As Musk steps back, DOGE moves forward with more cuts, sweeping agency changes
CNN
Elon Musk’s prominent role in President Donald Trump’s White House appears to be fading, but the tech billionaire’s brainchild — the budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency — is poised to continue its work after his departure.
Elon Musk’s prominent role in President Donald Trump’s White House appears to be fading, but the tech billionaire’s brainchild — the budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency — is poised to continue its work after his departure. In less than four months, the DOGE effort has become embedded across the government — from personnel in key positions, to work already underway to remake agencies’ sometimes decades-old software systems, to a government-wide push to build a master database of sensitive personal data that would speed up immigration enforcement and help identify fraud in government payments. Those staffers could be in place for months or years to come. Some are temporary — “special government employees,” the same title as Musk, and, like him, limited to working 130 days; or on contracts through September 30, the end of the fiscal year. Others are on renewable one-year agreements. And more have taken titles and roles that are typically considered permanent. “There are so many of Elon’s people in already and they are not leaving, so the chaos will continue and nothing will change,” one General Services Administration employee with knowledge of the agency’s leadership told CNN. Over the first four months of the Trump administration, DOGE has upended the federal government. At least 121,000 federal workers were laid off or targeted for layoffs in Trump’s first 100 days, and thousands more took buyout offers. Those workers, in interviews with CNN, have described confusion and upheaval, with many forced to return to offices or relocate to keep their jobs. Federal grants and programs have been slashed, and then at times reinstated after court challenges. The Musk-led effort is a hybrid entity with tentacles everywhere, despite legal and political battles over the reach and limits of its authority. Bradley Humphreys, a senior Justice Department trial attorney, told a judge in March that its mission “is somewhat pervasive, and it’s hard for us to clearly define.”
The two men killed as they floated holding onto their capsized boat in a secondary strike against a suspected drug vessel in early September did not appear to have radio or other communications devices, the top military official overseeing the strike told lawmakers on Thursday, according to two sources with direct knowledge of his congressional briefings.
As Chad Curry busily ferries his teenage children through the streets of their Chicago neighborhood of West Ridge, he eyes passing vehicles with a skepticism he didn’t have just a few months ago.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a political survivor, weathering crisis after crisis since his unlikely ascent two years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are well matched, rhetorically forceful opposites. And they have been clashing for more than a decade over an increasingly relevant question of presidential power: How easy should it be for the president to fire the heads of independent agencies?
The Army gynecologist described in a recent lawsuit as a “predator in uniform” is now being held in the Bell County Jail in Texas, “after apparently violating conditions of liberty imposed by his commander,” according to an Army spokesperson.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.