Trump’s DHS Chief Admits DOGE Has Infiltrated Department

CNN’s Dana Bash and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had an exasperating, circular argument on Sunday regarding Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency now having unfettered access to troves of personal data housed in the department.

“The Washington Post is reporting that Musk and his DOGE team have access to FEMA’s sensitive disaster data, which includes personal information about tens of thousands of disaster victims,” Bash said to Noem. “Have you authorized Elon Musk and his team to have access to Americans’ personal data that is housed inside DHS?”

“We’re working with them at the president’s direction, to find what we can do to make our department much more efficient,” Noem replied. “This is essentially an audit.”

“That’s different from him having access to personal data that is housed in—”

“The president has authorized him to have access,” Noem said curtly.

“And you feel comfortable with that?” Dash asked.

“Absolutely!’

“I remember a time when Republicans were very careful about, and worried about … the government—particularly unelected people—having—”

“Well we can’t trust the government anymore,” Noem retorted.

“You are the government,” Bash said.

Noem went on to reiterate the same point again: An unelected billionaire having personal access to this kind of information is totally fine because Trump said so, years of Republican policy be damned.

This is just another moment in Trump’s all-out blitz on the federal government, as he allows Musk and his team of young cronies to hack away at critical parts of our federal apparatus. A federal judge just rebuked DOGE’s attempted takeover of the Treasury on Saturday, and multiple lawsuits have been filed by states and labor unions against DOGE for violating privacy rights. But that hasn’t stopped Musk yet.

Donald Trump is once again taking shots at Taylor Swift, because it’s normal for the president to have a problem with a pop star.

Both Trump and Swift were in attendance at the Super Bowl LIX Sunday, where they watched helplessly as the very popular Kansas City Chiefs were decimated by the righteous Philadelphia Eagles. At one point, the jumbotron showed Swift in the stands, and the crowd reacted poorly.

Swift, who has been dating the Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce for more than a year, has proved herself to be a lightning rod for the more misogynist sports fans. She was able to shake it off, laughing with her famous friend Ice Spice, but Trump took the opportunity to revive his one-sided feud with the musician.

“The only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “She got BOOED out of the Stadium. MAGA is very unforgiving!”

Trump still seems sore that Swift endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, and once pathetically declared, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” Even before that, MAGA weren’t her biggest fans. However, it’s not clear that it was a MAGA crowd at all, but rather one composed mostly of Eagles fans cheering against her boyfriend.

Meanwhile, Trump fled the stadium during a very political halftime performance by Kendrick Lamar, after backing the losing team.

Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans spent the weekend openly attacking the federal judiciary and, by extension, the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Elon Musk took the first shot early Sunday morning with an X post, angrily reacting to a federal judge blocking his“Department of Government Efficiency” from accessing Treasury Department records.

“A corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached NOW!” Musk posted.

Later, JD Vance chimed in with his own attack on the federal judiciary.

“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vance posted.

Trump initially feigned ignorance when a reporter aboard Air Force One asked him about Vance’s statements later in the day, even attacking the journalist’s media outlet.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Neither do you,” Trump said, asking the reporter who he was with. When the reporter replied “HuffPost, Sir,” Trump replied, “Oh, no wonder. I thought they died.”

Trump gave a more complete answer to another reporter.

“We’re very disappointed with the judges that would make such a ruling. But we have a long way to go. We have to look, we have to find all of the fraud that’s going on. We have tremendous fraud, tremendous waste, and tremendous abuse, and theft, by the way,” Trump said. “And the day you’re not allowed to look for theft and fraud, et cetera, then we don’t have much of a country. So, no judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision. It’s a disgrace.”

These reactions are very worrying for the constitutional framework of the United States, where the separation of powers is supposed to provide a check from the judicial branch, represented by the courts, against the executive branch of the president and vice president. A billionaire oligarch like Musk is not supposed to have authority in the federal government, even if he is the world’s richest man, who funded the president’s campaign to the tune of $250 million.

Trump and Vance are floating the idea of ignoring federal court rulings against them, which would create a constitutional crisis in the United States. The conservative Supreme Court may not even step in to defend the separation of powers, and they’ve already granted Trump near-immunity. The Republican-led Congress will never even consider impeaching the president, either. What is to be done?

Kendrick Lamar’s very normal Super Bowl halftime show had the MAGA faithful pearl-clutching and conspiracy theorizing.

The iconic Pulitzer Prize and 22-time Grammy winner livened up an otherwise uncompetitive game with a classic performance that centered hip-hop and Black American culture—and featured the likes of Samuel L. Jackson (dressed in American flag garb as Uncle Sam), Serena Williams, and SZA. It only makes sense that right-wingers hated everything about it.

“The halftime show you just watched is clearly the regime’s response to Trump’s historic gains with black men,” shamed former Representative Matt Gaetz wrote on X, even though Lamar was announced as the halftime show performer months before Election Day.

“Raise your hand if you survived the black nationalist Super Bowl LIX halftime show,” right-wing commentator Eric Daugherty wrote on X, even as Lamar’s stage and costume designs were rife with American flag imagery.

“Hey NFL, Trump won. We no longer let talentless mumbling pagan satanic cultists do halftime shows and pretend like people like it,” MAGA media shill Benny Johnson said. “Thanks, everyone.”

In reality, the halftime show was fine, and Kendrick Lamar is an excellent rapper. These people took issue with the show because it didn’t fit into their narrow “post-woke” vision of America—but neither does a very large chunk of this country. This isn’t the first time Kendrick Lamar has performed at the Super Bowl, and it isn’t the first time Blackness has been a major theme of the show. And yet MAGA continues to cry about it.

Elon Musk announced Friday that the Department of Government Efficiency employee who quit for a range of racist social media posts will be reinstated.

Musk made a series of social media posts expressing his support for Marko Elez, the DOGE staffer who wrote in September that he couldn’t be paid to “marry outside [his] ethnicity,” and that people should “normalize Indian hate.” Musk also fired off postings attacking the journalist who had brought the racist posts to light, leading Elez to resign.  

“Bring back @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?” Musk asked in one post on X, attaching a poll where users could vote. 

The vice president of the United States, who is married to an Indian woman and has three children with her, decided to weigh in on the racist boss’s pitch to reinstall the racist employee. Spoiler alert: He thought it was a great idea!

“I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Vance wrote on X. “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back.”

Crucially, the person in question posted these things in September 2024, and is currently 25 years old. Not exactly a kid. 

“If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that,” Vance wrote, drawing a clear distinction between someone who is racist and someone who is a “bad dude.” Vance has actually been posting on X a lot recently, after he seemingly vanished from all governance the moment he entered the White House. 

Less than an hour later, Donald Trump was asked about Vance’s complicity during a press conference. He replied, “Well, I don’t know about the particular thing, but if the vice president said that—did you say that?—I’m with the vice president!”

Musk took Vance’s approval as marching orders. “He will be brought back,” Musk wrote on X. “To err is human, to forgive divine.” But given all of his support for Elez, it seems that to Musk, there wasn’t much to forgive in the first place. 

Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, who has been gentle on Musk as the representative of Silicon Valley, responded to Vance’s endorsement with a reminder that the vice president had been personally implicated in the hateful rhetoric of Musk’s employee. 

“Are you going to tell him to apologize for saying “Normalize Indian hate” before this rehire? Just asking for the sake of both of our kids,” Khanna wrote in a post. 

Vance, who clearly doesn’t believe in the dangers of hate speech, responded with a multipost tirade. 

“For the sake of both of our kids? Grow up,” he replied. “Racist trolls on the internet, while offensive, don’t threaten my kids. You know what does? A culture that denies grace to people who make mistakes. A culture that encourages congressmen to act like whiny children.”

In a separate post, Vance said he was more concerned that his children would spend their lives afraid to tell stupid jokes “that they later think are wrong or even gross” than face racialized hatred that is forgiven by his own administration. 

(Again, since entering office, he’s had a lot of time to tweet.) 

Khanna wasn’t being whiny; he was raising a real concern. There has been a surge in anti–South Asian hate since January 2023, with threats of violence against Asian Americans increasing by 17 percent. The majority of that hate has been directed at South Asian Americans specifically, according to a report from Stop AAPI Hate. 

Musk’s decision to reinstall his racist employee comes as concerns about DOGE’s sweeping access to sensitive information and startling lack of oversight reached new heights Friday.