Trump’s New Cabinet Pick Reveals Plan to ‘Abolish’ the IRS
Janna Brancolini – February 20, 20
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
President Donald Trump wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and create an “external” revenue service that will somehow force the rest of the world to fund the U.S. government, according to his newly confirmed commerce secretary.
“His goal is to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay,” Howard Lutnick told Fox News host Jesse Watters on Wednesday night.
Instead of the IRS, Trump plans to create an “external revenue service” that will “get rid of all these tax scams that hammer against America” and raise $1 trillion of revenue, he said, promising that Elon Musk’s cost-cutting task force DOGE would also find $1 trillion in waste and fraud to eliminate.
In January, Trump vowed to create an “External Revenue Service” to oversee tariffs, though he stopped short of saying he would eliminate the IRS. The rebranding reflects Trump’s oft-repeated and inaccurate claim that tariffs are paid by foreign countries.
In fact, they’re a tax paid by American companies, with the costs passed on to consumers. They’re also collected by Customs and Border Protection, not the IRS, according to Axios. Trump has nevertheless said that “tariff” is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.”
In February, he announced a 25 percent tariff on all products from Mexico and Canada, and 10 percent on all products from China, before agreeing to temporarily pause the tariffs against Mexico and Canada. If the proposed tariffs are implemented, they’re projected to cost about $272 billion per year, triggering massive inflation, economists told CNN and Axios.
Trump’s “external” service would also handle duties—a tax based on the type of product, as opposed to the country of origin, that is also paid by American companies—and “all revenue that comes from foreign sources,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last month.
It’s not entirely clear what that foreign revenue would consist of, though Trump has made vague threats to make foreign companies pay to enter the U.S. market.
“The foreign producer has contributed nothing to the growth or development of this country, so if you want to share with the citizens of the United States our home market, then you must pay for the privilege of doing it,” he said during a January speech at the Congressional Institute. “In other words, you have to pay for the privilege of coming to our country, of taking our jobs, taking our product, destroying our countries. [SIC]”
During the same speech, he also floated the idea of abolishing income tax, which would seem to be consistent with dismantling the IRS. The agency also collects employment tax, Social Security tax, inheritance and estates taxes, and other revenues.
Already the IRS is poised to lay off thousands of workers, according to Axios.
On Wednesday, Lutnick vowed to tax foreign cruise ships, supertankers and alcohol producers, none of which pay taxes in the U.S., he said.
“This is going to end under Donald Trump, and those taxes are going to be paid. Net American tax rates are going to come down,” he said.
Trump Secretary Reveals Next Giveaway to the Rich: Abolishing the IRS
Hafiz Rashid – February 20, 2025
Donald Trump’s new commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, says the president wants to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service.
“His goal is to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay,” Lutnick said to Jesse Watters on Fox News Wednesday, adding that the president’s planned “External Revenue Service” will fund the government with tariffs from the rest of the world.
Trump has already started cutting the government agency, with plans to lay off about 7,000 IRS workers beginning Thursday, despite tax season being in full swing. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has also demanded access to the private data of every single taxpayer, business, and nonprofit, and Musk claimed earlier this month that he killed a popular government program that allowed Americans a free and easy way to file their taxes.
In December, in negotiations to avert a government shutdown, Republicans already set the stage for Trump’s plan, cutting $20 billion in funding for the IRS, hurting its ability to conduct audits and adding $140 billion to the national debt, the Biden administration said at the time. Trump’s choice to run the agency, former Representative Billy Long, has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, but he repeatedly sought to abolish the IRS while serving in the House.
While killing the IRS might once have been a half-baked scheme for Republicans, that no longer seems to be the case. Trump has already destroyed one government agency, barring legal challenges. But will he actually be able to get rid of the IRS, which is responsible for bringing in the money that runs the federal government? It remains to be seen if he can overcome all of the legal issues with his goal, as well as Congress.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has caused uproar almost from the moment of its inception.
DOGE is not an official government department, despite its name. Only Congress can create new departments. But DOGE is an effort by President Trump and Musk to radically reform — and reduce — the size of government.
At one time, Musk had suggested it was possible to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. More recently he has indicated that half of that figure would be more realistic.
But even accomplishing $1 trillion in cuts would require massive cuts to government services and to its payroll.
The idea is welcomed by fiscal hawks, MAGA supporters and Musk’s own legion of fans.
But critics say DOGE is going to hurt millions of Americans by axing programs that they need, or the personnel that support them.
They also express concern about conflicts of interest, given that Musk’s companies have billions of dollars in federal contracts.
Here are the five biggest controversies so far.
Access to Treasury Department — and taxes?
Perhaps no single DOGE-related furor has captured the public imagination so much as his team’s access at the Treasury Department.
The issue is whether Musk and his acolytes have access to individual taxpayer data, which is subject to strict disclosure rules. At its most basic, the question is, “Can Elon Musk see your tax returns?”
The row has grown more intense in recent days after several news organizations reported that DOGE personnel had sought access to a specific system — the Integrated Data Retrieval System, or IDRS — which is home to some of the most sensitive information.
The Washington Post referred to IDRS as a system that “includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the country.”
The Post also noted that the system “enables tax agency employees to access IRS records — including personal identification numbers — and bank information.”
This is only the latest development in the saga of DOGE and the Treasury Department.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas extended an earlier restraining order curtailing DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department’s payment systems.
Musk had previously targeted another judge who ruled against his quasi-department in the matter, calling for U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer’s impeachment.
Hollowing out USAID
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is a shell of its former self after DOGE got to work.
The agency’s management of roughly $40 billion was a particular target of Musk, who contended that far too much of the money went astray, either through fraud or because of misplaced priorities.
Musk has said that USAID is “beyond repair,” “a ball of worms” and an agency that he had spent one weekend “feeding … into the wood chipper.”
Musk also contended in early February that he had gotten Trump’s agreement to “shut it down.”
An official shutdown would be a matter for Congress to decide. But the Trump administration has done everything short of that to neuter the agency. Until recently, USAID had about 14,000 employees. It is now projected to have fewer than 300.
USAID’s defenders argue that the moves to hollow out the agency are both callous and shortsighted.
Samantha Power, who led the agency under former President Biden, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that the de facto collapsing of USAID is set to be “one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in U.S. history.”
Power also contended that Musk and his allies had “imperiled millions of lives, thousands of American jobs and billions of dollars of investment in American small businesses and farms while severely undermining our national security and global influence — all while authoritarians and extremists celebrate their luck.”
The administration’s actions on USAID are the subject of several legal challenges.
Federal firings and the buyout offer
The Trump administration’s offer to buy out federal employees officially emanates not from DOGE but from the Office of Personnel Management.
But it has Musk’s fingerprints all over it — even in the way the subject line of the email that made the offer, “Fork in the Road,” echoed a similar email he sent to employees of the social platform X soon after taking over the company.
In the government case, federal workers were offered payment of their salaries and retention of their benefits until the end of September if they swiftly committed to resigning.
The administration has said about 75,000 employees took the offer before it closed on Feb. 12 — roughly 4 percent of the federal workforce.
Labor unions had sought to stop the program in the courts, but in the end they only briefly froze it.
Opponents argue that it’s not even guaranteed the workers will get their money, as Congress has not appropriated funding for that long or for the purpose of a buyout.
The buyout email had warned of forced cutbacks to come, telling government workers in a related document that “the federal workforce is expected to undergo significant near-term changes.”
So it has proven.
Reuters reported that the administration began firing thousands of workers last Thursday. The news agency reported that the Department of Veterans Affairs had laid off more than 1,000 employees who were in their probationary period and that the U.S. Forest Service was on the cusp of firing 3,000.
There has been little official word on how many workers have been fired in total, but the latest figures available, from roughly one year ago, indicated that around 220,000 federal workers were at less than 12 months on the job at that point.
Probationary workers appear to be the first group targeted for layoffs.
Putting a stop to the CFPB
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) grew out of the ashes of the 2008 financial crisis, intending to put financial institutions under greater scrutiny and to guard the interests of their customers.
But it was swiftly put under DOGE’s scrutiny instead, with Musk at one point posting on social media “CFPB RIP.”
In short order, DOGE helped to halt the bureau’s work.
The official move came from Russell Vought, a Trump loyalist who now presides over the Office of Management and Budget.
Vought instructed CFPB employees earlier this month to simply stop performing “any work tasks.”
The bureau has an unusual funding arrangement — its money comes from the Federal Reserve, not from a specific congressional appropriation — but Vought said that the next tranche of funding would simply not be drawn down.
Putting a stop to the CFPB’s work could have a payoff for Musk’s businesses, as critics were quick to note.
X has recently advanced plans for its own mobile payments service, apparently to be called an “X Money Account.” According to NPR, this service “would be directly regulated by the [CFPB] under expanded oversight powers it had finalized late last year.”
In other words, Musk’s team was in effect rendering impotent an agency that had the power to regulate elements of his business.
Delving into the vaults at Fort Knox?
As if he hadn’t made enough headlines with many of the moves listed above, Musk suggested on Monday that he would be putting Fort Knox under the microscope.
The Kentucky facility is synonymous with the vast amount of gold reserves stored there.
“Looking for the gold at Fort Knox,” Musk wrote on X on Monday.
Keying off a post from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) about allegedly being denied access to Fort Knox, Musk added, “Who is confirming that gold wasn’t stolen from Fort Knox? Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s not. That gold is owned by the American public! We want to know if it’s still there.”
Fort Knox famously does not allow visitors.
It was unclear exactly what Musk meant by his social media postings — whether he would demand some kind of auditing of the gold held in Kentucky or whether he was merely indulging his penchant for stirring controversy and publicity.
Elon Musk not in charge of DOGE and has no decision-making authority, says White House
Maroosha Muzaffar – February 18, 2025
Elon Musk’s role in the Trump administration is that of a senior adviser to the president, and not as an employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the White House has said.
The White House said in a court filing Mr Musk has no decision-making authority and can only advise the president and relay directives. It also emphasized that Mr Musk is not an employee of the US DOGE Service or its temporary organization, nor is he the DOGE Service Administrator.
“Like other senior White House advisors, Mr Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” it said, according to Reuters.
In December last year, Mr Trump said: “I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency.” Since then, and following Mr Ramaswamy’s departure from DOGE, Mr Trump has consistently referred to Mr Musk as its leader.
However, according to Joshua Fischer, Director of the Office of Administration at the White House, Mr Musk is neither the administrator nor an employee of DOGE. Instead, Mr Musk holds the title of “non-career special government employee” and serves as a senior adviser to the president.
The filing likened Mr Musk’s role to that of Anita Dunn, a long-time political adviser who also served as a senior adviser to former president Joe Biden.
“In his role as senior advisor to the president, Mr Musk has no greater authority than other senior White House advisors. Like other senior White House advisors, Mr Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions,” the affidavit said.
DOGE, tasked with cutting wasteful spending, was introduced under Mr Trump’s second term, with Mr Musk overseeing the effort.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk delivers remarks as he joins U.S. President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House on 11 February 2025 in Washington, DC (Getty Images)More
The court filing follows concerns raised by Judge Tanya Chutkan, who held a hearing on Tuesday in a case challenging the extent of Mr Musk’s authority. She expressed worries about the “unpredictable and scattershot” methods used by DOGE.
“DOGE appears to be moving in no sort of predictable and orderly fashion,” Ms Chutkan said. “This is essentially a private citizen directing an organisation that’s not a federal agency to have access to the entire workings of the federal government, fire, hire, slash, contract, terminate programs, all without apparently any congressional oversight.”
The court filing did not clarify who oversees DOGE, aside from ruling out Mr Musk. The lack of clarity regarding DOGE’s leadership extends beyond the public, with the Trump administration’s lawyers also uncertain about its organization.
Trump’s Mass Layoffs Leave Federal Workers Baffled, Angry
Nik Popli – February 18, 2025
Protesters demonstrate in support of federal workers outside of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on February 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. Organizers held the protest to speak on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts. Credit – Anna Moneymaker–Getty Images
A mid-level probationary worker with the U.S. Department of Agriculture read the letter in disbelief. It was from the USDA’s human resources department explaining he no longer had a job. The letter said the decision had been made “based on your performance.” But it didn’t make sense to him.
“There’s no way to tie me to a specific performance issue because I’m six weeks on the job,” says the employee, who works out of Phoenix and, like others interviewed for this report, spoke with TIME on the condition of anonymity. He says no one had mentioned any issues with his work before receiving the letter.
The USDA employee was among thousands of federal workers across the country hit with layoffs that began on Thursday with little prior notice, targeting probationary workers—those who have been employed by the federal government for less than one or two years and are easier to fire. The Trump Administration has ordered most agencies to let go of nearly all probationary employees who haven’t yet gained civil service protection.
The layoffs have shaken both federal employees and the unions that represent them, prompting widespread condemnation and setting the stage for future legal battles. Many in the federal workforce see the aggressive nature of the cuts as proof that the Trump Administration isn’t just trying to cut costs, but dismantle the federal workforce and reduce its capacity to serve the public.
“I feel like right now the administration is kind of demonizing federal workers,” says a senior IRS agent from New York who was hired in July and “fully expects” to receive a termination notice in the coming days.
The firings are part of a broader push spearheaded by the Trump Administration and the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative run by billionaire Elon Musk to streamline government operations. Musk has gone so far as to suggest that entire agencies should be “deleted,” likening them to “weeds” in need of eradication. Legal experts and union representatives argue many of DOGE’s actions are not legal.
The letter for the USDA employee, viewed by TIME, cited guidance from the Office of Personnel Management, claiming that probationary employees have “the burden to demonstrate why it is in the public interest for the Government to finalize an appointment to the civil service for this particular individual.” Soon after Trump’s inauguration, the leadership at OPM was replaced with Musk allies.
Elsewhere, thousands of workers were laid off in group calls or via pre-recorded messages, with their government access revoked immediately. Others were told they would be formally fired by emails. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides crucial services and benefits to military veterans, laid off more than 1,000 employees on Thursday alone, with VA Secretary Doug Collins claiming that the move would save the department $98 million per year. The vast majority of probationary employees, including those in the VA’s health care system, were exempted from the layoffs.
The abrupt and seemingly callous manner of conducting layoffs has left many workers stunned. One HR manager at the Veterans Health Administration, who has worked for the department for more than two decades, said that he had never witnessed anything like this in all his years of service. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” he says. At a staff meeting on Friday, he says leadership told them they were finding out about the terminations at the same time as the rest of the agency’s staff, and that the decisions were being made by a small group in the Office of Personnel Management backed by DOGE. “We’re paralyzed because we don’t know what’s happening tomorrow,” he adds.
The HR manager noted that he voted for Trump in the last three presidential elections and “will never make that mistake again.”
“If the GOP wants to win someone like me back, they would need to start making changes right now,” he says. “I have not voted for a Democrat in two decades. I will vote Democrat in the midterms and the next presidential race for sure.” Other federal employees who mentioned voting for Trump in the past say they are reconsidering their support for the Republican administration.
The layoffs come soon after a federal judge in Massachusetts allowed the Trump Administration to proceed with an offer for federal employees to leave their jobs with the promise of continuing to be paid through September. That offer expired on Wednesday, Trump officials said. The White House said that 77,000 workers, or around 3% of the civilian workforce, agreed to the buyout.
Jourdain Solis, a 27-year-old fuel compliance officer at the Internal Revenue Service in Fresno, Calif., accepted the buyout earlier this month, feeling it offered more security than staying in a job that didn’t seem like a priority under the new Administration. “I couldn’t guarantee that my program would stick around,” he said. “Taking this offer would have been much better than being laid off and only qualifying for unemployment.”
Solis also acknowledges feeling undervalued by the government with the ongoing rhetoric about job cuts and waste. “Our value as public servants gets questioned all the time,” he says. “So I just really didn’t want to work for a country that doesn’t respect public servants as much as they should.”
But many federal workers declined to take the resignation offer, in part because they were worried about its validity. The buyouts are technically not funded, as Congress hasn’t appropriated funding beyond March 14. “There are too many questions and concerns,” one worker at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told TIME. “It’s a joke,” says the probationary IRS agent. “There’s all kinds of issues with the funding. Nobody trusted it.” Solis admits he still has some questions about the legality of it all but says he’s prepared to take legal action if the government doesn’t follow through with the offer.
The ramifications of the staff reductions go far beyond the individual workers, potentially shifting the government’s relationship with the rest of its workforce. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents many of those dismissed, has vowed to challenge the firings in court, calling them a violation of workers’ rights. “These firings are not about poor performance,” said Everett Kelley, the union’s president. “There is no evidence these employees were anything but dedicated public servants. They are about power. They are about gutting the federal government, silencing workers, and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence.”
As the cuts continue, agencies are bracing for more uncertainty, and federal workers remain on edge. “I can feel it in my interactions with people,” said the former USDA employee. “People are nervous because they don’t know what’s going on with their jobs. And even the senior leadership at most of the agencies doesn’t know what’s going on.”
Some of these workers say they had hoped the changes under the new administration would be gradual. The speed and abrupt nature of it all has left many feeling blindsided.
Federal workers typically have the option to appeal layoffs or suspensions to the Merit Systems Protection Board, a process that involves an initial review by administrative judges before a final decision is made by the board itself. However, many workers fear that these legal avenues may not be enough to protect their rights in the face of an administration determined to impose sweeping changes.
For many, the recent firings are a stark reminder of how quickly the administration is willing to reshape the government, even if it might undermine its effectiveness. Asked about DOGE’s operations, the VA employee said: “They obviously are out of their depth and are struggling desperately to make whatever it is that they are trying to do work,” he adds. “I don’t think they will succeed.”
Thousands protest Elon Musk’s DOGE in NYC on Presidents’ Day
Rebecca Bellan – February 17, 2025
More than 10,000 protesters gathered in New York City on Presidents’ Day to speak out against the current Trump administration and the actions in particular of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
It was one of several protests that took place Monday in major cities across the country and came during the same long weekend that smaller protests sprouted up at Tesla dealerships across the country.
Protesters who spoke to TechCrunch from Washington Square Park, raised concerns about DOGE’s access to sensitive data of millions of Americans and the group’s dismantling of federal agencies. They said that they view Musk’s work with DOGE as a veiled attempt at a financial power grab, and expressed frustration that Musk, an unelected official, has gained unprecedented levels of power over the federal government.
“I think it’s extremely dangerous that [Musk] has access to our personal data,” Dmitri, 53, an architect who asked that his last name not be used, told TechCrunch. “He’s kind of a futurist fanboy who’s basically living in a sci-fi fantasy and trying to implement that, and has the resources to do mass amounts of damage. He’s tinkering with something that he doesn’t have the ability to actually understand.”
Protesters hold up signs at an NYC protest on President’s Day, February 17, 2025.Image Credits:Rebecca Bellan
A 55-year-old retired teacher who identified himself only as Tom and who held a sign that read: “No one voted for Musk,” told TechCrunch, “As much as I dislike the fact that a significant number of Americans voted for Trump, it is absolutely the case that no one voted for Musk.”
Tom noted that he didn’t believe the average MAGA supporter voted for Musk and worried that DOGE’s cuts would hurt Americans on a state, local, and individual level.
“The consolidation of power under billionaires is a frightening thing,” he said.
Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office to create DOGE, giving Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX, Tesla, X, and other companies, the reins to root out government fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.
Since then, DOGE has fired nearly 10,000 federal workers who handled everything from managing federal lands to caring for military veterans. Another 75,000 workers have accepted the Trump administration’s buyout proposal, which in late January offered federal workers eight months pay and benefits to leave their posts if they resigned in early February. DOGE has also cut 104 government contracts related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Trump also granted Musk’s DOGE team access to the Treasury department’s digital payments system, which controls trillions of dollars in payments to Americans, from Social Security benefits to tax refunds, despite questions about their security clearances, their cybersecurity practices, and the legality of Musk’s activities.
Supporters of Trump and Musk applaud their on-paper efforts to root out corruption, inefficiency, and red tape. Opponents object to the way DOGE is going about its stated goals, and warn that the team’s actions will lead to more corruption and national security risks.
The protesters in New York started at Union Square and marched to Washington Square Park, congregating under the iconic memorial arch dedicated to George Washington, the nation’s first president. They chanted “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Elon Musk has got to go,” and held signs that touted a range of causes, but Musk and DOGE were a common theme throughout.
Protesters gathered under the arch at Washington Square Park. Image Credits:Rebecca Bellan
The New York Police Department estimated the number of attendees to be more than 10,000.
Victoria, who identified herself as a 37-year-old teacher, held a sign that read: “Stop the coup,” echoing comments made to The Guardian on Monday by Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, who told told the outlet, “In the U.S., we appeal rulings we disagree with – we don’t ignore court orders or threaten judges with impeachment just because we don’t like the decision. This is a coup, plain and simple.”
“This is not about us disagreeing with Republican policies,” said Victoria, bundled up against the cold winds whipping through the city, where though sunny, temperatures hovered around 32 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s the fact that Trump has handed over the power of the purse to Elon Musk, who is unelected.”
As people played music and shouted chants, their homemade signs raised over their heads, a 39-year-old small business owner who identified himself as Corwin said of Musk, “he’s so conflicted and it’s so clear that his antiregulatory attitudes benefit him personally and financially.”
Musk has targeted several agencies for reduction or dismantling that regulates industries in which his companies operate. Earlier this month, Musk said he wants to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which would regulate X’s planned expansion to financial services, posting on his social network X “CFBP RIP,” punctuated with a tombstone emoji. He has stated an intention to go after the Federal Aviation Administration, an agency he’s clashed with before and one that regulates SpaceX. He has also called for ending a rule that requires automakers to report crashes when autonomous driving technology is engaged.
Musk’s actions at the federal level have affected Tesla’s brand image. During the automaker’s 2024 fourth-quarter earnings, analyst Thomas Monteiro of Investing.com noted that the hype around Tesla is trending downward due to, among other things, “severe brand devaluation.”
Who’s in charge of DOGE? Not Elon Musk, White House says
Kyle Cheney – February 17, 2025
Elon Musk is not the leader of DOGE — the mysterious Trump administration operation overseeing an effort to break and remake the federal bureaucracy. In fact, he’s not even technically part of it at all, the White House said in court papers Monday night.
In a three-page declaration, a top White House personnel official revealed that Musk’s title is “senior adviser to the president,” a role in which he has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”
That explanation, provided to a federal court by Joshua Fisher, the director of the White House’s Office of Administration, seems to directly contradict the way President Donald Trump and Musk have spoken publicly about the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, widely seen as a Musk-driven project to shrink and dismantle key aspects of the federal government.
The sworn statement instead deepens the questions surrounding DOGE. Fisher confirmed that Musk is not the official administrator of the office, which was established by Trump as an office in the Executive Office of the President. But Fisher did not indicate who the administrator actually is.
The technical designation does not mean Musk is not, for all practical purposes, the key decision-maker for DOGE, which has been staffed full of his allies and may still ultimately be fueled by his influence in the White House. Musk has eagerly touted DOGE’s work, described his influence over its operations and appeared alongside Trump to talk about its mission.
Trump himself has credited Musk with leading DOGE.
“I’m going to tell [Elon Musk] very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education,” Trump said in a Super Bowl interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier. “He’s going to find the same thing … Then I’m going to go, go to the military. Let’s check the military.”
But the Fisher filing suggests a technical degree of separation that raises new questions about accountability for DOGE’s operations — a breakneck effort that has alarmed federal employees and raised fears about data breaches in some of the federal government’s most closely guarded databases. He compared Musk’s role to Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to President Joe Biden who occupied a similar title and employment designation in the White House.
Fisher’s filing was delivered to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is weighing a legal effort by Democratic attorneys general to bar Musk and his DOGE allies from continuing to exert influence on the federal government. The states say Musk has amassed so much power that he’s violating the constitution’s “Appointments Clause,” which requires senior executive branch officials to be confirmed by the Senate.
Chutkan indicated Monday that a ruling on the state’s emergency motion to sideline Musk will come within a day. She seemed unlikely to grant that motion but asked the Trump administration for more details about the mass firings it appears DOGE has been directing across the government.
A Justice Department attorney, Joshua Gardner, declined to detail the job cuts DOGE has been involved in so far, despite Chutkan’s request for specifics. He said the administration was not prepared to make a “programmatic representation” about what other job cuts may be imminent.
Musk’s DOGE seeks access to US tax system: reports
AFP – February 17, 2025
Efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to access IRS data has sparked alarm that private data could be at risk (Kayla Bartkowski)Kayla Bartkowski/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/Getty Images via AFPMore
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has sparked alarm by seeking access to a system with the US tax office that has detailed financial data about millions of Americans, US media reported.
Spearheaded by Musk, the world’s richest man, US President Donald Trump has embarked on a campaign to slash public spending deemed wasteful or contrary to his policies.
The Washington Post and others reported that the latest request is for DOGE officials to have broad access to Internal Revenue Service (IRS) systems, property and datasets.
This includes the Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS), access to which is usually extremely limited and which offers “instantaneous visual access to certain taxpayer accounts”, according to the IRS.
As of Sunday evening, the request had not been granted, the reports said.
But it has sparked alarm within the government and among privacy experts who say granting Musk access to private taxpayer data could be extraordinarily dangerous, according to ABC News.
“People who share their most sensitive information with the federal government do so under the understanding that not only will it be used legally, but also handled securely and in ways that minimize risks like identity theft and personal invasion, which this reporting brings into serious question,” Elizabeth Laird, a former state privacy officer now with the Center for Democracy and Technology, told ABC.
“Waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said when asked about the employee’s potential access to the sensitive system, NBC News reported.
“It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.
“DOGE will continue to shine a light on the fraud they uncover as the American people deserve to know what their government has been spending their hard-earned tax dollars on,” Fields added.
US media reported on Friday that the IRS is preparing to lay off thousands of employees as soon as this week as part of Trump and Musk’s drive to shrink the federal workforce.
Elon Musk ridiculed a blind person on X. Then a mob went to work.
Pranshu Verma – February 17, 2025
A portrait picture of Elon Musk photographed in Krakow, Poland on January 22nd, 2024 and X, former Twitter, logo are screened for illustration photo in Krakow, Poland on October 25, 2024. (Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)More
Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette works at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group focused on reducing bureaucratic waste. He also happens to be blind. So when he criticized Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service in testimony on Capitol Hill last week, Musk unleashed an online attack Hedtler-Gaudette described as “surreal” in its juvenile bigotry.
First, Musk retweeted a post on X noting that the “blind director of watchdog group funded by George Soros testifies that he does not see widespread evidence of government waste” and added two laughing/crying emojis. The tweet garnered more than 21 million views, and sparked dozens of hateful messages to Hedtler-Gaudette’s account.
“He couldn’t see s— … perfect excuse for being unable to perform your job,” one poster said. “The dei blind guy can’t see fraud. U can’t make up this garbage,” another wrote. One person even called for posters to surface Hedtler-Gaudette’s bank account.
The episode illustrates how Musk’s unparalleled online reach has given him a powerful tool to attack individuals who criticize DOGE, with one post able to spark hundreds of blistering responses from his followers.
Last week, he amplified baseless claims about the judge who overturned Trump’s funding freeze on federal grants that named his government employee daughter. Musk has called for the dismissal of journalists who have written about DOGE, calling their actions “possibly criminal.” As he hunts for places to slash the federal bureaucracy, the billionaire has reposted the names and titles of individual government employees, insinuating they should be fired.
Digital rights experts say the situation has created an unprecedented imbalance in power. Musk’s massive online following, his ownership of a social media platform where he can dictate content moderation rules, and his position heading a government entity with access to private data, give him a unique ability to threaten those who question him and chill dissenting speech.
“People do not feel safe speaking out in this country against the government,” said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington. “Because the government in the form of Elon Musk and President Trump himself will catalyze retribution.”
Hedtler-Gaudette said that Musk’s decision to ridicule a blind, 38-year-old government waste expert exhibits something different: “He’s a fundamentally small person,” Hedtler-Gaudette said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Musk did not return a request for comment.
Long before Musk owned X, he used his personal account to name and shame individuals. In 2018, when journalist Erin Biba wrote that Musk attacked scientists and reporters, the billionaire quipped that he has “never attacked science. Definitely attacked misleading journalism like yours tho.” The single remark triggered a torrent of emails, tweets and Instagram posts, Biba wrote, from what she called the “MuskBros,” many with sexually offensive remarks.
After Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, the site transformed. The billionaire cut the bulk of X’s trust and safety team and replaced professional fact-checking with crowdsourced “Community Notes.” As Musk’s account has swelled to 217 million followers, he has the loudest online megaphone in U.S. politics – a megaphone further amplified by algorithms tuned to prioritize his content in people’s feeds, said Joan Donovan, assistant professor of journalism at Boston University.
Musk’s posts serve as “merely a trigger mechanism” to his followers, Donovan said, often prompting them to scour social media profiles, look up information about a target’s family members, launch cyberattacks, lodge fake complaints with their employer, or flood people with texts and phone calls throughout the night.
Shortly after taking over the site, Musk falsely posted that Yoel Roth, the site’s former head of trust and safety, was “in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services.” Some interpreted the comment to mean Roth was a pedophile, prompting a wave of antisemitic and homophobic harassment that ultimately forced him to move out of his home, according to Roth’s congressional testimony.
Following Trump’s reelection, Musk has often focused on people who fit narratives popular with the president’s nationalist base.
In November, Musk retweeted a post identifying Ashley Thomas, a director of climate diversification at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, questioning if taxpayers should fund her salary. “So many fake jobs,” Musk said in a tweet response, garnering more than 33 million views. His post inspired a barrage of abuse and calls for Thomas’s dismissal. “Fire her day 1,” one poster said.
When wildfires ensnared Los Angeles in January, Musk blamed minority and female firefighters for not stopping the flames sooner, posting their names and photographs. “DEI means people DIE,” Musk tweeted during the natural disaster.
After Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Long revealed Marko Elez, one of Musk’s DOGE staffers, had made racist comments online – prompting Elez to resign – the billionaire called her “a disgusting and cruel person” and suggested she should be “fired immediately.” Ashok Sinha, a spokesperson for the Wall Street Journal, said in a statement that “we stand by our reporter and our fair and accurate reporting.”
Musk’s attacks carry a new power since Trump has taken office, Calo said. Musk is a special government employee, and his DOGE team has access to sensitive private data. As the owner of X, he can choose what content is allowed.
The combination, Calo said, gives him the unique ability to discourage the people he attacks from posting on social media. Calo argues the process is a form of jawboning, when government actors use their authority to influence content on social media accounts.
“Now, you have a literal White House-appointed official who is on his own media platform and bullying people and threatening people,” Calo said. “If that isn’t jawboning, I literally can’t imagine what that term might mean.”
Musk’s actions online may ultimately reduce the criticism he gets in the future, said Gita Johar, a Columbia University business school professor who specializes in consumer psychology. “People just anticipate being attacked, and don’t take on positions that could make you the target of online bullying,” Johar said.
While Hedtler-Gaudette has yet to face physical harm because of Musk’s post, he said he does worry about the future.
“There is a power to what happens on the internet,” he said. “As much as I like to dismiss it sometimes and laugh at it, it does have real consequences sometimes.”
Trump administration fires thousands for ‘performance’ without evidence, in messy rush
Hannah Natanson, Lisa Rein and Emily Davies – February 17, 2025
Trump administration fires thousands for ‘performance’ without evidence, in messy rush
The first message from her manager on Saturday afternoon misspelled Amanda Mae Downey’s name. The second mentioned “the news” about probationary federal workers, and how the Trump administration planned to fire them.
When Downey called her boss at a Michigan branch of the U.S. Forest Service for an explanation, she learned her name was on a firing list. She would have to come into the office to sign a letter formalizing her termination. And she had to do it before the holiday weekend was over.
“I’m glad that our agency at least has decided we can do it in person,” her manager said, according to a recording Downey provided to The Washington Post. “So we can add a little human touch to what’s going on.”
Many federal government employees were dismissed over the holiday weekend as managers confronted a Trump administration demand to fire workers by Tuesday. In group texts and in online forums, they dubbed the error-ridden run of firings the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
The firings targeted new hires on probation, who have fewer protections than permanent employees, and swept up people with years of service who had recently transferred between agencies, as well as military veterans and people with disabilities employed through a program that sped their hiring but put them on two years’ probation. Most probationary employees have limited rights to appeal dismissals, but union heads have vowed to challenge the mass firings in court. The largest union representing federal workers has also indicated it plans to fight the terminations and pursue legal action.
Critics warned of swift consequences as the administration raced to execute a vision Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have touted for a leaner, reshaped government. The latest wave of personnel actions already prompted an administrative complaint on behalf of workers at nine agencies, adding to more than a dozen legal tests of Trump’s power filed one month into his term.
The Trump administration will not disclose how many workers it cut since last week ahead of its Tuesday deadline, but the government employed more than 200,000 probationary workers as of last year. The firings have extended to touch employees at almost every agency, including map makers, archaeologists and cancer researchers, The Post found, in choices that some workers said contradicted a U.S. Office of Personnel Management directive to retain “mission-critical” workers.
This account of how the Trump administration’s firing spree played out over the weekend, sowing pain and chaos, is based on interviews and messages with more than 275 federal workers, as well as dozens of government records and communications reviewed by The Post.
The Federal Aviation Administration let go hundreds of technicians and engineers just weeks after a midair collision miles from the White House killed 67 people, eliciting promises from Trump officials to improve air safety, workers said in interviews. FEMA, which handles the nation’s natural disasters, is preparing to fire hundreds of probationary employees, according to four people familiar with the situation who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The agency is already stretched thin responding to fires in California and floods in Kentucky. And the administration terminated scores of employees who work to bolster America’s nuclear defense, only to realize its error and start reversing the firings.
“I’d understand a strategic reduction in force if needed,” said one USDA employee, who was fired over the weekend. “But this was a butchering of some of our best. Does the public know this?”
The termination letters hitting inboxes all struck the same note: Probationary workers were getting the ax for poor job performance. But many of those fired had just received positive reviews, or had not worked in the government long enough to receive even a single rating, according to interviews with federal employees and documents obtained by The Post.
Internal communications from the Office of Personnel Management obtained by The Post appeared to tie the performance directive to Trump’s plans. In a message sent Friday to agencies, an OPM employee wrote that, because of Trump’s mandated hiring freeze, probationary employees “had no right to continued employment. … An employee’s performance must be viewed through the current needs and best interest of the government, [in] light of the President’s directive to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce.” OPM also provided a form email agencies could use to terminate workers, citing “performance.”
Firing employees en masse with the same claim of poor performance is illegal, said Jim Eisenmann, a partner at the Alden Law Group, a law firm specializing in litigation by federal employees. It violates federal law covering career civil service employees, he said.
“It can’t be true,” Eisenmann said. “They’re clearly not articulating this on an individual basis, which is what makes it so suspect.”
The White House referred questions about the firings to individual agencies and OPM. An OPM spokeswoman reiterated what the agency has previously said about the terminations: “The probationary period is a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment.”
Musk, whose U.S. DOGE Service is leading the drive to downsize government, over the weekend shared triumphant messages on X, the social media platform he owns. Close to 2 a.m. Monday, he reposted a picture of himself in a gladiator outfit and declared he was destroying “the woke mind virus.”
A few hours after the post, Downey, the U.S. Forest Service employee, climbed into her car. She drove a half-hour to her office and signed her name to a letter putting an end to the income she relies on to support three children, an ailing mother and a husband who just lost his own job.
Before she walked out, she jotted five words above her signature: “Received and accepted under duress.”
Mistakes, miscommunication and confusion
The firings started Thursday, by email and on video calls, after the Trump administration held calls with agency heads ordering them to terminate most probationary and temporary employees. The dismissals picked up pace into the weekend, hitting thousands more at the Interior Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Energy Department.
Some employees said the proceedings seemed rushed, the details botched. Termination letters at Education listed the wrong job, or the wrong start date. A legal help number offered in a notice sent to a Small Business Administration employee led to the voicemail for an apartment building, not a lawyer. Some firing letters seemed copy-pasted from a form and left out the name of the agency where employees worked.
The Friday email to agencies from OPM only caused more confusion. The email at first directed agencies to finish all their firings by close of business Monday, a federal holiday. Agency leaders were supposed to send a spreadsheet listing all their terminated probationary employees to OPM chief of staff Amanda Scales by 8 p.m. that day, the email said. OPM later adjusted the deadline.
The “tracker” should include “which probationary employees have been terminated and which you plan to keep,” the email said. “For those you plan to keep, provide an explanation of why.”
OPM also offered a template notice agencies could send to fired workers. It read in part: “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.” Federal law gives agencies wide latitude to fire probationary workers so long as they provide written notice “as to why he is being separated [and] the agency’s conclusions as to the inadequacies of his performance or conduct.”
The Alden Law Group and Democracy Forward, a legal group that has challenged several Trump policies dating back to his first term, filed a complaint on behalf of fired probationary employees.
U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan is weighing a request from a group of states to block Musk’s team from accessing sensitive data and ousting employees from seven federal agencies. In a hearing Monday, she signaled that she may reject the complaint, saying that DOGE appeared to be moving unpredictably but that the plaintiffs had not pointed to enough evidence of irreparable harm to justify an immediate ban on its activities.
Government personnel rules state that newly hired career employees serve probationary terms of one to two years, with attorneys and others who do specialized work falling in the lengthier category. Others, including scientists, can be hired for limited terms of one to four years, depending on the agency and role. Some of these have now been let go, federal workers said in interviews. Others who served at one agency but transferred to another job elsewhere in the government in interviews reported being dismissed, since the probation clock starts anew with a new agency.
In one division within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), firing emails began to go out Friday morning without supervisors’ knowledge, prompting a division director to call an all-hands meeting that afternoon. There, the director said all probationary workers were being terminated, according to a probationary employee.
There were two mistakes on the list of probationary people, the director noted, which leadership was working to fix. The NIH employee hoped she was one of the “mistakes.” She waited, anxiety building, until Saturday at 6 p.m., when she got her answer – in the form of an email stating her “ability, knowledge and skills” no longer “fit the Agency’s needs.”
Directors at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, known as CMS, were told Friday to reassure their probationary workers they would not be targeted, said a manager there. Then on Friday afternoon, probationary workers began to be “deactivated” in CMS systems, losing their access and user profiles with no notice. The letters started coming in a trickle at noon the next day – then a flood, the manager said. By Saturday evening, it was clear: All had been cut.
Americans have long held an appetite for government reform, but the breakneck pace of change could imperil public services, said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland who specializes in the civil service.
“If there’s any one thing that anyone on government’s inside would quietly agree about, it’s that the current civil service is badly broken and that the system is full of wasteful bloat,” Kettl said. “But a clumsy fix is worse than no fix at all. It’s like going to a meat market, getting a piece of steak, and trying to cut out the fat with a sledgehammer. That would only make a mess of the meat.”
‘Above fully successful,’ fired for performance
One Transportation Department worker found out he was fired on Valentine’s Day just after putting his children to bed, as he sat down to watch a movie with his wife. An Agriculture employee discovered he was terminated the morning after attending an ex-partner’s funeral. A Natural Resource Conservation Service employee was cut months after the government paid $20,000 to relocate his family North Dakota.
Others targeted in the wave of firings fixated on the emails explaining why, struggling to understand.
Employees who were told their performance was at issue said they had earned evaluations, reviewed by The Post, that offered evidence of their good work.
“Above fully successful,” read a November assessment of a fired General Services Administration worker.
“An outstanding year, consistently exceeding expectations,” stated a review for a former NIH employee, whose manager credited her for “mastering a steep learning curve and becoming an invaluable asset.”
One well-rated Veterans Affairs staffer texted her boss to complain after she was fired. In text messages obtained by The Post, he replied: “It states it’s due to your performance which is not true. … Your performance has nothing to do with this.”
Others were stunned to find themselves included in the probationary category, including a federal nurse with more than five years of government employment who recently moved under military orders with her spouse – and had to switch agencies as a result. Now she’s out of a job.
A veteran of the National Park Service, who had worked parks including Yosemite, Shenandoah and the Great Smoky Mountains, last year left a permanent position to accept a promotion in a new park. There, she was told she’d have to serve one year of probation. On Valentine’s Day, she was fired for “performance,” ending a quarter-century of service.
“It is very brutal,” she said. “Especially after working and dedicating most of my life to the NPS.”
Some lamented that they had hoped to forge careers in federal service but won’t get the chance.
Luke Graziani, a disabled Army veteran, was five weeks from completing his probation year on Friday, when he logged into his work computer at the Bronx Veterans Affairs hospital.
Waiting on the screen was a boilerplate termination email citing performance concerns. Graziani printed out the message and took it to his boss, who was shocked – and promised to submit a request for exemption.
“You’re critical staff,” Graziani recalled his boss saying. “We’re going to try.”
Graziani, who is 45 and has four children, had believed until this weekend that his veteran status would protect his job. He served 20 years in the Army, first as a supply specialist and then in public affairs, deploying for two tours in Iraq and another two in Afghanistan before retiring in 2023.
In the hours after his termination, Graziani tried to figure out what to do. Then he thought of Douglas A. Collins, the newly appointed veterans affairs secretary, who vowed in his confirmation hearing that “we will not stop until we succeed on behalf of the men and women who have worn the uniform.”
Graziani sat down and composed a letter.
“You see, I am a Veteran too. Just like you, Sec. Collins, I spent those same hot nights in Iraq, waiting for the all-clear after an incoming round set off the alert system, praying that there wouldn’t be another,” he wrote.
Then he asked for his job back: “This can’t be how my service to my country ends.”
As of Monday, Collins had not replied.
Derek Hawkins and Brianna Sacks contributed to this report.
