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      Elon Musk’s journey from climate champion to backing EV-bashing Trump

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      Donald Trump’s attempts to slash incentives for electric cars would cause sales of the vehicles to plummet, with this effort cheered on by a seemingly confounding supporter – Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and erstwhile champion for action on the climate crisis.Trump has said that he “will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American auto workers”.The US president, who previously suggested supporters of EVs “rot in hell” before somewhat tempering his rhetoric, has already ditched an aspirational goal for half of all car sales to be electric by the end of the decade, halted some funding for EV chargers and began reversing vehicle pollution standards that prod auto companies to shift away from gasoline models.A key tax credit for Americans buying an EV, worth up to $7,500, is also a major target for elimination, although to overturn this Trump will require Republicans in Congress. Should he succeed, though, the impact would be significant, with a recent study finding that electric car sales could fall by 27% without the incentive.“Turning off the credits would affect a meaningful share of the EV market,” said Joseph Shapiro, a University of California, Berkeley, economist and co-author of the study, who added that while a growing number of people would still go electric, the total number of cars sold would shrink by more than 300,000 a year than if the incentives stayed in place.“You could say that it would be a speed bump in the road but if the US goes all electric in 2090 rather than 2050, say, that matters a lot for the planet,” he said. “A lot of carbon would be emitted in that time.”Trump’s agenda has been enthusiastically backed by Musk, despite the world’s richest person heading Tesla, the market-leading EV company that also relies upon some parts made in China that may be targeted by tariffs imposed by Trump.Musk has said, though, that removal of EV subsidies will hurt rivals such as Ford and General Motors more than Tesla. “Take away the subsidies,” Musk wrote on X, another of his companies, in July. “It will only help Tesla.”There is some logic to this, Shapiro said. Tesla is comfortably the largest EV brand in the US, accounting for nearly half of all sales, and makes more profit per car than its rivals, meaning the removal of incentives would be disproportionately felt by other manufacturers.View image in fullscreen“If the tax credit is removed Tesla could survive and have less competition, they have more headroom to withstand a decrease in the market size,” Shapiro said. Stock in Tesla surged following Trump’s election win.However, Tesla will still be affected. Weakening federal pollution rules, for example, could see a reduction in the amount of carbon credits Tesla sells to other car companies – amounting to $2.7bn just last year – to offset their emissions and avoid fines. Tesla’s sales dipped slightly for the first time in 2024, amid concern among some of its traditionally liberal customer base about Musk’s rightward political turn.“Tesla isn’t immune to sales being impacted, they have some brand loyalty although we don’t know what the impact Elon Musk has had on polarizing consumers yet, that’s still a bit of an unknown,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive, which estimates EVs will have a 10% share of US car sales this year, up from 8% in 2024.Regardless, Musk’s focus has now seemingly shifted away from EVs to other areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence and his SpaceX venture, Valdez Streaty said. He has also embraced rightwing fixations shared by Trump. In a speech after the president was inaugurated, Musk made no mention of cars but said that the “future of civilization is assured” with “safe cities, secure borders, sensible spending, basic stuff”.He added: “We’re going to take Doge to Mars,” in reference to the “department of government efficiency” he heads in an effort to curb spending. “Can you imagine how awesome it will be to have American astronauts plant the flag on another planet for the first time? Bam. Bam. Yeah. How inspiring would that be?”Concern over the climate crisis is seemingly no longer one of Musk’s priorities, despite previously saying he is “super pro-climate” and in 2016 calling for a “popular uprising” against the fossil fuel industry because the world was “unavoidably headed toward some level of harm and the sooner we can take action, the less harm will result”.When Trump removed the US from the Paris climate agreement in 2017, Musk said he was quitting a presidential advisory body in protest. “Climate change is real,” he tweeted at the time. “Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”But Musk has had little to say after Trump, who memorably called climate change “a giant hoax”, once again pulled the US from the Paris deal and issued a flurry of orders to ramp up oil and gas drilling and stymie renewable energy production. In January, Musk said: “Climate change risk is real, just much slower than alarmists claim.”Critics say it is unlikely Musk will reflect the growing alarm voiced by scientists, and the American public, over the impacts of dangerous global heating within the Trump administration.“It just shows he’s an opportunist, really,” said Paul Bledsoe, who was a climate adviser to Bill Clinton’s White House. “He now downplays the dangers of climate change, but I think in the back of his mind he’s thinking about using government contracts for geoengineering as the costs of climate change become so undeniably expensive.”Those who know Musk say that he soured on Democrats in part after not being invited to a major summit on electric cars held by the White House in 2021, after Joe Biden became president.“That was an unforced error by Biden,” said Robert Zubrin, a leading advocate for human exploration of Mars who said he helped introduce Musk to the idea of Martian expansion. “And in the past two years, Elon Musk has redefined himself from the white knight of environmentalists to a Bond villain.”Zubrin said that Musk’s “central motivation is the desire for eternal glory for doing great deeds. He wants to save civilization because he wants to be famous for saving civilization.“This desire for eternal glory for doing great deeds has motivated his primary accomplishments, Tesla and SpaceX,” he added. “But it also has a dark side to it, and this has been exploited.”Tesla was contacted about its stance towards the EV tax credits but did not respond. More

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      Trump has thrown out the global economic playbook. It’s time for Australia to write its own rules | John Quiggin

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      With the resumption of parliament this week, and an election only months away, we have seen even more of the usual point-scoring about the cost of living, tax breaks for long lunches and budget deficits. But since the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the assumptions on which Australian economic policy have always been based are obsolete.It’s not just the “rules-based international order”, symbolised by the already moribund World Trade Organization, that is gone. Trump is ruling by decree (more politely referred to as “executive order”) and encountering little resistance. Corporations have rushed to buy his favour (or placate his wrath). The US Treasury appears to have been turned over to Elon Musk. No one can predict what will happen here, but a major financial crisis can’t be ruled out.The most immediate threat to Australia arises from Trump’s use of tariffs as a bludgeon to be used in pursuit of vague political demands, or simply as a display of dominance. Trump’s surprising backdown in response to mostly symbolic concessions from Canada and Mexico might be seen as a recognition of the risks of overreach. More likely, however, it reflects a belief that this is a weapon that can be used over and over again, and a desire to fight one enemy at a time (Trump does not believe in friends).For the moment, the tariff fight is with China, and both sides are showing some restraint. As long as this restraint persists, the collateral damage to the Australian economy will be modest. But Trump is prone to acting like a capricious dictator. He could easily take offence at some real or imagined slight and return to the 60% tariffs he promised on the campaign trail.Tariff policy is one of many fronts. Trump has withdrawn the US from the Paris climate agreement, the WHO and international aid programs. Of more immediate consequence for Australia, the US has withdrawn from the OECD agreement on corporate tax minimisation and from attempts to tax the digital economy. Musk and the other tech cronies have already threatened to punish Australia for taxing social media platforms, and for attempts to restrict toxic and violent content.In the long run, this means Australia needs to treat both the US and China as unreliable trading partners who will bully us whenever they see a benefit from doing so. We need to seek a balance between the two and, more importantly, become more self-reliant. In particular, we need to develop our own AI and social media infrastructure, for example by making our own version of DeepSeek and breaking with X and Meta as well as TikTok.In the short run, what’s needed is a recognition that the downside risks to the Australian economy have increased greatly. The government should be preparing plans for fiscal stimulus rather than worrying about public debt. More importantly, the Reserve Bank needs to start cutting rates immediately to guard against recession, even at the price of an incomplete victory over inflation.Above all, we need to ditch the illusion that all this is theatre and that things will go on as before. The US, as we knew it, is gone and won’t be back any time soon. The implications for the global economy, and therefore for Australia, are hard to discern, but they are sure to be profound.

      John Quiggin is a professor at the University of Queensland’s school of economics More

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      Musk’s Doge reportedly keeps attempting to push out federal workers despite judge blocking buyout deadline – live

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      Attorney general Pam Bondi dissolved an FBI taskforce aimed at combatting foreign influence operations on Wednesday, the same day that a hoax news report linked to Russia was shared by Donald Trump’s ally, Elon Musk, and his son, Donald Trump Jr.“To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion,” Bondi wrote in a memo to all Justice department employees after she was sworn in on Wednesday, “the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded.”The FBI website explains that former director Christopher Wray established the taskforce in 2017 to combat “covert actions by foreign governments to influence US political sentiment or public discourse”.“The goal of these foreign influence operations directed against the United States is to spread disinformation, sow discord, and, ultimately, undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values,” according to the FBI.As Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh of BBC Verify report, Elon Musk shared a viral video with more than 200 million followers on his social media platform X that falsely claims the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) paid more than $40m to Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Bloom and Ben Stiller to get them to visit Ukraine.The video, which carries the branding of the NBCUniversal outlet E! News, and follows the style of its celebrity reports, never appeared on any of that outlet’s social media accounts.The hoax, Robinson reports, “is extremely similar in style” to a Russian influence operation BBC Verify previously exposed that use fictional social media news reports to impersonate media outlets and push anti-Ukraine narratives.One of the named stars, Stiller, made an effort to combat the disinformation running rampant on Musk’s social-media platform by writing in a post there: “These are lies coming from Russian media. I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind. 100 percent false”.Despite Stiller’s effort to halt the spread of the hoax news report, it was also shared by Donald Trump Jr and Sidney Powell, known for her leading role in spreading wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.Donald Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC), the White House has confirmed.The text of the order, posted on the White House website, accuses the ICC of having “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel” and abused its power by issuing “baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant”.According to the order:
      The United States will impose tangible and significant consequences on those responsible for the ICC’s transgressions, some of which may include the blocking of property and assets, as well as the suspension of entry into the United States of ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members, as their entry into our Nation would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.
      Our colleagues on the Middle East live blog are tracking reaction to the order.Attorney general Pam Bondi dissolved an FBI taskforce aimed at combatting foreign influence operations on Wednesday, the same day that a hoax news report linked to Russia was shared by Donald Trump’s ally, Elon Musk, and his son, Donald Trump Jr.“To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion,” Bondi wrote in a memo to all Justice department employees after she was sworn in on Wednesday, “the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded.”The FBI website explains that former director Christopher Wray established the taskforce in 2017 to combat “covert actions by foreign governments to influence US political sentiment or public discourse”.“The goal of these foreign influence operations directed against the United States is to spread disinformation, sow discord, and, ultimately, undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values,” according to the FBI.As Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh of BBC Verify report, Elon Musk shared a viral video with more than 200 million followers on his social media platform X that falsely claims the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) paid more than $40m to Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Bloom and Ben Stiller to get them to visit Ukraine.The video, which carries the branding of the NBCUniversal outlet E! News, and follows the style of its celebrity reports, never appeared on any of that outlet’s social media accounts.The hoax, Robinson reports, “is extremely similar in style” to a Russian influence operation BBC Verify previously exposed that use fictional social media news reports to impersonate media outlets and push anti-Ukraine narratives.One of the named stars, Stiller, made an effort to combat the disinformation running rampant on Musk’s social-media platform by writing in a post there: “These are lies coming from Russian media. I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind. 100 percent false”.Despite Stiller’s effort to halt the spread of the hoax news report, it was also shared by Donald Trump Jr and Sidney Powell, known for her leading role in spreading wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.Doge staffer installed at treasury resigns after Wall Street Journal uncovers racist posts.Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer who obtained access to a treasury department payments system as part of his work for Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” initiative, reportedly resigned on Thursday after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about a deleted social media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.According to the Journal, recent posts on an account that once used the handle @marko_elez called for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act and supported a “eugenic immigration policy” just before Trump returned to office and empowered Musk to take a sledgehammer to federal agencies.
      ‘You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,’ the account wrote on X in September, according to a Wall Street Journal review of archived posts. ‘Normalize Indian hate,’ the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.
      “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool”, the account holder posted in July.A lawyer for the government confirmed in federal court on Wednesday that Elez, who had previously worked for Musk at SpaceX, Starlink and X, had access to US treasury payment systems that contain the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.Sources told Wired earlier this week, that Elez had been granted the ability “not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a secure mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.”Here’s what has been in the news this afternoon:

      A “DEI watch list” targeting federal employees who work in health equity-related positions spurred fear for the workers’ safety and jobs. Most of the workers included on the list are Black.

      A budget dispute among congressional Republicans could slow their efforts to enact Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. Trump was scheduled to meet with Republican lawmakers on Thursday as they craft a spending bill that could avert a government shutdown in March.

      For the second time in two days, a judge moved Thursday to block Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The Seattle judge said Trump viewed the rule of law simply as an “impediment to his policy goals.”

      A judge also temporarily limited Elon Musk’s access to the Treasury’s payment system. The order allows for two of Musk’s associates to access the system – but on a read-only basis.

      Even after a judge delayed a buyout offer for federal employees, Musk’s self-styled Department of Government Accountability (DOGE), continued to pressure workers to quit. Agencies under Musk’s unofficial purview threatened workers with layoffs and implied their jobs could be replaced with artificial intelligence.

      DOGE reportedly accessed sensitive data from the Department of Education and used artificial intelligence to analyze it. The data reportedly included personal and financial information.

      The Trump administration has dropped efforts to sanction oligarchs close to Putin. The Joe Biden administration had implemented sanctions on Russian oligarchs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
      After Donald Trump issued an executive order to ban diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, dozens of workers have been fired from their positions in the civil service.In an attempt to aid in the purge, a Heritage Foundation-linked group published a list of employees who work in health equity, most of whom are Black, and asked Trump to fire them.The “DEI watch list,” created by the rightwing nonprofit American Accountability Foundation, included the photos and work history of the employees it targeted – causing the workers to fear for their safety.Donald Trump is disbanding an effort started after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to enforce sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin, Reuters reports. A memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi, issued on Wednesday during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs.“This policy requires a fundamental change in mindset and approach,” Bondi wrote in the directive, adding that resources now devoted to enforcing sanctions and seizing the assets of oligarchs will be redirected to countering cartels.The effort, launched during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, was designed to strain the finances of wealthy associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin and punish those facilitating sanctions and export control violations.In a statement, Politico’s CEO and editor-in-chief responded to rightwing claims, echoed by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, that the outlet is bankrolled by the US government.The outlet clarified that Politico does not receive any government funding, while private companies, organizations and government agencies may pay to subscribe to Politico Pro for specialized reports.“They subscribe because it makes them better at their jobs — helping them track policy, legislation, and regulations in real-time with news, intelligence, and a suite of data products,” they wrote in the statement.Elon Musk’s associates at the tech billionaire’s self-styled Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have reportedly used artificial intelligence to process sensitive data from the Department of Education.According to the Washington Post, the operatives used AI to analyze spending by the Department of Education. Some of the information included sensitive employee and financial data.Meanwhile, Donald Trump is reportedly considering executive actions to dismantle the Department of Education, including one proposal to abolish the department entirely. Dozens of employees of the education department were reportedly put on leave following Trump’s orders to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programming in the federal government.Democratic lawmakers are seeking an inquiry into possible security breaches by Elon Musk and his operatives, reports the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe:Democrats are demanding an investigation into potential national security breaches created by Elon Musk’s takeover of certain federal agencies through his self-styled “department of government efficiency” (Doge).In a letter published on Thursday, the members of the House oversight committee say they are worried that Musk and his operatives have illegally accessed classified information and sensitive personal data at agencies including the office of personnel management (OPM), the US treasury and the US Agency for International Development (USAid).“There is no evidence that he, or any of his associates working under the ‘Doge team’ moniker, are entitled to access our government systems, nor is there any evidence that they have undergone the proper vetting to ensure the security of taxpayer and government data,” the letter said.Even as a judge blocked a buyout offer for federal employees, Elon Musk has continued his effort to push federal workers out of their jobs. According to a new report by Politico, officials at the agencies now overseen by Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have peppered employees with messages urging them to take the offer – or brace for layoffs. In one email, an official suggested the government would cut “redundant business functions and associated staffing” and was considering implementing artificial intelligence.Meanwhile, Musk has continued to regularly share posts throughout the day on X promoting DOGE and the idea that the civil service is rife with fraud.A judge has temporarily limited the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (Doge)’s ability to access the highly-sensitive payment system of the US Treasury that Musk’s associates reportedly attempted to use to block USAID payments.The ruling marks the first time that the courts have limited DOGE, which, in the last two weeks, has dug into the federal bureaucracy, pushing to shut down USAID and sowing chaos in the civil service.It comes in response to unions that represent federal employees accusing the Treasury of unlawfully sharing personal employee data with DOGE. The ruling named two DOGE associates who could be given access to the payment system – but on a read-only basis.A judge has moved to block Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship in the US, the second such ruling in two days.On Thursday, the Seattle judge, John Coughenour, told reporters, “It has become ever more apparent that to our president the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals.”Wednesday, a judge temporarily paused Trump’s order, which sought to prevent the US-born children of undocumented immigrants from obtaining automatic citizenship. The fourteenth amendment protects birthright citizenship, a right that was recognized by the US supreme court in 1898.Donald Trump is meeting with congressional Republican leadership Thursday to discuss a budget bill that has generated conflict within the GOP caucus.The proposed spending bill will attempt to turn Trump’s agenda into legislation, touching on immigration, energy and taxes, and while the senate Republican leadership has signaled they are ready to move forward with a two-part piece of legislation, Trump has suggested he prefers a single measure to deliver his agenda.The conflict underscores how narrow the Republicans’ majority in the house is: with 218 Republicans to 215 Democrats, the Republicans need nearly every vote to pass legislation.The Heritage Foundation funded the group compiling a list of federal employees to be targeted for firing under the Trump administration, the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports: A rightwing group that has created a series of blacklists to target federal workers it believes the Trump administration should fire has received funding for the project by the thinktank behind Project 2025.A recent list created by the American Accountability Foundation called the “DEI Watch List” includes mostly Black people with roles in government health roles alleged to have some tie to diversity initiatives. Another targets education department employees in career roles who “cannot be trusted to faithfully execute the agenda of the elected President of the United States”. One calls out the “most subversive immigration bureaucrats”.Tom Jones, the president of the American Accountability Foundation, said the organization had plans to add to its existing lists and create more. The group was designed to go after the “DC bureaucrats and leftist organizations” that had been allowed “to subvert, obstruct, and sabotage the America First agenda”, according to its website.Here’s a recap of developing news today so far:

      The Senate appears poised to confirm the nomination of Russell Vought to lead the powerful Office of Management and Budget, despite intense Democratic opposition. Senate Democrats held an overnight floor session in the senate to deliver speeches decrying Vought, an architect of Project 2025 who would likely attempt to further consolidate executive authority under Trump if confirmed.

      Trump attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, an annual gala, where he said he had plans to create a task force to root out “anti-Christian bias” and floated possible changes to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

      The deadline for federal workers to accept offered buyouts approaches tonight, leaving federal employees to wonder whether the promised benefits are really on offer, and whether they will be laid off if they choose to stay – a possibility floated to the press by top Trump officials.

      CNN reported that top associates of Elon Musk sought to use the highly-sensitive Treasury payment system to block funding for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), sparking fears of overreach by the unelected government employee and his staff.

      Trump is expected to sanction the International Criminal Court in an executive order, accusing the court of improperly investigating the US and Israel. In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top Hamas leadership.

      A federal judge said he stood ready to enforce his order for the Trump administration to end its freeze on federal grant funding. States have reported programs like Head Start still struggling to access their funding despite the Trump administration rescinding its pause on such funding and a court order to do the same.
      A federal judge on Thursday said he stood ready to enforce an order he issued blocking Donald Trump’s administration from freezing federal grants, loans and other financial assistance after Democratic-led states said billions of dollars in funding was still being tied up, Reuters reports. US District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, during a virtual court hearing, said state agencies had a “rightful concern” that they were still not able to fully access money nearly a week after he issued his temporary restraining order.He issued that 31 January order at the behest of Democratic attorneys generals from 22 states and the District of Columbia, determining it was necessary even after the White House’s Office of Management and Budget rescinded its wide-ranging directive that had announced the funding freeze. More

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      Democrats call for investigation into potential security breaches by Elon Musk

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      Senior Democrats are demanding an investigation into potential national security breaches created by Elon Musk’s takeover of certain federal agencies through his self-styled “department of government efficiency” (Doge).In a letter published on Thursday, the members of the House oversight committee say they are worried that Musk and his operatives have illegally accessed classified information and sensitive personal data at agencies including the office of personnel management (OPM), the US treasury and the US Agency for International Development (USAid).“There is no evidence that he, or any of his associates working under the ‘Doge team’ moniker, are entitled to access our government systems, nor is there any evidence that they have undergone the proper vetting to ensure the security of taxpayer and government data,” the letter said.It calls on deputy inspectors general at those agencies, and others including the education department, the General Services Administration and the Small Business Administration, to investigate potential national security breaches involving Musk’s team.“We are deeply concerned that unauthorized system access could be occurring across the federal government and could pose a major threat to the personal privacy of all Americans and to the national security of our nation,” the letter continued.The development comes as Democrats begin to crank up their opposition to Musk’s upending of US government systems and as a judge temporarily limited the unofficial department of government efficiency’s (Doge) ability to access the highly sensitive payment system of the US treasury that Musk’s associates reportedly attempted to use to block USAid payments.The ruling marked the first time that courts have limited Doge, which, in the last two weeks, has dug into the federal bureaucracy, pushing to shut down USAidand sowing chaos in the civil service.It came in response to unions that represent federal employees accusing the treasury of unlawfully sharing personal employee data with Doge. The ruling named two Doge associates who could be given access to the payment system – but on a read-only basis.At the same time a new poll suggests even some Republicans are becoming upset by the wrecking ball Musk is aiming at even more federal agencies, including the labor department.The number of Republicans who want Musk and Doge to have “a lot” of influence in the Trump administration has fallen significantly, to 26%, according to the Economist/YouGov poll conducted this week, reported by the Hill.The same poll taken in the days immediately after Trump’s November election win revealed that enthusiasm among Republicans for Musk’s role stood at 47%.The disquiet also appears to have spread to a number of Republican senators, who have begun voicing alarm at Musk’s tightening grip. The billionaire has moved to shutter USAid, and accessed payment systems and workers’ personal data at the US treasury, prompting a lawsuit and an agreement from justice department lawyers to back off, at least temporarily.On Wednesday, agents of Doge spread across several more government agencies seeking access to data, the Washington Post reported, including the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.On Wednesday night the Doge team, said to include inexperienced coders and engineers as young as 19, visited the US Department of Labor. Earlier in the week Doge workers entered at least two offices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), making personnel changes and accessing IT systems.Musk’s next big target, meanwhile, appears to be the Department of Education, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to shut down. Similar to actions taken at other federal agencies and departments, employees were told not to come to work or placed on leave, and dozens of workers were locked out of government email accounts and other computer systems.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration has set a Thursday night deadline for roughly 2 million employees in the federal government to surrender to buyouts or face the risk of being fired without compensation, although critics say there is no guarantee that those who accept will see any money either. On Thursday a federal judge suspended the deadline until a hearing on Monday.Democrats say Musk’s infiltration of the federal government, through an unofficial agency with no constitutional mandate or congressional oversight, amounts to a coup. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, told the chamber on Tuesday that an unelected “shadow government” was conducting a hostile takeover and usurping Trump’s authority.“Whatever Doge is doing, it is certainly not what democracy looks like, or has ever looked like in the grand history of this country, because democracy does not work in the shadows, democracy does not skirt the rule of law,” Schumer said.The White House, in an apparent effort to provide cover for Musk’s operations, said the SpaceX and Tesla founder had been designated an unsalaried “special government employee” at Trump’s direction to root out inefficiency and waste in government spending.Trump himself has told reporters Musk “can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval”.But unease has been mounting among elected officials, alongside a growing number of lawsuits. On Wednesday night, justice department attorneys agreed to an order temporarily restricting Doge staffers from accessing the treasury department’s payment system. That followed a lawsuit from union members and retirees claiming Musk’s team violated federal privacy laws.In the House on Wednesday, the Wisconsin Democratic congressman Mark Pocan filed legislation called the Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy Act, AKA the Elon Musk Act.“Elon Musk is ripping us off and like millions of Americans across the country, I’m pissed. I’m taking action [to prevent] grifters like him from getting richer while pillaging our tax dollars for himself,” Pocan said. More

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      It is Elon Musk who is now running the United States. Not Donald Trump | Moira Donegan

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      It’s one of the humiliations of our historical moment that the constitutional order has been destroyed by such stupid and unserious people. On the trail with Donald Trump, the billionaire Elon Musk, who financed Trump’s campaign to the tune of about $250m, pledged to cut $2tn from the federal budget, a project that promised to wreck the economy, destroy the nation’s credit, eliminate programs and institutions that structure people’s lives and create an international economic and leadership vacuum into which America’s rivals – namely, China – could step.This would have been ominous enough on its own. But because Musk is a narcissist and a nerd – because he insists on discarding solemnity and being ostentatiously irreverent and carefree as he destroys people’s lives – he named his new project the “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, a juvenile reference to a years-old internet meme featuring a shiba inu.It is under this idiotic banner that Musk has upended the American system of government, seizing an unprecedented, unelected and seemingly wholly unaccountable degree of personal power. Less than three weeks into the Trump restoration, Doge is well under way.The group is not a government department; Musk is not a cabinet member and has not been subjected to a Senate confirmation process. But he now reportedly has an office in the West Wing, along with one in the Eisenhower executive office building across the street. At his direction, a small group of coders and engineers – men reported to be aged between 19 and 25 years old – are fanning out across federal agencies, seizing control of their sensitive data and making proposals for massive cuts.Just days after Trump’s inauguration, Musk reportedly sent an email to all 2 million federal employees – subject line Fork in the Road – encouraging them to resign ahead of anticipated mass firings. Musk reportedly offered workers a buyout of seven months’ pay; it’s doubtful whether any of those who take him up on the offer will ever receive it.Musk and his young followers have moved to shutter specific programs that they deem wasteful – including those whose funds have been allocated by Congress – and to shutter whole departments. He has declared the closure of USAid, America’s foreign aid agency, and is reportedly looking to eliminate much of the Department of Education and the Department of Labor, along with privatizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He has seized control of the treasury, and specifically the treasury’s payment system, granting himself a personal line-item veto on all government spending. He also has gained access to reams of private and sensitive data and has reportedly downloaded much of it on to private servers. He can access bank accounts, medical histories, income and debt records. If he cared to, he could look up your social security number.No one elected Musk and very little of what he is doing is legal. It is Congress, not some random rich guy, who is granted the power of the purse, because the citizens deserve to have a say, through their elected representatives, in how the government spends their tax dollars. Federal civil servants are protected by law from purges, because the federal bureaucracy is supposed to serve the people of the United States, not to merely function as courtiers and enforcers of whim for some entitled foreign billionaire who nobody has ever voted for.There is a chance that Musk will be told to stop his unconstitutional dismantling of the federal government by a court order, one he might even obey; there is a chance that he will get scared, declare a hasty victory and back off. But that chance looks more and more remote. Musk, now, has seized control of many of the organs of state. There also does not seem to be any way to stop him.Trump critics have long predicted an oncoming rift between Musk and Trump, but it’s not clear, exactly, that it is from Trump that Musk is deriving his power: his gutting of federal agencies and slashing of federal expenditures seems to be coming from his own preferences and impulses, not as any direction from the man who is nominally the president.It may be Trump, that is, who sits in the Oval Office, and it may be Trump who takes to television every few days to sign yet another executive order seeking to punish and humiliate trans people. But it is Musk who controls government operations and federal spending, and so it is Musk who is running the country. The constitutional order, now, is largely window dressing. The reality is that a foreign billionaire is running the state through a shadow government, and that his power has no formal check.Another humiliation of our era: that to merely state what is happening sounds hyperbolic, even unhinged. Musk, after all, is such a morally small man – so transparent in his corrupt self-interest, so childish in his peevish self-regard – that it is hard to countenance him as such a profound agent of history.He represents not so much the banality as the imbecility of evil: how shallow and vacuous it is. Yet Musk’s personal, private seizure of state power has thrown real doubt on whether the US constitution is still in effect. How can it be, if he upends its demands so heedlessly, and with such impunity? How can it be, if the power of the people’s elected representatives can simply be wished away by a man rich enough to buy anyone?For a long time now, it has been clear that America was slipping out of a liberal democratic mode of governance and into something more vulgar and less accountable, something more like a privatized racket for the rich that extracts from and punishes the people, but never responds to their will. We knew this was coming. I just didn’t expect it to be so embarrassing.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Doge v USAid: how Elon Musk helped his acolytes infiltrate world’s biggest aid agency

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      USAid security personnel were defending a secure room holding sensitive and classified data in a standoff with “department of government efficiency” employees when a message came directly from Elon Musk: give the Doge kids whatever they want.Since Donald Trump’s inauguration last month, a posse of cocksure young engineers answering to Musk have stormed through Washington DC, gaining access to government computer systems as part of what Senator Chuck Schumer has called “an unelected shadow government … conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government”.The young men, who are all under the age of 26 and have almost no government experience, have tapped into the treasury department’s federal payment system and vacuumed up employment histories at the office of personnel management (OPM). Roughly 20 Doge employees are now working out of the Department of Education, the Washington Post has reported, and have gained access to sensitive internal systems there too. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported they had infiltrated the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and accessed key systems as well.The young engineers, whose identities have been confirmed to the Guardian, wanted the same at USAid. One of them, Gavin Kliger, was a 25-year-old techie who has defended the failed attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz as a victim of the “deep state” and claimed he had left behind a seven-figure salary to join Doge and “save America”. Another, Luke Farritor, 23, was a former SpaceX intern who had been given top-level clearances to USAid systems and had requested similar to Medicare and Medicaid. A third, Jeremy Lewin, was reportedly assigned to the General Services Administration. A superior planned to lobby the CIA for a clearance for him after he failed to gain access to a secure area.Some US officials had begun calling the young engineers the “Muskovites” for their aggressive loyalty to the SpaceX owner. But some USAid staff used another word: the “incels”.The Guardian has identified three calls by Musk to USAid’s political leadership and security officers in which he demanded the suspensions of dozens of the agency’s leading officials, and cajoled and threatened senior USAid officials to give his acolytes private data and access to restricted areas. At one point, he threatened to call in the US Marshals Service.
      One USAid employee said that the calls by Musk, two of which have not been previously reported, showed he had effectively usurped power at the agency even from the Trump administration’s political leadership. “Who is in control of our government?” the person said. “[Doge] basically showed up and took over.”In the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, USAid had been presented as a pilot test for a large-scale overhaul of the federal government that would downsize agencies and arbitrarily move federal employees to looser contracts that made them easier to fire.“If the Trump administration is successful here, they’re going to try this everywhere else,” said Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey, a former USAid employee who came to protest alongside fired and furloughed workers outside the agency’s headquarters on Monday. “This is just the beginning.”View image in fullscreenBut it has also been a primer on how Doge operatives have inserted themselves into federal agencies and cajoled and bullied their way to access their most sensitive systems. This account of Doge’s infiltration of USAid is based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former USAid, state department and other officials briefed on the events of the last week.Security staff initially rebuffed the engineers’ efforts to talk their way into the secure rooms, called sensitive compartmented information facilities (Scifs), because they didn’t have the necessary security clearances. But that evening, Musk phoned a senior official at USAid to demand access for his subordinates, the first of numerous calls to officials and employees of Doge at USAid that have continued into this week.Inside the building, chaos reigned. Areas that were once declared restricted, with limitations on electronics such as phones and watches, suddenly loosened their security protocols to allow in uncredentialed outsiders. Doge employees were said to obscure their identities to prevent online harassment, a tactic that was repeated at other agencies. And Peter Marocco, the controversial new director of foreign assistance at the state department, was stalking the halls and meeting in private with the Doge employees.By Friday, things had gone further downhill. After a tense all-hands meeting with senior staff, and outsiders in the sixth-floor conference room, the young engineers rushed around the offices with their laptops, plugging cords into computers and other electronics as they gathered data from the agency.After the meeting, Matt Hopson, a Trump appointee for USAid chief of staff, abruptly resigned. Jason Gray, the acting administrator, was removed from his position. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was soon to announce that he was the new administrator of USAid and appoint Marocco as his deputy. Musk was closing in on his goal.The Doge employees had open access to rooms throughout the sixth floor, including the offices of the administrator’s suite. But the Scifs were still off limits.At USAid, a newly installed leadership was formally in charge. But the real power lay with Marocco and Doge, which was plotting how to wind down the agency, a plan that Trump endorsed on Tuesday afternoon as he confirmed that teams were backed by the White House. That evening, USAid announced it would put all its direct-hire personnel around the world on administrative leave, a decision that would affect thousands of employees and their families.Inside of USAid, the operation to shut down the decades-old operation was being run by Marocco, four engineers in their early 20s and the Doge leadership that contacted them by phone.“It’s all being driven through Doge right now,” said a current USAid official, adding that Doge engineers in USAid headquarters continued to field calls from Musk and Marocco on Monday. “The folks in the building are turning the system off for [USAid employees], they’ve kept a small number of people from the different bureaus to help understand what programs will be kept and not kept, what the footprint will look like.”View image in fullscreenThe tension at USAid headquarters came to a head on Saturday evening, when Doge employees demanded access to the Scif on the agency’s sixth floor. They were stopped by the agency’s top security officer, John Voorhees.Among those present was Steve Davis, according to one current and one former USAid official. Davis, a Musk deputy, has worked with the billionaire for more than 20 years at SpaceX and the Boring Company. He reportedly sometimes slept in the Twitter offices to help Musk slash costs there after he acquired it in 2022.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe argument over access to the Scif had grown verbally heated and senior Doge staff threatened to call in US marshals to gain access to it. During that standoff, according to one account made to the Guardian, a call was again made to Musk, who, as Bloomberg first reported, repeated the threat to involve the US Marshals Service.Shortly after, Voorhees was placed on administrative leave and the Doge staffers entered the Scif. They took over the access control system and employee records. Within hours, the USAid website went down. Hundreds of employees were locked out of the system that weekend, and many still don’t know their status. (The Guardian has seen emails in which USAid administrators admit they do not know the employment states of current USAid officials.)“I’ve been furloughed, I guess?” said one contractor with 15 years of experience for the bureau for humanitarian assistance, where she had helped coordinate urgent responses in Ukraine, Gaza, Somalia and Latin America. “I don’t know what my status is but I don’t think I work here right now.”By Monday, Kliger wrote an email to all staff at 12.42am to tell them not to bother coming into the building that day.The incident has illustrated how Doge employees with Musk’s backing were able to override USAid leadership and bypass government procedures for accessing restricted areas with classified materials, fueling criticism that his agency is a national security risk.“Did Secretary Rubio allow this kind of access by Musk’s employees?” asked Kim. “It worries me about USAid but if it’s happening here, I’m guessing it’s probably happening at all these other national security agencies.”Formally, Rubio has delegated responsibility to Marocco, who has been pressed by congressional staffers to give details of the changes affecting USAid and the $40bn in foreign aid it manages each year.“The question at hand is: who’s in charge of the state department?” Senator Brian Schatz told the Guardian. “So far the answer has been Pete Marocco.”Doge did not respond to questions about what security clearances, if any, the engineers held. “No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances,” wrote Katie Miller, a Doge spokesperson, on social media.But Scifs are regulated by a strict protocol and it is unclear who could have verified the Doge employees’ credentials and filed the necessary paperwork to allow them to enter.Inside the building, staffers said that Doge cultivated a culture of fear.“It’s an extreme version of ‘who do you trust, when and how?’” said Kristina Drye, a speechwriter at the agency, who watched dozens of senior colleagues escorted out of the building by security. “It felt like the Soviet stories that one day someone is beside you and the next day they’re not.”People started meeting for coffee blocks away because “they didn’t feel safe in the coffee shops here to even talk about what’s going on”, she added.“I was in the elevator one morning and there was an older lady standing beside me and she had glasses on and I could see tears coming down under her glasses and before she got off her elevator she took her glasses off, wiped her eyes, and walked out,” she said. “Because if they see you crying, they know where you stand.” More