Breaking news. Musk is dismantling the government. Exclusive breaking details. Tonight, exclusive details about the young man Elon Musk is appointing as his lieutenants will be revealed. The editor at Wired, who broke the details about who they are and what they’re doing, is Out-front in just a moment, because it comes as the world’s richest man now has unprecedented power and access to critical government operations among them.

Well, one of the things he’s trying to do is shut down the agency in charge of US humanitarian aid. So Musk has tweeted about this a whole lot. But I think this one summarizes the whole mantra here. U.S. Aid is a criminal organization. Time for it to die. They’re all pretty much like that. And he’s got Trump splashing on this one.

If there’s fraud, these people are lunatics. That tremendous fraud. They turn out to be radical left lunatics. So he segments the people there. It’s also about the programs. I mean, U.S. Aid is a big organization. They do spend money on a whole lot of things. Fighting disease and starvation is on the list.

6 young men working for DOGE is a crime. ‘Wired’ journalist responds

And the most important thing actually just boils down to this. If there are legitimate concerns about U.S. aid and fraud and its spending money, then investigate it. Let the American people see it and take care of it. But to just shut it down without telling anybody what you’re doing on the whim of one man who is not elected and who isn’t even employed by the federal government.

Well, that is something that, at least in terms of the structure of the United States, is an un-American way to do it. There is a way to shine a light on U.S. aid. It would be by going before Congress. And Elon, if you want to run, I’d get nominated by Trump and go to the Senate. Good luck in getting confirmed.

Yes. Right. You get confirmed; you go in. Well, then you could dismantle it. Well, Congressman Gerry Connolly is going to be with us in just a moment. But this is not Musk’s only major move right now. According to the Wall Street Journal tonight, Musk is also leading Trump’s charge to essentially shutter the Department of Education.

And then there’s this Musk and his team gaining full access to the Treasury’s massive federal payment system. Basically the checkbook for the whole federal government. So, you know, the $6 trillion that goes and all sorts of things, you know, to households and businesses. Well, it goes through there. And up until this point, only a small number of career officials have controlled the Treasury’s payment systems.

usk says naming 6 young men working for DOGE is a crime.

That is until this weekend, when a top official left after a standoff with Musk’s team, where Team Musk tried to stop some payments. Make no mistake, this is a major coup for Musk. He’s got access only to letting people go that he thinks are no good. If we agree with him. And it’s only if we agree with him.

All right. Let’s begin with Jeff Zolani Out-front live at the White House tonight. And, Jeff, I know that you, you know, were able to question the president on a lot of this today. How much power is he willingly giving Musk? Erin, it’s really difficult to compare to anyone else in the government because Elon Musk has the broadest portfolio, certainly for an unelected official and for an unconfirmed official.

I mean, we are seeing example after example, hearing story after story from really agencies across Washington. But I was there in the Oval Office this afternoon, asking the president questions. And I was struck by this answer. We asked the president, you know, is there anything that you would not allow? And he said if there was something that didn’t have my okay, I’d let you know about that really fast.

What would that possibly be? I mean, no examples really come to mind of what the president would not allow Elon Musk to do. Also, what about all the government contracts he has? Would there be a conflict of interest? And the president said, Oh, sure, if there is a conflict of interest, he would stop that. But again, there was no one policing any of this.

Musk says naming 6 young men working for DOGE is a crime. ‘Wired’ journalist responds

So the bottom line here is Elon Musk is really spreading his wings throughout this federal government, largely with the help of just a handful of employees. Some may not even be employees of the government. He is what’s called a special government employee. Presidents of both parties have brought people on with it.

experience and expertise to work in the government on a part-time basis. This goes far beyond anything that we have ever seen before. That’s why there are so many questions about this. So from USAID? Yes. The president says he believes that he can make these decisions. He does not believe that it’s the purview of Congress to do it.

We will see there are legal challenges. But for Elon Musk, there are a few checks on his power. And it seems only the check of one man, which of course has not been used. Jeff, thank you very much. Out Front now is Katie Drummond. She is the global editorial director of Wired. And they have these incredible exclusive new details about who Elon Musk is bringing in, sending in to these federal agencies.

So, you know, these stories are sort of amazing. And then you’re, you know, you’re thinking, what world are we living in where you have, you know, an unelected, unconfirmed individual with so much power going into a system with trillions of dollars of payments and other government agencies? You’ve been focusing on six computer engineers.

They’re all men, and they are young. The youngest is 19. And, Erin, just to be clear, this is the world we are living in. and Wired has been documenting a few sorts of small parts of this world, including, yes, we have identified in our reporting, six young men. All of our reporting indicates they are between the ages of 19 and 24.

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They are either recent high school or recent college graduates, high school graduates in at least one case, all with ties to either Musk-owned companies or Peter Thiel-owned companies. So one is a former Palantir intern, and another intern is at SpaceX. One is a teal fellow. Another recently completed a summer internship at Neural link, which, of course, is also owned by Elon Musk.

All right, so what are they actually doing? And who is paying them for the work? Well, it’s to be, to be candid, a little bit difficult to ascertain exactly what they are doing. What we do know is that they are working across several federal agencies, including DoD, of course, as well as the Office of Personnel Management, which is essentially the HR function for the government, and the General Services Administration, which oversees things like federal buildings, leases, and then technology and IT.

So what we do know is that these young men are working at the behest of Musk and his team that he has brought in across these agencies. on, you know, a number of engineering-related tasks. So, okay, Elon Musk wants anyone, you know, talking about this, sharing the names of these Doge employees charged with a crime.

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obviously, these are people who are going in and now going to have access to the payment system for, you know, affecting hundreds of millions of Americans, possibly if you talk about Treasury or certainly federal employees. He’s got the backing of the U.S. Trump attorney in Washington, saying the FBI and prosecutors are investigating.

Has Musk reached out to you or any of his lawyers or anything? We haven’t heard from Musk or his legal team. Obviously, what I would say is that our reporting speaks for itself. It is rigorously reported, fact checked and vetted by our spectacular legal team. And we look forward to continuing to do the work, trying to figure out exactly what Elon Musk and his team are doing inside of these federal agencies.

And it’s important. Work is brave work. When in terms of what they’re doing, do you know what they’re doing when they go in this? I mean, are they, I don’t know, looking at this data, putting this data somewhere else? So do we know what they’re doing? Well, let me give you sort of one specific example that we were able to ascertain in at least some instances. You know, these men appear to be essentially evaluating the work product of federal employees.

So, you know, one of the sort of departments that sits inside one of these federal agencies is tasked with essentially IT and technology. So we do know that one of these young men, in 19, or a recent high school graduate who interned at Neural ink, was part of meetings where federal employees in this department were asked to submit code if they were engineers, as well as a one-sheet documenting their productivity.

Read more:

So sort of recent wins, barriers to productivity, barriers to efficiency, which actually calls back to Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, if you recall, he also in that instance asked Twitter employees to submit one-sheets documenting their productivity, as well as, you know, conducting code review. So we know that at least one of these individuals with a Gmail email address, I should add, as of late last week, has been meeting with federal workers to review their code and their productivity.

So that’s what they’re up to. That’s incredible. All right, Katie, thank you very much. I appreciate it coming in from the team at Wired doing such incredible work. I want to go now to Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the top Democrat on the oversight committee. It’s safe to say you don’t have any oversight over this, right? I mean, I would imagine some of this, in a sense, is news to you, Congressman; you got a 19-year-old recent high school graduate actually demanding productivity and code.

from federal workers and a group of young men who are associated with Elon Musk or Peter Thiel between 19 and 24, doing much of this just from the reporting that Katie just shared. Yeah, I think it’s outrageous. Think about it. The world’s premier development humanitarian aid organization, the agency for International Development of the United States Government, is going to be allegedly shut down or merged with the State Department based on the findings of six young men from the ages of 19 to 24, hundreds of years of aggregate experience.

In humanitarian assistance, child and maternal health care, famine relief, refugee assistance, and disaster assistance, is going to be thrown out the window by a team of six young men just graduating from high school or college. That is outrageous. It’s unacceptable.