What did Musk get done last week?
Discord within the Trump administration over Elon Musk’s powers reached new heights this week after the billionaire circumvented President Trump's cabinet and sent an email to millions of federal employees asking, "What did you get done last week?” The email demanded recipients respond with five bullet points detailing their weekly accomplishments. Failure to respond would result in termination, Musk asserted on X, while “good responses” to the emails could earn the authors a promotion.
Musk's gambit backfired. Numerous cabinet secretaries have explicitly informed their subordinates not to respond. FBI Director Kash Patel told his employees to “pause any responses” to the Musk email. Employees at the Departments of Justice, State, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Homeland Security were given similar instructions, as were employees at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Director of National Intelligence’s office. “Assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly,” warned an HHS memo advising employees to ignore Musk’s request.
Meanwhile, top officials at the Department of Treasury, the Department of Transportation, and the General Services Administration directed their underlings to acquiesce to Musk’s request.
During a bizarre cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Musk said he sent the email as a “pulse check” for federal workers. He said he believes federal paychecks are being sent to deceased or fictive individuals. “What we are trying to get to the bottom of is: We think there are a number of people on the government payroll who are dead, which is probably why they can’t respond, and some people who are not real people,” he said.
(Musk has made similarly false claims about Social Security recipients. Although Social Security fraud does exist, Musk exponentially exaggerated the problem by misreading the COBOL programming language.)
Among the administration officials blindsided by the email were Trump and his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, according to Reuters. Wiles reportedly had met with Musk previously about keeping her abreast of his decision making. Her request was ignored.
Trump endorsed Musk's email, but appeared unsure of its ramifications. “It’s somewhat voluntary,” he said on Tuesday, adding, “If you don’t answer, I guess you get fired.” The remarks conflicted with public statements from his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, who on the same day said cabinet secretaries would be free to decide whether their employees heed Musk’s emails.
In the cabinet meeting, Musk revealed that similar emails would be forthcoming. Trump stated that the roughly “[one] million” federal employees who have yet to respond to Musk “are on the bubble,” meaning they could be fired in the near future.
The same could be true of cabinet secretaries who disapprove of Musk’s tactics. “Is anyone unhappy with Elon?” said Trump, scanning the conference room for signs of disapproval. “If they are, we’ll throw them outta here.”
Musk claims he "accidentally canceled" Ebola prevention
Musk, during the cabinet meeting, acknowledged that DOGE had made another blunder. “With USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled, very briefly, was Ebola — Ebola prevention,” he said. “I think we all wanted Ebola prevention. So, we restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption.”
According to NPR, this is not true:
As of early February, the U.S. was not providing funding to support testing and port screenings in Uganda because of Trump's freeze on almost all U.S. foreign assistance…
Within USAID's Global Health Bureau there was a team of people that specialized in high risk outbreaks, like Ebola. "Virtually all of those people have been pushed out of the agency, and they have not been brought back. Only a very small handful — like low single digits — remain from what had been something like a 30 person team," says Jeremy Konyndyk, who oversaw USAID's response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
…He called Musk's reassurance that things have been restored "total garbage."
Musk team reportedly pushes for massive Starlink contract at FAA
Trump’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) appears poised to ink a massive new contract with Starlink, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Musk’s rocket company SpaceX. Starlink has the inside track to take over a $2.4 billion, 15-year contract with Verizon to overhaul the communications system used by air traffic controllers. The Washington Post reported more details on the impending deal on Wednesday:
The existing contract was awarded to Verizon in 2023, with the aim of upgrading a platform that different air traffic control facilities and FAA offices use to communicate with one another… But the process for unwinding a contract and awarding it to another company is lengthy and has not been followed in this case so far, the person said. Several senior FAA officials have refused to sign paperwork authorizing the switch, according to the person, who has been briefed on the internal deliberations and resulting fallout, so Musk’s team is now seeking help from the acting administrator of the agency, Trump appointee Chris Rocheleau, and [Department of Transportation Secretary Sean] Duffy.
The news comes shortly after a trio of SpaceX engineers were installed at the FAA and tasked with advising the agency on how to improve its air traffic protocols. The SpaceX team then determined the FAA can solve its communications problems by contracting SpaceX instead of Verizon.
Bloomberg News reported this week that the FAA has already begun testing Starlink terminals at facilities in New Jersey and Alaska. L3Harris, whose chief executive published an open letter venerating DOGE last month, confirmed to the Associated Press that it had been contracted to procure and test Starlink terminals for the FAA.
Musk, meanwhile, has used his following on X to repeatedly attack Verizon, which has completed nearly $200 million of work as part of its FAA contract thus far. “The Verizon communication system to air traffic control is breaking down very rapidly… putting air traveler safety at serious risk,” wrote Musk, who was unaware the Verizon system is not yet in use. Upon realizing the error, he added, “Correction: the ancient system that is rapidly declining in capability was made [by] L3Harris.”
The FAA said Wednesday that “no decisions have been made” regarding its contract with Verizon.
The FAA’s SpaceX team was onboarded after the Trump administration laid off 400 probationary workers at the agency as part of DOGE's efforts to reduce government spending. Among the layoffs were employees who helped maintain air traffic control communication systems, according to Wired. To fast-track the hiring of the SpaceX engineers, the FAA used a diversity carve out that allows federal agencies to “hire persons with disabilities without requiring them to compete for the job.”
An update on the State Department's proposed $400 million purchase of "armored Teslas"
If you recall, the State Department surreptitiously removed the Tesla brand name from a line item for armored electric vehicles included in a $400 million budget proposal after it was discovered by Drop Site News. NPR published new reporting on the matter in a Monday article:
NPR has obtained a State Department document detailing that Biden's State Department planned to spend just $483,000 in the 2025 fiscal year on buying electric vehicles and $3 million for supporting equipment, like charging stations. It represented less than 1% of the hundreds of millions of dollars likely destined for Tesla vehicles after the Trump administration quietly revised a State Department procurement document.
An unnamed former Biden official told the outlet that the $400 million number appeared intentional. “I don’t think this is a clerical error. It was likely someone who is new in [the] State [Department] who decided, ‘OK, we’re gonna do this with Tesla.'”
Trump signs new executive order expanding DOGE’s power
On Wednesday, Trump signed another executive order expanding the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) mandate. The order dictates every federal agency justify all spending on grants, loans, and contracts to a “DOGE Team Lead.” The DOGE representatives, which includes teenagers and others with no government experience, will then record all spending in a centralized system. “This order commences a transformation in Federal spending on contracts, grants, and loans to ensure Government spending is transparent and Government employees are accountable to the American public,” the order states.
Official DOGE administrator traveling in Mexico
Shortly before the White House unveiled Amy Gleason as the acting administrator of DOGE, CBS News contacted her — only to find the undistinguished staffer was in Mexico and not interested in talking.
More from CBS News:
Gleason's role as acting administrator came as a surprise to USDS employees who, like Gleason, were folded into DOGE, CBS News learned Tuesday evening. Those employees learned of her new position "in the past few hours" even though they had been asking for weeks who was going to fill the job, CBS News was told.
The Trump administration has insisted in federal court that Musk does not run DOGE as a way of circumventing transparency laws and other legal requirements.
Federal agencies directed to come up with plans to reduce workforce, move out of DC
On Wednesday, the Musk-controlled White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM) informed federal agencies that they have until March 13 to produce "Agency Reorganization Plans." The next due date has been scheduled for April 14, when agency heads are expected to outline how they will consolidate workforces and relocate offices outside of the Washington D.C., area. The final deadline to carry out the cuts has been set for September 30.
The Washington Post reported on how some agencies are planning to implement the memo:
The General Services Administration told its staff in an email that terminations are imminent. Social Security Administration leadership is under instruction to swiftly produce plans to cut its staff by half, according to two employees at the agency who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. And an office within the Labor Department that enforces equal employment opportunity laws is developing a plan to reduce its workforce by 90 percent, an internal document shows.
Musk repeatedly says his life is at risk
Musk has raised the prospect of his demise during two recent public appearances. “Look, I’m open to ideas about improving security, I have to tell you. Like, I don’t actually have a death wish, I think, but it’s not that easy,” Musk told a crowd gathered for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland last week. At the Wednesday cabinet meeting, Musk said he was “taking a lot of flak and getting a lot of death threats” because of his role in the Trump administration.
While Musk is not eligible for Secret Service protection, CNN reported that the U.S. Marshals Service has deputized an unknown number of his security team. Deputization could allow Musk’s team to carry firearms in otherwise restricted areas and affords them some of the same rights and protections as federal law enforcement officers.
Musk Minutes
In another incident that may give other governments pause before signing up for Starlink, U.S. negotiators reportedly threatened to pull Ukraine’s access to the satellite network unless President Volodymyr Zelensky satisfied Trump’s demand for Ukraine’s mineral riches. Confounding the situation further was the revelation that Poland pays for Ukraine’s Starlink access, not the U.S. The threat, which was first reported by Reuters, was denied by Musk. (Reuters)
Tesla shares have shed all of the gains they made following Trump’s victory in November. A distracted Musk in Washington and his polarizing political activities, along with a massive recall of Tesla’s two most popular models and new data on Tesla’s European sales — down 50% in January from a year ago — appear to have roused this week’s selloff. (New York Times)
Last week, we mentioned that a Musk-backed super PAC is dabbling in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race. It turns out the group spent thousands of dollars running an ad attacking the wrong Susan Crawford. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
A Wired investigation found that Starlink terminals are being used by sprawling compounds of internet scammers in war-torn Myanmar. To keep operations running, the criminal rings have enslaved thousands of human trafficking victims from China, Thailand, and Myanmar. SpaceX has done nothing to curtail the usage despite a deputy district attorney from California informing the company of the abuses. (Wired)
DOGE’s “wall of receipts” — its accounting of the “billions” in federal savings it claims to have induced — appears even more hollow than originally perceived. Forty percent of the contracts canceled by the Trump administration are expected to result in no savings, while DOGE claimed credit for a $4 million sale of a school building offloaded under Joe Biden’s presidency. DOGE has not acknowledged its failings but has sneakily deleted the five biggest spending cuts from its website after they were discredited. DOGE has also taken credit for cutting hundreds of licenses for free-use software. (Associated Press, New York Times, CBS News)
The Washington Post published a handy visual investigation into the $38 billion in government funding that Musk’s business empire has received over the years. The newspaper found the total could be higher, as various grants, reimbursements, and tax credits supplied to Musk and his companies did not disclose a dollar amount. (Washington Post)
Some of the scientists let go from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) amid the Trump-Musk layoffs have been asked to return to their jobs. Among those invited back are some of the FDA employees who were tasked with reviewing products from Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer implant company. (Reuters)
We are f*****.
Awesome reporting...watch your back!
It continues to get unimaginably worse every week, thank you for this reporting