While more than 500,000 people have put down a deposit for the privilege of owning Tesla’s new Model 3, according to the company, 30 employees were the lucky few to receive their vehicles first.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took the stage at a companywide event in Fremont, Calif., on Friday night to hand over the vehicles. Approximately a half-million people have put down $1,000 to eventually own an affordable long-range all-electric car.

“The whole point of Tesla is to make an affordable electric vehicle,” Musk told reporters earlier in the day. While Tesla gets much of the attention in the electric vehicle world, this week would be considered momentous even without Tesla.

Let’s consider the week:

• The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation authority, the nation’s second-largest transit system with the nation’s largest bus fleet made an investment of $138 million in electric buses. It’s the first step in the city’s plan to make the bus fleet all-electric by 2030.
• California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation extending the “cap-and-trade” program aimed at reducing use of fossil fuels. The state’s “cap and trade” was first signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It has been a powerful tool for California’s already-powerful air quality agency, the California Air Resources Board. Schwarzenegger joined Brown at the signing ceremony.
• Great Britain followed France in announcing that it would ban the sale of new cars fueled by gasoline or diesel fuel by 2040. It’s part of a plan to phase out petroleum-fueled cars and light trucks altogether by 2050.
• Toyota Motor Corp is working on an electric car powered by a new type of battery, according to reports from Japanese paper Chunichi Shimbun. The battery is supposed to significantly increase driving range and cut charging times. The new battery technology is supposed to be in cars by 2022.
• Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben Van Beurden said the company was focusing on the idea of oil prices that were “lower forever.” The company says it’s shifting its focus from oil to natural gas and plans on taking a bigger role in renewable energy so as not to miss out on a potential electric vehicle boom. Van Beurden said he is switching to an electric vehicle himself.

That’s the context in which Musk’s long-awaited affordable car enters the market. Musk heaped praise on the Model 3 calling it “safer than a Volvo.” Musk has said also in unequivocal terms that the company needs the Model 3 to succeed: “We finally have a great affordable electric cars, that’s absolutely what’s needed for us.”

During a test-drive, the fully loaded version of a Model 3 had comparable handling and amenities of its more expensive siblings the Model X and Model S but, according to Musk, has “far fewer bells and whistles.” It’s likely a car that will satisfy Musk/Tesla enthusiasts. However, if you want those bells and whistles such as autonomy and extended range, the prices jumps much higher than the $35,000 tease rate up to nearly $60,000. Even with federal and the most generous state rebates, that is out of the range for the average driver.

The problem for Tesla, unlike other automakers, is not demand, but supply. “We’ve done everything we could to unsell the car,” says Musk.

Tesla would have to dramatically increase the scale of its production to fulfill the half-million orders. In 2016, the company produced fewer than 100,000 of its two best-selling cars. The company predicts it will be able to produce 250,000 of the new Model 3, eventually scaling up to a half-million vehicles annually.

As Europe turns toward electric cars, California is doubling down and global leaders are preparing for the rise of such vehicles. Sales of electric vehicles have increased significantly in the past 18 months, but they remain a small fraction of overall sales. Analysts say gas-powered SUV and truck sales dominate the U.S. market at more than 60 percent.

A last bit of context: Just one day before Musk took the stage, Ford’s Truck division turned 100 years old. Its F-150 remains the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. for 40 years in a row. So while the nation’s flirtation with electric vehicles is piqued, its love affair with trucks endures.

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President Trump’s White House has been operating so far outside of this country’s traditional ethical “norms” that it’s been “a shock to the system,” Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, said Friday.

“We are truly in an ethics crisis, and something needs to be done about it,” he said at a news conference at the National Press Club.

Shaub, who resigned from the government earlier this month, proposed a series of legislative reforms that he says could ensure the agency can remain effective — even during the Trump administration, with which it has had a combative relationship.

He says the administration is hiring staffers who “are pushing back on literally everything” suggested by OGE to minimize conflicts of interest, although all have ultimately complied.

The White House nominees are not merely quibbling about details of the law, but are challenging “even some of the basic assumptions of the ethical norms,” said Shaub, who now works for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit group.

And the president himself sets a bad example, Shaub said. “You see the president flying around giving free advertisement to his properties, and foreign governments, businesses and charities and even political officials holding events at his properties,” he said. “It is just inextricable — the conflicts of interest.”

Trump has refused to release his tax returns, and has failed to fully divest from his business empire.

To raise ethical standards, Shaub is urging Congress to pass legislation that would, among other reforms, create a central inspector general for the executive branch. Then instead of merely providing guidance to the White House on ethical matters, the OGE could refer cases to an inspector for investigation.

In addition, OGE should be able to initiate civil penalties in court and talk directly to Congress without going through the Office of Management and Budget first. And, he wants to crack down on “revolving doors” in government, where senior officials currently are allowed to leave government and after one year become lobbyists for clients trying to influence their old agencies.

Shaub also wants to amend the Ethics in Government Act to prohibit officials from receiving compensation for the use of their names and their family names while in office — a matter particularly relevant to the Trumps, who hold extensive trademarks and make money from placing their name on properties, such as hotels.

Shaub said the changes he proposes transcend partisan politics.

“Both major political parties have always been incredibly supportive of the government ethics program and neither can claim sole credit for having built it,” Shaub said.

He has already found support for his efforts from Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina.

If OGE is not strengthened, Shaub said, Americans risk long-standing ethical norms changing, for the worse.

“Norms are the glue that hold society together,” he said.

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White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, speaking on Fox & Friends Thursday, said the Trump administration’s hiring efforts are being hindered by the “hoops you have to jump through” to comply with Office of Government Ethics rules.

“There are so many qualified men and women who wanted to serve this administration and their country who have been completely demoralized and completely disinclined to do so based on the paperwork we have to put forward, divesting assets,” Conway said.

Kathleen Clark, an ethics law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, disagreed about the impact of ethics disclosure forms, saying they help ensure that government employees prioritize the public good.

“Someone who is not used to putting the interests of the people first is probably more likely to see this as an inappropriate burden, but if you put it into the context of the ethics laws, it makes sense that people have a requirement to make these disclosures,” Clark said.

Conway said she does not want the OGE requirements to discourage Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, who claimed via Twitter that his financial disclosure form had been leaked to Politico.

In fact, the disclosure is a public document filed with the Office of Government Ethics. It is available upon request for anyone to see, as required by law.

At the White House, “we have all complied with those rules,” Conway said, “but it is really disincentivizing good men and women, and I hope it doesn’t disincentivize Anthony.”

Top executive branch employees have 30 days after assuming office to submit a report showing their income in “dividends, rents, interest, and capital gains, received during the preceding calendar year which exceeds $200 in amount or value.”

The OGE requirement covers more than 27,000 individuals who need to file publicly available disclosures and another 370,000 filers of similar, but confidential disclosures.

Scaramucci’s report showed he has assets worth as much as $85 million.

Earlier this month, Walter Shaub stepped down as director of OGE after calling the White House approach to ethics a “disappointment.”

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In the seven years since the Affordable Care Act was passed, CEOs of U.S. health care companies have made a lot of money.

Their compensation far outstrips the wage growth of nearly all Americans, according to reporter Bob Herman, who published an analysis this week of “the sky-high pay of health care CEOs” for the online news site, Axios.

Based on corporate financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Herman did research on 113 heads of 70 of the largest U.S. health care companies in the last seven years. Cumulatively, he says, these CEOs have earned $9.8 billion since the ACA was first enacted. Only four of the 113 CEOs were women, he notes, and only two are right now in charge of major health care companies.

The top earner was John Martin, the former CEO of the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, who took home nearly $900 million, Herman says. Gilead makes, among other things, medicines to treat HIV and AIDS, as well as two leading drugs to treat hepatitis C.

Several other executives topped $250 million.

Robert Siegel, host of NPR’s All Things Considered, spoke with Herman about his analysis. Excerpts of the interview follow, edited for length and clarity.

Interview Highlights

Who are these CEOs and why are they earning so much money — on average, $20 million per year, you say?

We looked at a wide array of different companies. They include pharmaceutical companies, health insurers, hospitals, pharmacies — it really spans the gamut. And we found that since the Affordable Care Act went into effect in 2010, their pay has really gone up. So the ACA hasn’t really hurt their earnings, per se. And a lot of the money that they’re earning is coming in the form of vested stocks.

Of course, an underlying issue behind all the talk about Obamacare is not just how we pay for health care and who gets insurance (and in what form) to pay for health care, but how much we pay for health care. What do these CEOs’ earnings say about health care costs in the United States?

For the longest time, health care inflation has really blown away the rate at which the rest of the economy is growing. And a big reason why is because health care executives are not paid to slow spending. Because so much of their pay comes in the form of stock, their incentive is to do whatever it takes to make that stock go up. So that means selling more drugs; raising prices above inflation; performing more procedures; getting more people into the hospital. And those are the exact opposite things that health policy experts believe would benefit the broader system: lower prices; eliminating unnecessary care and drugs; coordinating better care.

But from 2010 (when the Affordable Care Act was signed) through 2015, the Dow Jones went up from under 11,000 to almost 18,000. Wouldn’t executives in most sectors of the economy be making huge gains on stocks and stock options during the period that is also the lifetime of Obamacare?

The stock market really has been doing quite well since the Affordable Care Act has gone into effect, but the reason why this matters even more for health care is a sixth of our economy is devoted to health care. And that continues to grow more every year. So if the most influential executives of these companies are being paid to keep that trajectory up, that’s money that’s being taken away from education or infrastructure or other parts of the economy that may not be growing as quickly, and maybe that we’d want to grow more quickly.

Can a health care executive argue that the Affordable Care Act brought a lot of people into coverage who haven’t had it before? We’ve heard this anecdotally — that lots of people are getting treatment for things that they were skipping when they couldn’t afford it. So, more people are going to the doctor; they’re getting more prescriptions.

There is some effect there, but that doesn’t account for everything. The underlying incentives still really push these companies to do more — even if it’s unnecessary. There’s still this big issue of all these services that people are getting, are they necessary? And I think that’s one of the questions that still need to be answered.

Are there any proposals on the table now — either in Republican bills or in Democratic proposals — that would actually reduce health care costs significantly and reverse this trend?

In the health care debate right now, none of the proposals in Congress address this whatsoever. A lot of what’s being proposed merely tinkers with the financing of health care and who gets health insurance. Nothing is being addressed about drug prices, for example. Nothing’s being addressed about the actual costs of the system. The debate right now is still bickering over how to finance the system — not around how much the system itself costs, which I think is a big issue.

NPR editors Renita Jablonski and Gisele Grayson, and producer Ian Stewart contributed to this story.

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The House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday considered looking into President Trump’s financial ties, particularly those linking him to a bank that had been involved with laundering Russian money.

But Republican members voted “nyet” on a straight party-line vote of 34-26.

They defeated a Democrat-sponsored request to order Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “provide certain documents … relating to President Trump’s financial connections to Russia, certain illegal financial schemes, and related information.”

The committee, which deals with banking and money laundering, “will not be spending time and money” on an investigation that already is being touched upon by other congressional committees, said Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas.

The Senate and House intelligence committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee have all been looking at some aspects of Trump interactions with Russians. Hensarling called the effort to launch yet another investigation “blatantly political.”

But Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., urged passage of the bill known as a “resolution of inquiry,” a rarely used measure that allows Congress to request documents from the executive branch. He said an inquiry is needed because it’s clear “the president has something to hide when it comes to his financial dealings with the Russians.”

Perlmutter said his “suspicions” have increased in recent days because “the president has threatened to fire not only Mr. (Robert) Mueller, the special counsel, but also his attorney general, Mr. (Jeff) Sessions because of the probe into Mr. Trump’s and his family’s financial dealings with the Russians.”

Committee Democrats had been pushing for a broad inquiry, but with a special focus on Trump’s dealings with Deutsche Bank. Earlier this year, the Frankfurt, Germany-based bank paid a $425 million fine for its involvement in a money-laundering scheme with Russian clients.

To better understand why a German bank has turned up in the middle of a controversy involving an American president, here is an explainer:

Deutsche who?

Deutsche Bank, founded in 1870 in Germany, is an enormous financial institution, which S&P Global Intelligence’s ranks as No. 15 in the world in total assets. In 2016, 18 percent of Deutsche Bank’s capital was in the United States.

But the company frequently gets into legal trouble. For example, just last week, it agreed to pay $77 million to end U.S. antitrust litigation in a case involving manipulation of interest rates.

What does a German bank have to do with a U.S. president?

Deutsche Bank and Trump have a long relationship. It started after Trump went through a series of bankruptcies in the early 1990s, and U.S. banks did not want to lend to him.

Deutsche Bank then stepped in as his go-to banker. A New York Times review of security filings estimates that over the past 20 years, Deutsche Bank has given Trump $4 billion in loan commitments and potential bond offerings.

Where do those loans stand today?

While most of the loans have been paid back, Trump’s most recent financial disclosure shows he still has at least $150 million in outstanding debts to the bank.

Many people have loans. So what if Trump owes money to a bank?

For a president, any debt can create a conflict of interest, according to Norm Eisen, who served as the White House ethics adviser to President Barack Obama. He says debts raise questions about whether a president is making policy decisions based on a desire to get favorable terms from his lenders.

“When I was working for President Obama, we wouldn’t even let him refinance his modest home in Chicago because of the appearance of conflict,” Eisen told NPR.

Deutsche Bank isn’t Trump’s only lender. His most recent financial disclosure includes 16 liabilities, from Royal Bank America to Merrill Lynch. His debts total hundreds of millions.

But Deutsche Bank is particularly problematic because it’s so often in legal trouble. Since 2015, the bank has stacked up more than $9.2 billion in fines, penalties and settlements, according to monitoring by the Capital Performance Group. If Trump owes the bank a great deal of money, the question might arise: Would his administration back off tough regulatory enforcement so that the president can get better personal lending terms from Deutsche Bank?

Is special counsel Mueller looking into Deutsche Bank?

Yes, according to news reports. For example, The Guardian says Mueller wants to see an internal report done by Deutsche Bank itself. Several months ago, the bank did an internal review to determine whether any of Trump’s loans were connected to Russia or backed by the Russian government, the report said.

Also, New York regulators want to know whether loans made by Deutsche to Trump could expose the bank itself to heightened risk, The New York Times said.

What does the president have to say about all this?

In a recent interview with the Times, reporters asked whether it would cross a line for Mueller to examine his personal finances. Trump said it would, calling it a “violation.”

Trump has made it clear that he objects to Mueller, congressional investigators or banking regulators looking into his personal finances and loans.

Do other Trump family members owe money to Deutsche Bank?

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, secured and personally guaranteed a $285 million loan from Deutsche Bank in October 2016, as the The Washington Post first reported in June.

The loan came right before the election and just as Deutsche bank was settling the Russian money-laundering case with the New York regulators. Kushner did not include the loan on his financial disclosure form filed with the Office of Government Ethics in March nor was it listed on his updated form released last week.

The financial disclosure also shows Kushner has a $5 million to $25 million open line of credit from Deutsche Bank, which he shares with his mother.

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Six months after Republicans gained control of the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats have outlined a plan to improve their chances of methodically taking it all back.

They are leaning heavily on a re-branding of their greatest hits — more and better-paying jobs, lowering health care costs and cracking down on the what are seen as the abuses of big business.

As an agenda and a slogan, “A Better Deal,” hearkens back to the days of President Franklin Roosevelt. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer went 50 miles outside the Beltway, to Berryville, Va., to unveil it, hoping the ideas will resonate with suburban voters, many of whom were energized by Trump’s campaign-trail populism.

“When you lose an election with someone who has, say, 40 percent popularity, you look in the mirror and say what did we do wrong?” Schumer said, speaking on ABC’s This Week Sunday. “And the No. 1 thing that we did wrong is … we didn’t tell people what we stood for.”

Responding to the plan on Monday, President Trump tweeted that in releasing the plan, Democrats were admitting that it was their own fault they lost the election, and not Russian meddling.

Democrats say they want to double federal support for apprenticeship programs to help train young people and put out-of-work adults back in the work force. They also want tax incentives for companies to retrain workers, as well as new standards aimed at limiting corporate mergers that throw people out of work. In addition, the plan calls for lowering the cost of prescription drugs.

“We will aggressively crack down on unfair foreign trade and fight back against corporations that outsource American jobs,” the Democratic leadership said in a statement. “We will fight to ensure a living wage for all Americans and keep our promise to millions of workers who earned a pension, Social Security and Medicare, so seniors can retire with dignity.”

Berryville, with a population less than 5,000, is situated in one district that Democrats desperately would like to flip in 2018. It is currently represented by Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock and it stretches from just outside Washington to more rural parts of the state.

Writing in The Washington Post on Sunday, Pelosi said that since taking the reins in January, Republicans have squandered opportunities to help average Americans. “[Instead] of creating good-paying jobs, or rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure, or advancing tax reform,” she said, “Republicans have spent six months trying to raise Americans’ health costs to fund tax breaks for billionaires.”

Democrats need to wrest 24 Republican-held seats in the House to gain control of that chamber. In the Senate, however, they are playing defense, fighting to retain Democratic-held seats in states won by Trump.

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A 5-year-old girl whose sidewalk lemonade stand brought a $195 fine in east London has been invited to set up shop at several markets and festivals, as supporters reach out to her family. The ticket was forgiven; now the girl’s father is urging more kids to open their own stands.

Last weekend, Andre Spicer took his daughter to the end of their street to offer lemonade (50 pence for a small, 1 pound for a large) to people drawn to a music festival in a nearby park. But, as he said in a tweet that day, “She’s now sobbing, ‘I did a bad thing'” after four Tower Hamlets police officers descended on the stand, issued a fine, and sent them packing.

Spicer’s tweet didn’t bring a response from the local council. But after he wrote a column for The Telegraph, strangers began to praise Spicer and his daughter — and to wonder what was wrong with Tower Hamlets.

“So, about the lemonade standard incident… we are very sorry that this has happened,” Tower Hamlets said in a tweet on the morning after Spicer’s column was published. It continued, “We expect our enforcement officers to show common sense, and to use their powers sensibly. This clearly did not happen.”

The council said the fine “will be cancelled immediately,” adding that it had contacted Spicer and his daughter to apologize.

Spicer said in an email that his daughter may not realize how widely her story has resonated. He added that due to the positive response, “Now she feels less sour about the experience” — and she might be up for setting up another stand in the neighborhood later this month.

The Spicer family also wants to see more kids get the chance to make a stand. On Saturday, Spicer posted a message that reads in part:

“We have been overwhelmed by the kind response from people across the world. Dozens of festivals, markets and businesses have offered us the opportunity to set up a lemonade stand. We hope they will extend this invitation to others who’d love to make a stand.”

“Children could sell home-made lemonade, hand drawn comics or vegetables they have grown. Young people could do more than sell things, like sharing film or music they’ve created, or gaining support for their local club.”

If that sounds like a message influenced by someone who’s used to thinking about people and commerce, it should: Spicer is a professor of organizational behavior at the University of London’s business school. He’s also a critic for the type of behavior his daughter encountered, having written extensively about what he calls “collective stupidity” that sometimes overtakes organizations.

In Spicer’s column for The Telegraph, he noted the difficulties of giving kids space to pursue real-world activities, particularly in an era of shifting parental norms, competition from electronic gadgets — and an abundance of regulations.

Before “Lemonadegate,” Spicer said, his daughter had been inspired by seeing kids running their own tables at a school festival. Afterwards, as he said in The Telegraph, he told her they could get a permit, only to hear her reply, “No. It’s too scary.”

Spicer, who’s a native of New Zealand, says his daughter’s run-in with police has made him contrast the situation with his own childhood, when he and his brother roamed far from home and supported their clubs by selling snacks.

Since the episode became a news story, Spicer tells NPR, he’s received “many messages from people in the U.S.” telling their own stories about children and young people being “harshly shut down by authorities for doing things like selling candy.”

Stressing the importance of learning through action, the Spicer family’s note states, “Making a stand is a great opportunity for kids to share their interests, build confidence and contribute to our communities.”

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