Dogecoin enthusiasts reveal biggest fear after Trump-Musk fallout
Employees of the Department of Government Efficiency are worried Elon Musk's infamous chainsaw to government waste may come for them after his falling out with Donald Trump. Musk and Trump's bromance showed signs of unraveling when the SpaceX boss departed the White House but their differences were made apparent publicly over the president's 'big, beautiful bill.'
The ex-'First Buddy' has spent the days since torching the relationship, everything from publicly slamming Trump's spending bill to claiming the president is in The Epstein Files (which he quietly later deleted). Trump has also knifed a key Musk ally by pulling his nomination to become NASA administrator. That has many of those who remain at the Department of Government Efficiency worried that they may 'get DOGE'd' themselves, as group chats between employees have reportedly lit up wondering where their future in government lies.
As former DOGE software engineer Sahil Lavingia (pictured left) said, he and many of the people attempting to streamline the government were already allies or employees of Musk. 'I worry with Elon gone, no one will join, and it will just slowly fade away,' Lavingia told the Wall Street Journal. Even if they remain, without Musk, the organization that claimed it has already cut $180 billion in government waste may never be the same. 'Working there felt like pushing a boulder up a mountain, and it'll just fall back down if the work doesn't continue,' Lavingia added.
For now, the Trump White House remains proud of the department's work and looks for it to continue. 'Trump's success through DOGE is undisputed, and [the president's] work will continue to yield historic results,' spokesperson Harrison Fields said. However, sources told WSJ that many are worried that at the very least, DOGE will see massive staffing cuts without Musk's protection.
Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, seemed to confirm that they are now at the mercy of whomever is in charge of the department that they were hired to cut waste from. 'Cabinet agencies that are in charge of the DOGE consultants that work for them are fundamentally in control of DOGE,' he told Congress earlier this week. The fallout between Trump and Musk - who were political allies for a little less than a year - started in recent weeks when the billionaire started resisting Republicans' 'Big, Beautiful Bill,' arguing that the spending wiped out DOGE's cost-cutting efforts.
However, there were signs of the strain between the two on the day Musk left the White House, as Trump pulled the nomination for Jared Isaacman (pictured) to be the new NASA administrator despite reports he was a shoe-in for confirmation. Isaacman, 42, had his nomination pulled after a 'thorough review' of his 'prior associations,' Trump said. He believes the nomination was withdrawn to coincide with his friend Musk parting ways with the administration and was pushed for by Sergio Gor, an anti-Musk White House official. Then, on Thursday, when Trump was supposed to be hosting the new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office, he was asked about Musk's recent criticism. From there the dam broke. 'Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will any more, I was surprised,' Trump told reporters.
The president suggested that Musk was angry - not over the bill ballooning the deficit - but because the Trump administration has pulled back on electric vehicle mandates, which negatively impacted Tesla, and replaced the Musk-approved nominee to lead NASA, which could hinder SpaceX's government contracts. 'And you know, Elon's upset because we took the EV mandate, which was a lot of money for electric vehicles, and they're having a hard time the electric vehicles and they want us to pay billions of dollars in subsidy,' Trump said. 'I know that disturbed him.' Musk posted to X as Trump's Q&A with reporters was ongoing. 'Whatever,' the billionaire wrote.
'Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill,' he advised. 'In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that [is] both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this!' Musk continued. 'Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill. Slim and beautiful is the way.' The spat quickly turned personal with Musk then posting that Trump would have lost the 2024 election had it not been for the world's richest man - him. Musk publicly endorsed Trump on the heels of the July 13th assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania and poured around $290 million into the Republican's campaign.
The billionaire also joined Trump on the campaign trail when he returned to the site of the Butler shooting in early October, a month before Election Day. After his meeting with Merz, Trump continued to throw punches online. He asserted that he had asked Musk to leave his administration and said he was 'CRAZY!' 'Elon was "wearing thin," I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!' Trump wrote. It was after that post that he then threatened to pull SpaceX and Tesla's government contracts.
Musk then taunted Trump to act. 'This just gets better and better,' he wrote. 'Go ahead, make my day …' In a follow-up post, Musk said he would 'begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.' Trump continued his 'crazy' remarks on Friday when speaking with CNN Anchor and Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash. He said: 'I'm not even thinking about Elon. He's got a problem. The poor guy's got a problem.' The tech billionaire also claimed Trump appeared in files relating to disgraced Jeffrey Epstein in a post on his social media platform X as the pair traded blows in a sensational public row. Musk gave no evidence for the claim, which has since been deleted, and the White House dismissed the allegation. On Sunday, Trump said his relationship with Musk was over and rejected the idea of repairing their relationship.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
24 minutes ago
- The Independent
Veterans slam Trump's ‘political' deployment of Marines and National Guard to LA: ‘Citizens are not enemy combatants'
Donald Trump 's deployment of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles is a thinly veiled 'authoritarian' and politically motivated attempt to inflame protests and crush dissent, veterans and legal experts warn. Trump is relying on federal law that allows the president to call up the National Guard to respond to domestic unrest, an action known commonly as federalizing the normally state-authorized Guard. Even then, those troops have only a limited mission in supporting federal law enforcement agents and federal buildings at the center of protests against the administration's mass deportation agenda. But now, with his National Guard deployment combined with sending some 700 Marines to L.A., veterans groups, military law experts and Democratic officials fear the president is testing the limits of his authority to send active-duty military into American streets — and violating service members' commitments to stay out of domestic politics. 'When I joined the Marine Corps, I swore an oath — not to a person, not to a party, but to the Constitution,' said Marine veteran Janessa Goldbeck, CEO of the Vet Voice Foundation, a national nonpartisan advocacy group. 'What we're seeing now is a deliberate effort to turn the military into a political prop,' she told The Independent. Trump is not deploying troops for national defense but 'domestic intimidation,' she added. 'That's not just just politicizing the military — it's crossing a dangerous line,' Goldbeck told The Independent. Trump's military threats are 'how authoritarian regimes take power' and signal the president's wider ambitions for 'the weaponization of the military for political gain,' according to veterans advocacy group Common Defense. 'The militarized response to protests in Los Angeles is a dangerous escalation that undermines civil rights and betrays the principles we swore to uphold,' Army veteran and Common Defense political director Naveed Shah said. 'The idea that Marines would be deployed to suppress the very people we're meant to protect is a disgrace. It's un-American,' Marine Corps veteran and Common Defense organizer Jojo Sweatt added. The last time a president federalized the National Guard against the will of a state governor was in 1965, when then-President Lyndon Johnson deployed troops to protect civil rights advocates marching from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery — two weeks after the violence of 'Bloody Sunday' on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Johnson did so after Alabama's segregationist Gov. George Wallace told the president that his state 'refuses to provide for the safety and welfare' of the marchers, according to Johnson's proclamation. But 60 years later, Trump is deploying troops not to defend civil rights activists but to protect law enforcement and federal property. Activating troops against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom 'is bad for all Americans concerned about freedom of speech and states' rights,' retired Major Gen. Randy Manner said in a statement to Fox News. 'There are over a million badged and trained members of law enforcement in this country for the governor to ask for help if he needs it,' he added. 'While this is presently a legal order, it tramples the governor's rights and obligations to protect his people. This is an inappropriate use of the National Guard and is not warranted.' Trump's open-ended memo invoking military deployment does not single out Los Angeles or even California. It empowers the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 'to employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary.' Carrie A. Lee, a former associate professor at the U.S. Army War College, called Trump's actions 'massive overreach' and 'crazy broad,' seemingly paving the way for the administration 'to use military force against protestors on American soil anywhere they want.' Invoking 'protective power' authority without any geographical limits effectively creates an unprecedented and 'dangerous' nationwide order, according to Lee. Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act, though the president and administration officials have repeatedly labeled protesters 'insurrectionists' and 'seditionists' — sparking fears that the president is laying the groundwork for mass deployment of military assets across the country. Instead, Trump is currently relying on a far more limited statute that taps his 'protective power' authority, which does not allow the military to conduct law enforcement activities — unlike the Insurrection Act, which is excluded from federal statute that bars federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement. 'The public must be laser focused on seeing the extent to which Secretary Hegseth adheres to these historically recognized limitations,' according to University of Houston Law Center professor Chris Mirasola, a former attorney-advisor at the Department of Defense Office of General Counsel. If troops are pulled into violent confrontations, Trump could use those incidents to justify invoking the Insurrection Act, opening the door for active-duty military to face off against Americans not just in the streets of Los Angeles but across the country. 'This is an unnecessary, unprecedented and predictable misuse of military power against American citizens,' according to Army veteran Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. 'And Trump has now thrust our troops into the middle of the most explosive issue in America,' he added. 'And this is likely just the start. We could see a clash and crisis between Trump and governors and mayors across America like we've never seen.' A lawsuit from watchdog group American Oversight called the deployment 'an opening salvo in a coordinated national strategy and not simply an isolated incident.' The lawsuit is seeking records from the Trump administration regarding the use of military assets in immigration enforcement and 'potential authorities his administration would invoke to authorize federalizing law enforcement.' 'Deploying the military to quash protests over the administration's inhumane and legally dubious immigration policies — especially over the objection of elected state leaders — is a dangerous, though unfortunately predictable, escalation by the Trump administration,' according to American Oversight executive director Chioma Chukwu. 'If left unchecked, this abuse of power under thin legal pretense can be readily replicated across other states in the future,' he said in a statement. 'Americans have a right to know who authorized it, what rationale was offered, and not just whether the government crossed a line — but by how much that line has been obliterated.'
NBC News
26 minutes ago
- NBC News
Harvard gets new legal backing from 5 Ivies and over 12,000 alumni
Twenty four universities, including five Ivy League schools, and more than 12,000 alumni took measures to back Harvard University in its legal battle against the Trump administration, which has threatened it with slashing billions of dollars in grants. Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania, along with several other schools, filed an amicus brief on Monday in support of the nation's oldest university, arguing that the funding freeze would impact more than just Harvard, due to the interconnectedness of scientific research, and would ultimately hinder American innovation and economic growth. Also on Monday, the group of 12,041 Harvard alumni filed a separate brief describing the withholding of funds as a 'reckless and unlawful' attempt to assert control over the school and other higher education institutions. 'The escalating campaign against Harvard threatens the very foundation of who we are as a nation,' the alumni said in the brief. 'We embrace our responsibility to stand up for our freedoms and values, to safeguard liberty and democracy, and to serve as bulwarks against these threats to the safety and well-being of all.' The amicus briefs aim to provide expertise or insight to the court, but the schools and individuals are not parties in the lawsuit itself. The filings come after Harvard in April rejected the government's list of 10 demands, including auditing viewpoints of the student body, a move that the administration says is aimed at addressing antisemitism on campus. After the government threatened to freeze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and $60 million 'in multi-year contract value,' Harvard hit back with a lawsuit. The brief filed by the universities included other prominent institutions like Georgetown, Johns Hopkins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The only Ivy League schools missing were Cornell and Columbia universities. The schools argued that the partnership between the government and academia has long led to critical advancements, from the The Human Genome Project to the Covid-19 vaccine. And that funding cuts to one school could endanger research at others. Harvard, MIT and Princeton, for example, have received funding from the National Institutes of Health for a project that could potentially yield tools to treat Alzheimer's disease. 'The work cannot continue at individual sites; MIT cannot use machine learning to uncover patterns, for example, without data from Princeton and Harvard,' the brief said. The universities said in the brief that the cuts would only cause more harm to the United States' ability to compete in science and academia. 'These cuts to research funding risk a future where the next pathbreaking innovation — whether it is a cure for cancer or Alzheimer's, a military technology, or the next Internet — is discovered beyond our shores, if at all,' the brief said. Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT, said in a letter to the school's community that it was critical to make a legal argument against the funding cuts. 'Although the value to the public of federally funded university research feels obvious to us at MIT, we felt compelled to make the case for its countless benefits to the court and, in effect, to the American people,' Kornbluth said. The Harvard alumni filed their brief in support of the school's motion for a summary judgement submitted last week. If granted, the summary judgment would allow the court to decide the case without a full trial. The alumni, which include comedian Conan O'Brien, author Margaret E. Atwood and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., wrote in the brief that the administration's 'end goal is to narrow our freedoms to learn, teach, think, and act, and to claim for itself the right to dictate who may enjoy those freedoms.' The alumni also slammed the administration's concerns over antisemitism as rationale over the funding freeze. 'We unequivocally condemn antisemitism and every other form of discrimination and hate, which have no place at Harvard or anywhere else in our society,' the alumni said in its brief. 'Yet charges of antisemitism — particularly without due process and proper bases and findings by the Government — should not be used as a pretext for the illegal and unconstitutional punishment and takeover of an academic institution by the Government.' The government's demands on Harvard, the alumni said in the brief, 'have little or nothing to do with combating antisemitism' or any other form of discrimination on campus. 'Rather, its demands stifle the very engagement, teaching, and research that bring communities together, heighten our understanding of one another, and advance solutions that directly benefit us all,' the brief said. The show of legal support comes amid a monthslong back-and-forth between the administration and Harvard University. Most recently, the school sued the administration after Trump issued a proclamation last week denying visas for foreign students trying to come to the U.S. to attend the prestigious school.
The Guardian
27 minutes ago
- The Guardian
People in Los Angeles: share your reaction to the protests and military mobilization
Los Angeles is reeling after a series of immigration raids led to widespread protests over the weekend and Donald Trump took the extraordinary step of ordering thousands of US military troops to descend on the city, a move that California leaders have decried as 'inflammatory'. Raids on Friday in areas of the city with large Latino populations led to mainly peaceful demonstrations, but the protests turned violent when federal immigration authorities used flashbang grenades and teargas against demonstrators. Over the weekend, fiery and chaotic scenes played out in downtown LA, Compton and Paramount, with dozens of people arrested. Donald Trump has been accused of intentionally fanning the flames with his decision on Monday to send in 700 marines and another 2,000 national guard troops to LA, adding to 2,000 already sent to the city on Saturday. While Trump has said the deployment was essential for maintaining order, the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, accused the administration of using the city as an 'experiment', while Gavin Newsom, California's governor, called the decision to send in troops without his permission 'purposefully inflammatory'. We would like to hear from people living in LA about the latest events in the city. How do you feel about the immigration raids? What is your reaction to the national guard and marines being deployed? You can send us your thoughts on recent events in LA using this form. Please share your story if you are 18 or over, anonymously if you wish. For more information, please see our terms of service and privacy policy. Your responses, which can be anonymous, are secure as the form is encrypted and only the Guardian has access to your contributions. We will only use the data you provide us for the purpose of the feature and we will delete any personal data when we no longer require it for this purpose. For true anonymity please use our SecureDrop service instead. If you're having trouble using the form, click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.
