Older Americans are filing for Social Security benefits at a record rate this year, a surge that could reflect growing anxiety about the stability of the retirement system amid cutbacks under the Trump administration, experts say.
The number of people claiming Social Security jumped 17% to 1.8 million this year through May compared with the same period a year ago, according to the most recent data from the Social Security Administration. For the federal fiscal year, new filings are on track to reach 4 million, up 15% from the prior fiscal year, the Urban Institute said in a new analysis of claims data.
The spike in early benefits claims comes as the Trump administration has slashed jobs and made other changes at the Social Security Administration, an agency already struggling to provide services to the nearly 70 million retirees, disabled people and survivors of deceased workers who rely on the program.
These developments are likely prompting the surge in new filings, as well as an increase in calls and in-person visits to Social Security offices since January, the Urban Institute said.
Although Mr. Trump has vowed not to touch Social Security, his administration is has cut the agency’s staffing to 50,000 workers, down from its current level of about 57,000 workers. The agency’s workforce has been shrinking for years, with the AARP noting that the Social Security Administration had 63,000 workers in 2015.
Even as its workforce shrinks, the Social Security Administration is serving more people, with the number of beneficiaries rising 19% from about 59 million people in 2015 to about 70 million today, its data shows.
“I have attended several town halls around the country, and many people have asked if they should claim benefits early given Trump and [Elon] Musk’s interference in the system,” Max Richtman, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, an advocacy group for the two retirement programs, told CBS MoneyWatch.
He added, “People are scared, and they’re not sure what to do.”
To be sure, Americans have long held concerns about the stability of the Social Security system. Because the agency is paying out more in benefits than it’s taking in through payroll taxes due to the nation’s aging demographics, the program is currently dipping into its trust fund to pay beneficiaries.
Without changes to the program, the trust fund is slated to be depleted in 2035, which will trigger a benefits cut of about 20%, the agency has forecast.
An aging society
Other factors could be driving the increase in early Social Security filings, the Urban Institute said. For one, the baby boomer generation is hitting “peak 65” as a record number of people hit retirement age, although that demographic shift isn’t enough to entirely explain this year’s surge in claims, the think tank noted.
Another cause could be the Social Security Fairness Act, which provides more retirement benefits to public servants such as teachers, firefighters and police officers, and could encourage more people to file, the Urban analysis said.
The Social Security Administration didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Frank Bisignano, the agency’s new commissioner, told CBS News last month that the program will be able to provide services to beneficiaries despite the staffing cuts “through technology and process engineering.”
He added, “Everybody is committed to Social Security for the rest of time.”
The downside to claiming early
The agency is receiving more early claims from higher-income Americans, especially at age 62, which is the earliest age at which a worker can start receiving their monthly Social Security benefits, the Urban Institute said.
But there’s a major cost to claiming at 62. While it might seem prudent to claim early if you’re worried Social Security won’t be around in a few years — something that experts say is extremely unlikely — the tradeoff is a permanently lower monthly benefit.
People who claim Social Security benefits at 62 receive about 30% less in their monthly checks than if they wait until they turn 67, which is currently the program’s full retirement age. Older Americans can collect even greater benefits if they delay filing past their full retirement age, getting an extra 24% boost to their monthly check if they wait until they turn 70.
Because of that math, Richtman said his group recommends holding off on claiming, even though people might be fearful about the program’s health.
“Their concern is understandable. But we advise workers not to claim early out of fear, because filing for Social Security before full retirement age results in a lifetime reduction in benefits,” he said.
Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.
In the beginning, Donald Trump and Elon Musk got along great. “He is a truly incredible guy,” Trump said at a campaign rally last October, “and I don’t say that that often.”
The president invited Musk into the Oval Office and Cabinet meetings. Musk called himself “first buddy.”
Mr. Trump welcomed Musk’s idea to create a Department of Government Efficiency. [“You gotta give him credit!” the president told reporters.] Musk demonstrated his goals for DOGE by wielding a chainsaw at a February meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference. “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!” he bellowed.
Elon Musk holds a chainsaw reading “Long live freedom, damn it” during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on February 20, 2025.
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
In four months, DOGE took the chainsaw to every federal department: 250,000 workers were fired or bought out; Musk even slashed grants and staffing at environmental agencies, like the EPA and NOAA, after decades of warning about the risks of climate change.
Tesla profits plummeted by 71%—and Musk’s net worth dropped by $100 billion.
Last month, Musk finally left Washington, but still intended to work on DOGE a day or two a week. And this past Tuesday, he offered “Sunday Morning” an interview at SpaceX’s headquarters near Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas.
“It’s a bit unfair”
We knew we were in the right neighborhood when we saw a huge bust of Musk, installed by his admirers—and vandalized by his critics.
A vandalized bust of Elon Musk outside his SpaceX facility in southern Texas.
CBS News
But the interview didn’t get off to a smooth start.
I asked, “I noticed that all of your businesses involve a lot of components, a lot of parts. Do the tariffs and the trade wars affect any of this?”
“You know, tariffs always affect things a little bit,” Musk replied.
“I’m wondering what your thought is on the ban on foreign students, the proposal. I mean, you were one of those kids, right?”
“Yeah. I mean, I think we wanna stick to, you know, the subject of the day, which is, like, spaceships, as opposed to, you know, presidential policy,” Musk said.
“Oh, okay,” I said. “I was told anything is good, but…”
“No, well—no,” Musk replied.
Correspondent David Pogue and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who says he is stepping away from his White House role at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
CBS News
But Musk was willing to talk about the DOGE firestorm. I asked him, “You’ve spoken about how much of a grind and a stress it was on you, and you know, Tesla’s reputation took a hit, your reputation took a hit. People are very upset about [effects on] Social Security, and national parks, and air traffic, and food safety, and cancer research, Alzheimer’s research. Now that you’ve had a chance to look at it, might there have been a different approach?”
Musk said, “Yeah, I think … what was starting to happen was that, like, it’s a bit unfair because, like, DOGE became the whipping boy for everything. So, if there was some cut, real or imagined, everyone would blame DOGE. I’ve had people think that, like, somehow DOGE is gonna stop them from getting their Social Security check, which is completely untrue.”
I asked, “I was just thinking about the, you know, ‘move fast and break things,’ you know, before you really understand what the agency does?”
“Yeah, I mean, I guess part of it is, like, is it depends on where you’re coming from,” Musk said. “I’m like a proponent of smaller government, not bigger government. So, now if somebody’s a proponent of, you know, more government programs and bigger government, and they see, ‘Hey, DOGE is cutting all these government programs,’ then they’ll be fundamentally opposed to that because they just think the government should do more things. That’s just a fundamental, I guess, ideological opinion.
“But my frank opinion of the government is that, like, the government is just, like, the DMV that got big, okay? So, when you say it like, ‘Let’s have the government do something,’ you should think, ‘Do you want the DMV to do it?'”
And then, Musk started talking about the Trump administration, without even being asked about Trump. “And you know, it’s not like I agree with everything the administration does,” said Musk. “So it’s like, I mean, I agree with much of what the administration does. But we have differences of opinion. You know, there are things that I don’t entirely agree with. But it’s difficult for me to bring that up in an interview because then it creates a bone of contention. So then, I’m a little stuck in a bind, where I’m like, well, I don’t wanna, you know, speak up against the administration, but I also don’t wanna take responsibility for everything this administration’s doing.”
On the “Big, Beautiful Bill”
In Washington, federal workers say that DOGE has left the government’s operations in disarray. And worst of all, it might have all been for nothing. Musk claims to have saved the government $175 billion so far (nowhere close to his original target of $2 trillion, or even his revised target of $1 trillion).
And that was before the president’s new spending bill passed the House. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the president’s proposed budget will add $3.8 trillion to our debt over the next ten years. It’s now being debated in the Senate.
Musk said, “I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, doesn’t decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.”
I said, “I actually thought that, when this ‘big, beautiful bill’ came along, it’d be like, everything he’s done on DOGE gets wiped out in the first year.”
“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk laughed. “But I don’t know if it could be both. My personal opinion.”
And here is where the story gets a little complicated.
On Tuesday, right after our interview, CBS News released a clip of it to promote this very report. It was that part, where Musk criticizes Trump’s spending bill, and his remarks became news. It went all the way to the White House, where the president was asked about Musk’s criticism of the bill. Within 24 hours, Musk announced that his time in the Trump administration was officially over. Out of DOGE, out of government.
Musk said that the reason was that his limited 130-day stint as advisor was ending. But until that moment, he’d beensaying that he still intended to work on DOGE part-time. “Well, DOGE is gonna continue, just as a way of life,” he told us. “I will have some participation in that, but as I’ve said publicly, my focus has to be on the companies at this point.”
Truth is, the Trump-Musk relationship had already seemed to be cooling. The president used to post about Musk about six times a week. But by April, he’d stopped mentioning Musk altogether.
Still, on Friday, they held a media event at the White House to confirm their mutual admiration—and to leave the door open for future collaboration. “Elon’s really not leaving,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s gonna be back and forth, I think, I have a feeling.”
Musk added, “The DOGE team is doing an incredible job. They’re going to continue doing an incredible job, and I will continue to be visiting here and be a friend and advisor to the president.”
President Donald Trump looks on as Elon Musk speaks during a news conference in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Washington.
Evan Vucci / AP
Musk might be the first to admit that his DOGE experiment gave him a black eye—like the actual black eye he had on Friday, which he says he got from his five-year-old son … or the matching one on that statue.
At least for now, Musk says that his focus will be running his business ventures: Tesla, Starlink, X, xAI, Neuralink, Optimus robots, the Boring Company, and SpaceX.
I asked, “Are all of your businesses related in some way?”
“I guess you can think of the businesses as things that improve the probable trajectory of civilization,” Musk replied. “So you know, for making life multi-planetary or extending life to Mars, the idea there is to ensure the long-term survival of life and consciousness as we know it.”
After our interview Tuesday, we were invited to witness the ninth launch of his Starship, the biggest rocket ever built. The two previous Starship tests ended in explosions – or, as SpaceX puts it, “rapid unscheduled disassemblies.” So, all eyes were on Test Launch 9 to see if a Starship could return to Earth in one piece.
As Musk left our interview to watch the launch, he said something that could sum up all his enterprises: “I can’t guarantee success, but I can guarantee excitement.”
David Pogue is a six-time Emmy winner for his stories on “CBS Sunday Morning,” where he’s been a correspondent since 2002. Pogue hosts the CBS News podcast “Unsung Science.” He’s also a New York Times bestselling author, a five-time TED speaker, and host of 20 NOVA science specials on PBS. For 13 years, he wrote a New York Times tech column every week – and for 10 years, a Scientific American column every month.
“If all else fails, push the start button, look for smoke, and repair what is burning.” During my 15 years working with industry, this was common advice when dealing with troublesome complex electric controls that just would not respond to a more scientific analysis. And it worked. Should we expect a president hellbent on changing the world order to apply the same approach?
Flipping policy switches on and off might not sound scientific, but despite chaos and missteps, there’s at least something to be said for the idea.
Maybe it’s the rush to get things done. Or perhaps it’s the fact that Trump is relying on executive orders rather than on legislation with hearings to mandate much of what he envisions. In any case, the Trump administration is now famous for hitting a policy start button, seeing smoke and then, when alarms go off, reversing position.
How else might we explain the large number of policy reversals that occurred in the president’s first 100 days back in office? Consider a handful of examples.
Just a week into his new term, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a freeze order on all federal loans and grants in an effort to make certain that all funded programs would abide by the new administration’s tamped-down Diversity, Equity and Inclusion guidelines. But the outcry from state and local governments that rely on federal funding for day-to-day operations was so loud that OMB quickly reversed its order.
Then, in February, the Trump administration announced an end of free COVID testing, a mainstay program in fighting the pandemic. When the Department of Health and Human Services indicated that the agency would thus be destroying 160 million unused tests, political alarms went off and the policy was reversed.
More famously, after growing impatient with the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee for not cutting interest rates, Trump decided to hit the start button and blow them out of the water. He called the Fed Chair Jerome Powell a “major loser” and indicated he should be fired… immediately.
When world financial markets sensed that America’s central bank was about to be run by politics, interest rates rose, respect for the dollar fell and the end of American economic exceptionalism was posited. Smoke was everywhere. Trump backed away, softened the tone of his relationship with Fed Chair Powell and moved on to tilt with other windmills.
Another tilting occurred when Trump took on China by imposing a 145% tariff on all its exports to the United States, the functional equivalent of an embargo. China responded by laying on 125% tariffs on U.S. exports and indicated a willingness to engage in a trade war or any war that became necessary.
Markets shuddered. American retailers cried foul and indicated Santa Claus’s sled would be empty. Apple and other U.S. smart phone producers offered up end-of-world industry forecasts.
In short, the circuits turned red and the smoke was dense. Trump dramatically altered his policy position. The trade war with China suddenly de-intensified, at least for the next 90 days.
Finally, Elon Musk’s DOGE activities brought its own host of circuit tests that generated smoke and reversals. There were sweeping actions taken to fire thousands of federal government workers only to rush to rehire some when it was learned that they filled critical jobs involving nuclear weapons or controlling a raging bird flu epidemic.
Some look squarely at these policy reversals and see evidence that we have the equivalent of keystone cops running the federal government — officials who don’t seem to know what they are doing, but they do it anyway. Alternatively, and in at least some of these situations, we might consider the old “push the start button and look for smoke” explanation.
In a rush to bring dramatic change, the Trump administration seems to agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson that “consistency is a hobgoblin of small minds.” When things change, they change. Policy reversals are messy, but some might be a necessary part of Trump’s intended revolution.
Bruce Yandle is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, dean emeritus of the Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Sciences and a former executive director of the Federal Trade Commission./Tribune News Service
Elon Musk says he is “disappointed” by the price tag on the domestic policy bill passed by Republicans in the House last week and heavily backed by President Trump, the billionaire who recently stepped back from running the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, told “CBS Sunday Morning” in an exclusive broadcast interview.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said.
Musk’s comments appear to put him at odds with Mr. Trump, who has championed the massive spending package. The legislation — which still needs to pass the Senate — would extend Mr. Trump’s signature 2017 tax cuts, boost border security spending, impose work requirements on Medicaid and roll back clean energy tax credits.
The tax provisions of the package, titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” after Mr. Trump’s name for the bill, would increase the deficit by $3.8 trillion by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk told CBS News, “but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”
Musk was a near-constant presence in the early months of the Trump administration, with his DOGE staffers sweeping through virtually every government agency to make widespread cuts — drawing concern from Democrats and even some Trump allies, as well as numerous legal challenges. Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, has said he will dial back his involvement in government.
See more of the interview with Elon Musk on “CBS Sunday Morning” on June 1.
David Pogue is a six-time Emmy winner for his stories on “CBS Sunday Morning,” where he’s been a correspondent since 2002. Pogue hosts the CBS News podcast “Unsung Science.” He’s also a New York Times bestselling author, a five-time TED speaker, and host of 20 NOVA science specials on PBS. For 13 years, he wrote a New York Times tech column every week – and for 10 years, a Scientific American column every month.
Washington — The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to halt a lower court order that required the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency to turn over information to a government watchdog group in a lawsuit that tests whether the task force is subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
The request from Solicitor General D. John Sauer arose out of a public records request made by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that sought information about DOGE, its operations and personnel. The watchdog group went on to file a federal lawsuit based on that FOIA request, and, as part of the suit, sought categories of information through the discovery process about DOGE’s activities since President Trump took office.
Among the information CREW is seeking is a deposition with Amy Gleason, who the White House has said is the acting administrator of DOGE; a list of federal contracts or grants that DOGE personnel recommended for cancellation; and the names of all current and former DOGE employees, as well as details of their employment and who oversees them.
The district court granted most of CREW’s request for information, including to depose Gleason. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper found that DOGE is likely subject to FOIA and said that the task force’s actions demonstrate that it has “substantial authority over vast swathes of the federal government.”
“Canceling any government contract would seem to require substantial authority — and canceling them on this scale certainly does. Again, USDS reportedly is leading the charge on these actions, not merely advising others to carry them out,” Cooper wrote in a March decision.
He noted that DOGE likely has some independent authority to terminate federal employees, programs and contracts.
“Doing any of those three things would appear to require substantial independent authority; to do all three surely does,” Cooper said.
The Trump administration asked the federal appeals court in Washington to halt the order, which it agreed to do temporarily. Then, last week, a panel of judges on the appeals court lifted its stay, which clears the way for DOGE to hand over the documents sought by CREW. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that the discovery ordered by the district court is “narrow” and appropriate.
DOGE now has until June 3 to turn over documents, and Gleason’s deposition must be completed by June 13.
The dispute over the efforts to learn more about DOGE, its work and employees turns on whether the task force is subject to FOIA, the federal law that allows members of the public to request access to records and information from federal agencies. FOIA does not apply to Congress, the federal courts and entities within the Executive Office of the President.
In the emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, Sauer argued that DOGE is a presidential advisory body housed within the Executive Office of the President tasked with providing recommendations to Mr. Trump and federal agencies on policy matters that are important to the president’s agenda. Sauer said that as a result of those functions, DOGE is exempt from FOIA.
Sauer claimed that the district court’s order requiring DOGE to hand over information through the discovery process to determine if it is covered by FOIA turns the public records law “on its head” and violates the separation of powers by subjecting it to “intrusive discovery.”
He warned that if it is allowed to stand, several components of the White House like the offices of the chief of staff, national security adviser, and other advisers to the president would be subject to FOIA.
“That untenable result would compromise the provision of candid, confidential advice to the president and disrupt the inner workings of the Executive Branch,” Sauer wrote. “Yet, in the decisions below, the court of appeals and district court treated a presidential advisory body as a potential ‘agency’ based on the persuasive force of its recommendations — threatening opening season for FOIA requests on the president’s advisors.”
Mr. Trump established DOGE when he returned White House as part of an effort to shrink the size of the federal government. The president has repeatedly said that Elon Musk is the head of DOGE, though Justice Department lawyers have said in court filings that he is not an employee of the entity and “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”
Questions about Musk’s role with DOGE eventually led the White House to declare Gleason as its acting administrator. Gleason worked as a senior adviser to the U.S. Digital Service, the precursor to DOGE.
Still, since its establishment, DOGE employees have fanned out across federal agencies to implement cost-cutting measures and were behind steep reductions in the federal workforce, as well as the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Many of DOGE’s efforts, as well as Musk’s role within the task force have been subject to legal challenges.
The Supreme Court is currently weighing an emergency appeal involving DOGE’s attempts to gain access to sensitive information kept by the Social Security Administration and was asked to intervene in a legal battle over reductions in force at 21 agencies.
Melissa Quinn is a politics reporter for CBSNews.com. She has written for outlets including the Washington Examiner, Daily Signal and Alexandria Times. Melissa covers U.S. politics, with a focus on the Supreme Court and federal courts.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has been publishing every contract, grant and lease it claims to have canceled on its website for months.
But DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” can’t be searched, and its data can’t be downloaded easily by those without programming knowledge. CBS News is publishing all the data available on DOGE’s website in a searchable and savable format below. This page will refresh every morning at approximately 7 a.m. EST, but DOGE does not update its data each day.
DOGE calculates a contract’s value as the total potential value — a method federal contracting experts have criticized and likened to a credit card maximum, rather than a realistic estimate of planned spending. It then subtracts the total amount obligated from that value to estimate “savings.”
CBS News and other media outlets have identified numerous errors in DOGE’s accounting, putting the savings far lower than the task force suggests on its website. And while DOGE touts massive budget cuts, a CBS News analysis found that the Trump administration actually spent more in its first 100 days than over the same period last year.
DOGE withholds data for some contracts without explanation, including all contracts from the U.S. Agency for International Development. That data is marked as “Not disclosed” in the tables below.
Due to the volume of data, this page may take a few seconds to load.
Have any insight about a canceled contract, grant or lease you want to share? Reach out to us at confirmed@cbsnews.com.
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has added a new batch of entries to what it calls its “Wall of Receipts,” touting purported savings in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet many of these claimed cuts appear to be misleading, and the potential for actual savings continues to be uncertain.
According to the running tally on its website, DOGE claims it has saved American taxpayers a total of $170 billion. However, only $70.9 billion is itemized, and many of those entries continue to raise serious doubts about their accuracy.
Some have expressed skepticism, including Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. Malkus, who has been tracking DOGE’s work, said his review indicates the savings is more likely to be around $80 billion.
“[They are] over estimating contracts by a factor of two,” Malkus said.
Other costs and expenses associated with staffing reductions could end up costing the government even more than those purported savings.
Since it was created by President Trump via an executive order on his first day in office, the Elon Musk-helmed DOGE started posting purported savings for cancellations to contracts, grants and leases. News organizations including CBS News have identified a multitude of mistakes including triple and even quadruple counting of contracts. Many of those have been corrected after being highlighted but DOGE’s figure for total savings has not.
On Monday, DOGE updated its “Wall of Receipts” to include at least 848 additional contracts. Those totaled $639 million, with claimed savings of $278.5 million. But 553 were noted as $0 savings.
In this new release, CBS News has identified one major error involving a $38.7 million contract for wastewater monitoring for COVID. DOGE claimed $38 million in savings from canceling it. This is the second largest saving itemized in the most recent release. CBS News contacted the company, Verily Life Sciences, who disputed its cancellation and said that the contract was still active.
A CDC spokesperson confirmed this and clarified that the contract was merely modified, not canceled. “This was an expired scope of work that has been superseded by a new working contract,” the spokesperson explained. The new contract, listed in government databases, is valued at $41 million and extends through August 6, 2026.
“It’s very odd. It’s disingenuous to say they saved all this money,” Malkus told CBS News.
A spokesperson for the White House and DOGE has not responded to questions from CBS News.
DOGE is also now claiming savings in the tens of millions for canceling at least one federal contract—just signed by the Trump administration.
The largest new contract cancellation posted to the Wall of Receipts is for a $72 million administrative support contract recently awarded to Universal Strategic Advisors LLC to assist ICE with expanded immigration enforcement, part of the Trump administration’s move to begin mass deportations. DOGE claimed $66 million in savings, yet the contract had only been awarded a few weeks earlier. A company representative confirmed it was “terminated for convenience,” with no explanation provided by the government. The representative also noted that ICE’s operational needs for such services likely still exist, as the agency continues to expand. The Department of Homeland Security has not yet responded to a CBS News query.
Claimed savings also include $5.6 million from cuts to a program monitoring youth tobacco use, $3.9 million from the cancellation of a national concussion surveillance system, and $1.9 million from terminating a National Firefighter Registry.
According to Malkus “They have this funny math definition of savings that doesn’t accurately capture what the typical person would ever view as a savings amount.”
DOGE also appears to have deleted 96 contracts posted before May 4 totaling $124.7 million in purported savings.
Despite these inconsistencies, DOGE maintains that the “Wall of Receipts” is a model of transparency.
Elon Musk has repeatedly defended the platform — and DOGE’s cost cutting regime — including citing a nearly $1 billion government survey that, he claimed, should have cost just $10,000. Requests to the White House for details on that claim have gone unanswered.
Although the Trump administration insisted Musk was never formally the DOGE administrator, he was DOGE’s public face. Musk recently announced that he’d be stepping back from DOGE to focus on Tesla and his other companies.
Many of these contracts also fall under the “termination for convenience” rule that allows contractors to make claims to the federal government for expenses they’ve incurred like staffing expenses, office space and lost profits. Denials can be appealed to federal courts and may take years to be resolved.
“We know these termination settlements are going in, but is anyone paying attention? I just wonder who is keeping their eyes on that spending,” Malkus says.
Ultimately whether or any of these cuts add up to savings for taxpayers will be determined by Congress, when and if the Trump administration submits a rescission request, a process in which the President formally requests Congress take back funds allocated to specific programs.
A CBS News analysis of government spending revealed that the federal government has spent $200 billion more in its first 100 days than last year— a trend that is projected to continue.
Eva Steege may have seemed like an unlikely combattant in the pushback against mass firings by the Trump administration. The 83-year-old retired Lutheran pastor was in hospice, unable to walk, when she was asked to join a group seeking to block the administration’s gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“It took us about five minutes to decide that that was a good thing to do,” her husband Ted Steege, 82, told CBS News in an interview.
When Eva died in March, Ted took her place in the lawsuit which, to this point, has prevented the agency’s dismantling and yielded hundreds of pages of internal communications shedding new light on DOGE’s effort to slash the federal workforce. Steege has become one face of the human toll wrought by the chaos and scope of the mass federal firings that marked the Trump administration’s first 100 days in Washington.
“We saw an opportunity, not just to gain something that we were entitled to, but also to do something that will change lives for lots of dedicated workers and for people all around the country who have suffered injustices, quiet things that nobody ever notices,” Ted Steege said.
The injustice the couple faced originated with Eva’s decision in her 60s to fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming a pastor. To afford her seminary school tuition, Steege said the couple sold their house and took on $43,000 in debt.
For years, they dutifully paid down the debt but, as of January, still believed they owed about $17,000. On the advice of Lutheran Social Services, the couple approached the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for help enrolling in a federal loan forgiveness program.
Established by Congress in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the bureau, known as the CFPB, is tasked with protecting consumers from financial fraud and shady lending practices. Workers reviewing the Steeges’ case discovered the Steeges didn’t need loan forgiveness at all — that in fact they had overpaid and were owed them more than $15,000 in refunds.
Filled with hope, the couple planned on meeting with CFPB staffers on Feb. 10. That morning the Trump administration issued a stop work order effectively shutting down the agency.
“An email came that said, sorry we have different directives,” Steege said. “We can’t meet with you.”
Ted Steege
CBS News
A grieving husband joins the court battle over DOGE firings
Now, he’s fighting to restore the bureau’s functions by staving off the mass firing of its employees. The battle is playing out in federal court, where earlier this month appellate judges issued a ruling to temporarily block the Trump administration’s latest effort to slash the workforce.
The ruling came after a flurry of filings in the case made public a trove of emails, internal chats and sworn employee declarations. The documents revealed a frantic push in April by agency leadership and DOGE officials to fire nearly 1,500 employees — about 90% of the CFPB’s staff.
Helping to carry out the mass dismissals was a 25-year-old DOGE official named Gavin Kliger, who has helped implement cuts across at least half a dozen federal agencies. Kliger has no federal government experience prior to working for DOGE.
CBS News reached Kliger by phone, but he declined to offer comments or answer questions. In a statement, a White House spokesperson disputed the idea that Kliger “managed” the firings at CFPB, but did not clarify his role. In an internal chat made public in the court filings, messages show Kliger claiming he would “be running this operation.”
According to sworn testimony from a CFPB employee, Kliger allegedly demanded staffers prepare firing notices for 36 hours straight, “screaming at people he did not believe were working fast enough, calling them incompetent.”
The White House spokesperson said the allegations against Kliger were “another attempt to diminish DOGE’s critical mission to [make] government more effective and efficient.”
Former director disputes claim of “vast waste”
Before they were put on hold by the court, the CFPB’s Trump-appointed chief legal officer defended the firings, saying they were necessary to “better align with Administration police, and right-size Bureau” and claimed “leadership discovered vast waste”.
The CFPB did not respond to a request for comment about the Steeges’ case or the ongoing efforts by agency leadership to reduce its workforce.
In an interview with CBS News, former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra called that finding of waste “completely made up.” He said the bureau will cease to function if the administration’s cuts are allowed to proceed.
“This is a ‘defund the police’ approach to looking after Wall Street and the financial industry,” said Chopra, who was fired by the White House in February despite President Trump having appointed him to a role on the Federal Trade Commission during his first term.
Chopra said extending help to borrowers like Ted and Eva Steege who are looking to mount challenges against predatory lenders is core to the agency’s mission.
“Every day, thousands of people come to the CFPB for help like this, and all of that looks like it’s getting shut down,” he said.
As the courts wrestle over the administration’s actions, Ted Steege is continuing to pursue Eva’s reimbursement claim, hoping the agency will survive long enough to help deliver the money she was owed.
“She definitely wanted to have that refund money to be part of our estate and make things better for our children and grandchildren,” he said.
Michael Kaplan is an award-winning reporter and producer for the CBS News investigative unit. He specializes in securing scoops and crafting long-form television investigations. His work has appeared on “60 Minutes,” CNN and in The New York Times.
