I is Diane. On my mind, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and a growing legal backlash. Musk and his team at Doge

have moved at a remarkable pace over the last two weeks,

bringing slash and burn tactics to the federal government.

Donald Trump has signed more than 50 executive orders

the most in a president's first hundred days in more than 40 years.

With Republicans holding power in both chambers of Congress, there are seemingly few checks on the new administration's actions, even as questions

remain about how lawful they are.

The one venue that remains is the courts, and there has been several lawsuits against Doge,

against what it's doing.

That's Neftali Ben David.

He's senior national political correspondent for the Washington Post.

He joined me Thursday afternoon.

Neftali, tell us generally what Doge is and how it was created. I think one of the questions

that a lot of people have is exactly what Doge is, and there's a lot of lawsuits to try to get to the bottom of that.

Some people describe it as an advisory committee.

Some people describe it as part of the U.S. government.

But it was created, of course, when President Trump named Elon Musk and also Vivek Ramaswamy, who has since left the the organization and gave them this broad mandate to kind of

re-examine the federal workforce, federal spending, make cuts where appropriate.

It was just kind of a broad sweeping mission and a fairly ill-defined group.

Now, since then, there have been some reporters that have ascertained some of the people who

are doing work on its behalf. A lot of them

seem to be youthful members of the Silicon Valley community or people who have otherwise worked for

...