Will Musk "replace" Trump? Time magazine's cover is full of gunpowder

Source: TIME  Compiler: BitpushNews Mary Liu

The standoff at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue did not attract much attention. On February 1, Elon Musk's team came to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), just a few blocks from the White House, and demanded full access to its headquarters. USAID staff rejected their request. No guns were drawn, no physical conflicts occurred, and the police did not intervene. But in these early days of the Trump administration, perhaps no other scene can more clearly reveal the forces that are reshaping the US government. On one side is a 64-year-old agency with a $35 billion budget and a mission written into federal law. On the other is Musk’s political “wrecking crew” — members of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as they call themselves. DOGE is an ad hoc group with no charter, no website, and no clear legal mandate. Its power comes from Musk, the world’s richest man, who has been given the power to untangle the federal government’s vast bureaucracy — slashing budgets, firing civil servants, and stripping independent agencies of their ability to thwart the president’s goals. USAID’s leadership acquiesced to Musk’s group, a group of young and enthusiastic followers, entering its headquarters over the course of several days in late January. Some USAID officials privately called them “DOGE kids.” The young men, clipboards in hand, patrolled hallways, inspected desks and questioned managers. As the weekend wore on, however, their demands—including access to sensitive facilities used to store classified information—went beyond the tolerance of USAID’s security chiefs. DOGE members threatened to call in U.S. Marshals to clear the building. They also reported the problem to Musk. Musk then posted to his 215 million followers on his social media platform X: “USAID is a criminal organization and it’s time to make it go away.” Musk’s reasons for launching the crusade are unclear. But by the next morning, the agency, which disburses billions of dollars a year around the world to fight famine, disease and provide clean water to millions of people, was nearly shut down. Within a week, nearly all of its employees were furloughed and its offices around the world were closed.

Other government agencies have received a clear message, too. No private citizen, especially one whose wealth and business networks are directly subject to federal oversight, can wield so much power over a U.S. government agency.

So far, Musk appears to answer only to President Trump, who has given his campaign backers a sweeping mandate to bend the administration to his agenda. DOGE referred all of TIME’s questions about its work to the White House, which declined to comment.

Musk’s team has taken control of the U.S. Digital Service and established a foothold within the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal human resources arm. The Department of Education is on pins and needles, fearing an impending “self-castration” directive. Few agencies, it seems, are safe. Musk has made it clear that he will not tolerate dissenting opinions, no matter how justified. Just days before the “drama” at USAID, a Treasury official refused to give Musk’s team access to the U.S. federal payment system. The official was forced to retire, and newly appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant granted Musk’s team’s demands. After a group of current and former employees sued, the government agreed on Feb. 5 to limit that access, at least temporarily.

These are just the first ripples in a massive anti-government wave. Budgets will be cut, valuable programs will be canceled, and civil servants with career aspirations will be fired and replaced with political appointees whose main qualification is to demonstrate loyalty to the president, the path chosen by voters. For many, the idea of ​​one of the world’s most accomplished entrepreneurs attacking a sprawling and ossified federal bureaucracy with the speed and determination he would use to start a car company or a rocket company is a cause for celebration, not alarm. “The federal government is so big that there are certainly opportunities for significant savings and efficiencies,” said Robert Dole, president of the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank. “It’s a good thing that the president and his team are paying a lot of attention to this.”

But a public backlash may be brewing, and the stakes go far beyond the size of the federal balance sheet, the number of employees at agencies in Washington, D.C., or the dangers of an unelected man wielding such unchecked power. Americans will soon find themselves interacting with the federal government in ways they didn’t realize or take for granted.

Companies exporting tech products to China may no longer have employees from the State Department or Commerce Department explaining for free how to avoid violating criminal laws. Farmers in the Midwest may soon find that buyers funded by USAID are no longer paying for flour sent to refugee camps. Around the world, millions of people who rely on the United States for food, medicine, and shelter are suddenly on their own.

For now, millions of government workers find themselves at Musk’s mercy. One Department of Homeland Security employee described her team in a “defensive posture” as they waited for a visit from Musk’s team. To understand their fate, she added, her colleagues turned to a book called Character Limit, which chronicles how Musk took over Twitter two years ago and fired 80% of its employees, causing chaos and lasting consequences.

His shakeup of the bureaucracy bears striking similarities to the above. On January 28, millions of government employees received an email offering eight months' pay in exchange for their resignation. Musk had offered a similar deal to Twitter employees two years ago, and he even used the same subject line: "Fork in the Road."

Russell Vought, Trump's nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, appears at his January 15 confirmation hearing. Andrew Harnik—Getty Images

There’s a path for everything. Among Musk’s friends in Silicon Valley, many understand that his acquisition of Twitter is in preparation for a greater cause. “The mood right now is that hopefully Elon Musk will do the same thing with the U.S. government,” a person familiar with the matter told Time in November. Veterans of Trump’s first administration similarly laid out their plan long before the election, publishing a 900-page report called “Project 2025.” Russell Vought, one of the lead authors of the project, said in a speech two years ago that he wanted civil servants to be “traumatically affected” by the purge he envisioned. “We want their funding cut off,” he said. “We want to traumatize them.”

During the campaign, Trump swore he had nothing to do with the plan. “It’s inappropriate for them to come up with a document like this,” he told Time in November. “There were things I disagreed with vehemently.” But once in office, he chose Vought to run the White House Office of Management and Budget, which is now working closely with Musk to implement key parts of Project 2025. So far, Trump’s frantic start to his presidency has nearly hit two-thirds of its mandate, according to a Time analysis.

Musk has never hidden his intentions. Two weeks after the election, he co-wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal promising that his group would help Trump “hire a crack team of small-government crusaders” who would work to “massively cut the headcount of the federal bureaucracy.” The recruiting effort began soon after the election, picking up Musk’s followers in Silicon Valley, some fresh out of college, and preparing to scatter them across Washington.

The head of DOGE’s personnel that Musk appointed was Steve Davis, an aerospace engineer who had previously led Musk’s cost-cutting efforts at Twitter. In late December, as the presidential transition unfolded inside the White House, Davis attended a series of meetings with members of the Biden administration. Democratic staffers noticed that he was paying attention to an obscure branch of the White House, the U.S. Digital Service (USDS). Davis wanted to know how it worked, who it reported to, and what it had access to.

The US Digital Service, established in 2014, works with federal agencies to improve computer systems and databases. It has a map of the government's technical infrastructure and has points of contact with technical officials in nearly every federal agency. This makes it the perfect place to host Musk's team. By controlling the USDS, Musk's team was able to access key systems of the federal government, enacting massive layoffs and budget cuts that would, like "poison" flowing through the "veins" of the body, gradually weaken the operation of the entire government.

The power of the US Digital Service began on Inauguration Day. One of Trump's earliest executive orders renamed it the "U.S. Musk Service," cleverly retaining the office's acronym. The order also ensured that the new entity would report directly to the White House chief of staff. Since then, the office has established offices at the State and Treasury departments. It began accessing personnel computer systems, firing contractors, and blocking contracts that paid them.

Musk also sent a team to the Office of Personnel Management. The office has records on 2.1 million workers, the email address of nearly every federal employee, and tracks $59 billion in annual federal health care premiums and $88 billion in annual federal pension payments. The move to make "massive buyout offers" to government employees originated from within Musk's team at the Office of Personnel Management, according to a source familiar with the actions. (Musk's team and the White House declined to comment.)

Next, Musk's team began cutting funding for the Office of Personnel Management itself. Brian Beard, who most recently served as vice president of human resources at Musk Aerospace, told OPM career directors that the goal was to cut 70% of its staff, a move that would weaken its health care benefits and retirement plan teams, a current OPM official said.

Some senior leaders at the Office of Personnel Management were locked out of key databases, and the official said political appointees were given access to systems including corporate human resources integration without standard safeguards designed to protect the privacy of such information. The system includes information such as pay grade, years of service, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and home addresses.

Days after Trump took office, the White House ordered a freeze on federal spending — from foreign aid to public health programs and everything in between. The administration said the freeze would be lifted only if agencies aligned with the president's agenda: cracking down on immigration, ending diversity efforts and halting investments that reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuels. Facing court action, the White House rescinded the order.

 A protest outside the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, D.C., on February 4.

Musk’s layoffs continue, and Trump continues to give his blessing. “Elon Musk can’t do — and won’t do — anything without our approval,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on February 4. “We’ll give him approval where it’s appropriate,” he added. “And where it’s not appropriate, we won’t.”

Some have suggested that Trump might constrain Musk’s actions and prevent him from being too aggressive, but civil servants aren’t waiting for that to happen. In northern Virginia, where tens of thousands of federal government employees and military personnel live, a typical town hall meeting in the town of Leesburg, Virginia, drew dozens of people, and hundreds gathered the night Musk shut down USAID. “We’ve heard weird stories,” said local Democratic Congressman Suhas Subramanian, who spoke at the event. As workers streamed into his office describing a takeover by Musk’s team, he directed staff to record the testimonies and assist whistleblowers. Subramanian insisted to TIME that much of what they witnessed was “simply illegal.” “We were almost put to the test and goaded into suing or investigating.”

Some lawsuits did work. The White House complied with a court order blocking its attempt to freeze trillions of dollars in federal spending. A judge delayed a deadline for buyout offers for government employees in a Feb. 6 ruling. Unions sued Musk’s team on behalf of federal workers. Even Musk’s usual admirers warned that he was going too far. “The lawsuits are already pouring in,” a Feb. 4 Wall Street Journal editorial noted. “If Mr. Musk is not careful, the courts will derail projects before they get off the ground.”

On Capitol Hill, Musk’s attacks on the bureaucracy have set off a battle between him and Democrats that could determine the future of government and the balance of power within it. “We don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk,” Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, told a crowd outside USAID on the afternoon of Feb. 3, as Musk’s group (DOGE) tried to impose their plans inside USAID.

Jamie Raskin was right. But agency staffers listening to him on Pennsylvania Avenue were unsure whether they would keep their jobs, unsure how much power Musk had acquired and whether he would bend other branches of government to his will. One staffer seemed particularly skeptical. Yes, she told Time, the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. But Musk has demonstrated his power to take that away.

“There’s only so much the Democrats can do,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid drawing more attention to DOGE. Her official email account has been shut down, and she no longer has access to her desk at the agency. Like thousands of her colleagues and millions of Americans, she can only watch Musk’s actions unfold, wondering: How far will he go? And what — if anything — can stop him?