensive Reel last Friday about how the tariffs will affect small fashion brands.
The Netherlands expanded a government-run initiative on Monday allowing legal cannabis sales.
While growing cannabis is still illegal, cannabis shopsknown as coffeeshopsin 10 municipalities will be allowed to sell marijuana from 10 licensed producers.
Weed was sold here legally for 50 years, but the production was never legal. So its finally time to end that crazy, unexplainable situation and make it a legal professional sector, Rick Bakker, commercial director at Hollandse Hoogtes, one of the regulated producers, told the Associated Press.
Some 80 coffeeshops are taking part in the experiment which advocates hope this will ultimately end a long-standing legal anomalyyou can buy and sell small amounts of weed without fear of prosecution in the Netherlands, but growing it commercially remains illegal.
Bakker’s company in Bemmel, near the German border, is indistinguishable from the surrounding greenhouses producing tomatoes and peppers. But it makes 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of weed per week and is one of the largest producers in the experiment.
A trailblazer in decriminalizing pot since the 1970s, the Netherlands has grown more conservative. Amsterdam, long a magnet for marijuana smokers, has been closing coffeeshops in recent years and has banned smoking weed on some of the cobbled streets that make up its historic center.
Advocates have been pushing for a legal growing for years, citing the safety of the product as well as concerns about crime.
Benjamin Selma, the head grower at Hollandse Hoogtes who worked in cannabis production in California for more than a decade, said the quality control for the cannabis is extremely high. We do a full test, microbial, cannabinoid, terpene, as well as yeast and anaerobic bacteria, heavy metals as well. So its very, very controlled, he told the AP.
The company, which does not use pesticides and tightly regulates growing conditions, has an eye to the environment. The production facility gets its energy from solar panels and uses biodegradable packaging.
It is also a great opportunity to see how cooperation within the closed chain between legal growers, coffeeshop owners and all other authorities involved works, Breda Mayor Paul Depla told the AP when the first phase was launched in 2023.
The experiment “is really a political compromise, according to Derrick Bergman, chairman of the Union for the Abolition of Cannabis Prohibition. The plan dates to 2017, when Christian political parties and pro-legalization parties agreed to a test run after a bill to decriminalize production failed.
The government will evaluate the experiment after four years.
A research team, advised by an independent guidance and evaluation committee, is examining the effects of a controlled cannabis supply chain on crime, safety and public health, the government said in a statement.
Selma said he is happy to be working without concerns about prosecution. Ive seen some bad moments, he said, and I dont know if I ever believed I would be so free.
The coffeeshops taking part in the initiative are located in Almere, Arnhem, Breda, Groningen, Heerlen, Hellevoetsluis, Maastricht, Nijmegen, Tilburg, and Zaanstad.
Molly Quell, Associated Press
Jesse Schiller and Rachel Evans are likely the only business owners on Australia’s Norfolk Island to be directly affected by the Trump administration’s tariffs, as the South Pacific outpost they call home exports nothing to the United States.
The Canadian couple, both aged 41, own a business that makes plastic-free hair accessories under the brand Kooshoo. Vancouver-born Schiller said he and his Norfolk Island-born wife are likely the only business owners on the island that will pay elevated tariffsand they will pay at the rates imposed on Japan and India, where the goods are manufactured. Around 80% of Kooshoos business is with the United States.
Kooshoo means feeling good in the English-Tahitian creole known as Norfk or Norfuk thats spoken among this remote population of 2,000 people 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) northeast of Sydney.
Were probably the most affected business on Norfolk Island, Schiller said.
Norfolk Island was a shock inclusion in the Trump administrations list of global tariffs announced last week that was intended to redress U.S. trade deficits with the world.
While Australia and its external territories were assigned the global minimum 10% tariff, including the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic region, Norfolk Island was singled out for a 29% tariff.
I think Norfolk became a parable of sorts for the lack of nuance with which these tariffs went out in the world, Schiller said.
Schiller and Evans, a Canadian-Australian dual national, have the consolation of being dealt slightly lower tariffs: Japan has been assigned a 24% tariff and India 26%.
Why Norfolk Island came in for such severe and apparently futile tariff treatment has been a popular topic of conversation among locals.
Its been a question of great intrigue locally, Schiller said.
An early theoryand it seems to be proving rightis that there are other notable Norfolks in the world. Norfolk, of course, in the U.K., Norfolk in Virginia in the U.S., and it seems as though some improperly labeled customs paperwork may have contributed to the . . . error, Schiller said.
That couldve been very easily fact-checked, he added.
His wife, Evans, has an impressive Norfolk Islander lineage. She is a 9th generation descendant of a crewman of the British naval ship HMS Bounty who mutinied in 1789, although her mother is Canadian. The mutineers, whose exploits have been dramatized in Hollywood movies, established a settlement on Pitcairn Islands and their descendants later settled the former British penal colony of Norfolk Island.
She said the sustainable lifestyle she had learned from growing up on such an isolated island around 8 kilometers (5 miles) long and 5 kilometers (3 miles) wide had been part of the brand since they started their business in Vancouver 15 years ago.
She was confident their business would survive the latest trade barriers.
Definitely for the short-term well figure out a way to bridge this, Evans said.
Associated Press
U.S. consumer spending for Easter is expected to rise about 5% this year as Americans snap up candy and gifts to celebrate despite concerns around high inflation and economic uncertainty, a National Retail Federation report showed on Tuesday.
Shoppers are expected to spend around $23.6 billion this year, compared with $22.4 billion estimated last year, the trade body’s survey showed, with discount stores once again poised to be the top destination for Easter shopping.
Prices of eggs, traditionally used for Easter decor and games, have nearly doubled from last year as avian influenza wiped out millions of hens and led to a shortage of eggs in February.
Retail bellwether Walmart left out eggs from its yearly Easter promotional meal kit, shared late last month at a lower price than 2024.
President Donald Trump‘s sweeping tariffs on several trade partners have also raised fears of a recession, casting a pall on consumer sentiment in the United States.
However, retailers such as Target and dollar stores that enjoyed an upbeat December quarter thanks to robust Christmas spending have said consumers are expected to shop for Easter with similar interest.
“As we witnessed throughout the pandemic, holidays such as Easter are especially meaningful for Americans during times of uncertainty. And we are continuing to see that trend as consumers prioritize their Easter celebrations this year,” said Katherine Cullen, NRF vice president of industry and consumer insights.
“From other holidays NRF tracks, we know that consumers who are feeling constrained by higher prices or the economy may cut back in other areas, look to sales or find less costly substitutes in order to preserve their traditional celebrations.”
NRF’s forecast said a majority of consumers were expected to shop inspired by tradition to buy Easter-related items, while 36% were also expected to be influenced by sales and promotions.
Candy, food and gifts are likely to be at the top of shopping lists this Easter, with consumers seen spending a total of $7.4 billion on food, $3.8 billion on gifts, and $3.3 billion on candy, the report said.
Juveria Tabassum, Reuters
There is not much Josh Lockwood-Wewer loves more than Disney. The affable 33-year-old speaks almost exclusively in the voices of his favorite characters: Mickey Mouse, the Muppets Kermit the Frog, and, above all, Goofy. He has watched The Lion King nearly every day since its 1994 releasewell over 5,000 times, according to his mother. His family moved from Maryland to Anaheim, California, when he was in his early 20s just to be closer to Disneyland.
As an adult with severe autism, Lockwood-Wewer depends on around-the-clock support from multiple aides. His caregivers prepare his meals and watch as he eats to make sure he doesnt choke. They drive him everywhere from doctors appointments to his favorite restaurant, a fast food joint called Pauls Place where he orders two chicken tenders every time. And they administer his regimen of a dozen daily medications to control his psychosis, depression, and anxiety.
Lockwood-Wewer can only afford that support thanks to publicly funded programsIn-Home Supportive Services and the Regional Center of Orange Countythat fully cover his in-home care and community-based services, which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive.
But that funding may soon be at risk under a proposal by Republican lawmakers that could slash as much as $880 billion from Medicaid over the next decade. Cuts of that magnitude would impact millions across the country and could be especially debilitating to low-income people with disabilities like Lockwood-Wewer, according to Beth Martinko, his mother and primary caretaker. She is one of many healthcare advocates who are now pressuring Republican lawmakers across the country to vote against Medicaid cuts that could be devastating for families and politically unpopular.
In late February, Martinko spoke in front of more than 200 people at a packed town hall meeting in a Tustin community center. The event was organized by a coalition of healthcare advocacy groups working to pressure the districts representative, Republican congresswoman Young Kim, to reject cuts to Medicaid. Attendees applauded as speakers stressed how integral Medicaid was to their families, and booed and yelled shame! when they mentioned Republicans proposed cuts.
Beth Martinko speaks at a town hall meeting in Rep. Kims congressional district on Feb. 20. [Photo: Jeremy Lindenfeld/Capital & Main]
Martinko lives just outside of that district, but 157,000 of Kims constituents are enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state-run Medicaid program, making the topic of federal funding cuts especially poignant.
Though the GOPs budget resolution does not explicitly call for Medicaid cuts, it directs the committee that oversees the healthcare program to cut $880 billion, which would be impossible without cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Medicaid is a government health insurance program that covers 83 million low-income people in the United States and has more beneficiaries than Medicare, which provides health insurance primarily to people 65 and older.
Republicans have not released the exact cuts they are expected to vote on in the coming months, but an internal document obtained by Politico revealed several possibilities under consideration, including new requirements that beneficiaries provide proof of employment to receive benefits.
Some groups, like people with disabilities, could be exempt from those requirements, but that is little consolation to Martinko, who said her son would fall out of network and die before being able to make it through the complex and bureaucratic process of obtaining an exemption. Lockwood-Wewer would not be alone. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 36 million people across the country could lose their health insurance if Medicaid work requirements are implemented.
Both In-Home Supportive Services, which provides support for over 700,000 low-income Californians who have disabilities or who are 65 and older, and Californias 21 Regional Centers, nonprofits that coordinate services for individuals with developmental disabilities, largely depend on funding from Medicaid. Healthcare advocates fear Republicans proposed federal cuts would cause those California programs to be reduced or even eliminated.
[Photo: Jeremy Lindenfeld/Capital & Main]
Its hard for Martinko to see how the family would manage without that support. When Lockwood-Wewers father died of lung cancer in 2013, Martinko quit her job to become her sons full-time care provider. Two years later, the pair moved from Maryland to California, where they have benefited from robust state-run healthcare programs that rely heavily on Medicaid funding.
Californias federally subsidized programs for people with disabilities have enabled Lockwood-Wewer to stay healthy and safe while also developing his interests and professional skills. In-Home Supportive Services has provided funding for Martinko and other aides to maintain Lockwood-Wewers well being. The Regional Center of Orange County has fostered his love of animation by arranging voice acting training that prepares him for job opportunities and has coordinated theater classes that have provided him with a supportive social environment of peers.
Martinko said it took years to navigate the states complicated network of benefits to get her son approved for the assistance he needed. As a 71-year-old, two-time cancer survivor, she was constantly worried she would get sick again before being able to enroll her son in the necessary programs. So when it all finally came together last year, she was thrilled and relieved.
I felt like I could die and he would be OK because he had this whole sustaining system, Martinko said.
But when she learned that the GOPs budget resolution threatened to upend Medicaid funding, she said it was like somebody opened my front door and threw a grenade in.
Martinkos congressional representative, Democrat Lou Correa, voted against that Republican budget resolution and has repeatedly warned of the risks to people on Medicaid. Thats why Martinko, who is a registered Democrat, has focused her efforts on pressuring Republican House members, like Rep. Kim, who are more likely to support cutting healthcare programs.
If Medicaid cuts reduce his In-Home Supportive Services funding, Lockwood-Wewer would no longer be able to afford his at-home care. That would push his mother and other aides, like June Mekker, who first met the family when she was a Disneyland employee and who now lives with them, to look for other jobs.
June Mekker, caregiver to Lockwood-Wewer, joins his mother in protesting Medicaid cuts at Rep. Young Kims office on March 18. [Photo: Jeremy Lindenfeld/Capital & Main]
Mekker said she voted Republican all the way down the ticket in the 2024 election, believing Donald Trumps promises to protect Medicare and Social Security extended to Medicaid as well. She now fears that might not be the case.
I will feel very, very, very betrayed and disrespected, Mekker said. Everything in [Lockwood-Wewers] life would stop. I would have to go back to working a regular job, which means he wouldnt get that support.
Because In-Home Supportive Services pays for Martinkos full-time caregiving services, she depends on the program to afford their mortgage payment. If benefits are slashed and Martinko once again becomes too ill to work, Mekker said, the family could end up on the street.”
Mekker helps Lockwood-Wewer, who holds his stuffed bear named Marco, order lunch at his favorite local restaurant, Pauls Place. [Photo: Jeremy Lindenfeld/Capital & Main]
Republicans have pitched Medicaid cuts as a way to root out waste, fraud, and abuse from federal programs, but healthcare advocates like Jordan Lindsey, executive director of the disability advocacy nonprofit The Arc of California, said those politicians are being disingenuous.
The cuts they are proposing are not designed with a scalpel to cut out waste and abuse. Theyre just using a club, Lindsey said. Supporting a Californian with Down syndrome or cerebral palsy or profound autism to integrate into society is not waste and abuse.
Republican attacks on Medicaid are nothing new, according to Gerald Kominski, senior fellow at UCLAs Center for Health Policy Research. Kominski attributes GOP lawmakers efforts to cut government benefits like Medicaid to a deeply held resentment of government programs that support low-income individuals and their desire to cut federal spending to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthy.
That could be a political vulnerability, however, as Kominski said many voters likely see that tradeoff as blatant robbing from the poor to support the rich. And even though it doesnt make sense politically, Kominski said GOP lawmakers are seizing their moment of political power and charging ahead to follow through on their longstanding efforts to shrink the social safety net.
That vulnerability is what healthcare advocates are pouncing on by organizing events like the February town hall in Rep. Kims district. Martinko, who was among the first to speak at that forum, made an emotional plea for her son. She described him as the embodiment of joy, and spoke about his passion for Disney and for writing stories where the heroes always win and the villains always lose. Martinko then appealed directly to Rep. Kim.
The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service is resigning over a deal to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S., according to two people familiar with the decision.Melanie Krause, who had served as acting head since February, will step down over the new data-sharing document signed Monday by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The agreement will allow ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.Two people familiar with the situation confirmed Krause was resigning and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.The IRS has been in upheaval over Trump administration decisions to share taxpayer data. Acting Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell announced his retirement from the agency after roughly 40 years of service in February as furor spread over Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency gaining access to IRS taxpayer data. Krause replaced him.Acting chief counsel William Paul was removed from his role at the agency last month and replaced by Andrew De Mello, an attorney in the chief counsel’s office who is deemed supportive of DOGE, according to two other people familiar with the plans who were also not authorized to speak publicly.The Treasury Department says the agreement will help carry out President Donald Trump’s agenda to secure U.S. borders and is part of his larger nationwide immigration crackdown, which has resulted in deportations, workplace raids and the use of an 18th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants.Advocates, however, say the IRS-DHS information-sharing agreement violates privacy laws and diminishes the privacy of all Americans.The basis for the agreement is founded in “longstanding authorities granted by Congress, which serve to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans while streamlining the ability to pursue criminals,” said a Treasury official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to explain the agency’s thinking on the agreement.Tom Bowman, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, said disclosing immigrant tax records to DHS for immigration enforcement “will discourage tax compliance among immigrant communities, weaken contributions to essential public programs, and increase burdens for U.S. citizens and nonimmigrant taxpayers. It also sets a dangerous precedent for data privacy abuse in other federal programs.”Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, told reporters at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix on Tuesday that the agreement will help ICE find people who are collecting benefits they aren’t entitled to and are “kind of hiding in plain sight” using someone else’s identity.Working with Treasury and other departments is “strictly for the major criminal cases,” Lyons said.The IRS had already been called upon to help with immigration enforcement earlier this year.Noem in February sent a request to Bessent to borrow IRS Criminal Investigation workers to help with the immigration crackdown, according to a letter obtained by the AP. It cites the IRS’ boost in funding, though the $80 billion infusion of funds the federal tax collection agency received under the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act has already been clawed back.A collection of tax law experts for the NYU Tax Law Center wrote Monday that the IRS-DHS agreement “threatens to violate the rights that many more Americans have under longstanding laws that protect their tax information from wrongful disclosure or dissemination.”“In fact, it is difficult to see how the IRS could release information to DHS while complying with taxpayer privacy statutes,” they said. “IRS officials who sign off on data sharing under these circumstances risk breaking the law, which could result in criminal and civil sanctions.”The memo states that the IRS and ICE “will perform their duties in a manner that recognizes and enhances individuals’ right of privacy and will ensure their activities are consistent with laws, regulations, and good administrative practices.”
Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat contributed to this report from Phoenix.
Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
Tesla starts selling cars in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, a country where on a 900-kilometre (559 mile) stretch of its main east-west highway linking the capital Riyadh and the holy city of Mecca there isn’t a single charging station.
Electric vehicle sales in the kingdom totaled just 2,000 last year, according to Telemetry analyst Sam Abuelsamid, fewer than Tesla sold between breakfast and dinner on an average day.
But Saudi Arabia has huge plans for EVs that Tesla has not been able to tap, partly because of a feud between its billionaire CEO Elon Musk and the kingdom’s powerful Public Investment Fund sovereign wealth fund that dates back to 2018.
A new political landscape has given Musk an opportunity to change that.
Relations between Riyadh and Musk have improved since he took a high-profile role in U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign and then a top position in his administration, slashing the federal bureaucracy.
In a coup for Riyadh, Trump is set to visit Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks in his first foreign trip, after asking the kingdom in January to spend upwards of $1 trillion in the U.S. economy over four years, including military purchases.
“Plenty of business people are thinking about how to position their firms around President Trump’s anticipated visit to the Gulf,” said Robert Mogielnicki, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
“I suspect Tesla wants to firmly plant their flag in the Saudi market before President Trump’s visit and then try to capitalise on momentum thereafter.”
MISSING OUT
Musk could do with a boost.
Tesla posted a 13% drop in first-quarter sales earlier this month, its weakest performance in nearly three years, driven by a backlash against Musk’s politics, rising competition, and delays for a Model Y refresh.
But Musk has work to do in Saudi Arabia after his public spat with PIF boss Yasir al-Rumayyan.
The dispute started when Musk tweeted in 2018 he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private after a meeting with the PIF. In the ensuing lawsuit filed by investors when a bid failed to materialise, tense text messages between Musk and al-Rumayyan were made public.
In the following years, Musk missed out on the billions Riyadh has poured into its Vision 2030 programme to diversify the economy away from oil. The kingdom is investing an estimated $39 billion in developing the EV sector, according to a 2024 report by consultants PwC.
Tesla’s Saudi debut also lags that of Chinese giant BYD, which opened its Riyadh showroom in May 2024.
CHALLENGES
Now Tesla has arrived in Saudi Arabia, it faces a number of challengeseven if one of them is unlikely to be the angry protests against Musk’s politics that have recently dogged its operations in Europe and the United States.
These include the paucity of charging stations and summer temperatures that can top 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), draining EV batteries more rapidly.
As of 2024, Saudi Arabia had just 101 EV charging stations, compared with 261 in neighbouring United Arab Emirates, a country with a third the population, data from Statista based on Electromaps showed.
Most are in major cities, making long journeys across desert highways unfeasible.
“I think charging is probably one of the main, if not the main, point of concern,” said Carlos Montenegro, BYD’s general manager in Saudi Arabia, adding Saudi drivers clock up many more kilometres each year than in other markets.
Around 70% of the cars BYD sells in Saudi Arabia are hybrids rather than pure EVs, Montenegro said.
Fahd Abdulrahman, a Saudi browsing at BYD’s Riyadh showroom, said driving range was his major concern about buying an EV.
“I drive a lot, my average is more than 50,000 km (per year). I am afraid that an EV would not serve for that.”
Yet Riyadh has massive development plans, which include a goal of 30% EV adoption by 2030.
It has formed the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Company, which aims to boost the number of chargers to 5,000 by 2030, 50 times the current number.
“EV adoption (in Saudi Arabia) will likely remain below leading countries, such as China, but could still see growth in the coming years,” said Seth Goldstein, equity strategist at Morningstar. “I see growing EV demand as more fast chargers are built and affordable long-range EVs enter the market.”
Pesha Magid and Manya Saini, Reuters
A day care facility in a Texas county that’s part of the measles outbreak has multiple cases, including children too young to be fully vaccinated, public health officials say.West Texas is in the middle of a still-growing measles outbreak with 505 cases reported on Tuesday. The state expanded the number of counties in the outbreak area this week to 10. The highly contagious virus began to spread in late January and health officials say it has spread to New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Mexico.Three people who were unvaccinated have died from measles-related illnesses this year, including two elementary school-aged children in Texas. The second child died Thursday at a Lubbock hospital, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the funeral in Seminole, the epicenter of the outbreak.As of Friday, there were seven cases at a day care where one young child who was infectious gave it to two other children before it spread to other classrooms, Lubbock Public Health director Katherine Wells said.“Measles is so contagious I won’t be surprised if it enters other facilities,” Wells said.The measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is first recommended between 12 and 15 months old and a second shot between 4 and 6 years old.Maegan Messick, co-owner of Tiny Tots U Learning Academy, where the outbreak is occurring, recently told KLBK-TV in Lubbock that they’re taking precautions like putting kids who are too young to get the vaccines together in isolation.“We have tried to be extremely transparent,” she told the TV station.There are more than 200 children at the day care, Wells said. Most have had least one dose of the vaccine, though she added, “we do have some children that have only received one dose that are now infected.”The public health department is recommending that any child with only one vaccine get their second dose early, and changed its recommendation for kids in Lubbock County to get the first vaccine dose at 6 months old instead of 1. A child who is unvaccinated and attends the day care must stay home for 21 days since their last exposure, Wells said.Case count and hospitalization numbers in Texas have climbed steadily since the outbreak began, and spiked by 81 cases from March 28 to April 4.On Tuesday, the state added another 24 cases to its count and two additional counties, Borden and Randall. One more person was hospitalized since Friday, with 57 total.Gaines County, where the virus has been spreading through a close-knit Mennonite community, has the majority of cases, with 328 on Tuesday. Neighboring Terry County is second with 46, followed by Lubbock County with 36.The Texas Department of State Health Services tracks vaccinations rate for kindergartners, though the data doesn’t include homeschooled children or some kids who attend private school. Gaines County’s rate is 82%, which is far below the 95% level needed to prevent community spreadand health officials have said it’s likely lower in the small religious schools and homeschooling groups where the early cases were identified.In Terry County, the vaccination rate for kindergartners is at 96%, while Lubbock County is at 92%.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met with Texas officials Monday to determine how many people it would send to West Texas to assist with the outbreak response, spokesman Jason McDonald said Monday. He expected a small team to arrive later this week, followed by a bigger group on the ground next week.The CDC said its first team was in the region from early March to April 1, withdrawing on-the-ground support days before a second child died in the outbreak.A spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said late Sunday that the governor and first lady were extending their “deepest prayers” to the family and community, and that the state health department had sent epidemiologists, immunization teams and specimen collection units to the area.
AP reporter Amanda Seitz in Washington contributed to this report.
Jamie Stengle, Associated Press
Last month, First Lady Melania Trump used her first public remarks of President Trumps second term to voice her support for the Take It Down Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at curbing deepfake revenge porn. She was joined by Elliston Berry, a Texas teenager who was a victim of deepfake porn. The widespread presence of abusive behavior in the digital domain affects the daily lives of our children, families, and communities, Mrs. Trump said. Every young person deserves a safe online space to express themself freely, without the looming threat of exploitation or harm.
The Take It Down Act unanimously passed the Senate and is now headed for the House. Across the political spectrum, lawmakers generally agree that deepfake porn, in which generative AI renders a sexually explicit likeness of a real person, must be regulated. The public is on board as well. When pornographic deepfakes of Taylor Swift were circulated online, her fans were outraged and social media platforms raced to restrict these images. But the conversation has been framed too narrowly as a problem of exploitation and consent. It is also an existential labor problem: AI-generated porn could put thousands of Americans out of work.
Like it or not, porn is big business. The industry currently operates as a hybrid market. Porn studios hire performers as private contractors, paying them a flat rate per shoot to own the recorded scene and freely disseminate it online. Performers can also create their own porn for OnlyFans, a social media platform primarily for explicit content where users pay for subscriptions to content creators accounts. Pornhub, the largest porn sitereceiving 5.25 billion visits each monthhosts around 20,000 verified performers. On OnlyFans, the numbers are even more staggering. In 2023, OnlyFans received $6.6 billion in payments, generating $1.3 billion in revenue. The company has over four million content creators, an estimated two million of whom are Americanabout twice the number of Uber drivers in the US.
AI throws the porn industry, along with the rest of us, into new legal territory. For promotional purposes, porn studios have long included clauses in performers contracts giving them rights over not only the film itself but also derivatives of all images created during the shoot. These clauses could now grant studios sweeping ownership of performers likeness that they could use to make deepfakes porn scenes without providing additional pay to performers.
But performers face an even broader threat, one that jeopardizes the studio and OnlyFans markets alike: In the not-too-distant future, companies will likely be able to make porn scenes generated by AI that are difficult to distinguish from scenes involving real performers and are cheaper to produce than hiring them. Even if consumers know that the person they are watching is not real, they may not care. Porn performers will not merely have to worry about having their particular likeness stolen for deepfake porn, because their profession as a whole could be largely replaced by AI.
Los Angeles economy, already ravaged by wildfires, would be particularly hard-hit. The San Fernando Valley remains the epicenter of the global porn industry, supporting not only tens of thousands of porn performers and adult content creators, but also other porn industry members, from makeup artists to grips. Los Angeles is a company town, and porn workers are its employees.
One might argue that the porn industry should simply be allowed to collapse. Indeed, this is the tact that has often been taken with sin industries through restrictions on banking, for example. The porn industry has a way to go when it comes to empowering performers, but further cutting into their pay is not the solution. Porn performers are workers, and AI-generated porn poses a threat to their work.
Instead, the porn industry should be recognized as part of the entertainment ecosystemthe rebellious stepsister, shall we say, of the mainstream film industryand shares with it a common foe in AI. SAG-AFTRA, the labor union representing about 160,000 media professionals globally, has made the fight against AI a top priority. The union won important protections for its members in the historic 2023 strike, including consent procedures regarding deepfakes in contracts, minimum pay scales for using deepfakes, and limitations on employing generative AI for screenwriting. In the ongoing video game strike, deepfakes remain the sticking point.
Unfortunately, none of these negotiations will directly help porn performers. Although SAG-AFTRA represents a wide range of media professionalsincluding mainstream actors, screenwriters, broadcast journalists, news writers, DJs, recording artists, stunt performers, puppeteers, and other media professionalsporn performers have never been eligible for membership. The porn industry also struggles to organize from within due to fragmentation and notoriously high turnover. While the Free Speech Coalition serves as the industrys trade association, the industry has no labor union. SAG-AFTRA should add porn performers to its ranks, devoting a branch to their specific needs.
The entertainment ecosystem would be strengthened if media professionals recognize that, when it comes to AI, their fate is intertwined with that of porn performers. Indeed, when it comes to fair compensation and the protection of human labor, all of our jobs may depend on it.
