Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Growing Desperate for a “Win”

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is struggling to come up with accomplishments in the face of public criticism and pressure from Trump administration officials.

Several leading DOGE officials are desperate to show positive results from their work. Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla employee who now works with DOGE in the General Service Administration, or GSA, told his employees in a meeting last week that “I need wins to defend,” The Washington Post reports.

Some of the pressure on DOGE is coming from President Trump himself. Last week, he said that agency chiefs, and not Elon Musk, are in charge of making department cuts, and said on Truth Social that he prefers the “‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’” DOGE officials are also concerned about their image, with negative headlines and angry town halls reinforcing how damaging their agency cuts are.

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll last month showed that nearly half of Americans disapprove of what Musk has done with the federal government, as opposed to 34 percent who approve.

“P.R. is viewed as a big mess internally right now. I think everyone there knows they need to do a better job of telling the story,” one anonymous source told the Post. “And that’s going to be a big component of the next phase of DOGE, leaning into storytelling and showing the wins and not having the story told for them.”

Following their cuts to federal offices, which have resulted in thousands of federal workers being fired, DOGE’s next step is to build apps and websites for government services and federal employees. But even on this, DOGE has undermined its own efforts. For example, DOGE’s effort to overhaul the Social Security website and services upended an effort already underway in the U.S. Digital Service, with the team working on it being pushed out, former head of the USDS Mina Hsiang said.

​​“When you fire people who have deep understandings of the mission you want to accomplish, you’re sort of starting from zero,” said Hsiang, who left before the USDS became the U.S. DOGE Service in January.

DOGE employees have a short timeline to show what they’ve achieved: They have only months until their tenure as “special government employees” ends. In some cases, they are passing on this pressure to federal workers, giving them only minutes to complete tasks. DOGE seems to prioritize speed and coding skills over security and protecting sensitive information, said an employee of 18F, a digital unit inside the GSA.

“Anyone can make something look nice,” said the employee, who is now on administrative leave. But making sure government systems don’t break “is a lot more complicated. And I don’t think [people at DOGE] care about it at all.”

Americans should come up with a totally new calendar to measure how long they’ll be affected under the president’s tariff plan, per the president.

During an interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo that aired Sunday, Donald Trump dodged whether the country would dive headlong into a recession, and suggested that Americans should model their economic projections on a 100-year model—like China—rather than assess his performance on a quarterly basis.

“Are you expecting a recession this year?” Bartiromo asked.

“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big,” Trump said.

Instead, Trump said, “There could be a little disruption.”

“Look, what I have to do is build a strong country,” the president continued, responding to criticism about the recent stock market drop. “You can’t really watch the stock market. If you look at China, they have a 100-year perspective. We have a quarter. We go by quarters. And you can’t go by that.”

Last month, Trump announced he would impose a 25 percent tariff on goods from America’s closest neighbors. Two days later, he backtracked, giving Canada and Mexico a one-month delay. On March 4, the tariffs went into effect, sparking retaliatory tariffs from Canada, as well as outcry from America’s Big Three automakers.

A couple more days later, Trump directed another one-month pause for goods that met his 2020 trade deal, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which a White House official told CNBC covered roughly 50 percent of Mexican imports and 38 percent of Canadian imports. And then, in an interview that aired Friday, Trump said the tariffs could go higher than 25 percent.

As a result, the last week saw drastic market fluctuations, with the stock market tumbling as the tariffs went into effect. The Dow dropped 670 points, and by the end of the week, Republican lawmakers were fed up.

“The tariffs could go up as time goes by, and they may go up,” Trump told Bartiromo. “We may go up with some tariffs. I don’t think we’ll go down, but we may go up.”

“For years, globalists have been ripping off the United States. They’ve been taking money away from the United States, and all we’re doing is getting some of it back, and we’re going to treat our country fairly,” Trump said, echoing language from one of his former key advisers, Steve Bannon. “This country has been ripped off from every nation in the world, every company in the world. We’ve been ripped off at levels never seen before, and what we’re going to do is get it back.”

Donald Trump wants Americans to “shut up” about the soaring price of eggs.

Trump shared an article on Truth Social Saturday titled, “Shut Up About Egg Prices—Trump Is Saving Consumers Millions,” written by Charlie Kirk, the CEO of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, which assisted the president during his campaign.

The article posited that Democrats were “positively giddy about the price of eggs,” which reached $8 a dozen last week. While Democrats may long for “proof that these backward, ‘extreme’ MAGA Republicans didn’t know what they were voting for,” the high price of eggs was “in no way President Trump’s fault,” Kirk wrote.

Kirk echoed the right-wing claim that the high egg prices were the fault of the Biden administration, because it had killed way too many chickens in response to the bird flu outbreak—in reality, that’s an Agriculture Department policy that has continued during the first months of the Trump administration.

Kirk also claimed that it didn’t matter if egg prices went up—though Trump seemed to think it did when trying to win votes on the campaign trail—because the Trump administration would save consumers money in other important ways, by cutting taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security.

Trump has bragged about winning the election based solely on his promise to lower the price of groceries. Since claiming the presidency, though, Trump has plainly stated that he actually has no idea how to get consumer prices down. With the president’s endorsement, Kirk’s article reads like an admission. “I’m Sorry. I Can’t. Don’t Hate Me.”

Trump’s unwieldy economic policy only makes that more clear.

The president’s decision to enact steep tariffs on America’s closest trading partners, Canada, Mexico, and China, led to a major sell-off in the stock market last week and new forecasts predicting a recession on the horizon. Washington Post economic columnist Heather Long said on MSNBC that it was “hard to envision” prices coming down amid the ensuing trade war.

Trump’s insistence that American consumers should keep quiet about their concerns is particularly disturbing when just last week, he seemed to soft-launch the idea that despite his promises to reverse inflation, the U.S. was headed toward another recession. Already, members of the Trump administration have been trying to sugarcoat the economic meltdown, calling it a “detox” or “transition” period.

In a post on Truth Social Sunday evening, Trump had a much different message.

“We’re going to become so rich, you’re not gonna know where to spend all that money,” he wrote. “I’m telling you—just watch!”

Marco Rubio has put the final nail into the USAID coffin.

“After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID,” Trump’s secretary of state wrote on X early Monday morning. “The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.

“In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department,” Rubio continued. “Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform.

“Tough, but necessary. Good working with you,” purger-in-chief Elon Musk commented under Rubio’s post. “The important parts of USAID should always have been with Dept of State.”

In reality, this isn’t about efficiency or savings—these are ideologically motivated cuts that will have devastating, deadly impacts throughout the world. Last week, Nicholas Elrich, a recently fired USAID official, noted that the cuts will lead to “12.5–17.9 million cases of malaria with an additional 71,000–166,000 deaths annually,” “a 28 to 32 percent increase in tuberculosis globally,” “an additional 200,000 paralytic polio cases a year,” and in a potential worst-case scenario, over “28,000 cases of Ebola, Marburg, or related diseases.” His sentiments were echoed across the political landscape.

“USAID’s own internal projections suggest hundreds of thousands of kids will die from malaria or malnutrition, or be disabled by polio as a result of this,” Medhi Hasan wrote on X. “Shame on Rubio and Trump. Cruel and catastrophic beyond belief.”

“Huge mistake. We needed reform of USAID not dismantlement,” wrote Stanford professor Michael McFaul. “China is not ending is foreign assistance programs. In an age of great power competition, the Trump administration is unilaterally destroying one of our best instruments of soft power influence.”

“You sad, shitty human,” said Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson. “You know the damage to America this will do in the world, but can’t resist the lure of power and Trump’s approval.”

The Trump administration detained a pro-Palestine activist Saturday night in a chilling assault on free speech.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a leader in the Columbia University protest movement, despite his being a green card holder. Initially, they told his lawyer, Amy Greer, that his student visa was being revoked, even though he didn’t have one. When ICE agents were informed over the phone by Greer that Khalil has a green card, they reportedly hung up the phone on her.

“On March 9, 2025, in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism, and in coordination with the Department of State, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student. Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted about Khalil’s arrest on X Sunday, adding, “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”

It was unknown where Khalil was being held for days, but on Monday, the ICE locator finally showed him in the LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana. His wife is eight months pregnant and a U.S. citizen.

“ICE’s arrest and detention of Mahmoud follows the U.S. government’s open repression of student activism and political speech, specifically targeting students at Columbia University for criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza,” Greer said. “The U.S. government has made clear that they will use immigration enforcement as a tool to suppress that speech.”

On Friday, the Trump administration announced that it was canceling $400 million in federal grants to Columbia over its “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students,” a pointed reference to its pro-Palestine protest movement. Last week, Trump himself posted on Truth Social, “Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” threatening to deport foreign students who take part in such protests.

Khalil’s detention appears both to follow up Trump’s threat against pro-Palestine protesters and to continue to make an example out of Columbia University, despite the institution’s crackdown on student activists. Legal challenges to this assault on the First Amendment are surely coming, but it remains to be seen if the legal system will reinforce the right to free speech or strengthen the Trump administration’s draconian efforts.

Trump is soft-launching a recession. 

The president has now twice refused to rule out a recession in the wake of his own policies, including reckless tariff wars and massive cuts to the federal government. 

“Look I know that you inherited a mess,” Fox’s Maria Bartiromo asked him on Sunday Morning Futures. “But are you expecting a recession this year?”

“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America, that’s a big thing. And there are always periods of.… It takes a little time, it takes a little time. But I think it should be great for us,” Trump responded, completely avoiding the question.

“A lot of people said ‘Oh, this is the business president,’” Bartiromo continued. “And now we have tariffs and the market has been going down.”

“Well not much, in all fairness.”

“You said ‘Look, we’re gonna have disruption but we’re OK with that.’ Is that what you meant; the stock market going down was the disruption?” 

“Look what I have to do is build a strong country. You can’t really watch the stock market.… What we’re doing is we’re building a tremendous foundation for the future.”

Bartiromo pressed even further. “The public companies wanna make sure that we have clarity. After April 2, when those reciprocal tariffs go in, is that it? Are you gonna change anything after that? Will we have clarity?”

“You’ll have a lot. But we may go up with some tariffs, it depends. We may go up, I don’t think we’ll go down, but we may go up. They have plenty of clarity.… They always say that,” Trump said.  

Trump continued this economic dismissiveness later that same day. 

“Are you worried about a recession?” a reporter asked him on Air Force One Sunday evening. “Maria Bartiromo asked you, and you kind of hesitated.”

The president shrugged. “I’ll tell you what, of course you hesitate. All I know is this: We’re gonna take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs and we’re gonna become so rich you’re not gonna know where to spend all that money, I’m telling you, you just watch! We’re gonna have jobs, we’re gonna have factories, it’s gonna be great.” 

The businesses and farmers Trump claims to be doing this for might not survive the incoming recession that these tariffs—10 percent on China for now, with tariffs on Canada and Mexico to be determined later—will surely bring. It’s obvious now that Trump couldn’t care less about the American people’s economic suffering as long as it serves his spiteful political goals of sticking it to our allies and kneecapping the federal government.

While speaking to the press in the Oval Office Friday, Donald Trump got upset when a reporter asked him about “clashes” between Elon Musk and members of his Cabinet, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, during a Thursday meeting.  

“No clash, I was there. You’re just a troublemaker, and you’re not supposed to be asking that question because we’re talking about the World Cup,” Trump replied, referring to an executive he had just signed to prepare for the 2026 games. “Elon gets along great with Marco, and they’re both doing a fantastic job. There is no clash.” 

When the reporter tried to follow up, Trump asked him, “Who are you with?” The reporter replied, “NBC,” to which Trump said, “No wonder. That’s enough. NBC.”  

In the Cabinet meeting, Musk had reportedly complained that Rubio hadn’t fired anyone from the State Department, despite recommendations from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to The New York Times. Rubio fired back at Musk, noting that 1,500 officials had taken the government’s deferred resignation “buyout” program. Trump finally stepped in to defend Rubio, saying he was doing a “great job.”

Musk also reportedly argued with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy over the purge of federal workers, with Duffy complaining that Musk tried to fire air traffic controllers. Musk accused Duffy of lying, and the two argued, with Musk claiming that air traffic control towers were staffed with so-called DEI hires. The Times reported that Trump ended the argument by saying that Duffy should hire air traffic controllers who were “geniuses” from MIT.

Trump has long had a contentious relationship with the press, and in his second term, has sought to take action against media outlets he doesn’t like, taking over control of the press pool that covers the White House from the White House Correspondents’ Association and shutting out the Associated Press for not adopting his name change of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Who knows if he’ll now punish NBC for simply asking questions.

Republicans have censured Representative Al Green and petitioned to strip him of his committee assignments for interrupting Donald Trump’s speech to Congress. But by Friday, Representative Lauren Boebert had decided to sling some mud on the situation for good measure.

“For him to go and shake his pimp cane at President Trump was absolutely abhorrent,” Boebert, who was caught on surveillance footage fondling her date during a showing of Beetlejuice in 2023, told Real America’s Voice.

Boebert was referring to the 77-year-old Texas Democrat’s walking cane.

When Trump claimed during his Tuesday night speech that he had been given a “mandate” by the American people to radically reimagine the federal government, Green interrupted the president by yelling, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!”

That got Green ousted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called on the sergeant of arms to remove the 77-year-old from the chamber against a backdrop of jeers from Republicans.

“I did it from my heart, and I will suffer whatever the consequences are,” Green told reporters the next day. “But truthfully, I would do it again.”

Senate Republicans are working to pass a budget that even party members have recently admitted will result in a $880 billion cut to Medicaid, much to the chagrin of their own constituents. The multibillion-dollar cut is a trade-off for conservatives who were tasked by Donald Trump to extend his 2017 tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

Green’s protest was practically the only noticeable rejection of Trump’s agenda that Democrats could muster Tuesday night. Other liberal lawmakers were torched for flipping paddles that read “False,” “Musk Steals,” and “Save Medicaid” in a silent protest in the face of the administration’s apparent oligarchy and its systemic dismantling of the federal government.

And viewers watching live at home would never have known that a handful of Democrats stood up and walked out of the chamber in protest, as TV cameras never bothered to pan to their mute, “dignified” spectacle. Others, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Patty Murray, opted to not show up at all.

Donald Trump is continuing to crack down on free speech by threatening to revoke a program that forgives the student loans of federal and non-profit employees, teachers, police, and pastors, among others.

Trump signed an executive order Friday barring individuals who engaged in “improper” activities from receiving relief under the government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, a Bush-era policy that cancels student loans after 10 years of payments.

This move is clearly intended to have a chilling effect on the work of non-profits, which operate in some of the policy spaces most affected by Trump’s agenda, such as immigration. Under Trump’s order, loan forgiveness could be stripped away from individuals who provide legal support, advocacy, or education work on behalf of undocumented immigrants.

In addition to targeting work on illegal immigration, the White House said that the order would exclude individuals whose work had been tied to foreign terrorist groups. This is a clear sign they intend to continue cracking down on pro-Palestinian advocacy and activism.

The Trump administration previously threatened to revoke federal funding from any schools that allow large protests, and on Thursday announced it would cancel $400 million in grants to Columbia University for “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” Meanwhile, earlier this week, the university once again sicced police officers on its own peaceful student protesters, and has begun investigating students over speech critical of Israel.

As of December, more than two million Americans had eligible employment and open student loans, according to the Associated Press. While only a small percentage of claims are eligible for relief through PSLF, the work of hundreds of groups may be affected by Trump’s order.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote on X Friday that Trump’s order was “shockingly unlawful and a clear First Amendment violation.”

“The PSLF program provides the president no authority to restrict it to only those people who work for nonprofits whose work he supports,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote. “Expect lawsuits within short periods of time.”

DropSite News’s Ryan Grim sarcastically quipped that he’d heard from the Supreme Court that “the president can’t change the terms of student loans,” a dig at the high court blocking President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness efforts.

The Trump administration is canceling $400 million in grants to Columbia University over what it says is “the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”

In reality, the president is clamping down on pro-Palestine protests that began in late 2023, when Israel responded to Hamas’s attack on the country with a brutal military campaign that human rights organizations have called genocide. Columbia had some of the highest profile protests of any American college campus at the time, setting up an encampment and briefly occupying a university building.

On Thursday, the administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, made up of staffers from the Justice Department, Health and Human Services Department, Education Department, and the General Services Administration, told Columbia that it would soon be conducting a “comprehensive review” of their federal grants and contracts. That review seems to have taken all of one day.

In a statement, Education Secretary Linda McMahon implied that Columbia did not comply with federal laws against discrimination.

“Since October 7, Jewish students have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses — only to be ignored by those who are supposed to protect them,” the statement read. “Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding. For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus. Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.”

Left out of the statement was the fact that the university is facing a lawsuit from three students alleging civil rights violations, breach of contract, negligence, unlawful eviction, and other Title VI violations over Columbia’s harsh crackdown on pro-Palestine student protesters.

In recent months, the university’s new disciplinary committee, the Office of Institutional Equity, has brought several cases of discriminatory harassment against students who expressed criticism of Israel. “Infractions” include writing an op-ed in the student newspaper calling for divestment from Israel, sharing social media posts supporting the Palestinian people, or joining “unauthorized protests.”

These actions appear to have been for naught in the eyes of the Trump administration, which appears to be trying to make an example out of Columbia and suppress criticism of Israel and support for Palestine. Trump is fulfilling a threat he made on Tuesday, when he said in a Truth Social post that “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests” and threatened to deport foreign students who take part in such protests.

The notion of “illegal protests,” particularly in places like colleges and universities which have a long legacy of protesting going back decades, seems to be a massive violation of the Constitution and the First Amendment, and contradicts Trump’s own claim that he “stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America.” But Trump has never been consistent on any principles, and seeks to punish anyone who goes against his views.