Before Donald Trump re-entered the White House last month, his main donor Elon Musk seems to be reduced by a trillion of dollars in US Government consumption consisted of a little more than a dog’s logo that carries sunglasses and the flow of provocative media posts .
But behind the scenes, the richest globe man quietly hired technical executives and a number of young codes, who would quickly provide a shock treatment to one of the world’s largest bureaucracy.
Envoy from the so-called Ministry of the Musk Government infiltrated the main agencies, released or suspended tens of thousands of civil servants and received access to the overhaul of sensitive security, health and financial data.
Although they are a reconfigured branch of the White House, Doge officials set up within the Federal Government: in the US treasury, state and health departments, the Federal Administration for Air Force and many smaller bodies – some even sleeping in the building of the building. The entire agency for $ 40 billion, USAID, is actually closed, with canceled contracts and its workforce was placed from 10,000 on about 600 staff.
In an attack that shocked the elderly legislators, Doga employees began auditing for remittances of valuable trillion dollars, had access to social security numbers, details of a bank account, and even the health data of US citizens.
“The Congress or the public have not been provided with information about who has been officially engaged under Doge [or] According to which the authority or the regulations of Doga works, “eight democratic senators protested this week in the White House.
In Washington DC this week, democratic members of the congress joined protests against men outside the Ministry of Finance. Some wore inscriptions that say “stop the coup” and “no one chose a musk”.
Doge’s fast progress stunned even his wound supporters. “Doge for things we could never understand,” says James Fishback, an investor who advised the body after formation in November. “They act at speed and act with urgency.”
However, the devastating consequences in the real world of taking bristles in several key agencies quickly became obvious, and the HIV medicines were left in undoubtedly in South Africa and elsewhere, life in the rescue of clinical trials paused, and critical government websites that blinked and excluded .
“We do not have the fourth branch of the government called Elon Musk,” says Jamie Rskin, a democratic congressman. “Attacks on state service – from air traffic controllers to food inspector and drug – aim to destroy the congress power, which is the power of humans.”
Musk morph at In the most prominent so-called techno-libertarians in the Silicon Valley, who believe that government regulations interfere with innovation and profit.
Although his companies benefit from more than $ 20 billion in state contracts, he has long complained of purely -steaming Tesla, Spacex and others.
Shortly after he started donating a quarter of a billion dollar campaign to repeat Donald Trump, Musk bought a role in reducing the state, publicly setting an incredible goal of savings of $ 2tn, or almost a third of the US annual annual budget of $ 6.8.
Even Republican leaders seemed to have long enjoyed the opportunity to reduce the Government suspected Musk mission. Asked in December whether Doge will succeed, the Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said FT -in: “Who knows?”
Musk demolished expectations in early January, suggesting that Doge could only identify cuts worth 1 to $. His teammate in the proposed department of Vivek Ramaswamy soon left the initiative, along with his chief legal advisor.
“My initial reading was: well, they can’t do much,” says a former Republican Congress Officer. “I feel like this was this colossal striker.”
Any suspicion of Doge’s efficiency has singled out the opening of Salvos in the Musk Triple Plant, as his team quickly became the government de facto department for human resources, offering to buy millions of employees and get rid of diversity, help and development programs.
This ambush in the civil service, which encouraged anger from the unions and organizations for civil rights, welcomed the joy of Musk’s friends in Silicon Valley and other technological entrepreneurs. “The US government has become a destructive force in American society,” says Keith Rabois, Trump’s donor and technological investor who has known Musk for more than two decades.
Doge’s tactic seems to have been adopted from a start-up ecosystem. Many of his moves were carefully mirrored by the ones that Musk scheduled after taking on Twitter 2022, when he and his deputies quickly reduced the costs, fired 80 percent of the workforce and asked for faithfulness from those who remained in what the critics called ” Destruction. ”
The e -mail sent last week, winding the federal workers to accept the excess offer were used by the same phrase – “A fork on the road” – which Musk used during restructuring on Twitter.
Musk also enrolled in the help of a inner circle that helped in his Twitter download, known as “Goons” – as well as a raft of young engineers in their late teenagers and early twenties who allegedly responded to his call for “super revolutionaries of small government revolutions “willing to work more than 80 hours per week at the initiative.
Among the more experienced loyalists, Musk brought Steve Davis, a head of his tunnel start-up the Boring Company, who led a round of release in X and a hard negotiating with suppliers from the “war room” at San Francisco headquarters.
Musk managed to reduce the company, but the procedure was stormy. Former staff claims that the company lost critical talent and knowledge of how the X’s systems acted as a result of maneuvering with big hands, which led to multiple omissions in the months after taking over. In some cases, the company begged the dismissed employees to return. Others noted that then a well-known abstain from the male would be to “let them a lawsuit”-the presence, which eventually invited legal challenges and extracts with the performers.
Nevertheless, Musk accepted comparisons with his transformation on Twitter, boasting with this week’s sale of billions of debt that is used to buy a social network, whose finances have recently improved. “It’s almost like I’m good with money,” he wrote.
In Doge’s early meetings, Some of the involved in the deregulation driving, worrying that the attack on government consumption – unlike a private company – will be quickly frustrated with bureaucracy, legal challenges and constitutional authority of the Congress regarding funding, known as “Purse Power”.
But the obvious attack of this power with the rapid cancellation of the already entry funds on USAID and elsewhere did not cause the murmur of President Mike Johnson’s house, who welcomed Doge’s intervention this week at a press conference as “long and much welcome development.”
“When Congress fundes the agency, they give a wide discretion to the executive government,” said Johnson, Trump Ally. “They now use this authority in a way that has not been used for a long time. So it looks radical, [but] Not. “
Those who tried to interfere with Doge’s plans or asked legal issues did not last long. David Lebryk, who spent more than 35 years in the treasury and was briefly, while Scott Bessent waited for a certificate, gave up after a men’s team demanded an access to a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion.
“If it was really a typical examination, why extreme urgency and shameful treatment with exceptional federal executive director,” says Don Hammond, a former longtime treasure -in -day Officer.
Musk also used X, with more than 216 million followers to deal with Doge’s critics and boasted his work. He threatened to report those who discovered the names of the employee of the Law Division, which he ran in Trump’s appointed lawyer in Washington to convince the male that he would use his authority “against everyone who interferes with your work or threatening your people.”
Although Doge moved quickly, his plans filled some resistance. As of Thursday, only 60,000 federal workers accepted his bid for purchase, which was less than hundreds of thousands that the White House predicted.
Stand recruitment of relatively inexperienced Doge employees have become obvious when 25-year-old Marko Elez, who was granted an access to the US cash register, was forced to resign after the waste racist posts on social networks. Musk said he would repeat him on Friday.
After the men’s days dominated the titles, Trump himself suggested that there are limitations for the forces of the billionaire, telling reporters that “Elon cannot and will do nothing without our approval.” But on Friday, he praised the “great job” that Musk did “finding a huge fraud and corruption and waste.”
Some of the legal challenges against Doge also made progress, with the federal judge banned Elon Musk to hand over US Treasury on Thursday, and the Massachusetts court temporarily expands the deadline for buying employees.
But even on an accelerated time lane, the wheels of the US judicial system turn slower than the Musk drive of the effectiveness of an inspired by a silicon valley.
The work organizations are looking for an urgent limit of the command to prevent reaching the work systems for the work department, but warned that Doge can get “access to sensitive systems before the courts can stop them” and dismantle agencies before the Congress can claim their prerogatives in a federal budget ”as well as the intimidation of employees.
“They find technical characteristics in order to deal with the law,” says Richard Painter, who was George W Bush’s chief ethics lawyer. “They find holes to do the presidential power in unprecedented ways.”
Musk should “take away from a lot or take it out with a lot” to avoid the decline of a conflict of interests that manage federal employees, Painter adds. However, the implementation of such rules would fall on Trump’s Ministry of Justice, which has already shown its loyalty to the president’s agenda with a series of memorandum intended to follow their enemies.
Male power limits are more likely to come from the competitive priorities of Trump administration. Doga is yet to be aimed at paying social security and Medicaid where tens of millions of Americans rely or to the Ministry of Defense, which together makes up most of the federal consumption.
Trump vowed that he would not touch the well -being in any way, shape or shape, “while the Congress guided by Republican is unlikely to sanction significant decrease in the budget of the pentagon.
Musk himself hinted that his next goals could be the Department of Education, which Trump had previously vowed to eliminate, service for internal income and procure US weapons.
Arriving at the White House of Russella Voughta, the new head of the management and budget office, which he spent for years, outlining that the executive branch could use the power of a congress bag, he could make up for Doge’s efforts.
“Obviously, I am delighted with the progress, both in the direction and speed,” says Musk Rabois associate about the first weeks of the second Trump expression. “Just wait for a while [Trump] He has all his barrels in place. “
