Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Now Using AI to Spy on Federal Workers

Elon Musk, who wants AI to replace federal workers, is now using it to spy on them.

After speaking to 20 people close to the situation, Reuters has reported that officials within the Trump administration told federal employees that DOGE “technologists” are using AI to monitor “anti-Trump or anti-Musk language” at the Environmental Protection Agency. One person also said DOGE is using Musk’s Grok AI chatbot—an aspiring ChatGPT competitor—to make massive cuts to the government.

“Be careful what you say, what you type and what you do,” a manager allegedly told one of Reuters’s sources.

This is a grimly ironic development for Musk, who constantly claims that he and his X platform are bulwarks of free speech. The EPA has yet to comment.

“[It] sounds like an abuse of government power to suppress or deter speech that the president of the United States doesn’t like,” government ethics expert Kathleen Clark told Reuters.

DOGE employees are also using Signal—the app that landed Mike Walz in hot water for a week—to message each other. And on top of that, DOGE employees are working live on Google Docs instead of using the single copy vetting and chain of custody process that is standard operating procedure for the government.

If these allegations of spying, Signalgate II, and the use of Google Docs are true, they’re a very serious breach of security and a demonstrable lack of transparency from DOGE.

In any sane reality, President Trump’s deportation of immigrants based on an eighteenth-century law, with no right to due process, would be swiftly remedied by the courts. But to conservatives, such an action is tantamount to treason.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the high court’s liberals Monday by dissenting against Trump’s use of the “Alien Enemies Act,” drawing the ire of the MAGA faithful. While the court still ruled to uphold the president’s deportation by a 5–4 margin, Barrett, appointed by Trump in 2020, still received vitriol from the right for her decision.

Even a U.S. senator got in on the attacks, along with tech oligarch Elon Musk.

A few commentators engaged in some thinly veiled racism targeting Barrett’s adopted children.

This isn’t the first time that Barrett has broken with conservative orthodoxy in her rulings, showing that at times she thinks for herself, much to the right’s consternation. The funny part is that she is still quite conservative, voting to overturn Roe v. Wade and reliably joining her fellow right-wing justices in rulings regarding religious freedom, capital punishment, and affirmative action. While her dissent Monday wasn’t enough to tip the court’s ruling, it shows that there’s a glimmer of hope on the Supreme Court that it won’t always rubber-stamp Trump’s abuses of power.

China has promised to “fight to the end” in the face of even more tariffs from President Trump.

“If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday after China threatened retaliation against Trump’s tariffs. “Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!”

China’s Commerce Ministry matched that energy.

“The U.S. threat to escalate tariffs on China is a mistake on top of a mistake, which once again exposes the U.S.’s blackmail nature,” the ministry said Tuesday. “If the U.S. insists on its own way, China will fight to the end.… China will resolutely take countermeasures to safeguard its own rights and interests.”

The Chinese Embassy in the United States responded with similar ire.

“The U.S. so-called ‘reciprocal tariffs’ against China are groundless and a typical practice of unilateral bullying,” the embassy wrote on X Tuesday morning. “The countermeasures China has adopted are entirely legitimate actions aimed at protecting its sovereignty, security, and development interests, as well as maintaining a normal international trade order.

“There is no winner in a trade war and protectionism leads nowhere,” the embassy continued. “Pressuring and threatening are not the right way to engage with the country.”

If Trump goes through with all of his tariffs, the U.S. will levy a combined tariff of 104 percent on Chinese products: The new 50 percent tariffs, plus the 20 percent for alleged fentanyl trafficking, and then the 34 percent he announced last week.

Trump’s threats have already caused global stock markets to tumble and will likely only continue to erode confidence in the United States as a legitimate trading partner, as China and its massive economy look to less volatile actors like the European Union.

A mother and her three children were released from ICE detention Monday, after they were detained during an immigration raid in Sackets Harbor, New York, late last month.

Public outrage has overtaken the tiny town—which also happens to be border czar Tom Homan’s hometown—after a woman and three children, grades three, 10, and 11, were among seven individuals detained during a March 27 raid on a large dairy farm.

ICE officials said the raid had targeted a South African national who was charged with trafficking child sexual abuse material but that they had apprehended a total of seven people who lacked documentation. All seven people, including the family, were sent to a detention facility in Texas to await removal proceedings. Homan told the local news last week that the family had been moved to Texas for questioning and was being kept in an “open-air” residential facility, pending a decision on their removal.

“During investigations like that, we have to ensure that any children within that area are safe. There’s a process during these investigations where, could these children—could that family be a material witness in this horrendous crime? Can they provide information and evidence in this crime? Were they victimized within this crime? So the due diligence was done,” said Homan.

Sackets Harbor school Principal Jaime Cook wrote a scathing letter to ICE officials insisting that the children hadn’t done anything wrong. “They had declared themselves to immigration judges, attended court on their assigned dates, and were following the legal process. They are not criminals,” Cook wrote.

“They lived in a house on the same road as a house that ICE had a warrant for. The fact that ICE went to their door is unfathomable. The fact that our students were handcuffed and put into the same van as the alleged criminal from down the street is unconscionable,” Cook wrote.

The arrests sparked outrage across Central and Northern New York. Nearly 1,000 people gathered in Sackets Harbor on Saturday to protest the family’s detention by ICE. The population of Sackets Harbor is roughly 1,350 people.

The family was released from custody on Monday, according to a statement from Jennifer Gaffney, the superintendent of the Sackets Harbor Central School District.

“My colleagues and I are relieved and grateful to share that, after 11 days of uncertainty, our students and their mother are returning home,” Gaffney said.

“In the midst of this difficult time, the strength, compassion, and resilience of our community have shone through. We are very thankful to everyone who has reached out with kindness and offered support.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melchick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, pointed out that there was an obvious lesson from the family’s release. “This is a friendly reminder that ICE is not entirely immune to the court of public opinion,” he wrote on X Monday.

The European Union graciously offered to negotiate with Donald Trump on tariffs before retaliating, but the U.S. president is too blinded by his own conspiracy to even consider the deal.

On Monday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered the United States a “zero-for-zero tariff” on cars and industrial goods to avoid a trade war, a pretty generous offer given Trump slapped 20 percent tariffs on the EU—and pretty much everywhere else—last week.

“We have offered zero-for-zero tariffs for industrial goods as we have successfully done with many other trading partners. Because Europe is always ready for a good deal. So we keep it on the table,” von der Leyen said in a statement.

Trump, however, told reporters Monday afternoon that the deal isn’t enough. “The EU has been very tough over the years, I always say it was formed to really do damage to the United States and trade,” Trump said. “That’s the reason it was formed.”

In case you forgot, the EU was not, in fact, formed to screw the United States but to foster peace and cooperation among European countries post-World War II. It was founded in 1992 and is made up of 27 countries and seven major institutions that manage a common budget, facilitate trade, and make laws.

The president continued his rewrite of European history, claiming the EU was formed solely “to create a unified force against the United States for trade.” He added that the union has used NATO—an alliance that the United States is a part of—to take advantage of the United States.

The outlandish rant is Trump’s way of saying, no, he won’t accept von der Leyen’s deal. It’s a refusal that will likely result in further retaliatory tariffs on the United States as an economic recession looms.