Forbes Daily: Musk's White House Tenure Ends With Questionable Legacy
It's shaping up to be anything but a cruel summer for Taylor Swift, who announced Friday she bought back the rights to her first six albums from Shamrock Capital.
The billionaire pop star, who Forbes estimates is worth $1.6 billion, re-recorded much of her early work after she said in 2019 that the rights to her catalog were stripped from her without her consent or knowledge. Swift said she now owns her 'entire life's work,' calling it her 'greatest dream come true.'
The wealthiest woman in music did not disclose how much she paid for her music, but Swift's record-breaking Eras Tour surely helped—it grossed more than $2 billion.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, D.C.Elon Musk left his formal role in the Trump Administration Friday, and while Trump publicly praised the 'colossal change' spearheaded by DOGE, the president also reportedly questioned Musk's vow to cut $1 trillion in spending, according to the Wall Street Journal. In an interview last week with CBS News, Musk also aired his thoughts: 'It's not like I agree with everything the administration does,' while also calling DOGE criticisms 'unfair.'
New lawsuits filed last week accuse at least five companies handling payouts for class action settlements of conspiring to secretly pocket bank interest payments and award each other business outside the view of attorneys and judges. The scheme has resulted in lower class action payouts for consumers, according to the suits, allegations that are part of a troubling pattern in class action payouts that Forbes recently reported on.
Inflation was milder than expected in April despite some tariffs taking effect, according to new Commerce Department data, but economists expect their impacts on prices to be felt by the end of the year. Core PCE inflation, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation metric, was 2.5% in April, its lowest level in over four years.
Ron Shaich opened his first bakery at 26 years old. In the decades since, he's become a food fortune teller.
COURTESY ACT III
Ron Shaich has made a fortune discovering and bringing to market some of America's biggest restaurant brands, from Panera Bread to Cava, his most lucrative gamble to date. Cava went public in 2023 at a valuation of nearly $5 billion, making Shaich, its chairman and largest shareholder at the time of the IPO, a billionaire in the process. Forbes estimates Shaich is now worth $1.3 billion, after selling $640 million worth of stock since the public offering and retaining a 4% stake in the fast-growing company.
As e.l.f. Beauty is set to acquire Hailey Bieber's makeup and skincare brand Rhode for up to $1 billion, the company joins the ranks of a growing group of beauty brands to fetch high price tags. All in all, Forbes counts fewer than 30 people in the U.S. and Europe who have made fortunes of $380 million or more in beauty, including L'Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers of France and entrepreneurs like IT Cosmetics founder Jamie Kern Lima.
Chinese authorities on Monday accused the U.S. of violating their recent trade pact agreed to in Geneva last month—dismissing President Donald Trump's allegation from Friday that Beijing breached the agreement. A Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson also said the U.S. has since taken 'discriminatory restrictive measures against China,' and criticized the government's crackdown on Chinese student visas.
It was his father's penchant for business that Patrick Schwarzenegger adopted first.
CODY PICKENS FOR FORBES
The son of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Patrick Schwarzenegger is finally making a name for himself—in business and on screen, having starred in the most recent season of The White Lotus. The younger Schwarzenegger has invested in companies like Blaze Pizza, Olipop and Poppi, the latter of which sold for $2 billion earlier this year, and he and Shriver have personally invested nearly $1 million into their protein bar company Mosh, designed to promote brain health.
In Forbes' first valuations of National Women's Soccer League teams, the 14 soccer clubs are collectively worth nearly $2 billion, and the momentum won't be slowing down anytime soon. Angel City FC tops the list at $280 million—up $30 million from its $250 million sale that closed in September as the Los Angeles-based team continues to project growth for its sponsorships, merchandise and ticket sales.
There are a few key ways to side-step expensive money funds, writes Forbes' William Baldwin. Set up your finances so that the cash in your transaction accounts, where you can't avoid high management fees, is kept to a minimum. And shuttle excess cash in and out of some other safe, liquid investment, one with a low management fee.
In her second act, billionaire tech entrepreneur Michele Kang now finds herself widely recognized as the global face of investing in women's sports.
Kang, the owner of three prominent women's soccer teams, took control of the Washington Spirit of the National Women's Soccer League in 2022 for $35 million, then considered an astronomical price for a women's team. In reality, it was a bargain. Forbes now estimates the Spirit are now worth $130 million—and they aren't the only NWSL club to have seen such dramatic appreciation. Last year, for instance, Los Angeles' Angel City FC sold at a record $250 million valuation to Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay.
At the same time, Kang and her fellow NWSL owners face a steep climb to approach the valuations of the 124 teams in the four major North American men's sports leagues, which are all worth at least $1 billion and have appreciated more than 1,700% on average since Forbes started valuing them in 1998. By comparison, women's leagues are still in their infancy, and many of the clubs have yet to show they're able to generate real money.
Those concerns—paired with massive pay gaps between male and female athletes, unequal media coverage and occasionally outright discrimination—have led some critics to write off the recent women's sports boom as nothing more than a social cause. Kang isn't buying that.
'This is not charity; this is not some corporate DEI project,' she says. 'I'm on a mission to prove that this is good business—not just a business, but a good business.'
WHY IT MATTERS 'Kang set the NWSL's valuation boom in motion, but she's aiming even higher,' says Forbes staff writer Justin Birnbaum. 'In the not-too-distant future, she believes, women's soccer teams will be trading for $1 billion or more—and she's willing to spend whatever it takes to make that happen, having entered the sports world with an ante of at least $200 million. Now, others are—finally—matching her enthusiasm, flooding into the NWSL as investors, sponsors or fans.'
MORE The Richest Female Sports Team Owners 2025
Identity theft reports increased across the U.S. last year for the first time since 2021, suggesting that thieves have found new ways to evade existing protections, like using generative AI to make scams more convincing. Florida residents reported the most issues of any state:
9%: The rise in reports of identity theft in 2024
528 per 100,000 people: The rate of identity theft reports in Florida, according to an analysis of FTC data by All About Cookies
40%: The share of reports where credit card information was stolen, the most common form of identity theft
Demand for entry-level workers is nosediving, especially with the rise of AI. If you're trying to break into the job market, don't let the technology become a foe: The ability to work with AI is an in-demand skill. Take classes or earn a certification to take your AI abilities to the next level. And amid all the technological change, don't underestimate the power of building relationships and attending in-person networking events.
Federal job applications above a certain level will soon include an essay question related to President Donald Trump. What does it ask about?
A. Trump's businesses
B. His executive orders
C. The president's posts on X
D. The Trump family
Check your answer.
Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.
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Business Insider
12 minutes ago
- Business Insider
Elon Musk may be the only person in the world who can criticize Donald Trump in public. For now.
If you come at Donald Trump, he's going to respond. Unless, apparently, you're Elon Musk. Trump hasn't said a word about Musk's public complaints about Trump's budget bill. It's hard to imagine Trump staying silent forever. But even this restraint tells you a lot about the Musk/Trump alliance. A pretty fundamental rule of political physics in our age: If you criticize Donald Trump, he roars back. Which makes what's happening now worth noting: Elon Musk is criticizing Donald Trump, and Trump … isn't responding. As you likely know by now, on Monday afternoon, Musk used his X account to complain about the Republican budget bill — the one that's supposed to be Trump's signature legislation, and the one that's literally called the " One Big Beautiful Bill" act because that's the name Trump likes. More specifically: Musk called the bill " a disgusting abomination." "Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it," he added. That story — the richest man in the world, and for at least several months, a key Trump ally, blasting a Trump project in public — dominated Monday's news cycle. Even Fox News had to cover it. And under normal circumstances, Trump would rage back. Not this time, though. Trump has yet to acknowledge Musk's broadside out loud, or on his Truth Social platform. When a Fox News reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt "how mad" Trump would be when he learned about Musk's comments, she had a restrained answer ready: "The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn't change the president's opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill, and he's sticking to it." And when I asked the White House press office for comment Wednesday morning, they referred me to Leavitt's previous statement. Obvious conclusion: For now, at least, the Trump team is going out of its way not to stoke a feud with Musk. It seems very unlikely that Trump's silence is going to be permanent: Trump loves holding forth in front of the press, so someone's going to ask him about it at some point. Still, this level of what seems to be restraint is remarkable for a man who doesn't usually restrain himself, and who loathes people who poke at him in public. What's happening? For starters, it's worth noting that Trump has already gone through a version of this. Last week, Musk used much more muted language to criticize the same bill in a CBS interview, and those comments also became a news story. And Trump didn't fire back at Musk then, either — even when asked about it at a press conference. It's also worth noting that even though Musk used scathing language to condemn the bill on Monday, he never once criticized Trump directly. That gives both men rhetorical wiggle room: Musk can argue that his problems with the bill have nothing to do with the man who's promoting it. And Trump can lump in Musk's critique along with everyone else who has problems with the bill, including some Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. But it's also likely that the most likely thing is the most likely thing: That Donald Trump has enormous admiration for Elon Musk, and treats him differently than just about anyone else in the world. And that even though Musk has officially left his role as a part-time White House advisor, Trump still wants him on his side.
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Elon Musk abused his DOGE gig to benefit himself, Tesla, and his other companies more than 100 times, Elizabeth Warren's office says
Elon Musk abused his role as a "special government employee," a new report from Elizabeth Warren says. The report flagged over 100 instances that suggest Musk used his role to benefit himself or his businesses. US Senator Elizabeth Warren is criticizing Elon Musk's work in the White House this year as a vast enrichment campaign for the world's richest person. Warren's office released a letter on Tuesday which said the billionaire CEO used his role as a "special government employee" to benefit himself and his businesses. The letter outlined 130 instances, which Warren said suggest that Musk and his businesses gained from his role in the Department of Government Efficiency. The letter says that some of the actions explicitly violated rules that prevent federal employees from participating in matters where they have a financial interest, the report said, though some of Musk's actions have simply broken norms for government employees. "In many cases, Musk has violated norms at an astonishing pace, contributing to the Trump Administration actions that have benefitted his private interests while hurting the American public —- scandalous behavior regardless of whether it subjects him to criminal prosecution," the report, which was published by Warren's office, said. DOGE has said that its mission is to make the government more efficient and transparent, with the goal of saving taxpayers' money by eliminating wasteful spending. It estimates to have saved the government $180 billion so far. Here are some of the ways Musk benefited from his work with DOGE, according to Warren's letter: Government contracts. Some of Musk's businesses obtained "new lucrative contracts" with federal agencies after President Donald Trump re-entered the White House. In some cases, Musk's companies are reportedly being considered for deals, or informal arrangements that would benefit Musk's firms over competitors. Some of Musk's family members, like his brother, Kimbal Musk, have also struck deals for their respective businesses after Musk assumed his role in DOGE. Ending regulatory actions. Before Trump entered the White House, Musk's companies faced over $2.3 billion in potential liabilities from pending regulatory actions. But many of those actions have since "stalled or been dismissed," the report said, pointing to several closed investigations and dropped suits against Musk's companies this year. DOGE has also issued steep budget cuts at some agencies that oversee Musk's businesses, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Policy changes. Some agencies also issued policy changes in recent months that appeared to benefit Musk's firms. The report outlined recent decisions from agencies like the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Securities and Exchange Commission that helped several projects across Musk's companies. Special access to information. Musk had access to government meetings, classified info, and other data that could have potentially benefitted his companies, the report said. Influence over government workers. Musk has selected key personnel and placed them in agencies that could benefit his companies. During his time in DOGE, several SpaceX workers, investors, and other representatives for the company were nominated for roles in the government. Musk has not filed his financial disclosure form detailing potential conflicts of interest for government employees. "Elon Musk has done more to improve the lives of Americans and strengthen this country in just over 100 days than Sen. Warren has achieved in her over 10-year career. The Senator excels at producing toothless reports that waste paper and will be read by no one, even if paid to. The President's success through DOGE is undisputed, and his work will continue to yield historic results," Harrison Fields, a spokesperson for the White House, told Business Insider in a statement. SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI, which were among Musk's companies mentioned in the report, did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider. Warren has criticized Musk's conduct in the past, raising concerns in recent years about potential conflicts of interest as the CEO expanded his business empire. Last year she asked Trump to create conflict-of-interest rules for Musk, and said in a letter that Musk working in the White House without any rules was an "invitation for corruption on a scale not seen in our lifetimes." Meanwhile, Musk has been critical of the GOP budget bill in recent days. He's described Trump's "big, beautiful bill" as an abomination. He said the bill would add to the deficit and undermine the work DOGE has done. Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
GOP Bill Would Legalize DOGE and Let Trump Dismantle Everything
With the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team on dubious legal footing, congressional Republicans are quietly inching forward legislation to grant President Donald Trump new, lawful powers for razing the federal government: the unprecedented ability to propose to Congress, under reorganization authority, the abolition of executive departments, independent regulatory agencies, and all statutory programs in either. If enacted, the legislation would let Trump recommend that simple majorities in Congress bless any fatal finishing move of his on the already–gutted Education Department, any other Cabinet-level department, or any executive agency, including independent regulatory agencies — such as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Federal Communications Commission, and Federal Reserve — designed to serve congressional interests and whose heads have codified protections, albeit flagging, against at-whim firing. Legal experts tell Rolling Stone the Reorganizing Government Act would empower the president to ask Congress to approve, on a fast track, reorganization plans altering or eliminating how the executive carries out laws passed by Congress, effectively neutralizing, say, any or all civil rights laws, environmental laws, or fill in the blank. The Trump administration has already moved to impair or abolish several agencies, starting with the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose scraps have been folded into the State Department. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to 'to close the federal Department of Education,' and as president, he's attempted to dismantle it via executive order. His administration has fired heads of independent regulatory agencies, now under litigation. Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, head of the key White House agency for executive-led reorganizations, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has long targeted entire statutory programs — housing vouchers, student loans — for elimination. The very–little–noticed 'Reorganizing Government Act,' introduced by Republicans in both the House and Senate, would allow Trump to do the work of DOGE on steroids — and with the statutory backing from Congress that federal judges have stated he needs. It would give Trump far more authority than any previous president has ever enjoyed — with the partial exception of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression — to recommend Congress approve wide-ranging restructurings of the executive branch and, possibly, of even more entities inside the wider executive establishment. The slowly-moving legislation would resurrect and amend the congressionally granted presidential reorganization authority that expired in 1984, allowing Trump to propose ending or altering any executive agency or some/all of its statutory programs — such as the Environmental Protection Agency, any of the 18 spy agencies, or the IRS — as well as any 'corporation wholly owned by the United States.' Such corporations federally chartered include the Millenium Challenge Corporation; international aid foundations structured as corporations like the African Development Foundation; and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supplies small yet important funds for PBS, NPR, and local member stations. Expansive language in the legislation makes the list of potential targets sprawl — encompassing potential reorganization plans for firing independent regulators, eliminating their positions or agencies, and likely challenging the administrative apparatus in novel ways. Reorganizing means transferring, consolidating, coordinating, authorizing, or abolishing governmental org-chart entities or their functions, most plainly warranted when government efforts are needlessly duplicated. By letting the president formally pitch lawmakers on such restructurings, the legislation would grant Trump and his narrow Republican majorities in Congress exceptional power to take down the administrative state. Trump could, through 2026, present up to three concurrent plans to lawmakers, who'd then have 90 days per plan to consider each. Instead of the usual 60 Senate votes needed to pass legislation, based on filibuster rules, the reanimated law from 1984 would allow these plans to pass by simple majority votes. At any time during a 90-day period, Trump could withdraw a plan, and for the first 60 days, the ex-TV game show host could start-stop changes to it — an invitation to use what he calls 'great television' to stress everyone out with repeated shocks of will he or won't he, habituating fear into acquiescence. Stanford Law professor Anne Joseph O'Connell, who specializes in agency structure and personnel, tells Rolling Stone that 'While the Congressional Review Act of 1996 already allows for fast-track repeal of recent major agency regulations, this legislation, if enacted, could demolish statutory mandates that have been on the books for decades. The Reorganizing Government Act would, in practice, end the legislative filibuster for a wide swath of issues carried out by federal agencies. It is a wolf hiding in the details of government organization charts.' Assuredly, passing the legislation would regularize, if not Musk's DOGE per se, then similar, stronger austerity powers for the White House. The world's richest man on May 28 announced his supposed departure from DOGE, and while his murky 'special government employee' categorization apparently concluded around the end of May, authority for the austerity team itself persists through July 4, 2026, the country's semiquincentennial. Yet to keep dismantling the administrative apparatus long-term, federal judges have indicated the White House must put its dismantling efforts on a firm legal foundation. Trump's need for statutory backing is especially pressing since Musk or his operatives have been accused of various law breakings, in their attempts to hoard ever more power for the executive. Congressional Democrats led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have called DOGE conflicts of interest 'a disturbing pattern,' a way to 'enrich Mr. Musk and other elites.' His hacker-like team of twentysomethings' apparent stockpiling of sensitive information includes demanding states and their contractors give up food stamp recipients' personal details. In its data-hoovering efforts, DOGE has been accused of breaching protected records such as tax return data for millions of people and nearly every federal employee, as well as the Treasury systems behind almost all payments made by the U.S. government, though judges have since enjoined their access partially. Two federal judges' May 22 preliminary injunctions paused the White House's brazen staffing and budget cuts for the duration of their respective lawsuits. One, brought by 21 attorneys general from Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, seeks to stop the gutting of the Education Department, calling it equivalent to abolishment, with New Jersey's top prosecutor, Matthew J. Platkin, saying 'Trump is not a king, and he cannot unilaterally decide to close a Cabinet agency.' The other, filed by nonprofits, local governments, and labor organizations — prominently, the largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) — aims to 'stop the unconstitutional dismantling of the federal government by the President […] unprecedented […] in clear excess of his authority.' In court in April, the Justice Department conceded the obvious: Trump doesn't have statutory reorganization authority. The AFGE, in a March letter to the House, explained their dread that giving him it would result in an executive branch made up of fewer civil servants and more contractors. For all the White House bluster about increasing efficiency by cutting a bloated federal workforce, its portion made up of actual employees has, percentage-wise, long been shrinking consistently, while hovering — in absolute terms — around three million people since the late sixties. The often lucrative, secretive public gigs for the private sector — combined with revolving-door practices and capture of government decision-making by 'self-contracting contractors' — not infrequently give the growing number of hirelings weaker incentives than those offered the attenuated core of salaried civil servants to remain loyal to the United States Government and the public it's supposed to serve. Legalizing DOGE-style austerity would require getting the Reorganizing Government Act through the Senate, where the GOP is seven senators shy of bypassing filibusters sans sufficient defections from Democrats and independents. The legislation was born into a climate of drastic political regression. Trump's allies are pushing to legalize the twice–impeached president's hoped-for, but unconstitutional, third term; he's already selling Trump 2028 merchandise. Influential ideologues are glorifying extreme dominance hierarchies as the best human social structure, even claiming that installing a monarchy wouldn't be that big of a deal. Passing the Reorganizing Government Act would be a huge step toward crowning — even as protests swell against the idea — the first United States king. Republicans introduced both Reorganizing Government Act bills on Feb. 13 into a seismic landscape: Two days earlier, Trump had ordered federal agency heads to 'undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs),' the type of DOGE- (or OMB-)led restructuring involving axing budgets and personnel rosters — and the type receiving the most media attention. But Trump's order also told agency heads to submit reports 'discuss[ing] whether the agency or any of its subcomponents should be eliminated or consolidated,' for the purpose of 'Developing Agency Reorganization Plans.' OMB and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) followed up 13 days later with guidance deriding the government as 'bloated, corrupt' and instructing that the reports be developed with agencies' DOGE 'team leads,' then handed in by Mar. 13. The reports, Agency RIF and Reorganization Plans (ARRPs), couple reduction in force aspects — budget slashings, firings — with restructuring aspects such as abolishments; largely unrevealed, their contents would help illuminate the administration's doings. In the AFGE lawsuit, Judge Susan Illston at a May 9 hearing showed intense interest, per the transcript this journalist obtained, in the ARRPs, stating that 'Defendants have not publicly released these plans despite requests from the public, employees, and members of Congress.' Illston asked the Justice Department if the Senate's request for the ARRPs had been answered. When attorney Eric J. Hamilton replied that 'interbranch discussions between Congress and the executive branch' weren't 'relevant,' she retorted, 'So you don't want to tell me, is what you're saying?' He didn't. The Justice Department claims the ARRPs contain sensitive details, aren't final, and don't bind agencies to specific actions. On May 13, the plaintiffs provided at least part of one. The judge wrote that it didn't 'neatly align with the government's characterization of ARRPs in general.' With a discovery order, the judge obtained a sampling of ARRPs herself and reviewed them behind closed doors. The government's motion to prohibit the plans from coming to light remains pending. Illston explained why inspecting the ARRPs, the characterization of which the parties dispute, is pivotal: Did 'Trump, OPM, OMB, and DOGE simply instruct agencies to begin planning for RIFs in the future and provide guidance on how to make those plans?' That's what the Justice Department claims; if true, the deliberative process privilege would shield the plans from oversight. Or, as multitudinous news reports suggest, were the full ARRPs 'directing agencies to make 'large-scale' RIFs and to make them now?' The same question applies to structural reorganizations. Illston decided the evidence shows the ARRPs were indeed directive and on May 22 issued a preliminary injunction to 'pause large-scale reductions in force and reorganizations' for the lawsuit's duration. On June 2, the administration appealed to the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs told Illston the next day that their opponents aren't obeying her injunction. When issuing the pause, the judge gave Trump another option: procure 'the cooperation of the legislative branch.' If Congress passes it, that statutory partnership — presidential authority to propose reorganization plans — is exactly what the Reorganizing Government Act would supply the White House. At the moment, the Reorganizing Government Act appears to be moving slowly and looks unlikely to pass. With only 53 GOP senators, it faces an uphill battle for the 60 Senate votes required by default. But that could change if Republican Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham's (R-S.C.) new nuclear option effort, which is currently pending, portends further sleights-of-hand by his party. Such longshot tricks, if successful, might permit Republicans to get a budget bill to Trump with non-fiscal provisions — such as reorganization authority — shoehorned in. Rep. James Comer's (R-Ky.) half of the Reorganizing Government Act cleared the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform by a party-line vote of 23-20 on Mar. 25, and now has 19 cosponsors. Sen. Mike Lee's (R-Utah) version in the upper chamber, however, is still sitting in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee with its two cosponsors, apparently collecting mothballs. If GOP leaders want to force the reorganization bill through, Senate Republicans could try to add the legislation to budget reconciliation legislation — in an attempt to protect the bill from a filibuster, so it could sail through the senior body with just 51 votes. Congress is currently using the byzantine reconciliation process to try to extend and expand Trump's 2017 tax cuts for the richest, which will be financed, in part, with unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs for the poor. Members from both major parties have sometimes used the reconciliation process to try to stuff in agenda items probably not primarily fiscal, except the maneuver Graham has indicated he'll use represents a severe escalation. In April, GOP senators eschewed Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough's expertise and claimed Graham could decide the cost of a bill all by himself. The budget chairman said the extension Republicans set forward for Trump's 2017 tax cuts would be cost free. Rather than measuring against the 'current law baseline,' assessed for half a century following a statutory definition, he announced his intention to measure expenses against a 'current policy baseline.' He hasn't yet shown his math-work. Number-crunching watchdogs from both the center-right Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and the liberal Center for American Progress teamed up to tell the Senate in April that the Graham-goes-it-alone trick is 'abuse' tantamount to 'fabricat[ing] their own scores on the spot.' Even faking numbers, the GOP couldn't coherently claim the Reorganizing Government Act is principally budgetary in nature. The CBO scored the House version as having zero 'direct spending' and zero 'revenues' because it's the subsequent legislative dominoes — the putative joint resolutions approving any reorganization plans — that would impact the star-spangled spreadsheets. Bobby Kogan, a signer of the April letter and the Center for American Progress's senior director for federal budget policy, tells Rolling Stone that the Graham solo trick, arguably an attempt at a newfangled nuclear option, couldn't logically apply to sneaking the Reorganizing Government Act through reconciliation. 'CBO says the Reorganizing Government Act doesn't have a scorable impact, so it's not allowed in reconciliation,' Kogan says. 'This is exactly the sort of thing Senator Byrd didn't want in reconciliation and that his rule [controlling the process] was intended to keep out.' So far, Graham's maneuver is untested in floor debate. His office didn't respond to multiple emails and calls for this article. Republican senators might not give up easily, given the threat of Trump supporting primary challengers. An unusually high number of their seats, 20, are up in the midterms. Further, Americans for Prosperity, the dark-money flagship of fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch, told Congress on Apr. 28 to prioritize, along with four other bills, the Reorganizing Government Act. For months, the Koch network has sought statutory footing to 'establish lasting reforms' without Musk. 'Nuclear options' are almost always avoided since one's Senate opponents might deploy them too — mutually assured destruction — yet the times are trigger happy. Under White House pressure, the Senate's presiding officer — possibly J.D. Vance, a onetime harsh critic of Trump who's now his vice president and bowing bulldog — could assent to shutting down MacDonough or other Strangelove-style games. AFGE acting legislation director Daniel Horowitz tells us, 'The question hanging over reconciliation is to what extent is the Republican majority going to play by any rules at all. They are clearly going to stretch the boundaries of the budget laws as far as possible to insert their anti-government policy priorities into any package.' If defeated or left for dead, the Reorganizing Government Act would stand as a marker of just how far some congressional Republicans wanted to go to keep empowering an already off-the-chain Trump. And if presidential reorganization authority isn't in the cards this congressional session, there's always next year(s) — especially as long as Trump commands the loyalty or fear of many on Capitol Hill. Muddying the tea leaves, the White House and almost all queried congressional Republicans have said little or nothing about the Reorganizing Government Act. In fact, according to this journalist's historical review, with only one debatable, situational exception, every president extended reorganization authority by Congress since the power was first granted in 1932 has — as chief executive or president-elect — openly explained his desire for it to lawmakers or the public ahead of the earliest bill's introduction, usually weeks or months in advance. Trump, on the other hand, hasn't said a thing about it this term. The doubtful analogue occurred in an era when statutory reorganization authority was lower stakes, somewhat routine: President Jimmy Carter, in his 1980 State of the Union, could assume his touting of a then-forthcoming reorganization plan more or less implied, without his spelling it out, that Congress might need to renew his authority before it expired early that April. Lawmakers did, fairly fast. The House even passed their portion of the renewal under suspension of rules, a simplifying process for uncontroversial legislation. If Trump were granted such authority without publicly justifying it, he could try painting himself as somehow akin to Carter, but whereas Carter's campaign promise of 'a complete reorganization of the executive branch' was headline-grabbing enough to inspire multiple polls on the subject during his initial year in the White House, the first-term Trump encouraged the press to opt out of filming a 'little report' on the reorganization authority his officials were, in and around 2018, pursuing without much fanfare. Trump even told the journalists that report was 'extraordinarily boring and therefore not fit for camera.' Second-term Trumpers aren't talking at all. During the Mar. 25 Oversight session, Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), opposing the 'blank check' of the Reorganizing Government Act, said: 'I don't believe that Mr. Musk or any member of the administration has actually been in front of this committee […] yet here we are in a process to pass it without any clarification about why this authority is needed.' Several emails and calls from this journalist to the White House Press Office and OMB went unanswered. Congressional Republicans are almost all mum, too, despite the prerogative's capacity to profoundly affect the separation of powers among the three federal branches: Congress, executive, and the judiciary. Each checks the others and answers to the Constitution. Besides statutory reorganization powers, presidents can change up the executive branch via, varying with the type of agency, the usual slow method of working with Congress to enact statutes, or they can — because the Constitution lets presidents arrange for assistants while enforcing laws — issue executive orders or facilitate internal reorganizations led moreso by individual agencies themselves. However, those latter options may rely heavily on judicial assent, often requiring presidents to plunge into protracted power struggles, as in the AFGE lawsuit. If Congress enables presidents to propose reorganizations, the chief executives are largely freed from lawmakers' snail-speed deliberations and entrenched dependencies on specific districts and states, and can make recommendations quickly to Capitol Hill as a whole, from a birds-eye view. Yet whenever lawmakers delegate such a prerogative, Capitol Hill sidelines itself: Congress retains its constitutional power to create, edit, or end executive entities that implement statutory goals, but it passes to the White House the political capital baton — and lower procedural hurdles for congressional assent, nowadays including the filibuster-proof simple majorities mechanism. John A. Dearborn, a Vanderbilt University political science professor who authored the book Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation, tells Rolling Stone, 'In the early to mid-20th century, Congress's decisions to grant presidential reorganization authority depended on legislators' sense that they could trust the president, as an officeholder elected by the whole people, to uniquely act in the national interest and achieve a rational reorganization of the executive branch.' 'But in recent decades, the level of trust Congress and the wider public has had in presidents to do that has declined, and correspondingly, since 1984 lawmakers have avoided granting presidents such broad reorganization authority,' he says. 'The Reorganizing Government Act of 2025 comes during a political context very different from earlier periods when that kind of authority was regularly granted: a time of extreme polarization and disagreement over whether the president can be counted on to act in the interests of the whole country.' Given the contentious climate and the marginalization of Congress the legislation would entail, one might hope lawmakers would discuss it eagerly. But my multiple emails and calls to GOP leadership in both chambers, the bills' sponsors and cosponsors, and Republicans on the relevant committees went unanswered — save for the rare staffers who advised me to ask someone else and for two Representatives whose communications teams provided startling comments. Press Secretary Will Garrett told me on Apr. 25 that his boss, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), 'fully supports any effort that allows President Trump to make government more efficient.' However, in economics, public policy, physics, and the dictionary, efficiency means something like useful output divided by total costs. DOGE's boasts notwithstanding, federal government first-quarter expenditures — arguably a plausible denominator for an efficiency ratio — have increased, while revenues, the corresponding numerator, have slightly declined, the whole fraction compared with President Joe Biden's final first quarter. If receipts versus outlays spells efficiency, then that's not being efficient. That's not even just being cheap. Trump and Musk have been inefficient. Reorganization authority isn't any automatic efficiency cure-all. The Congressional Research Service report from 2012 that Comer entered into the record during the Oversight session states that there have been 'few instances in which reorganization plans resulted in documented cost savings.' Of course, obtaining reorganization authority and abolishing Cabinet-level departments could save fortunes — in the same way weight loss may be achieved by chopping off limbs. Discussing his state-level reorganization efforts as Georgia's governor in his 1975 presidential campaign autobiography Why Not the Best?, Carter criticized thought-terminating bizspeak clichés such as efficiency: 'Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States, or the Declaration of Independence, or the Bill of Rights, or the Emancipation Proclamation, or the Old Testament or the New Testament do you find the words 'economy' or 'efficiency.' Not that these two words are unimportant. But you discover other words like honesty, integrity, fairness, liberty, justice, courage, patriotism, compassion, love — and many others which describe what a human being ought to be. These are also the same words which describe what a government of human beings ought to be.' For all the questions, three Republicans skipped the Oversight vote, and while the offices of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) ignored my repeated calls and emails asking why, Press Secretary Annie Butler emailed me on Apr. 18 that the absent Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.) — who cosponsors the bill — had a 'scheduling conflict' for 'an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing scheduled at the same time.' 'That's all!' she added. In multiple emails — reinforced by calls — I asked her, 'The Energy and Commerce Committee hearing ended at about 1:41 p.m. Eastern. But the House Oversight vote for H.R. 1295 was more than five hours later. It takes something like 15-20 minutes to get from room to room, yes? So why didn't Rep. Langworthy vote on whether or not to favorably report this legislation he co-sponsors?' No answer. The White House and most of the relevant congressional Republicans' unwillingness to talk underscores the sense that Congress would not be granting reorganization authority to a principled steward of the national interest, but to a president who answers only to himself, his, or foreign foes. In April, the late Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), then the House Oversight ranking member, told Rolling Stone that 'congressional Republicans are finally admitting that President Trump and Elon Musk do not have the legal authority to kill entire federal agencies, take a chainsaw to beloved programs like Social Security and Medicaid, or purge the federal workers that care for veterans, keep our food supply safe, and fight cancer.' He added, 'They're plotting to use the shell of a long-dormant statute as a Trojan Horse to gift Trump and Musk the unprecedented, filibuster-proof authority they crave to use and abuse taxpayer dollars however they want in their bid to remake our government in their own corrupt image.' Congressional Republicans must now navigate, on one side, the risk Trump will tar them in MAGA extremists' eyes, and on the other, his softer voters among their constituencies angering at his doubling-down that their kids should just make do with fewer dolls and pencils, realizing it may not herald the new economic 'golden age' the six-time bankruptcy filer promised. Meanwhile, rising voter suppression legislation and voting computer insecurities threaten to list the ship of state farther and turn such political constraints into ancient history. Vanderbilt University political science professor David E. Lewis, an expert on presidents and the bureaucracy, tells us: 'In the past, presidents would exercise restraint in the use of reorganization authority. If they overstepped, there would be consequences. Upset members of Congress could refuse to support their legislative agenda, and so forth. For Trump, emphasizing an executive agenda, he is not worried about members refusing to support him down the road. He needs them for very little and does not fear losing their support.' Instead of Congress predominating as a representation of a diverse public, the MAGA-backing ideologues seek to reverse today's unique evolutions toward increasing heterodoxy — insta-global communications sharing bottom-up knowledge, feminist uprisings worldwide — to make macho-monarchy great again, though the Declaration of Independence says it wasn't. Maybe it seemed hard to believe — that some aim to make Trump a monarch — before mid-February, when he posted AI-generated imagery of himself as a king, which official White House socials circulated. In a January New York Times interview, the most prominent monarchist ideologue, blogger Curtis Yarvin, was asked if his 'point' was that the U.S. has supposedly 'had something like a dictator in the past, and therefore it's not something to be afraid of now.' He answered: 'Yeah.' Years earlier, 'Mencius Moldbug,' Yarvin's pseudonym, typed missives out of his grab-bag of cacophonous quotes to the fascist-friendly among consequential, on-the-down-low hacktivist chat-circles. Now the Times calls him the 'MAGA court philosopher,' reporting on Yarvin's May 5 debate at Harvard. The report says he calls for 'a techno-monarchy,' but an attendee said the debate 'never got to the heart of the matter: Yarvin's affirmative case for monarchy.' Likely Trump has heard, through his vice president and others, bits and pieces of that rambling, if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit case for monarchy — 'humans fit into dominance-submission structures' very easily, Yarvin wrote in 2008, with a tunnel vision cropping out counterexamples. He elaborated three years later that Trump has 'obvious kinginess': 'Supreme personal authority, generally male,' for which The Donald is 'clearly biologically suited.' On a podcast last year, Vance, then a U.S. Senate candidate, referenced Yarvin fleetingly, but approvingly. The vice president is a protégé of Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, who invested in his Senate campaign and also in Yarvin's computer networking project the regressive blogger described in 2010 as 'digital feudalism.' The night before Trump's second inauguration, at the D.C. 'Coronation Ball,' Yarvin was a fêted guest. On his trip, Moldbug and the VP spoke with one another — briefly, the blogger says. DOGE, especially if upgraded into statutory, escalated reorganization authority, is verging on a king-flavored administrative coup: a non-military seizing of enough power — illegally — to steer the ship of state very much elsewhere. Aided by Yarvin's circuitous justifications, Trumpers are smashing hollows into the government, and they're not remaining vacuums. Evidently, the White House is filling them, not infrequently, with themselves, their cronies, and perhaps tentacles of foreign enemies. So far, the public is responding with some strength. A grassroots effort to grant Trump his third impeachment — Operation Anti-King, now called Citizens' Impeachment — has gained several Representatives' support; protests are growing countrywide; the stakes keep skyrocketing. Yet in a world increasingly run — de jure or de facto — by software architects, it can feel like something new is needed, beyond the atavistic urge to discover pseudo-selfhood in stanning a bully-king or dusting off laudable, creaky impeachment protocols antithetical to the same. Another software architect, working on a global commons for online collaboration based on public-only data — a framework far from Yarvin's 'digital feudalism' — debated political theory at a leading university during Trump years, too, except philosopher and human rights activist Heather Marsh at the Oxford Union in 2018 argued for her project and the peaceful, prosocial-yet-diverse evolution of democracy, not its regression, and got censored. Regarding the Reorganizing Government Act and the United States generally, Marsh, author of the recent books Stigmergy: How to Create a Mass Movement and How to Dismantle a Dictatorship, tells Rolling Stone, 'A spectacle of horror creates suspense, terror and dread. Dictators take advantage of audience shock to spin a web around a mesmerized public until it is too late for escape. The paralysis of fear, guilt, anger, docility and nihilism still trapping part of the population in inertia is allowing a dictatorship to form where a democracy stood such a short time ago. The regime goal appears to be to isolate the U.S., tank the economy, and cause mass death through autogenocide, in order to create the perfect moment to implement totalitarianism.' How can the public 'reorganize' in response? Marsh says, 'The blitzkrieg strategy of regime actions must be turned on them until they are the ones dizzy and overwhelmed with the speed, variety and unpredictability of opposition tactics. There should be thousands of different things for them to respond to every day. Protests, boycotts, town halls and legal challenges are happening, but actions need to overwhelm the regime. 'At the same time, we have to build alternative community and governance structures to replace the rapidly collapsing ones,' she says. 'The neo-fascist-monarchist ideologues think they have a replacement ready, but they are just lazily recycling ideas we already fought against and won. If we beat them to implementation, we can create a new system that works for everyone. We must accelerate and diversify opposition actions quickly — while ensuring it is them who are paralyzed with shock and dread.' More from Rolling Stone Republicans Are Trying to Block My State From Regulating AI Escaped Inmate Asks Lil Wayne, NBA YoungBoy, Meek Mill for Help Elon Calls Trump's 'Big, Beautiful' Bill a 'Disgusting Abomination' Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
