Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that government spending could be separated from gross domestic product reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn.

“You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.”

With less than two weeks to go before a March 14 deadline, Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress appear to be nowhere close to a deal to avert a government shutdown that would throw Washington into deeper turmoil...

A new Rasmussen Reports poll found that the federal government as a whole acts as “government gangsters.”

Rasmussen Reports cited FBI Director Kash Patel’s book, entitled “Government Gangsters,” and asked voters: How much of the time do you believe the federal government acts as government gangsters?" 

Respondents said all of the time (17%), most of the time (24%) and some of the time (28%) for a subtotal of 69%. Rarely or never was 22% and not sure was 9%.

The White House is directing federal agencies to prepare for large-scale layoffs, so-called reductions in force (RIF), according to guidance sent out by the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management on Wednesday.

Why it matters: To date, job cuts in the federal workforce have mostly affected probationary employees who are relatively easy to fire — RIFs are a more drastic step. Agencies were given two weeks to make plans for "significant" layoffs.

Typically, in a RIF, positions are permanently eliminated.

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) launched a “You’re hired” initiative to attract former federal workers fired by the Department of Government Efficiency.

Hochul has begun publicly positioning herself as a major Democratic opponent of President Donald Trump, clashing with him last week over his intervention to kill New York City’s controversial congestion pricing plan. She trolled the president again on Tuesday, flipping Trump’s famous catchphrase to attract workers laid off by Elon Musk’s DOGE.

President Donald Trump is no stranger to conspiracy: He rose to political prominence by touting the racist lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. His team isn’t either: Take Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s longtime baseless conviction that childhood vaccines cause autism or the billionaire Elon Musk’s promotion of the 2016 “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory.

The Trump administration's month-old efficiency initiative that has hit the federal government like an earthquake has no leader. 

Not offically at least.

Elon Musk is not the administrator of the US DOGE Service, the agency that houses the temporary Department of Government Efficiency. He's not even a DOGE employee, according to the White House. 

In fact, the world's richest man, who was named by President Donald Trump to lead DOGE in November, who posts about it...

This month, Andrew Bernier, a US Army Corps of Engineers researcher and a union leader, says that he has received a barrage of menacing messages from the same anonymous email account. Unfolding like short chapters in a dystopian novel, they have spoken of the genius of Elon Musk, referenced the power of the billionaire’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and foretold the downfall of “corrupt” union bosses.

A federal judge temporarily halted multiple intelligence agencies from firing employees engaging in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, documents show.

The order, filed Tuesday, specifically blocks the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from terminating 11 anonymous federal workers from their DEI roles in the federal government.

Staci White said she voted for President Trump because she wanted lower prices and to stop fentanyl from coming into the U.S.

Now, with widespread federal layoffs and expected cuts, she worries her family will lose their house if her partner is laid off from his government-adjacent job. At the dialysis unit where she works, staff have started doing drills for what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement comes to deport their patients, some of whom are in the country illegally.