We could dedicate an entire separate Surge to Elon Musk each week. (Editors—don’t read that.) On Monday, he was practically sitting on Trump’s lap during the inauguration, then traveled to the Capital One Arena to warm up the overflow crowd ahead of Trump’s appearance. There, Musk made a gesture that looked an awful lot like a Nazi salute, commanding days’ worth of the internet’s attention. Our belief, especially as he said “My heart goes out to you,” is that this was an instance of him being unusually awkward and not knowing how his body works—though Nazis online certainly appreciated the gesture. Elsewhere, we learned that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which previously existed as more of a concept, will be an actual office housed within the government. He’ll have government office space and a government email address. Usually this would mean that the guy with a billion businesses that contract with the government would have to divest his interests, but there are no longer rules in America. Oh, and Musk also eliminated Vivek Ramaswamy (more on that later). Perhaps the most interesting Musk news, though, was that, one day after Trump held a big press conference with other tech nerds to unveil a pricey new A.I. infrastructure project, Musk started trashing it, perhaps related to his ongoing feud with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. We know that Musk is relatively new to the Trump inner circle, but his stay may be short if he keeps contradicting the boss like this.

Lost in the discussion about Pete Hegseth’s behavior at the Fox & Friends holiday party or Tulsi Gabbard’s meeting with Bashar al-Assad has been a necessary spotlight on Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee to serve (for a second time) as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Unlike with Hegseth or Gabbard, there’s no question that Vought is qualified and knows what he’s doing. And that’s what makes him so concerning to Democrats. Vought is arguably the leading intellect on the right behind Trump’s plan to gut civil service protections. The first couple of pages of his chapter on the presidency in Project 2025, of which he was a major architect, are key reading in this regard. What’s been of particular concern to senators in his two confirmation hearings—the second of which came this week—is his support for impoundment powers, in which the White House sits on money duly appropriated by Congress. Impoundment is against the law—indeed, the OMB violated this law on occasion in Trump’s first term—but Trump has argued that the law is unconstitutional. In his hearing this week, Vought backed that up, saying he agreed with Trump’s assessment. The Surge would like you to imagine a world in which Congress reaches a government funding deal, or an emergency spending deal, and after it's signed into law, Trump decides who’s actually going to get any of that money. Because this hypothetical will come before the federal judiciary soon enough. 

Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk had a dream: to change the world through DOGE, an amorphous entity to remake the federal government, and a backronym of an internet joke. But Ramaswamy didn’t even make it to Inauguration Day, and DOGE’s purview appears to have been tailored. After hashing it out for a few weeks, Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s visions clashed—and it was always clear who the senior member of this partnership was (the one with more money). While Ramaswamy got caught up in visions of deregulation and dismantling the administrative state, that’s Russell Vought’s turf. Instead, DOGE, as established by a Day 1 executive order, will serve as a rebranded United States Digital Service and will look more like the Geek Squad, sending DOGE teams to governmental agencies to improve their technology and efficiency. (Ramaswamy, it’s also worth mentioning, had gotten in trouble with the Trumpies for posting over the holidays that too many Americans were stupid idiots.) What’s a lad to do when his Washington ambitions have all come crashing down? Run for governor of Ohio! Hey, now. A gig’s a gig.

Congratulations to America: Pete Hegseth will be your new secretary of defense. Have we decided yet who’s bringing the kegs to the Pentagon courtyard? The final march toward Hegseth’s Friday confirmation did involve a hair of drama, as Hegseth’s former sister-in-law submitted an affidavit to the Senate that Hegseth’s second wife, Samantha, “hid in a closet once from Hegseth” and “that she developed escape plans for use ‘if she felt she needed to get away from Hegseth’ that would be activated with a code word and that she did once put the escape plans into action,” as NBC News reported. Samantha Hegseth, when asked for comment, told NBC News that “there was no physical abuse in my marriage.” This was enough for the right to dismiss the story as a hit job, and Hegseth survived by the skin of his teeth. Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tiebreaking vote after Sens. Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins joined all Democrats to vote against Hegseth. We’re not sure there’s been a better indicator of Trump’s strength within the Republican Party than this guy getting confirmed by the Senate.

Last week, with Washington in full panic about having to enforce a law it overwhelmingly passed last year that would’ve banned ByteDance-owned teen-hypnosis app TikTok on Jan. 19, we guessed that Trump might have triggered the law’s 90-day extension clause—even though ByteDance had not met any of the criteria the law spelled out for a 90-day extension. We were wrong. Instead, Trump’s executive action on the matter instructed the Justice Department not to enforce the law for 75 days. That’s not exactly the way things are supposed to work, but with Democrats scared of TikTok users and Republicans scared of Trump, who’s going to push back? As for Trump’s plans for TikTok—oh, does he have plans. He’s floated a deal in which the government gets a 50 percent stake in the platform. A U.S. government–owned app would be so fire. And he says he’d pressure ByteDance to sell by threatening overwhelming tariffs against China if it didn’t. Yada, yada, yada. As for why Trump has changed his mind over the need for a TikTok ban, he told reporters Monday: “I got to use it. And remember, TikTok is largely about kids, young kids. If China is going to get information about young kids out of it, to be honest, I think we have bigger problems than that.” That, and he got close with a billionaire who owns 15 percent of ByteDance.

Administrations may change, but horny congressmen making bad decisions are a fact of life. Despite House Speaker Mike Johnson saying that he would look forward, not backward, when asked about Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons, he also said that he’d reconstitute a select subcommittee to investigate the doings of the Democrat-led Jan. 6 committee from a couple of years ago. The new subcommittee’s chair, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, led a similar probe in the previous Congress. This week, the Washington Post reported that last June, an aide to Johnson had warned the investigators against subpoenaing Cassidy Hutchinson—a key witness for the Jan. 6 committee—“in an effort to prevent the release of sexually explicit texts that lawmakers sent her.” According to the Post, “Multiple colleagues had raised concerns with the speaker’s office about the potential for public disclosure of ‘sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors’ with Hutchinson.” A first thought here is that Hutchinson has been well advised to hang on to those texts as leverage. The vampires are coming, and she’s holding some stinky, stinky garlic. A second thought is that it can’t be emphasized enough how stupid some members of Congress are.