“President Donald Trump’s administration is filling one of the State Department’s top positions with a controversial conservative journalist who has promoted conspiracy theories related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and was fired as a speechwriter by the first Trump administration when it was revealed that he had spoken at a conference tied to White nationalists,” ABC News reports.

Elon Musk said his “DOGE team” of government efficiency enforcers is shutting down payments to federal contractors, suggesting that the world’s richest man may have access to sensitive systems used at the US Treasury Department, Bloomberg reports.

Said Musk: “The corruption and waste is being rooted out in real-time.”

“Elon Musk’s allies are moving swiftly to exert control over vast swaths of the U.S. government, as they demand access to sensitive information at federal agencies and lay out plans to block spending they deem excessive,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Musk, the billionaire adviser to President Trump who runs the Department of Government Efficiency, oversaw a successful effort by his representatives to get direct access to a payment system that distributes trillions of dollars to Americans each year. And individuals working for DOGE accessed the U.S. Agency for International Development following a clash with security officials.”

“The moves marked the start of a far-reaching campaign by Musk to upend the federal government agency by agency, according to his allies. The effort prompted outrage from Democrats, and some Republicans, who said Musk doesn’t have the authority to overturn programs and spending priorities decided by Congress. They also raised concerns about the nature of Musk’s operation, which is run by individuals with ties to the tech sector who haven’t been confirmed by the Senate and could benefit financially from the actions DOGE takes.”

“FBI officials sent out a questionnaire over the weekend to determine the involvement of thousands of FBI personnel in cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol,” the Washington Post reports.

“It is the latest sign that the Trump administration aims to deliver on its promises to make dramatic changes in the law enforcement agency and root out people who Trump or his allies claim acted inappropriately.”

“Elon Musk has vowed to unilaterally cancel hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of government grants after apparently gaining access to review the US Treasury’s vast payments system, a move that prompted the sudden resignation of one of the department’s most senior officials,” the Financial Times reports.

“The threat came after Musk appeared to confirm on Saturday that DOGE had access to the Treasury system, which disperses trillions of dollars each year, including social security payments.”

“He justified the move by claiming his team discovered ‘that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups.’”

Wired: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding Elon Musk’s government takeover.

David Frum: “Donald Trump threatening to annex Canada? It was an absurd situation. I briefly considered recycling an old joke of mine about merging all of the High Plains states into a single province of South Saskatchewan. But as I toyed with it, the joke soured. The president of the United States was bellowing aggression against fellow democracies. The situation was simultaneously too stupid for serious journalism and too shameful for wisecracks.”

“In this second Trump presidency, many of us are baffled by how to respond. The former Trump strategist Steve Bannon memorably described Trump’s method as ‘flood the zone with shit.’ Try to screen all the flow, and you will rapidly exhaust yourself and desensitize your audience. Ignore the flood, and soon you’re immersed in the stuff neck-deep.”

Jonathan Martin: “By attempting to do to the federal workforce what he did to Twitter… Musk is making a profound misread of what animates Trump. The president is eager for big, beautiful wins and press coverage of the same — not some conservative ideological project to shrink the federal workforce.”

Franklin Foer: “Over the decades, the American right has deployed violent imagery to describe its highest ideological goal: drown government in a bathtub, starve the beast, slash and burn.”

“In less than two weeks of organized chaos, the Trump administration has realized these fantasies, but by deploying tactics both more subtle and more sinister than the movement’s old guard ever imagined.”