Elon Musk and DOGE upend government with firings, budget cuts

In these fast and furious first four weeks of his second term, President Trump has had something unusual for him, a co-star. With the president's blessing, Elon Musk has taken a wrecking ball to the federal bureaucracy, just as he promised he would. But as the wealthiest man in human history and his Doge team make their aggressive layoffs and budget cuts, the courts are pushing back. NBC News White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor has our Sunday focus. We've had a great discussion. Terrific. An extraordinary scene playing out in the Oval Office this week. The world's richest man standing alongside the world's most powerful one promising to reshape the American government as we know it. A lot of times that, you know, people that don't get what they voted for. But in this presidency, they are going to get what they voted for. And that's what democracy is all about. And what the people want, Musk says, is to drastically slim down the federal government. We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. Since President Trump took office, Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, have moved at lightning speed, firing thousands of employees with Musk warning more could follow. We do need to delete entire agencies. And already in recent weeks, 75,000 federal workers have taken buyouts, though that's shy of the 100 to 200,000 workers the White House said it hoped would resign. The Trump administration now telling federal agencies to fire probationary employees who typically have only been with the government a year or two. The end goal to cut two trillion dollars from the annual federal budget. Federal employees don't cost the government anywhere close to that figure. We need to be very concerned about these tech billionaires merging with the state, the government and basically taking over the government. But critics say Trump and Musk are moving too fast. They're just taking things down. And what they're going to have to do is they're going to have to put them back together again. Elaine Kaymark is a former Clinton administration official who oversaw large scale cuts to federal spending in the 1990s. It took you eight years to cut something like 400,000 jobs. Elon Musk and President Trump are cut something like 200,000 jobs in less than a month. Well, there's a simple reason for that. We cut fat, not muscle. We targeted functions that we didn't think were needed anymore. And we made sure that we had technology ready to take those to take the place of those jobs. The doge cuts are already facing a number of legal challenges. There could definitely be conflicts of interest for Elon Musk, most notably because he hasn't gone through the normal process for becoming a government employee. Musk company SpaceX has billions in contracts with the U.S. government, carrying astronauts and satellites to space, while his electric car company Tesla has faced numerous federal investigations. But critics say it could take years for any legal challenges to play out in court. We're in the middle of a constitutional crisis. Eventually, this will reach the Supreme Court. And I hope the court does the right thing before we get to the next problem. And the next problem is things blowing up in our faces. The Silicon Valley mantra move fast and break things now playing out in real time inside the federal government. And Yamiche joins me now live. Yamiche, good morning. As you say, the courts have been rebuking Musk's efforts in some places in the absence of any real pushback from the Republican majorities in Congress. But are there other guardrails in place? Well, good morning, Willie. That's right. So far, several lawsuits have been filed in an effort to slow down these cuts by Elon Musk. Notably, on Thursday, a group of 14 states led by Democratic attorneys general sued Musk and President Trump, calling Doge's actions unconstitutional. The suit also alleges the American people are now subject to, quote, the whims of a single unelected billionaire. Unlike most high profile and high level government jobs, there was no government, no congressional vetting or confirmation vote on Musk's new role. That could mean there aren't the normal recourses for issues like abuse of power. Meanwhile, President Trump has said he is personally checking to ensure that Musk has no conflicts of interest. And Trump has repeatedly said Musk answers to him, Willie. People will want more than Trump's word that there are no conflicts of interest. We'll see as this moves along. Yamiche, thanks so much. Just follow The Today Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.