Wednesday, March 12

As President Donald Trump and his allies continue their quest to reshape the federal government into an authoritarian regime, new reporting from the New York Times suggest that all may not be well in MAGA land between Trump’s cabinet members and Elon Musk. Also in this week’s newsletter: A stark reminder that right-wing groups are still trying to disenfranchise voters.

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— Matt Cohen, Senior Staff Writer

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Even Trump’s Cabinet is Wondering WTF Elon Musk is Doing

It’s no secret that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — the faux-agency created by Trump and run by Musk that’s tasked with eliminating government waste and fraud — is wreaking havoc on the federal workforce. But what about how DOGE and Musk are perceived within Trump’s own administration?

New reporting from the New York Times last week shed light on the simmering tension between Musk and various cabinet members within the Trump administration, revealing that even some of the president’s closest allies are at their wit’s end with the world’s richest man. According to the Times, Musk got into it with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, among others during a meeting. The takeaway? DOGE’s "hatchet" approach to saving money within the federal government isn’t actually a safe or effective way of rooting out fraud and waste and is — shocker — creating a ton of problems.  

It’s the latest evidence that Musk’s role within the Trump administration is wearing thin and causing schisms within the MAGA world. It’s well-known that Steve Bannon, a top advisor during Trump’s first administration and still a close ally to the president, really hates Musk and thinks he’s a threat to the MAGA movement. As I’ve noted previously in this newsletter, Bannon and Musk represent two different sides of the modern GOP — Bannon’s the steward of old-school conservative populism, while Musk is the poster for techno-fascist ideology among the ultra-wealthy elite — and it’s clear that while they both want the MAGA movement to thrive, they’d rather it thrive without the other.

Even with Trump having to step in to mediate the feuds between Musk, Bannon and the majority of his cabinet, it’s clear that this dynamic isn’t sustainable — especially since Musk and DOGE are the subjects of a majority of the lawsuits against the Trump administration. The burning question at the center of the legal challenges is: what authority does Musk and DOGE actually have? While the courts are still trying to get to the bottom of that, the recent drama in MAGA world exposes that many of Trump’s closest allies aren’t really sure, either.

Right-Wing Groups Are Still Trying to Disenfranchise Voters

Late last week, a small but significant update in a lawsuit in Pennsylvania offered a stark reminder about the state of voting rights: Right-wing “election integrity” groups are still trying their hardest to disenfranchise voters all across the country.

The update came in the 1789 Foundation’s lawsuit to have more than 277,000 voters purged from Pennsylvania’s voter rolls. The lawsuit, originally filed in October, claims the Commonwealth’s voter rolls include hundreds of thousands of voters who did not respond to confirmation notices in the 2020 general election cycle and, as a consequence, may no longer be eligible to vote in the state. The group suffered a significant loss in the case just before the general election in November, when a court denied its motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, allowing the quarter million-plus voters to cast their ballots.

But the 1789 Foundation isn’t giving up and, last week, dropped the Commonwealth as a defendant and continues their litigation against Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt (R) and two pro-voting groups, AFT Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Alliance for Retired Americans, as the remaining parties defending the state’s voter rolls.

The 1789 Foundation is far from the only right-wing group continuing its crusade full steam ahead to disenfranchise voters. In late January, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) filed a lawsuit against Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read (D) challenging the state’s voter roll maintenance records-keeping practices. The lawsuit alleges that Read’s office is preventing PILF from evaluating the state’s compliance with voter roll maintenance laws. And True The Vote, the influential far-right voter integrity organization with a rich history of promoting election conspiracy theories, is pressuring DOGE to audit voter rolls across the country.

It’s a sign that, as we get closer to the next election, the attack on voter rights will amplify louder than ever — and Trump, the GOP and their allies will use their newfound power to use every tool at their dispense to disenfranchise as many voters as they can.