Trump Threatens to ‘Look At’ Judges Blocking Musk’s DOGE Actions

In an Oval Office press conference on Tuesday, President Trump touted the supposed cost-cutting efforts of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by his oligarch megadonor Elon Musk. He also ominously warned that specific judges who rule against efforts by DOGE to gut federal agencies and freeze their funds would have to be scrutinized.

Describing DOGE — a cabal of Musk allies, including very young programmers, currently running amok through the U.S. government’s human resources and payments systems — Trump vaguely asserted that the group had identified “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse,” and complained that the courts have in several cases blocked their activities. 

On Saturday, for example, responding to a lawsuit brought by 19 states, a U.S. District judge in New York issued an emergency order preventing DOGE from accessing personal data including Social Security numbers via the Treasury Department, citing “huge cybersecurity risks.” Then, on Tuesday, the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied a motion from the Trump administration seeking to overturn a previous order to release billions in federal grants that DOGE and the White House decided to hold hostage.

“It seems hard to believe that judges want to try and stop us from looking for corruption,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, with Musk standing next to his desk in a MAGA hat. “We want to weed out the corruption, and it seems hard to believe that a judge could say, ‘We don’t want you to do that.’” The president continued, offering a threat: “So maybe we have to look at the judges, because that’s very serious. I think it’s a very serious violation.” 

Trump did not explain what kind of “violation” might have occurred in the course of these judges doing their jobs. Musk had previously called for the impeachment of the judge who ruled that DOGE couldn’t look at Treasury records. On Tuesday, the world’s richest man shared an X post identifying the daughter of the judge who ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze federal funds, after the judge found that the administration had disobeyed his order to do so.  

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Just weeks into the second Trump administration, the president and his loyalists have not shown any inclination to abide by decisions from the judiciary that they don’t like — suggesting America may be on track for a full-on constitutional crisis. Vice President J.D. Vance has already claimed that Trump has the executive power to simply ignore rulings from the bench, and the administration has pursued a brazen legal strategy predicated on the idea that they can act with impunity — because no one is going to stop them. 

Musk fielded questions in the Oval Office as well, at times with four-year-old son X Æ A-Xii sitting atop his shoulders. At one point, challenged about spreading the misinformation that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had sent $50 million worth of condoms to the militant group Hamas in Gaza, he replied, “First of all, some of the things I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. Nobody’s going to bat a thousand. We will make mistakes, but we’ll react quickly to correct any mistakes.” (Trump himself repeated the false claim after the White House had conceded it was not accurate.) 

DOGE and the Trump administration have attempted to shut down USAID altogether, though a Trump-appointed judge on Friday issued a restraining order meant to prevent thousands of employees from being placed on administrative leave and others abroad from being recalled to the U.S.

Musk also attempted to assure reporters not to worry about the conflicts of interest that will inevitably arise based on his exceedingly broad charge at DOGE and roles at his companies that hold billions in government contracts and are routinely investigated or fined by the government regulators he is attacking — and, in some cases, hoping to demolish. It just so happens, for instance, that Musk wants to do away with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which the Trump administration has now effectively shuttered, as he seeks to build a peer-to-peer payment network into his social media platform, X, something that would bring it under CFPB’s oversight.

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Asked about the idea, offered by the Trump White House, that Musk can police his own conflicts of interest,he replied: 

“Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions, we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So all of our actions are maximally transparent.” (This answer ignored the fact that DOGE staffers are themselves perpetuating all kinds of misinformation online.)      

Pressed about the fact he is being tasked with overseeing agencies that provide his companies huge contracts, the richest man on the planet suggested the public will help  keep him accountable. 

“So if you see anything, you say, like, wait a second, hey, Elon, that doesn’t — that seems like maybe that’s, you know, there’s a conflict there,” he said. “I don’t think, like, people are gonna be shy about saying that. They’ll say it immediately.” (Despite extensive reporting on how he stands to personally benefit from his meddling in government so far, Musk has not explicitly recused himself from any element of DOGE’s assault.)

Musk continued, awkwardly: “You can see everything that’s going on. And then you can see, ‘Am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not?’ It’s totally obvious.” 

Trump then jumped in, saying, “And if we thought that, we would not let him do that segment or look in that area, if we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest. And we watch that also. He’s a big businessman. He’s a successful guy. That’s why we want him doing this.”

Of course, the insistence that DOGE is operating within some sort of ethical guidelines rings a bit hollow when Trump and Musk are now increasingly targeting judges who rule that their incursions into government agencies are illegal. 

For the moment, the country is still hurtling toward a showdown between the courts and a non-compliant White House. In the meantime, we can expect MAGA world to step up their rhetoric against anyone enforcing the law.