The Department of Government Inefficiency

Elon Musk looks on during a Cabinet Meeting at the White House on March 24, 2025. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

While I hesitate to use the term Kafkaesque, it is difficult to find a better adjective to describe Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The entity, which is not a department but rather an austerity initiative combined with a parapolitical apparatus, appears set on making the federal government as inefficient and wasteful as possible.

Take, for example, the Internal Revenue Service. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the IRS’s tax receipts are on pace to decline by more than $500 billion by mid-April. The theory behind the slump is that some would-be taxpayers presume the agency too hindered by DOGE’s shake-up to enforce filing requirements this year.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, psychiatrists are warning that the Trump administration’s return-to-office decree — one of Musk’s top priorities — has forced them into crowded workplaces where they cannot grant their patients the medical privacy they are guaranteed by law. And for some doctors at the VA, returning to the office full-time is a non-starter. “The end of remote work is essentially the same as cutting mental health services,” an anonymous clinician told the New York Times. “These remote docs aren’t moving and they have other options if they are forced to drive to some office however many miles away every day to see their patient virtually from there.”

In a piece for the Federal News Network, Deborah Grieser, a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer, presented the incredible costs that DOGE has incurred by placing thousands of civil servants on administrative leave:

The salaries and benefits for these sidelined employees are still being paid — millions of dollars a month — with no work being done. Administrative leave, especially when misused at this scale, is a direct drain on taxpayers. The numbers are staggering. A 2014 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report estimated that over $3 billion was spent on administrative leave in just two years. That was under normal conditions. What we’re seeing now — tens of thousands placed on leave across multiple agencies — is without precedent and likely far more expensive.

The legal exposure is just as alarming. Since the February executive order triggering mass RIFs, thousands of employees have filed or are preparing to file challenges. Some early court rulings have already found that the terminations violated due process or were procedurally defective. Reinstated employees, rather than returning to work, are often placed right back on paid administrative leave while agencies try to sort out next steps.

And if the government loses these cases, as early decisions suggest it might, taxpayers could be liable for far more than just salaries. Under the Equal Access to Justice Act, successful claimants can recover attorney fees.

On the topic of DOGE-led inefficiencies, it seems the inbox Musk uses to collect millions of responses to his “What Did You Do Last Week?” emails has been exhausted. “The recipient’s mailbox is full and can’t accept messages now,” reads a bounce-back email from HR@opm.gov, per Bloomberg News. “Please try resending your message later, or contact the recipient directly.” Emails to nowhere notwithstanding, the Washington Post reported last week that IRS employees have to spend their Mondays waiting in line to message Musk about the “five things I did last week.”

Federal employees should expect more of the same in the near future. At a cabinet meeting on Monday, President Donald Trump acknowledged the unpopularity of DOGE but said he would only be “satisfied” after two or three more months of DOGE cuts. The president has since signed a memo that attempts to grant the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — a DOGE cutout — the authority to fire employees across the government.

SpaceX's cash spigot

The roughly $300 million Musk spent to help elect Trump is starting to look like a pretty good deal. The billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla now stands to net a great deal more in federal contracts. From the New York Times:

Within the Trump administration’s Defense Department, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocketry is being trumpeted as the nifty new way the Pentagon could move military cargo rapidly around the globe.

In the Commerce Department, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service will now be fully eligible for the federal government’s $42 billion rural broadband push, after being largely shut out during the Biden era.

At NASA, after repeated nudges by Mr. Musk, the agency is being squeezed to turn its focus to Mars, allowing SpaceX to pursue federal contracts to deliver the first humans to the distant planet.

And at the Federal Aviation Administration and the White House itself, Starlink satellite dishes have recently been installed, to expand federal government internet access.

The report goes on to note that SpaceX would likely be the primary beneficiary of Trump’s plan for a Golden Dome, which — in theory — would work like a modernized version of Reagan’s failed “Star Wars” missile defense program. One former Pentagon comptroller has estimated the annual cost of operating the Golden Dome to be $100 billion.

The New York Times reported last week that the Pentagon had arranged to brief Musk on what it plans to do if war breaks out between the U.S. and China. The Pentagon opted to cancel that meeting after the leak, but SpaceX would gain a lot of valuable information on the Pentagon’s future procurement needs should Musk receive a similar briefing in the future.

The FBI crackdown on "violent Tesla attacks"

On Monday, the FBI announced the creation of a task force with the sole mandate of cracking down “on violent Tesla attacks,” referring to the incidents of vandalism that have plagued the automaker’s dealerships, showrooms, and charging stations in recent months. The task force was announced shortly after Trump said Tesla vandals would be treated like “terrorist [thugs]” and could be renditioned to a sprawling prison in El Salvador.

As reported by Wired, claiming “domestic terrorism” could afford the FBI broader powers and resources to go after Tesla vandals:

By labeling these and other incidents involving Tesla domestic terrorism, the FBI can file broader search warrants than in other types of cases. Under the Patriot Act, law enforcement gets “special authorities" while investigating terrorism, including “single-jurisdiction search warrants” from magistrate judges that apply anywhere in the US instead of a single geographic area, according to a 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office…

The FBI also has a national network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces that allow the bureau to borrow agents, experts, data, and intelligence from more than 30 federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including the “Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. military, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Transportation Security Administration,” as well as local police throughout a particular region.

In addition to these resources, the FBI has access to surveillance technology that local authorities may not, such as social media surveillance tools, face recognition programs, and allegedly “stingrays” that can intercept data from cell phones.

Four suspects have been hit with federal charges for Tesla-related vandalism so far.

Trump and Mask have claimed the acts of vandalism are being funded and cordinated at a high level, but some at the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security have taken a more measured approach. Federal law enforcement officials wrote that the crimes “appear to have been conducted by lone offenders, and all known incidents occurred at night, making identification and arrest of the actors difficult,” according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by the New York Times. The assessment advised law enforcement against conflating the vandals with the anti-Musk protestors practicing “constitutionally protected” activities outside Tesla facilities.

Apparent Tesla supporters have also jumped into the fray. Last week, a man in Florida was charged with aggravated assault after he drove his car toward a crowd protesting at a Tesla dealership in Palm Beach. And in Berkeley, California, a Trump supporter was arrested on Saturday after firing a stun gun at Tesla protesters.

There is speculation online that insurance companies might think twice about insuring Teslas amid this nationwide vandalism spree. But a CNN report exploring that theory found it would probably take a lot more damage before such a contingency is raised. “It isn’t something drivers need to be worried about happening today,” insurance expert Shannon Martin told the network. “But it is something they need to keep their eye on in the future, especially potential Tesla owners.” Another expert said that insurers could raise rates for Tesla owners living in areas with a significant amount of anti-Tesla vandalism.

Tesla owners are trading in their cars at a record pace this year, although that could have more to do with anti-Musk sentiment among electric vehicle owners than hooliganism concerns.

Tesla sales continue to decline

Tesla’s share price partially recovered some of its recent losses this week — the stock closed at 273.13 on Thursday — but the company’s fundamentals have continued to take a beating. In Europe, Tesla sales slumped by 49% in the first two months of the year, even as overall sales of electric vehicles increased substantially over the same period.

In the U.S., interest in Tesla’s Model Y refresh appears to be lagging. With the company struggling to entice consumers with its aging lineup, the new model was considered by some analysts to be an antidote for Tesla’s merchandising inertia. But that hasn’t been the case yet. From Electrek:

You can order a new Model Y Launch Edition today in the US, and Tesla can deliver it on the same day. This points to weak demand just weeks after the new vehicle’s deliveries started, while CEO Elon Musk indirectly suggested strong demand…

Tesla currently lists all colors, except for ‘Ultra Red’, as available for delivery “today”: Even the Ultra Red can be delivered within a few days, according to Tesla’s online configurator.

This would indicate that Tesla has no backlog for the new version of the Model Y in its currently available trim.

As Electrek noted, demand could increase once Tesla begins offering cheaper versions of the Model Y refresh to U.S. consumers. The only version currently available comes fully loaded with a $60,000 price tag.

SEC chief voted against suing Musk

In January, Mark Uyeda, the interim chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission, was the sole commissioner to vote against suing Musk over his failure to disclose the shares of Twitter he purchased in 2022, according to Reuters. The other four SEC commissioners at the time voted in favor of suing Musk, including another Republican. Leading up to the vote, Uyeda reportedly pressured SEC staffers to sign a pledge indicating that the case was not political.

Earlier this month, Musk received a court summons related to that SEC lawsuit.

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Musk Minutes

The White House said it has recruited Musk to investigate the messaging snafu that occurred when someone in the administration added the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic to a group chat on U.S. war plans in Yemen. (The Hill)

Amid nationwide anti-Tesla protests, the company is preparing to open a retro-futuristic diner in Los Angeles that looks like something out of the Fallout series. (New York Times)

As previously noted in this newsletter, DOGE’s budgetary “cuts” at the Pentagon have been less than remarkable. So far, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has claimed the termination of $580 million in Pentagon contracts, or less than .07% of its budget. “I need lethal machine learning models, not equitable machine learning models,” Hegseth said, referring to the cancellation of a $9 million defense grant for equitable AI models. (Responsible Statecraft)

DOGE has all but shuttered a nearly eight-decade-old federal agency that mediated labor disputes. Gutting the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service reportedly shaved .00014% off the federal budget. (The Guardian)

Amid Musk nearing his long-held goals of selling Teslas and Starlink subscriptions in India, the billionaire has chosen to risk ruffling feathers in New Delhi by suing the country’s authoritarian government for censoring content shared on X. (New York Times)

At the same time, X moved to suspend accounts belonging to the political opposition in Turkey after President Tayyip Erdoğan imprisoned his top political rival. (Politico Europe)

TechCrunch has gathered a list of 19 tech founders and venture capitalists collaborating with DOGE, including a previously unknown member of the initiative, Mike Gonzalez, who founded an HR systems startup. (TechCrunch)

The official account for Assassin’s Creed, a popular video game series published by Ubisoft, earned hundreds of thousands of likes on X after it called out Musk for recruiting someone to level up his video game characters for him. (Forbes)

Reuters has a new report on the background of Edward Coristine, DOGE’s 19-year-old senior technologist known as “Big Balls.” DiamondCDN, one of the companies Coristine founded while in high school, provided network services to a cybercrime gang that claimed to have collected stolen data and harassed an FBI agent. (Reuters)

Grok, Musk’s “anti-woke,” “maximally truth-seeking” AI model, has failed to heed its master’s call. Tests by the Washington Post found that Grok contradicted Musk’s views on gender-affirming care, the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, and federal spending on housing for undocumented immigrants. Musk claims that Grok was infected by woke content it learned on the internet and has suggested adopting a more closed-off approach to its training. (Washington Post)

Through an attorney, Ashley St. Clair, the pro-Trump personality who claims to have given birth to one of Musk’s children, accused the billionaire of recently reducing his financial support for the child as part of a retaliatory campaign. “He did this after Ashley was forced to bring this matter to court, when he refused to respond to her many private attempts to resolve this matter without publicity,” said Karen Rosenthal, St. Clair’s attorney. Rosenthal also said that Musk “filed an emergency application to gag Ashley and prevent her from communicating about his actions.” (HuffPost)