Elon Musk said Monday DOGE's staff are "pretty much" in every government department and he's looking to roughly double the number on the cost-cutting team he's the face of.
Why it matters: The Trump administration's DOGE-driven mass firings of federal workers have faced multiple legal challenges and resistance from some Republican lawmakers who are facing the impacts the department's cuts will have on their constituents and states.
Not many people can laugh off losing $16 billion in a day — but then again, it's different when it comes to Elon Musk,
Why it matters: The world's richest man seemed unfazed about the 15% decline in Tesla's stock Monday, a plunge that led the worst market day of the year.
What they're saying: Confronted with a litany of recent bad news headlines in a Fox Business interview, Musk shrugged it off with a chuckle: "But look on the bright side! Always look on the bright side of life!"
Monty Python fans will, of course, recall the reference to the closing song of "Life of Brian."
Catch up quick: It's been a tough few days for Musk.
Last Thursday, SpaceX's Starship rocket exploded minutes after launch from Texas, the second such mishap this year.
Friday, the New York Times reported President Trump was moving toward limiting Musk's previously free-ranging power after outrage from top Republicans.
On Saturday, the "Tesla Takedown" movement fanned out nationwide at the company's showrooms, including in Manhattan, where hundreds protested.
On Monday, Tesla shares plunged, leaving the company the worst-performing stock on the S&P 500 this year.
Meanwhile, his social media platform X also went down Monday due to a purported cyberattack.
The intrigue: Musk pointed to foreign actors in the X outage.
"We're not sure exactly what happened but there was a massive cyberattack to try to bring down the X system, with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area," Musk said.
Asked how he was running all of his other businesses while also dealing with DOGE's slash-and-burn government restructuring, Musk paused and said "with great difficulty."
Tens of thousands of X users reported outages throughout Monday, as a "massive cyberattack" targets the platform, owner Elon Musk said.
Why it matters: The app formerly known as Twitter has experienced several widespread outages since Musk took over in 2022. Other competitors have founded apps as the social media landscape has become more partisan and polarized.
U.S. stock markets cratered on Monday, with investors fearful that the economy could be headed into a recession.
Why it matters: This could put new pressures on consumer confidence and the Trump administration, all just days ahead of a possible government shutdown.
Women are surging in stand-up comedy and, in nearly half the country, the bestselling is Nikki Glaser, per Vivid Seats.
By the numbers: Glaser, who this year became the first woman to be the solo host of the Golden Globes, had the most ticket sales in 24 states from January 2024 to February of this year.
The Washington Post is making major changes to its newsroom that are meant to broaden the outlet's coverage and reach a wider audience, according to a staff memo from executive editor Matt Murray obtained by Axios.
Why it matters: The shifts follow months of high-profile staff departures and blowback to recent opinion coverage changes by owner Jeff Bezos.
Michelle Obama is now a video podcaster. The former first lady announced Monday thather new show, "IMO," will be hosted by her and her brother, Craig Robinson.
The big picture: Since Barack Obama left the White House, he and Michelle have become new media figures, producing Oscar-winning films and podcasts, writing books and narrating documentaries.
Asbury Auto Group last month agreed to pay $1.34 billion to acquire a New England auto dealership network called Herb Chambers.
Why it matters: It's a huge deal by sector standards, but also could exacerbate legal headaches for Herb Chambers, which is being sued by a dealership finance manager for allegedly failing to pay overtime and related wages.
ServiceNow on Monday announced an agreement to buy Moveworks, a Silicon Vallry provider of enterprise employee AI assistants, for $2.85 billion in cash and stock.
Why it matters: This is the largest acquisition ever by ServiceNow, a $175 billion company that's spending big to keep pace in the AI age.
The Justice Department is reportedly in the early stages of investigating egg producers for antitrust violations, but proving criminal activity won't be easy.
Why it matters: High egg prices alone don't suggest collusion is happening. To understand why, we need to turn to Microeconomics 101, and specifically the question of price elasticity.
The big picture: Price elasticity measures the degree to which consumers are willing, or unwilling, to pay higher prices for certain items.
Eggs, it turns out, have astonishingly low price elasticity: Demand barely falls as price rises. As a result, even modest reductions in supply are likely to result in huge price increases.
Follow the money: Berkeley economist Aaron Smith has run the numbers on egg price elasticity and found that it took a 228% increase in the price of eggs to reduce the number of eggs purchased by a mere 4%.
Elasticity is determined by a mathematical formula, where the closer you are to zero, the less elastic the price of a commodity is. Overall, Smith found demand elasticity for eggs to be somewhere between -0.02 and -0.06.
That's astonishingly low, lower even than the super-low price elasticity for eggs of -0.1 cited in "Microeconomics," the standard textbook by Paul Krugman and Robin Wells.
By comparison, gasoline has a short-run price elasticity of around -0.3, some 15 times greater than we've recently seen in the egg market. (Over the long run, when consumers can switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles, the price elasticity is closer to -0.5.)
How it works: "Egg demand is inelastic because there are few good substitutes and it doesn't take up a huge portion of most people's budget," Smith wrote. While it's not pleasant to pay more for eggs, he noted, "most people are willing and able to do it."
Where it stands: Wholesale egg prices have finally started to fall, but that's more because there have been no significant outbreaks of the avian flu over the past couple of weeks, per the USDA, than because demand is fallen in response to high prices.
The respite, USDA staff wrote, "has provided an opportunity for production to make progress in reducing recent egg shortages."
And as Karyn Rispoli, managing editor for eggs in the Americas for price-reporting service Expana, told Axios' Kelly Tyko, "the market is suddenly faced with a surplus of eggs" and therefore a potential decrease in prices.
Between the lines: It's great to be in a business where price elasticities are low and supply is shrinking, because whatever you lose in volume, you more than make up for in higher prices.
Normally, those excess profits get competed away: Your competitors will invest in new supply and undercut you unless you lower your prices. But that takes time.
The bottom line: When shrinking supply is the result of a shock like bird flu, it can take a full year for the industry as a whole to rebuild supply, during which time it may make very fat profits.
In another sign of congressional pushback on cuts to NOAA, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) asked the Commerce Department for detailed information on how the top federal weather, climate and oceans agency has been affected.
Why it matters: The letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — provided first to Axios — puts pressure on the department to defend the layoffs' legality based on existing laws and recent court rulings.
The Federal Trade Commission under President Trump is making its first move to challenge private equity in health care, by suing to block the $627 million acquisition of a maker of specialized coatings for catheters and other medical devices.
Why it matters: It's the first such FTC action around M&A since Trump was sworn in and could signal continued regulatory scrutiny as private equity buys more health care firms.
Sticker shock at the grocery store became a fact of life during the pandemic as food prices skyrocketed.
Why it matters: Higher prices have been unavoidable ever since — but five years since the start of COVID, new tariffs and retaliatory action could cause food prices to rise again.
Anyone who thinks President Trump's mesmerizing hold over the GOP will slip if his poll numbers slide is missing one of his biggest innovations in American politics:
The creation of a cash-flush political operation that hasraked in around a half-billion dollars — about the same amount the GOP's House and Senate campaign arms spent during the entirety of the last midterm campaign.
The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic permanently changed the U.S. auto industry, which isn't likely to see car sales bounce back to 2019 levels any time soon.
Why it matters: Supply chain vulnerabilities delivered hard lessons that changed the way automakers think about sourcing components, pricing their vehicles and controlling inventories.
Canada's ruling Liberals elected a new party leader in Ottawa, Canada, on Sunday who will serve as the nation's next prime minister, replacing the outgoing Justin Trudeau.
Why it matters: Liberal Party members' vote for Mark Carney, former governor of the Banks of Canada and England, comes as the Liberals are experiencing a polling boost amid widespread opposition to President Trump's U.S. policies targeting its northern neighbor.
