SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s efforts at President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have revealed a number of examples of government waste that have dominated headlines in recent weeks, as his team continues to audit the federal government despite Democrat opposition. 

Here are some of the top-lines from DOGE’s findings:

Musk reveals ‘Iron Mountain’ mine nightmare

Musk revealed this week that DOGE is investigating a limestone mine in Pennsylvania where federal employee retirements are processed manually. 

‘Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months,’ Musk announced on X. 

Musk said only 10,000 federal employees can retire a month because it takes so long to process the paperwork and sort through the millions of manila envelopes. He described the ‘Iron Mountain’ mine as a ‘time warp’ slowing down a completely manual federal retirement process. 

‘The limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move, determines how many people can retire from the federal government. The elevator breaks down sometimes, and then nobody can retire. Doesn’t that sound crazy?’ Musk told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. 

DOGE-inspired EPA locates $20 billion in waste

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), inspired by DOGE’s crackdown on federal spending, said it had located $20 billion in tax dollars within the agency that the Biden administration reportedly ‘knew they were wasting.’

‘An extremely disturbing video circulated two months ago, featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about how they were ‘tossing gold bars off the Titanic,’ rushing to get billions of your tax dollars out the door before Inauguration Day,’ EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video posted to X on Wednesday, citing another video from December. 

The EPA found that just eight agencies were controlling the distribution of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to different entities ‘at their discretion,’ such as the Climate United Fund, which reportedly received just under $7 billion.

‘The ‘gold bars’ were tax dollars, and ‘tossing them off the Titanic’ meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it,’ Zeldin said, vowing to recover the ‘gold bars’ that were found ‘parked at an outside financial institution.’

Zeldin said that the ‘scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposely designed to obligate all the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.’ 

In a Fox News interview, the EPA administrator praised DOGE’s work at the agency and said that the cost-cutting department is ‘making us better.’

‘They come up with great recommendations, and we can make a decision to act on it,’ Zeldin said.

DHS clawing back

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the government’s leading disaster-relief arm, gave over $59 million to house illegal immigrants in luxury New York City hotels just last week, DOGE uncovered.

The spending was exposed by Musk on Monday, who wrote in a post on X that ‘sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,’ which put FEMA under review to improve the agency’s ‘efficacy, priorities and competence.’ 

Of the $59.3 million, $19 million was for direct hotel costs, while the balance funded other services such as food and security, a New York City Hall spokesperson confirmed to Fox. 

One day after the spending was uncovered by DOGE, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed that ‘Secretary [Krisit] Noem has clawed back the full payment that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC migrant hotels,’ a DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital. 

Shortly afterward, Trump, in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, suggested that FEMA should be abolished.

‘FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry. It is now under review and investigation,’ the president declared.

‘THE BIDEN RUN FEMA HAS BEEN A DISASTER. FEMA SHOULD BE TERMINATED! IT HAS BEEN SLOW AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE. INDIVIDUAL STATES SHOULD HANDLE STORMS, ETC., AS THEY COME. BIG SAVINGS, FAR MORE EFFICIENT!!!’ the president added.

Pentagon wasted thousands on coffee cups and soap dispensers

The Pentagon’s $850 billion budget could be next up on the bureaucratic chopping block. Fox News Digital reported this week accusations of waste and inefficiency within the U.S.’s largest discretionary budget. 

The Defense Business Board found in 2015 that the Department of Defense could save $125 billion over five years by renegotiating service contracts and consolidating bureaucratic processes. 

A congressional inquiry in 2018 found the Air Force was spending $1,300 for each reheatable coffee cup aboard one of its aircraft. The Air Force spent $32,000 replacing 25 cups, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. 

A two-year audit by the Defense Department Inspector General last year found that Boeing overcharged the Air Force by 8,000% for soap dispensers. They overpaid by $149,072. 

Trump’s new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said he welcomes DOGE at the Department of Defense. 

‘We will partner with them. It’s long overdue. The Defense Department’s got a huge budget, but it needs to be responsible,’ Hegseth told Fox News. 

Questionable spending in USAID’s $40 billion budget, including ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the Senate DOGE Caucus Chairwoman, who says she speaks to Musk about spending cuts every few days, recently published a list of projects and programs she says the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has helped fund across the years.

Ernst described ‘wasteful and dangerous’ spending that had gripped taxpayers until DOGE stepped in.

Ernst highlighted that the agency ‘authorized a whopping $20 million to create a ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq.’ 

Under the Biden administration, USAID awarded $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshopto produce a show called ‘Ahlan Simsim Iraq’ in an effort to ‘promote inclusion, mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups.’ 

Several more examples of questionable spending have been uncovered at USAID, including more than $900,000 to a ‘Gaza-based terror charity’ called Bayader Association for Environment and Development and a $1.5 million program slated to ‘advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities.’

Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips and Emma Colton contributed to this report.

Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.

Planned Parenthood caught the internet’s attention on Thursday after all of its Instagram posts were deleted within hours of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary RFK Jr.’s swearing in. 

The organization, in an apparent nod to this move, posted a pair of eyes on a black background on its Instagram story with no explanation.

On Friday, Planned Parenthood posted another story, an animated gif with the words ‘I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me,’ and later there were just three posts on its Instagram page, all about condom use.

As speculation swirled about the mysterious disappearance of the posts, many pro-life advocates started to call for the defunding of Planned Parenthood. This also comes just days after a conservative watchdog nonprofit founded by former President Mike Pence, urged the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut federal spending on Planned Parenthood.

‘For the sake of the American people and generations yet unborn, the time has come for the United States to finally defund the largest abortion provider in America,’ Tim Chapman, president of Advancing American Freedom, wrote in a letter to Elon Musk.

Planned Parenthood health centers received nearly $22 billion in HHS grants and $53 billion from public health programs from 2019 to 2021, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

During his confirmation hearing, Kennedy said that he believes ‘every abortion is a tragedy,’ and expressed support for President Donald Trump’s assertion that states should handle the issue.

‘I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy,’ Kennedy said. ‘I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year. I agree with him that the states should control abortion. President Trump has told me that he wants to end late-term abortions, and he wants to protect conscience exemptions.’  

Kennedy, who has expressed support for abortion in the past, vowed to implement Trump’s policies.

With Kennedy at the helm of HHS and Elon Musk at DOGE, pro-choice advocates fear that Planned Parenthood will be on the chopping block.

On Feb. 3, Planned Parenthood Federation of America put out a statement warning that ‘defunding’ the organization could put patients at risk of losing access to ‘sexual and reproductive care.’

Planned Parenthood Federation of America said that in 2022 the organization treated 2.05 million patients. The services mentioned in the organization’s included more than 4.6 million STI tests, nearly 213,000 breast exams and more. However, no data on the number of abortions performed in that time was listed.

Planned Parenthood did not respond to a Fox News request for comment.

President Donald Trump and his administration forged ahead with its foreign policy priorities in meetings and calls with heads of state and advanced discussions surrounding the end of the Russia-Ukraine war this week. 

Trump spoke with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where leaders agreed to launch negotiations to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. 

‘We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations,’ Trump posted to Truth Social Wednesday after speaking with Putin. ‘We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately, and we will begin by calling President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now.’

‘I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, to lead the negotiations which, I feel strongly, will be successful,’ Trump said. 

Additionally, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday, and Vice President JD Vance also met with Zelenskyy Friday at the Munich Security Conference.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has come under scrutiny for the negotiations, fielding criticism that Ukraine is being pressured to give in to concessions after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that it wasn’t realistic for Ukraine to regain its pre-war borders with Russia. 

‘Putin is gonna pocket this and ask for more,’ Brett Bruen, director of global engagement under former President Barack Obama, told Fox News Digital.

But Hegseth shut down comments like these, and told NATO members in Brussels on Thursday: ‘Any suggestion that President Trump is doing anything other than negotiating from a position of strength is, on its face, ahistorical and false.’ 

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and Trump vowed on the campaign trail in 2024 that he would work to end the conflict if elected again.

Here’s what also happened this week at the White House: 

Meeting Jordan’s king 

Trump welcomed Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House Tuesday, a visit that comes amid contentious discussions between the U.S. and Arab nations about relocating Palestinian refugees to Jordan and other neighboring Arab countries to rebuild Gaza. 

Trump unveiled plans on Feb. 4 that the U.S. would seek to ‘take over’ the Gaza Strip in a ‘long-term ownership position’ to deliver stability to the region during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

However, Trump’s proposal prompted swift backlash from Arab countries, including Jordan, and Egypt announced plans on Sunday for an emergency Arab Summit to discuss ‘new and dangerous developments’ regarding the resettling of Palestinians on Feb. 27.

When asked how he felt about Trump’s plans for the future of Gaza, Abdullah remained tight-lipped and said he would wait for the Egyptians to take the lead on a proposal moving forward as they negotiate with the U.S. 

‘I think let’s wait until the Egyptians can come and present it to the president and not get ahead of us,’ Abdullah said. 

Abdullah did reveal plans to accept 2,000 sick Palestinian children to Jordan. 

‘I think one of the things that we can do right away is take 2,000 children that are either cancer children or in a very ill state, to Jordan as quickly as possible,’ Abdullah said. ‘And then wait for … the Egyptians to present their plan on how we can work with the president to work on the cause of challenges.’

Denuclearization talks with China, Russia 

Trump floated a joint meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Putin, claiming he wants all countries to move toward denuclearization. 

Trump on Thursday told reporters he plans to advance these denuclearization talks once ‘we straighten it all out’ in the Middle East and Ukraine, comments that come as the U.S., Russia and Ukraine are actively pursuing negotiations to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. 

‘There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,’ Trump said Thursday at the White House. ‘You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.’

‘We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive,’ he said.

The U.S. is projected to spend approximately $756 billion on nuclear weapons between 2023 and 2032, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released in 2023.

Cuts to federal workforce

Trump signed an executive order Tuesday instructing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to coordinate with federal agencies and execute massive cuts in federal government staffing numbers.  

The order will instruct DOGE and federal agencies to work together to ‘significantly’ shrink the size of the federal government and limit hiring new employees, according to a White House fact sheet on the order. Specifically, agencies must not hire more than one employee for every four that leave their federal post. 

Agencies will also be instructed to ‘undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force’ and evaluate ways to eliminate or combine agency functions that aren’t legally required.

The order builds on another directive Trump signed after his inauguration implementing a federal hiring freeze, as well as an initiative from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management offering more than two million federal civilian employees buyouts if they leave their jobs or return to work in person. The White House told Fox News Digital Thursday that more than 75,000 employees have accepted the buyout. 

Eliminate the penny? 

Trump unveiled plans Sunday to halt production of the penny — but getting that initiative underway requires a few additional steps and possibly congressional approval. 

Additionally, while Trump said he instructed the Treasury Department to stop minting them due to their high costs, supporters of the penny claim it’s wiser to evaluate changes to the nickel instead. 

‘For far too long, the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday. ‘This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.’

In fact, producing pennies is even more expensive than Trump’s numbers. It costs nearly 3.69 cents to mint a single penny, according to a 2024 U.S. Mint report. The coins are primarily made of zinc and then covered in copper.

While the waters are a little murky on the next steps, experts say Congress likely would need to become involved and pass legislation to fulfill Trump’s wishes.

‘The process of discontinuing the penny in the U.S. is a little unclear. It would likely require an act of Congress, but the Secretary of the Treasury might be able to simply stop the minting of new pennies,’ Robert Triest, an economics professor at Northeastern University, told the Northeastern Global News.

Fox News’ Emma Colton and Morgan Phillips contributed to this report. 

A federal judge on Friday extended a temporary order that blocks Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team from accessing payment systems within the Treasury Department. 

The extension comes after 19 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over DOGE’s access to the payment system, which has information about Americans’ Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ benefits, tax refund information, and much more. 

The lawsuit claims the Musk-run agency illegally accessed the Treasury Department’s central payment system at the Trump administration’s behest. 

The lawsuit was filed in New York by New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office and includes attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin. 

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan on Friday said that she wasn’t going to issue a ruling yet on the attorneys general request for a longer preliminary injunction, leaving the temporary order issued last Saturday in place.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told FOX Business last week that the concerns about DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department are not valid. 

‘DOGE is not going to fail,’ he said. ‘They are moving a lot of people’s cheese here in the capital, and when you hear this squawking, then some status quo interest is not happy.’

He continued, ‘At the Treasury, our payment system is not being touched. We process 1.3 billion payments a year. There is a study being done — can we have more accountability, more accuracy, more traceability that the money is going where it is? But, in terms of payments being stopped, that is happening upstream at the department level.’

The newly-created DOGE aims to cut government waste and has been given access to more than a dozen government agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Education and the Department of Labor.

A federal judge on Friday indefinitely delayed a final ruling on a request by labor unions to block Elon Musk’s government efficiency team from accessing internal system data, telling both parties, ‘You will hear from me,’ while declining to promise an exact time or date. 

The update from U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, comes just one week after he rejected an earlier request from unions representing Labor Department employees for a temporary restraining order to block DOGE access to internal system data. The judge said the plaintiffs lacked standing and failed to show they would be harmed as a result of the actions. 

In response, the unions amended their complaint to broaden the scope of the lawsuit, adding the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

Arguments Friday stretched for more than three hours, with plaintiffs arguing that DOGE employees were accessing their information illegally since DOGE is not technically a U.S. government agency.

‘There has been reporting that DOGE is directing the cuts of agency staff and contracts, not simply advising the president,’ one lawyer for the plaintiffs told Judge Bates, ‘The situation is extremely fluid and changing.’

The plaintiffs urged Judge Bates to grant a temporary request to block DOGE’s access to the information, which they said would ‘force the agency to implement a more thoughtful process.’

Meanwhile, the Justice Department argued in response that the DOGE personnel in question are ‘detailed’ U.S. government employees who have access to the information under provisions of the Economy Act.

Judge Bates declined to rule from the bench, telling both sides, ‘You will hear from me.’

The update will likely do little in the near term to assuage concerns among employees at the Labor Department and other federal agencies over DOGE’s access to sensitive internal data. 

Attorneys for unions representing Labor Department employees argued during last week’s hearing that, absent court intervention, DOGE could access protected agency information, including the financial and medical records of millions of Americans, as well as employee safety and workplace complaints.

The plaintiffs noted that Labor Department systems contain sensitive information about investigations into Musk-owned companies Tesla and SpaceX, as well as information about trade secrets of competing companies, sparking concerns about Elon Musk’s possible access to the information.

Attorney Mark Samburg argued that DOGE access to this information could have a ‘chilling effect’ on new employees coming forward, due to fear of unlawful disclosure or retaliation.  

‘The sensitive information of millions of people is currently at imminent risk of unlawful disclosure,’ Samburg said.

Judge Bates suggested Friday that DOGE’s creation and its hierarchy were ‘odd,’ noting that it ‘was created in a way to get it out of OMB [Office of Management and Budget], and instead answering to the chief of staff of the president.’

DOGE ‘took great effort to avoid being an agency, but in this case, you’re an agency,’ he said of DOGE. ‘It just seems to strain credulity.’ 

Blue state attorneys general accused Vice President JD Vance of attempting to spread a ‘dangerous lie’ after he criticized judges blocking President Donald Trump’s agenda. 

‘The Vice President’s statement is as wrong as it is reckless. As chief law enforcement officers representing the people of 17 states, we unequivocally reject the Vice President’s attempt to spread this dangerous lie,’ the statement reads. 

Seventeen state attorneys general, including those from California, Connecticut, Arizona, Massachusetts and Washington, signed the statement released Friday after Vance sent the internet into a frenzy, saying, ‘Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.’

‘Americans understand the principle of checks and balances,’ the AGs wrote. ‘The judiciary is a check on unlawful action by the executive and legislative branches of government. Generals, prosecutors, and all public officials are subject to checks and balances. No one is above the law.’ 

Vance’s comments were made after a court blocked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing personal data. The Trump administration has become the target of more than 50 lawsuits since Trump began his second term in mid-January. Judges in various states across the country, including Washington, Rhode Island and New York, have continuously blocked the administration’s efforts to implement its agenda. 

‘If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,’ Vance posted on X. ‘If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.’

The statement from the AGs said that they would ‘carefully scrutinize each and every action taken by this administration.’ They also made clear that if the administration violated the Constitution or federal law, they would ‘not hesitate to act.’

‘Judges granted our motions and issued restraining orders to protect the American people, democracy, and the rule of law. That is and has always been their job,’ the AGs wrote. ‘That job is the very core of our legal system. And in this critical moment, we will stand our ground to defend it.’ 

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently pledged her support for Trump’s efforts, vowing to challenge ‘unelected’ judges obstructing his administration’s agenda.

‘We have so many un-elected judges who are trying to control government spending. And there is a clear separation of powers,’ Bondi said during an appearance on ‘America’s Newsroom.’ ‘What they’re doing to [DOGE leader Elon Musk], to our country, is outrageous. You know, people work their whole lives and pay taxes, yet they find out that they’ve been giving $2 million to Guatemala for sex changes. It’s outrageous. And it’s going to stop.’

Since Inauguration Day, dozens of activist and legal groups, elected officials and local jurisdictions, as well as individuals, have launched a myriad of lawsuits in response to the president’s executive orders and directives. Notably, Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, his immigration policies, directives on federal funding, and the implementation of DOGE have all come under fire. 

The Trump administration has proceeded to appeal many of these rulings to the appellate courts. In a recent development, the Trump administration appealed an order from a Rhode Island judge to unfreeze federal funds. The order claimed the administration did not adhere to a previous order to do so. 

The Trump administration appealed the order to the First Circuit shortly thereafter, which was ultimately denied.  

Upon Trump’s historic win in November, Democratic AGs, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, publicly said they would be ready to engage in any legal battles against the Trump administration for actions they view as illegal or negatively impacting residents. 

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump’s administration has secured the release of 11 U.S. hostages held by foreign governments since taking office less than one month ago, according to the White House. 

The Trump administration has emphasized arranging the release of U.S. hostages under his second administration and welcomed U.S. Marc Fogel, a U.S. history teacher who had been detained in Russia since 2021, back to the U.S. Tuesday. 

Other hostages released since Trump’s inauguration include six Americans detained in Venezuela, two Americans detained in Belarus and Israeli-American citizen Keith Siegel, who was held hostage by Palestinian militant group Hamas. There are at least two living American citizen hostages believed to be held in Gaza. 

By comparison, former President Joe Biden said in 2024 his White House secured the release of more than 70 hostages during his four years in office, according to an August 2024 statement. Fox News Digital didn’t find any available data to compare numbers from Biden’s first month in office. 

Trump claimed to have helped release 58 in his first term as president. 

There were 46 American nationals known to be held captive in 16 different countries in 2024, according to the nonprofit Foley Foundation, which advocates for U.S. hostages and was named after James Foley, a U.S. journalist kidnapped while reporting in Syria in 2012 and killed by ISIS in 2014. That number is now likely closer to the low 30s after the recent releases of hostages in January and February.

On Tuesday, Trump met with Fogel, who was arrested in August 2021 at a Russian airport for possessing drugs and was slated to serve a 14-year sentence. Fogel’s family said the drugs he had on him were medically prescribed marijuana. 

‘I want you to know that I am not a hero in this at all,’ Fogel said Tuesday after meeting Trump. ‘And President Trump is a hero.

‘These men that came from the diplomatic service are heroes,’ Fogel said. ‘The senators and representatives that passed legislation in my honor — they got me home — they are heroes.’

Following Foley’s return and after announcing the release of another, unnamed hostage held in Belarus Wednesday, Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Adam Boehler said Trump ‘has made bringing Americans home a top priority, and people respond to that.’

The names of most of the hostages released in February have not been publicly shared. 

‘President Trump is committed to freeing Americans held hostage and returning them to their families,’ Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in a Friday statement to Fox News Digital. ‘To date, President Trump has secured the release of 11 Americans who were detained by the Taliban, Hamas, Venezuela, Russia and Belarus.’

Just before Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20, both the Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration coordinated to secure a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, which included provisions to release dozens of hostages on both sides. 

Biden and Trump separately boasted about their individual efforts to secure the deal, and State Department spokesman Matthew Miller described the Trump administration’s involvement as ‘critical’ to getting the deal over the finish line. 

Trump also touted his administration’s involvement in a social media post Jan. 15, claiming it occurred ‘as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies.’

Although Biden said the two teams had been ‘speaking as one team’ during the negotiations, he also mocked suggestions that Trump was responsible for securing the ceasefire deal. 

‘Who in the history books gets credit for this, Mr. President, you or Trump?’ Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich asked Biden Jan. 15 after a White House news conference.

‘Is that a joke?’ Biden said. 

When Heinrich said it was not, Biden replied, ‘Oh. Thank you.’ 

The Associated Press and Fox News’ Emma Colton and Landon Mion contributed to this report.

A federal judge on Friday indefinitely delayed a final ruling on the Labor Department’s request to block Elon Musk’s government efficiency team from accessing internal system data, telling both parties only that ‘you will hear from me,’ while declining to promise an exact time or date. 

The update from U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, comes just one week after he rejected an earlier attempt from the Labor Department to issue a temporary restraining order to block DOGE access to internal system data, saying that the plaintiffs lacked standing and failed to show they would suffer sufficient harm as a result of the actions. 

In response, unions amended their complaint to broaden the scope of the lawsuit, adding the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

Arguments on Friday stretched for more than three hours, with plaintiffs arguing that DOGE employees were accessing their information illegally, since DOGE is not technically a U.S. government agency.

‘There has been reporting that DOGE is directing the cuts of agency staff and contracts, not simply advising the president,’ one lawyer for the plaintiffs told Judge Bates, ‘The situation is extremely fluid and changing,’ plaintiffs argued.

They urged Judge Bates to grant a temporary request to block DOGE’s access to the information, which they said would ‘force the agency to implement a more thoughtful process.’

Meanwhile, the Justice Department argued in response that the DOGE personnel in question are ‘detailed’ U.S. government employees, who have access to the information under provisions of the Economy Act.

Judge Bates declined to rule from the bench, telling both sides only that ‘You will hear from me.’

The update will likely do little in the near-term to assuage concerns at the Labor Department and other federal agencies over DOGE’s access to sensitive internal data. 

Attorneys for Labor Department unions argued during last week’s hearing that, absent court intervention, DOGE could access protected agency information, including the financial and medical records of millions of Americans, as well as employee safety and workplace complaints.

Plaintiffs noted that Labor Department systems contain sensitive information about investigations into Musk-owned companies Tesla and SpaceX, as well as information about trade secrets of competing companies, plaintiffs noted – sparking concerns about Elon Musk’s possible access to the information.

Attorney Mark Samburg argued that DOGE access to this information could have a ‘chilling effect’ on new employees coming forward, due to fear of unlawful disclosure or retaliation.  

‘The sensitive information of millions of people is currently at imminent risk of unlawful disclosure,’ Samburg said.

Judge Bates suggested Friday that DOGE’s creation and its hierarchy were ‘odd,’ noting that it ‘was created in a way to get it out of OMB [Office of Management and Budget], and instead answering to the chief of staff of the president.’

DOGE ‘took great effort to avoid being an agency, but in this case, you’re an agency,’ he said of DOGE. ‘It just seems to strain credulity.’ 

Several states emboldened by President Donald Trump’s executive orders are moving to introduce bills banning transgender medical care for minors, and one legal expert believes it’s a ‘continuation’ of the success other states have achieved in the last several years fighting against the Biden administration.

‘You go back to 2020, when Idaho became the first state to pass a save women’s sports law, and in 2021, Arkansas was the first state to protect kids from dangerous gender transition, drugs and surgeries,’ Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Matt Sharp told Fox News Digital in an interview. ‘And since that time, we’ve had over 25 states pass both of those laws, plus other measures to protect women’s privacy and safety and schools or women’s shelters or correctional facilities.’

‘So, what we are seeing is truly the continuation of incredible work by state legislatures and others to address the concerns of gender ideology and make sure that women and children in their states are not being harmed by it,’ he said.

So far this year, several states have introduced or considered legislation to ban transgender medical procedures for minors. More than two dozen states already have laws in place restricting such procedures. 

Alabama recently passed a bill in the Senate aiming to legally define gender based on one’s biological sex, in line with Trump’s ‘two sexes’ declaration. Georgia’s state Senate also passed a bill this week that would cut state funding for transgender surgical treatments, extending to both minors and adults. The bill aims to block state funds for state employee and university health insurance plans, Medicaid, and the state’s prison system.

Some states are still rebelling against Trump’s orders. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, vetoed a bill this week that would have prohibited state funds from being used on gender transition treatments and procedures on minors and allow civil actions against healthcare providers conducting such treatments. 

Despite Trump’s executive orders, Democratic attorneys general from 15 states – California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin – issued a joint statement this month doubling down on their support for transgender procedures for minors.

The executive orders, signed in late January, include a reinstatement of the ban on transgender troops in the military, a ban on federal funding for sex changes for minors and a directive requiring federal agencies to recognize only ‘two sexes,’ male and female, in official standard of conduct.

‘What these executive orders represent is a 180-degree turn from that, rather than the federal government trying to push this dangerous ideology and being an adversary of states and their efforts to protect women and girls, you know, have an ally at the federal government,’ Sharp, who filed one of the first state cases against a Connecticut policy allowing men to compete in women’s sports in 2020, said.

Sharp described Trump’s executive orders as a ‘return to normalcy.’

‘What we saw starting a new Obama administration and continuing in the Biden administration, I think was trying to erase sex and replace it with the concept of gender identity,’ he said. ‘And I think Americans have seen that. They’ve seen the harm that’s caused to countless young women, to young children, pushed to do irreparable damage to their bodies through these gender transition drugs and surgeries to even families who have had their rights violated by policies that were hiding information, lying to parents about a child who was experiencing distress over their sex and gender.’

While the Trump White House has made its stance on gender-related issues clear, the U.S. Supreme Court will determine a critical ruling this summer on whether the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which guarantees equal treatment under the law for individuals in similar circumstances, prevents states from banning medical providers from offering puberty blockers and hormone treatments to children seeking transgender surgical procedures. 

A judge in Washington state has issued a temporary restraining order over President Trump’s executive order that withholds federal funding to health care providers who prescribe youth puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or who perform surgeries for gender dysphoria. 

Judge Lauren King, in the Western Washington District Court, issued the order on Friday. 

It comes after a federal judge in Maryland issued a similar temporary retraining order this week.