Musk’s WashingtonA close look at how Elon Musk is trying to transform the government.Good evening. Jess here. Remember Bill Gates? Tonight, my colleague Theodore Schleifer has a look at a billionaire who’s at sea in the era of Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency. We’re also looking at a curious new expansion of DOGE’s purview. We’ll start with the news.
That other billionaire, out in the coldElon Musk does not like Bill Gates. He regularly posts on X about his distaste for Gates’s contacts with Jeffrey Epstein, questions Gates’s understanding of artificial intelligence and denounces Gates’s past bet that Tesla would drop in value. Yes, there have been memes. It’s funny, because the Tesla chief used to respect the Microsoft founder enough that he signed the Giving Pledge, a Gates-run philanthropic commitment, in 2012. But nowadays, the chain saw in chief is destroying what Gates has spent the last 25 years of his life building, tearing apart much of the global health apparatus — which has relied heavily on the United States Agency for International Development — through his work at DOGE. My colleague Stephanie Nolen and I today have an article looking at the vise that Gates finds himself in. As his work is threatened, Gates wants to speak up and defend it. But at the same time, Gates doesn’t want to draw too much attention: He and his foundation are absolutely rattled by the Trump administration, and are fearful that the president will try to revoke their tax-exempt status if they anger Trump — or Musk. Gates is trying to deal with Musk and with Trump as best he can. And he’s trying to step in where they’re pulling back. One interesting detail from our cutting-room floor: The Gates Foundation team that oversees the Giving Pledge has refocused its work away from issue-agnostic philanthropy toward explicitly raising money for global health programs, largely to make up for Trump’s cuts to global health funding, according to several people briefed on the matter. Maybe Elon will throw Bill a few bucks.
DOGE REPORT How DOGE expanded its purview to voter fraudJess here, again. Over the last couple of days, I’ve noticed a few headlines that show how the Department of Government Efficiency is expanding its reach beyond slashing the federal budget and work force. Here’s what I found. On Monday night, my colleague Ed Shanahan wrote an interesting piece out of New York. A 45-year-old Iraqi man who appears to be an admirer of President Trump was charged by federal prosecutors with voting illegally in the 2020 presidential election in upstate New York. Why am I bringing this up here? Because federal officials said DOGE had assisted them. Yesterday, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, posted on X about two similar cases. She said immigration officials had arrested two Ukrainian nationals on charges they illegally voted in the 2024 election — also “in partnership with @DOGE.” The idea of widespread voter fraud has been a longtime obsession of President Trump, who has falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him. (In actuality, voter fraud is exceedingly rare and was not a determinative factor in Trump’s 2020 loss.) In the run-up to the 2024 election, Republicans warned loudly, though with scant evidence, that undocumented immigrants would try to fraudulently vote. But it’s not something that seemed like part of DOGE’s original mandate, which was to modernize technology across the government and create new efficiencies. Neither the Justice Department nor the Department of Homeland Security has responded to Ed’s questions about exactly what role DOGE played in either investigation. Late last month, though, Trump directed the Department of Homeland Security, “in coordination with the DOGE administrator,” to review state voting records alongside federal immigration records. These episodes appear to be examples of DOGE deploying the reams of data it has scooped up to assist with law enforcement related to immigrants. It’s something that one of Musk’s closest confidants, Antonio Gracias, talked about at a rally before the April 1 Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. Gracias, who has taken a role at the Social Security Administration, said then that he and his colleagues had used that agency’s data to look for illegal voting by immigrants. “We actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records and we found people here registered to vote in this population,” Gracias said then. “And we found some by sampling that actually did vote. And we have referred them to prosecution at the Homeland Security investigation service.” — Jess Bidgood
MEANWHILE ON X When Musk hands over the microphoneMusk is using his X account as a megaphone. My colleague Stuart A. Thompson, who monitors the spread of false and misleading ideas online, has this look at who he is amplifying. While Elon Musk shares plenty of his own opinions on X, he also elevates points of view that might otherwise receive little attention. It’s one of Musk’s greatest powers on X: He can pick and choose users with fewer followers and catapult their ideas to an audience of hundreds of millions. This week, Musk reposted something from Zuby, a Nigerian-born rapper and podcaster who often shares far-right commentary about feminism, immigration and identity politics. Musk follows Zuby on X and has engaged with his posts since 2022. Zuby posted on Tuesday that falling birthrates would never be solved as long as “widespread feminism” continued — a provocative claim that has roots in the growing pronatalist movement. This deeply conservative political constituency wants to see more childbearing, and some members embrace an erosion of women’s rights, like access to birth control and abortion, to achieve their goals. Musk has long been fixated on falling birthrates — he has fathered at least 12 children — and he wrote this week on X that the issue was “an existential crisis!” But demographers and lawmakers have typically focused on reducing the cost of living, improving child care and funding fertility treatments as more tangible solutions. By embracing and then elevating Zuby’s post on the topic, Musk has once again used his account to help spread a more extreme point of view, transforming a complicated policy debate into yet another politicized feud. — Stuart A. Thompson
BY THE NUMBERS 282,900That’s about the total number of federal jobs that have been — or are set to be — eliminated through cuts, buyouts and further planned reductions across agencies. Taken together, reductions could affect at least 12 percent of the nation’s 2.4 million civilian federal workers — a number that could grow as more of the agencies’ plans come into focus. My colleagues Elena Shao and Ashley Wu have laid out everything we know about these cuts, including which agencies have been affected, and by how much. Take a look. Got a tip? — Shawn McCreesh contributed reporting to tonight’s newsletter. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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