From USAID to the U.S. federal payment system, Musk is spearheading plans to audit and cut multiple government agencies

When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he laid off thousands of employees, stopped paying rent and auctioned off coffee makers and office chairs in hopes of a big turnaround.

One of the people working with billionaire Elon Musk in his efforts to overhaul the U.S. government is a Berkeley-educated computer scientist who has boosted white supremacists and misogynists online.

Musk, one of Trump's most influential backers, has been tasked with leading DOGE. As such, he has been granted "special government employee" status, a designation that experts say could come pose ethical and legal dilemmas because of the government contracts his companies like Tesla and SpaceX enjoy.

A federal judge on Friday declined to block Elon Musk's government cost-cutting department from accessing the U.S. Department of Labor's systems, an initial setback for the government employee unions resisting his efforts to shrink the federal bureaucracy.