MAKING SENSE OF THE WAR OVER DOGE. Twice this week, President Donald Trump has publicly noted that he will impose constraints on Elon Musk, a special government employee and the world’s richest man, as Musk works to cut federal spending. Arriving Sunday evening in Washington, Trump told reporters on the tarmac that, “I think Elon’s doing a good job. He’s a big cost-cutter. Sometimes we won’t agree with it and we’ll not go where he wants to go. But I think he’s doing a great job.”

In the Oval Office Monday, Trump said that Musk has “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.” The president added that Musk is “a very talented guy from the standpoint of management and costs. And we put him in charge of seeing what he can do with certain groups and certain numbers … and they’re finding tremendous waste, really, waste more than anything else. … They’re finding tremendous amounts of really bad things, bad spending.”