Here are all the agencies that Elon Musk and DOGE have been trying to dismantle so far
(Photo by Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency group has made swift work of the billionaire’s goal to scale back or dismantle much of the federal government, end diversity policies and otherwise further President Donald Trump’s agenda.
DOGE employees, many of whom have no government experience, have been going through data systems, shutting down DEI programs and in some cases, whole agencies.
The White House and Republicans have claimed, without citing details, that DOGE is accountable to the president and will be kept away from conflicts of interest. Musk, though, according to lawmakers and attorneys representing federal workers, has violated laws, union agreements and civil service protections.
Trump has repeatedly backed Musk.
“Elon is doing a great job, he’s finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste,” he told reporters Friday.
One DOGE member, Marko Elez, resigned on Feb. 6 amid reports linking him to an account that allegedly posted racist comments.
The next day Musk sent a poll to his X followers asking if the employee should be reinstated and later claimed he would return but did not provide further details. Musk and Vice President J.D. Vance also attacked the female Wall Street Journal reporter who discovered the posts.
Congressional Democrats have staged protests outside affected agencies, tried to enter them but were prevented from doing so by DOGE and Trump officials, and attempted to issue a congressional subpoena for Musk but were blocked by Republicans.
At the same time, opponents have had success fighting Musk’s and DOGE’s moves in the courts, with judges stopping some of DOGE’s orders.
Here is some of what’s known about the DOGE efforts since Trump was sworn in, although there has been little transparency about Musk’s efforts.
Federal government wide
On Jan. 8, the administration sent out buyout offers to over 2 million federal workers, including employees in the CIA.
On Feb. 5, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. temporarily blocked the offer and extended the deadline to Feb. 10 following lawsuit filed by federal workers’ unions.
NOAA
At least one member of DOGE entered the Department of Commerce — the agency that houses NOAA, the federal agency responsible for forecasting the weather, researching and analyzing climate and weather data and monitoring and tracking extreme weather events like hurricanes. That person was granted access to NOAA’s IT systems, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said on Feb. 5.
DOGE members accessed computer systems to search for staff and data related to diversity programs.
USAID
Musk announced on Feb. 2 that he was going to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is responsible for humanitarian efforts around the globe.
The agency’s website was shut down prior to his announcement, leaving many aid groups and American aid workers abroad in the dark about their programs and future.
A lawsuit was filed on Feb. 6 to prevent the move a day before USAID workers were forced to face being forced from their jobs. A day later Judge Carl J. Nichols, a Trump-nominated federal judge, said announced a temporary restraining order that prevents Trump and the DOGE from placing 2,200 employees on administrative leave.
FAA
The Department of Transportation and Musk announced on Feb. 5 that he had access to Federal Aviation Administration technologies to make “rapid safety upgrades,” the billionaire said on X.
Treasury
The Treasury Department gave Musk and DOGE access to the vast federal payment system responsible for handling trillions of dollars in government expenditures.
However, after three federal unions filed a lawsuit against the move, a federal judge ordered on Feb. 5 that read-only data be given to two DOGE employees.
One of those employees was Elez, who resigned from his post a day later.
On Feb. 8, a New York federal judge granted the states suing over DOGE a temporary restraining order that blocked DOGE from accessing taxpayer records, including the Social Security numbers and bank account information of millions of Americans.
Department of Education
DOGE gained access to the Department of Education, which Trump has vowed to dismantle despite such an action needing congressional approval, according to Democratic leaders.
Senate Democrats said Friday they launched an investigation into reports that DOGE gained access to federal student loan data.
(WASHINGTON) — The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, on Thursday urged Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from any consideration of President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to block his sentencing for his conviction in his hush money case in New York following ABC News’ reporting of a Tuesday phone call between Trump and Alito.
“Yesterday, we learned that President-elect Trump spoke to Justice Alito just hours before Trump asked the Supreme Court to halt his criminal sentencing in New York. Justice Alito brushed off this startling ex parte private phone call and breach of judicial ethics by asserting that this perfectly timed conversation actually regarded his recommendation of a former clerk for an administration job,” Raskin said in a statement.
“Especially when paired with his troubling past partisan ideological activity in favor of Trump, Justice Alito’s decision to have a personal phone call with President Trump—who obviously has an active and deeply personal matter before the court—makes clear that he fundamentally misunderstands the basic requirements of judicial ethics or, more likely, believes himself to be above judicial ethics altogether.”
ABC News reported that the call came just hours before before Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday morning filed an emergency request with the justices asking them to block a New York judge from moving forward with sentencing Trump in his criminal hush money case on Friday.
In his statement, Raskin said, “Justice Alito has made his political leanings and support for the president-elect clear, whether it be his display of flags in apparent support of the January 6th insurrectionists and the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, or his self-proclaimed ideological battle with ‘the Left.'”
“In our democracy, Americans expect their cases to be heard by impartial judges,” he said.
Alito told ABC News the call concerned a job recommendation for one of his former clerks in the new administration.
“William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position,” the justice said Wednesday. “I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump, and he called me yesterday afternoon.”
Alito said that he and Trump did not discuss his hush money case.
“We did not discuss the emergency application he filed today, and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed,” Alito said. “We also did not discuss any other matter that is pending or might in the future come before the Supreme Court or any past Supreme Court decisions involving the President-elect.”
It is not unusual for a sitting justice to offer a job recommendation for a former clerk, but it is rare, court analysts said, for a justice to have such a conversation directly with a sitting president or president-elect, especially one with an active stake in business pending before the court.
The court is expected to weigh in on Trump’s request by Friday morning.
The hush money case is not the only one before the Supreme Court that Trump has an interest in. On Friday, the court will hear a last-ditch challenge to a law that would ban the video-sharing app TikTok on Jan. 19 unless its Chinese-based parent company sells its stake.
Trump asked the court in a filing late last month to pause the divestiture deadline in order to give him a chance to reach a “negotiated resolution” to save the app once he takes office on Jan. 20.
(WASHINGTON) — For the first time in U.S. history, military aircraft were used this past week to deport scores of undocumented migrants from the United States. Middle schools, Trump administration officials say, are now seen as places to target for immigration enforcement operations. And, according to President Trump’s “border czar,” every undocumented immigrant should worry they could be arrested at any time, even if they have no criminal record.
The “border czar,” Tom Homan, says it’s all part of the Trump administration’s effort to send a “clear” message: “There’s consequences [for] entering the country illegally,” he told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz on Sunday.
“If we don’t show there’s consequences, you’re never going to fix the border problem,” he said.
More than 11 million undocumented immigrants are currently estimated to be living in the U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to take unprecedented action to remove as many of them as possible and stem the flow of more migrants coming to the southern border.
In his first several days in office, Trump declared a national emergency at the border, announced an end to the so-called practice of “catch and release” — when migrants claiming asylum are given court dates and then released pending those proceedings — and sought to overturn the long-held Constitutional right of birthright citizenship, a move that immediately faced legal challenges and was at least temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
As for the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the country, Homan said the administration will deport “as many as we can,” starting with threats to public safety threats and national security, Homan said.According to estimates released by House Republicans last year, based on government data, hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants in the country are convicted criminals or have charges pending against them. Government statistics indicate that in the past four years, hundreds of migrants were caught along the southern border with names matching known or suspected terrorists on a government watchlist. And Homan has said more than 2 million people were detected along the border but never captured, so authorities don’t know who they are or what threat some of them could pose.
According to statistics released by the Department of Homeland Security last year, a tiny fraction of those who reached U.S. borders in the prior three years had any kind of criminal record, and the vast majority of them involved nonviolent crimes, such as driving under the influence or previously entering the country illegally.
Homan told ABC News that the Trump administration is only “in the beginning stages” of carrying out its mass deportation plan, making public safety threats and national security threats a “priority,” but “as that aperture opens, there’ll be more arrests nationwide.”
And he warned that there will be “collateral arrests,” especially in the so-called “sanctuary cities” that he says are resistant to helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials locate and arrest undocumented immigrants already in local custody for other crimes.
“Sanctuary cities lock us out of the jails,” said Homan, who led ICE as acting director in Trump’s first administration.
According to Homan, that creates significant safety concerns: When an undocumented immigrant arrested for a serious crime is released by local authorities, instead of being deported, it “endangers the community.”
Nevertheless, Homan said that’s a time when ICE officers would likely make “collateral arrests.”
“When we find him, he’s going to be with others … [and] if they’re in the country illegally, they’re coming too,” he said.
He emphasized that anyone in the country unlawfully is “on the table.”
“It’s not OK to violate the laws of this country,” he said. “We have millions of people standing in line, taking the test, doing their background investigation, paying the fees that want to come in the right way.”
“So if you’re in the country illegally, you got a problem,” he said.
On Monday, during Trump’s first day in office, acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman issued a directive telling immigration authorities they could conduct operations in so-called “sensitive” areas that he said were off-limits during the Biden administration.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” he said in a statement.
Others, however, said the administration was simply creating fear within the immigrant community, with the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration saying that “turning places of care, healing and solace into places of fear and uncertainty … will note make our communities safer.
He said that as they prioritize national security threats and public safety threats, ICE officers might have to even go into schools because “many” members of gangs tied to South and Central America, such as MS-13, are between 14 and 17 years old.
In his interview with ABC News, Homan said that no other law enforcement agency is restricted from entering certain locations to promote public safety in the same way ICE has been.
“Name another agency, another law enforcement agency, that has those type of requirements, that they can’t walk into a school or doctor’s office or a medical campus,” he said. “No other agency is held to those standards.”
“These are well-trained [ICE] officers with a lot of discretion, and when it comes to a sensitive location, there’s still going to be supervisory review,” he said. “But ICE officers should have discretion to decide if a national security threat or a public safety threat [is] in one of these facilities.”
Homan said anyone already in the country unlawfully “should leave,” and those looking to claim asylum should “do it the legal way.”
“Go to the embassy, go to the point of entry,” he said. “You shouldn’t come to this country and ask to get asylum and the first thing you do is break our laws by entering illegally.”
In the meantime, Homan said the Trump administration is using not just the military but the “whole” government, including the Justice Department, to support its mass deportation plan, which allows ICE officers to concentrate on conducting enforcement operations.
But Homan acknowledged that the federal government won’t be able to remove every undocumented immigrant in the U.S., and that his “success is going to be based on what Congress gives us.”
ICE doesn’t currently have enough funding from Congress to detain all of the undocumented immigrants that the Trump administration says it hopes to arrest.
“I’m being realistic,” he said. “We can do what we can with the money we have. We’re going to try to be efficient. But with more money we have, the more we can accomplish.”
“What price [do] you put on national security?” he added. “When you … don’t secure that border, that’s when national security threats enter the country. That’s when sex trafficking goes up. That’s when, you know, that’s when the fentanyl comes in.”
As for what success practically looks like at the end of the Trump administration, Homan said: “Our success every day is taking a public safety threat off the streets or getting a national security threat out of here.”
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have vowed to radically shift American policy from Day 1.
From mass deportations to eliminating the Department of Education, Trump’s policies could impact millions of people and communities across the country. However, experts say there is a big obstacle that will make it harder — if not impossible — for the incoming administration to implement these plans: States and municipalities.
Alison LaCroix, professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, told ABC News that the power to regulate and implement key laws lies strictly within the states and many local leaders have already been working to prepare for a possible future Trump administration.
“The states have a lot of levers in the constitutional system, legal system and other systems,” she said. “This usually comes as a lot of shock to people who don’t know how much power they wield but we’re going to soon find out how valuable they are.”
Other experts who have focused on some of the biggest sectors targeted by Trump, such as public health and immigration, agreed but said they are likely gearing up for a legal and policy fight that could last a long time.
Trump has said he aims to remove at least 1 million immigrants living in the country illegally from the U.S. as soon as possible.
Elora Mukherjee, the director of Columbia Law School’s immigration clinic, told ABC News that states can’t outright act as immigration enforcement for the federal government without an agreement.
“It is the principle that the federal government cannot order local law enforcement to enact federal priorities,” she said.
Democratic governors like Gavin Newsom of California and JB Pritzker of Illinois have vowed not to assist Trump with any mass deportation plan, and Mukherjee said their claims are not empty words.
She said states already showed their power during the first Trump administration by blocking Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering courthouses for potential raids and denying the agency detainers that would have kept jailed immigrants in custody longer without an arraignment.
She added that any attempts by the Republican-controlled Congress to change immigration and deportation laws to take away rights from the states will take some time and likely be met with resistance even among Republican members who think it is too extreme.
“The Trump administration will issue many executive orders, but a large number that will be illegal and unconstitutional,” Mukherjee added.
At the same time, Mukherjee said that conservative states and municipalities may bolster anti-immigrant policies and make it harder for migrants and asylum seekers to gain a path to citizenship.
Sixty counties and police districts, many of them in Florida, have entered into 287(g) agreements with ICE, in which local law enforcement can conduct immigration policies on behalf of the federal government such as executing warrants and detaining undocumented immigrants, according to Mukherjee.
Florida also passed SB 1718 last year which cracks down on undocumented immigration with several provisions, including making it illegal to transport undocumented immigrants and requiring hospitals to ask patients for their immigration status.
Mukherjee stressed that states cannot try to enforce their own laws in other jurisdictions due to the 1842 Supreme Court case Prigg vs. Pennsylvania. That case, which overturned the conviction of a man convicted under a state law that prevented slave-catching, held that while federal law supersedes state law, states are not required to use their resources to uphold federal laws.
“It’s extremely difficult and illegal for one state to impose their laws onto another,” Mukherjee said.
Even when it comes to executive orders, Mukherjee said the laws are mostly on the side of states and municipalities.
Trump’s “border czar” choice Tom Homan has already threatened to go after states and cities that refuse to comply with the president-elect’s deportation plans, including arresting mayors.
Mukherjee said there is no legal mechanism or modern legal precedent that allows the federal government to incarcerate local leaders for not adhering to an administration’s policy.
“Sanctuary city laws are entirely allowed within the U.S. Constitution,” she said. “The 10th Amendment is extremely clear. The powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people. This is a bedrock principle of U.S. constitutional law.”
Public education State education officials are in the same boat when it comes to federal oversight, experts said.
Although Trump and other allies have made it clear that they want to eliminate or weaken the federal Department of Education, funding for schools and education programs lies mostly in the hands of state legislatures and local school boards, according to Alice O’Brien, the general counsel for the National Education Association.
“Those campaign promises in reality are much harder to achieve,” O’Brien told ABC News. “They would require federal legislation to accomplish.”
Federal oversight has little control over local school curriculum policies, she added.
O’Brien noted that much of the federal oversight on public schools lies outside of the jurisdiction of the Department of Education. For example, state school districts must adhere to laws set forth at the federal level such as non-discrimination against race and religion and disabilities.
“States and school systems can not run in any way that conflicts with the federal Constitution,” O’Brien said.
When it comes to funding, although the federal DOE does provide funding as a floor to many school districts, it is a small fraction compared to the funding that comes from city and state coffers, O’Brien explained.
Public health “It really comes down to a state-by-state basis in terms of how much dollars are allocated to the schools,” she said. “Ultimately it really comes down to how much money the state budgets have.”
Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association and former Maryland health secretary, told ABC News that state public health offices operate under the same localized jurisdiction and thus would have more autonomy on health policies.
Trump’s pick for the head of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been a staunch promoter of anti-vaccination policies and has pushed for the end of fluoride in water supplies.
Benjamin said he is worried about the effects of having someone with no professional health experience and public dismissiveness of proven health policies, however, he remarked that states and municipalities still hold immense power in implementing policies.
Georges noted that fluoride levels in the water supply are dictated at a local level, and many counties have chosen not to implement them. Federal health agencies can make recommendations but cannot block a municipality from implementing fluoridation, he said.
“There is no fiscal penalty for not following it,” Benjamin said of federal recommendations.
The same rules govern local vaccination requirements, he added.
“[The federal government does] control vaccine mandates at the federal level, with the federal workforce, but they don’t control the bulk of childhood mandates,” Benjamin said.
He noted that the country saw the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of state-run public health systems during the two years that COVID-19 hit the nation and the rollout of the vaccines. Republican and Democratic states all instituted shelter-in-place and social distancing rules during the peak of cases, Benjamin said.
“I do think we have a wait-and-see attitude,” he said.
In the meantime, several states have taken measures to bolster their state health policies, particularly when it comes to reproductive rights, through legislative action and ballot measures.
Power in state prosecutors One of the biggest ways that states will be able to “Trump-proof” their laws and policies is through state prosecutors and the courts, LaCroix said.
“We will see a lot of arguments in local government and what they can do,” she said.
Mukherjee said several state attorneys general were able to take Trump to court during his first administration and push back against immigration proposals such as his ban on residents from Muslim countries and deportation plans.
Mukherjee said despite the increase in Trump-backed judges in the federal courts, there is still the rule of law when it comes to immigration. For example, earlier this year, a federal judge struck down the provision in Florida’s SB 1718 that threatens felony charges for people who transport an undocumented immigrant.
U.S. District Judge Roy Altman, a Trump-appointed judge, issued an injunction against that provision stating that immigration-related enforcement was not in the state’s power.
“It will be harder this time around to win sweeping victories for immigrants and non-citizens … but federal judges across party lines reined in the worst abuses of the Trump administration the first time around,” she said.
LaCroix echoed that statement and said that partisanship can only go so far, especially when it comes to laws enshrined in the state and federal constitutions.
“Judges still have to give reasons for what they do and ‘because our party is in charge’ doesn’t hold weight,” she said.
