Elon Musk is enlisting the help of his X army as he seeks to hack away at the U.S. government, responding directly to users who recommend specific cuts and posting an X poll to justify reinstating a staffer who resigned over racist tweets.

Why it matters: Now the most powerful bureaucrat in America, Musk is leaning not only on access to sensitive government systems but also on his legions of fervently loyal, often-anonymous X followers as he weighs the fate of billions of dollars in spending.

The big picture: Donald Trump broke new ground in his first term by carrying out the nation's business via tweet decrees.

• Musk, who typically posts between 50 and 100 tweets per day, is taking the bottom-up approach by letting foot soldiers supply suggestions that get seen — and acted on — by his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Driving the news: Last weekend, Musk elevated posts decrying USAID uses of money in his push to gut the agency. Then on Monday, he declared that Trump "agreed" to shut it down.

• Media became a target when users initially claimed erroneously that Politico had received millions from USAID. In fact, federal agencies were paying for subscriptions to specialized Politico products.
• After users shared screenshots highlighting that spending, Musk agreed it was "wasteful." Within a few hours the White House announced the Politico subscriptions were being canceled.
• DOGE has since announced that subscriptions with the New York Times and other outlets are being scrapped.

Targeting the National Endowment for Democracy, Musk solicited ammunition from X users, asking them to "reply to this post listing all the evil things that NED has done."

• In responding to a user who complained about the IRS's Direct File system, Musk wrote "That group has been deleted." Similarly, he wrote "deleted" in responding to a critical post about one of the General Services Administration's programs.
• He has been reposting users' screenshots of line items in the government's budget as well.
• Some of the recommended cuts are hyper-specific. After FlexPort CEO Ryan Petersen tweeted that DOGE should "look into" the U.S. Mint in San Francisco, Musk swiftly replied "noted."

The latest: After the WSJ uncovered blatantly racist tweets apparently written by one key DOGE staffer, Marko Elez, the White House announced Elez had resigned.

• Then X users responding to Musk's poll (including Vice President Vance) overwhelmingly supported reinstating him, and Musk announced he'd be back.
• A spokesperson for DOGE did not respond to a request for comment.

Zoom out: The X activism has extended beyond Musk's cost-cutting mission to law enforcement.

• Musk found an ally in Ed Martin, a Trump supporter and interim U.S. Attorney of District of Columbia.
• After a weekend of reports about DOGE staffers' standoffs with Treasury and USAID — with Musk contending it was a crime to identify members of his team — Martin released a letter calling for the protection of DOGE workers.
• Replying to a post calling for Martin to "look into" progressive commentator Will Stancil, Martin replied, "Thank you. Noted."

Friction point: Trump appears on course to getting all of his most controversial Cabinet picks confirmed — with the exception of Matt Gaetz — due in no small part to the pressure campaign waged by Musk and the right-wing digital chorus on X.

• Senators who had wavered on some of the picks — Sen. Joni Ernst for Pete Hegseth, Sen. Bill Cassidy for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Sen. Todd Young for Tulsi Gabbard — all came around after being harangued online and inundated with threats of primary campaigns.

Flashback: Musk has a history of crowdsourcing ideas for his businesses, and of posting prolifically on Twitter long before he bought it.

Now, his posting habit is intertwined with his mission of slashing billions in government funding and waging digital war on Trump's behalf.

Donald Trump's second presidency is already off to a blazing start — partly from how aggressively he's seized power, but also because his rival, President Biden, has given Trump a head start on realizing some of his big campaign promises.

Why it matters: The most consequential pre-presidency in recent U.S. history has left Trump uniquely positioned to quickly impose his plans to boost executive power, reshape foreign policy, deport millions of undocumented immigrants and juice the economy.

• Trump's also ignited a rightward tilt of corporate America, the removal of social media speech guardrails and significant geopolitical shifts.

Zoom in: This week, Biden's White House hailed a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal — one that was made possible partly by Trump's imminent arrival.

• Biden's team worked for months to secure peace, but Israel was willing to close the deal only with Trump's backing, Axios' Barak Ravid reported.

Trump has sent ripples through several countries with his -pre-inauguration musings on foreign policy.

• Justin Trudeau's resignation was triggered in part by divisions within Canada's government over how to respond to Trump's 25% tariff threat.
• The Overton window on U.S. expansionism quickly shifted as Trump mused about taking back the Panama Canal, claiming Greenland and invading Mexico, prompting frazzled responses from foreign leaders.
• Iran put a retaliation plan against Israel on the back burner, signaling it wants to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Trump.

The Trump effect has hit tech at a head-spinning pace.

• The incoming president is trying to resuscitate TikTok, signaling that he'll sign an executive order Monday to keep the social media app alive — at least temporarily.
• In a matter of weeks, Meta morphed into a Trump-hugging, MAGA-aligned fount of "masculine energy."
• The company's blitz of moves included loosening speech restrictions, dropping DEI efforts, appointing the UFC's Dana White to its board and putting Republican Joel Kaplan in its chief public affairs role. CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be at Trump's inauguration today.

These effects are cascading through Corporate America.

• Several of the country's biggest companies have unwound their DEI efforts, with many others talking about the topic less.
• Top executives, including Zuckerberg, sense a new permission structure to speak their minds, unshackled.

Zoom out: Trump has cast Biden as weak, but on some policy fronts — namely immigration and the economy — Biden is leaving Trump a stronger hand than the Republican admits.

• As Biden departs, border crossings are down, deportations are up and the economy is humming along, with inflation trending down.

State of play: Trump enters office with plans to deport millions of immigrants at a time when U.S. immigration courts already are on pace to decide record numbers of deportation cases — and order the most removals in five years — under Biden's push to fast-track asylum decisions.

• Immigration courts are predicted to rule on 852,000 deportation cases from Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2025, according to an analysis of data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
• If that pace continues, immigration judges will rule on more deportation cases in 2025 than in any previous year on record.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported more than 271,000 people last fiscal year — a 90% increase from 2023, the most in nearly a decade and more than Trump did in any year of his first term.

Illegal border crossings also have declined steadily in 2024 after a sharp drop early in the year, according to Department of Homeland Security data obtained by USA Today and CBS News.

• Documents obtained by the ACLU show that ICE under Biden has considered proposals to expand its immigration detention capacity in at least eight states.
• Those proposals could give Trump a running start for a key part of his mass-deportation plan.

On the economy, encouraging consumer price index reports indicate inflation is relenting, a dramatic improvement from 2022 — although food and energy costs remain relatively high.

• Jobs reports also have been strong under Biden, whose post-pandemic recovery added more jobs in a single four-year term than Presidents Bush and Obama (two terms each) and Trump's first term.
• A majority of Americans are already giving Trump credit for these economic improvements, according to an Axios/Harris poll. A similar number of respondents, roughly 55%, said they were optimistic about the government's ability to manage the economy and lower prices.

Trump's challenge in the Middle East will be to help maintain the fragile peace established in Biden's hostage and ceasefire deal, which paused 15 months of war in Gaza.

• Biden's team dismisses the notion that Trump's impending return helped clinch the deal. Asked by reporters whether Trump should get credit, Biden said: "Is that a joke?"

After spending much of his first term and all of his post-presidency under investigation, President-elect Trump is moving to ensure that doesn't happen again.

The big picture: The Department of Justice, FBI, Congressional committees and government watchdogs all launched probes into Trump's activities, paving the way for two impeachments and dozens of criminal charges.

• Now more familiar with the levers of power — and his own points of vulnerability — Trump is attempting to insulate himself.

Breaking it down: Trump and his allies have telegraphed unprecedented steps to put loyalists in roles that have historically been apolitical.

• FBI Director: Trump has signaled he will fire Christopher Wray, whose 10-year term would run into 2027.
• Trump sparked a firestorm in his first term by firing James Comey and replacing him with Wray.
• Firing Wray would be norm-smashing yet unsurprising, given Trump's antipathy for Wray and the bureau more generally, particularly after its raid on Mar-a-Lago to recover classified documents.
• Attorney general: The nomination of Pam Bondi, who represented Trump at his first impeachment trial, would put a close ally in a position that by tradition (though not always in practice) has a level of independence from the president.
• "For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans — Not anymore," Trump said in announcing the pick.
• Trump castigated and eventually fired his first AG, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, and later fell out dramatically with his successor, Bill Barr, for not endorsing his claims of widespread election fraud.
• Special counsels: Jack Smith moved to dismiss his cases against Trump after the election and is likely to resign before Inauguration Day.
• In Trump 2.0, we're unlikely to see a repeat of the Mueller probe, with an autonomous team investigating the sitting president — though Trump last year floated the idea of a special counsel to investigate the Biden family.
• Inspectors general: Watchdogs for government agencies could also be on the chopping block, with Trump's allies calling for their removal, Politico reports.
• Project 2025 — which Trump disavowed on the campaign trail before naming some of its architects to his administration — calls for a much wider culling of career civil servants in favor of loyalists.

Between the lines: Conservatives now control all three branches of government, neutralizing many potential challenges to Trump at least until 2026.

• Congress: Republican majorities — albeit slim ones — could prevent a third impeachment, at least until after the midterms. Republicans will also control the committees that would oversee investigations into the president.
• Supreme Court: A 6-3 conservative bench, which has already granted Trump presidential immunity for official acts, could side with him for years to come.

What to watch: Trump's most consistent and reliable target, the media, stands weaker than ever due to declining trust and difficult economics.

• He has filed lawsuits against news organizations, threatened to revoke broadcast licenses and reportedly cited the discrediting of news media as part of his mission.

The demotion of news media's role in American life has brought on a profound shift in how facts make their way to voters.

Why it matters: The scattering and flattening of media has created a labyrinth where information trickles from primary sources to news media to non-journalist media including Youtubers, podcasters, TikTokers and X accounts — and eventually to conversations between family and friends.

• This chain leaves facts susceptible to being massaged, spun and outright fudged.

By the numbers: A sweeping survey from The Civic Health and Institutions Project finds that "friends and family" (29%) was the top source of election information among 25,000 adults, beating out news media (26%).

• This dynamic proved beneficial for President-elect Trump. The groups most likely to lean on friends and family for info included Republicans, as well as the 18-24 demographic — a voting bloc that swung massively toward Trump, particularly among men.

Simultaneously, the fact that fewer people are consuming news appeared to greatly benefit Trump, according to Data for Progress polling.

• Among voters who consume "a great deal" of news, Vice President Harris led by six percentage points. Among those who consumed "a little" news, Trump led by 7 points, and for "none at all", Trump led by 19 points.

Zoom in: An inability to convince America of a strong economy ultimately maimed Biden and then Harris. While inflation was an undeniable drag on them, strength on other key indicators — growth, unemployment, stock market — suggested there was plenty of room for interpretation.

• But an eye-popping survey from the spring found that 56% of Americans believed the country was in recession, 49% thought the stock market was down for the year and 49% believed unemployment was at a 50-year high. None of those beliefs were remotely true.
• Exit polling indicates that the economy was the most critical issue for those who went for Trump.

The bottom line: The most-discussed media properties of the election — Joe Rogan and Call Her Daddy's Alex Cooper — highlight how journalists are losing power to set the agenda.

• Taking their place are hosts and personalities — skilled conversationalists and entertainers who get their facts elsewhere.