Elon Musk’s rapid takeover of two U.S. government agencies has enabled the South African-born billionaire to exert unprecedented control over America’s 2.2-million-member federal workforce and begin a dramatic reshaping of government.
Musk’s Takeover
Elon Musk has in two weeks created a new center of power in Washington as he executes Trump’s cost-cutting initiative to reduce the size of the U.S. government.
Musk’s actions have fostered a wave of panic among government workers and public protests in Washington and at times have threatened to overshadow Trump’s own agenda.
Trump’s up-and-down trade war with neighboring Canada and Mexico vied this week for space on front pages with Musk’s effort to shut down USAID, the Agency for International Development, America’s main humanitarian aid agency to the world.
Musk’s efforts are part of a massive government restructuring by Trump, who has fired and sidelined hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.
Americans are witnessing “an extraordinary centralization of power in someone who lacks a top-level security clearance and has not been subject to any Senate confirmation process,” said Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
Nonetheless, Musk operates at Trump’s pleasure. The president told reporters on Monday that the billionaire had to seek approval from the White House for any of his actions.
Trump has put Musk in charge of what both men call the Department of Government Efficiency. Despite its name, it is not a department, Musk does not draw a government salary, and DOGE’s creation immediately drew lawsuits from government unions, watchdogs and public interest groups.
Exactly who makes up DOGE is unclear. The Trump administration has not released a list of DOGE employees. Nor has it said how they are being paid, how many have entered each agency, and whether they are government workers. That raises questions about who they are answerable to – Musk or Trump as head of the executive branch.
Musk and his DOGE lieutenants have taken over the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the General Services Administration (GSA) along with their computer systems.
OPM is the human resources arm of the U.S. government, overseeing 2.2 million government workers. From there, emails have been sent out in the past week offering federal employees financial incentives to quit. The GSA oversees most government contracts and manages federal property.
On Friday, a Musk team gained access to the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment system, which sends out more than $6 trillion a year on behalf of federal agencies and contains the personal information of millions of Americans who receive Social Security payments, tax refunds and other monies from the government.
Trump has repeatedly said that the federal bureaucracy is bloated and inefficient, and needs to be downsized. He also accuses many federal workers of being liberal ideologues to thwart his agenda.
Musk Exceeding His Authority
Governance experts say Musk appears to have already gone beyond the mandate granted by the executive order Trump signed setting up DOGE on Jan. 20.
That order mandated it to modernize federal technology and software “to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” Other orders on hiring freezes and recruitment say DOGE should work with other agencies to make recommendations.
Fear is gripping many civil servants, and they have taken to Reddit, Signal and Facebook to report on what is going on inside their agencies and discuss how to respond. They also warn that DOGE personnel are watermarking and otherwise embedding identifiers like additional spacing in emails to track down suspected leakers.
Musk’s critics, including Democratic lawmakers, have accused him of a hostile takeover of government. Federal worker unions sued to block Musk’s access to sensitive computer systems.
(With inputs from Reuters)
