‘Shadow government’? Billionaire Elon Musk’s grip on U.S. government spending raises questions
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- Elon Musk and his deputies in the Department of Government Efficiency have gained access to Treasury Department systems and targeted a key foreign aid agency for closure, riling Democrats who say the billionaire has no such authority.
- The debate reflects growing tensions between long-standing government norms and laws, and President Trump’s vision for a new government order of his own making.
The world’s richest man, acting as an unelected “efficiency” consultant to President Trump, has in recent days managed the rare feat of overshadowing his boss — presuming to storm into and begin closing out government agencies at will.
After two weeks of chaos caused by Trump’s own unilateral executive orders to radically alter the federal government, it was suddenly Elon Musk whose name was everywhere in Washington this week, as he and his deputies in the new Department of Government Efficiency slashed at the federal bureaucracy in a purported effort to cut costs.
Disregarding established security protocols while downplaying the budgetary authority of Congress, they accessed sensitive Treasury Department systems full of Americans’ most personal data and declared that the U.S. Agency for International Development — the agency long in charge of distributing American foreign aid to places such as Gaza, Ukraine and sub-Saharan Africa — was corrupt and being shuttered.
They suggested anyone who stood in their way, including career civil servants with actual authority to safeguard Treasury and USAID data, were the real rogue agents. And they and their allies dismissed rising outrage among Democrats as the whining resistance of political sore losers.
In one instance, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, tore into Musk for overreaching, saying “we don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk.”
In its first two weeks, President Trump’s administration has made significant changes to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“Elon Musk, you didn’t create USAID. The United States Congress did for the American people,” Raskin said. “And just like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn’t have the power to destroy it.”
Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security, shot back on the social media platform X, which Musk owns.
“Democrat politicians hate democracy,” Miller wrote. “They don’t believe voters have the right to elect a president to drain the permanent unelected DC swamp.”
The showdown continued a roiling debate over U.S. governance that defined the 2024 race between Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris and has continued to shape Trump’s presidency in its first days.
The battle is between legacy government and the legal checks and balances that have held it together for generations, a system Democrats are vociferously trying to defend — including in court — and Trump’s new order, aimed at tearing down the status quo with the fast-paced, slash-and-burn tactics of venture capital and big tech, where breaking things in the name of innovation is celebrated.
Trump and his supporters believe they have a sweeping new mandate to drive change, thanks to a slim win for Trump and tiny majorities for Republicans in the House and Senate, powered in part by nearly $300 million in campaign contributions from Musk. They say Trump chose Musk to ferret out fraud and waste, and that Musk as a result has all the authority he needs to proceed unimpeded.
Trump, never one to appreciate being upstaged, has so far remained unmoved by the growing alarm over Musk usurping undue power — though those concerns have clearly reached him. In recent remarks, Trump has said he approves of Musk’s work so far, but also that he remains in charge as president and won’t always agree with the tech billionaire’s playbook.
“Sometimes we won’t agree with it, and we’ll not go where he wants to go,” Trump said. “But I think he’s doing a great job. He’s a smart guy.”
Trump said he won’t allow Musk to work in areas where he has a conflict, but hasn’t seen anything of concern yet.
In addition to being the primary owner of X, Musk is the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla. The companies hold dozens of contracts with the federal government worth billions of dollars.
Democrats say it is impossible to untangle Musk from his conflicts, particularly if he is given sweeping spending authority across all of federal government. They say no president has the legal right to disregard budget decisions by Congress or the basic structure of government as outlined in the Constitution and other law — much less an unelected and clearly conflicted subordinate who has not been confirmed to any real government position by the Senate.
And they warned that a system that hands government control over to rich campaign donors is not a democracy at all, but an oligarchy.
“Before our very eyes, an unelected, shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said during a news conference Monday.
Schumer said DOGE employees doing Musk’s bidding had on Friday “forcefully gained access” to the Treasury Department’s payment system and “the most sensitive information of virtually every U.S. citizen,” including Social Security data, tax information and Medicare and Medicaid benefit data.
Schumer took a similar message to X, attacking DOGE there as a made-up entity with zero legitimate power.
“DOGE has no authority to make spending decisions. DOGE has no authority to shut programs down or to ignore federal law,” Schumer wrote. “DOGE’s conduct cannot be allowed to stand. Congress must take action to restore the rule of law.”
Musk, reportedly operating as a “special government employee” with limited responsibilities, called Schumer’s response “hysterical” and proof that DOGE “is doing work that really matters.”
“This is the one shot the American people have to defeat BUREAUcracy, rule of the bureaucrats, and restore DEMOcracy, rule of the people,” Musk wrote on X. “We’re never going to get another chance like this. It’s now or never. Your support is crucial to the success of the revolution of the people.”
How the American people feel about Musk’s latest actions is not entirely clear. But polling in recent months has showed Americans are skeptical of his role in government, and of him personally.
A Quinnipiac poll conducted toward the end of Trump’s first week in office found that 53% of registered voters disapproved of Musk playing a prominent role in the administration, compared to 39% who approved.
An AP-NORC poll conducted early last month, before Trump took office, found that two-thirds of U.S. adults said corruption and inefficiency were “major problems” in the federal government, and about 6 in 10 said the same about government regulations and bureaucracy. However, only a third of respondents had a favorable view of Musk, and about 6 in 10 said the president relying on billionaires for advice on government policy would be a “very” or “somewhat” bad thing.
Late Monday, several unions representing federal employees sued the Treasury Department for sharing what they said was “confidential data” with Musk’s team — alleging new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had abdicated his responsibility to protect the data by granting Musk access and by taking “punitive measures” against Treasury employees who had tried to block it.
“People who must share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with Elon Musk or his ‘DOGE,’” the lawsuit read. “And federal law says they do not have to.”
Street protests have also erupted over Musk’s moves, with one titled “Nobody elected Elon” scheduled Tuesday.
Bessent had reportedly spent part of Monday behind closed doors with Republican lawmakers, reassuring them that Musk’s team did not have control over a Treasury system that controls trillions of dollars in federal funding.
Katie Miller, a DOGE spokesperson, has also disputed claims that DOGE representatives accessed classified information without the proper security clearances. She and other Trump officials have backed DOGE’s work in part by alleging that both the Treasury and USAID ran afoul of Trump’s “America First” agenda.
Katie Miller’s husband, Stephen Miller, offered a particularly stunning assessment of USAID, an agency established by President Kennedy in 1961 and enshrined in law to distribute billions of dollars in foreign assistance.
“Bureaucrats at USAID cannot interfere in the affairs of foreign countries to prop up regimes, to thwart America’s interests, to facilitate mass illegal immigration, nor to facilitate diversity, equity and inclusion policies, which violate federal civil rights law,” Stephen Miller said on Fox News.
Musk has said USAID is “an arm of the radical-left globalists” and responsible for “insane spending.” To Trump’s decision to put Secretary of State Marco Rubio in charge of USAID amid a review of spending, Musk replied: “Cool.”
USAID’s budget, while massive in terms of overseas spending power, amounts to less than 1% of the current federal budget. And its programs have been lauded on a bipartisan basis for years for providing a vital lifeline to people around the world, including for HIV medications and other healthcare aimed at stemming infectious diseases.
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Dr. Atul Gawande, USAID’s head of global health under the Biden administration, has called Musk’s claims about the agency a “willful distortion,” and said the “impending shutdown of USAID is unconstitutional and reveals complete ignorance or indifference to how vital its work — in global health, conflicts, disasters and beyond — is to Americans and humanity.”
Democrats have also strongly defended USAID.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on CNN that USAID supports an array of international initiatives, not just in support of vulnerable populations but American foreign policy priorities — from “countering Chinese influence inside Africa” to “fighting back against Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
International aid organizations sounded alarm over potential disruptions to humanitarian aid in Gaza, which has been decimated by Israel in its ongoing war against Hamas, while others worried over cuts to Ukraine, which is fighting off a Russian invasion.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said Musk and his team’s foray into federal agencies was “an illegal act” that the Trump administration was trying to justify through sheer brazenness.
“They are depending on some sort of sense of swagger and inevitability to storm into buildings, and take over the servers, and to run the databases, and to relieve people of their duties,” he said, “like this is some hostile takeover of a tech company.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Americans should be extremely concerned about Musk gaining access to government data without any legitimate authority or clear limits on how the informaion may be used.
“Whether it’s to boost his finances or expand his political power,” she said, “it is all up to Elon.”
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