Latest news with #DepartmentofGovernmentEfficiency
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
White House floats a new funding trick — and GOP lawmakers grimace
Russ Vought's relationship with Republican appropriators was already strained. Then he started talking about pursuing the ultimate end-run around their funding power heading into the fall. The White House budget director has been persistently touting the virtues of 'pocket rescissions,' a tactic he has floated as a way to codify the spending cuts Elon Musk made while atop his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, and which the federal government's top watchdog says is illegal. On Capitol Hill, leading GOP appropriators see Vought's comments as another shot against them in an escalating battle with the Trump administration over Congress' 'power of the purse.' And they warn that the budget director's adversarial posture hinders their relationship with the White House as they work to head off a government shutdown in just over three months. "Pocket rescissions are illegal, in my judgment," Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a brief interview this week, "and contradict the will of Congress and the constitutional authority of Congress to appropriate funds." To hear Vought tell it, a "pocket rescission" is a legitimate tool at the executive branch's disposal. In such a scenario, President Donald Trump would issue a formal request to claw back funding, similar to the $9.4 billion package he sent lawmakers this month to cancel congressionally approved funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid. But in this case, the memo would land on Capitol Hill less than 45 days before the new fiscal year is set to begin Oct. 1. By withholding the cash for that full timeframe — regardless of action by Congress — the White House would treat the funding as expired when the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. The dizzying ploy is another means toward the same goal Trump has been chasing since Inauguration Day: to spend less money than Congress has explicitly mandated in law. But the Government Accountability Office says the maneuver is unlawful, and the GOP lawmakers in charge of divvying up federal funding are wary that Vought is now talking about it in the open. 'I understand we want to use all the arrows in our quiver, and he wants to use all his,' Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said of Vought in an interview. 'But every time you pull out an arrow, you have to be ready for the consequences, right?' Joyce continued: 'It's going to change the course of conversations and how each side works toward coming to resolution going forward.' Vought declined last week to elaborate on his intentions, when pressed in person on Capitol Hill about his plans to use the ploy in the coming months. His office also did not return a request for comment. However, the budget director laid out a detailed argument for the maneuver on television earlier in the month — then mentioned it again as he left a meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson and then during a later hearing with House appropriators. 'The very Impoundment Control Act itself allows for a procedure called pocket rescissions, later in the year, to be able to bank some of these savings, without the bill actually being passed,' Vought said on CNN. 'It's a provision that has been rarely used. But it is there. And we intend to use all of these tools.' Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the Interior Department and the EPA, recently warned that the gambit is 'a bad idea" that "undermines Congress' authority," after saying last month that he thinks "it's illegal" for a president to withhold funding lawmakers approved. But many top Republican appropriators — while scoffing at Vought's comments — aren't willing to engage in rhetorical arguments about the bounds of the president's spending power. 'Talking is one thing. We'll see if he actually does it,' Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the military, said about Vought's comments. 'He's got his ideas,' said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), chair of the appropriations panel responsible for funding the departments of Transportation and Housing. 'I'd have some concerns about it,' said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services — all targets of Trump's deepest funding cuts. Tension has been building for months between those Republican appropriators and Vought, who has a history of testing the limits of funding law: When he served in this same role during Trump's first administration, he froze aid to Ukraine in a move that helped set the stage for the president's first impeachment trial. Republican funding leaders are irked that the White House has yet to deliver a full budget request, which appropriators rely upon to write their dozen funding measures. Vought has already left open the door to withholding the new money if the administration doesn't agree with the spending priorities in the final bills. They also say the president's budget director and other Cabinet secretaries have withheld essential information about how they are using federal cash as the Trump administration fights off more than 100 legal challenges around the country. The suits are seeking to overturn the White House's freezing of billions of dollars Congress already approved for myriad programs and agencies. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) issued a rare rebuke of Vought this spring for taking down the public website showing how agencies are expected to disburse federal dollars. But the Oklahoma Republican generally avoids any public criticism of the Trump administration and is not sounding off now about Vought's embrace of pocket rescissions. Cole said this month that he would 'look at each individual' request the White House sends to claw back funding, now that the House has passed the $9.4 billion package to nix money for foreign aid and public broadcasting. That package of funding cuts now sits in the Senate, where some top Republicans are interested in tweaking the plan to protect funding for preventing AIDS around the world and supporting PBS programming in their home states. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested Vought's public comments about using pocket rescissions could be intended to encourage reluctant senators to clear it. 'Maybe that's the way to let members know: Vote for the ones he sends up,' Johnson said, noting that he would be 'totally supportive' of Vought using the tactic this fall. Another Senate fiscal hawk, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said he believes the law 'does allow for pocket rescissions.' 'I think the president should have more power not to spend money,' Paul told reporters last week. 'So if we have a way to reduce spending, by all means, we should use it.' No court has ruled on the president's power to cancel funding by sending Congress a request and then running out the clock at the end of the fiscal year. But GAO has twice weighed in. In 2018, the watchdog found that the law 'does not permit the withholding of funds through their date of expiration." Vought, though, likes to cite an older GAO conclusion from 1975: It determined that Congress was unable to reject then-President Gerald Ford's requests to claw back funding 'in time to prevent the budget authority from lapsing.' Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
Gulf Insider
5 hours ago
- Business
- Gulf Insider
Elon Musk On The Coming AI "Tsunami"
Tech billionaire Elon Musk waxed poetic about his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency in Washington, D.C., describing the experience as significant but secondary to a more pressing challenge: preparing society for the rapid rise of disruptive artificial intelligence. 'Fixing the government is like, say, the beach is dirty and there's some needles and feces and trash,' Musk begin in an interview with Garry Tan of Y Combinator. 'But then there's also this thousand-foot wall of water, which is a tsuami of AI.' 'How much does cleaning the beach really matter if you've got a thousand-foot tsumai about to hit? Not that much,' the Tesla CEO continued. 'Back to the main quest of building technology, which is what I like doing.' 'The signal to noise ratio in politics is terrible,' he added. .@elonmusk on DOGE: "Fixing the government is kind of like there's some needles, feces and trash, and you want to clean up the beach." "How much does cleaning the beach matter if you've got a thousand-foot AI tsunami about to hit?" — Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) June 19, 2025 On May 28th, Musk announced his departure from DOGE, concluding his 130-day tenure as a special government employee in the Trump administration. Later in the interview, Musk predicted that AI will drive an economy thousands or millions of times larger than today's size, if it doesn't wipe us out first. 'AI will so profoundly change the future, it's difficult to fathom how much. But, you know, the economy, assuming we don't, things don't go awry, and AI doesn't kill us all and itself, then you'll see ultimately an economy that is not, not ten times more than the current economy,' Musk said. 'Ultimately, if we become, say, or whatever our future machine descendants, or mostly machine descendants, become a Kardashev scale two civilization or beyond, we're talking about an economy that is thousands of times, maybe millions of times, bigger than the economy today.' Musk then mused how society is on the brink of digital superintelligence that could outsmart humans, predicting it might hit as soon as this year or next. 'I think we're quite close to digital superintelligence,' the billionaire said. 'It may happen this year and if it doesn't happen this year next, year for sure.' 🚨 BREAKING: Elon Musk says we're very close to Digital Super Intelligence. It may happen this year, and if it doesn't happen this year, next year for sure. A Digital Super Intelligence is defined as smarter than any human at anything. — DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) June 19, 2025 Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI, is reportedly seeking to raise $4.3 billion in equity financing This capital raise would complement a separate $5 billion debt financing effort for a combined entity encompassing xAI and X, the social media platform. The fundraising push follows a $6 billion cash injection xAI received in December, signaling the company's aggressive drive to bolster its AI capabilities amid intensifying industry competition.
Politico
9 hours ago
- Business
- Politico
White House floats a new funding trick — and GOP lawmakers grimace
Russ Vought's relationship with Republican appropriators was already strained. Then he started talking about pursuing the ultimate end-run around their funding power heading into the fall. The White House budget director has been persistently touting the virtues of 'pocket rescissions,' a tactic he has floated as a way to codify the spending cuts Elon Musk made while atop his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, and which the federal government's top watchdog says is illegal. On Capitol Hill, leading GOP appropriators see Vought's comments as another shot against them in an escalating battle with the Trump administration over Congress' 'power of the purse.' And they warn that the budget director's adversarial posture hinders their relationship with the White House as they work to head off a government shutdown in just over three months. 'Pocket rescissions are illegal, in my judgment,' Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a brief interview this week, 'and contradict the will of Congress and the constitutional authority of Congress to appropriate funds.' To hear Vought tell it, a 'pocket rescission' is a legitimate tool at the executive branch's disposal. In such a scenario, President Donald Trump would issue a formal request to claw back funding, similar to the $9.4 billion package he sent lawmakers this month to cancel congressionally approved funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid. But in this case, the memo would land on Capitol Hill less than 45 days before the new fiscal year is set to begin Oct. 1. By withholding the cash for that full timeframe — regardless of action by Congress — the White House would treat the funding as expired when the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. The dizzying ploy is another means toward the same goal Trump has been chasing since Inauguration Day: to spend less money than Congress has explicitly mandated in law. But the Government Accountability Office says the maneuver is unlawful, and the GOP lawmakers in charge of divvying up federal funding are wary that Vought is now talking about it in the open. 'I understand we want to use all the arrows in our quiver, and he wants to use all his,' Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said of Vought in an interview. 'But every time you pull out an arrow, you have to be ready for the consequences, right?' Joyce continued: 'It's going to change the course of conversations and how each side works toward coming to resolution going forward.' Vought declined last week to elaborate on his intentions, when pressed in person on Capitol Hill about his plans to use the ploy in the coming months. His office also did not return a request for comment. However, the budget director laid out a detailed argument for the maneuver on television earlier in the month — then mentioned it again as he left a meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson and then during a later hearing with House appropriators. 'The very Impoundment Control Act itself allows for a procedure called pocket rescissions, later in the year, to be able to bank some of these savings, without the bill actually being passed,' Vought said on CNN. 'It's a provision that has been rarely used. But it is there. And we intend to use all of these tools.' Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the Interior Department and the EPA, recently warned that the gambit is 'a bad idea' that 'undermines Congress' authority,' after saying last month that he thinks 'it's illegal' for a president to withhold funding lawmakers approved. But many top Republican appropriators — while scoffing at Vought's comments — aren't willing to engage in rhetorical arguments about the bounds of the president's spending power. 'Talking is one thing. We'll see if he actually does it,' Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the military, said about Vought's comments. 'He's got his ideas,' said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), chair of the appropriations panel responsible for funding the departments of Transportation and Housing. 'I'd have some concerns about it,' said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services — all targets of Trump's deepest funding cuts. Tension has been building for months between those Republican appropriators and Vought, who has a history of testing the limits of funding law: When he served in this same role during Trump's first administration, he froze aid to Ukraine in a move that helped set the stage for the president's first impeachment trial. Republican funding leaders are irked that the White House has yet to deliver a full budget request, which appropriators rely upon to write their dozen funding measures. Vought has already left open the door to withholding the new money if the administration doesn't agree with the spending priorities in the final bills. They also say the president's budget director and other Cabinet secretaries have withheld essential information about how they are using federal cash as the Trump administration fights off more than 100 legal challenges around the country. The suits are seeking to overturn the White House's freezing of billions of dollars Congress already approved for myriad programs and agencies. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) issued a rare rebuke of Vought this spring for taking down the public website showing how agencies are expected to disburse federal dollars. But the Oklahoma Republican generally avoids any public criticism of the Trump administration and is not sounding off now about Vought's embrace of pocket rescissions. Cole said this month that he would 'look at each individual' request the White House sends to claw back funding, now that the House has passed the $9.4 billion package to nix money for foreign aid and public broadcasting. That package of funding cuts now sits in the Senate, where some top Republicans are interested in tweaking the plan to protect funding for preventing AIDS around the world and supporting PBS programming in their home states. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested Vought's public comments about using pocket rescissions could be intended to encourage reluctant senators to clear it. 'Maybe that's the way to let members know: Vote for the ones he sends up,' Johnson said, noting that he would be 'totally supportive' of Vought using the tactic this fall. Another Senate fiscal hawk, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said he believes the law 'does allow for pocket rescissions.' 'I think the president should have more power not to spend money,' Paul told reporters last week. 'So if we have a way to reduce spending, by all means, we should use it.' No court has ruled on the president's power to cancel funding by sending Congress a request and then running out the clock at the end of the fiscal year. But GAO has twice weighed in. In 2018, the watchdog found that the law 'does not permit the withholding of funds through their date of expiration.' Vought, though, likes to cite an older GAO conclusion from 1975: It determined that Congress was unable to reject then-President Gerald Ford's requests to claw back funding 'in time to prevent the budget authority from lapsing.' Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
Daily Maverick
a day ago
- Health
- Daily Maverick
Elon Musk, depression and South Africa's cowboy ketamine clinics
Elon Musk admitted to using it for depression, Friends actor Matthew Perry died from using too much of it and in South Africa, some ketamine healthcare providers are serving it up irresponsibly. So what's ketamine all about? 'To be clear, I am NOT taking drugs!' the richest man in the world announced on his social media platform X at the end of May. 'The New York Times was lying their ass off.' Elon Musk – originally from South Africa and until recently the head of the Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency which cut billions of dollars in foreign aid – was responding to a New York Times investigation that reported he was using drugs, particularly the psychedelic-inducing drug ketamine, while he was on the campaign trail with President Donald Trump. 'I tried prescription ketamine a few years ago and said so on X, so this [is] not even news. It helps for getting out of dark mental holes, but I haven't taken it since then,' he told The New York Times. Musk also made these remarks two months ago on The Don Lemon Show. Ketamine has been used for decades as an anaesthetic drug. But in the past few years more and more psychiatrists have been using it for hard-to-treat depression – and not without reason. Peer-reviewed research, such as this study, which pooled the results of dozens of studies, shows that ketamine, when used in combination with other antidepressants, could help even the most treatment-resistant depression patients to lift their mood. In South Africa, treatment-resistant depression is mostly regarded as depression in someone for whom at least two antidepressants haven't worked. Musk has openly talked about having occasional periods of depression, but not necessarily treatment-resistant depression. Because ketamine causes temporary ' dissociative effects ', patients should only use the drug for the treatment of depression in the presence of a health professional, who either gives it to them, for instance as a drip, or supervises them taking it as a nasal spray. Dissociative effects change someone's level of consciousness or their perceptions of themselves or environment. Some patients say this feels like being 'spaced out' or 'dreaming'. These psychedelic effects, and the fact that ketamine can make people feel happier, are part of the reason ketamine is also used as a street drug, often known as 'Vitamin K' or 'Special K'. Musk told The Don Lemon Show that he gets ' a prescription from a real doctor ', but he didn't confirm whether he takes the medicine in the presence of doctors, as it should be, only that he takes ' a small amount of ketamine every other week ', with 'several weeks going by where I don't use it'. In South Africa, ketamine is registered as a 'schedule five' drug with our medicines regulator, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra). Schedule five drugs can't be bought over the counter and can only be obtained with a doctor's prescription. But in the case of ketamine, a patient can also not collect the medicine directly from a pharmacy, since the taking of it for the treatment of depression has to be supervised by a health professional. In 2022, ketamine was approved as a nasal spray for treatment-resistant depression, but psychiatrists told Bhekisisa the spray isn't available in the country. Some healthcare providers in South Africa are also administering the drug off label as a drip; that's when doctors use a legally registered medication to treat an illness that it hasn't been approved for. Off-label use is a common practice for many medicines, but it has to be done responsibly. In the case of ketamine, the South African Society of Psychiatrists (Sasop), has published guidelines for its use for the treatment of depression. This includes that it's only used for treatment-resistant depression, and only in drip form, not as an intramuscular injection or as a tablet that dissolves under your tongue. Ketamine also has to be given by an anaesthetist or a GP with a diploma in anaesthetics 'in an environment where it is possible to monitor the patient and potentially resuscitate'. But Bhekisisa's TV programme, Health Beat, found many 'cowboy clinics' where unqualified workers give ketamine to people with depression and for conditions such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, for which there isn't credible evidence that it works. Sahpra's CEO, Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela, told Health Beat: '[Although off-label use] is an informed decision, on published clinical evidence, [it's important to remember] that it means that if anything happens to a patient, they [patients or healthcare providers] then cannot hold the manufacturer responsible when it, in fact, registered the product for a different indication.' Experts say unregulated use of ketamine is not only risky, it can be deadly, because if someone takes too much it can raise their blood pressure, make it hard to breathe and, among other things, cause seizures. In an autopsy, authorities in Los Angeles found that Friends actor Matthew Perry, who played the character Chandler Bing and wrote about his history of drug dependency, died in 2024 of what authorities called the 'acute effects' of ketamine abuse, which was administered intravenously. Mia Malan recently spoke with the psychiatrist Dr Bavi Vythilingum, a member of the South African Society of Psychiatrists, who helped write the guidelines for ketamine use in South Africa, in Bhekisisa's May episode of Health Beat. The interview was edited for clarity. Mia Malan (MM): Why are psychiatrists talking about ketamine right now? Bavi Vythilingum (BV): It's probably the first completely novel antidepressant that we've had for a long time. So, with antidepressants, it usually takes about, say, two to three weeks for it to work. With ketamine, you can get a response within two to three days, and sometimes, as we give the infusion patients feel better. MM: Why does it work so fast? BV: We're not 100% sure, but we think it's because it's working on the glutamate receptor and causes very big neurodevelopmental changes very rapidly, and that's what gives you that rapid onset of action. MM: What is a glutamate receptor? BV: Glutamate is a brain neurotransmitter like serotonin and noradrenaline. Glutamate is situated throughout the brain and ketamine works on that receptor. MM: So it's something that helps you to feel good? BV: If you're taking ketamine, for example, for drug use, it would produce an altered state of consciousness, which can make you feel good, but can also be unpleasant. But certainly, for depression, it seems to work for a lot of people. MM: So, who gets ketamine? Is it people who need to be helped immediately, and then you wean them off it? Or how does it work? BV: There are two groups of people who would get ketamine: those who are extremely depressed, extremely suicidal and a danger to themselves, where we need a very rapid onset of action. And the second group are what we call treatment resistant, where they have failed what we call an adequate trial – that's a trial at a high enough dose for a long enough period of two standard antidepressants. MM: And if you then put such a patient on ketamine, what happens? BV: Most people who have ketamine will have a non-ordinary state of consciousness where they may feel they are not in their body, what we call dissociation. They may experience reality in different ways. They may see complex shapes and colours. They may feel sounds as being colours. It can be a beautiful experience, but it can also be an anxiety-provoking experience. MM: How long would that last? BV: As long as we give the infusion, usually about 40 minutes. Then they go home and they come back after two to three days for a total of about six infusions. MM: What happens after that? BV: There's no internationally recognised standard of maintenance. We're still trying to understand how we should do it. But there are definitely some people who get very well on ketamine and don't get well on other stuff. And for them, we need to top up. So, initially we would top up every week to two weeks, for about four weeks, and then reassess. There are some people who need monthly ketamine, but we do that with caution, and we do a constant reassessment of a patient to see if we still need to give it. MM: What about addiction? BV: We have to assess somebody very carefully for previous and current substance use. So if somebody is an active substance user, even if they're not using ketamine – say they're an alcoholic – you'd be very cautious about giving ketamine. MM: Who can give ketamine? We have heard of many clinics that give it where it's not psychiatrists giving it, where a GP gives infusions. Is that legal? BV: It is technically not illegal, because any doctor can give any medication. That's a Health Professions Council of South Africa regulation. But you have to be within the scope of your practice, which means you have to be able to prescribe and you have to be able to manage the [possible drug] complications. Sasop's position is that only psychiatrists can prescribe ketamine because it is for either emergencies or treatment resistance situations. But we follow the principles of the South African Society of Anaesthesiologists, in that people must have an anaesthetic qualification. So I, as a psychiatrist, will prescribe, but I don't give ketamine. My anaesthetic colleagues are the people who give ketamine. MM: What does ketamine treatment cost? BV: You're looking at about R2,400 to R2,500 per infusion. The big cost of that is around personnel because you need an anaesthetically trained doctor and a nurse. MM: Do medical aids pay for it? BV: Medical aids are starting to pay. So your top-tier medical aids will pay for ketamine upon motivation, but the medical aids are reluctant to pay. And a big cause of the reluctance is all these so-called cowboy ketamine clinics. The medical aids are saying, quite rightly, that they don't know if ketamine is going to be given safely. DM
New York Post
a day ago
- Business
- New York Post
Elon Musk rips Trump personnel director Sergio Gor as ‘a snake'
WASHINGTON — Elon Musk ripped President Trump's personnel director Sergio Gor as 'a snake' following The Post's report that Gor failed to submit himself to a standard background check despite serving as the administration's top vetter of political appointees. 'He's a snake,' the former Department of Government Efficiency leader tweeted late Wednesday. Gor, 38, allegedly played a major role in causing Trump's intense falling-out with Musk, 53, this month by convincing the president to yank the nomination of the SpaceX CEO's personal friend Jared Isaacman to lead NASA shortly before the Senate was due to confirm him. 6 Elon Musk tore into President Trump's top personnel official as a 'snake' Wednesday. Francis Chung/POOL via CNP/ Musk and Trump have taken steps to walk back a stunning bout of insults that peaked June 5 when the billionaire endorsed Trump's impeachment and the president threatened to cancel 'Billions and Billions of dollars' of federal contracts for Musk's companies. Gor's role in the saga outraged some of Trump's key advisers who viewed him as allowing personal grievances to put at risk the president's political agenda. 6 Personnel director Sergio Gor allegedly helped cause Musk's rift with Trump this month. Facebook/Sergio Gor Musk was Trump's top financial donor in last year's election, pouring more than $250 million into the campaign. Isaacman's nomination was one of the few that Musk intensely cared about, sources said, and the revocation turned Musk's tepid criticism of a bill packed with Trump's campaign promises — including to cut taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security — into outspoken calls to 'kill' the legislation, backed by a call to unseat those who vote in favor. 6 Gor convinced Trump to pull the nomination of Musk's friend Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, purportedly over his donations to Democrats. REUTERS Gor, tasked with recruiting and vetting more than 4,000 executive-branch appointees, said Isaacman was pulled over his donations to Democrats and that Trump made the final decision. A number of prominent former Democrats serve in Trump's administration, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. 6 Trump and Musk bitterly fought this month before quietly walking back insults. The presidential personnel chief, meanwhile, did not submit his Standard Form 86, or SF-86, to begin a standard security clearance background check — despite virtually all other White House aides doing so. The form is typically submitted before officials begin work. Gor, who has an interim security clearance, has now 'completed' the more than 100-page questionaire for a permanent clearance, the White House says, though it's unclear when he intends to submit it. 6 Musk was a constant presence alongside Trump during the president's first few months back in power. Getty Images 6 Musk led Trump's efforts to pare down the size of the federal government. AFP via Getty Images The form requires security-clearance applicants to list their birthplace and foreign connections. Gor has described himself as from Malta, but the Maltese government confirmed to The Post he was not born there. The powerful aide, who says he immigrated to the US at age 12, declined to identify his birthplace, other than to say it was not Russia. Gor did not immediately respond to The Post's request for comment on Musk's tweet.
