The legal fight over DOGE's budget cuts.

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Quick hits.

1. Hamas released three Israeli hostages and Israel released 183 imprisoned Palestinians, the fifth such exchange since the ceasefire agreement started on January 19. (The exchange) Separately, Israel’s military withdrew from the Netzarim Corridor, which divides Gaza’s north and south, as part of phase one of the ceasefire. (The withdrawal) Elsewhere, the White House announced $7.4 billion in military sales to Israel. (The sale)
2. Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, closed the office of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and told its staff to pause all of their supervisory efforts. (The decisions) Separately, the National Institutes of Health announced it would cap the indirect cost rate on all new and current research grants at 15% of the total cost as part of an effort to prioritize funding direct research over administrative costs. (The announcement)
3. President Donald Trump said that Japan's Nippon Steel would drop its $14.1 billion deal to acquire U.S. Steel and instead invest in the company, though the terms of the proposed investment have not been confirmed. (The comments) Separately, President Trump said he plans to levy 25% tariffs on all aluminum and steel imports into the U.S. early this week. (The latest)
4. U.S. employers added 143,000 jobs in January, slightly below economists’ expectations for 170,000 jobs added. Additionally, the unemployment rate fell from 4.1% to 4.0%, an eight-month low. (The report)
5. President Trump announced that he has ordered the U.S. Treasury to stop minting new pennies, saying that the coin’s production cost is too high. (The order)

Today's topic.

Legal challenges to the Department of Government Efficiency. On Saturday, a federal judge blocked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staff from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment systems. U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled that only “civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties” may use the system, while special government employees are explicitly barred. The ruling will remain in place until at least this Friday, when another judge will hear arguments in a case brought by 19 Democratic state attorneys general challenging DOGE’s access to the Treasury’s system. 

Back up: President Donald Trump established DOGE as a temporary organization within the Executive Office of the President to “moderniz[e] Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity” under Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In the ensuing three weeks, DOGE claims to have cut over $1 billion in federal spending, primarily focused on agencies' diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. 

Engelmayer’s decision follows a separate ruling on Thursday by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who approved an agreement to grant two DOGE staffers (who had been made Treasury employees) “read-only” access to the department’s payment systems, meaning they could look at the information but not alter or share it. However, Engelmayer's ruling goes further, barring the two DOGE staffers and most other government officials from accessing the system due to “the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.”

Some legal experts have questioned the language of Engelmayer’s ruling, suggesting that it could apply to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent due to language barring “political appointees” from accessing the agency’s system. On Sunday, the Justice Department sued to end the court order. 

What else: The Treasury case is one of several legal challenges against DOGE since President Trump took office. On Friday, a federal judge declined to block DOGE from accessing the Department of Labor's systems, ruling that the plaintiff — the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations — had not established standing to sue. Separately, a student group sued the Department of Education for allegedly disclosing personal and financial information to DOGE. On Saturday, NBC News reported that two DOGE staffers had obtained “administrator” email accounts for the department, which followed comments by President Trump that Musk was preparing to recommend significant cuts. 

Today, we’ll share perspectives from the left and right about Engelmayer’s ruling and the latest actions by DOGE. Then, Managing Editor Ari Weitzman gives his take while Executive Editor Isaac Saul is on paternity leave.

What the left is saying.

• The left is critical of DOGE’s actions, arguing Trump must put limits on Musk’s authority. 
• Some say the courts are the last remaining constitutional check on Trump’s agenda.
• Others say the courts are ill-equipped to respond to the speed with which DOGE is moving. 

The Washington Post editorial board said “Trump needs to erect guardrails for DOGE.”

“Trump promised before the election that he would put Musk in charge of DOGE… and then won a mandate for disruption. It’s also true that the $36 trillion national debt is unsustainable and there’s plenty of bloat in government. Musk became the world’s richest person by relentlessly innovating and constantly cutting costs, and this gives him valuable perspective,” the board wrote. “Yet he lacks governing experience and any accountability to voters. He has treated the federal workforce rudely and recklessly neglected to distinguish between what’s working in government and what isn’t.”

“On Thursday, a federal judge signed off on a temporary agreement to limit the sharing of sensitive data outside the Treasury Department… the White House should see that Musk complies with the law and follows best practices for data privacy,” the board said.  “Musk has understandably focused on low-hanging fruit, but ending some periodical subscriptions won’t change the government’s fiscal trajectory. To have any chance of achieving Musk’s audacious goal of $2 trillion in cuts, Trump will need to work with elected representatives in Congress to reform entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare before they become insolvent.”

In CNN, Stephen Collinson suggested “the courts may be the last constraint on Trump.”

“The new Trump presidency has arrived where it was always destined to land — in the courts. The White House suffered a pair of hitches Thursday in its drive to shred the US government using expansive and questionable executive power,” Collinson wrote. “The legal system is about to be clogged with multiple battles over his second presidency. But they are among the most significant early tests of the judiciary’s capacity to constrain what many experts see as blatantly unconstitutional acts that have the capacity to fundamentally change the presidency and the political system.”

“Three weeks in, the growing storm of lawsuits means some of this young administration’s most extraordinary applications of unilateral presidential power could be reined in. But the litigation also conjures a scenario that no one wants to think about: what would happen if the administration refused to recognize court rulings,” Collinson said. “The constitutional remedy for a president who breaks the law is impeachment, but Republicans have twice shown that they will not hold Trump to account in such trials, making moot this key check on power envisioned by the founders.”

In The Nation, Elie Mystal argued “the courts can’t stop the Trump-Musk coup.”

“Many of Trump’s orders are illegal, and unconstitutional, and brazenly so. Most good-faith lawyers can see that, but ‘good faith’ does not describe the current state of the federal judiciary. Trump and MAGA have captured and corrupted the courts,” Mystal wrote. “This doesn’t mean that cases brought by the ACLU, AFL-CIO, or Democratic state attorneys general are destined to fail. Their cases are righteous (and, legally speaking, right) and must be brought. Some might even succeed. But the courts will not ‘save’ us.”

“The most obvious reason for this is that the courts move slowly… A court has to wait for a bad thing to happen (a ‘case or controversy’), then gather evidence on the bad thing that happened (a ‘trial’),” Mystal said. “Consider the constitutional crisis unfolding right now. Musk has reportedly seized access to the private information of every US taxpayer, and the payroll information of every government employee. He has no right to this information but… he has it… Who is going to lead the crack team of forensic digital investigators to make sure that Musk is in compliance with this or any future court order? My guess is ‘no one.’”

What the right is saying.

• The right is mostly supportive of DOGE’s actions, though many concede that their legality is still in question. 
• Some say Trump and Musk are showing how to effectively target government waste.
• Others frame DOGE’s efforts as squarely in line with voter’s wishes.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote “DOGE hits the courts.”

“President Trump and Elon Musk might be able to ignore the squawking of Democrats in Congress and the press, but they can’t ignore the courts. Two judges weighed in Thursday to temporarily hold up the effort by Messrs. Trump and Musk to shake up the government. Whether those court orders become permanent will depend on the law,” the board said. “Federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued an order Thursday limiting access to Treasury Department systems by a parachute team from Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.”

“While deferring a broader decision, Judge Kollar-Kotelly signed a temporary order, ‘with the consent of the parties,’ to restrict Treasury’s ability to let outsiders peruse the checkbook,” the board wrote. “The American legal system has a good track record for sorting out such disputes, which is one reason not to panic every time Mr. Musk sneezes in the direction of another agency. If he and Mr. Trump want their economizing to stick, their actions must be legally defensible. If not, the two men will achieve much less than their frenetic energy suggests.”

In The Federalist, Eddie Scarry said “if Elon’s DOGE is to successfully cut government waste, there can be no ‘but’ about it.”

“As Democrats and the media continue to grip their groins in agony over Elon Musk and his DOGE team’s audit of the federal government, it’s fun to hear them all periodically pause to offer some variation of, ‘Everyone wants to end wasteful spending, but…,’” Scarry wrote. “What follows the ‘but’ is invariably some excuse for why a proposed cut isn’t practical; a claim that the cut will result in ‘literally millions of deaths;’ or, my personal favorite, an assertion that the target of the cut is ‘only” some infinitesimally small fraction of the budget.’”

“I don’t know to what extent Musk and DOGE will be successful in reducing even just one penny from the federal budget, but their approach so far — auditing the Treasury payment systems and aggressively pushing to eliminate mass numbers of government workers — is the only serious way to try,” Scarry said. “Democrats and their media friends are pretending the process has been in breach of various laws and violated privacy rights and a court has intervened… But whatever the case, when this all shakes out, cutting the hundreds and billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal budget is only possible by doing exactly what Musk is doing.”

In The Washington Examiner, Christopher Tremoglie argued “the idea of DOGE is at the root of American values.”

“Democrats in Congress have become apoplectic at the idea that Trump has engaged the services of an independent person to conduct an audit of federal expenditures. The reasons for this have become quite obvious in recent days. Spending tax dollars is the engine that powers the Democratic Party’s political machine. Anything that jeopardizes this engine jeopardizes their power,” Tremoglie wrote. “Not surprisingly, it took very little time for Musk to find billions of taxpayer dollars being spent extravagantly, frivolously, wastefully — and, possibly, even corruptly.”

“The Republican Party represents Main Street, the Forgotten Person, social conservatism, fiscal responsibility, freedom from fear, freedom from poverty, freedom to worship, and freedom from war. It reveres the triumphs of Western civilization and American culture, accomplishments of human civilization that have improved the quality of life for all,” Tremoglie said. “Simply put, DOGE is the latest manifestation of one political party’s efforts to prevent the other from using America’s treasure to spread its toxic ideals while pursuing greater influence and power.”

My take.

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• I support efforts to streamline government spending, but DOGE is taking the wrong approach.
• Much of what they’re doing is probably illegal, and they aren’t focused on the most significant aspects of the federal budgets. 
• If Trump continues to push executive-only action with Musk, his impact won’t last long or go far.

I don’t support the way President Trump and DOGE are going about slashing federal spending, which is a very different thing from saying that I don’t support cutting federal spending in general. 

In each of the last three years, the federal government’s budget deficit has grown, reaching an eye-popping $1.83 trillion in FY2024. So far in FY2025, the deficit is set to grow again, with November 2024 outpacing 2023’s spending by $200 billion. Solving the deficit can only be done by raising revenues or cutting spending, and 60% of U.S. adults think the government is overspending (something I agree with, too). 

However, very few issues divide people along ideological lines more than what should be cut: 84% of Trump supporters want a smaller government with fewer services, compared to 51% of Kamala Harris supporters. On the question of whether government aid to the poor does more harm than good, that split was a similarly dramatic 72–18%. In principle, I don’t have a big problem with the majority party targeting services the minority party prefers — that’s just politics.

So what’s my issue with Trump empowering Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to slash spending? I actually have three problems, in increasing order of importance: How they’re cutting, who’s doing the cutting, and what exactly is being cut.

First, what Musk and DOGE are doing is likely breaking the law. After DOGE gained access to data at the Treasury Department, a judge blocked it while a separate legal challenge plays out. After USAID placed all its employees on administrative leave and recalled all workers stationed abroad back to the U.S., a judge paused the plan. Several more lawsuits are working their way through the courts, and I think DOGE’s leash is about to get shortened. 

I don’t have a moral issue with the president probing the perimeter of his power to try to enact his agenda — remember, liberals made this same argument when President Biden tried to cancel student aid. If these actions are illegal then they’ll be stopped by the courts and many of them will probably end up appealed to the Supreme Court, where we'll get a definitive ruling one way or the other. If the high court decides that these cuts are constitutional or legally sound, reasonable people can disagree — even vehemently disagree — with that ruling, but it will still have been made through the democratic process.

My bigger issue with the possible illegality, however, is a practical one. Even if I were rooting for everything Trump’s doing, I’d still be opposed to this course of action — because I just don’t think it will work. I think Musk’s access will be blocked, the courts will rule that Trump can’t ignore the funding Congress allocates, and this path to budget balancing will be a dead end.

Second, I object to the people leading the budget-slashing charge: Musk, DOGE, and its cadre of young contractors. Let’s start at the top: Elon Musk is a billionaire government contractor, with conflicts of interest all over the place from his position as the head of a major social network (X) that influences public discourse, an electric car company (Tesla) whose success is impacted by energy and taxation policies, and a space-flight company (SpaceX) dependent on government contracts. There’s no doubt that Musk has been incredibly successful in the private sector, but Trump could have tapped someone without his own interests to consider.

Then, there’s the whole issue of DOGE — a quasi-governmental agency that just 30% of Republicans (and 17% of Democrats) say should have “a lot” of influence on government operations. Why not leverage an existing agency — the Government Accountability Office (GAO) or the Congressional Budget Office — to lead the charge?

Nobody vetted the people Musk tasked with accessing government spending data, which has already created major problems. One of the two government contractors who was granted read-only Treasury access, Marko Elez, resigned after his incredibly racist posts were made public. Then, Musk said he’d rehire him. How was someone like Elez hired at all? There are plenty of other smart and capable people DOGE can employ who don’t require Republicans to bend over backwards to defend inexcusable racism.

These arguments open themselves up to counterpoints. Unelected bureaucrats already have access to our information. Taking Trump’s perspective, it makes sense that he’d be so distrustful of the civil-servant class which prefers Democratic executives that he’d consider starting from scratch and totally remaking the GAO into a new agency he can control. Furthermore, DOGE may have been founded by the president out of whole cloth, but so was the agency it’s operating within — the Digital Service, which Obama founded in 2014.

Personally, I don’t think those counterpoints do enough to justify what DOGE is doing. Trump’s uniting an opposition force around Musk — someone as polarizing as Trump but easier to attack. There’s also a deep irony with DOGE as an organization looking to cut waste: Once federal agencies are founded and funded, they’re hard to remove. Exhibit A is Obama’s Digital Service. Exhibit B may be DOGE itself: a task force for government accountability — a kind of government accountability office, if you will.

Lastly, DOGE is cutting the wrong things. I don’t just mean that cutting an entire agency like USAID is a bad idea because it’s “only” 1% of the U.S. budget, or that cutting funding to the National Institutes of Health is bad because it’s going to hurt local economies. Remember: Republicans want a smaller government, and enacting that policy was always going to result in some pain along the way. Foreign aid and scientific research are the #1 and #5 areas where voters think the government overspends, and cutting the areas where U.S. voters think we overspend is sensible.

However, Musk can only have a real impact by cutting the major sources of government spending. Healthcare (comprising Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Health and Human Services), Social Security, and defense spending are three of the largest areas of government spending. Without investigating those three behemoths, Musk is fighting a losing battle.

However, the more important issue is DOGE’s focus on personnel.

Musk’s approach to reform through staff-cutting is well known at this point. But the federal government isn’t X or Tesla, and as much as we like to make the analogy, it isn’t a business. The total cost of government employee salaries and benefits is less than 5% of the federal budget, as opposed to the more common allotment of 25–35% of the budget a private business would spend on personnel. Additionally, as the budget and population have grown, the size of the federal workforce has remained pretty much the same for about 50 years. Lastly, by antagonizing government employees with buyout offers and making them come to the nearest federal office to work (which for many people outside D.C. can mean added hours-long commutes to and from an unrelated federal building each day), Musk’s approach could be making the government less efficient. Already, 1% of federal employees have taken the buyout offer; but 6% of employees churn organically each year, and the ones who are quitting now are likely the ones with the most options. So Musk could have just paid the government’s best employees to leave.

I’ve been offering counterpoints to each of my big three concerns, but on this issue I just don’t see a good defense. Musk says he wants to cut federal spending by $2 trillion; he simply won’t find it where he’s looking.

Again, even taking Trump’s goals of balancing the budget entirely through spending cuts and with no increases in tax revenue, the DOGE approach is still not a good strategy. It will be stopped by the courts at worst and tied up with lawsuits at best, unite the opposition against an easy target, and ultimately fail at its stated objectives. 

I’ll say this about Trump’s strategy until I’m blue in the face: You don’t have to “flood the zone!” You have Congress! That could easily change in 2026, and if the president doesn’t start coordinating his efforts with the legislature, all of his short-term wins could simply evaporate with lawsuits and legislative gridlock.

Take the survey: Do you think DOGE’s actions so far have been legal? Let us know!

Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.

Your questions, answered.

Q: Recently, you included two opinion writers (Jeff Jacoby and Max Boot), who I would never consider 'left,' on the "What the left is saying." side of the issue. Which got me wondering: how do you decide which side to put someone on? The media outlet they write for, or something else?

—Bob from Concord, Massachusetts

Will Kaback, Editor: Max Boot (a columnist for The Washington Post covering national security) used to call himself a conservative but has since written at length about his rejection of the American right since President Trump’s ascension — even writing a book titled The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right. While criticizing the right does not inherently make someone “on the left,” we decided Boot’s repudiations of modern conservatism (and his support for actions of the Biden administration) make him a better fit for “the left” in Tangle’s format.

Jeff Jacoby’s inclusion on the left (in our December 12 edition) was simply an oversight. Like Boot, Jacoby is a frequent Trump critic, but he still holds clear conservative positions and levies many criticisms against Democrats and the left. We were unfamiliar with his background when we categorized him as a writer on the left — at the time, his recent columns were mostly Trump criticism — and didn’t realize the mistake until weeks later when a few readers wrote in to question his placement. 

Broadly, we categorize writers based on their stated political identities and the topics and figures they choose to critique (and praise). We do not group them based on the bias of the outlet they write for — Jacoby writes for the left-leaning Boston Globe, while we’d classify someone like Doug Schoen, who regularly contributes to Fox News, as on the left. Even so, as the Jacoby example illustrates, these lines can get blurry, which leads us to sometimes miscategorize a writer.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

As part of President Donald Trump’s actions to halt federal funding disbursements in his first days in office, he ordered the Agriculture Department to freeze funds for several programs created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Two of those programs — the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Rural Energy for America Program — offer farmers grants and loan guarantees to build fencing, plant new crops, and install renewable energy systems if they finance the costs upfront. However, some farmers are now reporting that these reimbursements have been canceled due to President Trump’s executive order, despite the White House rescinding the pause on January 29. These farmers say they will face tens of thousands of dollars in unexpected costs if reimbursements are not restored. The Washington Post has the story.

Numbers.

• 87.9%. The percentage of federal payments disbursed in fiscal year 2023 by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), the agency that handles the government's accounting, collections, and payments within the Treasury Department. 
• $5.4 trillion. The total payments disbursed by BFS in FY 2023.
• $205.4 billion. The average daily cash flow managed by BFS in FY 2023. 
• 41% and 46%. The percentage of U.S. voters who approve and disapprove, respectively, of Elon Musk’s appointment to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to a February 2025 Morning Consult poll.
• 45% and 40%. The percentage of U.S. voters who approved and disapproved, respectively, of Elon Musk’s appointment to lead DOGE in November 2024.
• 70%, 65%, and 59%. The percentage of U.S. adults who believe corruption, inefficiency, and red tape, respectively, are major problems in the federal government, according to a January 2025 AP-NORC poll.
• 29% and 40%. The percentage of U.S. adults who favor and oppose,  respectively, eliminating a large number of federal jobs.
• 23% and 49%. The percentage of U.S. adults who favor and oppose, respectively, eliminating entire federal agencies.

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just covered the conviction of a school shooter’s mother.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was the CIA sending an unclassified list of some employee names to the Trump Administration.
• Nothing to do with politics: An Australian man found 102 venomous snakes in his mulch pile.
• Thursday’s survey: 3,786 readers answered our survey on Trump’s plan for Gaza with 83% disapproving and not believing it will happen. “No serious Middle East strategist, historian or lawmaker is ever going to get behind this plan,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

A stray dog unintentionally made history, becoming the first to cross the Romania-Hungary border after Romania joined the Schengen Area of the European Union. A now-viral social media post shows the dog casually wandering through the crossing to the cheers from officers on duty. As the video circulated online, one police officer was deeply moved by the moment and decided to search for the stray. The officer found the dog, adopted him, and brought him to his family’s farm where he now enjoys his forever home and family. Sunny Skyz has the story.

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