Judges, the Economy, and Even Elon Musk’s Own DOGE Team Are Turning Against His Wild Plans

What exactly would you say you “do” here? That’s what Elon Musk and his made-up federal task force DOGE asked roughly 2.3 million federal employees via an email sent by the Office of Personnel Management, implying that those who didn’t respond by Monday night with five bullet points of things they accomplished in the week prior would be out of a job. This brand-new flavor of the Sunday Scaries is just the latest antic that has led to Washington insiders turning on Musk, now with the added twist of a federal judge saying this whole thing might be in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

That old thing? Donald Trump hasn’t shown himself to care much about it, but you never know if you don’t try, and Washington’s Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is doing just that.

“Based on the limited record I have before me, I have some concerns about the constitutionality of U.S.D.S.’s structure and operations,” Kollar-Kotelly said Monday in a Washington Federal District Court hearing, invoking the initials of DOGE’s rarely-used government name, the U.S. DOGE Service and sidestepping the group’s legendarily dumbass meme-inspired acronym. Leaders of government agencies—which, given the power and access that DOGE has, it would appear to be—must be nominated by the president and confirmed by Congress. Musk, who has gotten access to a kajillion personnel files and other sensitive information between sending his never-ending stream of jackass tweets and ghosting on (some of) the mothers of his various offspring, did not go through this process.

To put it in terms that memelords like Musk might more easily understand: much overstep. fascist wow. many illegal. what boss. lol.

Kollar-Kotelly’s remarks are not connected to any official action as of yet, but were made in the context of civil suits that groups are bringing against DOGE and Musk, with the emails as a central cataclysmic piece of evidence. As Musk continues on his mission to slash and burn federal budgets, with a bedazzled chainsaw as a prop, agencies have provided their employees with mixed guidance about whether and how to respond to the ominous email.

“Our chief said it was mandatory,” one anonymous Department of Veteran Affairs employee told CNN. “Then OPM said it became voluntary. Then I guess Trump just told us it was mandatory again. No one knows who is in charge and who to listen to.”

“It’s bedlam,” an IRS employee echoed.

Some reports claim that any responses to the email received will be fed through AI for analysis. (Sounds like those bots get to enjoy a lot of photos of cats and personal attacks on Musk from the general public, who, naturally, got a hold of the email address and went off to the races.) Musk, via social media, disputed AI involvement, and on Monday tsk-tsked at the uproar the email has caused.

“The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!” he wrote. “Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?”

We’re all thinking the same thing while looking at even a small sampling of this man’s utterly flooded timeline, right? The one where he regularly drops slurs about the very taxpayers he claims to treasure so dearly? What was that you were saying about incompetence and contempt, again?

On Tuesday, 21 DOGE employees resigned en masse, writing in an open letter addressed to Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles that they objected to being asked to “compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services.”

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the letter continued. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments at the United States DOGE Service.”

In the immortal words of the Muppets, even the vegetables don’t like him.

Beyond federal employees and agencies, as well as DOGE’s own employees, signaling that they’re extremely over Musk and Trump’s partnership and its methods, there are the charts. Charts don’t have feelings, but Musk has feelings about charts. Namely, the one tracking the 10-year Treasury bond yield over time.

As Bloomberg reported Tuesday, though DOGE crows about making $55 billion in cuts already, their numbers aren’t adding up to that. And even if they did, that’s still less than 1 percent of the federal budget, not even a dent. Plus, DOGE is hitting easier targets first in the cuts, and is already facing resistance and lawsuits. Where else will they find room to successfully trim, if these first cuts have sparked such outrage?

Musk, meanwhile, is taking a page from Timothée Chalamet’s book and practicing some good ol’ manifestation. One affirmation, made via X (formerly Twitter) on February 12:

“As it becomes clear that @DOGE is working, you will see the long-term Treasury bill yields fall,” he wrote. “And all Americans will benefit from lower interest payments on mortgages, small business debt, credit card and other loans.”

As our omniscient narrator (and those pesky charts) can confirm, we have not seen those long-term Treasury bill yields fall. They have inched upward from the 4.3 percent immediately before the November 2024 presidential election, and swung as high as 4.7 percent since Trump’s win.

“You can say where you think yields should go and what will allow for your economic plans but that’s not going to have any effect,” veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said in a recent interview. “The bond market is the most un-spinnable entity there is.”

Carville predicted that support for Trump, Musk, and the MAGA ideology would suffer a “massive collapse” within the next month or so. “Particularly in public opinion.”

“It’s gonna be easy pickings here in six weeks. Just lay back,” he urged Democrats. “It’s collapsing right now, we’re in the midst of a collapse.”

And Carville has as much confidence in the bonds numbers as Shakira does in hips, once famously saying that he wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market, because “you can intimidate everybody.”

He’s singing the same song now.

“You can come up with every fake number you want, but you can’t fool a bond market. These people are not foolable,” he said of the current climate and that MAGA demise he sees on the horizon. “They’re not gonna believe any of that.”