• Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and, depending on whom you ask, the perceived head of the Department of Government Efficiency, is taking a big step back from his role in the federal government. He’s doing so amid sinking international popularity, both as a political figure and as a businessman. But let’s be real here: Musk is still a billionaire many times over, and the Department of Government Efficiency really did put multiple government agencies — and the careers of tens of thousands of government employees — into a metaphorical wood chipper. Brian Barrett, executive editor of news at Wired Magazine, explains what Musk’s time in power has meant for average Americans.
• And in headlines: The Supreme Court let President Donald Trump’s ban on trans troops in the military take effect for now, Trump had an awkward Oval Office sit down with Canada’s prime minister, and the Department of Justice asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to limit access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

• Check out Brian’s work – www.wired.com/author/brian-barrett/
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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Wednesday, May 7th. I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that, like the Trump administration, has not held any tariff negotiations with the Chinese government. Honestly, the similarities between me and the Trump Administration on this front are almost scary. Neither of us have any idea what we’re doing, but both of us are really good at coming up with weird explanations for that. [music break] On today’s show, the Supreme Court lets President Donald Trump’s ban on trans troops take effect for now. And Trump has an awkward Oval Office sit down with Canada’s prime minister. But let’s start with Elon Musk. Remember him? The world’s richest man and depending on whom you ask, the perceived head of the Department of Government Efficiency is taking a big step back from his role in the federal government. Though, based on his continuous Fox News interviews, he will be sticking to his role of talking a lot about how the sun will eventually incinerate the Earth, so that’s why we all have to move to Mars. Yes, that is a real thing he really discussed with Fox News host Jesse Waters, as one does. 

[clip of Elon Musk] So eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun. The sun is gradually expanding. And so we do, at some point, need to be a multi-planet civilization uh because Earth will be incinerated. 

[clip of Fox New’s Jesse Waters] I’m hearing this for the first time. No one’s ever told me the sun is going to burn Earth. 

[clip of Elon Musk] Yeah this is not a disputed fact. 

[clip of Fox New’s Jesse Waters] I’m not disagreeing with it. 

[clip of Elon Musk] Yeah. 

[clip of Fox New’s Jesse Waters] I’m just saying I didn’t know this was our destiny to get roasted by the sun. 

[clip of Elon Musk] Yes, and I don’t think there’s anyone who would disagree with that. 

Jane Coaston: Riveting and normal as always. Elon is stepping away at what one could delicately call a difficult time for his popularity, both as a political figure and as a guy who runs a car company. As a political figure, most Americans disapprove of his handling of the Department of Government Efficiency. According to a Washington Post-ABC news poll released last week, 57% of Americans disapprove of Musk and DOGE. And support for Musk is down by double digits among pretty much all demographics, including independents, adults under 30, and people without college degrees. In Georgia, a red state, a survey performed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that nearly 60% of registered voters disapproved of Elon playing a major role in the federal government. And then there’s Tesla, Musk’s car company. Sales of Teslas in Britain and Germany have dropped by about half, which Business Insider argued, quote, “could partly be attributed to political tensions tied to Elon Musk’s divisive role in the Trump administration and advocacy for right-wing European parties.” TLDR people who might ordinarily be interested in an EV probably don’t want to buy one from a guy who has never found a far-right European political movement he wasn’t an awkward fanboy for. And in America, Tesla sales have experienced their largest decline in the company’s history. The Cybertruck, or as I think of it, what would happen if you could drive Home Depot’s cheapest stainless steel refrigerator, has been such a flop that the company is sitting on thousands of unsold vehicles, and Tesla dealers are refusing to accept trade-ins. But let’s be real here, Elon is still the richest man on earth. And the Department of Government Efficiency really did put multiple government agencies and the careers of tens of thousands of government employees into a metaphorical woodchipper. So what did Elon Musk’s time and power actually mean for Americans? To find out, I talked to Brian Barrett. Executive editor of News for Wired magazine. Brian, welcome to What a Day. 

Brian Barrett: Jane. Thanks so much for having me 

Jane Coaston: So as Musk prepares a step back from taking his chainsaw to the federal government, how would you rate his tenure? Now, granted, it will be a failure to me, but would it be a success to someone else or is it too soon to tell? 

Brian Barrett: You know, I think what’s interesting is, is yeah, who is it a success for? I think you could say probably not for Elon Musk in a lot of ways, at least not yet because he has lost billions of dollars in value and in Tesla. Most of his money is wrapped up in Tesla stock and that’s in the tank, tied a lot to his performance there. Um,  I think the people who are winning or there are the sort of people who had these like preset agendas. And I think everyone else, I would rate it personally pretty poorly. Given that he’s dismantled so much of the federal government in such a short amount of time. 

Jane Coaston: On the failure side, Musk came in promising to slash like two trillion dollars from the federal budget. And there was talk and you hear people talking about this still. People talking about getting DOGE savings checks at one point. Like that was a real thing people were talking about. Those projected savings were eventually downsized to one trillion dollars and then to just 150 billion dollars, which is still a ton of money. But in government spending terms, not that much. So why did cutting government spending prove to be so difficult? Is it because a lot of government spending is on stuff people really like? 

Brian Barrett: Yeah, I think that’s exactly it. So much of what the government spends money on are those programs, social security, Medicaid, things that people really care about, and that are sort of third rails that nobody can really touch, especially not Elon Musk. So all of it becomes this sort of performative, but very destructive process where you’re sort of saving, you know, a hundred, however many billion dollars, but the amount that then they’re spending to defend the court cases of all these people rightly suing against that. The opportunity cost of cutting so much scientific research out of the federal government budget that we’re gonna be feeling for decades as a country falling behind on cancer research, falling behind all kinds of things that we can’t really afford to. So I think we’re going to be we’re going to look back at this as being a time where we lost way more than we than we saved. 

Jane Coaston: And I think it’s worth even asking, do we even know if the one hundred and fifty billion dollars is an accurate figure? Because there were tons of stories by some great reporters about how they were basically counting programs that had already been cut and not exactly that, you know, they haven’t been really transparent about their activities. 

Brian Barrett: Yeah, it’s every few weeks it seems like they either get called out for having inaccurate numbers. They have to, you know, they change the calculations themselves. Again, they’re not including what it’s actually costing also to employ all of these DOGE people. A lot of these DOGE people are bringing in six figure salaries, which again, a drop in the bucket compared to the government budget, but all of that counts, right? I think there’s no real accounting of, uh, what specifically they’ve saved and and what again what that’s going to cost in the long run. How much is the U.S. going to spend, now that USAID is dismantled, how much is the U. S. going have to spend in the long run in national security, in in regions where we used to have a stronger presence uh and now we’ve kind of disappeared? Um. Yeah, I think it’s a it’s a sort of a total farce. 

Jane Coaston: Let’s talk about, like, the personal cost to Musk of his tenure at DOGE. You’ve mentioned the sales of Teslas have plummeted in the U.S. and Europe. Buying one now is kind of a political statement, which is not something you want if you run a car company. I was just thinking about how, like I don’t know who the CEO of Toyota is. And I think that that’s probably for the best for Toyota. So how has his personal brand suffered as a result of DOGE? 

Brian Barrett: Yeah, I think that his personal brand has suffered a lot, especially as you see the impacts of what DOGE has done start to hit people. Uh. They are associating Elon Musk with all of this very unpopular activity that’s going on. And so you’re seeing that reflected in, you know driving around a cyber truck is a big statement, buying a cyber truck is a a big statement that a lot of people don’t wanna make right now. Uh. So, and I think it’s gonna be hard to come back from that, even if he’s stepping away from the government, I think the damage is done. I think that people know what he thinks, he still tells people what he thinks on Twitter or X every day, dozens of times a day. So it’s become the sort of toxic brand personally, and that reflects across his businesses. 

Jane Coaston: Brian, it is still Twitter in this dojo. You don’t need to worry about it. 

Brian Barrett: Thank you. Whew. 

Jane Coaston: But uh Musk did manage to help Republicans do something they fantasized about for decades, which is slashing the federal workforce. His minions helped to gut USAID, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And I think he gave Republicans a foil so that like they can be like, Elon did that, we didn’t do it, Elon did it. So by that measure, it would seem that DOGE has been a success for Republicans, maybe not for Elon Musk. Definitely not for you and me, but for Republicans, right? 

Brian Barrett: I think it has, in terms of achieving their objectives, I think, again, a lot of what DOGE has done lines up with what Project 2025 set out to do, but they’re still gonna have to own the consequences of it. I think that in the near term, you’re gonna have people who, it’s gonna take a lot longer for them to get on the phone with someone at the Social Security Administration, right? And I think they know why that is. In the longer term, you’re going to have people who um they’re unable to get access to certain medical treatment that they may have been you know hoping for. The problem is gonna be where some of the stuff that’s gonna happen, I think, some of the effects we’re gonna feel are gonna be so far down the line that they’re gonna feel detached from DOGE. And they’re going to be sort of a little bit abstract in terms of the day-to-day. Like I feel like a lot of people aren’t sitting around saying like you know how come that latest cancer trial didn’t go all the way? But it is that opportunity cost. So I don’t know, I think I think we’re gonna they’re gonna feel it a little bit day to day, and then I think the country as a whole is gonna feel it a lot in the next few years. 

Jane Coaston: Maybe more on the personal success front. Musk’s many, many companies are deeply intertwined with the government. Some rely on billions in government contracts. And some of those agencies were investigating Musk’s companies or they’d sued or fined them. So on that front, given that some of those agencies don’t really exist anymore, how was he able to personally benefit from his time working in the government? 

Brian Barrett: Well I think the important thing to remember, which I keep sort of trying to remind people in our reporting too, is that just because Musk is gone doesn’t mean that he’s no longer involved or he doesn’t have people there to help. So he’s got you know dozens of employees who have been associated with SpaceX, with X, with Tesla, who are now sort of spread out across these very key agencies, still looking for things and potentially looking for ways to benefit Elon Musk’s companies. I think that he’s got a lot of long-term potential benefits. Even just in terms of having people inside the FAA from SpaceX. FAA regulates SpaceX and regulates Elon Musk’s very lucrative satellite industry. They’re in a position now to sort of, well you know the next time the next contracts come up, the next there’s a procurement process, I think he clearly has the poll position whether he’s in the government or not. 

Jane Coaston: And Doge has also been able to tap into some of the most sensitive and valuable data in the world. What are the long-term ripple effects of that access going to be, I ask, horrified. 

Brian Barrett: I’ll tell you the I’m currently horrified about the near-term aspects because what we know they’re already doing is looking for ways to combine this data to make it easier to identify and surveil immigrants in the United States and to make it easier to deport them. We’ve already seen the Justice Department credit DOGE for giving an assist to an arrest in an immigration case a couple of weeks ago. So that’s a concrete example of how it’s being used. I think long term, once you bring all this data together that is supposed to be in different places, because it is so sensitive, because combining it gives you way more information about someone than any agency needs to have, it’s a lot harder to uncombine it, right? It’s sort of the toothpaste back in the tube situation. So especially when again, these are people who are come from private industry that are very data dependent. They’re going to go back to that private industry when their terms of government are gone done, it is a sort of a privacy nightmare in action that I don’t see slowing down. And I think it’s going to have long-term effects that we can’t really reverse. 

Jane Coaston: And let’s be clear here, Musk isn’t disappearing into the ether, sadly. DOGE will still also exist without Musk’s daily involvement. So where will it turn its sights to next? I’ve seen some worries about the security and exchange commission. What what do you think? 

Brian Barrett: I don’t think there’s any agency that’s going to be immune from DOGE. I think based on what we’ve seen, they’ve really focused on spreading out progressively. What we know they’re doing in the immediate term is working on this visa project, right? This sort of $5 million gets you a U.S. Visa, the golden visa that Trump is working on. That’s DOGE, and that’s not necessarily a place you’d expect them to show up. But I think that’s as indicative of any place that there is data, that there are you know, technical processes, they are going to find their way into it. They’ve got this mandate that is as wide as the government. So I wouldn’t expect to see, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them pretty much anywhere. 

Jane Coaston: Brian, thank you so much for joining us. 

Brian Barrett: Thank you so much, Jane. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Brian Barrett, executive editor of News for Wired Magazine. We’ll link to his work in our show notes. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube so you can see Elon be weird about the sun, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Prime Minister Mark Carney] As you know from real estate there are some places that uh are never for sale. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] That’s true. 

[clip of Prime Minister Mark Carney] Uh. We’re sitting in one right now you know Buckingham Palace that you visited as well. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] That’s true. 

[clip of Prime Minister Mark Carney] Uh and um having met with uh the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign uh last several months uh it it’s it’s not for sale won’t be for sale uh ever. 

Jane Coaston: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney met with President Trump at the White House Tuesday. The two spoke to reporters in the Oval Office. Topics of discussion included Trump’s interest in annexing Canada and making it America’s 51st state. You just heard Carney say that will never happen. Of course, Trump had to follow up with. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] But never say never, never say never. 

Jane Coaston: I’m saying never. Carney and Trump also shared a tense exchange about Trump’s tariff war that has strained U.S.- Canada trade relations. Trump was asked if there was anything Carney could say during their meeting that would get him to lift his tariffs on Canadian goods. His answer was a big fat– 

[clip of President Donald Trump] No. 

[clip of unknown reporter] Why not? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] That’s the way it is. 

Jane Coaston: Trump was also asked what concession he wants most out of Canada when negotiating a trade deal, to which he said: 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Uh friendship. 

[clip of unknown reporter 2] That’s not a concession. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Oh. Just I’d just we’re going to to be friends with Canada.

Jane Coaston: Girl, same. Carney’s visit to Washington comes after he led Canada’s Liberal Party to victory last week in the country’s election. Carney’s campaign was built on an anti-Trump message, something Trump alluded to in a super normal and not awkward way. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I think I was probably the greatest thing that happened to him. 

Jane Coaston: If you’re listening to this episode, I highly encourage you to head over to our YouTube channel to see the face Carney made here. I’d like to think it is the same face you’d make if Trump said he was probably the greatest thing that happened to you. The Supreme Court will allow the Trump administration to start enforcing a ban on transgender troops in the military, for now. The court’s emergency ruling Tuesday was unsigned, but the three liberal justices dissented. It’s not the final decision in the case. The justices are just allowing the ban to go into effect while legal challenges play out. Lower courts had blocked the order. It’s a big win for President Trump, who immediately started attacking trans rights when he returned to office. In a January executive order calling for the ouster of trans troops, the White House said, quote, “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” I say, quote “fuck that.” The case was filed by a group of trans service members and one trans person who hopes to enlist. They sued to block the ban on grounds it was insulting and violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. One is a transgendered Navy commander with nearly 20 years of service. She’s flown more than 60 combat missions. In a statement, advocates for the service members called the decision a quote, “devastating blow.” The Department of Justice on Monday asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to limit access to the abortion drug Mifepristone. The lawsuit was brought by Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri after the Supreme Court ruled to preserve access to Mifepristone last year. They filed their lawsuit in Texas, likely because they wanted to find a sympathetic judge. The GOP-led states sued the Food and Drug Administration, arguing that access to the drug, which was used in roughly two-thirds of all U.S. abortions in 2023, undermines their anti-abortion laws. But the DOJ says the states don’t have legal standing to bring their case in Texas because their claims don’t have any ties to the state. This is similar to the argument the Biden administration made last November when it sought to get this case thrown out. But Monday’s request doesn’t mean the Trump administration is suddenly pro-choice or anything. The DOJ said the states can sue elsewhere, quote, “in a district where venue is proper.” Enforcement of Real ID at U.S. airports technically starts today. You know that form of identification we’ve been hearing about for actual years. It sets minimum security standards for state issued drivers licenses and identification cards. But Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told a congressional panel Tuesday that people who don’t have a Real ID yet should still be able to fly despite the deadline. 

[clip of Kristi Noem] Folks will come through the line. Uh and they will be issue their ID and show it. If it’s not compliant they may be diverted to a different line and have an extra step. But people will be allowed to fly. 

Jane Coaston: 81% of people that travel by airline in the United States already have IDs that meet the requirements for a Real ID, like passports or tribal IDs. Congress passed the Real ID Act 20 years ago after a recommendation from the 9/11 Commission. Enforcement has been repeatedly delayed over the years. The law was initially intended to take effect in 2008, when I was in college. Efficiency! Real IDs will also be needed for access to certain federal facilities. To apply for a Real ID, Homeland Security says people need to provide a social security number, proof of address, and proof of lawful status, among other things. And that’s the news. [music break] Before we go. Hey, WAD fam, What a Day will be live at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival on May 31st in downtown Seattle. That’s the weekend after Memorial Day for the record. I’ll be interviewing former Senator, comedian, and Saturday Night Live writer Al Franken, and it’s a conversation you’re not gonna wanna miss. The rest of the lineup at the festival includes guests like CNN anchor Jake Tapper, former Republican Senator Jeff Flake, Washington’s own congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, plus Amanda Knox and a ton of other live podcasts like Criminal and Radiolab. If you’re in the area, come see us. You can get tickets and find out more at cascadepbs.org/festival. [music break] That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, and tell your friends to listen. And if you are into reading like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. And finally, thank you to everyone for your kindness and patience during my absence over the last few weeks. As some of you may know, my mom died on April 18th after a long battle with ALS. It is by far the worst and stupidest thing that has ever happened to me and my family. They don’t tell you that death is terrible and incredibly, incredibly dumb. But you guys, your DMs and emails and very kind comments have been so, so appreciated. I’m Jane Coaston, and thank you. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

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