• Trump's hush money trial is in its second week in Manhattan.
• AttorneyTodd Blanche struggled Tuesday to defend Trump's online attacks on witnesses and the jury.
• "You're losing all credibility," the judge railed when Blanche insisted Trump was "careful" online.

A judge verbally excoriated a defense attorney for Donald Trump during the Manhattan hush-money trial on Tuesday, questioning the lawyer's ethics and calling his arguments unsupported and "irrelevant."

"You're losing all credibility," New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan angrily told the lawyer, Todd Blanche.

"You're losing all credibility with the court," Merchan repeated, his voice frustrated.

The remarkable tongue-lashing came during a hearing on whether the GOP frontrunner was in contempt of court for violating his gag order more than ten times in the past three weeks.

The judge said Tuesday morning that he would issue a decision later — he didn't say when — on prosecutors' request that Trump be fined $10,000. Prosecutors also want Trump warned of possible jail should his attacks on jurors and witnesses continue.

"We are not yet seeking an incarceratory penalty, though the defendant seems to be angling that," prosecutor Christopher Conroy said in a hearing held before testimony began for the day.

In addition to the hush money trial, now in its second week, Blanche represents Trump in his Florida classified-documents case and his Washington, DC, 2021 election-interference case.

His credibility came under fire Tuesday as he struggled to argue that Trump had not violated his gag order, as prosecutors claimed — and that, in fact, his client is being "careful."

"We are trying to comply with it," Blanche told the judge, referring to the gag.

"President Trump is being very careful," the lawyer added.

It was at this point that the judge accused Blanche of "losing all credibility."

"We don't read the order that way," Blanche was left to stammer, calling the gag order "ambiguous."

"We'll take down the posts, of course we will," the lawyer added.

Merchan's April 1 order bars Trump from making statements against witnesses and jurors, among other categories of people, if those attacks could interfere with the trial.

The alleged gag violations argued about on Tuesday included Trump's April 10 Truth Social post attacking key witnesses Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels as "sleaze bags," and another "truth" that claimed "undercover liberal activists" were infiltrating the jury.

Blanche's arguments at Tuesday's hearing, in defense of Trump's posts, fell roughly into three categories.

None of the arguments were supported, the judge soon noted.

"I've asked you eight or nine times, show me," the judge said, referring to the times he asked Blanche for supporting case law. "And you were not able to do that — even once."

Blanche's first argument was that Trump is allowed to make purely political attacks on political opponents.

His second was that Trump is somehow protected because prosecutors waited three weeks to start complaining.

"There is a history here of posting and reposting that has gone unchecked," the lawyer fumbled.

But the fact that prosecutors "did not come running in here" after the first few posts "is not probative of anything," the judge snapped back.

Blanche's third argument was that reposting attacks on trial witnesses that were originally made by others was somehow exempt.

It was here that Merchan really hit the proverbial roof.

Where is the caselaw exempting repeated or "reposted" speech from gag orders? the judge demanded.

"I've asked you eight or nine times, show me, and you were not able to do that even once," the judge said.

"You're not giving me anything to hang my hat on," he added.

Brushing some of the 10 posts off as reposts "somehow washes his hands?" the judge asked.

What if someone was walking around with a placard saying "terrible things" about jurors, Merchan asked Blanche, as a hypothetical.

"Is it your position that if your client was to grab that placard and walk around with it, and it says terrible things about the jury, that he did nothing wrong?" the judge asked the lawyer.

"Is that what you're saying to me?" the judge repeated, his voice impatient.

"Are you testifying under oath that this is your position?" the judge demanded at another point.

"Is it your client's position that when he reposted something, he did not believe that he was violating the gag order?"

Prosecutors are demanding a $10,000 fine — the maximum allowed — for three weeks of Truth Social and campaign website posts attacking two trial witnesses, Daniels and Cohen.

A Truth Social post from April 10 called both the porn star and Trump's former fixer "sleaze bags."

A Truth Social post from April 17, the second day of jury selection, was "very troubling," prosecutor Christopher Conroy told the judge.

It cited Fox News commentator Jesse Watters and claimed that "undercover liberal activists are lying to the judge in order to get on the Trump jury."

Trump could be thrown in jail for a maximum of 30 days jail for each gag violation, but Conroy said Tuesday that a warning that jail is possible if Trump does not stop would suffice — for now.

Other witnesses, beyond Cohen and Daniels, see these posts and are also intimidated, the prosecutor said, calling it "sort of the undertow effect."

"The defendant is having his day in court," Conroy said in successfully arguing for the fines and warning levied by Merchan.

"Unfortunately," the prosecutor added, "he is doing everything he can to undermine this process."

Catch and kill

After the morning hearing, jurors were called into the courtroom to hear the continued testimony from the trial's first witness, former National Enquirer executive David Pecker.

"I met him in the '80s at Mar-a-Lago," Pecker told the five-woman, seven-man jury.

Pecker described the "beneficial relationship" he enjoyed with Trump since taking control of the tabloid in March of 1999.

Stories attacking Trump's enemies — in particular stories about Hillary Clinton "enabling" her philandering husband — were good for both of them, Pecker said.

The two spoke daily during Trump's 2016 run for president, he said, when the tabloid's headlines included "Ted Cruz sex scandal five different mistresses." 

In describing the origin of the tabloid's "catch-and-kill' campaign on Trump's behalf, Pecker offered jurors an important narrative to the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case.

Prosecutors say that just 11 days before the 2016 election, Trump paid $130,000 in hush money to bury Daniels' story of a 2006 extramarital affair with the then-Apprentice star in 2006.

It was a story that Pecker "caught" when Daniels tried to sell it to the Enquirer and then "killed" by alerting Cohen, prosecutors said.

Cohen, then a Trump Organization vice president, acted as bag man, taking out a home equity loan to pay Daniels' lawyer the $130,000.

Prosecutors say that in reimbursing Cohen in monthly installments throughout 2017, Trump falsified 34 Trump Organization business documents.

Each of the falsified invoices, checks, and business ledger entries claimed the reimbursements were "legal fees," rather than what they were, prosecutors allege: illegal campaign expenditures meant to influence the 2016 election.

Pecker's testimony is expected to continue when court resumes Wednesday.

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• The US debt is pushing the country toward a financial crisis, Leon Cooperman said. 
• He criticized the Fed for its abrupt monetary policy shift after keeping rates low for over a decade. 
• He's said that markets are overvalued and investors should expect a steep decline. 

Mounting national debt is pushing the US toward a financial crisis, billionaire investor Leon Cooperman said this week. 

The Omega Family Office CEO said that too little has been done since the 2010 Simpson-Bowles Commission, which was formed under President Barack Obama and proposed a series of long-term strategies to slash the national debt. 

"I think we have a system of leadership in this country that's evolved to a leadership crisis," he told CNBC on Tuesday. "Deficits matter, and I think we're headed into a financial crisis in this country."

Cooperman said he gave the Federal Reserve a "low grade" in terms of how abruptly it shifted its monetary policy approach from holding rates at near zero for over a decade to raising rates by over 500 basis points in about a year. 

"Now they're talking about cutting rates, and the Fed is too restrictive. There's no sign that I could tell from the economy and the market that the Fed is restrictive," he said, adding that there's a lot of speculation going on that has sent the stock market to record highs.

The billionaire investor has been consistently bearish. He said in February that the stock market seemed too richly valued and would eventually go down this year. 

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• Tesla employees say they've been left in limbo after a week of layoffs.
• Elon Musk announced a more than 10% cut in staff numbers at Tesla last week.
• After mass jobcuts on Monday, some layoff notices continued to trickle in.

In the wake of Tesla's mass layoffs last week, some workers who are still at the carmaker say they feel as if they've been left in limbo.

"I keep waiting for Elon to send another email and tell us they're finally done firing people," one current Tesla worker, who requested anonymity to speak on the conditions of their employment, said. "We need some level of closure or a sign that we can stop worrying about losing our jobs."

Tesla workers have been put through the wringer ever since layoffs started on Sunday, April 14. Even before the cuts started, some staff said they were nervous about potential downsizing because of a post on the anonymous site Blind that warned layoffs were coming. The post, which can only be viewed by verified Tesla employees, said that the EV company had asked some managers to identify workers for a cut that could impact as much as 20% of the company's workforce. Some of the workers said they spent much of the weekend before layoffs refreshing their email, waiting to see if the rumors were true.

Then the hammer fell on Sunday night when Tesla CEO Elon Musk told staff in an internal email that the company planned to axe more than 10% of its workforce. Within a few hours, some workers learned they'd been laid off when they received a generic email that led with "Dear Employee," others learned they'd been terminated when their access was cut off to Tesla's internal systems or when they showed up at work, only to find out their badge didn't work.

One worker compared the abrupt layoffs to a "Thanos snap."

"It was like all at once, people you'd seen every day were just erased from the company," the worker said.

The layoff notices kept trickling in

While many workers were notified they'd been impacted by the layoffs on that Sunday night or early Monday morning, the layoffs continued throughout last week, five workers told Business Insider. Last Tuesday, the layoffs hit some workers in China. On Friday, Tesla's layoffs impacted its recruiting staff in the US. And on Monday, Bloomberg reported that Tesla's new marketing team in the US had also been laid off.

Some teams that had been impacted during the round of layoff notices last Monday, were hit again later in the week when a few additional staff were cut, three workers from separate parts of the company told BI.

"On Monday were were all waiting to see if we'd been hit and then by Tuesday we thought we were in a good position and the worst was over. By the time I got the email Wednesday night, it came as more of a shock," a worker, who was laid off last Wednesday, said.

One worker, who is in charge of a handful of direct reports, said that after the layoffs last Monday, they were told by their manager that upper-level management was unhappy with the number of people that had been laid off and wanted to make deeper cuts.

Several workers said the multiple days of layoffs created a level of uncertainty for workers and pushed some surviving staff to begin looking for work elsewhere.

"I wake up every morning and I check my email because I know if I can't it means I've gotten the boot," one worker said.

Another worker said they feel Musk and Tesla haven't treated the issue with the proper respect, especially when it comes to the company's decision to ask shareholders to vote on a $55 billion pay package for the Tesla CEO only a few days after laying off thousands of staff.

"The timing on Tesla asking voters to reinstate Elon's pay package stings," the worker said.

While some workers say the layoffs have created a major distraction at the company, at least two other current workers told BI they see it as a normal part of doing business.

"Layoffs are nothing new at Tesla. There was a purge in 2022 and this is probably just part of that natural cycle," one current worker said.

Do you work for Tesla or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at gkay@businessinsider.com

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• Kreskin J. Torres, a Lyft driver, has traveled across all 50 states, documenting his dining experiences.
• Torres is working on a book, an app called Rideshare Foodies, and is organizing a national potluck.
• He said gig driving is just temporary and has helped him achieve his larger goals.

Kreskin J. Torres, 35, has eaten his way through all 50 states — including Alaska and Hawaii. His ticket to doing so? Driving for Uber and Lyft.

The Army veteran and Baltimore native has documented his dining on his blog Rideshare Foodie. After seven years, he's learned the most profitable times of day to drive, the best locations to find riders in each city and the optimal strategies for maximizing tips.

"You just got to work smarter, not harder," Torres said. "From my experience, I've been in every state, so I know how every city works now."

At the same time, he's been able to pursue his foodie passions. Torres is now working on a book called "Taste of the States," his recommendations app called Rideshare Foodies, and planning a series of events to honor dishes from various states and their history.

While driving for ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft can be a flexible way to earn money for people like Torres who have more than one hustle, it can also be a recipe for burnout. Among the dozens of drivers Business Insider has spoken with over the past few months, many are already dreaming of what's next — starting a business or finding new modes of employment.

And that's Torres' main career advice for those considering it. After all, he's not planning to do the job forever, as he hopes to transition away, though it helped him jump-start new paths for his future.

"Do not make this the end all be all," Torres said, noting how Uber and Lyft have threatened to pull out of Minneapolis. "When it started, it was advertised as a gig, a side hustle."

Traveling the country as a gig driver

As a veteran, he said this job has been relatively stress-free and helpful for not feeling lonely, a similar sentiment he's heard from veterans with PTSD.

"I enjoy meeting and connecting with different people and getting to see different places," Torres said.

He decided to spend his next few years on the road using driving to fund his adventures and to meet locals who could point him to the best restaurants and experiences.

"The great thing is you get to learn about different cities and how everything operates," Torres said.

He moved to San Antonio, though he works mainly around the more-profitable Austin area, and has explored the South and Southeast.

While he doesn't make much money from his blog, he said driving has allowed him to try everything from Navajo tacos in Arizona to biscuits in chocolate gravy in Arkansas to huckleberry swirls in Montana. Driving has led him to some of his favorite restaurants like I693 Red Zone Grill in Jackson, Mississippi; Strawberry's BBQ in Holcomb, Missouri; and Rice & Roll by Xing Xing in Wichita.

Learning the most profitable places and times to drive

Torres noticed he would get more profitable rides driving around suburbs, airports, and sports stadiums, locations coveted by drivers as they get more tips and sometimes elevated fares.

He learned New Year's will always be profitable, though rides slow down around February before picking up in mid-March. It's led him to be more methodical about the types of rides to take, as well as planning when to save more of his earnings and when to splurge a little on food and travel.

"After seven years, I'm a lot more experienced. It depends on the time of the season, so I usually can do a lot more business in college towns," Torres said. "I would visit a city, see what they're known for, a little history behind it."

Torres was making enough to comfortably travel the country, though he's always been careful since he said passengers are sometimes confused by his out-of-state license plate. He also faced a permanent deactivation from Uber last year over a dispute over the color of his car.

He doesn't have a wife or kids, nor does he have an apartment, as he mainly lives out of his car to save money. He acknowledges that growing competition on the road and lower earnings could put a greater dent in savings for people with families or permanent residences.

Torres has transitioned to driving full-time for Lyft, and he typically is online for 12 hours a day but only actively drives five to six hours in between waiting around airports.

He said he's increasingly put himself in his passengers' shoes to determine the best places and times to drive — he likely won't put in the effort to drive during rain, and he's more likely to do later trips around concert venues or bars.

To continue supporting his travels, he said he sometimes does airport rides at 3 or 4 a.m., as well as rides between 6:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. during the morning rush. He also said being online around noon is fruitful for corporate workers, while 3 p.m. is right when schools let out. He usually tries not to drive around evening rush hours but sometimes resumes later at night.

He also devotes more time to driving between Wednesday and Sunday, when rides are more frequent, whether for "whiskey Wednesdays" or Friday afternoon happy hours. This is also when he can best network with passengers and hear their stories, as he said he occasionally gets to drive famous people.

Torres said drivers should consider this a short-term opportunity while working toward long-term goals. As he eases off the app, he has his eyes set on more international travel in the coming months. He's also investing more time in his food app, a local recommendation tool that functions like a Facebook group in which people ask questions about, for example, the best bartender in the area or where to go for particular dishes. It has launched on Android and set to be released on Apple by the summer.

"The most positivity that you can get out of it, do whatever you can and get the most out of it," Torres said. "The next few months will probably be my last time doing this because I'm focusing on other things, so I always had a plan for the things I was going to do."

Are you a ride-hailing driver who's struggling to pay bills or has had recent success? Have you recently pivoted to a new career from driving? Reach out to nsheidlower@businessinsider.com.

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• The US is drafting sanctions on Chinese lenders, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• These could cut China off from accessing the US dollar and Western markets.
• Lawmakers are worried that China's commercial exports to Russia are helping its military industry.

The US is taking sharper aim at Chinese financial institutions, in an effort to stamp out a key source of support for Russia's military production.

Lawmakers in Washington are actively drafting a round of sanctions against such banks, the aim being to completely cut these lenders off from the global financial system, The Wall Street Journal reports. 

Although this constitutes a more forceful step than seen before, the ballooning trade between Beijing and Moscow is feared to be helping Russia rebuild its war machine. While no weapons are exchanged, China has become the lead supplier of essential industrial components, from circuitry to aircraft parts.

For instance, exports of dual-use goods are estimated to have jumped from a few thousand to almost 30,000 a month in March, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Such volumes amplify concern that Russia could hold out in a war of attrition against Ukraine, especially as Kyiv falls deeper into an ammunition shortage. 

Previously, the threat of US secondary sanctions has already sparked a pullback in Chinese-Russian financial dealings, including restricted yuan payment transactions. But while this has added difficulty in facilitating trade, it hasn't stopped the two economies from drawing closer together. 

New sanctions could go as far as cutting China from accessing the US dollar, the linchpin currency used in global trade. This would essentially shun Beijing from Western markets, a threat US officials are hoping will induce change on China's part.

And for an economy roiled by debt and struggling to rebound, that would only add to issues. But it also means risks for Washington, as it could speed up de-dollarization efforts.

"China can't have it both ways," Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said last week. "It can't purport to want to have positive friendly relations with countries in Europe, and at the same time be fueling the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War."

He is headed for China on Tuesday. 

Beijing responded to the news by calling the US' approach as "hypocritical," Reuters reported. 

"China's right to conduct normal economic and trade exchanges with other countries, including Russia, is inviolable," Wang Webin, a spokesperson from China's foreign ministry responded to the sanctions threat in a Tuesday news briefing.

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• The US has spent $5 billion on a fleet of new helicopters to transport the president.
• But the VH-92 continues to scorch the White House lawn, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
• This years-long problem has sidelined the helicopters from carrying Biden for now. 

The new Marine One helicopters, part of a program that the US spent $5 billion on, still can't carry President Joe Biden because there's still a risk they will scorch the White House lawn, according to a new report.

The rotors and engine exhaust from the Sikorsky-manufactured VH-92 Patriot will occasionally burn the grass when it lands, an issue that was initially identified in 2018, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Because of this unrelenting problem, the new VH-92 is only carrying White House officials or Secret Service personnel instead of the president himself and is restricted to landing on paved surfaces, the report said. Older VH-3D Sea King helicopters will continue to transport Biden from the iconic, traditional South Lawn takeoff spot.

The executive-transport fleet consists of VH-3D and VH-60N helicopters, which are designated with the "Marine One" callsign when Biden is aboard. The US military sought to replace these aging aircraft with the newer VH-92 systems under the $5 billion program and has already secured 20 of them from Lockheed Martin, Sikorsky's parent company.

The VH-92's lawn-scorching problems were first discovered in 2018 during the Trump administration, kick-starting an effort to resolve the issue.

The Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency, noted in a June 2020 report on the matter that the military had "yet to demonstrate that it can meet the requirement to land on the White House South Lawn without causing damage."

"Heat from the auxiliary power unit and/or engine exhaust continue to damage the lawn under certain conditions," the GAO wrote at the time.

"The program is studying solutions," the GAO said, noting that those included certain "aircraft design changes, lawn surface treatments, and operational procedural changes to minimize landing zone risks."

In early 2021, the Department of Defense's operational testing and evaluations office determined that "the damage was found to be primarily due to engine exhaust, auxiliary power unit exhaust, and discharge of aircraft fluids onto the grass."

However, in its 2023 annual report, which was released earlier this year, the Pentagon said the VH-92 is "operationally effective for administrative lift missions" after the helicopter's "voice communications" were improved, without specifically mentioning the lawn issue.

Neither Lockheed Martin, nor the White House, immediately responded to Business Insider's queries on the reported continuation of the VH-92 problems.

A spokesperson for the defense contractor, meanwhile, told Bloomberg that the company thinks it has found a way to fix the issue.

"We have been working in close collaboration with our customer and have an agreed upon landing zone solution with testing planned to validate and ensure the aircraft meets that specific operational requirement," Melissa Chadwick told the outlet.

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• Captcha tests have been around for years, but they're getting more difficult.
• The "I'm not a robot" tests must evolve to keep up with advancing tech, experts said.
• But internet users are over trying to prove their humanity.

The days of simply identifying distorted letters and typing them out to verify your humanity are long gone.

Google's reCAPTCHA and other third-party Captchas are feeling more like a New York Times game nowadays. But instead of bragging to friends about solving it in two minutes, the reward is being able to pay your utilities bill or log into an account you haven't accessed in months.

The prompts ask us to identify pictures of motorcycles, crosswalks, or buses. Still, they're getting less simple in order to stay ahead of technology that knows how to outsmart Captchas, the Wall Street Journal reported. To put it another way: the robots are making it harder to prove you're not a robot.

So, if you're annoyed by the complex Captchas, prepare for them to get only more mentally taxing.

"Things are going to get even stranger, to be honest, because now you have to do something that's nonsensical," Kevin Gosschalk, founder and CEO of Arkose Labs, a firm that designs Captchas, told the Journal.

He added: "Otherwise, large multimodal models will be able to understand."

The acronym CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Some humans struggle more than others to pass such tests.

There's already a corner of the internet complaining about them.

"I keep falling into endless loops of non-stop 'prove you're human' tests. As in 12+ times I'm absolutely certain I know what a bloody car, bus or crosswalk looks like but they just keep coming," one Reddit user complained in a query about bypassing such tests.

"Can't wait to be violently humbled by one of those goddamn captcha things telling me I'm too dumb to tell a bus from a bike again tonight," an X user posted ahead of a Taylor Swift merchandise release.

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• Tesla EVs come with an adapter to charge at non-Tesla chargers. 
• But that adapter doesn't work with the Cybertruck, Tesla says. 
• This design flaw almost stranded me — until a Ford dealership came to the rescue. 

When I got behind the wheel of my 3-day rental earlier this month, I knew driving the Tesla Cybertruck would be unlike any other driving experience.

What I didn't expect was for the attention-grabbing truck to also give me a headache when I tried to juice up. After all, it's Tesla's newest product, the company's superchargers are seemingly everywhere, and EV charging is slowly improving across the board.

Boy, was I wrong.

In all of my naivety (despite editing articles every single week about electric cars and their associated infrastructure challenges), I thought the reporting trip would be a breeze. I would pick up the vehicle, test it out, charge it overnight, stop quickly at a Supercharger on the way to return it, and be on my way.

Not so fast.

Here's where my assumptions went astray, thanks to some design oversight from Tesla and a lack of contingency planning on my part:

I picked up a shiny new Cybertruck, one of the first few hundred made, in a Target parking lot in South Austin.

It was my first time using Turo, the peer-to-peer car rental app (more on that in a later story), and the pick-up was seamless.

I was staying at my parent's house in the Texas Hill Country, about an 80-mile drive, so I knew I would be fine on range for the first leg of this journey. I also made sure to research Superchargers — there wasn't one in my parent's town — but there were two within 30 miles, and some new third-party plugs in town I hoped to check out.

Given the truck's advertised 320-plus miles of estimated range, I didn't give charging much more thought.

As I settled in and came to terms with the contraption I was now responsible for operating, I made a mental note of the estimated range remaining: 218 miles

The truck's owner, whom I never actually met face-to-face, had a charging limit set at 80% to protect the battery pack's long-term health.

I also noticed the massive front windshield and sunroof actively soaking up the Texas sun, which would definitely affect the range if I cranked the climate control to cool off. Still, even with the AC blasting and some fun accelerating to investigate the truck's handling, I knew I would be fine mileage-wise.

The truck handled winding Texas backroads with ease, hugging corners and accelerating astonishingly quickly.

My excitement to test out "sport mode" and the truck's speed probably didn't help my range either.

I arrived in the heart of the Hill Country with 111 miles remaining, according to Tesla's onboard computer, plenty for another full day of testing every feature possible. Charging would be no issue, I thought, and I wanted to get the full experience.

Some more testing and photo-taking took my range to about 85 miles when I locked up the truck for the night.

To my surprise, I lost about 20 miles of range overnight. This meant starting the next day with 62 miles in the tank.

I later learned Tesla's sentry mode can eat battery life as it monitors the exterior cameras. That's when some of my anxiety began to set in. "I really hope this one public charger in town works," I thought as I prepared for a day of testing the truck. I headed over to the public charger first thing to check it out.

If it were my own truck, I would likely have a high-voltage outlet at home to charge overnight and start every day with a (mostly) full battery. But because it's a rental and my parents don't have an EV, that wasn't an option.

Unfortunately, the public charger was occupied. Time to get creative.

I opened PlugShare, a crowdsourced app that aggregates all EV chargers onto one map, and headed over to the local HEB.

The best US grocery chain (depending on who you ask) has installed chargers at many of its locations around Texas. The ones here were brand new from Volta. (So new they weren't yet showing on Volta's app or even Google Maps Street View).

HEB didn't respond to questions about how many chargers it has installed so far or of which brands.

This is where the problems started. I (wrongly) assumed Tesla's adapter would work for all CCS chargers. CCS is an industry standard that predates Tesla. But newer, second-generation CCS chargers have additional DC fast-charging pins that make the plug bulkier on the bottom to increase charging speeds.

Even with the adapter, the bottom part of the plug could not fit past the Cybertruck's plastic fender.

Before you send me hate mail, there’s an important nuance here: Tesla does, in fact, sell a CCS combo adapter for $250. It doesn't work with the Cybetruck.

So I was stuck with a measly "SAE J1772" charging adapter that comes with every Tesla. Silly me.

This is when panic began to set in. What if the car using the public charger in town was there all day? It could be hours, given how slow those are.

But deep down in my journalistic notebook of a brain, I remembered that Ford was installing EV chargers at many of its dealerships. The one in town showed up on PlugShare, and maybe, just maybe, that one would work differently or have different adapters, I thought.

I called them before heading over just to make sure the charger was working and available to anyone. They said come on over. I didn't tell them exactly what I was driving yet.

There's one thing you should know about pulling a Cybertruck into a Ford dealership in Texas. You're going to get lots of attention.

Their brand-new CCS fast chargers wouldn't work with the Cybertruck, either, thanks to the larger plug on this new generation.

As more automakers switch to Tesla's charging technology, now known as the North American Charging System or NACS, the adapter issue is only going to get worse. For now, the two standards largely operate at the same speed, with the plug shape being their main difference.

Luckily, the dealership had an old-school level-2 charger around back. They were happy to let me hang out for a bit if they could have a look at the truck. I was happy to oblige.

Charging on a car lot with no shade or amenities isn't fun, but it's better than being stuck.

"My new Bronco used to be what turned heads in this lot," one employee told me. "I can't compete with this!"

After about an hour, I had added nearly 30 miles to the truck's estimated range and decided to go try the public charging spot in town again.

An open spot this time! Maybe I wouldn't be stranded after all.

I didn't have high hopes after reading some reviews. And the station's appearance wasn't helping my anxiety. I pulled in and set to figuring it out.

I had never heard of LibertyHydra chargers, and their app was clunky at best. Still, I was able to pre-pay for charging increments up to 4 hours at a relatively cheap rate — $8.90 total in this case. (The company didn't respond to questions about uptime and maintenance on their system).

It worked! Once electrons started flowing I was getting about the same charging rate as at the dealership.

Some quick back-of-the-envelope math showed I could easily finish the day and make it to a Supercharger the next morning to return the truck with the same range as I picked it up.

Relief.

With (most) of my anxiety squared away, I set out to test another strange task asked of EV owners: Leaving a car for hours.

Luckily, nobody messed with the plug. (The app would have warned me if the truck stopped charging unexpectedly). But there were plenty of passersby still taking photos.

I was able to monitor the charging remotely on the app.

As the truck sat in the sun charging, temperatures inside climbed rapidly.

But the same way I could see this meant I could also start the AC on my walk over to pick it up, a handy feature for hot climates like Texas.

When all was said and done, I had 170 miles of charge for the next day's return trip to Austin with a stop at a Supercharger.

Tesla owners have told me for years that the Supercharger network was a huge selling point, and this trip proved that to be true.

Supercharging takes away most, if not all, of the hassles I encountered. (Charging overnight at home would have as well.)

On the return trip, I simply plugged in a Supercharger along my route into the computer and headed down the road. About 15 minutes away from the charger, the truck notified me it was pre-conditioning the battery for a faster charge, which seemed to mean no more regenerative braking but no other major changes.

I arrived at an empty — albeit stark — Supercharger in Johnson City, Texas, and plugged in with no issue. The truck immediately began charging at warp speed compared to my other two tries, adding 140 miles of range every hour. I was topped up in exactly 27 minutes to the limit pre-set by the owner.

On a brief walk to the local ACE Hardware and a doughnut shop (no amenities at this charger), the truck let me know that charging was almost finished and warned me of idle fees if I remained plugged in more than 5 minutes after.

The total came out to $17, my Turo host told me. Since it was a rental, I didn't even have to think about it — and he didn't request a reimbursement.

I dropped off the truck with about 125 miles of range right next to a Supercharger.

Was I truly stranded at any point? Not quite, but it was as close as I ever wanted to be. On my next road trip in an EV, I'll double-check my adapters — and not count on random ones to get the job done.

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• A US defense official downplayed the threat of China's new Xi'an H-20 bomber.
• The official said it's "not really" a concern, per defense media.
• That said, the US won't really know for sure how good or bad they are until it sees them fight.

China's new bomber, the Xi'an H-20, is intended to rival America's new stealth bomber, but a US defense official told reporters on Monday it's "not really" a concern.

"They want to show that they're a great, you know, military power," the official said during a background briefing, per Breaking Defense and other defense outlets, but "that doesn't necessarily mean it actually delivers them the kind of capability that they would need or at the quantity that they would need."

The official said that looking at the system design, "it's probably nowhere near as good" as US stealth platforms, "particularly more advanced ones that we have coming down."

There are still a lot of unknowns with the H-20. Still, the Pentagon's 2023 China military power report notes that the H-20 is expected to have a range of around 10,000 km, be able to carry both nuclear and conventional payloads, and be capable of being refueled aerially for prolonged flight. Those aren't insignificant capabilities, but without sufficient stealth, the bomber may not be worth the hype.

A Chinese military official recently told Chinese media that additional information about the bomber would be made public in the near future. "It's coming soon, just wait," People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) Deputy Commander Wang Wei told Hong Kong Commercial Daily in March, adding that "it is worth the excitement."

China has been heavily focused on military expansion and modernization, advancing its aviation through its state-owned companies such as China Aviation Industry Corporation, which has previously produced bombers, heavy transport planes, and fighter aircraft.

Among the products this company makes that the US military has also shrugged off is the Chinese fifth-generation J-20 fighter jet. A former US Air Force commander said previously that it wasn't "anything to lose a lot of sleep over."

Although the US official said that the H-20 bomber likely doesn't match up to American capabilities, they clarified at the press briefing that "we're not going to know they're not good until they're shooting at us, and I don't want to be in a position where I find out, 'Oh, they actually are that good.'"

So the military may not be particularly worried, but they also can't make assumptions and have to be ready to match the threat and maintain overmatch.

The Pentagon unveiled a new stealth bomber in 2022 that is currently in production and will eventually replace B-1 and B-2 fleets. 

"As the world's first six-generation aircraft, B-21 forms the backbone of the future for US air power, delivering a new era of capability and flexibility through advanced integration of data, sensors and weapons, and is rapidly upgradable to outpace evolving threats," Northrop Grumman, the aircraft's manufacturer, said in in a statement earlier this year.

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• The founder of startup HeadSpin just got an 18-month prison sentence for wire and securities fraud.
• He admitted he gave investors wrong financial information, defrauding them out of over $100 million.
• Prosecutors said his sentence is a warning to other "fake it til you make it" Silicon Valley execs.

The founder of a buzzy Silicon Valley startup was sentenced to prison over a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme — and prosecutors want it to be a lesson to other "fake it til you make it" entrepreneurs.

Manish Lachwani, the former CEO of app testing company HeadSpin, was sentenced on Friday to 18 months in prison, plus three years supervised release, for wire fraud and securities fraud, the Department of Justice announced.

Lachwani pleaded guilty to the charges in April 2023, admitting that he had knowingly given investors wrong information on the company's financials and customer base.

Those false documents helped him dupe investors out of more than $100 million between 2017 and 2020, according to the DOJ.

Lachwani founded the software-as-a-service company — which gives clients software and tools to test out mobile apps — in 2015.

He served as its CEO until he was ousted in 2020 after the board launched an internal investigation into company financials, The Information reported. The company is still operating under new leadership.

Lachwani's defense argued in a court filing that "The Court has referenced a 'fake-it-till-you-make-it' mentality in Silicon Valley; HeadSpin has in a very real way 'made it' and HeadSpin's investors may still see a highly profitable exit."

But the judge and prosecutors would not let the "fake it" part of the equation slide.

"This defendant admitted he lied about his company's revenue and customers to attract funding from investors, including many in Silicon Valley," US prosecuting attorney Ismail J. Ramsey said in the DOJ's statement. "Today's sentencing should send a message to other entrepreneurs who may be tempted to cross the line into fraud and to 'fake it until they make it.'"

"This Office is committed to protecting investors—including those whose capital powers the engines of innovation in Silicon Valley—from start-ups that misrepresent their finances and try to cut corners," Ramsey said.

Lachwani's fraudulent behavior highlights how private startups can keep information from their backers.

Representatives for Lachwani and HeadSpin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

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