The Week in Musk: Who runs DOGE?

Elon Musk holds a chainsaw reading "Long live freedom, damn it" during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on February 20, 2025. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

A month has passed since Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency Service (DOGE). The Trump administration, however, can't decide if Elon Musk is leading the powerful group or if he is just another White House adviser.

On Monday, the Justice Department told a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit challenging Musk’s power that he “is not an employee in the U.S. DOGE Service or… the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.” The lawsuit, filed by a group of Democratic attorneys general, argued Musk’s role in the government violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which grants Congress the power to approve executive branch officers.

Two days later, Trump contradicted his own Justice Department. “I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency and put a man named Elon Musk in charge,” he said at a Miami gathering of Saudi financiers on Wednesday. With Musk in the crowd, Trump added, “Thank you, Elon, for doing it. And he’s doing a great job.” Musk, meanwhile, has claimed personal responsibility for DOGE's work, including canceling federal contracts, instituting mass layoffs, and eliminating federal agencies.

It remains to be seen whether federal courts will accept the Trump administration’s portrayal of Musk as both a powerless adviser and an empowered executioner.

DOGE falsely claims it has saved taxpayers $55 billion

Whoever is crunching the numbers for DOGE needs to check their math.

DOGE launched its “wall of receipts” database on its website Monday and claimed responsibility for canceling $55 billion in government spending. The largest item contributing to the total was an $8 billion contract for a diversity initiative paid for by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But that was a typo. The real maximum value of the contract was $8 million. Only $2.5 million had been spent on it before its cancellation.

DOGE fudged the numbers in other ways to reach its $55 billion in claimed savings. From CNN:

A CNN review of contracting data showed that about two-thirds of the total claimed savings from contracts listed on the DOGE site came from taking the maximum amount that could possibly have been spent on so-called “indefinite delivery” contracts… The second-, third- and fourth-largest savings listed on the DOGE site came from three IDV contracts signed by the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, related to services for the agency’s research office. Each contract lists a maximum ceiling value of $655 million. Since the contracts were signed in 2020, the government has only committed to spending about $55 million in total under all three of them over the last four and half years.

DOGE also took credit for saving taxpayers $128,233 per year on a General Services Administration lease for office space in an Atlanta building that houses Jimmy Carter’s nonprofit. But as reported by LawFare, the GSA lease, which was tied to a law allowing ex-presidents to receive federal funds, ended with President Carter’s passing last year.

The DOGE website was the cause of another controversy after its full launch on Wednesday. According to HuffPost, DOGE’s federal spending database included classified information disclosing budget and staffing figures of the National Reconnaissance Office, an intelligence agency that oversees U.S. spy satellites. The White House has claimed the information was already public.

DOGE’s Pentagon business

In last week’s Musk Watch round-up, we noted that Trump had authorized DOGE to begin its overview of the Pentagon. Since the announcement, defense officials have been scrambling to present Trump with a smattering of projects they think should be cut. From the Wall Street Journal:

The Army list includes outdated drones and vehicles that have been produced in surplus and, if cut, could add up to billions of dollars in savings. “We’re taking a proactive approach to making our spending more efficient,” said Col. Dave Butler, an Army spokesman. “There are several systems that we know won’t survive on the modern battlefield.” The U.S. Navy is proposing cuts to its frigates and littoral combat ships, people familiar with the plans said. The Air Force declined to comment on any proposed cuts, but Musk in the past has taken aim at the service’s F-35 stealth jet fighters. Musk has called the program, whose total costs are expected to exceed $2 trillion over several decades, a “flop” and its builders “idiots.”

On Wednesday, the Washington Post published a memo issued by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordering “senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military to develop plans for cutting 8 percent from the defense budget in each of the next five years.”

Meanwhile, the AP reported Tuesday that DOGE is being given lists of probationary Pentagon workers, with the chief candidates for layoffs being civilian support staff.

Will the Trump administration actually impose major cuts at the Pentagon? We'll believe it when we see it.

Lawsuits stall

With help from the Justice Department, DOGE has largely avoided judicial restraints on its power. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, a Barack Obama appointee, denied a request from 14 Democratic attorneys general to immediately bar Musk and DOGE employees from accessing federal databases and firing federal employees. Chutkan ruled the states had failed to demonstrate how they “will suffer imminent, irreparable harm” from DOGE’s actions. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, another Obama appointee, declined a request to temporarily block DOGE from accessing federal student loan data in a suit brought by the University of California Student Association. Last Friday, U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, denied the request for a restraining order to bar DOGE from accessing data held by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Labor Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Bates, who is overseeing a lawsuit brought by federal labor unions, ruled in DOGE’s favor even as Musk repeatedly called for Bates’ impeachment.

X allegedly used Musk-Trump relationship to strong-arm ad group

One of Musk’s lawyers allegedly used the billionaire’s proximity to Trump to pressure an advertising conglomerate to increase its ad spending on X. From the Wall Street Journal:

A lawyer at advertising conglomerate Interpublic Group fielded a phone call in December from a lawyer at X. The message was clear, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation: Get your clients to spend more on Elon Musk’s social-media platform, or else. X CEO Linda Yaccarino has made comments that seemed like similar warnings in conversations with Interpublic executives, according to people with knowledge of those talks.

Interpublic leaders interpreted the communications from X as reminders that the recently announced $13 billion deal to merge Interpublic with rival Omnicom Group could be torpedoed, or at least slowed down, by the Trump administration, given Musk’s powerful role in the federal government, some of the people said. They also had a front-row seat to Musk’s continued criticism of advertisers that ditched X since he bought it in 2022, when it was known as Twitter. Interpublic has recently signed a new annual deal with X for potential client spending, people familiar with the agreement said.

A spokesperson for Interpublic responded by telling the newspaper, “We do not make spending commitments on behalf of clients to any partner or platform, and decision-making authority always rests with the client.”

Musk and Trump interested in sending Americans ‘DOGE dividend’ checks

In a Tuesday post on X, Musk said he would introduce a plan to Trump that would see Americans receive “DOGE dividend” checks, i.e., a one-time payment with a percentage share of the savings DOGE has supposedly created. On Wednesday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he loved the idea, suggesting it would encourage average citizens to oppose government spending. “They’ll be reporting it themselves,” Trump said. “They participate in the process of saving us money.”

Vietnam tries to appease Trump administration by paying off Musk

In another example of Musk and his businesses being considered an extension of the White House, the government of Vietnam hopes to avoid U.S. tariffs by allowing SpaceX’s Starlink internet service to operate in the country. “[It's a] demonstration from the Vietnamese side that they can play the transactional diplomacy game if the Trump administration wants that," a Vietnamese official told Reuters.

Musk praises Russian foreign minister

Musk heaped praise on Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week. “This is what competent leadership looks like,” Musk wrote on X on Monday in response to a video of Lavrov arriving in Riyadh to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Another child?

Last week, Ashley St. Clair, a 31-year-old far-right influencer, claimed that Elon Musk was the father of her infant child. Musk has not acknowledged paternity. If the allegation is true, that would put Musk’s brood at 13, with four different women. Most of Musk's children were born through in vitro fertilization.

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Musk Minutes

Gavin Kliger, a leading member of Musk’s DOGE team, wrote in a Substack last week that he was radicalized by an essay from an author who went on to deny the Holocaust. Kliger, who has since deleted the post, is one of the DOGE deputies given access to the Social Security Administration’s database. (Mother Jones)

Employees at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who were overseeing a probe into Musk’s brain-machine implant company lost their jobs in the Trump administration’s layoffs of probationary employees. (Reuters)

Musk is still lying about dead people receiving Social Security payments. (NBC News)

CNN analyzes how Trump has crippled the National Labor Relations Board, something that Musk has wanted for a long time. His space exploration company, SpaceX, filed a lawsuit last year claiming the NLRB was unconstitutional and should be prohibited from moving against unfair labor practices. (CNN)

Coming off an election cycle where he spent nearly $300 million bankrolling Trump’s election campaign, Musk has now turned his attention to a pivotal state-level election. Building America’s Future, a dark money group financed by Musk, has been buying up TV time to run ads backing Brad Schimel, a conservative candidate running in Wisconsin’s upcoming Supreme Court election. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

While Musk has characterized undocumented migrants as a national blight, Bloomberg Businessweek found that numerous undocumented workers were employed as sub-contractors to build and maintain his Tesla and SpaceX facilities in Texas. Some of the laborers described working in grueling or inhumane conditions. (Bloomberg)

Musk’s crew at DOGE — a “force of super-geniuses,” according to Trump — failed to secure the DOGE.gov website. Last Friday, an internet vandal broke into the site and updated it with messages that read, “These ‘experts’ left their database open” and “This is a joke of a .gov site.” (404 Media)

Less than a week after Musk met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the presidential guest house in D.C., Tesla began hiring advisers, technicians, store managers, and sales and delivery personnel in India. Tesla has been attempting to break into the Indian market for years but has faced protectionist policies restricting the sale of foreign-made cars. Automakers must first commit to substantive investments in India to elude the high import fees. (Electrek)

Musk may lose his status as a fellow of the London-based Royal Society, the oldest perpetually operating scientific academy in the world. The review of his membership comes shortly after 2,700 scientists signed an open letter charging Musk with violating the Royal Society’s code of conduct. (Fortune)