Welcome to POLITICO's West Wing Playbook: Remaking Government, your guide to Donald Trump’s unprecedented overhaul of the federal government — the key decisions, the critical characters and the power dynamics that are upending Washington and beyond. Send tips | Subscribe | Email Sophia | Email Irie | Email Ben | Email Adam | Email Holly | Email Jake THE LATEST: It’s another Monday in Musk world, which means many federal workers have just a few hours left to respond to the “What did you do last week? Part II” email sitting in their inboxes from Friday. Or not — depending where they work. Some employees have been told to hold off on complying with the Department of Government Efficiency’s now weekly directive (the State Department), while officials elsewhere instructed workers to respond (Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, Department of Defense). And ELON MUSK appears ready to hold them to it: “The President has made it clear that this is mandatory for the executive branch,” Musk posted Saturday on X. “Anyone working on classified or other sensitive matters is still required to respond if they receive the email, but can simply reply that their work is sensitive.” MUSK COURTS JUDICIAL IMPEACHMENT: Musk is wielding enormous authority over the U.S. government with an undefined portfolio and commenting compulsively on virtually every policy and political issue on Earth, sometimes dozens of times per day. It has raised questions about the line between Musk’s two identities — the senior adviser to President DONALD TRUMP, speaking for the administration, and the billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X, speaking for himself — and how to tell which version of the man is commenting at any given time. On one of those issues — Musk’s repeated and increasingly aggressive calls for the impeachment of federal judges — the White House is making clear that Musk is speaking on his own. “Those comments were made in his personal capacity,” a senior White House official said of the impeachment drumbeat. A smattering of those comments from the past few weeks:
- “We must impeach judges who are grossly undermining the will of the people and destroying America. It is the only way.”
- “We should at least ATTEMPT to fire this junky jurist. The notion of having a judge job for life, no matter how bad the judgments, is ridiculous!”
- “Impeach this pseudo-jurist!!”
- “We must impeach to save democracy.”
It’s a notable, intentional line drawn between Trump and Musk, who have worked feverishly to portray themselves as fully in sync. Instead, it portrays Musk’s frenetic commentary about the judges, who are weighing dozens of emergency cases that could halt major components of Trump’s agenda to dismantle the federal bureaucracy, as his own thinking.
But that strategic separation also serves another clear purpose: It allows Trump to let his perpetually online lieutenant float an extreme plan to neuter the courts while avoiding giving his loose talk the imprimatur of the Oval Office. And Trump's inner circle is well aware that even when Musk is speaking for himself, his words — broadcast to 200 million followers — drive the sentiment of Trump's MAGA base and can dominate news cycles on their own. The White House declined to say whether the president has any official position on calls for the impeachment of judges. Musk has described judges as “evil” (a label he applied today to Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY), said the United States should strive for a judiciary like El Salvador’s (where its right-wing leader orchestrated the removal of judges who ruled against his agenda) and endorsed calls by rank-and-file members of Congress who have filed dead-on-arrival articles of impeachment against federal judges. Those calls have at times become personal. “Impeach Ali,” he said on X last week, after U.S. District Judge AMIR ALI, an appointee of President JOE BIDEN, ordered the Trump administration to pay foreign aid contractors for their work. Musk has mounted similarly personal impeachment campaigns against U.S. District Judge JOHN BATES, a GEORGE W. BUSH appointee, and JOHN McCONNELL, a BARACK OBAMA appointee, after they blocked key pieces of Trump’s agenda. One reason Musk’s impeachment calls are likely to go nowhere — even in a Republican-led Congress — is pure math. Just like in proceedings against the president, it takes a majority of the House to impeach a judge, an uncertain prospect in such a narrowly divided chamber. No Republican leaders have endorsed impeachment calls and many would be wary of taking that draconian step purely out of disagreement with a ruling. And the math in the Senate is even more prohibitive: It takes two-thirds of the chamber to remove a judge, an impossibility in a chamber with 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and 2 Democrat-aligned independents. What’s notable, too, is that Musk’s interests seem to spike and recede on a dime. While he spent days manically tweeting about the impeachment of judges in February, he has spent the last few days amplifying his attacks on Zelenskyy and trying to drive support for Trump’s handling of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — in between posts touting the advances of his AI chatbot, Grok. Keep an eye out for which of Musk’s policy pronouncements the White House do(d)ges next. MESSAGE US — West Wing Playbook is obsessively covering the Trump administration’s reshaping of the federal government. Are you a federal worker? A DOGE staffer? Have you picked up on any upcoming DOGE moves? We want to hear from you on how this is playing out. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe!
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