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SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft exploded on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, dooming an attempt to deploy mock satellites in the second consecutive failure this year for Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.

Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship’s breakup in space, which occurred shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX livestream of the mission showed.

The failure comes just more than a month after the company’s seventh Starship flight also ended in an explosive failure. The back-to-back mishaps occurred in early mission phases that SpaceX has easily surpassed previously, indicating serious setbacks for a program Musk has sought to speed up this year.

The US state department is preparing to shut down a number of consulates that are mainly in western Europe in the coming months and looking to reduce its workforce globally, multiple US officials said on Thursday.

The state department is also looking into potentially merging a number of its expert bureaus at its headquarters in Washington that are working in areas such as human rights, refugees, global criminal justice, women’s issues and efforts to counter human trafficking, the officials said.

Reuters reported last month that US missions around the world had been asked to look into reducing US and locally employed staff by at least 10% as Donald Trump and his billionaire aide Elon Musk have unleashed an unprecedented cost-cutting effort across the US federal workforce.

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Summary

Elon Musk is distancing himself from sweeping federal job cuts linked to DOGE, blaming agency heads—not DOGE—responsible for mass layoffs, including the announced 70,000 job cut at Veterans Affairs.

Despite claiming DOGE’s role as merely advisory, Musk admitted to mistakes in private meetings with GOP lawmakers and pledged to correct them.

Some cuts have already been reversed, with a Trump administration memo clarifying agencies are not required to fire probationary employees (new hires).

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali on Thursday gave the Trump administration until Monday to pay nearly $2 billion in debts to partners of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department, thawing the administration’s six-week funding freeze on all foreign assistance.

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Companies greed has no end.

The death of a New Mexico adult comes eight days after a 6-year-old child succumbed to the disease in Texas last week.

An unvaccinated New Mexico adult who tested positive for measles has died, the second death in a growing measles outbreak centered along the West Texas-New Mexico border, officials said Thursday.

The individual did not seek medical care before death, New Mexico health department officials said. The official cause of death is still under investigation by New Mexico’s Office of the Medical Investigator. However, the state health department scientific laboratory has confirmed the presence of the measles virus in the person, the state health department said.

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A federal judge has reinstated National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Gwynne Wilcox, ruling that Trump's firing of her was "blatantly illegal."

Judge Beryl Howell cited a federal law allowing NLRB members to be removed only for "neglect of duty or malfeasance," noting this was the first attempted firing in the board's 90-year history.

Wilcox had been appointed by Biden to serve until 2028. The Justice Department argued unsuccessfully that the law protecting Wilcox was unconstitutional.

The NLRB, created in 1935, handles union disputes and protects workers' right to unionize, established during a time when labor conflicts often turned violent.

Stocks fell Thursday afternoon as President Donald Trump's pledge to temporarily exempt many Mexican imports from his 25% tariffs failed to deter a wider sell-off.

The S&P 500 was down as much as 2.1%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 2.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell approximately 500 points, or 1.4%.

The major averages have each lost more than 3% this week, with the broader S&P 500 having now erased the gains it accrued since Trump won November's election. That index is off 6% from its all-time high in January, the month he took office.

Thursday's action marks a reversal of a short-lived rally Wednesday following the Trump administration's announcement that autos from America's largest manufacturers would be exempted from the 25% tariffs he unveiled on Canada and Mexico.

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Ed Martin, the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney for D.C., warned Georgetown Law that his office will not hire students or affiliates from schools that continue diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

In a letter to Dean William Treanor, Martin demanded Georgetown eliminate DEI from its curriculum, calling it “unacceptable.”

Legal experts condemned his stance as unconstitutional.

Georgetown defended its academic freedom, stating they are constitutionally protected and promote intellectual and ethical understanding.

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed executive actions that delay for nearly one month tariffs on all products from Mexico and Canada that are covered by the USMCA free trade treaty, a significant walkback of the administration’s signature economic plan that has rattled markets, businesses and consumers.

The executive actions follow a discussion Trump held Thursday with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and negotiations between Canadian and Trump administration officials.

Can America come get Grandpa? He's pooping in the flowerbed again.