• Several recently fired federal workers are set to attend Trump's joint address to Congress.
• They'll be there as the guests of Democratic members of Congress.
• BI spoke with one of them, whose job was to root out waste in Medicare.

In February, Matthew Fessler was one of thousands of probationary employees fired by the Trump administration amid DOGE-driven cuts to the federal workforce.

On Tuesday night, he'll be seated in the gallery overlooking the House chamber, attending President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress alongside several other former federal workers whose employment has been terminated in the early weeks of his administration.

All of them are attending as guests of Democratic senators and House members who are using Trump's speech — a nationally televised address akin to the State of the Union — to highlight the impact of his administration's early moves to reshape the bureaucracy and freeze streams of federal spending.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is bringing two New Yorkers recently fired from the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona is bringing a disabled veteran who was fired from his role as a security expert at the Department of Homeland Security. Rep. Ayanna Pressley is bringing a Massachusetts constituent who worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Elon Musk, the man leading much of the charge behind the firings as the de facto head of the White House DOGE office, will also be there.

Fessler, a 35-year-old former health insurance specialist at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, will be the guest of Rep. April McClain Delaney, a freshman Democratic lawmaker from a Maryland district near Washington, DC.

"I ran on common sense, common ground, and I really agree that our government should run efficiently and effectively for the American people," McClain Delaney told BI in an interview on Monday. "But I think the Trump administration's actions thus far have been marked by confusion and chaos."

For Fessler, there's a particular irony to his termination, which he says came after he was told he'd "achieved outstanding results" in an early January performance. His job was essentially to root out waste and fraud in Medicare Part D, the portion of the program that helps pay for recipients' prescription drugs, by keeping track of improper payments.

"These are actually the people that you really need to achieve the things that they purport to want to be doing," McClain Delaney said. "But in fact, it's all smoke and mirrors."

Fessler said that if he could send a message to Trump and Musk, it would be to "make sure you're aware of what the implications are for the actions that you're taking."

The Trump administration has broadly characterized the cuts as necessary to shrink a bureaucracy they view as bloated, and White House Spokesman Harrison Fields cast the Democratic lawmakers' effort as dishonest in a statement to BI for this story.

"Exploiting the American people for political points is par for the course, but it is unsurprising coming from a party that would rather showboat than solve problems," Fields said.

The reelection of Donald Trump brought Republicans a chance to realize their long-held dream of drowning bureaucracy in a bathtub. Since the Reagan era, many have tried; none have succeeded. But when Trump announced that Elon Musk would serve as cutter in chief and set up a Department of Government Efficiency, many believed the moment had at last arrived. So in November, I posed a question to management and policy experts: Could Musk's history of ruthlessly slimming down his companies and making them wildly successful give him the experience he needs to sniff out and cut Washington waste?

They predicted that Musk would have less unilateral power to enact his will than he does in the headquarters of X or Tesla. The federal government is not ruled by a king, after all, let alone an unelected "special government employee." But they didn't doubt Musk, given that he gutted Twitter's staff and — defying expectations that the platform would break — somehow kept it alive. As the Columbia Business School professor Michael Morris told me, sometimes it takes "creative destruction" to make radical changes to large organizations. On the whole, the experts were cautiously hopeful.

That was the fall, when all anyone could do was speculate. Today, six weeks into DOGE's existence, we have a lot of data. DOGE has created a dizzying tornado of news. Musk has used it to test the limits of the law, such as by dismantling USAID, a move that many legal experts have called unconstitutional. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been hastily fired; some, such as those who regulate the nation's food supply, were rehired once their necessity was recognized. Engineers loyal to Musk have infiltrated government IT systems.

So I went back to the experts and asked for their assessment of how things are going so far. For the most part, their hope had morphed into serious concern. They described DOGE's tactics as "clumsy," "wrongheaded," and full of "political recklessness."

"The arrogance of the whole thing is pretty stunning — even for someone with an ego as large as Elon Musk," Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, tells me. "It appears as if the objective is just to blow things up and hope something better emerges."

Bilmes says Musk's approach thus far has been a huge "missed opportunity." In November she told me she hoped Musk would seek counsel from those who know best where government waste is, including the Government Accountability Office, the inspectors general, and federal workers themselves. DOGE has barely interacted with the GAO, which last week released its latest road map to improving government efficiency. Trump has fired more than a dozen inspectors general as part of the purge of government workers. And Musk has painted federal workers as his enemies rather than his partners. For two weekends in a row DOGE has sent an email to all federal workers asking for a list of their weekly accomplishments; if DOGE deems them lacking in productivity, they could be terminated.

Last month, onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Musk wielded what he called "the chainsaw for bureaucracy." But if Musk were truly interested in understanding the government to root out inefficiencies, Bilmes says, the memelord would have led with an image of a giant ear or telephone. "The wrongheadedness of the approach can be summed up in the image of the chainsaw," Bilmes added.

Two business school professors I talked to said the imagery harked back to "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap. In the 1990s, Dunlap wiped out thousands of employees at the toilet-paper giant Scott, facilitated the sale of the company, and walked off with a $100 million paycheck. Dunlap then took his brutal methods to the appliance maker Sunbeam, where share prices soared in anticipation of his plan to halve the company's staff. But that alone couldn't save Sunbeam. After several quarters of disappointing profits and a scandal involving falsified accounting documents, Dunlap was fired. Sunbeam went bankrupt, and Dunlap was hit with a shareholder lawsuit accusing him of inflating stock prices to acquire two other brands, as well as fines by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused him of misrepresenting Sunbeam's financial results. (He settled both.) All that chainsawing left a trail of destruction. "He substituted one kind of trauma for another kind of trauma," Morris says.

Musk is jogging memories of Chainsaw Al because his tactics aren't about simply cutting back on government waste, which can be achieved through things such as killing the penny (Trump did order this), getting rid of unoccupied office space, and telling the Pentagon that its days of lobster dinners are no more. It's about pushing the federal workforce to the brink and expanding the power of the executive branch.

"I'm both appalled and hopeful," Morris says. "Letting young kids who don't know anything about the context just gain access to all kinds of records that it's not clear they're legally allowed to be looking at, that opens the door to privacy issues, to espionage, to all kinds of problems."

On the other hand, Morris maintains some optimism that Musk's wrecking-ball approach may still be the best bet yet to break through entrenched government waste. "Bureaucracies grow because politicians make calculated moves based on the constituencies that they're trying to keep for the next election. You have inertia, you have this snowballing bureaucracy, and that's part of the problem," he says. "It's relatively rare to have an administration and an administrator like Elon Musk with complete political courage, political recklessness even."

The world's richest man doesn't answer to voters, and he even said during Trump's campaign that Americans should expect economic "hardship" as a result of his slicing of government programs and workers. And Trump is only giving Musk more power, requiring agencies to create a centralized system managed by DOGE where they record and justify payments. He has even said he'd like for Musk to "get more aggressive."

Morris says that when bold figures like Musk try to bring about rapid change in business, they create shocks to the system that usually lead to blowback. And that blowback is building. On Thursday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the firing of probationary employees at some agencies. DOGE is drawing ire not just from federal workers and Democrats but from within the MAGA movement. Steve Bannon has called Musk a "truly evil person" and last week told an interviewer that Musk "wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country's history, values or traditions."

Recently, federal workers were sent a now notorious email asking them what they accomplished in the past week. They had little time to respond, with the threat of termination hanging over them if they left the email on read. Chaos ensued. Federal workers felt harassed and intimated, and many mulled resignation. Management experts largely told my colleagues that this type of leadership was harmful and could hurt worker morale. Then another email hit workers' inboxes, asking for a list of accomplishments to be sent every Monday. The emails are just the latest example of the ways DOGE and the Trump administration have wreaked psychological havoc on government workers, and Bilmes described them as "total nonsense." Many workers in the government are focused on preventing bad outcomes, such as the spread of disease or terrorist attacks — that work doesn't necessarily lend itself to ideals of efficiency.

Joseph Fuller, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, says that DOGE's tactics largely show that "at the root of what they're trying to do, they're trying to get the data." That could allow the government to push toward automating more tasks of its office workers. "In some ways, what they're trying to do is get a better map of how these places work so that they can start using tech to reduce costs and reduce deficits," Fuller says. But the disarray and confusion created by DOGE's tactics could outweigh any benefit. "The extent to which that agenda is overthrown by this kind of almost comically clumsy initiative might be something they regret," he says.

Fuller says tactics similar to the accomplishments emails happen in the corporate world in companies "under pretty significant financial duress." "It's a little bit of a 'break glass, pull lever' mechanism," he says, that "can be useful to allow you to make rapid cuts, which might cause you to live to fight another day in a corporate setting." The federal workforce is heavily unionized. The sources of funding are not controlled by a CEO. The government is not a company that needs to make it through the next quarter in hopes of being acquired. It needs the resources to carry on in perpetuity. DOGE did not respond to questions about whether it plans to work with the GAO as it continues to recommend spending cuts going forward.

The federal government isn't Sunbeam. Or Twitter. Or Tesla. Or SpaceX. When you cut half the people who work at Twitter, it glitches — even if it eventually recovers. When you eliminate USAID, people can die. How are we to measure the efficiency of programs that keep the country safe from terrorist attacks or nuclear disasters? The purge of employees can lead to gaps in systems we can't afford to break now and fix later.

The US government is not a corporation. And it's not a startup, the vast majority of which fail. Some are acquired, which is seen as success. Few turn out like Tesla and SpaceX. Their founders move on to try again, to come up with something new and take it back to investors for another go. The government cannot be put to the same tests — what it does is too important.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• Elon Musk will attend Trump's joint address to Congress on Tuesday night.
• It's similar to a State of the Union address.
• The DOGE leader recently attended Trump's first Cabinet meeting.

Elon Musk is coming back to Capitol Hill on Tuesday night.

The defacto leader of the White House DOGE office will attend President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress, a White House spokesman confirmed to BI on Monday.

The speech, expected to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern time, is akin to a State of the Union address, where the president delivers a nationally televised speech before senators and members of Congress in the House chamber.

Trump's address is expected to cover his presidential agenda, and the president could make new announcements on tariffs, taxes, AI, and DOGE.

Musk, a special advisor to Trump, recently attended the president's first Cabinet meeting, standing off to the side in a "tech support" T-shirt while providing an update about DOGE's work.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO last attended a speech in the House chamber in July, when Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress.

• Elon Musk appeared in a new episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" on Friday.
• In the three-hour interview, Musk touched on a number of hot topics, including DOGE and AI.
• Here are five key points from the show.

Elon Musk appeared in a new episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" on Friday.

Musk and host Joe Rogan, both well-known supporters of President Donald Trump, held a wide-ranging interview that covered many of the year's hottest topics, including DOGE, AI, and Musk's alleged Nazi salute.

While it's not the Tesla CEO's first time on the show, a lot has changed since his last appearance in November, which came just ahead of the US election.

Here's a closer look at five of the key moments from the episode.

1. Doubling down on DOGE

Rogan and Musk understandably spent a large portion of the interview discussing the Department of Government Efficiency.

The Musk-headed agency has made headline after headline in recent weeks as it continues to blitz the US government in its bid to cut spending.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) — the government agency responsible for foreign aid — came in for particular criticism, with Musk questioning the effectiveness of its work.

He said that while the agency did some good, "90, 95%" of its work was not.

"It could be the kind of thing where you sort of fund Ebola prevention, but it turns out that actually, you're funding a lab that develops new Ebola," he said, adding: "They claim it's Ebola prevention, but it's actually Ebola creation."

He told Rogan that DOGE had continued to fund things that "appear to be legitimate" but that the government should not be sending taxpayer money to "dubious enterprises overseas."

The SpaceX CEO also touched on changes to the Treasury Department's payment systems.

DOGE has sought to implement new reporting requirements for outgoing government payments and make payment categorization codes mandatory.

"There needs to be an explanation," he told Rogan. "We're not judging the quality of the explanation, but there should be some explanation for what this payment is for above nothing. That's a radical change to the system that is being implemented now."

"My guess is that probably saves $100 billion a year," he added.

2. Social Security is a 'Ponzi scheme'

Musk also dished out heavy criticism of Social Security, the retirement and disability benefits program, calling it "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time."

"Basically, people are living way longer than expected, and there are fewer babies being born, so you have more people who are retired and that live for a long time and get retirement payments," Musk said.

"Have you ever looked at the debt clock?" he continued. "There's our present-day debt, but then there's our future obligations. So when you look at the future obligations of Social Security, the actual national debt is like double what what people think it is because of the future obligations."

A report by the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees last year found that the program would only be able to pay out full benefits for around the next 11 years.

"However bad the financial situation is right now for the federal government, it'll be much worse in the future," Musk added.

The billionaire has long warned of risks associated with falling birth rates, saying in 2022 that it was the "biggest danger civilization faces by far."

3. 'I'm not a Nazi'

The interview also addressed the widespread backlash Musk received following accusations that he made a Nazi salute last month.

While speaking to the crowd at Trump's inauguration celebration in January, Musk made a gesture that caused many to question whether he had intended to make a fascist salute.

"Hopefully, people realize I'm not a Nazi," Musk said, adding: "Now I can never point at things diagonally."

He also called legacy media's portrayal of the incident "coordinated propaganda."

4. AI

Another topic tabled by Rogan was, perhaps inevitably, artificial intelligence.

The pair kicked things off by discussing OpenAI — the firm Musk cofounded in 2015 and that has been at the heart of his long-running feud with CEO Sam Altman — with Musk again criticizing the company's efforts to become a for-profit business.

Musk later said he thought AI could have a role in government, although he didn't expand on what functions it could perform.

However, Musk added that he would be concerned about whether such AI would become a "super oppressive woke Nanny AI that is omnipotent."

"That would be a miserable outcome," he said.

Striking an arguably more positive note, the billionaire also told Rogan that he thought there was "only a 20% chance of annihilation" with AI.

"The probability of a good outcome is like 80%," he said, adding that he still thought AI would be smarter than humans and that the technology would pose an existential risk.

Earlier this month, Musk's AI startup xAI released its Grok 3 chatbot, which he has touted as the "smartest AI on Earth."

Three xAI employees recently told Business Insider that the firm planned to hire thousands of people this year to help train Grok.

5. 'All-access' security clearance

Elsewhere in the interview, Rogan asked Musk whether he believed there were any secret programs involving defense contractors aimed at developing "advanced propulsion systems" for drones.

Musk said he did not believe that top defense companies like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing had developed such systems, claiming that he had the "equivalent of an all-access pass from a security clearance standpoint" and that he didn't think they were hiding developments from him.

"SpaceX is has the most advanced rocket technology in the world. I think I'd know," he said. "To the best of my knowledge, there's not some super advanced propulsion technology."

• Elon Musk says he's not a Nazi following backlash to a gesture he made last month.
• Musk said to Joe Rogan that you can't be called a Nazi if you're not actively committing genocide.
• "What is actually bad about Nazis — it wasn't their fashion or their mannerisms, it was the war and genocide," he said.

Elon Musk says he's not a Nazi and that the online hate he's been receiving is "pretty stressful."

In a three-hour episode of Joe Rogan's podcast on Friday, Rogan and Musk discussed a recent incident that fueled accusations that the billionaire SpaceX and Tesla CEO made a Nazi gesture.

While speaking to the crowd at President Donald Trump's inauguration celebration in January, Musk made a gesture that caused many to question whether it was intended to be a fascist salute.

For example, the former vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany Michel Friedman, told a German outlet that Musk's action was a disgrace and, in his opinion, very clearly a "Heil Hitler" salute, The Guardian reported. US Rep. Jerry Nadler also condemned the gesture in a post on X, several Jewish organizations spoke out against it, and Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Musk to clarify his intentions.

Meanwhile, The Anti-Defamation League argued in a post on X that it was "awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute."

Social media sites including Musk-owned X have since been swarmed with users accusing the billionaire of condoning Nazism.

In response to the controversy, Musk wrote on X at the time, "Don't say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would've been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming," turning the names of prominent Nazis into puns, followed by a crying-laughing emoji.

On Friday, Musk told Rogan that the persistent criticisms are "ridiculous," and that the gesture was not a Nazi salute, joking, "Now I can never point at things diagonally."

"Hopefully people realize I'm not a Nazi. Just to be clear, I'm not a Nazi," Musk said, laughing.

Musk then argued that if you're not committing genocide, then you can't be called a Nazi.

"What's relevant about Nazis is like, are you invading Poland? And if you're not invading Poland, maybe you're not" a Nazi, he said. "You have to be committing genocide and starting wars. "

"What is actually bad about Nazis — it wasn't their fashion or their mannerisms, it was the war and genocide," he added.

At another point in the episode, Rogan asked the billionaire how he personally deals with hate and attacks against him.

"It's pretty stressful," Musk answered, taking a much more serious tone. "They actually want to kill me. They say so online. There's like Reddit forums where they don't just want to kill me, they want to desecrate my corpse."

It's not just Musk's arm gestures that have led critics to debate whether he supports Nazi ideologies. The frontman of the White House DOGE office has also supported Germany's far-right political party, the Alternative for Germany party, which is fiercely nationalistic and anti-immigration. Leaders of the AfD party have repurposed Nazi slogans, urged Germany to stop apologizing for its past crimes, and said the Nazis are just a "speck of bird poop" in Germany's long, successful history.

Musk did not respond to BI's request for comment.

• A fired USAID worker says security stopped him from taking one last photo of his wife's office memorial.
• The Trump administration has dismantled USAID and fired most of its staff.
• Workers at the agency's DC headquarters were given a short window of time to clear out their desks.

A recently fired US Agency for International Development worker spoke with reporters on Thursday about his exit, saying security stopped him from taking one last photo of a memorial to his wife in the office.

In a video shared on X by the NewsNation reporter Joe Khalil, the former USAID employee, Adam Tomasek, described the abrupt departure.

"My first wife passed away," Tomasek told reporters outside USAID headquarters. "She was honored on the memorial wall. She was a foreign service officer herself, so I wanted to take another photo to send to her mother."

Tomasek said he got into an argument with the security guard who refused to let him take a photo.

"I explained my story to him, and he said, 'No, we have instructions,'" Tomasek said. "You are not allowed — no photos, no videos."

Workers at USAID were forced to clear out their offices this week after the Trump administration largely dismantled the foreign aid agency and terminated most of its staff.

Earlier this week, USAID workers received notices that they were being fired or placed on leave — including thousands who worked at the agency's Washington headquarters — and that the Trump administration was ending 90% of the agency's contracts, The Associated Press reported.

USAID, which has funded humanitarian efforts around the world, was one of the first targets of the Trump administration's expansive cost-cutting efforts.

The US channeled nearly $32.5 billion through the agency in 2024, providing aid to countries such as Ukraine, Jordan, and Ethiopia. Still, foreign aid spending makes up less than 1% of the federal budget.

Elon Musk, who's closely linked to DOGE, has called USAID a "criminal organization" and wrote on X on February 3 that he "spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper." Hours later, USAID workers were told to stay home from work, and within days, the agency announced that direct-hire personnel would be placed on leave globally, with a few exceptions.

After federal workers unions sued over the dismantling of USAID, a federal judge granted the Trump administration a win on February 21, saying it could continue placing the agency's workers on leave.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued a stay allowing Trump to continue his freeze on foreign aid money allocated by USAID.

Experts have said the shutdown of USAID is illegal, while others have said it could make China more powerful on the world stage.

Tomasek and a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

• The Trump administration already faces more than 85 lawsuits.
• Some lawsuits challenge President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's moves to shrink the federal government.
• Below are some lawsuits corporate America, as well as consumers, may want to keep tabs on.

President Donald Trump's executive orders and actions by his administration have already spurred more than 85 lawsuits since he was sworn into office for a second term.

A chunk of those legal challenges has emerged in response to Trump and Elon Musk's push to shrink the federal government through the work of DOGE.

Here are some high-stakes lawsuits related to the moves of the Trump administration and DOGE that corporate America, as well as consumers, may want to keep tabs on.

Lawsuit over the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

It did not take long before the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a federal watchdog agency designed to oversee financial institutions and protect people from scams — became a target of the Trump administration.

On February 1, Trump fired Rohit Chopra, the CFPB director under former President Joe Biden, and on February 7, Musk wrote on X, "CFPB RIP."

Shortly after, Russell Vought, the bureau's acting director, sent an email to employees ordering them to "not perform any work tasks this week." The agency's Washington, DC, headquarters was also ordered closed.

The National Treasury Employees Union and other workers' unions quickly filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in Washington, DC, federal court, alleging that the move to "dismantle" the CFPB is unlawful since the agency was created by Congress.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is overseeing the case, said in a ruling on February 14 that the Trump administration could not terminate any CFPB employee without cause. She also ordered that the defendants not "delete, destroy, remove, or impair any data or other CFPB records covered by the Federal Records Act."

In a February 24 court filing, Justice Department attorneys argued against the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction and said that the Trump administration plans to streamline the CFPB.

Jay Kesten, a law professor at Florida State University who researches securities regulation and corporate law, called the CFPB "one of the few governmental watchdogs for our financial markets."

"In the short-term, while litigation is pending, this is very likely to disrupt the ability of consumers to hold bad-actors in the banking and credit markets to account," Kesten told BI.

Lawsuit challenging Trump's termination of DEI programs

A lawsuit brought earlier this month against the Trump administration by the city of Baltimore, Maryland, higher education groups and a restaurant workers' organization challenged Trump's executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government.

One executive order calls for federal agencies to terminate all "equity-related" grants or contracts, while another requires federal contractors and grant recipients to "certify" that they do not operate any illegal DEI programs.

The plaintiffs — which include the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the American Association of University Professors, and the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United —argued in their lawsuit that the orders are "unconstitutionally vague."

US District Judge Adam Abelson issued a preliminary injunction on February 21 temporarily blocking the Trump administration from enforcing parts of the orders.

In his written opinion, the judge added that the plaintiffs "have shown they are unable to know which of their DEI programs (if any) violate federal anti-discrimination laws, and are highly likely to chill their own speech."

The Trump administration has moved to appeal the ruling.

Peter Woo, a California lawyer specializing in corporate diversity practices at the firm Jackson Lewis, told BI that though the case does provide some temporary reprieve at least to federal contractors and private entities that receive federal grants, the court's ruling does not prevent the Department of Justice or other federal agencies from launching a probe over DEI initiatives.

"The only thing that it blocks the AG from doing is to use the term 'illegal DEI' as the basis to conduct those investigations," Woo said.

One of Trump's executive orders encourages the private sector to end "illegal DEI discrimination and preferences." As part of that plan, the order tasks each federal agency to "identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations" of enterprises including publicly traded corporations and large nonprofits.

The Head of the Office of Special Counsel sued the Trump administration over his termination

Hampton Dellinger, the head of an independent government watchdog agency that protects federal whistleblowers, sued the Trump administration, including US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, after he was fired through a one-sentence email this month.

In his lawsuit filed in Washington, DC, federal court, Dellinger argued that his termination from the Office of Special Counsel was unlawful and the president may only cut his five-year term short "for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson granted a temporary restraining order on February 12, reinstating Dellinger to his post for 14 days. The case reached the Supreme Court after the Trump administration filed an emergency petition, and the court left Jackson's order in place for now.

Jackson, on February 26, extended the temporary restraining order reinstating Dellinger by three days before she rules on the motion for a preliminary injunction.

Also on February 26, Trump administration's acting solicitor general urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing in part that a "fired Special Counsel" shouldn't be allowed to continue "wielding executive power."

Roderick Hills, a New York University School of Law professor, told BI that the case could be consequential for the business world. That's because, he said, it appears the Trump administration wants to use the case as a vehicle to try to get the nation's high court to overrule a 1935 legal precedent called Humphrey's Executor, which says Congress can insulate agency chiefs from presidential removal.

If that precedent — which is cited in Dellinger's lawsuit — gets overruled for all independent agencies, that means that even the Federal Reserve Board could be placed under presidential control, said Hills, who researches administrative and constitutional law.

"If the Federal Reserve Board served at the pleasure of the president, you can just imagine the chaos that Trump could reap," Hills said.

Lawsuit over DOGE's access to sensitive taxpayer data at the IRS

Following reports that DOGE was seeking broad access to sensitive taxpayer data at the Internal Revenue Service, a group of watchdog organizations and workers unions filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. In it, they allege that DOGE's efforts to gain access to the confidential information is illegal.

The data in question includes individuals' social security numbers, income and net worth, bank account information, tax liability, deductions and charitable donations as well as confidential business information like profit and loss statements and payroll lists, the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs — which include the advocacy groups Center for Taxpayer Rights and Main Street Alliance, along with workers' unions National Federation of Federal Employees and Communications Workers of America — argue that Congress has not granted DOGE the authority to view the data and that such sweeping access violates the Tax Reform Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The White House and the Treasury Department later agreed to block DOGE's full access to the IRS's payment systems, instead granting read-only access to anonymous taxpayer data.

Kesten, the law professor at Florida State University, told BI that lawsuits involving alleged privacy violations like this one could fuel greater cybersecurity concerns within the business community.

"This may be a very novel kind of problem that they face where privacy information, data leaks, come not from hackers or other folks trying to obtain access, but coming from leaks through governmental sources," Kesten said.

Lawsuit over the Trump administration's firing of Inspectors General

In Trump's first few days in office, the Trump administration fired more than a dozen inspectors general, telling them in a two-sentence email they were being terminated because of "changing priorities."

After their termination, eight inspectors general from the departments of defense, veterans affairs, health and human services, state, education, agriculture, labor, and the Small Business Administration sued the Trump administration, arguing that their firings "violated unambiguous federal statutes" designed to protect them from "interference" in their nonpartisan oversight duties.

Inspectors general — who conduct audits, investigate reports of misconduct, and look for waste and fraud in federal agencies and government contractors — are expected to be independent of the president.

The plaintiffs also argue that the Trump administration violated the Inspector General Act of 1978 by not notifying Congress of their terminations 30 days in advance, and not giving a reason for their removal.

On February 14, US District Judge Ana Reyes, who is overseeing the case, denied the inspectors' general request to be immediately reinstated in their roles, saying that their emergency request was not necessary. The judge, however, allowed for the case to proceed, just on a slower timeline.

Joseph Slater, a law professor at the University of Toledo and an expert in labor and employment law, told BI that while this case directly involves rules specific to the federal sector, it could have downstream effects on the business world.

"The question will be how much an agency without traditional checks and with a decidedly partisan slant can abuse its authority in terms of regulating/not regulating and rewarding/punishing private sector businesses for what previously would have been seen as improper reasons," Slater said in an email.

Federal workers' unions sue over Trump administration's buyout offer

Trump and Musk's plan to root out federal employees with buyout offers was allowed to move forward.

In late January, the Trump administration gave just over 2 million government workers the chance to resign and maintain full pay and benefits until September 30. Employees originally had until February 6 to accept the buyout.

Federal workers' unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Association of Government Employees, then sued the Trump administration, arguing that the country "will suffer a dangerous one-two punch" if the federal employees "leave or are forced out en masse."

The lawsuit said that the "fork in the road" deferred resignation offer was "arbitrary," "capricious," and unlawful.

US District Judge George O'Toole Jr. of Massachusetts initially issued a temporary restraining order to extend the deadline on the offer, but ultimately ruled on February 12 that the program could proceed. The judge wrote in his order that the labor unions who sued did not have standing to bring the lawsuit because they were not "directly impacted by the directive."

In a statement to Business Insider after the judge issued his order, Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees called the ruling "a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants," but said, "it's not the end of that fight."

About 75,000 federal employees have accepted the buyout offer, the Trump administration has said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

• Trump's new executive order expands DOGE's power across federal agencies.
• The order lists out what tasks DOGE Team Leads are expected to accomplish as they embed in federal agencies.
• The tasks include tracking federal staffers' travel requests and reporting contract and grant payments.

President Donald Trump details in a new executive order just how much power DOGE staff will have as they embed in federal agencies to tighten the reins of government spending.

The new order, issued on Wednesday, lists the duties and responsibilities that officials from DOGE will have at the federal agencies they're assigned to.

It expands on Trump's executive order from his first day in office that established the DOGE task force and mandated that every federal agency set up a DOGE team. That team, the order said, should typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney, who will all work with the head of their agency to implement Trump's cost-cutting agenda.

Wednesday's order asks agency heads to work with their assigned DOGE Team Lead to accomplish the following tasks:

• Build out a system to track "every payment" related to the agency's contracts and grants, and record a "written justification for each payment."
• Review all the agency's current contracts and grants with a goal to terminate or modify them "where appropriate" to reduce or reallocate spending. Contracts and grants to educational institutions and foreign entities should be prioritized.
• Conduct a review of the agency's contracting policies, procedures, and personnel.
• Issue guidance on signing new contracts or modifying existing contracts to "promote government efficiency" and the policies of the Trump administration.
• The DOGE Team lead at each agency will give a monthly report to the DOGE Administrator detailing the agency's contracting activities.
• Set up a system to track agency employees' travel requests that will require written justification for non-essential travel and travel to conferences. The DOGE Team Lead will then report all travel justifications to the DOGE Administrator every month.
• Freeze all employee credit card activity for the next 30 days, except for charges related to "disaster relief or natural disaster response benefits or operations or other critical services."
• Create an inventory of the agency's federal property and submit a plan to get rid of property that is "no longer needed."

There are a few exceptions to the order, which does not apply to law enforcement officers, US Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security, or the Uniformed Services. Classified information, as well as contracts or grants related to the enforcement of federal criminal or immigration law, are also excluded. Agency heads can submit additional requests for exemption, according to the order.

The order is part of Trump's larger agenda to reduce the federal workforce and cut government spending across the board — an endeavor that, with the help of SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has caused mass chaos and confusion among federal staffers, and spawned over 85 lawsuits challenging his and DOGE's authority.

While Musk is largely seen as the leader of DOGE, the White House said Wednesday that task force's official administrator, who will oversee much of the above tasks, is Amy Gleason.

The order, which had been posted to the White House webpage that shares Trump's executive orders, was removed by Thursday afternoon.

The White House didn't immediately return a request for comment about the removal.

• Elon Musk says it "might make sense" to increase pay for members of Congress.
• He said it could help safeguard against corruption — an argument Democrats like AOC have long made.
• It's a reversal from December, when he helped tank a funding bill over a modest lawmaker pay raise.

Elon Musk seems to be changing his mind about whether members of Congress should get a raise.

"It might make sense to increase compensation for Congress and senior government employees to reduce the forcing function for corruption," the Department of Government Efficiency head wrote on X on Thursday. "The latter might be as much as 1000 times more expensive to the public."

It's a far cry from December, when Musk helped tank a bipartisan government funding bill in part because it included a modest pay increase for members of Congress.

Musk's comment on congressional and government salaries came in response to a video claiming that members of Congress are enriching themselves by steering congressional funds toward non-government organizations that they're affiliated with.

Members of Congress are already prohibited by law from using their official positions for personal gain, and outside income often comes in the form of book proceeds.

Nonetheless, the argument Musk is making about corruption and salaries echoes those made by Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and good-government experts, who have warned that members of Congress may be tempted to trade stocks or be lured into employment in the private sector due to their stagnant salaries.

Rank-and-file members of the House and Senate currently make $174,000 — a figure that hasn't changed since 2009, since lawmakers have proactively blocked a cost of living adjustment every year since then.

If their salaries had kept pace with inflation since 2009, they would have been paid $217,900 last year, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Though that $174,000 salary is far higher than what most Americans make, lawmakers and experts have pointed to the cost of maintaining two residences, as well as the importance of the job, as a reason why the salary should be increased.

• When DOGE was first announced, GOP lawmakers expected to be at the forefront.
• One month into Trump's presidency, they're largely in the backseat.
• One key DOGE-focused lawmaker says he wants to see lawmakers get more input.

When Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy made a splashy visit to Capitol Hill in December to tout their new "Department of Government Efficiency," the excitement among Republican lawmakers was palpable.

GOP leaders moved to set up a DOGE subcommittee led by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Lawmakers established DOGE caucuses in both chambers to serve as the focal point for legislation, and in the House, it was even bipartisan. "If this is where that conversation is going to happen," Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida told BI at the time, "I'm happy to be at the table."

Two months later, it's clear that Congress is not where the most consequential DOGE conversations are happening, or where key decisions are being made.

Instead, even Republicans who broadly support DOGE's mission have been left watching from the sidelines as Musk's team has shuttered entire agencies, frozen federal funds, and asserted control over the federal workforce, spurring a flurry of lawsuits and fears of a constitutional crisis along the way. At the same time, those same lawmakers are still bearing the brunt of the public outcry over DOGE cuts, with some now public suggesting that the effort should slow down.

Rep. Blake Moore of Utah, one of the three GOP co-chairs of the House DOGE caucus, recalled on Tuesday feeling "very encouraged" when Musk visited the Capitol in December, when lawmakers took the microphones in a subterranean auditorium to offer up the variety of ideas that they'd spent years developing around government efficiency and eliminating waste.

"There was just very much an interest in taking and collecting input for stuff that we've already been working on," Moore told BI. "I want to see more of that."

Musk's shock and awe campaign across the federal bureaucracy has made parallel efforts in Congress feel quaint. Later on Tuesday, a handful of members of the House DOGE caucus held a "DOGE Day" press conference, where they highlighted various bills aimed at clamping down on government waste. When it was time for questions, those lawmakers weren't asked about any of those bills — they were instead pressed over the cuts that Musk's team has already been making.

Rep. Aaron Bean of Florida, another co-chair, told reporters that the "uncomfort factor" for members of Congress came from the speed of it all.

"A lot of members of Congress haven't seen this speed," Bean said. "But I can tell you, it has to be done."

Republicans on Capitol Hill have continued to assert that they remain behind the steering wheel when it comes to the flow of federal funds and the structure of the federal bureaucracy, even as they're increasingly in the back seat. Others blame the perennially slow pace of congressional legislating.

"Congress will have its time," Rep. Greg Murphy, a North Carolina Republican who's in the DOGE caucus, told BI. "But as slow as Congress moves, and as difficult as it is to get 535 opinions, this is one thing where the executive branch has come in."

Some argue that the administration's moves to withhold congressionally approved funding and fire thousands of workers merely constitute a "review," and that Congress will have the final say. Others, such as Republican Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas, say their main concern is the longevity of the executive actions driven by President Donald Trump and Musk.

"We've got to codify what President Trump is doing," Cloud, a member of both the DOGE caucus and the DOGE subcommittee, told BI. "Otherwise, it's just a great blip on the radar."

Sen. Rand Paul is urging the administration to send a rescission bill to Congress, arguing that it would be "messier" to attempt impoundment, which would "likely be challenged in court" and take some time to resolve.

"Rescission won't be challenged in any way," the Kentucky Republican told BI. "It's a much cleaner way of doing it."

Congress played second fiddle to DOGE yet again on Wednesday, when Greene's DOGE subcommittee held a hearing centered on the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. Over the course of nearly two hours of testimony and questioning, few of the panel's Republican members acknowledged the elephant in the room — that the agency is already shuttered and nonfunctional.

After the hearing, Greene insisted that Congress remained at the forefront of DOGE.

"We're actually filling our role here on the DOGE subcommittee," Green said, "looking into the waste, fraud, and abuse, making our recommendations, and hopefully putting that into legislative actions."

• Workday's CEO said outdated federal software systems are a "tremendous opportunity."
• The company has been working with federal agencies since May.
• Workday's fourth-quarter revenue surpassed expectations and sent its stock up 12%.

Workday sees a "tremendous opportunity" with DOGE, the software company's CEO said on Tuesday.

"If you want to drive efficiency in the government, you have to upgrade your systems and we find that as a really rich opportunity," Eschenbach said on an earnings call on Tuesday.

His comments about DOGE echoed similar remarks he made on a November call.

On Tuesday, Eschenbach said despite high tech spending from the federal government, its human resource and financial systems are "very antiquated." He added that most of these systems are inefficient because they are on-premises — still physically located on local servers.

Private and public organizations have been pushing to move their servers to the cloud for cost efficiency, security, and collaboration. On an earnings call in November, Eschenbach said that 80% of the federal government's HR systems were on local servers.

Workday makes cloud-based human resource software used by employers for job applications, payroll, and performance evaluations.

The company's fourth-quarter revenue was $2.2 billion, beating analyst expectations of $2.18 billion. Revenue grew 15% from the same quarter last year.

Workday rose over 12% after hours on Tuesday. The company's shares are down 13.5% in the past year. Earlier this month, Workday cut about 1,750 jobs or 8.5% of its workforce.

In a note on Tuesday, Jefferies analyst Brent Thill wrote that Workday has an "attractive valuation" relative to other high-growth software companies and international opportunities that can drive long-term revenue growth. Jefferies has a buy rating on the stock.

DOGE uncertainty

Since May, Workday has been working with some federal agencies, including the Department of Energy and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"Over the last 18 months, we've started to lean into the federal business and opportunity more aggressively than we've historically done," Eschenbach said on Tuesday.

Eschenbach also acknowledged that there is "some uncertainty" regarding DOGE, which has been throwing back-to-back curveballs at federal employees.

Just weeks after offering buyouts, the department asked federal workers to respond to an email asking them to detail what they did last week. Agencies differed on their recommendations to employees before the Tuesday night deadline.

About 75,000 federal employees accepted the buyout offer, the Office of Management and Budget said last week. That made up 3.75% of the federal government's 2 million people workforce, under the White House's goal of 5% to 10%.

• The White House released the name of the DOGE office's acting administrator.
• It's Amy Gleason, a former nurse who has spent decades in the medical records space.
• For weeks, it was unclear who, if anyone, occupied the position.

The White House on Tuesday named Amy Gleason as the acting administrator of the White House DOGE office following weeks of confusion over who was leading the agency.

A White House official confirmed Gleason's role to Business Insider. As of early Tuesday evening, Gleason hadn't publicly commented on the appointment, and her account on X was private. In her bio, she identified herself as formerly part of the "COVID response with US Digital Service."

Representatives for the White House, Elon Musk, DOGE, and Gleason didn't respond to requests for comment from BI.

Gleason worked in multiple roles at the United States Digital Service, the Obama-era agency that President Donald Trump rebranded as the US DOGE Service, according to her LinkedIn. She served as a digital services expert at the agency from October 2018 to December 2021 and as a senior advisor starting in January 2025, per the LinkedIn page.

Jonathan Kamens, a former USDS engineer who was fired on February 14, and a current USDS employee both told BI that Gleason rejoined the agency between the election and the inauguration.

"From our view, she has been as surprised by things coming out of DOGE as the rest of us," the current employee said. They said they didn't see her as "part of Musk's crew."

Kamens said he was told Gleason was there to help with the transition to the second Trump administration.

"I would not presume that just because Amy Gleason was named as the DOGE administrator, necessarily means she's been acting as the administrator this whole time," another former USDS employee told BI. "I also would not presume that she's the one who holds the real power over DOGE, just because she was officially named to this role."

Gleason's background stretches into the private sector, too, and even bumps up against the profiles of other White House DOGE office staffers, according to her LinkedIn profile. The page indicates that Gleason worked as the chief product officer at Russell Street Ventures between November 2021 and December 2024, a health industry investment firm founded by Brad Smith, whom BI previously identified as a DOGE employee. Kendall Lindemann, whom BI also identified as working for the DOGE effort, also worked at Russell Street Ventures.

Gleason's path has differed from some of the private sector titans and young engineers involved in the White House DOGE Office, though. She started out as a nurse, according to a 2022 podcast appearance with the company Syllable. Gleason also said on the podcast she previously cofounded a company to help patients with a chronic disease, sparked by the experience of coordinating care after her daughter was diagnosed with a rare illness.

"The rest of my career is mainly electronic medical records all the way back to starting as an ER nurse," Gleason said on the podcast.

Gleason's LinkedIn says she's worked in senior positions at a variety of healthcare companies since the late 1990s.

The Obama White House honored Gleason as a "Champion of Change" for her work in the medical records space.

Though Elon Musk is closely associated with the DOGE office, the White House previously said in a court filing that he isn't the group's leader and instead serves as a senior advisor to Trump. BI previously reported that Musk's title was written as "unlisted" in a White House record.

For weeks, the White House had declined to say whether there was a DOGE administrator — let alone name one. Trump created the position on Inauguration Day. He had previously said Musk would lead the DOGE office, though Musk was never named to the position.

On Tuesday, reporters repeatedly pressed the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, onthe DOGE administrator's identity. After her briefing concluded, Semafor first reported Gleason's role.

Trump is set to hold his first formal cabinet meeting on Wednesday, where Leavitt said he'd be discussing the DOGE office's work.

Musk is expected to be in attendance. It's unclear whether Gleason will be too.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at alicetecotzky.05. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Jack Newsham contributed to this report.

Amy Gleason is named as the acting administrator of DOGE, amid ambiguity over Elon Musk's role.

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• A White House official told Business Insider Amy Gleason is the acting DOGE administrator.
• Donald Trump tapped Elon Musk to lead DOGE.
• White House officials have previously said Musk is not the DOGE administrator.

A White House official on Tuesday said that a former US Digital Service official is serving as the acting head of DOGE.

In a statement to Business Insider, a White House official said that Amy Gleason is the acting DOGE administrator, appearing to put to rest a question that has hung over the White House's DOGE office: Who is in charge?

President Donald Trump's Inauguration Day executive order created a DOGE administrator to lead the rebranded US Digital Service. Under penalty of perjury, a White House official recently said in a court filing that Elon Musk was not the administrator nor a DOGE employee. It remains unclear whether there is a DOGE administrator.

Earlier on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, refused to name the DOGE administrator during a back-and-forth with reporters. She also said Musk wasn't the administrator.

"No, Elon Musk is a special government employee," Leavitt said when pressed on the world's richest man's status.

"There are career officials at DOGE. There are political appointees at DOGE. I'm not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium," she said. "I'm happy to follow up and provide that to you. But we have been incredibly transparent about the way DOGE has been working."

Leavitt also said Trump had "asked Elon Musk to oversee DOGE."

Business Insider followed up with the White House and a DOGE spokesperson. They did not immediately respond to our questions.

The White House has said Musk is a special government employee, a category of federal worker created to bring officials with expertise into the civil service part time. Musk is also a senior advisor to the president.

Trump and Musk have blurred the extent of Musk's power. BI previously reported that Musk's job title was "unlisted."

Musk recently hosted a DOGE update with members of Congress on X, the social media platform he also owns. Trump has told reporters he asked Musk which type of people DOGE had hired. In an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, Musk wielded a chainsaw onstage. His talk was titled "DOGE update."

During the briefing, Leavitt told reporters that Musk would attend Trump's first Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

"Elon will be in attendance tomorrow just to talk about DOGE's efforts and how all the Cabinet secretaries are identifying waste, fraud, and abuse at their respective agencies," Leavitt said.

It's not just journalists asking about the position. On Monday, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly asked a Justice Department attorney if there was a DOGE administrator.

"I don't know the answer to that," the counsel responded, according to Lawfare.

Trump's executive order dictates that the administrator answers to the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Twenty-one civil service employees who resigned en masse on Tuesday addressed their letter to Wiles.

In a footnote, they wrote that they addressed their letter to Wiles because "no one has been identified internally as the official Administrator or leader of the United States DOGE Service."

February 25, 2025: This story has been updated to include Gleason's name.

• 21 employees from the agency rebranded the US DOGE Service resigned on Tuesday.
• The signatories said in a joint letter that they refuse to "jeopardize Americans' sensitive data."
• Elon Musk and a spokeswoman for the White House DOGE Office responded to the resignations on X.

Twenty-one civil service employees resigned from the agency that was rebranded the United States DOGE Service on Tuesday, protesting the White House DOGE office's actions.

"We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services," the employees wrote in their public resignation letter directed to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. "We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE's actions."

The letter, dated February 25, was taken down on Tuesday afternoon without an explanation, though the resignations were not publicly rescinded.

On Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump formally turned the Obama-era United States Digital Services into the White House DOGE office. Trump previously appointed Elon Musk to co-lead the effort, but a top White House official recently declared in a legal filing that Musk is not leading DOGE and is instead a senior advisor to Trump.

In their letter, the now-former employees had said that DOGE representatives "began integrating us into their efforts," which the signatories believe were inconsistent with their goals as civil servants.

Jonathan Kamens, a former USDS engineer who was fired on February 14, told BI that he thinks more federal employees are beginning to push back against the White House DOGE office's most recent efforts.

"We are seeing more resistance, we are seeing more overt resistance," he said the day before the group resignation.

Musk took notice of the employees' collective actions and responded on X, writing, "These were Dem political holdovers who refused to return to the office. They would have been fired had they not resigned."

Katie Miller, a spokesperson for the White House DOGE office, also took to X to respond: "These were full remote workers who hung Trans flags from their workplaces."

Harrison Fields, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, issued a statement to BI.

"DOGE has effectively become part of the USDS as a component of the White House, and any leftover career bureaucrats who don't align with the President or DOGE are neither advised nor welcomed to be a part of this never-before-seen mission to make the government more efficient," he said.

The group resignation comes one day after federal employees faced a deadline to list their productivity from the past week. Agencies offered conflicting guidelines on whether or how to respond to the request, and some employees told BI that the experience bred confusion and stress.

Representatives for Trump, Musk, and the White House DOGE office did not respond to BI's request for comment.

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• Rep. Rich McCormick faced a town hall full of constituents angry over DOGE last week.
• Now, he seems the government-efficiency initiative is moving too quickly.
• "I'm concerned that maybe we're moving a little bit too fast," he said.

Last week, Rep. Rich McCormick faced a town hall full of voters angry about President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency's swift reshaping of the federal government.

Now, the Georgia Republican says he's worried the government-efficiency initiative is moving too quickly.

"I'm not against anything he's doing, but I'm concerned," McCormick said on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's "Politically Georgia" podcast on Monday. "I'm concerned that maybe we're moving a little bit too fast."

At a town hall in Roswell, Georgia on Thursday night, McCormick fielded a variety of contentious questions about the Trump administration's recent moves, with many of the questions focusing on the firing of federal workers and the cutting of certain programs.

The Georgia congressman, who represents a conservative-leaning district, said on Monday that he'd prefer a more methodical approach to cutting than the rapid pace that Elon Musk's DOGE is setting, including the shuttering of entire government agencies.

"We should have impact studies on each department as we do it, and I'm sure they can do that," McCormick said. "But I think if we're moving really, really rapidly, we don't know the impact."

McCormick also suggested that he's not the only House Republican who's concerned by the pace of DOGE's work.

"I think there's debate of how rapidly we're moving," McCormick said. "Some people who are very conservative also think we should move much more slowly."

In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement to BI that Trump has "enjoyed broad support" for his cost-cutting initiatives.

"The spending freeze is already uncovering waste, fraud, and abuse across federal agencies and ensuring better stewardship of taxpayer dollars, including for American farmers and families," Kelly said. "Ultimately, President Trump will cut programs that do not serve the interests of the American people and keep programs that put America First, just as 77 million voters elected him to do."

• Donald Trump's political operation is cashing in on DOGE.
• Trump's group is selling official Trump DOGE membership cards.
• Some merchandise also features Elon Musk.

President Donald Trump's political operation is selling DOGE membership cards, part of an effort to capitalize on the popularity of the White House DOGE office and Elon Musk's role in it.

"Today, I'm announcing that YOU can become an OFFICIAL TRUMP DOGE MEMBER!" Trump's political operation wrote in an email to supporters Sunday night.

For a minimum $47 donation, supporters can get their name on a black metal card that says "Trump DOGE member." If that is too pricy, there are also Trump DOGE T-shirts. One shirt for $40 depicts Trump and Musk. Another for $28 shows Trump, Musk, and the Shiba Inu dog, which inspired the original doge meme.

The White House's efficiency initiative is one of the most visible parts of Trump's second term.

DOGE has been the subject of numerous lawsuits from federal workers, Democratic state attorneys general, and good government groups. Trump initially appointed Musk to co-lead the "Department of Government Efficiency," though a top White House official recently declared in a legal filing that Musk is not the DOGE administrator. Musk is a senior White House advisor and remains closely linked to DOGE.

Over the weekend, Musk upended federal agencies by claiming that employees would be fired if they did not respond to an email asking, "What did you do last week?" A number of departments have since told federal workers to pause potential responses ahead of the midnight deadline.

Musk spent over $290 million on the 2024 election to elect Trump. Trump and his allies have featured Musk prominently. Trump's emails to supporters often seize on the latest DOGE headline, including Democratic lawmakers' calls for Trump to rein in the world's richest man.

Trump is term-limited out of the White House, but his political operation has remained active. According to Axios, it plans on using the money to back candidates ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Republicans hold narrow majorities in Congress. Historically, incumbent presidents have lost seats in both chambers, though the GOP currently has a much easier path to retaining control of the US Senate.

Trump could also use his war chest to remain active in the GOP once he leaves office in 2029.

• Meta's Yann LeCun warned there could be an exodus of US-based scientists due to funding cuts.
• The Trump administration wants to slash NIH funding, causing concern in the scientific community.
• LeCun said Europe should be recruiting them by offering more favorable research conditions.

The United States could soon see an exodus of tech talent, according to Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun.

"The US seems set on destroying its public research funding system. Many US-based scientists are looking for a Plan B," LeCun wrote in a post on LinkedIn on Saturday.

The Trump administration has issued several executive orders to reduce funding, sparking concern among the US-based scientific community.

It announced drastic cuts to the National Institutes of Health that would effectively end billions in federal funding for biomedical research. A judge on Friday extended a temporary block on the cuts as lawsuits filed by states and universities who say the cuts are illegal make their way through the court system.

"A sane government would never do this," former Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier said of the funding cuts in a post on X.

Elon Musk's cost-cutting DOGE squad has also been deployed to federal agencies, including the NIH, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and NASA.

The executive order that Trump signed against diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates has also caused concern that it could threaten scientific research at universities.

"At least one university is telling its researchers to refrain from terms like "biodiversity" to steer clear of detection by AI-based grant review systems, " Scientific American reported.

LeCun — who earned his bachelor's and Ph.D. in France — said the changes in the United States should be a wake-up call for European institutions and companies.

"You may have an opportunity to attract some of the best scientists in the world," he wrote.

He shared seven things he believes talented researchers want to see at any university, company, or public research agency they're joining:

1. Access to top students and junior collaborators.
2. Access to research funding with little administrative overhead.
3. Good compensation (comparable with top universities in the US, Switzerland, Canada).
4. Freedom to do research on what they think is most promising.
5. Access to research facilities (e.g. computing infrastructure, etc).
6. Ability to collaborate/consult with industry and startups.
7. Moderate teaching and administrative duties.

His message to Europe: "To attract the best scientific and technological talents, make science and technology research professions attractive."

• President Donald Trump said on Saturday he'd like to see Elon Musk "get more aggressive."
• Musk is the face of DOGE, which has upended Washington with its budget cuts and layoffs.
• Musk responded to Trump's comment a few hours later. Then, federal workers started receiving emails.

As far as President Donald Trump is concerned, Elon Musk's DOGE isn't cutting enough.

On Saturday, Trump praised Musk's efforts to streamline government operations and reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy and then called on his ally to do even more.

"Elon is doing a great job, but I would like to see him get more aggressive," Trump wrote in all caps on his social media platform, Truth Social.

A few hours later, Musk responded on his social media platform, X.

"Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump's instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."

The emails began arriving in the inboxes of federal workers on Saturday, with the Trump administration again upending traditional norms across the federal government.

It's a strategy that mirrors Musk's actions after he bought Twitter — now known as X — in 2022.

That year, Musk texted the line, "What did you get done this week?" to then-Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal after the two men disagreed over Musk's public criticism of the social media company. Musk later fired Agrawal.

After acquiring the social media company, Musk asked engineers to print out their most recent software code for review to assess their skills.

During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Trump called Musk a "patriot" for his government work.

In just over a month in office, Trump and the White House DOGE office have pushed through buyout offers and laid off swaths of staffers at the US Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and elsewhere.

DOGE on Thursday said it had already saved taxpayers $55 billion, mostly through canceled contracts, though it has made some mistakes in its accounting, like reporting a contract was worth billions when it was actually worth millions.

Musk says his ultimate goal is to cut at least $1 trillion — or a "best-case outcome" of $2 trillion — from the federal budget.

"Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary, a vocal supporter of Trump's economic policies, also said during a CNN interview on Thursday that Musk should go even further in his efforts.

"I don't think he's cutting enough," O'Leary said. "When you find a broken company, whatever you think you should cut, you add 20 percent more to it. Then you see how the organization adjusts, and you can always hire back."

"There's always going to be an opportunity to criticize some cut that was too deep or the wrong person got cut," he continued. "But my point is, as long as you keep the mandate in place, keep cutting, keep hacking, keep slashing. This is good for government."

Musk's move-fast and break-things effort to disrupt and reinvent the federal government is having a significant real-world impact across the country.

In addition to the thousands who have left their jobs and are now unemployed, many farmers and organizations that rely on federal funding are seeking clarification on whether invoices for completed work will be paid.

Legal challenges to Trump's slew of executive actions have added to the uncertainty federal workers now face.

• Trump and Elon Musk keep talking up the idea of sending some DOGE savings to Americans.
• GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, keep batting it down.
• The president can't do this on his own — he'd need Congress to approve it.

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk keep talking up the "DOGE Dividend" — turning a portion of the Department of Government Efficiency's eventual savings into checks to taxpayers.

But for the DOGE checks to become reality, Congress would have to authorize it. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told reporters as much on Thursday, pointing to the ongoing budget reconciliation process on Capitol Hill.

So far, most Republicans aren't biting — including House Speaker Mike Johnson.

"I mean, politically, that would be great for us," Johnson said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday. "But if you think about our core principles, right? Fiscal responsibility is what we do."

"We have a $36 trillion federal debt, we have a giant deficit that we're contending with," Johnson continued. "I think we need to pay down the credit card."

That's similar to what other Republicans are saying — that Congress should be balancing the federal budget and paying down the national debt before any talk of sending out checks.

"If there's money left after we address inflation, and the debt, and the deficit, it's always a good idea to send taxpayers their money back," Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming told reporters. "But when we're $36 trillion in debt, we've dug ourselves a pretty big hole."

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky told reporters that he's "all for it after they balance the budget." Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told Business Insider he'd "want to see the details" of the plan.

With Democrats largely shunning DOGE, the legislative path for the checks is largely closed off — unless Republicans change their mind.

That hasn't stopped Musk from talking it up.

During his own appearance at CPAC on Thursday, the billionaire businessman likened the checks to the "spoils of battle" and expressed optimism about the idea.

"I talked to the president, he's supportive of that, and so it sounds like that's something we're going to do," Musk said.

The "DOGE Dividend" was first proposed by investor James Fishback, who pitched the checks as a way to engage the mass public in DOGE's efforts and pay "restitution" to taxpayers.

According to Fishback's formulation, 79 million households — those that are net taxpayers — would receive $5,000 checks in 2026, funded by 20% of the money saved by DOGE.

That's based on an assumption that DOGE cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget. In recent weeks, Musk and Trump have revised that goal down to about $1 trillion.