Much of President Donald Trump’s return to Washington feels familiar, from his withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement to his claim that DEI is to blame for an aircraft accident over Washington. What’s new is his injection of mega-billionaire Elon Musk into the federal government by having him lead a so-called Department of Government Efficiency. So far Musk’s foray into government appears to be based on the model of sloppily gutting a company, which bodes poorly for a functioning government. Equally concerning is that Musk’s reach appears to far exceed the kind of influence any private citizen should have over the federal government, which is in turn raising a crisis of authority in Washington.
The firehose of news surrounding Musk’s “efficiency” initiatives in Washington has been astonishing. Here’s a quick round-up of some of the most notable developments.
- On Tuesday, millions of federal employees received an email from the Office of Personnel Management demanding that they either accept a huge set of changes to the workplace or resign. The subject line of the email, “Fork in the Road,” was the same subject line Musk used in an email to employees of Twitter shortly after he purchased the company in 2022, and employees of the social media platform were given a similar edict. The Washington Post, citing four people familiar with the situation, reported that the email was the result of Musk’s influence. Among other things, the listed changes to federal jobs included a new “performance culture” and “enhanced standards of conduct.” The email offered federal workers an option to take a “deferred resignation,” which would apparently mean agreeing to leave their jobs now but getting paid through September.
- Musk appears to have acted without consulting at least some of Trump’s inner circle. Those same sources told the Post that the email “blindsided some advisers to President Donald Trump, including officials in the budget office and agencies that typically would be consulted in advance of such monumental changes to personnel and spending policies.” And Reuters cites two agency officials who said Musk aides “have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees.”
- Musk has drawn from his lieutenants in the private sector to help him oversee his interventions in the government. As The New York Times reports, his meddling includes placing a human resources executive from SpaceX as an adviser to the Office of Personnel Management; the head of Musk’s tunneling startup, The Boring Company, who also helped him cut costs at Twitter, at the new Department of Government Efficiency; and a Tesla engineer at the General Services Administration. A Morgan Stanley banker who helped lead Musk’s purchase of Twitter is slated to take a gig at the Commerce Department.
- According to a Washington Post report, citing three people with knowledge of the matter, the “highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems.” That payments system disburses trillions of dollars annually and affects the lives of tens of millions of Americans who, among other things, receive support from Social Security and Medicare. The Post also noted: “It is unclear precisely why Musk’s team sought access to those systems. But both Musk and the Trump administration more broadly have sought to control spending in ways that far exceed efforts by their predecessors and have alarmed legal experts.”
- Musk’s involvement in the General Services Administration includes terminating leases for federal offices. Cost-cutting there could also affect federal contracting and technology services across the government.
This is far from a comprehensive account of Musk’s fingerprints across Washington, but the emerging picture is clear: Musk is everywhere, and he’s telegraphing a mission to radically reduce and reshape the federal workforce around a hazy set of criteria ostensibly tied to performance.
Trump signaled in his campaign that he intended to purge the federal bureaucracy and stack it with loyalists. That was in and of itself a concerning authoritarian pledge. But it’s been surprising that he has enlisted the richest man in the world to help him do it. That man also happens to be an unelected right-wing demagogue with vast private business holdings that put him in several conflicts of interest with the federal government.
Musk appears to be exhibiting the “move fast and break things ethos” that prevails among many Silicon Valley executives. Musk has no experience with or demonstrable understanding of the government of the most powerful country in the world. That hasn’t humbled him. Early signs suggest that Musk is moving at a full sprint and views the federal government the way he viewed Twitter — an institution in need of radical reform through drastic cost-cutting, sweeping changes in internal culture and new features.
Notably, at Twitter, now X, Musk’s swashbuckling approach didn’t have the intended effect: He demolished the company’s value, destroyed the quality of the product and sparked a mass exodus of users. It’s deeply disturbing to think what he could do to something as complex and consequential as the U.S. government.
The problem is that, even with the obvious financial incentives Musk possesses, we don’t exactly know what he wants to do with his power grabs. The speed and opacity with which Musk is taking action have no precedent in modern politics. It’s also not clear how much, if any, of what he’s doing is even legal or how much may be masking ulterior motives.
As University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket recently noted:
Elon Musk is not a federal employee, nor has he been appointed by the President nor approved by the Senate to have any leadership role in government. The “Department of Government Efficiency,” announced by Trump in a January 20th executive order, is not truly any sort of government department or agency, and even the executive order uses quotes in the title. It’s perfectly fine to have a marketing gimmick like this, but DOGE does not have power over established government agencies, and Musk has no role in government. It does not matter that he is an ally of the President. Musk is a private citizen taking control of established government offices. That is not efficiency; that is a coup. As NBC News reported, Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, has said that resignations prompted by the “Fork in the Road” email “should not be viewed as voluntary.” “The number of civil servants hasn’t meaningfully changed since 1970, but there are more Americans than ever who rely on government services,” Kelley said. “Purging the federal government of dedicated career civil servants will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government.” He added, “Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.” The National Treasury Employees Union called on its members to refuse to resign and said that the OPM guidance to workers in the “Fork in the Road” email is “questionable at best and possibly violates the rules of conduct that federal employees are required to follow.” This is a rapidly developing situation, and it’s unclear how far Musk can or will go in pursuing his “rip wires out of the wall until the lights go out” method. But at the moment it looks like a billionaire with a soft spot for extreme right-wing politics is trying to gut the government and muzzle federal bureaucrats with extraordinary speed. What remains to be seen is how the federal workforce, the courts and the public might respond to and reject his shenanigans.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy. 
