How Elon Is Breaking The Government

Sources:

The Trump-Vance Administration is trying to Undermine strong rules and protections by creating the "Department of Government Efficiency", Democracy 2025 Response Center, https://www.democracy2025.org/response-center/tbd-23715

The Trump-Vance Administration is trying to Block aid obligations to international partners and allies, Democracy 2025 Response Center, https://www.democracy2025.org/response-center/nSr0PP

The Trump-Vance Administration is trying to Give political loyalists and the DOGE more control over federal hiring, Democracy 2025 Response Center, https://www.democracy2025.org/response-center/drXHgv 

John Hudson, Elen Nakashima, Missy Ryan, Mariana Alfaro, Faiz Siddiqui, Trump moves to wrest control of USAID as Musk says, ‘We’re shutting it down’, Washington Post, Feb. 3, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/02/usaid-trump-musk/

Daniel Wu, What is USAID, the government agency targeted by Trump and Elon Musk?, The Washington Post, Feb. 2, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/02/usaid-musk-trump-faq/ 

Abigail Williams, Vaughn Hillyard, Yamiche Alcindor, Dan De Luce, USAID security leaders removed after refusing Elon Musk's DOGE employees access to secure systems, ABC News, Feb. 2, 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/usaid-security-leaders-removed-refusing-elon-musks-doge-employees-acce-rcna190357 

USAID officials put on leave as Elon Musk says time for agency to ‘die’, Al Jazeera, Feb. 3, 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/2/3/usaid-officials-put-on-leave-as-elon-musk-says-time-for-agency-to-die 

Lauren Kent, Kevin Liptak, Jennifer Hansler, USAID’s future appears bleak as Musk and Trump work to dismantle agency, CNN, Feb. 3, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/03/politics/usaid-washington-workers/index.html 

Ellen Knickmeyer, Matthew Lee, USAID security chiefs put on leave after trying to stop Musk’s team from accessing classified info, officials say, PBS, Feb. 2, 2025, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/usaid-security-chiefs-put-on-leave-after-trying-to-stop-musks-team-from-accessing-classified-info-officials-say 

Benjamin Har, ‘We’ve Got an Enormous Crisis on Our Hands’, Intelligencer, Feb. 3, 2025, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-and-elon-musks-blitzkrieg-attack-on-government.html 

Kate Conger, Ryan Mac, Déjà Vu: Elon Musk Takes His Twitter Takeover Tactics to Washington, The New York Times, Jan. 30, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/technology/musk-doge-x-playbook.html

Chance Townsend, Elon Musk's DOGE takeover is reportedly being spearheaded by young college grads, Mashable, Feb. 2, 2025, https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-doge-college-student-takeover 

Zeeshan Aleem, Elon Musk is sweeping through Washington — and answering to nobody, MSNBC, Feb. 3, 2025, https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-trump-treasury-doge-government-rcna190175 

Andrew Duehren, Maggie Haberman, Theodore Schleifer, Alan Rappeport, Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System, The New York Times, Feb. 1, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/us/politics/elon-musk-doge-federal-payments-system.html 

Joe Miller, Elon Musk vows to cancel grants after gaining access to US Treasury payment system, Financial Times, Feb. 2, 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/27ba0a6a-0d9b-4e08-8329-730b581c0481 

Richard Kogan, FAQs on Impoundment: Presidential Actions Are Constrained by Long-Standing Constitutional Restrictions, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Nov. 21, 2024, https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/faqs-on-impoundment-presidential-actions-are-constrained-by-long-standing

Dave Eisenstadter, Elon Musk US financial data grab a ‘coup,’ Heather Cox Richardson says, MassLive, Feb. 2, 2025, https://www.masslive.com/news/2025/02/elon-musk-us-financial-data-grab-a-coup-heather-cox-richardson-says.html 

Transcript:

Elon Musk is a slimy sniveling, incredibly uncool, socially awkward, low IQ, unelected foreign-born private citizen dead set on grinding the federal government to a halt for his own personal financial gain and ego and to make his daddy Donald Trump happy because his own father has never been proud of him. The last two weeks have been exhausting chaos on so many levels but today I want to talk about the particular chaos Elon is bringing to the government, not only through DOGE but also across federal agencies. He’s bringing the tactics he used to drive Twitter into the ground to the US Government. Will this entire country face the same fate? Let’s get into it.

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A quick reminder of how we got here, because as I’ve said before the point is to overwhelm and confuse us with lots of splashy headline creating activity that is all really really bad. But a few key things have happened to vault Elon to his current level of power, and it’s important to remember they are generally typical avenues of government. To be clear: Trump is pushing beyond the limits of what’s allowed by law and under the constitution, but he’s doing so using processes that are often used by Presidents, namely executive actions like orders and proclamations. He’s just ordering and proclaiming things that are beyond the pale, which is then emboldening the members of his administration to go do lots of crazy shit to upend governmental order. But it’s all stemming from Trump’s orders and proclamations, because if they go through typical processes then it lends an air of legitimacy even when what he’s ordering and proclaiming is completely illegal. 

So first there’s the order issued on January 20th called “Establishing and Implementing the President's "Department of Government Efficiency"”. This created DOGE as a “temporary organization” within the executive branch. According to the Democracy 2025 dot org response center, a handy tool to help you keep track of all the presidential actions, there are at least 4 lawsuits currently in action to challenge the creation of DOGE, claiming it’s beyond the authority of the president to create this organization and that there’s no transparency. Unfortunately the speed at which Trump is issuing orders and his lackeys are carrying out directives far exceeds the pace of the federal judiciary. So those cases are very much still pending. And in the meantime Trump and Elon are ready to fuck shit up.

Then there was the executive order from January 20th called “Re-evaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid” which required a 90 day pause and review of foreign development assistance. This directive then gets implemented by the people Trump has placed in charge across government agencies. This is why USAID is being investigated and shut down. Why Elon Musk of all people is being put in charge of something like that is another question which we’ll get to.

And then there’s the executive order called “Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service”, also made on January 20th, that claims federal hiring processes are illegal and discriminatory because of DEI, and orders DOGE to create a federal hiring plan that puts merit above DEI and ends illegal discrimination against white men. So, again, that order starts the chain of events and now Elon and others are carrying out the order, as evidenced by the extreme levels of confusion not only for federal employees but also state level employees in positions that rely on federal grant money. The level of chaos this is creating cannot be understated and is grinding the day to day functioning of governments across the country to a halt as people try to decipher what’s legal, what’s not, and how to comply. That is the very point of all of this, this is all directly pulled from the Project 2025 play book, the end goal being a concentration of power in the hands of the executive, Trump, and a shrinking of all aspects of government, until the government’s power is so limited that it basically just protects property rights and pretty much nothing else, a fringe economic pipe dream 50 years ago that has since made its way to center stage thanks to the influence of billionaires, who are the only class of people that benefit from a setup like that. 

Okay and obviously there are many more executive orders that have come down the pipe, I made an episode covering the ones from the first 48 hours, which is the bulk of them, but the three I just highlighted are where a lot of the Elon Musk chaos is coming from. I think it’s important to just get a lay of the land to try to fight against the chaos. First comes order from the President, then comes rules and regulations from agencies attempting to carry out the presidential directive. Legal fights will happen at all levels, but of course the most effective legal fights happen where lawsuits are able to stop the implementation of entire executive orders, because that halts all the downstream activity as well. But lawsuits are happening over individual agency actions, too. Which of course just adds to the chaos. Because a lawsuit is not an answer. So it’s still unclear what’s legal and illegal and how people should or should not be complying with these orders. And in the meantime peoples’ jobs and literal lives are just hanging in limbo. 

And it is from these orders, especially the three I’ve highlighted, that Elon claims to get his power. And let me be clear that when I say “it’s not clear what's legal and illegal” that doesn’t mean there’s not a TON of professional legal consensus that Trump is overstepping the bounds of his executive authority and the constitution, and that Elon Musk, an unelected immigrant billionaire who’s not even from here [she doesn’t even go here], is acting outside not only the spirit of the laws and constitution but also the literal law and constitution. It is clear to anyone who knows the law or has you know the basic ability to read or watch the news and see what Elon is doing, I think just common sense-wise, it seems wrong that someone we didn’t vote for, who isn’t even officially head of anything, can take sweeping actions in the government that will also likely provide personal financial benefit for him as well. We all KNOW it’s wrong, legal consensus is that it’s wrong and illegal, the problem is that we need a judge to say it’s illegal and then order it to stop. Which I think will happen, I do have faith in that remaining check on the president’s power, at least at the lower level, and I even have a sliver of faith in the Supreme Court as well, at least for the most egregious of these lawsuits, though I’m certain many of you would call me naive for keeping the faith. What I have less faith in is whether Trump and the people carrying out his orders will listen to the directives of judges. But we’ll talk more about that in a minute, right now let’s talk about Elon fucking Musk.

As we know Musk has done a number of corrupt and concerning things but what I’m specifically talking about are two related to DOGE. First, his involvement in the closure of the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, and second his access to a Treasury Department system that manages trillions of dollars in US government payments and houses sensitive information on millions of Americans. Let’s start with USAID.

USAID is the world’s largest provider of food assistance. It was established in 1961 by JFK and oversees a huge number of humanitarian relief efforts across the globe. According to reporting from The Washington Post, in 2023 it managed appropriations worth $40 billion dollars, is present in 130 countries, and has a staff of over 10,000 people. Some of its efforts are in incredibly sensitive areas, including Ukraine, one of the largest recipients of USAID funding. That funding primarily flows through USAID to NGOs, foreign governments, and other US agencies. Historically, the largest share of funding went towards health programs, especially efforts to combat HIV and AIDS, though it is also used to funnel money towards the promotion of democratic governments and free markets. And while criticism can rightfully be made about the US’s history of inserting itself in the name of “humanitarianism” and doing more harm than good, it’s equally important to note that USAID has access to incredibly sensitive information and sudden removal of aid and the shuttering of the world’s largest provider of food assistance, among so many other programs, will have disastrous, life-threatening effects the world over. According to reporting from PBS, the funding freeze and chaos has aid organizations “agonizing over whether they could continue operating programs such as those providing round-the-clock nutritional support to extremely malnourished infants and children, knowing that closing the doors means that many of those children would die.”  Additionally, proponents of USAID say that its work promotes national security by bolstering American good will and stabilizing disaster areas, according to the washington post.

And Elon Musk has it OUT for USAID. On twitter, the platform he bought to force people to listen to him, he’s called it a “criminal organization” and said it’s “time for it to die.” He called it a ball of worms that’s beyond repair. He said it’s evil and a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.” 

Trump has taken a similar tone, telling reporters this week “it’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics and we’re getting them out.” And the agency has experienced chaos since Trump took office. Foreign aid has been frozen. More than 1000 employees and contractors have been fired or furloughed, including the majority of USAID’s Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs and most of the upper management and leadership, including many staff attorneys and anyone who was deemed to be working against Trump’s executive orders and trying to fight the aid ban, or those simply involved in applying for the waivers the ban itself put in place to allegedly allow for the continuation of life-saving assistance, which appears to have just been lip service, with Marco Rubio saying dismissively “we don't want to see people die and the like” while appearing on Megyn Kelly’s talk show. Communications staff were blocked from accessing internal communications systems connected to staff members. Its website has been down since Saturday. Its twitter and instagram accounts were taken offline. On Saturday, according to the Washington Post, a group of 8 DOGE officials entered the USAID building in Washington DC and demanded access to every door and every floor. Only a few of them had proper security clearances. USAID personnel at the scene attempted to block access to especially what WashPo described as “a sensitive compartmented information facility–commonly known as SCIF–an ultra-secure room where officials and government contractors take extraordinary precautions to review highly classified information.” The DOGE officials who, again, did not have proper security clearances to access that area, threatened to call federal marshalls and were eventually given access to everything. Early this morning, USAID staff received an email saying its Washington headquarters were shuttered and everyone was to work remotely. John Voorhees and his deputy were put on administrative leave for refusing DOGE access to the secure SCIF room. USAID chief of staff Matt Hopson resigned. According to CNN even the USAID logo and photos of its aid work have been physically removed from the walls of its offices. The future of the 10,000 USAID staff, many of whom are overseas, and the millions of people who depend on their aid, is completely in limbo, with talks of rolling USAID into the state department, thus giving Trump and his secretary of state Marco Rubio more control over it. In fact, last week USAID staffers got a notification that the agency’s Google Drive was now under the control of the State Department, and while the USAID website is down, the State Department website has a new bare bones page dedicated to the agency.

According to the washington post, 10 democratic senators have warned Marco Rubio that steps to dismantle an independent agency like USAID would legally require congressional approval, and requested an update after this weekend’s activities, though it doesn’t sound like he’s responded. Neither Trump nor Elon have pointed to what authority they have that gives them the legal right to dissolve a federal agency or move it into the State Department without congressional approval, mostly because they don’t have the legal authority to do that because it is illegal. Winding down a major government agency is a lengthy, complicated administrative process that legally requires the involvement of Congress. But Elon Musk is bringing the “move fast and break things” Silicon Valley mentality to Government. As we know historically rules and regulations are mere suggestions for Elon Musk, because the thing about them is they usually just come with financial penalties, which means nothing when you’re the richest man on the planet. I couldn’t find anything laying out clearly WHY Trump and Elon have it out specifically for USAID, my theory is in part that USAID is a huge part of the foreign aid apparatus and there is just a general push towards protectionism. Helping hungry people in the Sudan is SO NOT America First!! Nevermind that USAID represents about 1% of the total federal budget and whatever money “saved” by not funding USAID will go in the pockets of the richest people in this country through tax cuts, not to the many people in America clamoring for help and convinced that Elon’s budget cuts will mean more money in THEIR pockets. This is not a move to save money for everyday Americans. It’s greed, its personal vendetta, Musk went off on USAID AFTER officials attempted to refuse DOGE access to sensitive information, apparently in retaliation, Trump is mad at South Africa, a major recipient of USAID aid, because of land confiscations that Trump claims are poor treatment of “certain classes of people.” He’s talking about the South African law that, according to Al Jazeera, allows the confiscation of white farmers’ land without compensation in certain cases. It’s a continuation of Trump’s view of international relations as transactional only. They are not doing anything for us, why are we giving them money. They do things that hurt landed white people, MY people, so we remove aid as a sanction. Elon Musk is also FROM South Africa, I am CERTAIN there’s a connection there, though I wasn’t able to find reporting to confirm my suspicion. But if you follow the money, the gutting of USAID is about power, control, and manipulation, per usual.

The same is true of Musk's attack on the Treasury department. Last Friday Trump-appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave DOGE officials access to the Treasury’s payment system. The system administers payments submitted by agencies from all parts of the government, dispersing more than $5 trillion dollars per year according to the New York Times. It also includes sensitive personal information about every American that gets social security, tax refunds, and other payments from the federal government. So, like, all of us. DOGE was granted access to this system after a week-long standoff with a career civil servant and top Treasury official named David Lebryk, who resisted giving DOGE access until he was put on leave and then, suddenly, retired on Friday. Elon has criticized the Treasury for not rejecting more payments for fraud. Note that the Treasury department has a literal team dedicated to rooting out fraud, and the agencies submitting payment requests also, separately, have mechanisms for detecting fraud. 

According to the new york times, DOGE officials have access to the Treasury info but not to operational capabilities, and they have not stopped any government payments from going through. Treasury Department lawyers okayed the access, and changes would allegedly need to go through a review process and testing. That, however, provides little comfort when you’re dealing with an unofficial government org, DOGE, lead by Elon Musk, a man who does not care about rules and who is unelected, unvetted, has zero government experience, AND, importantly, has enormous conflicts of interest because he is the recipient of vast amounts of government contracts, which flow through the treasury department payment systems, and his competitors also have vast contracts that flow through that payment system. On top of that, Elon has reportedly “vowed to unilaterally cancel hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of government grants” according to the financial times. Whether he’s been actually granted access to be able to do that seems to be questionable, and he certainly does not have the legal authority to do so, as someone who does not have an official role in the government. Trump officially created DOGE, which itself is legally questionable and currently the subject of multiple lawsuits, but did not officially name Elon to anything. He’s acting as the head, but legally he does not have an official government role. He is an unelected, foreign-born private citizen running rampant through the government.

These two incidents are just the latest in what has been a whirlwind two weeks for Elon Musk. And as numerous reports have laid out, his work dismantling the government mirrors his work dismantling Twitter in many ways. And his infiltration of the government is not limited to USAID or the Treasury department. His influence is apparent in the Office of Personnel Management, basically federal employee HR. His fingerprints are on the federal employee buyout that told employees they needed to work harder and focus on productivity or could instead choose to quit now and receive compensation until September. That email, sent by the office of personnel management, even had the same subject line as one sent to Twitter employees, A Fork In The Road. A human resources exec at SpaceX who also helped Elon take over Twitter, is now acting as an adviser to the OPM. In fact, according to reporting from Wired, a number of young men ages 19 to 24 have been added to OPM as experts or special advisors, all of whom served as interns for Musk or big tech companies, and many of whom have connections to Peter Thiel, the insane billionaire ideologue I made an episode about back when JD Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate because he also owns JD and his shadowy influence over the federal government has been growing rapidly. Elon’s fingerprints are also all over the General Services Administration, tasked with managing federal agencies, which has recently indicated it would be selling its real estate and limiting those expenditures, a similar move to one Twitter took to limit costs. In fact a former Tesla software engineer now works for the GSA as head of “technology transformation services.” The OPM chief of staff is also an Elon loyalist, Amanda Scales, who is also the subject of a recent lawsuit alleging that sensitive federal employee information is being funnelled improperly to Amanda Scales, whose LinkedIn says she currently works for xAI, one of the many companies of which Elon is a CEO. The operations head at Elon’s tunneling startup The Boring Company who also helped oversee cost cutting at Twitter is now helping to lead DOGE. At every turn, Musk loyalists are in places of power that manage federal personnel and federal agencies, and are enacting similar tactics to the ones Elon used to absolutely fucking destroy the stability and value of Twitter, and turn it to the internet’s toilet, which may be an indicator of what’s to come now that the same tactics are being brought to the federal government.

And the reason why Elon has been allowed to move fast and break things in Washington is because he is furthering two very important ideas that Project 2025 and the right wing extremists behind it and behind this new administration have been chomping at the bit to bring to the federal government. One is the unitary executive theory and the other is the Presidential impoundment power. The unitary executive theory posits that the founding fathers meant the president to have sweeping authority over the executive branch, and that the constitution’s mandate that the president see that the laws be faithfully executed means that he has the sole authority to decide whether and how to execute the laws the Congress writes. The impoundment power has been severely limited since Nixon because of his abuse of it, basically it’s where Congress passes an appropriations bill mandating that federal money be spent on certain things, and then the President unilaterally orders that the appropriated money just not be spent. This is unconstitutional–the constitution gave Congress the power of the purse, explicitly and on purpose, but just to reinforce that, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 in response to Nixon’s overreaching. By ordering a freeze on federal spending, on aid money, by unilaterally attempting to shut down agencies, Trump and Elon are putting these legal theories into action and dramatically ballooning the power of the President, which is the central goal of Project 2025 and Trump and his advisors. According to many historians and legal experts, these actions are not legal and the extent to which Trump and his people, including Elon, are pushing the bounds of the law and of these theories is unprecedented in US history.

I have been frantically reading The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton, a prescient book published in 2004 that lays out the stages of Fascist takeover. In doing so I think I’m searching for the Sign. The Thing that happens that signals the point of no return, or an indication that it’s time to flee. I think that’s why there’s SO much online discourse happening about pre-war Germany, we’re all looking for parallels to try to see how to stop it. What they did wrong that we can get right. And I think the two pieces for me that are helping me on to hope, though the parallels between pre-war Germany and the rise of MAGA are frankly stark, and we are far down the path towards fascist takeover in a way that is VERY clear from reading this book, Anatomy of Fascism, the two things giving me hope are first that Trump doesn’t have a militant army the way Hitler did. There are certainly militant groups ready to do his bidding, but they’re disorganized, scattered, and experiencing a lot of infighting of their own. Hitler had like an extra-legal army in uniform marching in the streets at this stage in his fascist takeover. The other hope I hold is in the rule of law and in the courts. There ARE judges that care deeply about applying the letter of the law as faithfully as possible. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but they do exist, I’ve met them, I’ve seen them in action. They are there. Some of them are coming out of retirement in an attempt to limit the number of appointees Trump can put on the bench. And there are many MANY lawyers who are out there zealously advocating for their cause, whether it’s for individuals facing housing discrimination, imminent deportation, or other injustices, or for organizations fighting these executive orders at the highest level, there are so many passionate fucking brilliant lawyers out there. And when I say brilliant, I mean it–lawyers get a bad rap but they’re smart. I’m not even saying that to toot my own horn. I came from a LONG history of being gifted and talented, one of the smartest kids in class, getting the best grades, going to one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country. In law school I was the middle of the fucking herd. AVERAGE. Joe Schmo. These people are fucking smart. And I went to a law school that churns out these activist lawyers. Chase Strangio, the first openly trans person to argue before the Supreme Court, went to my law school. These lawyers are smart. These judges are smart. And they care deeply about the rule of law and about protecting the most vulnerable people in this country, as well as the foundations of the country itself. Will it be enough? I don’t know. But I’ve decided those two things are my bellwether. The second Trump has an extra-governmental army of ideologues that is actually organized, or he blatantly disregards the rule of law from judges? That’s my sign we’ve passed the point of no return. The rest of this is chaos, and it’s bad, and many people are going to be hurt and will literally die from it, and it needs to be fought in whatever way possible, but history is long and this too shall pass. I have to believe that for my own mental sanity. So through all this chaos I’ll be keeping my eyes on the courts. Given the gridlock in Congress where Democrats don’t seem to know what to do and Republicans are complacent about Trump’s takeover, the judicial branch is the last check on the growing power of the president until the primaries next year when we can hopefully vote in some new legislators with a spine to stand up to tyranny. Until then, as I keep saying in every video, turn towards your community and your local government for support and for taking action, you have much more power than you think.

And you can join me over on my Patreon community where I just launched the Why, America? Co-Learning Lab, a learning community having discussions and making connections, along with a monthly syllabus curated by me. All year we’ll be covering topics under the umbrella theme of “Eat the Rich: Building Solidarity in the New Gilded Age.” January’s topic was all about learning from history to fight for the future. And this month we’re delving into organizing and how to create movements. This is all hosted over on Patreon, which is linked down below. If you’re interested, please join us.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Monday where I read the entire US constitution, since the White House decided to take it off their website.