Hi there. The country is changing — and so is this newsletter. We usually go deep on a different subject each night. But for the next few weeks, we’re going to stick with one big story: Elon Musk’s efforts to slash the federal bureaucracy and upend the nation’s politics.
We’ll explain what he’s doing, what it means and why. I’ll be your host, as always, and I’ll be joined by an all-star cast of reporters from our Washington and Technology teams, who will help us make sense of this moment. Let’s get started. Today, we have a case study of the freezing of one agency.
At first, things at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau seemed eerily calm.
The Biden-appointed director of the agency, which was created after the 2009 financial crisis to regulate banks and other lenders, was not immediately fired by President Trump. The lawyers at the agency continued with their business. In late January, they said a remittance company was misleading customers about its fees and ordered it to pay a $2.5 million fine.
And then the chaos began.
On the morning of Feb. 1 — a Saturday — the director was dismissed, as my colleague Stacy Cowley, who has followed every twist and turn of this story, reported. By the next Friday, Feb. 7, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and a close Trump adviser, was installed as the C.F.P.B.’s acting director. Representatives from the new Department of Government Efficiency, which is led by Elon Musk and is not a formal executive-branch department, arrived and got access to the computer systems.
Musk posted a message on his X account: “CFPB RIP.”
Musk’s cost-cutting team has been operating with little transparency. Members don’t announce what they’re doing, who’s doing it or how. So it’s worth understanding what’s happening at the C.F.P.B., both because of the direct impact on the agency’s work and because it’s a glimpse into the playbook that Musk and his team, working with Trump officials like Vought, seem to be writing in real time.
The panic strategy
Last Saturday, Vought ordered the nearly 1,700 people who work at the agency to stop much of their work. The edict prompted widespread fear and deep concern about the agency’s future. People worried that their work phones and computers were being tracked. One employee I spoke with, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation, felt panic, and then remembered that Vought had spoken in 2023 of his intent to demoralize workers in the civil service.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought had said.
Some employees tried to plug away at their jobs. Two of them told me that after they saw Musk’s post on X about his team’s preference for working on weekends, when federal offices are closed, they decided they would do the same. On Saturday, they saw three employees from Musk’s team in the bureau’s basement, working in conference rooms with the windows papered over.
The confusion
Those two employees, who also spoke with me on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, returned to the office on Sunday, about an hour and a half after the agency’s chief operating officer sent an email informing the staff that the offices would be closed for the week.
By 4:30 p.m., security officers in the lobby were telling employees who showed up that they wouldn’t be allowed inside. The two employees and others who were already inside worked to collect personal belongings that people worried they might not be able to access again. As their colleagues who weren’t in the office messaged about what they needed, the employees gathered clothes, family photos and a breast pump.
Upstairs, some of the employees who were already inside stuck signs in the window. “CFPB fights for you,” one said.
Dismissals and departures
A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about the C.F.P.B. The agency was founded in 2011 after Elizabeth Warren, now a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, pressed President Obama to tighten controls on banks as part of a sweeping financial reform bill in 2010. Republicans and the financial industry have targeted it for years, arguing that it is unaccountable and has overstepped its mandate.
Musk has his own connection to the agency. The bureau has a database containing hundreds of complaints about his car company, Tesla. The agency also regulates digital payment platforms — something Musk is developing at X, my colleagues noted today.
For now, employees have been told not to do “any work task” and the agency’s enforcement work is frozen. The enforcement division received an email on Monday telling it to stand down on any continuing work because there would be “new enforcement priorities.”
On Tuesday, two key leaders at the agency resigned. Recently hired employees — those still in their “probationary” period — found they could no longer access their email or other work systems.
One of them was Taylor Sonne, 27, a compliance examiner living in Houston who had learned about the bureau in college and made it his mission to work there. Five minutes after he realized was locked out, he received a message to his personal email address saying he had been fired because, according to the letter, the agency had found he was “not fit for continued employment.” Other probationary employees were fired, too.
Sonne had just been promoted, he said, and had only one month to go before his probationary period was over. He said his termination seemed to take even his direct supervisor by surprise.
“It was demeaning,” he told me. “At the end of the day, I just want to do my job.”
It’s not clear what will happen next. Trump has nominated a new director. But the disruption has created lingering questions about the future of the agency and its mission.
AGENCY REPORT
Accidental access at Treasury
After Musk’s team got access to a payment system at the Treasury Department, the Trump administration claimed the staff members could only see the data, not alter it.
But my colleague Andrew Duehren reported yesterday that a young ally of Elon Musk and former Treasury Department appointee had been accidentally given the ability to make changes to a sensitive payment database.
A court filing revealed that, on Feb. 6, Treasury officials found that Marko Elez had been given “read/write” permissions to one of the payment databases. Elez, a 25-year-old former employee of X, resigned from the team last week after being linked to racist social media posts.
That access was revoked, according to the filing, and the incident is being investigated.
More on government agencies
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Layoffs have been ordered at the General Services Administration, two people with knowledge of the situation told our reporters.
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Musk’s cost-cutting team is at the Department of Labor — and that could really matter for the U.S. economy, according to Politico.
MEANWHILE on X
Musk vs. the courts
Musk rarely does interviews, but he is using his X account as a megaphone. My colleague Kate Conger, the co-author of a book called “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” guides you through his most important messages in recent days.
Right now, the strongest check on Musk’s power may be the federal courts. Looking at his feed on X, Musk seems to understand this.
In recent days, as courts have blocked some of this work, Musk has called for some judges to lose their jobs.
On Wednesday, Musk reposted a message from Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, calling for “corrupt” judges to be impeached. Musk added an American flag emoji. He shared several other messages from X users that accused the judges of activism and overreach.
He also started a poll, asking his followers to reply “yes” or “no” to the prompt: “Federal judges who repeatedly abuse their authority to obstruct the will of the people via their elected representatives should be impeached.”
Musk has bristled at judicial oversight in the past, and gone to great lengths to avoid scrutiny from the courts. He focused particular ire at a Delaware judge who has overseen several lawsuits against him and his businesses, using his posts on X to accuse her of corruption. He also reincorporated several of his businesses in Texas to avoid being dragged into her courtroom as part of future litigation.
Other notable posts:
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Musk has been celebrating his rising power. On Wednesday, he shared photos and videos of himself in the Oval Office with President Trump. Musk is walking a fine line with Trump, who doesn’t like to be overshadowed by his aides. Musk’s feed suggests his strategy to this dilemma is effusive flattery. “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man,” he recently posted.
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He also celebrated a milestone when, for the first time, he had more than 217 million followers on X.
BY THE NUMBERS
The head count
My colleagues are tracking the numbers behind Trump and Musk’s attempts to shrink the government payroll. Their regularly updated tally is here.
Got a Tip?
The Times offers several ways to send important information confidentially.
MUSK’s World
An origin story
Antonio Gracias, a Silicon Valley investor who is one of Musk’s closest friends, recently pulled back the curtain a bit on the earliest days of the Department of Government Efficiency. His description reveals Musk’s immediate frustration with government accounting.
On the “All-In” podcast, Gracias said he was at Mar-a-Lago with Musk during the transition, “trying to track through how does the money actually flow.”
“No one could tell us how it actually flows. Where is it going out? People didn’t know.”
“How can the government not know how much money it’s spending?” he asked, bewildered. “Just hit the button on the computer and figure it out. The problem is — that button doesn’t exist.” (According to the Treasury Department, the federal government spent $6.75 trillion last year.)
Gracias said he was still somewhat involved in Musk’s project. “I’m in and out a little bit, and trying to help where I can, but I’m not there full time,” he said.
you shouldn’t miss
How Musk is redefining ‘doxxing’
My colleague Ken Bensinger takes a sharp look at how Musk and other Trump allies have suggested that journalists who report on their work are “doxxing.” Ken writes:
For years, journalists have written about the social media posts of government employees to help reveal the positions, motivations and actions of public officials.
But when a journalist recently trained that same lens on Elon Musk’s new government efficiency program, the billionaire suggested that the reporting might be illegal, joining other powerful figures connected to the Trump administration who have made similar claims in recent weeks.
Ken notes that First Amendment groups are pushing back, pressing one Trump official to explain what laws were violated.
Read more here.
The post When Musk’s Team Comes to Your Door appeared first on New York Times.
