WASHINGTON – Billionaire Elon Musk has been sporting a “tech support” T-shirt serving President Donald Trump, but he’s gone quite a bit further to overhaul the federal government than turning it off and back on again.
The world’s richest man dominated the agenda of Trump’s first six weeks in office, literally wielding a chainsaw as a symbol for cutting government spending. Musk bragged about feeding the U.S. Agency for International Development “into the woodchipper.”
Recommendations from the Department of Government Efficiency, which Trump says Musk heads despite another nominal administrator, led to firing tens of thousands of workers and targeted more. DOGE placed staffers inside agencies to recommend what programs could be scuttled, how money is spent and which workers fired. And the administration ordered a freeze of grants and loans.
Along the way, Musk lectured Trump’s Cabinet on the need to cut spending. He received a standing ovation from Republicans during the president’s speech Tuesday to Congress.
But federal courts are wrestling with the fallout, blocking some of the actions at least temporarily. Spending cuts have polarized Congress, where lawmakers who determine funding or set policies traditionally held tight control over their fiefdoms. Trump’s fellow Republicans have cheered on Musk while Democrats protest because in the minority they can’t conduct official investigations, subpoena witnesses or pass legislation.
Lawmakers need to reach an agreement to fund the government by March 14 or risk a partial shutdown. The limit on the national debt could lead to a default as early as Friday unless raised. The unelected Musk will be at the heart of these fiscal debate, with Trump pushing his Cabinet to get to work making big changes in government spending and some Republican lawmakers arguing the new administration’s efforts should be approved in legislation so that they are permanent.
“Elon was like Christmas came early,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told USA TODAY after Republican senators met Wednesday evening with Musk at the Capitol. “I’ve never seen the guy this happy.”
Trump created DOGE on his first day in office Jan. 20 in an executive order that instructed department heads to give the new agency “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”
In rapid fashion, the DOGE team – which includes some 50 to 100 computer engineers, IT specialists and others – fanned out across federal departments and agencies, seized control of federal infrastructure and begin initiating cuts.
Musk has worked to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce. First came DOGE’s “Fork in the road” buyouts, which 77,000 of the federal government’s 2.3 million workers accepted.
Federal agencies, at DOGE’s direction, then moved to swiftly terminate tens of thousands of recently hired or promoted probationary workers.
Yet the third phase to come is poised to be the most crushing blow yet to the federal workforce. Following a Trump executive order, the administration ordered federal departments to initiate “large-scale reductions in force” by Thursday.
Trump has floated cutting the Environmental Protection Agency by 65%. The Department of Veterans Affairs has plans to cut 76,000 workers. The Social Security Administration is looking at smaller, yet still significant, 12% cuts.
“I just feel a sense of emptiness. Like I feel I’ve done everything right,” Allie Mitchell, a 30-year-old former researcher at the National Institute on Aging, recently told USA TODAY. “And they just fired us and said it was because of your performance. And that’s not true.”
Hayley Robinson, 27, had barely started as a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when she learned last month during an online meeting with 400 probationary employees that they no longer had jobs.
Robinson said the devastating part is she and her partner relocated more than 1,700 miles from Champaign, Illinois, to Las Vegas for the new job. Boxes still held their belongings in their newly leased rental home.
“This was my first biologist position that I worked so hard for and it was ripped away from me,” Robinson said. “I feel very vulnerable and scared about my future.”
Musk has an ambitious goal of cutting federal spending by $1 trillion by the end of September. Yet DOGE’s accounting has been riddled with errors and exaggerated.
DOGE is currently boasting $105 billion in “estimated savings” listed on a “wall of receipts” page on the agency’s website. The site itemizes workforce reductions, grant cancellations, asset sales and other savings to the government.
But the page has contained flaws. The largest canceled federal contract – listed the day the page debuted -was purported to be valued at $8 billion. The most recent version of that contract, a 2022 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agreement with D&G Support Services, was for $8 million. DOGE later removed the contract.
Budget experts note DOGE’s website documenting canceled contracts has not factored in funds the government must still pay even if a contract is ended. In other instances, DOGE tallied the maximum ceiling for a contract even if the entire funding hadn’t been obligated to receive a greater value in savings.
Musk has said DOGE will be “maximally transparent” with its work and acknowledged the group will make mistakes.
But Trump and Musk have continued to push falsehoods. That includes telling Americans that deceased people 150 years or older could be receiving Social Security benefits.
Trump doubled down on the unsubstantiated Social Security claims during his joint address to Congress.
“We’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty,” Trump said of a database listing the ages of Americans as old as 160 in the system.
Yet a 2023 inspector’s general report found that almost none of the deceased individuals listed in the database are receiving Social Security payments. And Trump’s own agency chief, Leland Dudek, last week acknowledged “these individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”
Democratic state officials, unions, federal workers and advocacy groups have filed about 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration to block his policies.
DOGE and Musk are magnets for at least 17 lawsuits, according to a USA TODAY tally. Most of the litigation opposes giving DOGE access to sensitive information in government computers to determine where to cut spending and staffing.
Another four lawsuits challenge Trump’s removal of members of so-called independent boards dealing with workforce complaints as DOGE recommends mass layoffs. Hampton Dellinger, former head of the Office of Special Counsel, decided against heading to the Supreme Court after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his firing.
At least four more lawsuits are fighting the dismantling of USAID. U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled Thursday the Trump administration must make some payments to foreign aid contractors – the government has estimated the total disputed amount at nearly $2 billion – by Monday.
“The role for the court is in interpreting the Constitution and there are two branches here,” Ali told the government’s lawyer. “It would seem to me a pretty country-shaking proposition that appropriations are optional.”
Ali’s decision came after a divided Supreme Court refused Wednesday to block the payments. Justice Samuel Alito was joined by three other conservative members of the court in “stunned” disagreement.
“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” Alito wrote. “The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.”
A couple of lawsuits are fighting Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans. U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island became the second judge to halt the freeze by ruling on Thursday the Trump administration “put itself above Congress.”
“The Executive’s categorical freeze of appropriated and obligated funds fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government,” McConnell wrote.
Musk has proposed to impeach judges who rule against the administration, arguing some are “corrupt judges protecting corruption.” Trump has said he would obey judges’ orders but appeal adverse decisions and Attorney General Pam Bondi said the the administration would not be moving immediately to push Congress to impeach judges.
During a closed-door meeting Wednesday with Musk on Capitol Hill, Republican senators made the case for putting his spending cuts into law through Congress.
In doing so, they delicately sought to regain a seat at the table in an administration where they have frequently been caught by surprise and where their previous funding directives have in some cases been ignored. Lawmakers traditionally insist on maintaining control over the jurisdiction of their own committees, and on being notified when executive agencies are doing something in their home states.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told reporters he pitched Musk on clawing back funding that Congress had already approved, which would require only a majority vote in the chamber where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.
“I don’t think they’re real until we vote on them,” Paul told USA TODAY of the DOGE cuts. “To make them real, a sense of permanence, a sense of legitimacy, they’re going to have to go be voted on by Congress.”
Senators have been cautious about criticizing Musk in public, but have raised concerns when cuts hit industries or agencies that are particularly important to their home states. But Wednesday’s meeting was largely friendly, with Musk telling lawmakers he wanted to work more closely with them and handing out his cellphone number.
“I think they’re very intrigued by it,” Graham, the head of the Senate Budget Committee and a member of the Appropriations Committee, said of his GOP colleagues. “If we don’t do this, it’s political malpractice. Because we’ve got a bunch of absurd spending items that we should get rid of through the rescission process.”
House Republicans also briefly discussed voting on spending cuts while meeting with Musk.
“I feel very much that if we’re going to do this the right way, Congress has to take the lead,” said Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., who said she shared Paul’s concerns.
However, putting specific cuts to a vote in Congress is not likely to be easy. Many Republicans support cuts to government spending in concept, but are reluctant to hurt their local priorities.
“I’m totally comfortable putting a rescissions package on the floor,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. But “you can’t put cuts on the floor that I’m probably not going to support.”
Musk warned mistakes would be made.
“We won’t be perfect,” Musk told the Trump Cabinet on Feb. 26 while wearing his “tech support” T-shirt. “But when we make a mistake, we’ll fix it very quickly.”
During an initial wave of firings, about 325 workers received layoff notices from the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nation’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. Less than 50 workers had their jobs terminated, according to a spokesperson, before the administration moved to rehire them.
USAID funding to fight Ebola was “accidentally canceled very briefly,” Musk also told the Cabinet.
“I think we all wanted Ebola prevention,” Musk said. “So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption.”
Trump met Thursday with Musk and members of the Cabinet to discuss spending cuts. The group will continue to meet every two weeks with a goal of keeping the most productive workers while reducing the size of government, Trump said.
“As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’”
But Trump denied Musk was moving too swiftly, calling him “amazing.”
“We’re going to be watching them, and Elon and the group are going to be watching them, and if they can cut, it’s better,” Trump told reporters about his Cabinet. “And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”
Recent public opinion polling shows that one advantage for Trump during the political storm is that Musk shields the second-term Republican president by becoming a lightning rod for criticism about dismantling federal agencies and firing workers.
More Americans had a negative view of Musk at 54% than a positive view at 42%, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2 – before his government overhaul escalated.
More recently, nearly half of respondents (49%) disapproved of how Musk was handling his job compared to about one-third (34%) approving, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted Feb. 13 to 18.
About 45% of respondents disapproved of the job Musk is doing compared to 41% approving, according to an Emerson College poll conducted Feb. 15 to 17.
“The poll findings suggest generally unpopular domestic and foreign policy ideas, however, Trump’s approval has not shifted significantly since last month,” said Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, referring to a 48% approval rating for the president.
Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which recruits and funds candidates, advised GOP lawmakers Tuesday not to hold town-hall meetings, where angry crowds have complained about spending cuts. The 2026 mid-term elections for House members and one-third of the Senate will be the first chance for voters nationwide to react to Trump’s policies.
After the meeting, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters that the people who filled up recent town hall meetings across the country are “professional protesters” so it is “wise” not to “play into that.” Trump has similarly said the attendees are “paid troublemakers.”
Musk’s work so far has been done under Trump’s executive orders and direction, but without congressional input. Lawmakers are grappling with how to lock in savings from his contentious cuts.
Congress faces a deadline Friday to extend funding for the federal government through the end of the fiscal year Sept. 30 or risk a partial shutdown. Republicans postponed the decision after the election to wait until they controlled both the House and Senate.
But finding a deal for their priority to cut spending has been elusive with narrow majorities in both chambers. Johnson has proposed extending current spending levels set in 2023 − in a compromise with Democrats − to start with a clean slate for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.
Decisions for next year are no easier. The House-passed version of the budget blueprint aims to cut $880 billion over the next decade from the portion that includes Medicare and Medicaid, which Trump has said he wouldn’t cut.
But all the other programs in that part of the budget combined total hundreds of billions of dollars less than the goal to cut, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Democrats contend the healthcare entitlements will suffer.
“This letter from CBO confirms what we’ve been saying all along: the math doesn’t work without devastating Medicaid cuts,” Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee that oversees Medicare and Medicaid, said in a statement Wednesday.
At the same time, the Treasury Department has been taking “extraordinary steps” for months to avoid breaching the country’s debt limit. The latest suspension of the limit expires Friday. The country has never defaulted but votes to increase the $36 trillion in national debt are painful to all lawmakers.
Meanwhile, Musk − the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of X − has other interests. SpaceX’s Starship rocket broke up during its eighth uncrewed flight test on Thursday, sending debris shooting through the sky and temporarily affecting airline flights around Miami. It was SpaceX’s second such setback since January.
Trump commended Musk at his speech Tuesday to Congress, saying “he didn’t need this” as Republicans applauded and cheered.
“He’s really working so hard,” Trump told the Cabinet on Feb. 26. “And he’s got businesses to run. And in many ways, they say, ‘How do you do this?’ And, you know, he’s sacrificing a lot and – getting a lot of praise, I’ll tell you, but he’s also getting hit.”
