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      Elon Musk appears with Trump and tries to claim ‘Doge’ team is transparent

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      Elon Musk claimed in the Oval Office on Tuesday that his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) was providing maximum transparency as it bulldozed its way through the federal government, remarks contradicted by the reality of how he has operated in deep secrecy.The appearance from Musk was the first time he had taken questions from the news media since his arrival in Washington, and he used his time standing next to Donald Trump at the Resolute Desk to defend the aggressive cost-cutting measures the Doge team has pursued.Musk confidently asserted, without offering any evidence, that some officials at the now gutted USAid had been taking “kickbacks” and that “quite a few people” in the government had “managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position”.The most startling claim centered on his insistence that the Doge team had been transparent about its activities as it had swept through roughly 20 agencies, seeking the removal of career officials who stood in his way and accessing sensitive data systems.“We are actually trying to be as transparent as possible,” Musk said, referring to what Doge has posted on X. “So all of our actions are maximally transparent. I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the Doge organization.”In reality, Musk has taken great pains to conceal how Doge has operated, starting with his own involvement in the project. Musk himself is a “special government employee”, which the White House has said means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public.The Doge team involves about 40 staffers, but the actual number is not known. Staffers have tried to keep their identities private and refused to give their last names to career officials at the agencies they were detailed to, the Guardian has previously reported.Musk has also tried to stop Doge staffers from being identified. When the Wall Street Journal reported that one 25-year-old staffer, Marko Elez, had made racist posts on an anonymous X account in recent months, Musk called for the reporter who wrote the story to be fired.Their identities have slowly come to light not because of any transparency efforts on the part of Musk but as a result of Doge staffers having to use their official government emails and sometimes being added to employee directories – often over their objections.Doge technically reports to the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles. But Musk has operated with virtually unchecked power as he radically reshapes the federal government, and some of his moves have caught the White House by surprise, a person familiar with the matter said.Musk’s appearance came on the sidelines of Trump signing new executive orders related to his bureaucratic cost-cutting initiatives, including one to implement the “workforce optimization initiative” of Doge that limits hiring, according to a White House official.The billionaire stood next to the Resolute Desk, where Trump sat as he signed the executive orders, wearing a black “Dark Maga” hat and accompanied by his young son, who is named X. While Musk responded to reporters, Trump was busy staring at the boy with amusement.Asked about possible conflicts of interest as a result of Musk gutting agencies that either are investigating his companies for regulatory noncompliance or that have contracts with his companies, such as the defense department, Musk suggested there were none.“First of all, I’m not the one filing the contract. It’s the people at SpaceX or something,” said Musk, the founder, chief executive, chief engineer and chair of SpaceX.Pressed by reporters on the possibility that Doge might be moving too fast and cutting too much, Musk said he would simply reverse any measures that were gratuitous, reprising a strategy that he has used to reduce costs in his private companies.“Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. Nobody’s going to bat 1,000,” Musk said. “We all make mistakes. But we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”But Musk has bristled at criticism leveled at him or Doge, and has lashed out at injunctions issued by federal judges. Over the weekend, Musk promoted a series of posts that contemplated defying a court order that temporarily blocked the Department of the Treasury from giving Doge access to its payment systems. More

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      Musk defends Doge role and rejects conflict of interest claims as he joins Trump for Oval Office ceremony – live

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      Speaking from the Oval Office, where he stood behind the Resolute Desk, but to the right of a seated Donald Trump, Elon Musk just defended his outsized role in the gutting of federal agencies, under the auspices of his “department of government efficiency”.Asked about critics who call his effective control over multiple federal agencies, and the cutting of funding for congressionally approved programs federal judges have ordered to halt, Musk said: “The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get”.“That’s what democracy is all about”.He also dismissed concerns about his own clear conflicts of interest, since six of his businesses are dealing with investigations, complaints or regulatory actions from 11 of the federal agencies he has taken a leading role in drastically cutting back or reshaping.Musk told reporters he is trying to be as transparent as possible, even though his own financial disclosures will not be made public. “Transparency is what builds trust” he said.Trump backed Musk’s claim there was no problem with his role. Trump also claimed that he saw a lot of “kickbacks” with government contracts. The president said that he hoped the courts would allow him to pursue his agenda.Trump claimed that his administration, with Musk’s help, had already found billions in “fraud and abuse”, despite the fact that multiple examples they have previously offered to the public have been false or misleading. Trump cited no new evidence, but told reporters “and you know what we’re talking about”. This appears to be his new shorthand for the debunked claim that Musk’s team had uncovered $50 million in funding to send condoms to the besieged Gaza Strip.Here is photograph of the press availability in the Oval Office posted on Musk’s platform X by Katie Miller, the spokesperson for his “department of government efficiency”, which shows that Miller’s spouse, Stephen, was just out of the frame of wire photographs, to Trump and Musk’s right.The Associated Press was not allowed in to the Oval office to report on the Musk-Trump news conference, the not-for-profit news cooperative says, because it has declined to abide by a White House directive to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.The AP’s executive editor, Julie Pace, said in a statement:
      As a global news organization, The Associated Press informs billions of people around the world every day with factual, nonpartisan journalism.
      Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing.
      It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.
      The AP issued this style guidance note on 23 January on the renaming:
      President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The body of water has shared borders between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump’s order only carries authority within the United States. Mexico, as well as other countries and international bodies, do not have to recognize the name change.
      The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.
      Speaking from the Oval Office, where he stood behind the Resolute Desk, but to the right of a seated Donald Trump, Elon Musk just defended his outsized role in the gutting of federal agencies, under the auspices of his “department of government efficiency”.Asked about critics who call his effective control over multiple federal agencies, and the cutting of funding for congressionally approved programs federal judges have ordered to halt, Musk said: “The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get”.“That’s what democracy is all about”.He also dismissed concerns about his own clear conflicts of interest, since six of his businesses are dealing with investigations, complaints or regulatory actions from 11 of the federal agencies he has taken a leading role in drastically cutting back or reshaping.Musk told reporters he is trying to be as transparent as possible, even though his own financial disclosures will not be made public. “Transparency is what builds trust” he said.Trump backed Musk’s claim there was no problem with his role. Trump also claimed that he saw a lot of “kickbacks” with government contracts. The president said that he hoped the courts would allow him to pursue his agenda.Trump claimed that his administration, with Musk’s help, had already found billions in “fraud and abuse”, despite the fact that multiple examples they have previously offered to the public have been false or misleading. Trump cited no new evidence, but told reporters “and you know what we’re talking about”. This appears to be his new shorthand for the debunked claim that Musk’s team had uncovered $50 million in funding to send condoms to the besieged Gaza Strip.Here is photograph of the press availability in the Oval Office posted on Musk’s platform X by Katie Miller, the spokesperson for his “department of government efficiency”, which shows that Miller’s spouse, Stephen, was just out of the frame of wire photographs, to Trump and Musk’s right.Elon Musk has joined Donald Trump in the Oval Office, as the president put his signature on an executive order that requires federal agencies to coordinate with the billionaire Tesla chief’s “department of government efficiency”.In comments to the press, Musk called the federal bureaucracy an “unelected” fourth branch of government, and also said the US budget deficit must be addressed. Trump, meanwhile, talked about the need to root out “corruption”.A coalition of labor unions yesterday filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) violated federal law by accessing secure systems in three government departments.“Elon Musk and his minions are stealing Americans’ private personal and financial data in one of the biggest data hacks in U.S. history,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the plaintiffs in the suit.“I suspect no one who voted for Donald Trump thought he would allow Musk permission to invade their privacy. This is a breach of our fundamental freedoms. Right now, inside the Department of Education, the world’s richest man is rifling through 45 million people’s private student loan accounts and feeding the data into artificial intelligence.”The suit singles out Doge’s access of secure systems in the departments of Treasury and education, and the office of personnel management. Last week, a judge temporarily stopped Musk’s officials from accessing the Treasury’s payment system:Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director Kash Patel coordinated with the White House and justice department on the firing of top bureau officials, then lied about it at his confirmation hearing, the top Democrat on the judiciary committee said.Dick Durbin made the allegation in a letter to justice department inspector general Michael Horowitz, and requested an investigation.“It is unacceptable for a nominee with no legal or current role in government to personally direct the unjustified and potentially illegal firings of dedicated, nonpartisan professionals at the FBI. If these allegations are true, then Mr. Patel may have committed perjury before the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Patel said.The Senate judiciary committee is expected to on Thursday vote on advancing Patel, who Democrats consider a concerning pick to lead the bureau because of his vows to use its powers to retaliate against Trump’s enemies.Shortly after Trump took office, a former personal lawyer to the president who is now a senior justice department official ordered the firing of several veteran FBI agents, and asked for the names of everyone at the bureau who worked on January 6-related cases. Here’s more on that:Officials from Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” are “actively dismantling” the department of education, a Democratic congresswoman told HuffPost.Donald Trump recently signaled that he would like to see the department abolished, and congresswoman Melanie Stansbury said Musk’s employees “are in the building, on the sixth floor, canceling grants and contracts.”She expects the department “to potentially be dissolved in the coming days.”“It’s not legal. They know it’s not legal. But they’re doing it anyway,” said Stansbury. “The only recourse we have right now is to … go the courts.”Here’s more on the Trump administration’s plans for the department:Donald Trump plans to today sign an executive order that will require heads of US government departments and agencies to cooperate with the Elon Musk-chaired “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Reuters reports.Citing a White House official, the president will also order agency heads to limit hiring to only essential staff. The order comes as Democrats warn that Trump is defying the law by allowing Musk and his staff to enter federal agencies and access secure systems, or shut them down altogether.The White House says Trump will signs executive orders at 3pm. Here’s more about the concerns surrounding Doge:Republican congressman Guy Reschenthaler has been an advocate for Marc Fogel during his detention, and had this to say about the news that he had been released:
      Our prayers have been answered. Thanks to President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, Marc Fogel has been freed from Russia! Marc spent 1,255 days locked away in a Russian penal colony under the Biden Administration. President Trump freed Marc in just 22 days.
      Notice the reference to the Biden administration. Donald Trump and his allies have sought to cast themselves as more effective than his Democratic predecessor at every turn, and do have some diplomatic successes to promote, such as when Venezuela earlier this month agreed to release six detained Americans.Marc Fogel, an American teacher who was serving a 14 year prison sentence in Russia after getting caught with medically-prescribed marijuana “will be on American soil” by tonight, the Trump administration announced on Tuesday.“Today, President Donald J. Trump and his Special Envoy Steve Witkoff are able to announce that Mr. Witkoff is leaving Russian airspace with Marc Fogel, an American who was detained by Russia,” National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said in a statement. “President Trump, Steve Witkoff and the President’s advisors negotiated an exchange that serves as a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine. Since President Trump’s swearing-in, he has successfully secured the release of Americans detained around the world, and President Trump will continue until all Americans being held are returned to the United States.”Vice President JD Vance and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.The Trump administration is pushing for the war with Russia to end, while Zelensky is hoping for more US military commitments, as well as NATO membership, the deployment of peacekeeping troops.Trump said in a Fox interview on Monday that Ukraine “may be part of Russia someday.”After Pope Francis rebuked mass deportation of migrants plan, US border czar Tom Homan has pushed back, saying Francis should leave border enforcement to his office.“I’ve got harsh words for the Pope: Pope ought to fix the Catholic Church,” Homan, a Catholic, told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.“I’m saying this as a lifelong Catholic — I was baptized Catholic, my first Communion as a Catholic, confirmation as a Catholic. He ought to fix the Catholic Church and concentrate on his work and leave border enforcement to us.”The criticism was in response to the pope’s public letter condemning the Trump administration’s efforts sent earlier on Tuesday.“I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” Francis wrote in a letter sent on Tuesday. “The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”Francis urged people “not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”Homan compared the wall surrounding the Vatican City to the US border wall.Federal judge John Bates on Tuesday ordered US health agencies to restore websites that were suddenly and unexpectedly taken offline after Trump signed an executive order to scrub websites of “gender ideology extremism.”The legal saga began after medical advocacy group Doctors for America sued US health agencies for taking down their websites.”Prior to the sudden, unannounced removal, these Defendants had maintained these or similar webpages and datasets on their websites for years,” the lawsuit says. “The removal of the webpages and datasets creates a dangerous gap in the scientific data available to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, deprives physicians of resources that guide clinical practice, and takes away key resources for communicating and engaging with patients.”Donald Trump hit out at federal judges who have frustrated his efforts to transform the government, calling them “highly political” and arguing he is merely fighting fraud and waste. The president received an assist from his ally, House speaker Mike Johnson, who said he had met with Elon Musk and was “excited” about his work in the “department of government efficiency”. But the American Bar Association warned that the administration was flying in the face of the constitution, and that it “cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore”, while a Democratic senator said that if the White House begins ignoring court orders it does not like, it would be “maybe the greatest challenge to democracy in our lifetimes.” Meanwhile, an appeals court granted prosecutors’ request to drop charges against two of Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case, marking the end of the aborted federal effort to convict the president prior to his re-election.Here’s what else has been going on today:

      Steve Bannon pleaded guilty to a fraud charge connected to a fundraiser falsely billed as paying for a border wall, but will serve no jail time.

      Two senior officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have resigned, after a top White House official who also played a major role in Project 2025 ordered the watchdog to stop work.

      Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, will go to Ukraine to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced Trump, who also predicted the war with Russia would end “soon”.
      King Abdullah of Jordan has arrived at the White House to meet with Donald Trump, and the fate of the ceasefire in Gaza is expected to be high on their agenda.The two leaders may also discuss Trump’s proposal for the United States to take over the territory and for its population to be displaced to countries neighboring Israel – such as Jordan.We have a separate live blog covering the meeting, and you can follow it here: More

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      ‘We are here to fight back’: hundreds protest suspension of US financial watchdog

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      Chants of “let us work!” rang out across the courtyard of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) blocks away from the White House on Monday, as hundreds of angry protesters rallied against the Trump administration’s decision to suspend all operations at the US’s top financial watchdog – an agency that has clawed back more than $21bn from Wall Street for defrauded consumers.The demonstration came after Russell Vought, Trump’s newly installed acting director of the agency, ordered all CFPB staff to stand down and stay away from the office in what critics are calling a brazen attempt to defang financial industry oversight.“This is like a bank robber trying to fire the cops and turn off the alarm just before he strolls into the lobby,” Senator Elizabeth Warren told the crowd. “We are here to fight back.”The shutdown order has thrown the agency into chaos, with employees reporting confusion over basic questions such as whether they can check their work email or complete routine training. The agency’s staff union filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Vought’s stop-work order.View image in fullscreenThose critics also point to the influence of tech billionaire Elon Musk, who reportedly placed several members of his Doge team inside the agency with access to its computer systems. Warren accused Musk of orchestrating the shutdown to benefit his planned financial services platform, X Money, part of X’s eventual evolution to be an app for everything.“The financial cops, the CFPB, are there to make sure that Elon’s new project can’t scam you or steal your sensitive personal data,” Warren said. “So Elon’s solution, get rid of the cops, kill the CFPB.”The CFPB was created after the 2008 financial crisis to protect consumers from predatory financial practices. It’s since taken action against major banks including JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America for violations of consumer protection laws.A shutdown would then threaten oversight of everything from credit card late fees to paycheck advance schemes. Without the CFPB’s supervision, companies could potentially charge excessive overdraft fees, while debt collectors and payday lenders would face seriously reduced oversight.The agency’s enforcement actions have secured billions in consumer relief, including a $120m settlement with student loan servicer Navient announced last September over illegal loan servicing practices, and a $175m penalty against Block’s Cash App in January for inadequate fraud protection. In one of its largest actions, the CFPB ordered Wells Fargo to pay $3.7bn in December 2022 for widespread mismanagement of auto loans, mortgages and deposit accounts.But in November, Musk posted that they should “delete” the CFPB for being too duplicative of other regulatory bodies, and on Friday posted: “They did above zero good things, but still need to go.”“We have worked too hard. We have fought too hard for this democracy, and we ain’t turning it over to Elon Musk,” Representative Maxine Waters said to the crowd. “We’re going to win.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenSenator Chris Van Hollen called the situation “the most corrupt bargain in American history”, referring to Musk’s $288m investment in Trump’s campaign. “Elon Musk spent over $280m to elect Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has given Elon Musk the keys to the United States government,” he said.Christine Chen Zinner, senior policy counsel for consumer financial justice at Americans for Financial Reform, was also at the rally, and warned that shutting the CFPB would eliminate crucial consumer protections.“Director Vought ordering all the CFPB staff to stop their work essentially is giving financial companies a green light to defraud and gouge their customers,” she said.The move comes despite broad public support for the agency. A September poll from Americans for Financial Reform showed that 91% of voters believe it is important to regulate financial services to ensure they are fair for consumers, including 95% of Democrats, 87% of Republicans and 88% of independents.“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a really popular agency,” Chen Zinner said. “So to do anything to hamper this work would be a risky political move, because right now, the CFPB is held with the same high regard as programs like Social Security and Medicare.” More

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      Democrats demand conflict-of-interest answers over Elon Musk ‘Doge’ role

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      The California senator Adam Schiff has demanded answers about Elon Musk’s potential conflicts of interest in his role leading the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), as evidence grows of his complex business relationship with agencies now facing cuts.In a Monday letter to the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, Schiff accused Musk of operating in a legal grey zone, noting that as a “special government employee” Musk is subject to strict conflict-of-interest regulations while retaining “significant financial interests in multiple private companies that benefit from federal government contracts”.He is now demanding a response before 13 February about whether Musk had completed a financial disclosure report and whether he had received any waivers exempting him from potential penalties for financial entanglements.“Mr Musk’s compliance with federal conflicts of interest and other related obligations remains unknown to Congress and the public,” the letter read.The controversy centers on Musk’s dual role as a government official and CEO of companies under federal scrutiny, including Starlink, a satellite internet service operated by Musk’s SpaceX. Most notably, USAid was investigating Starlink’s operations in Ukraine just months before Musk, as Doge chief, moved to dismantle the agency.USAid inspector general Paul K Martin confirmed to Congress in September that the agency was looking into its oversight of Starlink terminals provided to Ukraine. The investigation focused on a 2022 collaboration where USAid helped deliver 5,000 Starlink terminals to the war-torn nation.Tesla, valued at $1.25tn – more than all other American automakers combined – faces multiple federal investigations that could be affected by Doge’s restructuring and government regulation. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s investigation into Tesla’s autopilot system identified design flaws that “led to foreseeable misuse and avoidable crashes” in an April report linking the technology to 13 fatalities.Further entanglements arise from Neuralink, Musk’s brain computer chip company. The firm received FDA clearance for human trials in May 2023 after initially being denied permission, but remains under investigation by the FDA and the Department of Agriculture over its animal testing practices. Reuters reported that approximately 1,500 animals died in four years of testing at Neuralink facilities.“Mr Musk’s companies have been the subject of at least 20 recent investigations or reviews by federal agencies, which heightens the risk that Mr Musk may seek to use his new position to shield his companies from federal scrutiny,” Schiff wrote.Last weekend, a federal judge blocked Doge-affiliated employees from accessing a sensitive Department of the Treasury payment system that handles 90% of federal payments. Another judge temporarily halted Doge’s move to place thousands of USAid employees on immediate leave – a decision that would have effectively ended the agency’s ongoing investigations.In response, Musk posted on X that the judge who made the decision should be impeached, and later suggested that the “worst 1% of appointed judges” be purged yearly.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has claimed Musk would “excuse himself” from any conflicts, but Schiff says such assurances are insufficient.“Unless [Wiles] or another senior White House official, in consultation with the Office of Government Ethics, provided a written waiver prior to Mr Musk’s appointment as a special government employee, Mr Musk may have violated the federal criminal conflict of interest statute by undertaking acts otherwise prohibited by law,” Schiff wrote in the letter.Send us a tip
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      Trump is driving political debate to ever new lows. The left must hold on to its values | Zoe Williams

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      The problem with Trump’s America is that everything happens so fast, and across too many categories. There are moves so stupid and trivial that you can lose hours wondering whether there is a long game or if it’s all just trolling: renaming the Gulf of Mexico, bringing back plastic straws. There are moves so inhumane, causing so much deliberate suffering, that they are hard to fathom. The cancellation of USAid is so consequential that reaction has almost frozen in place, as the world figures out which immediate humanitarian crisis to prioritise, and waits for some grownup, such as the constitution, to step in. Into that baited silence steps Elon Musk, with a hoax about the agency having been a leftwing money-laundering organisation. Then everyone hares off to react to that, first debunking, then considering, what it might mean, for a man of such wealth and power to have come so completely unstuck from demonstrable reality. This is not an accident – and yet it has no meaning. So why is he doing it? To galvanise a base, or make a public service announcement that observable reality can’t help you now, so get used to having it overwritten by fantasy? It’s an understandable thing to worry about.Then there are the chilling direct legislative moves against sections of US society: banning the use of any pronouns that are not male or female in government agencies, defunding gender-affirming medical care, signalling a ban on transgender people in the military with an executive order that says being trans “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honourable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life”. There’s the assault on immigrant rights, which is vivid and wide-ranging from the resurrection of Guantánamo Bay as a for ever holding-house, to the shackled people deported to Punjab, to the reversal of a convention that schools, churches and hospitals would not be raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.The sabre-rattling on tariffs throws up its own unstable side-show. Bit-part Republicans such as Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana senator, try to carve out some space in the drama with remarks so bracingly racist – the maternal death rate isn’t as bad if you don’t count black women, apparently – that you’re forced to give him the attention he craves. Ignoring him will not make him go away.There will never be any shortage of things to react to; nothing will ever be inconsequential. Even things that misfire comically or are immediately ruled illegal will have an effect, drive the debate to new lows and foster fear and division. And there will rarely, from outside the US, be any meaningful way to react; whatever ideas about democracy we’ve had to let go of in 2025, it remains bordered.There’s an agenda to that too, of course. If the watching world is constantly responding to things it can’t change or even protest about, that sends spores of impotence far and wide. Events in the US are already debasing our own discourse: Trump cheerleaders springing up with bizarre arguments and the leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch strategically claiming that liberalism has been “hacked” by groups focused on “radical green absolutism”. The effect? Everything is pushed rightwards.It might be impossible to blot out the drama, but we have to simultaneously focus on our own debates and our own terms – the threats to trans rights in our own country, the language on immigration in our own parliament, our own burgeoning politics of nastiness and tough-talking. We don’t have to surrender to the momentum of the right by becoming more like them. We don’t have to catch this virus because America sneezed. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist More

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      Elon Musk’s gutting of US agencies is illegal, experts say. How do you muzzle Doge?

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      In 2022, the Pentagon proudly announced a committee on diversity and inclusion, with a marine veteran and senior director at Tesla, serving as a member. The same person, who spent nearly six years at Tesla, also helped push Elon Musk to make Juneteenth a company-wide holiday. But Musk is a notorious recipient of lucrative government contracts and changes with the winds of presidential administrations.Now in 2025, as a “special government employee” heading up the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Musk is going to war with those kinds of government diversity and inclusion programs and slashing whatever he sees as a “waste” of public coffers.But legal resistance is mounting, as Doge faces countless lawsuits alleging everything from privacy concerns to free speech violations, which all leads to one important question: is any of this even legal?Laurence Tribe, one of the nation’s leading and preeminent constitutional scholars and a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, has already argued that much of Trump’s blitzkrieg of executive orders on the day of his inauguration disregards the US constitution. He told the Guardian he saw Musk’s actions as furthering that culture.On whether Doge and Musk can legally have this much power over an array of government departments, Tribe was emphatic: “NO.”Musk has applied a buckshot method across the government, offering CIA agents walking papers while appraising the Department of Education – all at the same time.Tribe said the lack of guardrails being placed on Doge’s maverick initiatives, raises “both” questions of illegality and ethical wrongdoing that can be challenged in court. As for Musk’s status as a federal contractor (such as his StarLink work with the Pentagon) and now a government employee, Tribe sees it as “absolutely” a legal conflict of interest.Musk is certainly facing roadblocks: protests at the buildings of USAid – another target of Doge he called a “radical-left political psy op” on X – have brought in hundreds and attracted broader Democratic backlash. But Doge continues unabated, honoring Trump’s campaign promise to rid the federal government of the “woke” Biden era.On Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders went further, telling CNN: “What Musk is doing is illegal and unconstitutional.”Sanders explained how outright deleting an agency like USAid, which was itself a creation of Congress, requires congressional approval.“You can’t do it unilaterally,” he said.But with a Republican supreme court supermajority that almost always sides with the Trump administration, any of these lawsuits that do end up being tested in the highest US court risks rulings in favor of Musk and Doge. Many of these Doge-related lawsuits will go on for months and be heard by benches stacked with Trump appointees from his first presidency. Musk has also begun publicly chastising lower court judges who go against the spirit of the administration.Doge, nonetheless, will continue to be sued.It took only minutes after Trump was sworn in for a Maryland-based public interest law firm to file a 30-page lawsuit alleging Musk’s Doge should be considered a “federal advisory committee”, which makes it subject to government transparency laws and public scrutiny, which includes note keeping and meeting records, as required by law. So far, Musk has reportedly employed a team of very young programmers who brazenly took control of the treasury department payment system, which gave them access to the addresses, social security numbers and bank account information of Americans.Tribe says that act alone raises, “serious issues of privacy”. Doge is indeed already facing legal action for that treasury fiasco, with a judge approving a temporary hold on Doge from fully accessing the payment system, while another judge ordered a freeze on the deadline for federal workers to accept a buyout.Ultimately, the only real guardrails on Musk and Doge will be in the hands of the courts. Even if Doge is found to be violating labor laws, national security statutes or constitutional rights – cases will inevitably be gummed up in the legal process, which could allow enough time for some of these federal workers to relent and take buyouts.“Obviously what Musk is doing is illegal,” said Ed Ongweso Jr, a senior researcher at Security in Context, an international project of scholars housed at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “And on some level it boils down to the world’s richest man – a child of apartheid who surrounds himself with sycophantic phrenologists – trying to consolidate control over as much of the state apparatus as possible.”Ongweso has been following the rise of the tech-bro class and its cozying up to presidential administrations. Musk’s Doge takeover is the latest iteration.“For years, both parties have fetishized Silicon Valley to varying degrees, eagerly swallowing the sector’s gibberish about making governance efficient via algorithmic rule via privatization,” he said.Ongweso pointed out that Musk is a veteran of the mass layoff and knows they come with lawsuits. But it hasn’t stopped him before.At Tesla’s Fremont, California, plant a Black former employee was awarded $3.2m in a racial harassment case, while the plant itself has been sued multiple times on racial discrimination and labor law grounds.“Learning that a key Doge staffer was a skull measuring eugenicist should come as no surprise given the rampant racism (slurs, swastikas, a hanging noose, etc) at Musk’s Fremont Tesla factory,” he said.And when it comes to laying off workers, Musk has the same recycled playbook.“He’s been sued for failing to provide advance notice for 2024 mass layoffs at Tesla and for 2022 Twitter layoffs that were a transparent attempt to get out of severance pay,” explained Ongweso.“It’s obvious lawsuits aren’t a deterrent for the world’s richest man – why would he stop mass layoffs, slashing and burning operations, or recruiting racists when it’s worked out so well for him that he’s now in firm control of America’s administrative state?” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump to announce 25% aluminum and steel tariffs as China’s levies against US come into effect

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      Donald Trump has said he will announce new 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the US on Monday that would affect “everybody’, including its largest trading partners Canada and Mexico, in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul.Trump’s pre-announcement came as China’s retaliatory tariffs, announced last week, came into effect. The measures target $14bn worth of products with a 15% tariff on coal and LNG, and 10% on crude oil, farm equipment and some vehicles.The US president, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, also said he would announce reciprocal tariffs – raising US tariff rates to match those of trading partners – on Tuesday or Wednesday, which would take effect “almost immediately”. “And very simply, it’s, if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said of the reciprocal tariff plan.The move on steel and aluminum brought a swift reaction from Doug Ford, the premier of the Canadian province of Ontario, who accused the US president of “shifting goalposts and constant chaos” that would put the economy at risk.Monday’s tariffs would come on top of existing metals duties.The largest sources of US steel imports are Canada, Brazil and Mexico, followed by South Korea and Vietnam, according to government and American Iron and Steel Institute data.By a large margin, Canada is the largest supplier of primary aluminum metal to the US, accounting for 79% of total imports in the first 11 months of 2024. Mexico is a major supplier of aluminum scrap and aluminum alloy.During his first term, Trump imposed tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum, but later granted several trading partners duty-free quotas, including Canada, Mexico and Brazil.Joe Biden extended these quotas to Britain, Japan and the European Union, and US steel mill capacity utilization has dropped in recent years. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that the new tariffs would come on top of the existing duties on steel and aluminum.Trump’s rollout of tariffs has been widely criticised and prompted volatile market reactions and fear of more to come. Beijing has lodged a complaint with the World Trade Organisation, but otherwise has been muted in its response. The tariffs imposed by Trump are far below the level he had threatened during the election campaign, and analysts have said China was prepared for them.Beijing’s actions – which also include investigations into several US companies including Google – were seen by analysts as measured and allowing room for negotiation.Amid wider pushback against Trump’s economic heavy-handedness, French President Emmanuel Macron warned in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he was willing to go “head-to-head” on tariffs with the US president. “I already did so, and I will did (sic) it again.”Macron told CNN that the EU should not be a “top priority” for the US, saying: “Is the European Union your first problem? No, I don’t think so. Your first problem is China, so you should focus on the first problem.”Macron said tariffs would harm European economies but also the US, given the level of economic ties. “It means if you put tariffs on a lot of sectors, it will increase the costs and create inflation in the US. Is it what your people want? I’m not so sure,” he said.He said the EU must be ready to react to US actions, but stressed that the 27-nation bloc should mainly “act for ourselves”. “This is why, for me, the top priority of Europe is competitiveness agenda, is defence and security agenda, is AI ambition, and let’s go fast for ourselves.“If in the meanwhile, we have [a] tariff issue, we will discuss them and we will fix it.”Trump has long complained about the EU’s 10% tariffs on auto imports being much higher than the US car rate of 2.5%. He frequently states that Europe “won’t take our cars” but ships millions west across the Atlantic every year.The European Commission said on Monday it would react to protect EU interests, but said it would not respond until it had detailed or written clarification of the measures. “The EU sees no justification for the imposition of tariffs on its exports. We will react to protect the interests of European businesses, workers and consumers from unjustified measures,” the commission said in a statement.Trump has also flagged tariffs against Taiwan’s semiconductor industry – which he has repeatedly and without evidence accused of stealing US business. Taiwan now appears to be scrambling to prevent that happening. This week senior economic officials will fly to the US to meet their counterparts. Taiwan’s government and state-run petroleum company are also reportedly taking steps to buy more US gas and oil to reduce Taiwan’s trade surplus – a key factor cited by Trump in enacting tariffs.Reuters contributed to this article. More