Elon Musk’s Government Takeover: Breaking Down His Escalating War On Federal Agencies
With unchecked authority from Trump, Musk’s DOGE team is ignoring laws, moving to dismantle agencies, accessing sensitive data, sidelining civil servants, and testing the limits of executive power.
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In his first two weeks back in office, President Trump’s “flood the zone” tactic is in full swing—this time, with the world’s richest man as his accomplice in chaos.
The Trump Administration is moving with lightning speed to pursue its far-right agenda via executive order and test the bounds of executive power, seeking to unilaterally seize the power of the purse away from Congress. These moves have run into some early setbacks, with actions like Trump’s federal funding freeze facing legal roadblocks.
As we sift through the torrent of actions, one developing dynamic that has yet to be halted is the increasingly dangerous, full-frontal assault on the federal bureaucracy led by Elon Musk.
Elon Musk and his team of young engineers have taken over the US Digital Service and renamed it DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). DOGE has been moving from agency to agency, freezing funds, gaining access to sensitive data, and putting civil servants who stand in their way on leave. They’re also seeking to outright dismantle agencies, which is blatantly unlawful. These moves apparently have President Trump’s full blessing.
In the Oval Office on Monday, President Trump told reporters that “Elon can’t do, and won’t do anything, without our approval. And we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where not appropriate, we won’t.” The White House later said that Musk is a “special government employee,” which could cause Musk to run afoul of conflict-of-interest laws.
Trump’s Oval Office comments are telling. Trump made a point to say he’s in charge. Reports of Musk unilaterally exerting influence are likely getting to him. The New York Times reported on Monday that Musk is actually operating with remarkable autonomy, citing Trump officials:
“In his current role, Mr. Musk has a direct line to Mr. Trump and operates with little if any accountability or oversight, according to people familiar with the dynamic.”
Musk, an unelected billionaire whose companies directly benefit from billions in federal contracts, has been given unchecked power over the federal government that regulates his own companies.
The moves have been frantic and a lot to keep up with, even for me, who does this for a living. So, I thought I’d put together an article that synthesizes what Elon Musk is actually doing at each agency in a simple format.
From what we know so far, Elon Musk has deployed his DOGE team to nearly half a dozen agencies.
DOGE has targeted the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), freezing funds and seeking to outright dismantle it. DOGE has forced its way into accessing the Treasury Department’s payment systems. DOGE has taken root in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and made moves to push out career civil servants throughout the government. DOGE has its eyes on canceling leases of federal offices managed by the General Services Administration (GSA).
The Department of Education is reportedly next on Musk’s list, with the Trump Administration reportedly drafting an executive order to shut down the department.
All of this is directly in line with Project 2025’s core objectives, which many of us spent the past year warning about.
Unilateral attempts to dismantle agencies are unlawful, and accessing sensitive data without proper security clearances could violate privacy laws. Lawsuits have already begun to fly, and Democratic lawmakers have been making a lot of noise and seeking new ways to express opposition.
Here are some of the most troubling intrusions by Elon Musk and DOGE.
Dismantling USAID
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been a force for good in the world and has traditionally garnered mostly bipartisan support for its humanitarian missions abroad. The USAID funds humanitarian aid, global health, pro-democracy projects, economic growth, education, climate resilience, conflict prevention, and innovation programs that promote global development and US foreign policy objectives.
Musk sees it differently; he has called the agency “evil” and said, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” Of all the agencies Musk is targeting, USAID has gotten the most forceful treatment.
On Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order freezing foreign aid, which effectively crippled the USAID. Dozens of senior officials at USAID were put on leave for allegedly trying to defy Trump’s executive order, and hundreds of contractors were also put on leave.
Thousands of projects providing crucial foreign aid have been halted, putting life-saving humanitarian aid in jeopardy.
The attack on USAID began to heat up further over the weekend. DOGE staffers reportedly sought to force their way into USAID HQ, and were denied entry. From CNN:
“According to sources, personnel from the Musk-created office then physically tried to access the USAID headquarters in Washington, DC, and were stopped. The DOGE personnel demanded to be let in and threatened to call US Marshals to be allowed access, two of the sources said.”
DOGE was attempting to access “sensitive data” from the agency, and was blocked, which led to two more senior officials being put on leave. DOGE staffers did eventually gain access to the building and began putting more staffers on leave.
This week, the effort to dismantle USAID escalated. In a post on X, Elon Musk said that Trump agreed that USAID should be shut down. There has now been talk of an effort to fold USAID into the State Department, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio was named acting head of USAID.
Of course, neither President Trump nor Elon Musk have the legal authority to unliterary shut down federal agencies or fold them into other agencies.
Democratic lawmakers, who went to the USAID headquarters to try and gain access to the building and held a press conference after, have been vocal about the unlawful nature of this effort to shut down USAID. They’ve gone as far as to call this a “constitutional crisis.”
Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) laid it out pretty succinctly:
“What Trump and Musk have done is not only wrong, it's illegal. USAID was established by an act of Congress, and it can only be disbanded by an act of Congress. Stopping this will require action by the courts and for Republicans to show up and show courage and stand up for our country.”
Democrats have pointed out how this move was a gift to America’s foreign adversaries and laid out how they plan to fight it. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) proclaimed, “We are going to fight in every way we can in the courts, in public opinion, with the bully pulpit, in the halls of Congress, and here at USAID itself. We are not going to let this injustice happen.”
Lawsuits are expected to begin flying over this effort.
I think it’s important to lay out the reasoning behind this. USAID is a fraction of the federal budget. This doesn’t appear to be a sincere effort to cut costs.
This could very well be a test run at the unilateral dismantling of a federal agency. If they’re able to get away with this blatantly unlawful effort, they may seek to replicate this model across other agencies, like the Education Department.
On Tuesday, Elon Musk quoted a post that said, “If you think USAID was big just wait.” Musk simply responded with one word and an emoji: “Yes 😎”
We’ll see how this plays out in court. Meanwhile, Democrats have to keep the pressure up, and the media needs to continue informing the public about what’s happening.
Infiltrating The Treasury Department
Last week, Elon Musk and his DOGE team were in a standoff with David Lebryk, a top career civil servant at the Treasury Department.
Musk and DOGE were trying to gain access to the Treasury Department’s payment systems. Lebryk refused and was subsequently put on leave. Musk effectively ousted him in retaliation for his refusal to comply with Musk’s demands.
By the weekend, DOGE had been granted full access to the Treasury’s payment systems by the new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. These payment systems disperse trillions in payments to Americans, issuing contractor payments, social security payments, tax refunds, and more.
In an interview with USA TODAY Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) confirmed that DOGE staffers gained access to “the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans, bank accounts and tax data, Social Security numbers and home addresses.”
“We got on it, and what is clear now is that unqualified and unaccountable people have seized control of the flow of taxpayer funds and a trove of very sensitive data, and they are seizing the tools they need for a coup,” Wyden asserted.
It’s unclear exactly what Musk and DOGE will do with these payments. Secretary Bessent claimed that Musk and DOGE only have “read-only” access to the payment systems.
But on Tuesday, WIRED reported that a 25-year-old DOGE engineer had been given “write access” to the payment systems’ code:
“Two of those sources say that privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: The Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS).”
On Monday, the American Federation of Government Employees and the Service Employees International Union filed a federal lawsuit alleging that DOGE’s activities violate the Privacy Act of 1974 and cybersecurity laws.
Once again, it could be up to the courts to stop this intrusion. This lawsuit is worth keeping an eye on in the coming days.
Taking Over OPM & Targeting Civil Servants
One of the very first things DOGE did was settle in at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which essentially operates as the federal government’s HR department.
DOGE sent out an email with the subject line “Fork in the Road,” mimicking the same subject line that was sent to Twitter employees after Elon Musk’s takeover of the company. The email was sent to 2 million federal employees offering a “deferred resignation” program, which has been referred to as a buyout, although its legality is dubious.
It offers federal workers to voluntarily resign but maintain their pay until September 20, 2025. They sent out another email with the same offer this week.
This has widely been seen as an effort to purge civil servants that don’t align with Trump’s views, and comes after President Trump reinstated “Schedule F,” which makes it easier to fire federal workers.
These moves have sent chills throughout the federal workforce, with some digging in and others seeking to find more secure employment.
Some Republican lawmakers have reportedly been quietly saying that this “buyout” effort is illegal, CBS News reported:
“Some lawmakers have noted the offer of pay through Sept. 30 violates the Anti-Deficiency Act, a law that prevents the government from promising or spending money in excess of what Congress has made available. Congress has funded the government only through mid-March, not through the end of the fiscal year at the end of September.”
Regardless of its legality, about 20,000 federal workers have reportedly accepted the deferred resignation offer.
Aside from the emails being sent from OPM, DOGE is also making changes within OPM, icing out senior civil servants. CNN reported:
Career civil servants at OPM, including those at the senior-most levels, have been physically moved out of their offices in the Office of the Director Annex and onto different floors. Some have also lost access to internal data systems. That has raised many alarms for civil servants concerned that the personal data, including Social Security numbers, of millions of federal employees is at risk.
“The political team has unfettered access to everything the Office of the Chief Information Officer manages,” a source at the agency told CNN.
All of this is well aligned with Trump’s Agenda 47 and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
While DOGE is barring civil servants from accessing internal data systems, they’re also installing illegal servers, according to Musk Watch:
“Several of Elon Musk’s associates installed at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have received unprecedented access to federal human resources databases containing sensitive personal information for millions of federal employees. According to two members of OPM staff with direct knowledge, the Musk team running OPM has the ability to extract information from databases that store medical histories, personally identifiable information, workplace evaluations, and other private data…
A new server being used to control these databases has been placed in a conference room that Musk’s team is using as their command center, according to an OPM staffer. The staffer described the server as a piece of commercial hardware they believed was not obtained through the proper federal procurement process.”
Federal workers have sued over the alleged existence of this server.
Moving In On The GSA, Federal Offices, And Tech
Elon Musk and DOGE have also had their eyes set on the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the federal government’s real estate.
The Associated Press reported on their maneuvers:
“Last week, regional managers for the General Services Administration, or GSA, received a message from the agency’s Washington headquarters to begin terminating leases on all of the roughly 7,500 federal offices nationwide, according to an email shared with The Associated Press by a GSA employee.
The order seems to contradict Trump’s own return-to-office mandate for federal employees, adding confusion to what was already a scramble by the GSA to find workspace, internet connections and office building security credentials for employees who had been working remotely for years.”
On top of this effort to end federal office leases, they’re also taking aim at the GSA’s tech. The Technology Transformation Services (TTS) is under the GSA’s umbrella, and it’s something that Musk has reportedly taken great interest in. Musk has appointed a former Tesla engineer, Thomas Shedd, to head technology projects at the GSA.
The New York Times has reported that the use of Artificial Intelligence will be vital to their efforts:
“Meeting with T.T.S. members Monday, Mr. Shedd said he hoped to pool all government contracts in a central database and use artificial intelligence to assess them for potential redundancies and budget reductions, the people familiar with the discussion said. He noted that the acting G.S.A. administrator, a Trump appointee and Salesforce executive named Stephen Ehikian, is maintaining an A.I. strategy document.”
Using AI to streamline and expedite budget cuts is an interesting idea. But that being done by Musk and his DOGE staffers, it’s far from trustworthy. Which AI models will they use? Will they use Musk’s? Will sensitive or classified data be training this AI model? A lot of questions here.
Why Are They Doing This?
One of the core goals of the modern right-wing movement and Project 2025 is to cripple the federal bureaucracy and to reshape the federal government into a tool of the far-right.
President Trump wants to expand executive power. As I’ve written about extensively, Trump is testing the boundaries of the law and this Supreme Court’s appetite for further expanding executive power.
After the Supreme Court’s shocking immunity decision, the Trump Administration is likely seeking a further expansion of executive power greenlit by its right-wing justices. Given the Supreme Court’s clear openness to the unitary executive theory, Trump wants to see how much they will let him get away with.
For example, if Trump and Musk are allowed to unilaterally dismantle the USAID, they could use that as a precedent to dismantle the other agencies they want to. This would spark a constitutional crisis, as the executive branch takes over a key power from the legislative branch.
When it comes to Elon Musk specifically, he benefits from a government that can’t effectively regulate his companies, but it’s more than that. Musk is more than a mere oligarch right now. He’s operating effectively as a co-president.
Elon Musk finally has the power he has always wanted. Born in South Africa, Musk is ineligible to run for president. But now, even while unelected, he has been given near-unilateral control over federal agencies. He is totally unaccountable to voters. And congressional Republicans, who hold the majority in the Senate and House, have shown little appetite for retaking their constitutional authority.
We’ll see how long Trump tolerates sharing the attention with Musk. Two egos this big can’t work in tandem forever. The power dynamics will eventually run into friction.
Until then, it’ll be up to the courts to stop this madness.
Thnxs for the prompt response counting you n your fellow journalist to keep your eyes open and keep us informed
Thanks, Ahmed. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to stay abreast of the insanity. Now I’m going to watch the live demonstration at Treasury. We’re taking to the streets!