In Elon Musk’s first two weeks in govt, his lieutenants gained access to closely held financial and data systems, casting aside career officials who warned that they were defying protocols. They moved swiftly to shutter specific programmes – and even an entire agency that had come into Musk’s cross hairs. They bombarded federal employees with messages suggesting they were lazy and encouraging them to leave their jobs. Empowered by President Donald Trump, Musk is waging a largely unchecked war against the federal bureaucracy – one that has already had far-reaching consequences.
Musk’s aggressive incursions into at least half a dozen govt agencies have challenged congressional authority and potentially breached civil service protections. Top officials at the treasury department and the US Agency for International Development who objected to the actions of his representatives were swiftly pushed aside. And Musk’s efforts to shut down USAID, a key source of foreign assistance, have reverberated around the globe.
Musk, the world’s richest man, is sweeping through the federal govt as a singular force, creating major upheaval as he looks to put an ideological stamp on the bureaucracy and rid the system of those who he and the president deride as «the deep state». The rapid moves by Musk, who has a multitude of financial interests before the govt, have represented an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual. The speed and scale have shocked civil servants. Senior White House staff members have at times also found themselves in the dark, according to two officials. One Trump official, who was not authorised to speak publicly, said Musk was widely seen as operating with a level of autonomy that almost no one can control.
Musk, the leader of SpaceX, Tesla and X, is working with a frantic, around-the-clock energy familiar to the employees at his various companies, flanked by a cadre of young engineers, drawn in part from Silicon Valley. «He’s a big cost-cutter,» Trump told reporters Sunday. «Sometimes we won’t agree with it and we’ll not go where he wants to go. But I think he’s doing a great job. He’s a smart guy.»
There is no precedent for a govt official to have Musk’s scale of conflicts of interest, which include domestic holdings and foreign connections such as business relationships in China. And there is no precedent for someone who is not a full-time employee to have such ability to reshape the federal workforce. Historian Douglas Brinkley described Musk as a «lone ranger» with limitless running room. He said the billionaire was operating «beyond scrutiny». «It’s a harbinger of destruction of our basic institutions.»
Several former and current senior govt officials – even those who like what he is doing – expressed a sense of helplessness about how to handle Musk’s level of unaccountability. The president has given Musk vast power over the bureaucracy that regulates his companies and awards them contracts. He is shaping not just policy but personnel decisions, including successfully pushing for Trump to pick Troy Meink as the Air Force secretary, three sources said. Meink previously ran the Pentagon’s National Reconnaissance Office, which helped Musk secure a multibillion-dollar contract for SpaceX to help build and deploy a spy satellite network for the federal govt.
Musk’s actions have alarmed Democrats and watchdog groups. At least four lawsuits have been filed in federal court to challenge his authority. Democrats on Monday said they would introduce legislation to try to bar Musk’s deputies from entering the treasury system. In private conversations, Musk has told friends that he considers the ultimate metric for his success to be the number of dollars saved per day. «The more I have gotten to know President Trump, the more I like him. Frankly, I love the guy,» Musk said in a live audio conversation on X. «This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have.»
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