Trump’s Reaction to Court Order Blocking DOGE Is as Ominous as It Gets

Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans spent the weekend openly attacking the federal judiciary and, by extension, the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Elon Musk took the first shot early Sunday morning with an X post, angrily reacting to a federal judge blocking his“Department of Government Efficiency” from accessing Treasury Department records.

“A corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached NOW!” Musk posted.

Later, JD Vance chimed in with his own attack on the federal judiciary.

“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vance posted.

Trump initially feigned ignorance when a reporter aboard Air Force One asked him about Vance’s statements later in the day, even attacking the journalist’s media outlet.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Neither do you,” Trump said, asking the reporter who he was with. When the reporter replied “HuffPost, Sir,” Trump replied, “Oh, no wonder. I thought they died.”

Trump gave a more complete answer to another reporter.

“We’re very disappointed with the judges that would make such a ruling. But we have a long way to go. We have to look, we have to find all of the fraud that’s going on. We have tremendous fraud, tremendous waste, and tremendous abuse, and theft, by the way,” Trump said. “And the day you’re not allowed to look for theft and fraud, et cetera, then we don’t have much of a country. So, no judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision. It’s a disgrace.”

These reactions are very worrying for the constitutional framework of the United States, where the separation of powers is supposed to provide a check from the judicial branch, represented by the courts, against the executive branch of the president and vice president. A billionaire oligarch like Musk is not supposed to have authority in the federal government, even if he is the world’s richest man, who funded the president’s campaign to the tune of $250 million.

Trump and Vance are floating the idea of ignoring federal court rulings against them, which would create a constitutional crisis in the United States. The conservative Supreme Court may not even step in to defend the separation of powers, and they’ve already granted Trump near-immunity. The Republican-led Congress will never even consider impeaching the president, either. What is to be done?

Kendrick Lamar’s very normal Super Bowl halftime show had the MAGA faithful pearl-clutching and conspiracy theorizing.

The iconic Pulitzer Prize and 22-time Grammy winner livened up an otherwise uncompetitive game with a classic performance that centered hip-hop and Black American culture—and featured the likes of Samuel L. Jackson (dressed in American flag garb as Uncle Sam), Serena Williams, and SZA. It only makes sense that right-wingers hated everything about it.

“The halftime show you just watched is clearly the regime’s response to Trump’s historic gains with black men,” shamed former Representative Matt Gaetz wrote on X, even though Lamar was announced as the halftime show performer months before Election Day.

“Raise your hand if you survived the black nationalist Super Bowl LIX halftime show,” right-wing commentator Eric Daugherty wrote on X, even as Lamar’s stage and costume designs were rife with American flag imagery.

“Hey NFL, Trump won. We no longer let talentless mumbling pagan satanic cultists do halftime shows and pretend like people like it,” MAGA media shill Benny Johnson said. “Thanks, everyone.”

In reality, the halftime show was fine, and Kendrick Lamar is an excellent rapper. These people took issue with the show because it didn’t fit into their narrow “post-woke” vision of America—but neither does a very large chunk of this country. This isn’t the first time Kendrick Lamar has performed at the Super Bowl, and it isn’t the first time Blackness has been a major theme of the show. And yet MAGA continues to cry about it.

Elon Musk announced Friday that the Department of Government Efficiency employee who quit for a range of racist social media posts will be reinstated.

Musk made a series of social media posts expressing his support for Marko Elez, the DOGE staffer who wrote in September that he couldn’t be paid to “marry outside [his] ethnicity,” and that people should “normalize Indian hate.” Musk also fired off postings attacking the journalist who had brought the racist posts to light, leading Elez to resign.  

“Bring back @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?” Musk asked in one post on X, attaching a poll where users could vote. 

The vice president of the United States, who is married to an Indian woman and has three children with her, decided to weigh in on the racist boss’s pitch to reinstall the racist employee. Spoiler alert: He thought it was a great idea!

“I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Vance wrote on X. “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back.”

Crucially, the person in question posted these things in September 2024, and is currently 25 years old. Not exactly a kid. 

“If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that,” Vance wrote, drawing a clear distinction between someone who is racist and someone who is a “bad dude.” Vance has actually been posting on X a lot recently, after he seemingly vanished from all governance the moment he entered the White House. 

Less than an hour later, Donald Trump was asked about Vance’s complicity during a press conference. He replied, “Well, I don’t know about the particular thing, but if the vice president said that—did you say that?—I’m with the vice president!”

Musk took Vance’s approval as marching orders. “He will be brought back,” Musk wrote on X. “To err is human, to forgive divine.” But given all of his support for Elez, it seems that to Musk, there wasn’t much to forgive in the first place. 

Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, who has been gentle on Musk as the representative of Silicon Valley, responded to Vance’s endorsement with a reminder that the vice president had been personally implicated in the hateful rhetoric of Musk’s employee. 

“Are you going to tell him to apologize for saying “Normalize Indian hate” before this rehire? Just asking for the sake of both of our kids,” Khanna wrote in a post. 

Vance, who clearly doesn’t believe in the dangers of hate speech, responded with a multipost tirade. 

“For the sake of both of our kids? Grow up,” he replied. “Racist trolls on the internet, while offensive, don’t threaten my kids. You know what does? A culture that denies grace to people who make mistakes. A culture that encourages congressmen to act like whiny children.”

In a separate post, Vance said he was more concerned that his children would spend their lives afraid to tell stupid jokes “that they later think are wrong or even gross” than face racialized hatred that is forgiven by his own administration. 

(Again, since entering office, he’s had a lot of time to tweet.) 

Khanna wasn’t being whiny; he was raising a real concern. There has been a surge in anti–South Asian hate since January 2023, with threats of violence against Asian Americans increasing by 17 percent. The majority of that hate has been directed at South Asian Americans specifically, according to a report from Stop AAPI Hate. 

Musk’s decision to reinstall his racist employee comes as concerns about DOGE’s sweeping access to sensitive information and startling lack of oversight reached new heights Friday. 

Donald Trump doesn’t care that Elon Musk and his nerd squad have access to the private information of millions of Americans.

During a press conference Friday, Trump was asked about the Department of Government Efficiency’s unfettered access to trillion-dollar payment systems such as the U.S. Treasury Department, as well as the personal information of millions of Americans, including their Social Security numbers, home addresses, and bank account numbers.

“Why does DOGE need all of that?” asked one reporter.

“Well, it doesn’t, but they get it very easily,” Trump admitted. “I mean, we don’t have very good security in our country, and they get it very easily.”

Trump appeared completely unbothered by the massive intrusion on the privacy of U.S. citizens—in fact, he seemed to suggest it was the fault of government agencies for not better concealing this information from Musk’s goons.

Trump rambled on, describing how DOGE needed to audit certain investments the government had made because they were “obscene, dangerous, bad, very costly.”

Concerns over DOGE’s “insider threat” have only grown in recent days, as they take over agency after agency, acquiring access to more troves of sensitive information. Trump has already said he couldn’t care less about Musk’s conflicts of interest, and the White House said that the DOGE czar would self-determine what projects were appropriate for him to work on.

As DOGE continues to extend its reach, members of Musk’s team are simultaneously being revealed to be a group of twenty-something failsons.

Musk announced Friday that he would be rehiring the DOGE employee who was fired over a range of racist posts because, as he wrote, “to err is human, to forgive divine.” Still, on X, Musk waged war against the journalist who reported on the posts in the first place, so it’s considerably more likely that, to him, there was nothing to forgive.

Additionally, Bloomberg reported Friday that another one of the 19-year-old wards on Musk’s DOGE team had been fired from an internship after he was accused of sharing company secrets with a competitor. Seems like the perfect person to have access to a trove of sensitive information, right?

Shocking: The 19-year old DOGE goon with a questionable résumé who goes by “big balls” online was fired from his last real gig for leaking company information online.

Bloomberg is reporting that Edward Coristine was fired from cybersecurity firm Path Network in 2022 for “leaking internal information to the competitors.” Now Coristine has access to the most sensitive internal information there is, the federal government’s, and he has no confirmed clearance that legitimizes that access.

“I can confirm that Edward Coristine’s brief contract was terminated after the conclusion of an internal investigation into the leaking of proprietary company information that coincided with his tenure,” a spokesperson for Path Network told Bloomberg on Thursday.

“I had access to every single machine,” Coristine wrote on Discord just weeks after being fired. But he swore he “never exploited it because it’s just not me.” He also posted that he had done “nothing contractually wrong” at Path Network. The comments were made in a Discord channel dedicated to one of Path’s competitor companies.

Several people who knew Coristine said they were confused as to how he ascended to such a consequential position and nervous as to how he’ll handle the enormous responsibility that comes with it, given that he could not handle it at Path Network.

This all comes as DOGE strikes an antagonistic chord with the federal government, taking over government buildings, telling federal employees to stop showing up to work, and locking out elected representatives.

“Your data has been breached. Donald Trump gave unvetted teenagers access to your most private information,” Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell wrote on X. “We are fighting now in the courts. And, shortly, Democrats will use our votes—in government funding bill—to stop this madness and secure your data.”

Musk, DOGE, and Coristine have yet to comment.

The Department of Energy on Friday tried to clarify why one of Elon Musk’s DOGE underlings was granted access to the department’s I.T. systems despite opposition from its general counsel and cybersecurity offices. 

CNN reports that Luke Farritor, 23, whose previous work experience consists of an internship at Musk’s company SpaceX was granted access by Energy Secretary Chris Wright Wednesday. The department’s legal counsel and chief information offices, which govern I.T. and cybersecurity, “said this is a bad idea,” according to a source who spoke with CNN, given that Farritor hadn’t received a standard background check. 

“He’s not cleared to be in DOE, on our systems. None of those things have been done,” said the unnamed source. 

While Farrior was only granted access to basic I.T., including email and Microsoft 365, according to CNN’s sources, the report still rang alarm bells as the agency is in charge of the country’s nuclear arsenal, among other aspects of American energy policy and production.

In response to the uproar, Wright sought to discourage speculation that Farrior or anyone else associated with DOGE had access to U.S. nuclear secrets.  

“I’ve heard these rumors. They’re like seeing our nuclear secrets. None of that is true at all,” the energy secretary told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan Friday. 

But Trump administration officials haven’t been honest with the level of access given to Musk’s DOGE cronies. One of his young software engineers, Marko Elez, had administrator privileges with the country’s most vital payment systems governing trillions of dollars in disbursements, allowing critical code to be rewritten, despite Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claiming Elez only had “read-only” access. Elez resigned this week over racist social media posts (but already may be rehired). Meanwhile, a U.S. district court on Thursday limited DOGE’s privileges in government agencies.

Right now, DOGE’s activities are stretching, if not outright breaking, federal law over government functions and positions that are supposed to be governed by Congress. But the only bulwark against Musk and Trump’s overhauling of the federal government is the courts, as federal law enforcement is in the president’s crosshairs.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has decided to play ball with the Trump administration in efforts to stop the Russian invasion.

On Monday, Trump announced that if Zelenskiy wanted to keep getting U.S. military aid, Ukraine would have to fork over some precious rare minerals.

“We’re telling Ukraine they have very valuable rare earth; we want what we put up to go in terms of a guarantee. We want a guarantee, we’re handing them money hand over fist, we’re giving them equipment, [the European Union is] not keeping up with us,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “We have an ocean in between, they don’t. It’s more important for them than it is for us … so we’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earth and other things.”

On Friday, Zelenskiy agreed to Trump’s demands.

“If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” he said, according to Reuters. “The Americans helped the most, and therefore the Americans should earn the most. And they should have this priority, and they will. I would also like to talk about this with President Trump,” Zelenskiy continued, trying to explain that he actually wasn’t just giving Trump access to all the valuable rocks he wanted but instead was offering a joint agreement.

The majority of Ukraine’s mineral deposits—holding metals like titanium and uranium—are now in Russian-controlled territory, as Putin has gained more and more Ukrainian soil as the war has dragged on.

“We need to stop Putin and protect what we have: a very rich Dnipro region, central Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said.

Trump and Zelenskiy are expected to talk sometime next week.

Donald Trump wants you to believe that he’s totally nonplussed by Time magazine’s February cover, which features Elon Musk—not the president—behind the Resolute Desk.

During a press conference Friday alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Trump tried to play it off as if he were totally unbothered by the cover, insinuating that he wasn’t aware that the popular American news magazine (which named him “Person of the Year” in December) was still around.

“Is Time magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that,” Trump said when asked for a reaction to the provocative cover, sparking laughter from the room.

But Trump’s cavalier attitude to the magazine’s focus belies the fact that he spent years pining for it to name him “Person of the Year.” In fact, Time’s decision to feature Steve Bannon on the cover in the early days of Trump’s first term effectively ended his romance with his top strategist.

Bannon was, much like Musk, at the epicenter of Trump’s universe at one point, serving as the forty-fifth president’s chief White House strategist in the first year of his term. But the former host of The Apprentice abruptly fired him in 2017 following a series of controversies in which Bannon openly contradicted Trump and began to encroach on the MAGA limelight.

The pattern appears to be repeating with Musk. Reports emerged Friday that even Trump loyalists in and outside of the administration have found themselves suffering under the billionaire’s sudden seizure of the executive branch.

Last month, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles openly refuted Musk’s outsize influence on the administration, telling Axios that anyone who wants to be a “star” would have no place on her team.

“I don’t welcome people who want to work solo or be a star,” Wiles said at the time. “My team and I will not tolerate backbiting, second-guessing inappropriately, or drama. These are counterproductive to the mission.”

One of Elon Musk’s allies, Tom Krause, is going to be installed in a senior position in charge of America’s critical payment systems.

Krause, a Silicon Valley executive with ties to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will become the financial assistant secretary of the Treasury after clashing with David Lebryk, the previous secretary, over illegally ceasing payments on foreign aid.

Lebryk had served in the Treasury Department since 1989, becoming its longest-serving career official. He was serving as acting head of the department until Scott Bessent’s confirmation as treasury secretary last week, and refused to allow Musk’s cronies to have access to the federal payment systems distributing trillions of dollars every year, operated by the Bureau of Fiscal Service.

Bessent has tried to downplay the level of access that Musk’s DOGE henchman have in the Treasury Department, claiming that it was only at “read-only” levels. In reality, one of Musk’s software engineers, 25-year-old Marko Elez, had been given administrator privileges allowing the code governing those vital payment systems to be rewritten. A federal court halted that access Thursday, and Elez has resigned after racist social media posts, although Musk and JD Vance have floated rehiring him.

The Treasury systems at stake distribute funds for thousands of vital functions that millions of Americans depend on, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, federal salaries, payments to government contractors, grants, and tax refunds. Now all of that will be overseen by Krause, who will certainly be acquiescing to Musk’s demands to unilaterally stop payments that he and the MAGA right disagree with. Is any of this legal? In Trump’s presidency, the law isn’t likely to be enforced.

One of Donald Trump’s biggest donors is looking to the Supreme Court to limit tough press coverage of the MAGA leader’s administration.

Republican megadonor Steve Wynn filed a petition with the nation’s highest judiciary on Friday to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, a landmark 1964 decision that raised the standards required for a plaintiff to win a defamation lawsuit against a media organization.

The bench unanimously found, at the time, that it wasn’t enough for reported information to be found false for a plaintiff to win a suit. Instead, Justice William Brennan Jr. argued that in order to win a defamation case, public figures must prove that journalists published details with “actual malice”—as in, a gross recklessness or disregard for the truth.

Wynn’s case against press protections comes with its own baggage. In 2018, the casino mogul sued the Associated Press for defamation after the newswire reported that two women had accused him of sexual assault in the 1970s.

Wynn resigned as chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts that year, just two weeks after  The Wall Street Journal reported that the billionaire had paid out a $7.5 million settlement to a hired manicurist he allegedly raped.

“After she gave Mr. Wynn a manicure, she said, he pressured her to take her clothes off and told her to lie on the massage table he kept in his office suite, according to people she gave the account to,” the Journal reported at the time. “The manicurist said she told Mr. Wynn she didn’t want to have sex and was married, but he persisted in his demands that she do so, and ultimately she did disrobe and they had sex, the people remember her saying.”

The Nevada state Supreme Court ruled against Wynn in November, with Justice Ron Parraguirre writing that “one of the most recognized figures in Nevada” needed to show “clear and convincing evidence to reasonably infer that the publication was made with actual malice.” Wynn’s request Friday to the Supreme Court is an effort to overrule that decision.

“Sullivan is not equipped to handle the world as it is today—media is no longer controlled by companies that employ legions of factcheckers before publishing an article,” Wynn’s attorneys argued in their petition. “Instead, everyone in the world has the ability to publish any statement with a few keystrokes. And in this age of clickbait journalism, even those members of the legacy media have resorted to libelous headlines and false reports to generate views.

“This Court need not further this golden era of lies,” they wrote.