Elon Musk’s DOGE Cuts Drove This Trump Official to Breaking Point

White House budget director Russell Vought reportedly fumed at spending cuts directed by former DOGE czar Elon Musk.

The New York Times reported Monday that Vought, a key architect of the Project 2025 playbook for Donald Trump’s second term, felt undercut by Musk’s brief efforts to make sweeping reforms, as Vought embarked on his plan to force a legal battle over Congress’s power of purse. Musk’s supposed cost-cutting initiatives were affecting programs Vought wanted to keep in place.

“We’re going to let DOGE break things, and we’ll pick up the pieces later,” Vought told his staff, three people told the Times.

Vought was reportedly outraged when Musk sent an email to federal employees prompting them to explain five accomplishments they’d made that week. Musk’s so-called “pulse-check” pissed off agency heads and irritated Vought, who believed the move had sidestepped personnel procedures and needlessly exposed the government to liability.

Vought was also furious that Musk had moved to eliminate the Department of Education’s data office, two people told the Times. Vought wanted to use information collected by the agency to undermine programs that benefit Black and brown students, as well as students with disabilities or poor backgrounds. Vought has previously called to abolish the agency entirely.

Vought’s spokesperson Rachel Cauley denied that he made these comments, but acknowledged that he felt annoyed by the billionaire bureaucrat.

Vought isn’t the only one in the White House who was irritated at Musk: The Tesla chief and the evidently ill-tempered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly almost came to blows while arguing about the Internal Revenue Service.

Now that Musk has vacated the White House, Vought has been free to move ahead with his plan to set new legal precedent for Trump to block spending from policies and programs that he personally disagrees with, and dismantle the administrative state how he sees fit.

As the government funding deadline fast approaches, Vought has taken to openly trying to intimidate Congress. The White House Office of Management and Budget wrote Congress last week urging them to pass a short-term measure to keep the government open through November. If they fail to agree on a deal, Vought’s office has warned federal agencies to prepare for another round of mass firings, with a focus on eliminating positions where funding has been discontinued or that do not align with Trump’s agenda.

Meanwhile, Democrats are working to ensure tax credits from the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire at the end of this year. An estimated 5.1 million Americans will lose their insurance by 2034 if funding expires, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

President Trump has caused federal drug prosecutions to plummet as his administration prioritizes kidnapping immigrants off the streets. 

Reuters has reported that the Trump administration is prosecuting people for breaking federal drug laws at the lowest rate in over two decades. 

“We’re seeing a reduced amount of time on long-term investigations so agents can go out in their raid gear and be seen supporting immigration raids,” an anonymous senior Justice Department official told Reuters. 

While drug overdose deaths did drop during the Biden administration, drug trafficking itself hasn’t tailed off at all. In fact, it rose by six percent this year, while the number of people charged with drug trafficking fell by six percent, according to Reuters. Charges for “drug conspiracy” fell by 15 percent, and prosecutions for using illegal guns for drug trafficking fell by five percent.  

This has, in all likelihood, been caused by the Trump administration’s decision to prioritize arresting as many immigrants as possible. “You cannot conduct thorough, multi-agency drug investigations if you’re running around doing this other stuff,” said a former DEA official who oversaw the shift diverting agents to immigration enforcement. 

That, along with decisions like shutting down the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, has made it harder for officials at the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to do their jobs. Instead of investigating cartels, they’re whisked away to assist in immigration raids, even if they have no background or experience in them.

Trump and his Cabinet seem to think that Mexican and South American immigrants are the primary arbiters of drug trafficking. “[President Trump’s] highly successful efforts at closing the border and removing dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our communities, along with prosecuting violent drug traffickers and targeting transnational cartels, means less illegal drugs are circulating in American communities,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in response to Reuters’s story.

But the numbers prove that’s simply not the case. It’s been clear from the very start that this administration is more concerned with the appearance of strength and success than actually being strong and successful. Echoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s depraved photo ops, ATF and DEA agents have been specifically directed to display their agency badges on their armor so that the White House can post them on social media. 

“A lot of good cases are just going stagnant for some photo-op bullshit,” said a former ATF agent. 

The ATF and DEA did not respond to Reuters’s questions about the priority shift.

Stephen Miller was apparently calling the shots in the Trump administration’s lethal military strikes on Venezuelan boats accused of drug smuggling. The White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser played a principal role in the operations, which were led by his homeland security council, The Guardian reported Monday.

According to three Guardian sources familiar with the matter, Miller’s influence over the strikes “at times” even “superseded” that of Marco Rubio, who is President Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser. This comes as Miller continues to consolidate power in the homeland security council.

Miller’s role, The Guardian notes, helps account for the shaky legal justification the administration has provided for the attacks: The Trump administration claims the president was using his authority under Article II of the Constitution, based on the notion that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a foreign terrorist organization. This recalls Miller’s repeated assertions that TdA is “running Venezuela” in his argument for deporting Venezuelan immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.

The revelation about Miller’s role also recalls reports that he mused about bombing unarmed immigrants in boats as an adviser in the first Trump administration.

Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who resigned in Trump’s first term and became a vocal critic of the president, recounted an exchange between Miller and the then-commandant of the Coast Guard—which Miller vehemently denies—in his book Blowback.

Miller, according to Taylor, asked the commandant why the administration couldn’t “use a Predator drone to obliterate” boats “full of migrants” in international waters. The commandant replied that it would violate “international law,” but Miller was interested not in “the moral conflict of drone-bombing migrants,” but “whether anyone could stop America from doing it.” He told the commandant, per Taylor, “I don’t think you understand the limitations of international law.”

The president threatened a bevy of new tariffs against foreign-made products Monday morning, rattling America’s industries for another among countless times.

In a post to Truth Social, Donald Trump announced he intended to impose a 100 percent tariff on films made outside of the country, blaming California Governor Gavin Newsom for what he perceived to be a “stolen” industry.

“Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby,’” Trump wrote.

Hollywood did not react positively when Trump first aired the possibility of such a tariff in May. One industry insider told CNN at the time that it would “represent a virtually complete halt of production.”

“But in reality, he has no jurisdiction to do this and it’s too complex to enforce,” the insider said.

In a separate post Monday, Trump claimed he would be helping North Carolina—the so-called “furniture capital of the world”—by placing steep tariffs on companies selling foreign-made furniture.

“In order to make North Carolina, which has completely lost its furniture business to China, and other Countries, GREAT again, I will be imposing substantial Tariffs on any Country that does not make its furniture in the United States,” Trump wrote. “Details to follow!!!”

He did not specify exactly how severe the new tariffs would be.

Monday’s threat is just the latest in a long line of whopping trade penalties imposed by the White House. Last week, the president unveiled a 100 percent tariff on branded drugs, a 25 percent tariff on heavy trucks, a 50 percent tariff on kitchen cabinets, and a 30 percent tariff on upholstered furniture.

In the end, it will be America that pays the price for Trump’s aggressive trade policies. Countless companies have already introduced price hikes on consumer goods to offset the cost of doing business under the president’s unconventional economic plan (practically every company outsources some component of its manufacturing or business in the current era of globalized trade).

Some of the companies that have already announced price spikes include Adidas, Nike, AutoZone, BestBuy, Columbia Sportswear, Ford, Macy’s, Nintendo, Proctor & Gamble, Walmart, Target, Shein, and Temu.

Did Donald Trump fall for an AI deepfake of himself?

The president shared a video Saturday that showed him speaking from the Oval Office about a “historic new health care system.” But the video and announcement weren’t real, and the post was deleted from Trump’s Truth Social account just 12 hours later.

The clearly computer-generated clip shared to Trump’s Truth Social showed Lara Trump reporting on Fox News about the president’s new “medbed” hospitals, a far-right medical hoax. An AI-generated Donald Trump announced that every American would receive their own “medbed card,” which would give them access to facilities “designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength.”

“Medbeds” are a far-right conspiracy theory that claims the so-called deep state has access to futuristic medical pods that can cure any ailment. One faction of QAnon believes that the government has been using one to keep former President John F. Kennedy alive.

It’s not clear where exactly the video originated. Investigative reporter Jacqueline Sweet posted on X that the clip appeared to originate from an Instagram account under the name Dr. David Richard Simon, “a common fake name for fake doctors in romance scams.”

Trump shared the video as part of a late-night posting spree on Truth Social, where he pushed a range of news clips from right-wing networks. So it’s entirely possible that the president posted the video by mistake, thinking it was a real news story—and apparently forgetting he never made such an announcement. Either that, or he’s trying to elevate a far-right conspiracy theory as a means of waving to his extremist supporters, or just to troll anyone who cares about the difference between reality and fiction.

In any case, it is disturbing to imagine the president would “announce” a phony medical breakthrough only to revoke it hours later.