Elon Musk’s Efforts to Slash and Burn Government Hits Major Obstacle

A U.S. District Court in Washington on Thursday partially blocked Elon Musk and his DOGE groupies from further accessing government databases.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved a temporary restraining order that prevents two DOGE-affiliated employees from accessing anything other than read-only records from the Bureau of Fiscal Service’s systems.

The restricted employees are Tom Krause and Marko Elez, who will be permitted access on an “as needed” basis, according to the filing. Prior to joining Musk’s federal team, Krause served as a chief executive of a Silicon Valley software company, while Elez is a 25-year-old engineer with experience at two of Musk’s companies: X and SpaceX.

“The Defendants will not provide access to any payment record or payment system of records maintained by or within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service,” the order reads.

The order was in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, alleging that the newly minted Trump appointee had provided Musk and his team “full access” to Americans’ personal and financial information.

The order barred “any person who is an employee (but not a Special Government Employee) of the Department of the Treasury and who has a need for the record or system of records in the performance of their duties.”

The agreement will stay in place until February 24, when both parties are expected to return to court for a long-term preliminary injunction, according to ABC News.

Senator Ron Wyden is calling out Donald Trump and Elon Musk for carrying out a “coup” in their slash-and-burn takeover of federal agencies.

During an appearance on The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Wyden, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, gave a grim answer to host Nilay Patel’s intrepid question of “What the fuck is going on?”

“That is the question of the hour,” Wyden replied. “And it is almost impossible to divine an answer because it moves from minute to minute. Donald Trump essentially governs by whim.”

“I’m very troubled by the type of policies that they are pursuing that when you add them up, looks and feels like a coup,” Wyden said, noting that Democrats had been trying to stop Trump and Musk where they could.

“If I were to embrace it in a sentence apropos of ‘what the hell is going on here,’ is that Trump and Musk are ignoring the checks and balances of our republic, and for all practical purposes I’d call that a coup.”

After pillaging USAID over the weekend and illegally shuttering the agency, Musk then gained access to the Treasury Department’s payments system, which could affect programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payments, all of which fall under the jurisdiction of the Senate Finance Committee. In a letter to Wyden Tuesday, the Treasury Department insisted that Musk’s team at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is merely performing an audit of the system, and not, as some sources have suggested, rewriting code. Wyden told The New Republic that the letter “reeks of a cover-up.”

“It doesn’t pass the smell test,” Wyden said to TNR.

Wyden has been sounding the alarm on the Trump-Musk takeover in other ways. In a statement Tuesday urging his colleagues to vote against the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Wyden said that what the U.S. is witnessing is nothing short of “an authoritarian takeover of our federal government by Donald Trump and Elon Musk.”

“They’ve set their sights on a full purge of anyone in government that doesn’t bend the knee and follow their orders,” he said in the statement, saying that their actions had “dubious legal and constitutional authority, and flies in the face of Congressional authority.”

Decoder’s full interview with Wyden will be published Monday.

Democratic voters are begging their elected officials to wake up.

Axios reports that congressional Democrats’ office phone lines are being overrun with calls from distressed constituents goading their representatives to push back harder against the Trump administration. The callers are angry that President Trump is “flooding the zone” with a flurry of spiteful and potentially illegal policies targeted at, but not limited to, nonwhite immigrants, the LGBTQ community, Black Americans, the disabled, and the federal bureaucracy.

Members of Congress told Axios that they hadn’t received this many calls since events like the October 7 attack on Israel, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, or the Trump impeachment hearings.

“I can’t recall ever receiving this many calls,” Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern told Axios. “People disgusted with what’s going on, and they want us to fight back.”

Wisconsin Representative Mark Pocan echoed McGovern’s sentiments: “We had the most calls we’ve ever had in one day on Monday in 12 years.” Maryland Representative Steny Hoyer said his office is receiving “hundreds, maybe thousands” of calls.

Democrats struggled to respond last week as Trump signed a flurry of destructive executive orders. But after a week of furious phone calls, Democrats are starting to fight back.

It looks like Elon Musk isn’t winning any popularity contests anytime soon. New polling has found that the billionaire technocrat has fallen out of favor with, well, everyone (including Republicans).

Republicans are reportedly losing faith in Musk, who Donald Trump appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is currently on a slash-and-burn campaign through several essential federal agencies.

At first, Republicans were on board with Musk’s radical plan to eradicate government agencies. In a poll from The Economist/YouGov taken in the days after the 2024 presidential election, 47 percent of Republicans said that they wanted Musk to have “a lot” of influence in Trump’s administration. Twenty-nine percent said they wanted him to have “a little” influence, and just 12 percent said they hoped he’d have “none at all.”

But less than a month into Trump’s reign in the White House—and his shadow president’s nefarious efforts to ruin everything—it seems that Republican voters aren’t so sweet on the unelected bureaucrat running rampant through the federal government. A new poll published Wednesday from The Economist/YouGov found that now only 26 percent of Republicans want Musk to have “a lot” of influence, a drop of 21 points. By contrast, 43 percent of Republican respondents said they wanted Musk to have “a little” influence, and 17 percent said they wanted his hands out of government altogether.

So what exactly is happening?

It seems that the more people learn about Musk, the less they like him—at least, according to a new Hart Research survey published Wednesday by Groundwork Collective and Public Citizen. The poll asked respondents about how much influence they felt Musk should have in government, explaining aspects of his role in DOGE, his lack of oversight, and his far-reaching access.

By the end of the survey, 63 percent of voters reported having an unfavorable opinion of Musk, an increase of nine points from the beginning of the survey. Meanwhile, only 32 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion, which was down 7 percent from the start, and showed a major negative swing among non-MAGA Republicans.

As beloved as Musk may be among the MAGA crowd, it’s not clear that he appeals to voters in general, which could prove to be a problem for Trump, who claims to have a mandate from the American people to do whatever the hell he wants.

Respondents seemed disturbed by the extent to which Musk had permeated the Trump administration. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said that Musk had too much influence and involvement in the government. Of the voters who were familiar with DOGE, 60 percent said Musk had too much power.

Sixty-one percent of respondents said that they were less favorable toward Musk’s role with DOGE because he was not bound by any rules about conflicts of interest. On Wednesday, the White House reaffirmed that the SpaceX CEO would self-determine when he had a conflict of interest.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said that they had an unfavorable view of Musk’s role with DOGE, considering the group’s unfettered access to all unclassified records, software systems, and I.T. systems across federal agencies.

Over the weekend, DOGE employees raided USAID offices for access to personnel files and payment information, shortly before every employee was placed on administrative leave. Every hour, it seems DOGE employees gain access to the files of a new federal agency. Musk’s team recently gained access to Treasury Department files for an “operational efficiency assessment.”

Two sources told WIRED that one of Musk’s twentysomething-year-old engineers had the ability not just to read but to write code on the Treasury’s extremely sensitive Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. The Treasury Department insisted Tuesday that Musk’s access was “read-only.”

In general, a majority of voters just don’t like the DOGE czar at all. According to Hart Research, 54 percent of voters had an unfavorable view of Musk, including 40 percent who found him very unfavorable.

Lawmakers said they have been overwhelmed by calls from constituents across the country concerned about the Musk-Trump takeover.

“The U.S. Senate phone system has been receiving around 1,600 calls each minute, compared to the 40 calls per minute we usually receive, which has disrupted our call systems,” wrote Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski in a post on X Wednesday.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ex–chief of staff has announced his intention to primary Representative Nancy Pelosi in an attempt to redefine the Democratic Party.

Saikat Chakrabarti, 39, who previously worked in the tech sector and for Senator Bernie Sanders before joining Ocasio-Cortez’s staff, announced his 2026 candidacy for California’s 11th congressional district Wednesday in an X post.

“I’ve got some news: I’ve decided to run against Nancy Pelosi to represent San Francisco in Congress. I know some of you might be surprised that Speaker Emeritus Pelosi is running again, but she is—for her 21st term!” Chakrabarti’s post read.

The former congressional staffer went on to describe the rift between the Democratic Party’s older, neoliberal leadership and its younger, progressive members.

“I respect what Nancy Pelosi has accomplished in her career, but we are living in a totally different America than the one she knew when she entered politics 45 years ago,” Chakrabarti continued. “In an interview with Ezra Klein after Trump’s victory, Pelosi said the Democrats don’t need to change. I disagree. When Democrats were about to appoint their star communicator—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—to chair the powerful Oversight committee to hold Trump and his cronies accountable, Pelosi personally intervened to block it.”

While Pelosi has yet to publicly announce her 2026 candidacy, she has filed the requisite paperwork to run. And even with the former House speaker’s age (she’ll be 86 in March 2026), Chakrabarti still faces an uphill battle in San Francisco, which Pelosi has represented for nearly 40 years in Congress.

“When Nancy Pelosi was first elected to Congress, you could buy a home on a single income. A summer job could pay for college. Republicans believed in climate change and respected election results,” Chakrabarti’s announcement said. “Now, the things that defined the American Dream—being able to afford health care, education, a home, and raise a family—are impossible for most people.… The Democratic Party needs to stop acting like it’s competing against a normal political party that plays by the rules, and it needs a bold vision for how to raise living standards, quality of life and security for all Americans.”

The winner of the district’s Democratic primary is almost certain to carry the general election as well, as Pelosi easily won reeelection in 2024 with 81 percent of the vote.

An ex-incarcerated organizer of the far-right Proud Boys has lofty aspirations for his future.

In an interview with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio pitched a run for office, boasting that he had already elevated himself from prison to Mar-a-Lago in a span of two weeks.

“Last time I was on, I told you that I was gonna take some time, and I was going to really think about what I was going to do,” said Tarrio. “And I think my future is in politics. I think I’m gonna take a serious look at running for office at some point in 2026 or 2028, and I believe that there is a path for that because it is my passion.”

Tarrio then went on to say that he had made up his mind to run for office, though he wasn’t sure exactly what office that would be.

“Is it gonna be local? Is it gonna be at a federal level? I don’t know, but I will tell you that I have made a decision,” he said.

Tarrio received a 22-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy charges over his role in the January 6 attack.

In 2021, a federal prosecutor, an FBI agent, and Tarrio’s own lawyer described Tarrio as an informant for local and federal law enforcement, helping authorities nab “more than a dozen people in various cases involving drugs, gambling and human smuggling” before he was arrested in 2012, according to Reuters.

In an interview with the network after Trump pardoned Tarrio alongside 1,500 other January 6 rioters, Tarrio said he was “jubilant.” Trump’s spontaneous decision to legally forgive his most ardent and violent supporters overrode his administration’s internal debate on the issue and amounted to little more than a “fuck it” moment for the president, according to a White House adviser who spoke with Axios.

Two weeks ago, in an interview with Alex Jones, Tarrio promised “retribution” against people who worked on prosecuting January 6 cases.

“We’ve got to do everything in our power to make sure that the next four years sets us up for the next 100 years,” he said.

Senate Democrats stayed on the chamber floor all night Wednesday to protest the nomination of Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025, to chair the Office of Management and Budget.

The Senate invoked cloture Wednesday afternoon with a vote of 53–47, a party-line split. In response, Democrats decided not to yield any of their allotted 30 hours of debate time, and kept the floor occupied through the night, scheduling speakers one after another.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer delivered a last-minute plea to his Republican colleagues, urging them to oppose Vought’s nomination.

“Maybe somehow you’ll realize how damaging Russell Vought is. Maybe you’ll say to yourselves, despite the fact that you might have President Trump angry with me, you’re doing the best thing for him by voting down Russell Vought ultimately, politically. Maybe. Unlikely. Forlorn hope. I always try to be an optimist. But maybe,” he said.

Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey posted on X shortly before 1 a.m. to say that he’d be taking one of the late-night shifts.

“Just got back to the Capitol past midnight as I prepare to speak during an all night marathon session to control the Senate floor and keep the focus on this assault on our Constitution,” he wrote. “We have to raise the alarm to the American people.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said his “voice was shot” after his speaking shift.

“Just finished 3 hours of speaking on the floor—I took the 2-5am shift in Democrats’ effort to hold the floor all night in protest over OMB nominee Russel Vought,” he wrote on X.

Despite the Democrats’ efforts, Vought will likely be confirmed at 7 p.m. Thursday.

Last week, Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee boycotted a meeting to advance Vought’s nomination over the OMB’s effort to “illegally freeze trillions of dollars” for federal funding for grants and loans, which seemed born from Vought’s intention to use “impoundment” to allow the president to pause, or even outright refuse to spend, the full amount of federally mandated funding that Congress has appropriated.

The U.S. Department of Education chose to kindly let employees know that Donald Trump’s “buyout” offer for federal employees, should they accept it, may be yanked away from them at any moment.

Last week, the president announced that he’d be giving federal workers the option of full-time in-office work or quitting with a buyout and severance pay through September 30. This is a key strategy in his effort to completely transform the federal government’s bureaucratic apparatus.

However, three Department of Education officials told NBC News on Wednesday that there were some massive caveats to this policy. The department’s new chief of staff, Rachel Oglesby, and Jacqueline Clay, its chief human capital officer, told employees that the secretary of education could nullify the agreement or the government could simply stop paying, as employees would waive their right to legal claims if they take the buyout deal. Employees have until Thursday to make a decision.

“It sounded like a commercial for a used car dealership, like, ‘Act now, one day only,’” one department official who was at the meeting said.

The Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management, the agency responsible for managing federal employees, has pushed back with a memo that claims to assure the government’s accountability on payments. That memo includes a sample agreement that gives the “sole discretion” to waive the buyout to the “agency head” and “waives all rights to challenge the resignation before the Merit Systems Protection Board or any other forum.” More than 40,000 of the two million–plus federal government employees have accepted the buyout as of Wednesday.

Donald Trump is continuing to push his crazy plan for the United States to take over Gaza, even after the idea was soundly rejected by world leaders. In a post on Truth Social Thursday morning, the president said the “Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting.”

“The Palestinians, people like Chuck Schumer, would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region,” Trump said, showing his true regard for the Palestinians by using them to insult the Senate minority leader.

“They would actually have a chance to be happy, safe, and free. The U.S., working with great development teams from all over the World, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth. No soldiers by the U.S. would be needed! Stability for the region would reign!!!” Trump’s post said.

The post flies in the face of White House officials’ attempt to clarify Trump’s harebrained idea, which he first mentioned during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday evening. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that Trump only intended to “temporarily” transfer the 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza to neighboring countries, such Egypt and Jordan.

The “greatest development teams from all over the world” Trump referred to in his post presumably would be real estate developers, as opposed to humanitarian organizations who help displaced people rebuild their lives and homes. The president is trying to end America’s humanitarian initiatives by trying to close the U.S. Agency for International Development, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner is a real estate developer who sees Gaza’s destruction as an opportunity for profit.

While Trump promises not to use any U.S. troops to transfer Gaza’s population, sending Israeli troops to do the job would reignite the conflict, which continues to simmer despite a more than two-week-old ceasefire. Palestinians have universally rejected the plan, as have America’s Arab allies, who presumably would be taking them in. How, then, does Trump intend to carry out his scheme?

Donald Trump wants CBS to do more than pay the price for conducting a sit-down interview with Kamala Harris before Election Day.

Since the interview aired in September, the president has insisted that the network had selectively edited Harris’s answers to a question regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a detail made all the more confusing since CBS’s 60 Minutes and Face the Nation cut and aired different portions of her answer on different days.

“CBS and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, been seen before,” Trump posted on Truth Social early Thursday. “They 100% removed Kamala’s horrible election changing answers to questions, and replaced them with completely different, and far better, answers, taken from another part of the interview.”

CBS has maintained that the interview with the Democratic presidential candidate was only edited for time but that both clips were cut from the same extended answer to the question.

Trump sued the network for $10 billion after the interview, claiming that the different clips were tantamount to “election interference” and merited CBS losing its broadcast license. Trump also argued, at the time, that Harris should drop out of the presidential race over the GOP-baked scandal.

After a review of the interview, the Federal Communications Commission released a transcript Wednesday revealing that the two answers were in fact cut from the same cloth and had both been provided by the former vice president during an extended 21-second response.

Anna Gomez, a Democratic commissioner on the FCC, said that the raw footage of the interview provided “no evidence” that CBS violated broadcasting guidelines.

“Having now seen these materials, I see no reason to continue pursuing this investigation,” Gomez said in a statement. “The FCC should now move to dismiss this fishing expedition to avoid further politicizing our enforcement actions.”

Still, the company’s apparent innocence is backdropped by a decision from Paramount, its parent company, to pursue a settlement with Trump as it rushes to close a merger with SkyDance. Trump’s new Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has said that the editing controversy would “likely arise” in his review of the deal.

“Each excerpt reflects the substance of the vice president’s answer,” 60 Minutes said in a statement Wednesday. “As the full transcript shows, we edited the interview to ensure that as much of the vice president’s answers to 60 Minutes’ many questions were included in our original broadcast while fairly representing those answers. 60 Minutes’ hard-hitting questions of the vice president speak for themselves.”