How Elon Musk Is Getting Around Judge Orders to Keep DOGE Out of USAID

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has appointed an official from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to head USAID—the very same day a federal judge ruled that DOGE could no longer mess around with the federal agency. Now Musk may be able to continue ripping the development organization to shreds.

Jeremy Lewin was appointed Tuesday to lead what remains of USAID, after serving as DOGE’s team lead at the federal agency. In February, DOGE raided USAID’s offices and subsequently laid off up to 50 percent of the agency’s employees while placing the rest on administrative leave. The Trump administration intends to keep fewer than 300 of USAID’s 10,000 employees, four sources told Reuters. Rubio announced earlier this month that a whopping 83 percent of all USAID’s programs had been terminated.

On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that Musk and DOGE’s efforts to eliminate USAID were likely unconstitutional because they had shuttered the agency without congressional approval, and Congress alone maintains the authority to create or terminate federal agencies. The judge barred DOGE from taking “any actions relating to USAID without the express authorization of a USAID official with legal authority to take or approve the action.”

However, the order maintained that actions that were ratified by a USAID official would not be subject to the same restrictions, so as not to “enjoin USAID.” It seems that Lewin’s appointment to USAID might allow them to work around the judge’s order and continue to execute DOGE’s cost-cutting agenda at the already gutted development agency.

In a brief court filing Wednesday, lawyers for Musk and DOGE sought to clarify that the appointment of Lewin, who now has authority over the day-to-day work at USAID, did not constitute more DOGE meddling at USAID.

The lawyers asserted that the decision to appoint Lewin came before the judge’s order, though it was only formally announced on Tuesday. “Mr. Lewin surely does not fall within the spirit of this Court’s decision—and Defendants file this motion to ensure he is not wrongfully picked up by its letter,” the lawyers wrote.

Lawyers requested that the judge amend his order so that it specifically did not include Lewin, as “the injunction may bar him from engaging in a wide range of work he is otherwise authorized—and tasked—to perform. That is untenable.”

In a declaration, Lewin claimed that he was no longer affiliated with the defendants subject to the judge’s order. “None of Elon Musk, USDS, or any USDS employee has any formal authority over me. None has the legal authority to direct me or anyone at USAID,” Lewin said.

Republicans are learning fast that the Department of Government Efficiency’s federal cuts are not popular.

Representative Harriet Hagemen was booed and chanted down by a crowd of her constituents during a Wyoming town hall Wednesday night as she attempted to defend Elon Musk’s influence over the executive branch.

“DOGE is not dismantling Social Security,” Hagemen said as hundreds of people jeered.

The crowd also chanted, “Deport Elon” as Hagemen attempted to explain her work on the Judiciary Committee.

Things took a turn for the worse when one woman from the incensed crowd claimed that she was a recently laid-off employee of the Agriculture Department.

“In a state where so many farmers rely on government programs for drought and disaster relief, [Donald] Trump’s plans to cut these programs and the people who administer them, coupled with the tariffs, will decimate Wyoming farms in rural communities,” the woman said as the crowd applauded her. “What are you doing about that?”

“I disagree,” Hagemen said, once again souring the crowd on her. The Republican lawmaker then went on to accost the irate crowd for challenging her actions, claiming it was “bizarre” to her “how obsessed you are with federal government.”

That sent attendees into a rage, with some people screaming, “Oh my God!” and expletives at the irony.

“Calm down, calm down,” Hagemen continued, laughing. “All DOGE is doing—you guys are going to have a heart attack if you don’t calm down. Your hysteria is really over the top.”

Dissenting crowds in deep-red Wyoming should be a warning signal to Republicans around the country. In November, state residents voted to send Trump back to the White House by a whopping 46 percent margin. But on Wednesday, roughly three-quarters of the hostile, 500-person crowd were there to oppose Hagemen and elements of Trump’s agenda, reported the Cowboy State Daily.

Musk has eyed slashes to Social Security. Changes are already underway: By DOGE’s demand, the Social Security Administration is nixing some 7,000 employees, or roughly 12 percent of agency staff, and closing offices around the country.

An internal Social Security Administration memo leaked earlier this week proposed changes that could further hamper the agency’s processing abilities for the retirement income program, including altering its phone service to require America’s aging population to verify their identity over the internet rather than by phone for new applications, as has been required.

By acting Deputy Commissioner Doris Diaz’s own estimates, that could send some 75,000 to 85,000 people to Social Security offices in order to access their benefits—which they’ve paid into throughout their working life by way of payroll taxes and are theoretically entitled to. But even before Musk’s involvement, the SSA’s physical offices were already beleaguered with extraordinarily long wait times, forcing Americans to wait months before receiving their benefits.

Beyond that, Musk—the world’s richest man—clearly has no affinity for the popular program. In recent weeks, he’s accused Social Security of being the “biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and rife with fraud. In order to sell the unsavory cuts to America’s “third rail” social issue, Musk has hinged Social Security on an immigration conspiracy theory, claiming that Democrats—who failed to win the House, the Senate, or the Oval Office in November—are using “entitlements fraud” to stay in power by winning over the votes of undocumented immigrants, a group that (reminder) cannot vote.

Republicans in Congress are refusing to hold town halls in their districts out of fear of criticism, and now Democrats are swooping in.

In Wisconsin, Representative Derrick Van Orden didn’t show up at a town hall meeting Tuesday in his district in Viroqua, so Democratic Representative Mark Pocan showed up, speaking to 300 people next to an empty chair with Van Orden’s name on it.

“Derrick was a NO SHOW, but over 300 people in the town of 4500 showed up. Empty seat for him,” Pocan posted on X. “Of note: Derrick doesn’t respond to constituents & they don’t like cuts to Medicaid & other programs.”

Van Orden “is afraid of his constituents, and he can be fired in 2026,” Pocan noted in a follow-up post. The Republican congressman plans to switch to virtual town halls, calling protesters at Republican-led town halls “George Soros-funded agitators” and comparing them to Nazis.

Pocan has done this before to Van Orden, mocking the Republican for being “on vacation” last month after Van Orden and other Republicans refused to show up at a Wisconsin Farmers Union event where farmers spoke on their concerns with Donald Trump’s policies. And it appears that Democrats elsewhere may soon take a similar approach.

The Democratic National Committee announced Wednesday that it will put up billboards in Republican districts in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania telling local residents to push their members of Congress to hold town halls. The billboards will even include these Republicans’ phone numbers.

“Republicans are refusing to meet with their constituents after voting to take away health care and make it harder for families to put food on the table,” the new chair of the DNC, Ken Martin, said in a statement. “This isn’t surprising—over the last few months, one word has come to describe Republicans: cowards.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024, is also holding events in Republican districts, visiting Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in Van Orden’s district on Tuesday for a “People v. Musk” rally following earlier visits to Iowa and Nebraska. Senator Bernie Sanders has held several rallies in Republican territory, and he and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plan to visit Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado later this week.

Will it help, though? Democrats are currently struggling to come up with an effective plan to fight against Trump and the GOP’s massive overhaul of the federal government. Meanwhile, tech oligarch Elon Musk is throwing millions of dollars into political races to shore up support for the Trump agenda. The Democrats need to grab the attention of an already frustrated electorate and leverage its rage against the GOP.

Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act—something President Trump is currently trying very hard to do—could result in a $160 billion hit to the gross domestic product, according to Semafor.

A complete IRA repeal would devastate the country’s economy. It could lead to 790,000 lost job losses by 2030, while household energy bills would increase by up to $370 per year, on average, by 2035.

This is ominous news for an economy already on the brink of recession. That recession is being driven by Trump’s ongoing trade war with America’s closest allies—25 percent levies are currently being placed on many imports from Mexico and Canada—which Fed Chair Jerome Powell just admitted was making inflation worse. Cuts to the IRA would have a massive negative impact on American manufacturing, delivering a devastating blow to a sector that those tariffs are theoretically intended to boost. Slashing the IRA would also particularly harm red states, which have received a whopping 77 percent of clean energy manufacturing and deployment investment since the third quarter of 2022.

A full repeal of the IRA is not expected, of course, but Speaker Mike Johnson did describe his vision for the cuts as “somewhere between a scalpel and a sledgehammer.” Even if the bill is not repealed—or curtailed—by Congress, agency cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have likely already affected its implementation.

The National Archives released thousands of declassified documents this week relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy—but in its effort to make the unredacted trove public, it published the Social Security numbers of over 200 former congressional staffers.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that buried within the 60,000 pages of mostly unredacted documents were the Social Security numbers of more than 100 staff members of the Senate Church Committee, and more than 100 staff members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The names of those who were doxxed include several high-profile figures, including a former assistant secretary of state, a former U.S. ambassador, and several prominent figures in the intelligence and legal fields.   

The Senate Church Committee was formed in 1975 to study the intelligence abuses of federal agencies, and the Committee on Assassinations investigated Kennedy’s death. 

Joseph diGenova, a former Trump campaign lawyer who previously investigated intelligence abuses in the 1970s, was not aware that his private information was included within the JFK files until the Post reached out to him. He called the move “absolutely outrageous,” “sloppy,” and “unprofessional.”

“It makes sense that my name is in there,” diGenova said. “But the other sensitive stuff—it’s like a first-grade, elementary-level rule of security to redact things like that.”

“It not only means identity theft, but I’ve had threats against me,” diGenova added. 

One former Senate staffer, who spoke with the Post under the condition of anonymity, directed their ire at the Trump administration, now that they had become a target for identity theft and fraud. 

“It just shows the danger of how this administration is handling these things with no thought of who gets damaged in the process,” they said. 

Following up on his executive order from January, Trump had promised Monday that all the files related to the assassination would be made public by Tuesday afternoon—setting off a scramble at the Department of Justice to make it happen as quickly as possible. Attorneys in the DOJ’s National Security Division were called to urgently provide a second set of eyes to review the documents for release, even though they had already received an initial review by the FBI. 

Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security, told the Post that the mass publication of sensitive information was “absolutely” a violation of the 1974 Privacy Act, which requires agencies to be careful in their handling of sensitive information. 

“Social Security is literally the keys to the kingdom to everybody,” said Callahan.

Some of the undocumented immigrants that the Trump administration deported to El Salvador were not hardened criminals or gang members, as it claims, but rather people without criminal records whose gang affiliations are dubious at best.

Linette Tobin, an attorney for detained Venezuelan immigrant Jerce Reyes Barrios, released a sworn statement about the accusations against her client Wednesday night. Reyes Barrios, her statement says, was a professional soccer player in his native country but sought asylum in the United States after being detained and tortured for marching in two political demonstrations against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Reyes Barrios’s petition for asylum was pending, with a hearing scheduled for April, when he was deported March 15 to El Salvador without any notice to his family or attorney. Tobin only was able to reach an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official three days later.

The government accuses Reyes Barrios of being a member of the Tren de Aragua gang based on two “Gang Membership Identification Criteria.” The first was a tattoo on his arm of a crown on top of a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “Dios,” which is Spanish for “God.” Reyes Barrios chose this tattoo because it resembles the logo for Spanish soccer team Real Madrid. The second was a social media post with a picture of Reyes Barrios making “rock and roll” or “I love you” hand gestures.

Reyes Barrios’s account is one of many sworn statements from immigrants detained and immediately sent off to El Salvador as part of an agreement with the country, without any due process. Some, like Reyes Barrios, were detained merely because they have tattoos that look suspicious to immigration officials but are in fact harmless. Many had pending hearings about their asylum claims.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pursued a hard-line immigration policy that disregards due process in favor of swift deportations, cutting a deal with a friendly autocrat in El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele without much in the way of legal justification. Unlike any of President Trump’s other Cabinet picks, Rubio got the vote of every single Senate Democrat in his confirmation. Some Democrats now regret their votes, and it’s easy to see why.

Corporate executives are allegedly trying to talk the president “off the ledge” of his tariff plan, according to an ex-Trump official.

In an interview with MSNBC Wednesday, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci claimed that Donald Trump’s weekends are consumed by fearful phone calls from CEOs looking to reverse the clock on the president’s trade war.

“Remember, he’s living alone in the White House, Nicolle,” Scaramucci, who was fired after serving just 11 days during Trump’s first term, told host Nicolle Wallace. “I think it’s important for people to understand that there’s nobody there to hand-check him. There’s no family in there.

“And so he’s taking calls over the weekend from various CEOs that I know that are trying to talk him off the ledge of this sort of stuff,” Scaramucci said.

Scaramucci further predicted that Trump’s economic actions won’t only fail to bring manufacturing back to American shores but could also lead to a recession—something that he argued won’t bode well for the president or his allies in upcoming elections.

“The stock market will. I mean, you take the market down another 15 percent, we go into a recession, you’ll flip the Congress, even though the Democrats weren’t really doing so well from an approval rating right now,” said Scaramucci. “You knock the economy off the grid, the Democrats will be back in power, and that will liquidate some of President Trump’s power.

“So he’s doing this thinking that it’s going to restore manufacturing, but it’s actually going to have the opposite effect, and market participants know this,” Scaramucci said, pointing to the flow of capital into European markets since Trump announced the tariffs.

Trump has repeatedly attempted to spin the tariffs to claim that foreign countries will pay the difference on the rising cost of goods, but economists point out that’s not how tariffs work. Instead, Trump’s global tariff war is expected to affect just about every sector of life for the average American.

Products that will see prices rise include groceries such as avocados, maple syrup, ground beef, cherry tomatoes, sugar, bananas, nuts, cooking oil, squash, cucumbers, strawberries, and pineapples. The order also had immediate ramifications for countless other business sectors, raising the price on everything from liquor to gas.

Children’s toys, shoes, beer and alcohol, and crude oil were all hit in Trump’s 25 percent tariff hike on Canada and Mexico, alongside an additional 10 percent tariff on China. Car manufacturers BMW, Audi, Nissan, and Mazda were also affected, as was American-owned Ford. And every industry that relies on lumber, aluminum, and steel—from artisan goods to construction—will see markups as the materials themselves become more costly.

Four major political organizations focused on young voters—the Sunrise Movement, College Democrats of America, United We Dream of Action, and Voters of Tomorrow—are calling on Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to either stand up to Donald Trump or step down from leadership.

“Chuck Schumer, your leadership is failing to meet the moment. Your decision—along with nine other Senate Democrats—to cave and support the MAGA budget bill is just the latest example of how you and other Democratic leaders are driving young people away from the Democratic Party,” the groups wrote in a joint letter released on Thursday. “Instead of taking a stand against Trump’s illegal actions to gut our healthcare, dismantle public education, attack immigrants and trans people, and tear up climate action, you supported a budget that gave tax cuts to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their billionaire buddies. You sided against us.”

This is just the latest call for Schumer’s resignation. Representative Glenn Ivey was the first national elected official to call for him to step down as Democratic Senate leader, with Representative Delia Ramirez following soon after. Even Nancy Pelosi recently expressed her doubts in Schumer. While the longtime Democratic Senate leader insists that a shutdown would have granted the Trump administration control of the narrative, Democrats young and old are begging him to resist rather than capitulate.

“Gen Z voters want leaders with a backbone who will stand up to billionaires and fight for working people,” the letter continued. “If you want our support, it’s time to get bolder, get louder, or make way for leadership who will. If you don’t get this right, we are ready to take the reins of this party ourselves to shape it into a force that can fight for working people and defeat growing authoritarian power.”

After Donald Trump’s surreal turn as a car salesman last week, the president’s Cabinet members are now also taking turns as shills for Elon Musk.

During an appearance on Fox News Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick gave a pitch for buying the billionaire bureaucrat’s struggling Tesla stock. 

“I think if you wanna learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla! I think it’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It will never be this cheap again,” Lutnick said, appearing on-screen beside footage of burning electric vehicles—the results of protests at Tesla dealerships across the country. 

“When people understand the things he’s building, the robots he’s building, the technology he’s building, people are gonna be dreaming of today and Jesse Watters, and thinking, ‘Gosh, I should have bought Elon Musk’s stock!’” Lutnick said, some laughter leaking through his desperate bid. 

“I mean who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk, you gotta be kidding me!” Lutnick continued. 

Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm once run by Lutnick but now helmed by his children, also upgraded Tesla stock from “neutral” to “overweight” Wednesday, citing a buying opportunity. At the end of 2024, Cantor Fitzgerald held roughly 740,000 shares of Tesla stock. So it seems Lutnick is trying to rescue Musk’s falling stock to the benefit of his family business.  

Despite an initial “Trump bump” after Election Day, Tesla shares have fallen more than 40 percent since Trump took office, shedding nearly $121 billion of Musk’s personal net worth. 

The hit to Musk’s popularity resulting from his antics with the Department of Government Efficiency has also coincided with the release of competitive technology in China. Investors who once needed to play ball with the erratic Musk may be starting to realize that they might not have to. 

Last week, after Musk saw a huge drop in a single day (not unrelated to the market-wide fall caused by Trump’s tariffs and recession waffling), the president refashioned the White House into a car dealership and held an eerie promotional event where he pretended to drive a Tesla. 

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told the country Wednesday that Donald Trump’s tariffs are partially to blame for rising prices, and that the likelihood that the country will enter a recession has grown, but the president doesn’t seem ready or willing to confront that reality.

In an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that night, the MAGA leader once again ducked and dodged direct questioning on whether his policies would result in an American recession.

“There is a lot of talk about a possibility of a recession, and CNBC had a report from the Fed saying they can’t rule it out. It could actually happen,” Ingraham said, before Trump interjected that “everything could happen.”

“What can you say to Americans tonight who are concerned about the possibility of a recession, given the fact that you’re trying to reorient the economy to a manufacturing economy again?” the Fox host continued.

“I think, if I didn’t get elected, our country would be finished, to start off with,” Trump said. “And I think I—now that I did get elected, I think we’re going to have the strongest economy in the history of the world. And I had that economy in four years. With all the harassment, with all the crazy people after me, with all of the things that went on, even with Covid, I had the strongest economy in the history of our country.

“I had a stock market that went up 88 percent: 88 percent, number one in history. The other markets went up 66 percent, and I think like 71 percent,” he continued.

But that didn’t answer the question.

“Will we see a recession in 2025? Are you ruling it out?” Ingraham pressed.

“We’re going to have the strongest economic country in the history of the world, of the planet. We are taking in so much money,” Trump said.

“Now, some people are unhappy, because it has to come from somewhere. Some of it’s going to come from Europe, because not everybody’s going to be doing as much business maybe in Europe and other places. But I can only speak for the United States. And I am a nationalist, and I’m proud of it. I love this country. And I want to help other countries too.

“Look, I’m the one. If it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t be talking peace in Ukraine and Russia, because there are not Americans being killed. They’re Ukrainian soldiers and Russian soldiers, and I’m trying to make peace. And, again, it has not that much to do, other than, we don’t want to be paying,” Trump said, before continuing to blame former President Joe Biden for the cost of the conflict.

In just a handful of weeks, Trump’s global trade war has weakened America’s relationships with some of its longest allies, compromising strategic military alliances while also sparking fears of a forthcoming recession as the market slumps hundreds of points in reaction to his whiplash tariff negotiations.

Economic experts have always cautioned that Trump’s tariff plan would hurt the country. In a joint letter released before the election, nearly two dozen Nobel Prize–winning economists formally warned against Trump’s economic plan, arguing that the MAGA leader’s stiff tariff increases and tax cuts would spell disaster for the average American.

Once Trump began to formally enact his tariffs in February, that concern went into overdrive.

“This is a ‘Stop or I’ll shoot myself in the foot’ threat. It defies economic logic,” economist Larry Summers told CNN at the time. “It means higher prices for consumers. It means more expensive inputs for American producers.”

Earlier this month, Trump floated that the “little disruption” caused by his aggressive trade policies could go on for quite a bit longer, suggesting that Americans should model their economic projections on a 100-year model—like China—rather than assess his performance on a quarterly basis.