Backed by President Trump, Elon Musk restarts Tesla factory in defiance of Alameda county orders

74 Comments

Backed by President Trump, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Monday that the company’s factory in Fremont, California is open and has restarted production despite a stay-at-home order issued by Alameda County.

Kirsten Korosec for TechCrunch:

Elon Musk
Elon Musk

Musk’s move follows days of public venting on Twitter as well as a lawsuit — efforts that are all aimed at pressuring Alameda County officials to allow the company to reopen its factory.

Officials at the county, the city of Fremont, and Fremont Police Department, which has jurisdiction on this, are continuing to negotiate with Tesla, Sgt. Ray Kelly, public information officer with Alameda County Sheriff’s Department told TechCrunch.

Tesla filed a lawsuit Saturday against Alameda County seeking injunctive relief, an effort to invalidate orders that have prevented the automaker from reopening. Later that evening, Tesla issued a back to work plan, a 37-page document that outlines how it intends to restart production while keeping employees safe and preventing the potential spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus…

On Monday, [California Governor Gavin] Newsom issued support for Tesla and Musk during his daily COVID-19 briefing, saying that he believes the issue between Alameda County and the company will be resolved in the next few days.

Jessica Bursztynsky for CNBC:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s calls to resume production at its Fremont, California, plant.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin backed Musk on Monday, telling CNBC that California should help the company reopen its plant there amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I agree with Elon Musk. He’s one of the biggest employers and manufacturers in California, and California should prioritize doing whatever they need to do to solve those health issues so that he can open quickly and safely,” Mnuchin told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”

MacDailyNews Note: Here are Musk’s other tweets on the subject:

74 Comments

    1. neutered…… yeah thats what you need to deal with a delay virus…. big tough non neutered idiots throwing their financial weight about , killing workers, so they can make a buck:-)

      Reply

        4. Weaponized the IRS and FBI. Does he know that non-profits like churches lose their tax exempt status if found to be political? If you invite one side you need to invite the other to not be deemed politically partisan and lose the tax exempt status.

        5. That “same old dead horse” is hardly old. It was just last week pertinent news was released noting the scandal. I’m guessing you’re not aware of the case (Flynn’s) and the related implications.

          After 2+ years of one of the biggest lies in American politics/legal system being disproven and you yawn!

          I’ll guess you still recite, “Trump” and “Russian collusion” in the same breath?

        7. “It was true then and it is true now.”

          It was? It is?

          Didn’t the House spend MONTHS interviewing 50+ of the who’s who from every government branch and office in Washington?
          Didn’t Schiff just release the 6,000 pages of transcripts from those interviews?
          Weren’t those 50+ Trump haters unable, UNDER OATH (not while on CNN), to offer ANY proof of collusion?
          Isn’t that why Pelosi, Schiff and Nadler didn’t list Russian Collusion in their vague articles of impeachment?
          Didn’t Hillary’s campaign and the DNC split the cost of the discredited Steel Dossier?

          Either;

          A) The Dem’s Trump / Russia collusion is a hoax, or

          B) Trump is such a god-dammed GENIUS that even after nearly four full years of scrutiny, nobody can find an ounce of anything that will actually stick.

          You figure it out.

    3. You’re just embarrassed because you were caught backing an idiot child and a trader to the United States. And now you are stuck with the crimilal, giving you no choice but to also betray your country.
      Don’t worry, you will always have a friend with Putin.

      Reply

        3. Clearly 2014 / 2016 was using 99% figuratively, not literally. But, you knew that and you still went ahead with your ridiculous 3.6 million post… based on the ENTIRE population being infected.

        6. Without social distancing, testing, tracing, and effective isolation protocols, why would it NOT infect the entire population? With over 80,000 dead, we still aren’t even a fifth of the way to herd immunity.

        7. Tell me again hugh. before COVID-19, how many babies were murdered daily in America due to, as you say, “an inconvenience” and personal privacy, that the country was okay with? Yet you consider people who have not had a paycheck in the past three months as selfish and how dare they. How dare you! Why should the body count of Corona virus be special? Think of the green house reduction with the rerduction of the population. The environmentalists will be happy.

        8. “How dare you! Why should the body count of Corona virus be special? ”
          So it’s okay if the born die…?

          Somehow they don’t have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but the unborn do?

          Manage your own life.

        4. I’m not sure that the 2nd Amendment covers dildos, but thank you applecynic for thrusting your dildo into the comments.

        6. Pardon me, if I may INSERT myself into this conversation, while the Founding Fathers did not specifically mention DILDOS, I think they are FIRMLY protected by the 2nd Amendment. This would be especially true if applecynic or any other individual were to use their dildo(s) for protection. Remember, always use PROTECTION.

        8. I don’t own a gun. Didn’t visit my Statehouse. I respect my health. Almost THREE months since my last paycheck. I can’t wait until after the election to get back to work. Can you respect my need to make house payments and buy food for my family? Or should I shelter in place until December?

        9. You have a valid point, all the way around, but this isn’t about the election.
          Meanwhile government, yes government, should be helping us all find solutions here. Freezing loan payments, for instance, without penalty when they resume. Same for utilities, etc.

        10. This isn’t about the election?

          While the virus is a medical issue, it is also economic and political. Why is Biden bashing Trump about the virus? Why has Obama opened his mouth – after 3 1/2 years of relative quiet – to bash Trump about the virus (maybe to deflect that whole FBI Russia thing… but that is another story).

          The virus is political. Elections are political.

    2. Darwin is busily doing his thing in the big cities. He’s multitasking, in fact.

      He did seem to postulate per survival factors…right? He was seen putting feathers in the caps of those that multitasked with the danger at hand and the goal in mind. He had flowers delivered to those that were afraid to leave their cave, because they eventually became too gaunt and weak to til the field and hunt their prey. Unfortunately, for those, the PPP had it’s limits too.

      Reply

    3. Elon Musk and Donald Trump aren’t risking their lives, just other folks. They would argue that Darwin working is when men who inherit hundreds of millions of dollars survive and working folks and retirees don’t.

      I don’t want to hear any more from any of you fans of this about law and order. We live in a system that is no longer directed by laws but by the arbitrary whims of powerful individuals who are convinced they can act with impunity.

      Reply

    2. So, Sherm, you also favor pardoning shoplifters and burglars who wanted to make a living so they could feed their families? Either we live in a society governed by laws or we live under anarchy.

      This isn’t civil disobedience. Tolstoy, Gandhi, and King fully expected to pay the penalty when they broke the law. The current crop of scofflaws fully expect to get away with it. They believe they are under the protection of a man who can literally do anything he wants, and who has made it clear throughout his life that economic self-interest ranks higher on his moral hierarchy than humanity in any sense.

      Reply

    3. Orange Chosen One is a socialist. Feds are buying corporate bonds so the corporate fat cats who outsourced manufacturing to Chyyyyna won’t feel any pain. Small US companies have been screwed by the trickle down artists in this administration and every prior GOP administration since the party abandoned the premise of fiscal responsibility. Taxpayers are funding bigger bailouts than a decade ago when the last GOP crash occurred. Only this time there are no ammo in the box. The last 3 years of top down stimulus went to corporate stock buybacks, not federal fiscal health and rainy day funds. This administration fired anyone who proposed keeping any government safety nets in place. The real actions of the Orange Chosen One have never lined up with the rhetoric. He’s devastated farmers, he’s killing small businesses. Wake up, people!

      Reply

  4. If only trump had the same conviction early on with the virus instead of ignoring his intel and calling it a Dem hoax – we wouldn’t be in this situation today.

    Reply

    2. A 20 second search and you will easily find The President’s exact words with Google or Duck Duck Go. Free your mind and think for yourself.

      During a Feb. 28, 2020, campaign rally in South Carolina, President Donald Trump likened the Democrats’ criticism of his administration’s response to the new coronavirus outbreak to their efforts to impeach him, saying “this is their new hoax.”

      Turn down the volume on the CNN soundbites (written and dictated by the DNC) and read Trump’s words with your own eyes.

      Reply

      1. English can be hard to understand. “this is their new hoax.” Sounds like hoax to me. And the memo went out so all the right wing hate cult could parrot it.

        Reply

        1. Yes, English can be hard for you to understand. Let’s try again…

          Trump compared the Democrats’ criticism of his administration’s response to Covid-19 to their efforts to impeach him, saying “this is their new hoax.”

          “This” does not refer to ‘virus.’ In the sentence above, “this” refers to ‘the Dems criticism’ of him.

          Trump did not say the virus is a hoax

          Period

          .

      2. He did not call the virus itself a hoax. Nobody ever said he did. What he DID say that the efforts of the media and Democrats to paint the virus as a threat were a hoax. In that same late-February timeframe, he was assuring Americans that “the number of cases is going down, not up” and that it would “go away in April.” In view of subsequent events, it is pretty clear that the media and Democrat concern was not a hoax.

        Reply

  6. So I get these pop up notifications every time I come to MDN warning me that with the precipitous drops offs in ad revenue and the site may not survive.

    The first few times I was keen to make a donation, but then I get to articles where the comments descend into tribal battles like this one. I’ve been reading this site near-daily since 2005 and they used to be rare, really rare.

    Sure, we’re in the middle of a pandemic that has pushed institutions in the US to their limits, but the trend on this site in my opinion started long before Trump was elected.

    I would be sad to see MDN go. Its takes are often acerbic yet insightful. The stories used to be laser focused on Mac-related goodies that I used to lap up as a new switcher. I used to come here to feel excited to be an Apple user, to discuss Apple and the Mac amongst knowledgeable and passionate others. That excitement has slowly worn away.

    I think I speak for a lot of current and former regulars that, on the whole, the Apple news community (and its readers) would be better off without MDN today.

    That’s why I can’t bring myself to prolong MDN any longer than it can survive naturally.

    Reply

    1. Fsck MDN. It’s a political morass masquerading as a tech news aggregate. You would do better to bookmark reliable news outlets that actually write and produce real content.

      Reply

        1. All homo sapiens are monkeys. Some have evolved to think for themselves, others come to MDN to parrot GOP/Russian propaganda. You know who you are.

          Ironic that the same people who emphatically spew their irrational hate for half the USA today, especially anything from CA or NY —- have lionized old Dementia Reagan, former actor and governor of California as well as Lyin’ Donald, bankruptcy king of NY. All while buying tons of liberal computers and financial services from the people they obviously detest. Self absorbed Towertone, FirstPickAYear, and Dd will demonstrate this momentarily.

          If the old Confederacy you love is so facking great, why don’t you make your own iPhones?

        2. Well done Mrs. GoeB.
          But your son’s okay too, we’re just opposite!
          How do we get Dd and Firsty to stop listening to Dildo Don? You know, the prick without a heart!

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