The Week in Musk: The White House is now a Tesla dealership
At the outset of Elon Musk’s work for the White House, a reasonable person would have predicted a certain amount of graft. But even the most skeptical observers may not have pictured President Donald Trump selling Teslas on the White House lawn, which is exactly what took place on Tuesday afternoon. A makeshift South Portico showroom — featuring five Tesla models — was organized for the explicit purpose of rallying the company’s stock after it suffered its worst selloff in five years on Monday.
“I think he’s been treated very unfairly by a very small group of people,” said Trump, who has called boycott campaigns against Tesla illegal. “I just want people to know that he can’t be penalized for being a patriot.”
Although Trump cannot drive himself, the White House purported the president had purchased a Tesla for his staff to use. "That's beautiful," he said as he ducked into a red Model S with Musk sitting shotgun. It appeared that Trump, a longtime critic of electric vehicles, was reading directly from a handwritten Tesla sales pitch.
The White House event helped Tesla recover some of its losses through Wednesday. But by Thursday, the stock had resumed a downward trajectory. Some analysts believe the White House stunt could have negative implications for the Tesla brand long-term. “Tesla is becoming a political symbol of Trump and DOGE, and that is a bad thing for the brand,” Wedbush Securities financial analyst Dan Ives told the Associated Press. “You think it’s helping, but it’s actually hurting.”
Musk has sought to pin Tesla’s ongoing turmoil and protests against the company on a vast liberal conspiracy funded by billionaire George Soros. “The dirty tricks campaign against me & my companies happened exactly as predicted,” Musk wrote in a Wednesday post on X.
DOGE plans to double its staff, target safety net programs
During a Monday appearance on Fox Business, Musk boasted that staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have now been installed at “pretty much” every federal agency. DOGE currently employs a staff of around 100 and plans to add another 100 employees in the future, Musk said. He went on to say that his work for the Trump administration will continue for another year. (As a special government employee, Musk is technically limited to working 130 days during any 365 day period, but the White House could easily work around those limits.)
Musk also telegraphed DOGE’s designs on dramatically reducing social safety net programs. “Most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that’s the big one to eliminate. That’s the sort of half trillion, maybe six, $700 billion,” he told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow. The Trump administration has repeatedly insisted that it will only cut fraudulent entitlement spending. But that does not mesh with Musk’s desire to see entitlements reduced by at least $500 billion, as that level of fraud simply does not exist.
Thus, the issue comes down to how broadly Musk and Trump define fraud. Musk’s definition appears to include a sizable portion of legitimate entitlement spending. Earlier this month, he described Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” So far, DOGE’s work has served as a form of austerity theater, which — while destructive — has done very little to reduce federal spending. To shrink the social safety net and thus substantially reduce the budget, DOGE and the White House would likely need congressional action. In February, Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, vowed not to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
Regardless, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is a major DOGE target. From ABC News:
In a private meeting with outside groups last Tuesday, [acting Social Security Administrator Lee] Dudek referred to DOGE staffers as "the DOGE kids" and said they would "make mistakes" but that "we have to let them see what is going on at SSA," according to three people who attended the meeting.
Dudek said they were being given access to people's names, birth dates and earnings information but not disability information. He also noted that the staffers were granted expedited background checks by the FBI and had been onboarded as agency employees.
One member of DOGE’s SSA team is Mark Elez, who temporarily resigned from the initiative after the Wall Street Journal reported on racist social media posts he shared last year.
Two lawsuits could provide further insight into DOGE
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered Musk and his DOGE collaborators to provide records and testimony about its plans to slash federal agencies. The order seeks to establish the “parameters of DOGE’s and Musk’s authority.” From Politico:
[Chutkan’s order] is a win for a group of 14 Democratic state attorneys general who are suing President Donald Trump, Musk and DOGE, arguing that Musk has unconstitutionally wielded immense power in ways that are damaging their states. Any information the states glean as a result of Chutkan’s decision will help her determine whether to block Musk and DOGE’s government activities altogether. It’s the first time a judge has ordered Musk to produce documents in a court challenge to his aggressive campaign to slash and reshape the federal bureaucracy.
Musk and DOGE have three weeks to fulfill the discovery requests.
The order followed a Monday night ruling from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper requiring DOGE to expeditiously process Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The Trump administration has argued that DOGE is covered by a presidential records law used to evade FOIA requests.
Remarking on the initiative’s “unusual secrecy,” Cooper wrote in a 37-page opinion that DOGE has exercised “unprecedented” authority without congressional input. “The rapid pace of [DOGE’s] actions, in turn, requires the quick release of information about its structure and activities,” the judge wrote. “That is especially so given the secrecy with which DOGE has operated.”
In response, a White House official claimed that Cooper’s ruling was misguided. “DOGE is a component of the White House and not subject to FOIA, only [the Presidential Records Act],” the official told Government Executive, a news publication. “We expect [Cooper] to reverse the ruling once he correctly comprehends DOGE’s structure within the White House office.”
Musk and Rubio's relationship rollercoaster
During a private cabinet meeting held last week, Musk reprimanded Secretary of State Marco Rubio for failing to implement staffing reductions recommended by DOGE, according to the New York Times. The paper reported that Musk accused Rubio of having fired “nobody” and suggested the former senator was only useful for media appearances. The accusation led to a retort from Rubio and was preceded by complaints from Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. From the Times:
Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again…
Just moments before the blowup with Mr. Rubio, Mr. Musk and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fix is needed… Mr. Duffy said the young staff of DOGE was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr. Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers? Mr. Musk told Mr. Duffy that his assertion was a “lie.” Mr. Duffy insisted it was not; he had heard it from them directly.
This was the same meeting in which Trump proposed limiting Musk’s powers. While DOGE can recommend cuts, Trump said, cabinet secretaries would be in charge of carrying out any future cuts within their agencies. In a subsequent social media post, Trump said additional workforce reductions would be pursued with a “‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.”
Since the report, Musk and Rubio have presented a united front publicly. On Sunday, the duo teamed up to insult Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. The Polish official had accused Musk’s Starlink satellites of being an “unreliable provider” for Ukraine, referring to reports on the Trump administration’s threat to revoke Ukraine’s access to the satellite network. “Be quiet, small man,” Musk replied. “You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.” Poland has financed approximately half of the Starlink terminals used by Ukraine.
Rubio chimed in by demanding that Sikorski “say thank you because without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now.”
Musk courts Congress, shifts blame for layoffs
In meetings with Republican lawmakers, Musk has sought to improve his image and blame others for any problems with mass layoffs of federal workers. The spin seems to have worked on a number of Republicans. From the AP:
Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., said Musk told lawmakers that “some of the folks that were the probationary people, he didn’t fire them, they were actually supposedly fired by the agencies —and they messed up.” Did Musk actually say “they messed up?” “Well, if they were in fact, you know, critical people, and the agency did the firing, then yeah, they messed up,” Gimenez said. “But not him.”
Another Republican, Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky, said that Musk went so far as to emphasize that not only had DOGE not recommended mass termination of probationary employees, but that he thought some federal agencies were either incompetent or sabotaging the effort. Musk told them he wanted more precise terminations of those not performing.
Tethering the layoffs to individual cabinet secretaries rather than a unilateral DOGE project appears to be a way for Musk to avoid legal scrutiny and ensure the dismissals are not overturned. Last month, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that the U.S. Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) — the federal human resources agency overtaken by Musk and his deputies — lacks the authority to fire workers at other agencies. On Thursday, Alsup ordered numerous agencies to reinstate thousands of probationary employees laid off by OPM, which is tightly controlled by DOGE.
Musk Minutes
The top lawyer at the Internal Revenue Service, William Paul, was removed by the Trump administration on Thursday amid DOGE’s push to access taxpayer records and induce thousands of layoffs at the agency. Paul will be replaced by an attorney with ties to Trump. DOGE has advised the IRS to cut more than 18,000 jobs by May 15 with deeper cuts expected in the future. (Washington Post)
Neuralink, Musk’s brain-machine implant company, is attempting to trademark the names Telepathy and Telekinesis. (Wired)
The U.S. Postal Service says it has agreed to let DOGE assist with an overhaul of the agency. “While we have accomplished a great deal, there is much more to be done,” Postmaster General Louis DeJoy wrote in a letter to Congress on Thursday. “We are happy to have others to assist us in our worthwhile cause.” (Federal News Network)
DOGE has opted to remove identifying information on federal contractors whose contracts it claims to have canceled on its “wall of receipts” website. While the White House said the change was made for security reasons, it also makes it harder to authenticate DOGE’s claims. However, the New York Times discovered that information identifying the contractors was embedded in the site’s publicly available source code. “The Times used those numbers to match DOGE’s claims with reality,” the paper reported, “and to discover that they contained the same kind of errors that it had made in the past.” (New York Times)
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to approve a waiver for Starlink to access higher power levels on flexible-use spectrum bands. Starlink submitted the waiver as part of its direct-to-cell service with T-Mobile. Competing cellular service providers have argued that Starlink’s access could interfere with their customers. (Reuters)
A number of federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense and Commerce and the General Services Administration (GSA), are considering the adoption of Musk’s Starlink internet service. The GSA — a DOGE cutout — installed Starlink terminals at its D.C. offices last month at the behest of Musk’s deputies. The Federal Aviation Administration is currently testing Starlink terminals in at least three airports. (NBC News)
DOGE has deployed a rudimentary chatbot at the GSA to automate tasks at the agency. “The options are endless, and it will continue to improve as new information is added,” read an internal memo explaining how to use the GSAi chatbot. “You can: draft emails, create talking points, summarize text, write code.” (Wired)
On the topic of DOGE’s GSA takeover, Politico reported that Musk staffers have turned at least four rooms in the agency’s office building into living quarters, “complete with beds from IKEA, lamps and dressers.” (Politico)
Another Politico report revealed that Chris Young, a former Republican organizer, has become Musk’s right-hand man in Washington. Young even had a large TV installed in Musk's office at the White House complex so Musk could play video games. (Politico)
The DOGE-enforced $1 spending limit on credit cards provided to federal employees has hindered work to dispose of trash in national parks and to identify the corpses of U.S. soldiers killed in decades-old conflicts. DOGE claims it has canceled 200,000 government credit cards so far. (Washington Post)
Tesla dealerships in Canada appear to have engaged in a shady scheme to game the country’s electric vehicle subsidy program. In Quebec, a single Tesla dealership reported to have delivered 4,000 vehicles in a single weekend just before the federal program ran out of funding. (Toronto Star)
On Wednesday, SpaceX again delayed its mission to retrieve a pair of NASA astronauts whose mission aboard the International Space Station has dragged on for nine months. Musk has previously accused former President Joe Biden of leaving the astronauts “up there for political reasons.” (Associated Press)
Wired published a report on Musk’s privately held desire for a government shutdown, which he believes would open the door for another round of federal layoffs. (Wired)
Starlink’s years-long effort to enter the Indian market is almost complete. This week, the SpaceX subsidiary signed distribution deals with India’s top telecommunications providers, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. The companies had previously lobbied Mumbai to keep Starlink out of the market. Starlink has yet to receive regulatory approval from the Indian government. (New York Times)
So humiliating! All respect for the White House was cast aside and reduced to such a low level. Trump is close to trailer trash!
As is frequently noted "elect a clown, expect a circus".