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Elon Musk Backs Away From Washington, but DOGE Remains
As Elon Musk sought to reassure Wall Street analysts on Tuesday that he would soon scale back his work with the federal government, the strain of his situation was audible in his voice.
The world’s richest man said that he would continue arguing that the Trump administration should lower tariffs it has imposed on countries across the world. But he acknowledged in a subdued voice that whether President Trump “will listen to my advice is up to him.”
He was not quite chastened, but it was a different Mr. Musk than a couple months ago, when the billionaire, at the peak of his power, brandished a chain saw onstage at a pro-Trump conference to dramatize his role as a government slasher.
Back then, Mr. Musk was inarguably a force in Washington, driving radical change across the government. To the president, he was a genius; to Democrats, he was Mr. Trump’s “unelected co-president”; to several cabinet secretaries, he was a menace; and to G.O.P. lawmakers, he was the source of anguished calls from constituents whose services and jobs were threatened by cuts from his Department of Government Efficiency.
As Mr. Musk moves to spend less time in Washington, it is unclear whether his audacious plan to overhaul the federal bureaucracy will have lasting power. The endeavor has already left an immense imprint on the government, and Mr. Musk has told associates that he believes he has put in place the structure to make DOGE a success. But he has still not come close to cutting the $1 trillion he vowed to find in waste, fraud and abuse.
Mr. Trump has constrained some of Mr. Musk’s influence over the past two months, telling cabinet secretaries that they were in charge of their own agencies. But the president also told the secretaries to work with Mr. Musk and DOGE to cut spending. At the same time, Mr. Musk has fought publicly and privately against the president’s steep tariffs that have threatened the manufacturing and profits of Tesla, his car company.
Mr. Musk has told friends that he has been frustrated by the encounters he has had with Mr. Trump’s trade advisers, according to a person briefed on the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. The billionaire has tried to work behind the scenes to persuade Mr. Trump to abandon his draconian protectionist posture, according to two people with knowledge of their conversations.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokeswoman for Mr. Musk declined to comment. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said the billionaire “was a tremendous help, both in the campaign and in what he’s done with DOGE.”
“He was always at this time going to ease out,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office.
Shaun Maguire, one of Mr. Musk’s closest friends and an adviser to DOGE officials, said that he was confident the endeavor would thrive without Mr. Musk’s full-time involvement. He compared DOGE to a Falcon 9 rocket — an initial thrust of energy powers the rocket even after it has separated from its engines.
“At this point, a rocket is only a couple hundred kilometers from Earth, but it has escaped its gravity well and can travel far into the solar system,” Mr. Maguire said. “DOGE has escaped D.C.’s gravity well.”
Mr. Maguire, who was involved in interviews for Pentagon appointments during the presidential transition, said he believed that “history will judge DOGE very favorably, well beyond what is appreciated today.”
Mr. Musk has placed DOGE allies across the federal government, seeking to dismantle some agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The New York Times has identified more than 60 employees hired to work for Mr. Musk’s effort, although some have since left the federal government. Many have worked with the billionaire in the private sector, including at least 20 who have ties to Mr. Musk’s companies. DOGE is led by Steve Davis, Mr. Musk’s top adviser and enforcer.
DOGE staff members have overridden the objections of career civil servants at the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service to access closely held data about immigrants. Inside a Social Security database, Mr. Musk’s team put into place a system to list living immigrants they claimed were criminals as dead, in an effort to cut them off from financial services and to force them to leave the country.
All told, DOGE has tried to gain entry to more than 80 data systems across at least 10 federal agencies, The New York Times found. Those data sets include personal information about federal workers, detailed financial data about federal procurement and spending and intimate personal details about the American public.
Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have watched anxiously as Mr. Musk has taken risky political swings at agencies that tens of millions of Americans rely on.
At the Social Security Administration, rushed policy changes have led to panicked beneficiaries overwhelming field offices. And a return-to-office policy and layoffs of probationary employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs have imperiled the agency’s mental health care program and threatened its ability to conduct medical research.
Mr. Musk came into the Trump administration claiming he would find governmental cost savings so large that they sounded impossible to budget experts.
In February, the group posted an online “wall of receipts” that detailed the savings from thousands of canceled grants, contracts and office leases. But that site included claims that confused “billion” with “million,” double- or triple-counted the same cancellations and even took credit for canceling programs that ended when George W. Bush was president.
Earlier this month, at a cabinet meeting, Mr. Musk said he had so far cut $150 billion from next year’s federal budget — far less than the $1 trillion he claimed he would extract.
DOGE has triggered sharp cuts to the federal work force and to the budgets of some agencies. But it is difficult to gauge exactly how much it has saved, because DOGE’s public claims have been riddled with errors and guesswork that inflated its success.
Mr. Musk’s slashing of the government has been politically costly, but he remains in good standing with the president, according to people familiar with Mr. Trump’s views.
While some of Mr. Trump’s close aides and advisers have argued with Mr. Musk, the president still praises him at nearly every opportunity, and still invites him to hang out at his clubs and to bring along his children.
Mr. Trump has told advisers that Mr. Musk put it all on the line for him. And he feels bad about what he calls left-wing “lunatics” attacking Tesla dealerships to protest Mr. Musk’s role in the Trump administration. Mr. Trump also respects the power of Mr. Musk’s social media platform, X, even as the president retains a commercial interest in Truth Social, his own platform.
In private, Mr. Trump has occasionally indicated to associates that it might be time for Mr. Musk to move on and spend more time with his companies. But the president is unlikely to ever pressure Mr. Musk to leave, or do anything deliberate to alienate him. He remains grateful for the hundreds of millions of dollars that Mr. Musk spent to elect him in 2024, and mindful of the additional $100 million that Mr. Musk has pledged to Mr. Trump’s political operation, the associates note.
Mr. Musk is now a financial cornerstone of the Republican Party, and will keep immense influence as long as he wants to stay involved in politics.
Still, Mr. Trump has recognized problems that Mr. Musk has caused, such as a plan for him to get briefed at the Pentagon on sensitive national security matters related to China — something even the president described privately as a conflict of interest and a meeting he was not told about in advance, according to people familiar with what took place. When Mr. Trump learned of that potential session from news reports, it was the first time people close to the president could remember him expressing displeasure with Mr. Musk.
Mr. Trump has also acknowledged to advisers that Mr. Musk has stumbled as a political force — most notably with his costly long-shot effort to flip a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. Mr. Trump, a student of public opinion, has paid attention to the billionaire’s standing in opinion polls, watchful for any signs that Mr. Musk’s deep unpopularity might transfer.
But people close to Mr. Trump have also said that Mr. Musk has been helpful as a “heat shield,” absorbing unrelenting attacks that would otherwise be aimed at the president.
On Tuesday, Mr. Musk told analysts that he planned to dial back his government work to “a day or two per week” to turn his attention back to his companies. Administration officials with knowledge of Mr. Musk’s schedule said that they have already noticed he has reduced the amount of time he spends in Washington.
By dialing back the number of days he spends working for the White House, Mr. Musk can also potentially stretch out the 130 days he is allotted as a “special government employee.”
Zach Montague, Emily Badger, Wilson Andrews and Alexandra Berzon contributed reporting.
Three San Francisco couples set out Monday for their annual road trip to Ashland, Ore., for the town’s famous Shakespeare festival. They drove separately and planned to meet at 6:30 p.m. on the terrace of their favorite Japanese restaurant there.
They had booked a table for six, but only four showed up for dinner.
Judith and Wylie Sheldon were found dead in their running car on the side of the road to Oregon, shocking their friends and family and leaving a hole in San Francisco’s arts and film world.
Ms. Sheldon, 84, was the daughter of William Wyler — who won three Oscars for best director — and chaired the board of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Mr. Sheldon, 86, was a prominent lawyer.
David Smith, who had befriended the couple more than 40 years ago, said in an interview that he and the others at the dinner table had grown nervous as time ticked on and their friends did not answer repeated calls to their cellphones. They learned they had not checked into their hotel either.
The friends eventually learned from one of the couple’s sons that the California Highway Patrol had found the couple at 5:46 p.m., both dead inside their running Jeep Compass. It was parked on the side of Interstate 5, north of Redding, Calif., more than 100 miles from their destination, the authorities said. Ms. Sheldon was driving, while Mr. Sheldon was in the passenger seat, according to the authorities.
The Redding area on Monday was under an extreme heat warning issued by the National Weather Service. Temperatures reached 109 degrees, according to the Weather Service.
Mr. Smith said he learned from the son that the couple had been found without any water or other liquids in the car. The fan was on high, but the air conditioning was not working, meaning they might have been blasted with hot air, Mr. Smith said. The windows were rolled down. The car had plenty of gas, and there were no signs of mechanical failure or foul play, Mr. Smith said the son told him.
“They didn’t crash. They stopped. They both just died there,” Mr. Smith said. “The entire thing is so bizarre. We’re still in a state of shock.”
The circumstances and cause of the couple’s death is under investigation but “appears to be medically related,” the Highway Patrol said in a statement.
Whether the heat contributed to the couple’s death “may be determined” by an autopsy, a spokesman for the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office said, adding that one had not been scheduled yet and could take several weeks to complete.
“We’ll just have to see,” the spokesman, Tim Mapes, said.
The Sheldons met at Stanford University and had two sons. They lived in a large home in San Francisco’s upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood that had views of the bay from the front and a garden out back.
They hosted many parties there on behalf of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and sometimes let revelers pose for photos with Mr. Wyler’s Oscar statuettes. Ms. Sheldon fell in love with silent movies after first seeing those created by her father — before his better known blockbusters like “Ben-Hur” and “Roman Holiday” — only about 30 years ago, said Anita Monga, artistic director of the festival.
Stacey Wisnia, the festival’s executive director, said the couple was generous, delightful and unassuming.
Back in Ashland, Ore., Mr. Smith said the four remaining friends had distracted themselves from their grief by attending plays, including “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Come From Away.” They were able to give away their friends’ tickets.
Ms. Monga had last seen Ms. Sheldon just last month at the film festival, which was held at the newly remade Castro Theater.
“This is such a shock,” Ms. Monga said of the deaths. “Also because it’s still a mystery.”
Luigi Mangione appears for a pretrial hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, June 17, 2026.
Angelina Katsanis/AP
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Angelina Katsanis/AP
New York — In a dramatic reversal, Luigi Mangione’s legal team on Thursday backed away from a plan to use a psychiatric defense when his case goes to trial in state court in September. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to murdering health insurance CEO Brian Thompson in 2024 on a Manhattan street.
At a hearing only a day earlier before state Judge Gregory Carro, Mangione’s attorneys confirmed that Mangione had been undergoing psychiatric evaluation. They signaled that his defense would be based at least in part on the argument that Mangione was experiencing “extreme emotional disturbance.”
But in a one-line letter sent to Carro on Thursday, Mangione’s team said that “at this time” they no longer intend to introduce psychiatric evidence during the trial. It’s unclear what sparked the shift. Mangione’s team didn’t respond to NPR’s request for comment.
Former Manhattan prosecutor and legal analyst Gary Galperin told NPR it was a “stunning reversal” for Mangione to withdraw from the psychiatric defense. “One can only speculate at this point as to the reasons,” he said.
“What remains, of course, at this point is the question of what defense they will pursue at trial,” he added.
This maneuver came after Carro ordered Mangione’s attorneys to quickly share psychiatric information with prosecutors.
“They need to know what the malady is that this defendant suffers and how that triggered extreme emotional distress,” he said, during Wednesday’s hearing. “I’m not going to let you surprise people on the eve of trial. Get it done.”
Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Joel Seidemann repeatedly complained that Mangione’s team was “stonewalling” the prosecution by withholding medical information about his psychiatric state. “We have gotten nothing,” Seidemann said.
Mangione’s lead attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo denied her team was delaying the court process or improperly withholding information.
But legal analyst Richard Schoenstein says by withdrawing the psychiatric defense, Mangione’s team “is avoiding the court deadline to produce its psychiatric evidence.”
According to Schoenstein, this latest move “does not entirely foreclose” Mangione’s team from returning to some form of psychiatric argument during the trial, but he added that such a defense would now be far more difficult.
Mangione’s case has drawn worldwide attention. Legal experts say the 28-eight-year old has drawn an unusual level of public support because of his criticism of the health insurance industry. Thompson, a father of two, was CEO of UnitedHealthcare at the time of his murder.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Carro also indicated that a tranche of court documents would be made public that apparently relate to Mangione’s potential psychiatric defense. On Thursday, Carro reversed course.
In a signed order, he said that because Mangione will no longer present psychiatric evidence, “the court’s previous order sealing certain transcripts, emails, and documents, remains in effect.”
Mangione’s state trial is scheduled to begin in early September, with a federal trial expected to take place later.
The museums, designed by conservative nonprofits and Trump appointees, tell the story of early America, from colonization to revolution. The one exhibition looking beyond the early years is the “Wall of American Heroes.” It is a list of 51 people, chosen to illustrate 250 years of American history.
A White House spokesman said they were “individuals who shaped this nation’s history, culture and spirit across generations.”
The people pictured on this national honor roll — and the people left out — help illustrate what this administration sees as the highlights of American history.
Amid the administration’s efforts to reshape the nation’s relationship with its past, Trump appointees heavily weighted the list toward a single era of American history — and a few specific kinds of hero.
The other exhibitions in the Freedom Trucks were crafted by a pair of conservative nonprofits, PragerU and Hillsdale College. But the “Wall of American Heroes” was created by Freedom 250, a nonprofit effort whose leaders were chosen by President Trump and that was created to lead the planning of celebrations of the nation’s 250th birthday, overshadowing a bipartisan congressional commission.
A spokeswoman for Freedom 250 said Mr. Trump was not directly involved in the selection of those featured.
But the list clearly tracks Mr. Trump’s own lifetime and the heroes of the conservative political movement.
The wall’s tilt toward heroes of the baby boomer generation, for instance, extends beyond Hollywood stars and musicians. Of the four religious leaders on the list, two — Archbishop Fulton Sheen and the Rev. Billy Graham — also appeared on TV regularly in the 1950s and 1960s. The only painter on the list is Norman Rockwell, known for his idealized depictions of American life in that period.
By contrast, there is only a handful of figures from the first decades of American independence.
“That’s a disservice, if your intention is to present the last 250 years,” said Sarah Weicksel, the executive director of the American Historical Association. “Because all of the people on this list are building on the work and struggles and progress that was made by the people in the 150 years prior.”
The “Wall of American Heroes” was inspired by a similar display in a traveling museum created by the State of Virginia. But Virginia’s display celebrates little-known historical figures.
Mr. Trump’s, by and large, celebrates people who are already well-known — and, often, people who were famous in their own time. For example, it praises P.T. Barnum, a circus impresario who used hoaxes and freak shows to draw crowds. The wall calls him an “icon of American sensationalism.”
The spokeswoman for Freedom 250 said that many of the names on the wall were drawn from a list of 250 people that Mr. Trump wants to include in a “Garden of American Heroes” in Washington.
The spokeswoman declined to say what criteria were used to narrow down the list.
The only president whose name appears on the wall — not on the list of heroes, but alongside his quotation — is Mr. Trump himself.
Explore the Wall of Heroes
Navigate the display by dragging from side to side.
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