“Responses to the Elon Musk-directed email to government employees about what work they’d accomplished over the past week are expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary or not, according to three sources with knowledge of the system,” NBC News reports.
“The AI system will determine whether someone’s work is mission-critical or not.”
Despite President Trump’s public comments to the contrary, the Trump administration told federal agency leaders that they can ignore the public decree from Elon Musk to effectively fire employees who do not send in bullet-point summaries of their work last week, the Washington Post reports.
A legislative town hall hosted by Idaho Republicans “turned volatile after some attendees voiced their concerns over the possible repeal of Medicaid expansion and other bills working their way through the Idaho Legislature,” the Couer d’Alene/Post Falls Press reports.
After making remarks from the audience to several legislative members on stage, one woman was asked to leave.
After refusing, she was pulled from her seat, wrestled to the ground and dragged out of the high school auditorium by three unidentified people.
“President Trump on Monday stood by his adviser Elon Musk and the Saturday email he helped create that demanded millions of federal workers justify the work they did last week,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Trump doubled down on Musk’s weekend tweet announcing the email, in which the billionaire said nonresponses would be considered resignations.”
Said Trump: “What he’s doing is saying, ‘are you actually working?’ And then if you don’t answer, like you’re sort of semi-fired, or you’re fired, because a lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist.”
“The Trump administration has rescinded a Biden-era regulation that sought to ensure American allies don’t use U.S.-made weapons in violation of international humanitarian law,” the Washington Post reports.
As Dr. Mehmet Oz prepares to becomes CMS administrator, a deep dive into his financial interests “revealed not only opaque ties with the industries he may soon regulate but also a coziness with health care companies that lawmakers have already highlighted in questioning his independence,” the New York Times reports.
“He has made tens of millions of dollars hawking dietary supplements on his show and on social media, often without any mention of his financial interest. He has been paid by medical device firms and health-related ventures, and his money was invested in a dizzying array of businesses. Many of those companies would be affected by any decisions he would make in the government post and many already benefit from agency funding.”
Peter Bergen: “Trump wants to remake the Pentagon, so he has total control over it. Of course, he is the Commander in Chief so it’s his prerogative to do so, but by firing Brown who is Black and Franchetti who was the first woman to run the Navy, Trump signaled that unquestioned loyalty will be the key qualification for these jobs rather than providing the best military advice to the president irrespective of American domestic politics, which is meant to be the key function of the roles…”
“The scar tissue from Trump’s past fights with Pentagon leaders has resulted in Trump’s intention to take total control over the Department of Defense. We saw a hint of that in the final months of his first term when Trump installed an ultra-loyalist, Kash Patel, to the powerful job of chief of staff at the Pentagon. Patel was recently voted in by the Senate to become the new director of the FBI.”
“Trump expects nothing less than Patel-levels of loyalty in his generals and top officials at the Pentagon. And Friday night’s purge of six senior military officers is likely to be just the aperitif since Hegseth is now looking for tens of billions of dollars of cuts at his department and he’ll likely have to lose significant numbers of personnel.”
“Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday that he isn’t planning to make any changes to his budget plan to placate Republicans concerned about possible Medicaid cuts,” Politico reports.
Said Johnson: “Look, everybody needs to understand that the resolution is merely the starting point for the process. So there’s nothing specific about Medicaid in the resolution. The legislation comes later, so this is the important first start.”
“Gov. Ron DeSantis and first lady Casey DeSantis had a message for donors and other important Republican backers over the last few weeks: Don’t throw your support to Rep. Byron Donalds, because Casey DeSantis was seriously considering jumping into the 2026 race for governor,” Politico reports.
“That message was upended last Thursday night with a single social media post by President Donald Trump emphatically endorsing Donalds. And Trump’s decision may have also derailed an effort to preserve Gov. DeSantis’ conservative legacy ahead of another potential presidential run.”
Aaron Blake: “One of the biggest legal questions looming over the Trump administration right now is whether Elon Musk is illegally wielding power over the American government.”
“This weekend suggested he is wielding significantly more power than the White House has let on in court. Either that, or President Donald Trump’s own political appointees are defying Trump’s wishes.”
“It’s all rather complicated, but the events of this weekend crystallize the chaotic and legally dubious nature of Musk’s sudden elevation to a hugely influential player in American politics and government.”
Speaker Mike Johnson said today that there “may be more” than one House Republican who plans to vote no on a massive multi-trillion dollar budget resolution this week, potentially a huge problem for GOP leaders, Punchbowl News reports.
Said Johnson: “There may be more than one. But they’ll get there. We’re going to get everybody there. This is a prayer request. Just pray this through for us, because it is very high stakes, and everybody knows that… I don’t think anybody wants to be in front of this train. I think they want to be on it.”
“House Republicans plan to hold a vote on the budget resolution Tuesday evening, but this timeline may shift.”
“The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a Tennessee law restricting some drag performances, allowing the first-in-the-nation law to remain largely intact,” The Hill reports.
“New York City’s new toll on motorists driving into Manhattan’s busiest areas raised $48.6 million in its first month, as President Donald Trump is seeking to end the congestion pricing program just weeks after it began,” Bloomberg reports.
Maureen Dowd: “I’ve been reading a book called How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders, written by Suetonius and translated by Josiah Osgood. Osgood writes of Caligula’s “propensity to give in to every whim and the relish he took in putting down others with cruel remarks.”
“As Suetonius noted about Caligula, ‘To the Senate he showed no more mercy or respect. He allowed some who had achieved the highest offices to run alongside his chariot in their togas for several miles or to stand, dressed in a linen cloth, at the head or the foot of his couch as he dined.'”
“Sound familiar?”
President Donald Trump personally decided to bar The Associated Press from some White House events and spaces, Politico reports.
The decision to grant journalists “special access” is a “quintessentially discretionary presidential choice,” government lawyers wrote in a 23-page brief submitted in advance of an emergency court hearing Monday afternoon.
“The United States voted with Russia, North Korea, Belarus and 14 other Moscow-friendly countries Monday on a resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and calling for its occupied territory to be returned that passed overwhelmingly in the U.N. General Assembly on Monday,” the Washington Post reports.
Jonathan Rauch: “Even those who expected the worst from his reelection (I among them) expected more rationality. Today, it is clear that what has happened since January 20 is not just a change of administration but a change of regime—a change, that is, in our system of government. But a change to what?”
“There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism—nor is it autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy. Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism. Understanding patrimonialism is essential to defeating it. In particular, it has a fatal weakness that Democrats and Trump’s other opponents should make their primary and relentless line of attack.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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