Trump Signs Order on DOGE as Elon Musk Stands Next to Him Watching

Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to strong-arm federal agencies into bowing down to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The executive order, first reported by Semafor and Reuters, has specific instructions for agency leaders to cooperate with DOGE’s culling of the federal workforce and limit future hiring. The order will allow agencies to only rehire one worker for every four people who leave the workforce. This is all a part of DOGE’s “workplace optimization initiative,” which is code for overhauling the bureaucratic apparatus in MAGA’s image.  

The order is a signal that Trump is backing all the anti-woke chaos that Musk and his DOGE minions have inflicted thus far. Musk even stood next to Trump as he signed the order in the Oval Office, saying that “it’s important that the public’s elected representatives decide what happens rather than a large unelected bureaucracy,” according to Reuters’s Nandita Bose. Musk is an unelected official. 

Federal agencies, their employees, and the courts have been fairly resistant to DOGE’s takeover up to this point, filing multiple lawsuits and refusing to take buyouts. But this executive order clearly shows that Trump does not respect the basic power of the judiciary and will do everything he can to carry out his agenda faster than a court can rule against it—including signing executive orders like this one.

Donald Trump doesn’t want the public to know who visits the White House. 

A White House official told the Washington Examiner Tuesday that visitor logs will not be released during Trump’s second term, mirroring his policy during his first term. After the 2020 election, President Biden resumed the practice, which began during Barack Obama’s presidency. 

It’s telling that early on, Trump is refusing a basic transparency measure. The Obama administration made over six million visitor records public through open.gov, a bright spot in an otherwise secretive administration. Today, the website doesn’t work anymore, a testament to the Trump administration’s opacity. 

Through his first weeks in office, Trump has restricted the communications teams of several government agencies from disseminating information, including those concerning public health such as the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services. 

While a federal judge ordered the federal government to restore government health websites and data sets on Tuesday, much of what the Trump administration decides to make public may not be argued about in a courtroom. The White House has exempted Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from needing to respond to public records requests and most court intervention until at least 2034, for example.

It flies in the face of what Musk promised in November when he was campaigning for Trump. He claimed in an X post back then that “there should be no need for FOIA requests,” referring to the Freedom of Information Act. 

“All government data should be default public for maximum transparency,” Musk added. But both he and Trump seem inclined to be hiding what they’re doing, suggesting that the Trump administration is engaging in some highly unpopular, if not illegal, behavior. 

Insiders are blowing the whistle on Kash Patel, claiming that Donald Trump’s appointee to run the FBI lied to Congress during his confirmation hearings and is already directing a “purge” of the bureau while he’s still a private citizen.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin reacted Tuesday to the reports, asking the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate the “highly credible” claims that Patel had issued “directives” to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, and several members of the “newly established” FBI director’s advisory team.

“I have received highly credible information from multiple sources that Kash Patel has been personally directing the ongoing purge of career civil servants at the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Durbin wrote in a letter to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

“Although Mr. Patel is President Trump’s nominee to be FBI Director, he is still a private citizen with no role in government,” the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee continued. “This alleged misconduct is beyond the pale and must be investigated immediately.”

Durbin’s letter pointed to notes from a January 29 meeting that stated “KP wants movement at FBI, reciprocal actions for DOJ,” reported The Hill.

But such evidence would suggest that Patel perjured himself during his Senate confirmation hearing on January 30, when the Trump nominee denied knowing of any “plans or discussions” to “punish” personnel that had been involved in Trump’s criminal investigations.

“Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations?” Senator Cory Booker asked at the time.

Patel, in turn, replied that he was “not aware.”

“All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” Patel said at the time.

Completely gutting the nation’s systems is apparently the MO of Trump’s second term. Last month, Trump’s team ransacked FBI leadership, firing the top five career positions at the bureau, according to The Hill. The administration also conducted a mass firing of more than a dozen career prosecutors who had worked directly with former special counsel Jack Smith as he developed two cases against Trump: one into Trump’s alleged retention of classified documents after he left the White House in 2021, and another into Trump’s involvement in the January 6 riots.

The matter boiled down to “trust” for the incoming administration, which claimed that the prosecutors had weaponized the government against the MAGA leader and had no place in a second Trump term.

Donald Trump’s illegal funding freeze just won’t stop.

A senior official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered employees to place financial holds on a range of the agency’s grant programs, in defiance of a federal judge’s restraining order against the Trump administration’s sweeping funding freeze, NBC News reported Tuesday.

In an email sent Monday, Stacey Street, FEMA’s director of the Office of Grant Administration, ordered her subordinates to “put financial holds on all of your awards—all open awards, all years (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024).”

NBC obtained screenshots of the email from one of the recipients.

“There’s a lot of people who are running scared and trying to appease [the new administration],” said the recipient, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“This is a violation of the court order.”

Earlier Monday, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell had said that the Trump administration had continued to block federal grants, ignoring the judge’s previous directive restraining the disastrous executive order that would have stripped funding from an array of essential government services.

Trump reaffirmed his intention to get rid of the “slow and totally ineffective” FEMA, in an angry post on Truth Social Tuesday. The Department of Homeland Security announced the dismissal of four FEMA employees Tuesday, after Elon Musk claimed that DOGE had discovered nearly $60 million in funds going to house undocumented immigrants in New York City just last week.

Donald Trump is once again threatening to destroy the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The president took aim at the agency, which provides essential disaster aid, in a post on Truth Social Tuesday.

“FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry. It is now under review and investigation,” Trump wrote. “THE BIDEN RUN FEMA HAS BEEN A DISASTER. FEMA SHOULD BE TERMINATED! IT HAS BEEN SLOW AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE. INDIVIDUAL STATES SHOULD HANDLE STORMS, ETC., AS THEY COME. BIG SAVINGS, FAR MORE EFFICIENT!!!”

Trump’s tantrum comes one day after Elon Musk claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency had “discovered” that FEMA had provided nearly $60 million to house undocumented immigrants in New York City last week.

“Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” Musk fumed on X. “That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals! A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”

The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that the four “deep state activist” FEMA officials who made the payments had been fired.

Trump has floated the idea of scrapping FEMA multiple times. Most recently, he weighed shutting down the agency while residents of Los Angeles County coped with ongoing wildfires.

“I like, frankly, the concept when North Carolina gets hit, the governor takes care of it. When Florida gets hit, the governor takes care of it. Meaning the state takes care of it,” Trump told reporters last month. (Florida receives the most funding from FEMA of any state.)

Trump said that assistance for states affected by natural disasters would be run directly through his administration, ensuring that he can use it as political leverage to reform the policies of Democratic-led states and cities.

The president previously said that he planned to sign an executive order reforming—or even abolishing—the agency. It’s unclear if this is still his plan, and his social media posting is simply setting the stage for what’s to come.

Now we know just how serious Trump is about acting outside of his authority as president to gut federal agencies: Since he made this initial statement, Trump’s administration has illegally taken the ax to USAID.