Elon Musk arrives before the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 20, 2025. | Pool photo by Kevin Lamarque
CRISIS MANAGEMENT — A fierce proxy battle over “cancel culture” is taking place behind the scenes of Elon Musk’s DOGE-led purge of the federal bureaucracy, illustrating the right’s new willingness to flex its muscles in the culture war.
The controversy kicked off Thursday, when the Wall Street Journal reported that a 25-year-old DOGE employee named Marko Elez had resigned from the department after the paper discovered racist posts Elez made last year on social media. The posts, from an anonymous account connected with Elez, bragged about “being racist before it was cool” and featured a call to “normalize Indian hate.” In a statement provided to the Journal on Friday, a White House spokesperson confirmed that Elez was no longer working for the government.
It was a standard exercise in crisis management, but less than 24 hours later, the tide had turned unexpectedly in Elez’s favor. On Friday, Musk posted a poll to his 216 million followers on X asking whether he should “bring back the @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym.” By 1:00 pm on Friday, the poll had recorded over 385,000 responses, with close to 80 percent of them answering affirmatively. (Musk did not say why Elez, who reports to him, had resigned in the first place.)
On Friday afternoon, Vice President JD Vance joined a chorus of online voices calling for Elez’s reinstatement, writing in a post on X that while he “obviously disagree[s] with some of Elez’s posts,” conservatives “shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever.”
“If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that,” wrote Vance.
Just a few hours later, Musk took to X to broadcast his intentions to rehire Elez, writing “To err is human, to forgive divine.” (Spokespeople for the White House and DOGE did not respond to questions about whether Elez had been formally rehired as of today.)
The episode spoke to the newfound sense of cultural defiance that conservatives are feeling under the second Trump administration — as well as their very real power to impose their own values on federal policy. Though activists on the right have long complained against the rise of “cancel culture” and related speech norms, they have been largely unable to roll back those norms — until now. In addition to Elez’s rehiring, the Trump administration recently announced the appointment of Darren Beattie — who was fired as a speechwriter from the first Trump administration after it was discovered that he had spoken at a conference attended by white nationalist — to a senior State Department role.
The perceived stakes of the debate over Elez’s dismissal became clear in the flurry of social media posts over the weekend calling for his reinstatement. On X, several prominent conservative influencers argued that reinstating Elez would represent a symbolic rejection of “cancel culture” and liberals’ perceived power to set the norms of appropriate online speech.
“What @elonmusk and @DOGE have the power to do here is reset how speech norms get adjudicated,” wrote the conservative publisher Jonathan Keeperman, who posts under the pseudonym “L0m3z.” “The old way was that the media and the left got to play cop, judge, jury, and executioner. The new way is that we adjudicate speech norms for ourselves, based on criteria that is [sic] relevant to the individual organization.”
The conservative activist Christopher Rufo also chimed in in support of Elez, writing, “The Left has defined the terms of social annihilation for the past decade. Vice President @JDVance has the opportunity to shift the calculus and end the era of doxxing, smears, and cancelation.”
Democrats, in turn, seized on the debate, suggesting that Musk and Vance were not so much taking a principled stance against the excesses of cancel culture as much as they were defending Elez’s racist rhetoric.
“Are you going to tell him to apologize for saying ‘Normalize Indian hate’ before this rehire?” posted California Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna, who is of Indian descent. “Just asking for the sake of both of our kids,” Khanna added, a reference to the fact that Vance’s children with his wife, Usha Vance, are also of partial Indian descent.
Vance fired back, reframing the skirmish as a referendum on broader cultural norms about the consequences of offensive speech. “Racist trolls on the internet, while offensive, don’t threaten my kids. You know what does? A culture that denies grace to people who make mistakes,” Vance wrote.
In other circumstances, the exchange could be written off as another minor internet fracas with little bearing on the direction of the federal government or the country. But as Trump, Musk and their allies continue their assault on federal DEI programs and government aid for progressive-coded projects, the pugnacious attitude on display in Vance’s posts — and the online right’s broader willingness to punch back against what they see as excessively liberal norms around race and gender — appear to be shaping federal policy.
And with Elez apparently set to return to DOGE shortly, it appears that conservatives may well now have the upper hand.
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What'd I Miss?
— Trump expands steel and aluminum tariffs to all countries: President Donald Trump on Monday expanded his steel and aluminum tariffs to cover all imports, effectively canceling deals with the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and others. The new executive order builds off the 25 percent tariff on steel and the 10 percent tariff the first Trump administration imposed in 2018 by raising duties, closing loopholes and eliminating exemptions, according to a White House official.
— Judge says Trump administration violating order to lift spending freeze: A federal judge says the Trump administration has been violating his order to resume funding federal grants that the White House attempted to block with a blanket spending freeze last month. U.S. District Judge John McConnell ordered the administration to “immediately restore frozen funding” while his order remains in effect, including to the National Institutes of Health and to fulfill the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act.
— States sue Trump administration over health research grant cuts:Twenty-two state attorneys general sued the Trump administration today in an attempt to stop it from slashing billions of dollars in health research grant funding for universities. The lawsuit alleges that the NIH’s “unlawful action” will devastate critical public health at universities and research institutions. “Without relief from NIH’s action, these institutions’ cutting-edge work to cure and treat human disease will grind to a halt,” the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, says.
— FBI must disclose more info about Trump classified docs case, judge rules:The dismissal of criminal charges against Donald Trump for concealing classified records at Mar-a-Lago eliminated a significant barrier to making records about the probe public, a federal judge ruled today. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said Trump’s election as president — which forced the end of the criminal case — combined with the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity mean Trump is effectively insulated from any criminal responsibility for his conduct.
David Huitema was confirmed by the Senate in December for a five-year term. His dismissal was announced in one sentence on the OGE website, stating that the office had been notified that Trump is removing him as director. The website also said OGE will revert to an acting director: Shelley K. Finlayson, chief of staff and program counsel at the office.
“Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I have ordered the immediate dismissal of the Board of Visitors for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard.” The president did not immediately announce the appointment of new members to the boards.
AROUND THE WORLD
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis speaks at the EPP Congress in Bucharest, Romania on March 7, 2024. | Andreea Alexandru/AP
ROMANIAN LEADER TO STEP DOWN — Romanian President Klaus Iohannis announced he will step down, effective Wednesday, to avoid the spectacle of an impeachment process launched by Bucharest’s parliament.
Iohannis, who has been president since 2014, was due to leave office after Romania’s presidential elections at the end of last year. However, his term was temporarily extended after the Constitutional Court ordered a rerun of the vote following concerns about Russian interference. Romania has been in political turmoil since the first round of voting in November saw Călin Georgescu, a far-right independent, catapulted from obscurity into the lead.
Shortly before the second round, Romania’s Constitutional Court ruled that the first round of voting had been so badly tainted by a Russian influence operation on social media that the entire process had to be scrapped and started over. Iohannis was allowed to remain in office until the rerun of the presidential election, which is scheduled to begin on May 4.
“By imposing tariffs, the U.S. would be taxing its own citizens, raising costs for business, and fueling inflation. Moreover, tariffs heighten economic uncertainty and disrupt the efficiency and integration of global markets,” the Commission said in a statement.
Imposing the tariffs is likely to trigger a forceful reaction from Brussels. Steel and aluminum are at the center of an unresolved dispute between Washington and Brussels dating back to 2018, when Trump imposed tariffs that were later suspended. The EU’s retaliatory tariffs on bourbon whiskey, motorbikes and cranberry juice were paused during the Joe Biden administration. The truce is expected to lapse on the European side at the end of March.
Labeling the tariffs as unlawful is paving the way for the EU to respond according to its usual rulebook, including by launching a challenge at the World Trade Organization or deploying safeguard measures.
Nightly Number
$700 million
The estimated Democratic and Republican spending in next year’s North Carolina Senate race, according to Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The seat is currently held by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).
RADAR SWEEP
RAT RACE — Climate change has been linked to almost every issue you can think of: food supply, health, natural disasters, and now — rats. There’s now a study to prove what you might have seen with your own eyes: rat populations really are on the rise. Science Advances, a peer reviewed journal, found that spikes in rat populations in cities across the country are tied to an increase in temperature, urbanization and human population. The study reported rat numbers are soaring in cities that are warming faster, which can allow rats to feed and breed longer. Using data from complaint calls in 16 cities, the researchers saw an uptick in rat populations in cities across America. The rat problem is now costing the country $27 billion each year in damage to infrastructure, crops and contaminated food supplies. In National Geographic, Jason Bittel unpacks the upshot of the study exploring the relationship between the rise of rats and climate change.
Parting Image
On this date in 1989: Outgoing Democratic National Committee chair Paul Kirk Jr. (left) holds up the hand of Ron Brown, the new chair, after his appointment to the post in Washington. | AP Photo
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