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“I prefer to stay out of politics." Those were Elon Musk’s words when forced in September 2021 to respond to a claim by Texas governor Greg Abbott that he supported the state’s anti-abortion laws. If he really does prefer to stay out of politics, however, Musk has a funny way of showing it. Over his many years of fame as the chief executive of Tesla, SpaceX, and now Twitter, the South African-born tycoon has attacked everyone and everything from Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders through individual regulatory officials to Covid rules, trade unions, and "pronouns". Since 2022, his public political stances have taken a sharp rightward turn as he declared his support for the Republican Party, aligned himself with far-right activists on Twitter, disparaged transgender rights, embraced conservative conspiracy theories, and pledged to save civilisation from the “woke mind virus”. His activities appear to have earned him the patronage of Florida’s GOP governor Ron DeSantis, who was announcing that he is running for president during a conversation with Musk in Twitter’s audio panel service Spaces on Wednesday 24 May. It is a striking departure from the 51-year-old’s aproach to politics before the Covid pandemic, when he carefully triangulated between left and right and donated to both Democrats and Republicans while variously declaring himself a “moderate”, a “socialist”, and “socially liberal and fiscally conservative”. Yet despite evidence to the contrary, Musk still claims to be an independent who is “neither conventionally right nor left” and committed to healthy debate. So what does Elon Musk really believe? And – given that he is both one of the world’s richest people and the owner of one of its largest social networks – what does that mean for the rest of us? Embracing the Republican Party Let’s start with Musk’s recent support for the US Republican Party, which has been clear and unambiguous, if not without caveats. “In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division and hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican,” he said in May. This came after months of criticism of President Joe Biden, which included hammering his flagship infrastructure and social spending bills for granting subsidies to the electric car industry and increasing the “insane” federal budget deficit. Musk later called the president a “damp sock puppet in human form”. In June 2022, Musk went further, revealing he had voted for Republican congressional candidate Maya Flores in a special election – the first time, he claimed, that he had ever cast a vote for the GOP. “Massive red wave in 2022,” Musk tweeted, though it was unclear if he meant this as a prediction or a rallying cry. Florida governor Ron DeSantis joked about the South African-born billionaire’s comments: “I’m focused on 2022, but with Elon Musk, what I would say is I welcome support from African Americans. What can I say?” Despite all this, Musk has stopped short of declaring his permanent support for the party as a whole. Following his tweet about the special election, one Twitter user asked: “I assume Republican for president [too]?” “[To be determined],” Musk replied. “What are you leaning towards?” he was asked in a follow-up question. “DeSantis,” he said. Similarly, the mogul’s endorsement of the Republican Party on the day before the US midterms in November 2022 was somewhat qualified. “To independent-minded voters: Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties,” he told his his 115 million Twitter followers. “Therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the presidency is Democratic. Hardcore Democrats or Republicans never vote for the other side, so independent voters are the ones who actually decide who’s in charge!” After the election, Musk added: “To be clear, my historical party affiliation has been Independent, with an actual voting history of entirely Democrat until this year. And I’m open to the idea of voting Democrat again in the future.” A self-proclaimed ‘centrist’ who donates to both paties Musk’s caveats about supporting the GOP echo his longstanding claim to be a “centrist” or an “independent” who does not fit into traditional boxes of left or right. For years, he has offered varying definitions of his own politics. His most consistent theme has been that he is “socially liberal and fiscally conservative”, or even “socially very liberal”. In 2020, he put it this way: “I’m socially very liberal. And then economically right of center, maybe, or center. I don’t know. I’m obviously not a communist.” In 2018, he described himself as “a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks”, referring to the late Scottish sci-fi author who wrote longingly (if sceptically) of a space-faring anarcho-socialist civilisation called the Culture, which has no money, no poverty, no wage labour, no police, no prisons, no standing army, and nearly infinite abundance of basic goods. At another point Musk claimed to be a “socialist”, but “not the kind that shifts resources from most productive to least productive”. He later said we should not take what he’d said too seriously. In April 2021, he posted a stick figure cartoon on Twitter that depicted political moderates, including himself, standing still on the political spectrum while the left accelerates away into extremism, dragging the centre ground away and making moderates appear right-wing by comparison. The following November, he professed himself “neither conventionally right nor left”, and in December remarked: "You know Twitter is being fair when extremists on far right and far left are simultaneously upset!" Musk’s political donations offer some support for this. According to data gathered by the non-profit lobbying watchdog Open Secrets, Elon Musk has given a total of $1.2m to politicians, parties, political action committees (PACs), and referendum campaigns since 2002. That money went almost equally to Democrats, with $542,000, and Republicans, with $574,500, with another $85,000 going to two broadly left-wing referendum campaigns in California. The balance has fluctuated over the years: in 2006, 2013 and 2017 he donated overwhelmingly to Republicans, while in 2015 he gave exclusively to Democrats. He has also given a total of $30,000 to a PAC set up by SpaceX, which donated 54 per cent of its total to Democrats and 46 per cent to Republicans. Many of the individual politicians he gave to were state legislators in California, where Tesla was formerly based, and Texas, where SpaceX has long maintained rocket testing and launch facilities. Musk donated to more individual Democratic politicians than to Republicans, and often praised specific Democrats in a way he has rarely done with their opponents. Way back in 2005, he gave $10,000 to California’s Proposition 82, a proposal to increase taxes on the rich to pay for universal pre-school for four-year-olds, although it did not pass. When Donald Trump was a candidate for the Republican nomination, Musk said of him: “I feel a bit stronger that he is probably not the right guy. He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.” Musk says he voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Meanwhile, SpaceX itself has spent about $9.7m on lobbyists and Tesla has spent $5.5m. The former company relies on government contracts for much of its revenue, while the latter is subject to plenty of regulation. "SpaceX's campaign to win political support has been systematic and sophisticated," wrote the Sunlight Foundation in 2013. Musk has described these donations not as a signal of his own personal beliefs but simply as the cost of doing business in America. "In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution," he told the Huffington Post in 2013. All of which helps explain why the first version of this article – back in December 2021 – framed Musk’s political beliefs as elusive and somewhat puzzling. Since then, however, Musk’s own behaviour has made that idea rather outdated. Elon Musk, culture warrior There’s no avoiding the obvious: Musk appears to have been thoroughly red-pilled. Originally drawn from the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix, the “the red pill” is a phrase used by white supremacists and anti-feminists to describe the process of being radicalised into their worldview. Musk himself urged his Twitter followers to “take the red pill” in April 2020. It is a neat expression of how far down the culture war “rabbit hole” Musk has burrowed since then. He has described “wokeness” as a “mind virus” that poses a “mortal threat to civilisation”, declaring: “The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters.” In a June 2022 interview with The Babylon Bee, a conservative satire site, he said: "At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary and hateful. It basically gives mean people... a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue." In a similar vein, he mocked Twitter’s adoption in 2016 of “Stay Woke” T-shirts inspired by the 2014 Ferguson protests against police racism, claiming that the protesters’ “Hands up, don’t shoot” slogan was “made up” and that “the whole thing was a fiction”. The US Justice Department did indeed clear the officer who shot Michael Brown, but also concluded that Ferguson police had “routinely” violated citizens’ constitutional rights and discriminated against Black people. Texas governor Greg Abbott, to whom Musk donated $10,000 in 2014, has claimed that Musk “likes the social policies” of his state, which include banning almost all abortion and defining transgender healthcare for under-18s as “child abuse”. Musk rebuffed him, but ambiguously and mildly, with nothing like the fire and brimstone he has mustered against trade unions or tax proposals. Musk has also boosted right-wing conspiracy theories, claiming that health tsar Anthony Fauci should be prosecuted and sharing a groundless claim about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband from a website with a history of fake news. As a homophobic hate campaign began to gather steam against one of his former employees, Yoel Roth, Musk weighed in to groundlessly imply that Roth was an enabler of child abuse. Roth subsequently suffered a torrent of abuse and threats that reportedly forced him to leave his home. That incident echoed the US right’s growing penchant for smearing political opponents, and particularly LGBT+ people, as paedophiles or “groomers”. According to the left-wing think tank Media Matters, some members of the quasi-fascist QAnon movement – which helped popularise child abuse smears as a political tactic – are convinced that Musk is one of them, albeit based on shaky evidence. On Twitter, Musk regularly interacts on friendly terms with far-right activists who traffic in hoax claims about the 2020 US election and hate speech about minority groups, sometimes soliciting their advice about how to run the site or chiming in to agree with their tweets. Perhaps this could be explained as a commitment to maintaining open discussion across political divides – except it’s hard to name any left-wingers with whom he is so pally. Musk has shown a particular antipathy to Covid lockdowns, which he once described as "fascist". He declared early in the pandemic that "the coronavirus panic is dumb" and wrongly predicted that the virus would be gone from America by the end of April 2020. He has also consistently singled out transgender people in his critiques of “wokeness”. While he has claimed to “absolutely support” trans people, he scorns the idea that anyone should be expected to use the correct pronouns when referring to them, which most trans people view as a basic act of respect that is necessary for their equal participation in society. “Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracising those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone,” Musk said in December 2022. He has previously declared that “pronouns suck” and tweeted a meme likening cisgender people who state their pronouns on their Twitter profiles to oppressive Redcoats in colonial America. Before buying Twitter, he railed against the social network’s rules on anti-trans hate speech, which forbid users from intentionally referring to specific trans people by their birth sex (known as misgendering) or by old names they have renounced (known as deadnaming). As chief executive, Musk has reportedly made reviewing that policy a top priority. And, just after Christmas 2022, Musk liked a tweet by Libs of TikTok, a conservative Twitter account that has been accused of encouraging violence and harassment against LGBT+ people, that appeared to characterise educating children about LGBT+ issues as “confusing kids about their identity” and “stealing childhood innocence” while describing transition healthcare as “sterilising and mutilating kids”. Critics have suggested that this rhetoric may be related to Musk’s estrangement from his trans daughter, who has legally renounced his surname and said that she does not want to be related to him “in any way, shape or form.” Musk has blamed “neo-Marxists” at her university for turning her against him. Others have raised eyebrows at the fact that Musk’s former girlfriend, the electronic musician Grimes, is now in a relationship with a trans woman. All in all, it’s hard to reconcile Musk’s actions in 2022 with his claims of centrism. Nor does his alliance with pro-Trump outrage merchants say much for his once-vaunted “social liberalism”, which previously led him to favour “direct democracy” over representative democracy and advocate for the release of people imprisoned for cannabis offences. Pro-capitalist and anti-union Social policies notwithstanding, Musk remains an ardent free-marketeer who is deeply skeptical of government interventions in business. That was the basis of his attack on President Biden's Build Back Better Act in December 2021, saying the bill's tax rebate of up to $12,500 for people who buy electric cars is an "unnecessary" handout for an industry that is already taking off. He backed that up with a revealing philosophical argument about the difference between corporations and nation states. "It does not make sense to take the job of capital allocation away from people who have demonstrated great skill in capital allocation," he said, meaning business leaders, "and give it to an entity that has demonstrated very poor skill in capital allocation, which is the government. Government is simply the biggest corporation, with a monopoly on violence – and where you have no recourse. So how much money do you want to give that entity?" This libertarian-style thinking is fairly consistent for Musk. He has strongly opposed trade unions, especially in his own companies, as a barrier to efficient operations, and skirmished repeatedly with Bernie Sanders over the Vermont senator’s proposals for an income tax on billionaires. He claimed in October that Biden "seems to be controlled by unions" and in 2018 tweeted that Tesla employees who attempted to unionise would lose their stock options, which regulators have claimed was illegal. When he does endorse government intervention, Musk tends to favour measures that minimise government bureaucracy. Rather than subsidies for green industries, for example, he wants a carbon tax, and says he lobbied the Biden administration to create one. His argument is that the price of fossil fuels doesn't properly reflect their cost to the environment, meaning companies are basing their decisions on false information. Taxing carbon would correct that balance, allowing the free market to figure out in its own way how best to cut their emissions. That said, none of this stopped him from accepting billions of dollars in government subsidies for both Tesla and SpaceX. Similarly, Musk has long argued for a universal basic income to support human workers whose jobs, he believes, will soon be replaced with artificial intelligence (AI). In some ways that's a pretty left-wing idea, since it would involve spending enormous amounts of taxpayer money. But it has also been favoured by some conservatives such as Richard Nixon and free market economists such as Milton Friedman, both of whom felt it would prevent government bureaucrats deciding who deserves benefits and avoid punishing recipients for finding work. Green power has often been Musk's red line Another point of consistency has been global warming and clean energy. Back in 2006, Musk gave one of his biggest ever single donations – $75,000 – to Proposition 87, a California referendum campaign to impose a special tax on fossil fuel extractors. Since then, emissions have often been his red line. In the early years of Donald Trump's presidency, Musk joined a White House advisory council, saying that "the more voices of reason that the president hears, the better". But when Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, Musk quit, saying: "Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world." And when Musk was persuaded to get into Bitcoin – a natural fit, given his libertarian outlook and his penchant for technological solutions for political problems, to say nothing of his fondness for controversy – it was the currency's prodigious carbon emissions that led him to rethink. "Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin," he said in May 2021. "We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel. Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at a great cost to the environment." Where Musk has supported Biden, that too is connected to the environment. Just after the president’s inauguration, he told Fortune: "I'm super fired up that the new administration is focused on climate... I feel very optimistic about the future of sustainable energy with the new administration." Even in his culture warrior era, Musk has stuck to this particular gun. When conservative activist Tom Fitton claimed in December 2022 that electric cars have “no impact on climate”, Musk responded, curtly: “Yeah they do.” A technocrat with astral ambitions Through all these issues runs one strain of Musk's politics that genuinely does not map onto the traditional political compass: technocracy. Back in the 1930s and ’40s, Musk’s grandfather Joshua Haldeman was the Canadian leader of the original technocratic movement, which believed in replacing both politicians and bankers with whoever had the most expertise. Elon Musk, capitalist extraordinaire, does not exactly take after his grandfather. Like the movement’s founder William Henry Smyth, though, his statements suggest a strong underlying belief that scientists and engineers can solve political problems that are intractable to others. As the historian Jill Lepore has argued, Musk inspires numerous followers with an exotic brand of techno-capitalism that she calls "Muskism". She says that many of its ideas are drawn from science fiction, sometimes very old science fiction, meaning that alongside rockets and cars it is also selling "visions of the future". Musk thinks we may live in a simulation; he regularly references Scottish sci-fi author Iain M Banks; and he is especially preoccupied with the dangers of AI, which he calls "the most serious threat to the survival of the human race". He is worried not only about mass automation of white-collar jobs but also the rise of a theoretical hyper-intelligent AI that is too powerful for humans to restrain. "With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon," he said in 2014. "In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like – yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon. Doesn’t work out." Both that and global warming feed into Musk's conviction that colonising other planets – becoming "a multi-planet species" – is crucial to humanity's long-term survival. However seriously you take that, it is clearly an important goal that shapes the rest of his politics. Even his diatribes against the “woke mind virus” – as well as his hostile takevoer of Twitter – are based on the idea that “wokeness” and divisive social networks are a threat to human civilisation. It is a characteristically cosmic rationale for tweeting incessantly about pronouns. Two things are notable here. One is that many of these issues are not very well-known outside the tech industry, and to prioritise them suggests that you believe everyone else is missing a trick. The other is that Musk is not attempting to meet the dangerous future through government action or massive collective institutions like formal movements or trade unions. Instead, he wants to solve it himself, through hierarchical top-down for-profit companies run by him where he decides how to allocate capital. In other words, he is his own kind of technocrat: a talented engineer and huge nerd who thinks engineers and nerds can design better systems of government and economics than currently exist. For evidence, look at Musk’s troubled Hyperloop project, which is trying to build a new form of public transport while eschewing any input from traditional transit experts, who say that he has essentially invented very inefficient buses. (It is also among the beneficiaries of Biden’s infrastructure bill.) WhenTIME magazine named Musk its 2021 Person of the Year, it described him this way: “The man from the future where technology makes all things possible is a throwback to our glorious industrial past.” But many of the people who actually lived in that past reviled its industrialists as “robber barons”, and their misdeeds inspired regulations and social policies that are still in place today. That is why Professor Lepore describes Muskism as containing "a lot of feudalism", saying: "It’s like there are these lords and the rest of us are the peasantry and our fates are in their hands because they know best... The presumption that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, [two of the] wealthiest people in the world, get to decide the extraterrestrial fate of humankind is a bizarrely regressive notion." Musk has his own bullish answer to such claims. "To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say: I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship," he said on Saturday Night Live in May 2021. "Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?" This article was originally published on 9 December 2021, and has been regularly updated since then. Read More Elon Musk wants to proceed with $44bn Twitter buyout Zelensky fires back at Elon Musk’s ‘insane’ Twitter poll on Russia Ukraine peace Elon Musk Twitter deal - live: Stock market goes wild as Tesla mogul’s $44bn buyout is accepted Ivanka and Jared split over attending Trump 2024 launch – follow live Why was Donald Trump impeached twice during his first term? Four big lies Trump told during his 2024 presidential announcement

David Sacks, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, will host Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Tesla CEO Elon Musk in an audio chat on Twitter Spaces on Wednesday (24 May) where Mr DeSantis is expected to announce his campaign for 2024 president. Mr Sacks, 50, is a longtime friend of Mr Musk and supporter of Mr DeSantis. Though Mr Sacks’ name is not as prominent as other tech-industry giants, the entrepreneur has a long history of leading and investing in major companies like PayPal, Yammer, Facebook, Airbnb and more. In more recent years, Mr Sacks has become a major donor to political campaigns for individual Republicans like JD Vance and Mr DeSantis. What experience does Mr Sacks have? Mr Sacks – who was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1972 and moved to Tennessee with his family as a child – was the Chief Operations Officer (COO) and head of product for PayPal from 1999 until 2002. He has been dubbed part of the “Paypal Mafia”, a group of former PayPal employees who went on to have successful tech companies- like Mr Musk. In 2008, he founded Yammer which became one of the fastest-growing software-as-a-service companies to exist. In 2012, Yammer was acquired by Microsft for $1.2 bn. Mr Sacks co-founded the venture capital firm Craft Ventures in 2017, where he remains a partner. He also has the podcast All-In alongside fellow entrepreneurs Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg. Last year, Mr Sacks was widely reported to be helping out his longtime friend, Mr Musk, behind-the-scenes when his fellow South African-born friend acquired Twitter. What does Mr Sacks believe in? Like Mr Musk, Mr Sacks says he is a proponent of free speech. In a blog post on Medium in 2021, Mr Sacks criticised big tech social media platforms for permanently banning politicians. His belief in free-speech was echoed more recently in an interview with conservative personality Benny Johnson. Mr Sacks accused the media of not allowing anti-vaccine activists and Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr to speak freely and questioned critics’ justification of saying Mr Kennedy was spreading misinformation. The entrepreneur also expressed support for Tucker Carlson after he was unexpectedly fired from Fox News. Mr Sacks has also been an outspoken critic of US policy towards Ukraine following the Russian invasion that began in February 2022. In a piece for The American Conservative last year, Mr Sacks proposed a peaceful end to the war which included holding referendums on the future of Donbas and Crimea, both of which were illegally occupied by Russian forces in 2014. On Twitter, Mr Sacks is vocal in criticising the US for its involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict and has repeatedly clashed with critics of Vladimir Putin, including former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. In October Mr Musk retweeted an article Mr Sacks wrote for Newsweek in which he argued that continued military support for Ukraine could lead to “Woke War III”. The article itself was a response to the backlash Mr Musk received over a Twitter poll suggesting a peace deal which would strongly favour Russian interests. In his Newsweek article, Mr Sacks wrote: “There will be no peaceful resolution to this conflict that America doesn’t at least have a hand in negotiating, and we should be leading the effort. Instead, we’ve been deferring to the Ukrainians and their maximalist demands, upping the sanctions on Russia as Putin ups his rhetoric against the West.” While he has been criticised for his outspoken views despite lacking a foreign policy background, he has argued that his lack of expertise is actually an advantage: “Not being a member of the MIC [military industrial complex] is clearly an advantage in understanding the conflict.” What political candidates has Mr Sacks supported? Since the 1990s, Mr Sacks has supported both Republican and Democratic candidates according to OpenSecrets. His largest donations have gone toward the PAC supporting GOP Ohio Senator JD Vance, the conservative Purple Good Government PAC, Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Republican National Committee. Over the last two years, Mr Sacks has expressed vocal support for Mr DeSantis on Fox News and Twitter as well as donated to his political campaign. Read More Ron DeSantis to launch 2024 presidential bid on Twitter with Elon Musk Can the chaos from Silicon Valley Bank's fall be contained? Casey DeSantis gives cheeky response to reports husband is launching 2024 campaign

Bryan Kohberger became a household name across America when police swooped on his parents’ home in December and arrested him for the brutal murdersof four University of Idaho students. Mr Kohberger, then a PhD criminology student at Washington State University, was accused of stabbing to death Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin in an off-campus student rental home in Moscow, Idaho, on 13 November. The victims’ loved ones and those following developments in the quadruple murder case went from weeks of near-silence from law enforcement to the bombshell news of the accused killer’s arrest six weeks later. Since then, people from Mr Kohberger’s past – though shocked – have built a picture of a bullied loner who overcame addiction. Meanwhile, fellow students from his time just over the Idaho border into Washington describe a criminology zealot who “creeped people out”. With the 28-year-old refusing to enter a plea on four counts of murder and one burglary charge on Monday, The Independent asks: Who really is Bryan Kohberger? Bullying, addiction and weight loss Four years before the vicious murders of four University of Idaho students, the man now headed to trial for allegedly taking their lives was lauded for helping to save another. Mr Kohberger had been working as a part-time security officer for Pleasant Valley School District, where his mother was also employed when a hall monitor – a grandmother – began having trouble breathing and losing consciousness. Security guard Luis Fuentes, according to the Pocono Record, dispatched Mr Kohberger to retrieve the school AED as fellow staffers and emergency personnel attended to their coworker. Disaster was averted – but the incident still made the local paper in small-town Pennsylvania, where Mr Kohberger grew up with his parents, Michael and Maryann, and two sisters, Amanda and Melissa. It would mark one of the few times that Bryan Kohberger’s name would surface online until his arrest. Most of Mr Kohberger’s college courses have focused on criminality and the mind, though careers in education with an emphasis on psychology run in the family. His mother worked as a paraprofessional at Pleasant Valley School District and was beloved by students, by all accounts – the type of woman who tells a former pupil that they can always call her after the death of a parent. Her two daughters, both older than Mr Kohberger, both studied psychology at East Coast schools before finding work in the field. Melissa is a therapist in New Jersey, while Amanda is a counsellor in Pennsylvania. The Kohbergers lived for years in Effort, an unincorporated community in Monroe County with a population of under 2,500 just minutes from Pleasant Valley School District, where the children also graduated from high school. Michael Kohberger was a maintenance worker and the family seemed unremarkable in the quiet community 90 miles north of Philadelphia; Bryan used to mow the neighbours’ lawn. Mr Kohberger was overweight and bullied in high school – then lost 100 pounds in his senior year, and more than just his appearance changed, according to friends. “He was rail thin,” Casey Arntz, who hung around in the same group as Mr Kohberger, told 48 Hours. “It was after that weight loss that a lot of people noticed a huge switch.” She says Mr Kohberger bullied her brother, a member of the same social circle, at times even putting her sibling in chokeholds: “When Bryan would get kinda angry with him, he would gaslight him and get physically aggressive,” she said. Her brother, Thomas, told The Daily Beast that Mr Kohberger liked to point out his “flaws and insecurities” and would do so “all the time.” “He would go after my intelligence,” the 26-year-old said. “He would basically insinuate that I’m kind of slow-witted and that I’m forgetful and [that] I lack the intelligence to be his friend.” That aggressive streak was described by other friends, as well. Nick McLoughlin, 26, attended classes at both Pleasant Valley High School and Monroe Count’s vocational school with Mr Kohberger, telling The Daily Beast the murder suspect had been interested in becoming a police officer and took criminal justice courses. His interest in law enforcement was apparent, one former teacher told the outlet, describing Mr Kohberger as “passionate about criminal justice.” “He was just a regular 12th grader, had a few friends, was a good student,” she said. “I thought he would become a police officer or correctional officer ... He liked to watch movies about police, and ask me the next day if I’d seen it. It was more than a hobby for him, he was always asking questions.” In addition to criminology, Mr Kohberger had a new interest after the weight loss, Mr McLoughlin said: Boxing. “He always wanted to fight somebody,” he said. “He was bullying people. We started cutting him off from our friend group because he was 100 percent a different person.” Mr Kohberger’s changing behaviour included drug abuse, another friend, Bree, told 48 Hours – claiming that he began using heroin. She said that “people were not his strong suit.” “You just saw him becoming more self-destructive,” said Bree. “He really stayed secluded.” Overcoming addiction and interest in criminology In a February interview with the Idaho Statesman, high school friends and acquaintances of Mr Kohberger addressed previous reports that he was bullied because of his weight. They told the newspaper that Mr Kohberger found in marijuana a way to cope with the constant targeting that he suffered as a teenager before he escalated to heroin addiction. “I feel he was looking for validation, and that’s why he fell into that crowd,” Ms Arntz told the Statesman. “And honestly, it’s why he fell into the whole drug scene.” Ms Arntz recalled an instance in which Mr Kohberger asked her to drive him to pick up needles for his aunt because his car had broken down. In reality, Mr Kohberger was buying drugs from a dealer, Ms Arntz claimed. “He literally used me to get it,” she added. “I was freaking out and not happy I had heroin in my car and didn’t even know.” Following high school, however, many believed Mr Kohberger seemed to be doing better. He told Ms Arntz that he went to rehab, according to the Daily Beast, and he earned an associate of arts degree in psychology from Northampton Community College in 2018. “He was telling me that he wanted to get sober, that he was getting sober,” Bree told 48 Hours, “And he wanted to let me know, ‘I’m gonna do better. I’m gonna be better.’” Ms Arntz last saw Mr Kohberger at a wedding in 2017, where she gave him a hug and told him, “You look so good. I’m so proud of you,” she told 48 Hours. Mr Kohberger continued his studies at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in criminal justice last year. Teachers and classmates have described him as bright, focused and nearly obsessive about criminology. Michelle Bolger, an associate professor at DeSales, taught Mr Kohberger and described him as a “great writer” and “brilliant student.” “In my 10 years of teaching, I’ve only recommended two students to a PhD program and he was one of them,” she told the Daily Mail. “He was one of my best students, ever. Everyone is in shock over this.” After Mr Kohberger’s graduation from DeSales, he left Pennsylvania and crossed the country to pursue a PhD at Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, Washington, just across the state border from the University of Idaho in Moscow. He was also a teaching assistant in WSU’s department of criminal justice and criminology. There, he “sort of creeped people out,” fellow grad student B.K. Norton told The New York Times, describing a quiet, intense demeanour. She also alleged he made comments about the LGBTQ community that made some uncomfortable. “He stared and didn’t talk much, but when he did it was very intelligent and he needed everyone to know he was smart,” Ms Norton said. Another WSU grad student in the programme with Mr Kohberger, Benjamin Roberts, echoed her sentiments about the suspect’s academic arrogance. “He would describe things in the most complicated, perhaps academic way possible,” Mr Roberts told 48 Hours, elaborating: “It was like he was trying to convince people that he knew what he was talking about.” Mr Kohberger lived in an unassuming Pullman apartment complex and, while studying and working as a TA, was also continuing to pursue his dream of working in law enforcement. The affidavit unsealed earlier this year by Idaho courts revealed that Mr Kohberger applied for an internship with the Pullman Police Department. “Kohberger wrote in his essay he had an interest in assisting rural law enforcement agencies with how to better collect and analyze technological data in public safety operations,” the affidavit states. The department did not respond to The Independent’s request regarding whether Mr Kohberger ever got the internship. He was committed, it seems, to thoroughly exploring the inner workings of the criminal mind, posting a survey to Reddit that “asked for participants to provide information to ‘understand how emotions and psychological traits influence decision making when committing a crime,’” the affidavit continues. Mr Kohberger seemed fastidious about his efforts to understand the inner workings of the criminal mind – and reportedly applied that same attitude to his diet. A former aunt told the New York Post that Mr Kohberger’s food regime was “very, very weird” and went “above and beyond being vegan.” Relatives had to “buy new pots and pans because he would not eat from anything that had ever had meat cooked in them,” she said, adding that he seemed “very OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder].” Allegations of sexism and disciplinary action at WSU Around the time of the murders, Mr Kohberger was facing disciplinary action in his teaching assistant job at WSU. The 29-year-old began working as a teaching assistant in the criminology department in August as part of his graduate program. But within a month he was already under investigation by the university because of “behavioural problems” and a “sexist attitude towards women”, according to NewsNation. Earlier this year, the outlet obtained a detailed timeline of his issues in the department, revealing that Mr Kohberger was warned multiple times about his behaviour and was brought into several meetings with professors due to their concerns. His attitude towards women was cited as a key concern, with the criminal justice student allegedly being “rude to women”, grading the women that he taught differently to the men, and having a “sexist attitude towards females he interacted with at the school”. In his brief four-month stint as a teaching assistant, Mr Kohberger also reportedly got into multiple altercations with one of the professors – Professor John Snyder. The first altercation reportedly took place on 23 September and he was called in to meet the professor to discuss his behaviour on 3 October. But his behaviour only escalated, with reports of him becoming increasingly “feisty”, “belligerent” and getting into arguments with professors in the run-up to the murders. On 21 October, Professor Snyder emailed Mr Kohberger telling him he had failed to meet the expectations he had outlined in their previous discussion. On 2 November – 11 days before the murders – Mr Kohberger reportedly met with the professor to discuss an “improvement plan” for his behaviour. In the aftermath of the slayings, the university continued to note his concerning behaviour. Mr Kohberger attended a meeting with the professor about the improvement plan on 7 December – before getting into yet another altercation with him two days later. The professor condemned his behaviour, writing to the accused killer that it was “apparent that you have not made progress regarding your professionalism”. On 19 December – just over one month on from the murders – Mr Kohberger was ultimately fired from his WSU teaching post, reported NewsNation. Phil Weiler, the vice president at WSU, told The Independent back in February that the university could not discuss a student’s records. “Bryan Kohberger received an appointment as a teaching assistant at Washington State University (WSU) during the fall 2022 semester. It is typical for students to receive a teaching assistantship or similar appointment as part of their PhD program,” he said in a statement. “Mr Kohberger does not currently have a teaching assistantship and he is not currently enrolled at WSU. “Information concerning a student’s teaching assistantship is considered a student record. The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) prevents universities from discussing student records. As a result, I am unable to comment on Mr Kohberger’s experience as a teaching assistant.” Aftermath of the murders Following the murders, classmates said Mr Kohberger continued attending classes – but “seemed more upbeat and willing to carry a conversation,” Ms Norton told the Times. In mid-December, Mr Kohberger then drove cross-country with his father in his white Hyundai Elantra, getting stopped twice in Indiana, before returning to his parents’ home in Pennsylvania. He was arrested there on 30 December and extradited to Moscow to face charges. His lawyers have claimed Mr Kohberger is innocent and wants to clear his name. His family released a statement expressing their condolences to the victims’ families while urging a presumption of innocence on part of their son. Many in Mr Kohberger’s orbit expressed shock at his alleged involvement in the crime; others from his past were not so sure. “He was mean-spirited,” Thomas Arntz told the Daily Beast. “He was a bully. I never thought he would do something like that, but at the same time it doesn’t really surprise me.” On Monday (19 May), Mr Kohberger refused to enter a plea in Latah County District Court, with his attorney saying that he was “standing silent” on the charges. The unusual response prompted the judge to enter a “not guilty” plea on Mr Kohberger’s behalf, setting the stage for a trial in which he could potentially face the death penalty. Read More Bryan Kohberger arraignment – live: Idaho college murders suspect to appear in court and enter plea on charges Four students stabbed to death, a weeks-long manhunt and still no motive: What we know about the Idaho murders Kaylee Goncalves’ father thanks roommates who survived Idaho murders for helping in Bryan Kohberger case

The Walt Disney Company has pulled the plug on a $1bn office complex in Orlando, following a warning from Disney leadership that billions of dollars in projects were on the line after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis escalated his feud with the company. The development scheduled for construction in the Orlando area was set to bring 2,000 jobs to the region, with 1,000 employees expected to be relocated from southern California. In an email to employees on 18 May, Disney’s theme park and consumer products chair Josh D’Amaro pointed to “changing business conditions” for the cancellation of the 60-acre Lake Nona Town Center project, according to The New York Times, which first reported the move. “I remain optimistic about the direction of our Walt Disney World business,” he added, noting that the company has still planned $17bn in projects over the next decade its Disney World campus. “I hope we’re able to,” he said. For years, Florida legislators and the governor’s office enjoyed a close relationship with the state’s largest taxpayers, among the state’s largest employers, which has wielded enormous political influence while bringing in billions of dollars to the state each year. Now, the company and DeSantis allies are suing one another, following a year-long feud over opposition to what opponents have called Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that boiled over into political and legal battles that could shape the company’s business in the state. Moments after board appointed by Mr DeSantis voted to strip the company’s control of its Florida park, Disney filed a federal lawsuit against the governor and state officials alleging a “targeted campaign of government retaliation” for “expressing a political viewpoint.” The lawsuit follows the governor’s state takeover of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, now the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, made up of conservative activists and DeSantis loyalists, a move that followed Florida Republicans’ punitive measures against the company after its public opposition to the “Don’t Say Gay” law. Days later, the board voted to sue Disney in state court. In March, Disney slammed the governor’s “anti-business” approach to the company, which Mr DeSantis has accused of advancing a “woke agenda” while his administration targets LGBT+ people and their families with sweeping laws to control public school education, healthcare access and speech. The governor dissolved a decades-old municipal district that allowed Disney to control its own land use, zoning rules and public services, without putting a tax burden on Florida residents. In effect, Disney taxed itself to foot the district’s bill for its municipal needs. “Does the state want us to invest more, employ more people, and pay more taxes, or not?” Disney CEO Bob Iger said on a conference call with analysts last week. A statement from Disney said the company has decided to pull out of the new campus construction “given the considerable changes that have occurred since the announcement of this project, including new leadership and changing business conditions.” The “Parental Rights in Education Act” – what opponents have called “Don’t Say Gay” – prohibits instruction of “sexual orientation or gender identity” from kindergarten through the third grade and any such discussion “that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students” in other grades. The governor recently expanded the law to explicitly extend such restrictions to all grades. Critics have warned that the broadly written law threatens to freeze classroom speech involving LGBT+ people and issues, from civil rights history lessons to discussion of LGBT+ students, school staff and their families. Following passage of the Florida law, lawmakers across the US and in Congress have introduced similar legislation, including more than two dozen measures in current legislative sessions. Read More DeSantis v Disney: Why Florida’s governor is at war with the Mouse ‘We will not be erased’: Critics slam Ron DeSantis for unprecedented bills attacking LGBTQ+ people Penguin Random House sues Florida school district over ‘unconstitutional’ book bans Florida teacher under investigation for showing Disney movie with LGBT+ character speaks out

A former Apple engineer who fled to China five years ago has been charged with stealing the company’s self-driving car technology. The US Justice Department charged Weibao Wang, 35, for stealing large troves of data from Apple, including trade secrets and technology related to autonomous systems that are used to design self-driving cars. Mr Wang was charged with six counts of theft or attempted theft of trade secrets, according to a press release issued by the department. “Innovation is alive and well in Silicon Valley – indeed, throughout the Northern District of California,” said US attorney Ismail J Ramsey. “Unfortunately, there will always be some who cheat the system by stealing and profiting from the fruits of others’ labour. The Wang prosecution is but one example. We are pleased that the Disruptive Technology Task Force renews energy and focus on securing innovation for those who actually create it.” The former Apple engineer was a resident of Mountain View in California and began working with the tech giant in 2016. He had signed a confidentiality agreement for the project for which he was working on, and very few people at the company knew about it at that time. He began working as staff engineer with the US-based subsidiary of a Chinese company and was working to develop self-driving cars, the indictment said. The company was identified only as “Company One” in the indictment. Mr Wang was also accused of waiting for more than four months before telling Apple that he was resigning, after he signed a new employment agreement with “Company One”. After the last day of his employment at Apple, on 16 April 2018, Apple’s officials found in their logs that he had accessed large troves of confidential data in the final days of his stint at the tech giant. His Mountain View home was searched on 27 June 2018. Law enforcement agents discovered “large quantities of data taken from Apple prior to his departure” during the search, for which Mr Wang was present. After telling the agents that he had no plans to travel, he purchased a one-way ticket to Guangzhou, China, and boarded a flight that same night. In a press conference, Mr Ramsey said Mr Wang remained in China and he could face 10 years in jail, if extradited and convicted. This is the third incident of a former Apple employee being charged for stealing of documents for China. Two other Apple employees have previously been charged in similar cases involving theft of trade secrets, reported the BBC. Read More Elon Musk calls working from home ‘morally wrong’ How many more rapists and killers are in Met? Police force ‘institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic’ says damning report The Independent backs calls for jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai to be released

When Bob Lee, a well-known tech executive who co-founded the payment programme Cash App, was stabbed to death in April, many within San Francisco’s close-knit tech community lept to conclusions, with figures like Elon Musk declaring the death another sign of the city’s persistent, if often misunderstood, struggles with random street crime. What actually happened, according to prosecutors and friends of Lee, couldn’t be further from this original narrative. Lee was part of an underground party scene in San Francisco known among participants as “The Lifestyle,” where recreational drugs and casual sex were common, participants and those who knew Lee told The Wall Street Journal. One of the people Lee overlapped with within San Francisco nightlife was Khazar Momeni, sister of Nima Momeni, the man arrested in April for Lee’s murder. He plans to plead not guilty. Lee and Ms Momeni, who is married, were reportedly in a casual relationship. “There are many rumors circulating around this case, many of them untrue,” lawyers for Ms Momeni told the Journal. “Ms. Momeni loves and supports her brother. What happened here is a tragedy, and Ms. Momeni is deeply saddened at the suffering of the Lee family as they deal with their terrible loss.” In the hours before Lee was killed, Mr Momeni confronted Lee about his sister, prosecutors allege, asking if she had done anything inappropriate, which he denied. Later, according to officials, Khazar Momeni sent Lee a text message acknowledging the confrontation: “Just wanted to make sure your doing ok Cause know nima came wayyyyyy down hard on you.” Hours after the alleged confrontation, Lee was seen getting into a white BMW with Mr Momeni, and prosecutors allege he drove the tech executive to a secluded area and stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife. The Independent has contacted Mr Momeni’s lawyer for comment. Lee had been using cocaine and ketamine before his death, an autopsy found. Mr Momeni, an IT executive, will be arraigned later his month. Read More Autopsy: Stab wounds to heart, lungs killed Cash App founder Man accused of stabbing Cash App founder gets new court date A tech CEO has been murdered and Elon Musk blames San Francisco’s ‘horrific’ rise in crime. Is he right?

Elon Musk has announced he’s hired former NBCUniversal advertising boss Linda Yaccarino as the new Twitter chief executive. The erratic billionaire confirmed widespread speculation that Ms Yaccarino would take on the role in a Twitter post on Friday. “Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app,” Mr Musk wrote. Ms Yaccarino will focus on business operations, while Mr Musk will stay on as executive chairman and focus on product design and new technology, he said. Hours earlier, Ms Yaccarino said in a statement she was leaving her role as chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal after more than a decade at the media conglomerate. “It has been an absolute honour to be part of Comcast NBCUniversal and lead the most incredible team,” she said. “We’ve transformed our company and the entire industry.” Ms Yaccarino oversaw the launch of the NBC’s streaming site Peacock. On Thursday, Mr Musk teased the appointment when he announced he had hired a woman to take over the social media platform’s top job from him in six weeks. The appointment, six months after Mr Musk said he would step down as CEO, comes as Twitter faces an exodus of advertisers, service disruptions, and renewed scrutiny from regulators. After purchasing the platform for $44bn last October, Mr Musk has fired around 80 per cent of the workforce, reinstated banned accounts, and allowed hate speech to flourish under the guise of “free speech”. Read More Elon Musk says he's found a new CEO for Twitter, a woman who will start in 6 weeks Stephen King ruthlessly shuts down US commentator Dan Bongino after incendiary exchange Twitter finally adds secure messaging to DMs – but Elon Musk tells people not to ‘trust it’ Reports: NBC Universal executive will take over as the new CEO of Twitter AP News Digest 4 a.m. Secure messaging arrives on Twitter - sort of. 'Don't trust it yet,' Musk warns