After Musk's Nazi salute and his surprise video appearance at an AfD rally in East Germany, he is getting down to the nitty-gritty of slashing US government spending even though his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has no legal standing, he is still just a private citizen with no official position and he almost certainly isn’t being paid. The man who was supposed to be the joint head of DOGE, Vivek Ramaswamy, has been pushed out and Musk now rules supreme and unchallenged. There are reports that some of his employees from Twitter are now installed at the top of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the HR function for the entire federal government.
Wired, an online investigative platform, lists all the key people who have taken over at the OPM which it refers to as Musk's 'lackeys.'
"Scott Kupor, a managing partner at the powerful investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, stands as Trump’s nominee to run the OPM. But already in place, according to sources, are a variety of people who seem ready to carry out Musk’s mission of cutting staff and disrupting the government."
"Amanda Scales is, as has been reported, the new chief of staff at the OPM. She formerly worked in talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, according to her LinkedIn".
A professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, Don Moynihan says with masterly understatement: “I don't think it's alarmist to say there's a much more sophisticated plan to monitor and enforce loyalty than there was in the first term.”
Wired also claims to have identified six "young, inexperienced, engineers" aged between 19 and 24, one of who appears to still be at college, linked to Musk's companies who have basically forced their way into various government computer systems holding sensitive and even classified information with proper authorisation:
"Already, Musk’s lackeys have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material."
Imagine in the UK Alan Sugar gaining access to the Treasury computer system.
Professor Moynihan says what we are seeing is "unprecedented" with these actors who are "not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government.” He says because these men are not public officials Congress has no power to intervene and describes what's happening as a "hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.” This is quite extraordinary but amidst everything else that is happening in Washington in the first two weeks of Trump's second term, it is all being either overlooked, played down or normalised.
The first department in the firing line is Overseas Aid. Musk, according to CNN, has said on Twitter:
“With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it with (the president) in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down.” The USA spends about $40 billion a year on overseas aid (excluding Ukraine) all approved by Congress, but after a brief conversation between two of the world's stupidest men the entire department is to be closed down. Musk has decided that it's a "criminal organisation.":
Cyberbaron Musk called USAID a “criminal organization” and pronounced it “Time for it to die.” That’s sheer lunacy. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/u...— Laurence H. Tribe (@tribelaw.bsky.social) 3 February 2025 at 02:29
This, along with Trump firing about 20 Inspectors General and senior staff at the FBI and other agencies, offering redundancy to two million federal employees and imposing swingeing tariffs on Mexico and Canada, is almost certainly illegal. A lot of people are complaining that Trump has no power to do any of this and his actions are in breach of either the law or the Constitution.
There are a lot of legal challenges springing up and no doubt judges will rule against Trump, but it doesn’t explain who is going to enforce the law? Judges make rulings to define or clarify the law or order some specific actions but since the POTUS is ignoring the law anyway, who will stop him? He has control of the White House, the Senate, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the military and even the Supreme Court leans heavily towards him. He is becoming America's Lukashenko.
This morning the BBC are reporting that Trump intends to impose tariffs on the EU. In response, the share price of European car makers has already fallen. Trump told a BBC reporter:
"They don't take our cars, they don't take our farm products, they take almost nothing and we take everything from them."
He seems to think something is preventing US manufacturers and producers exporting to the EU when there isn't. EU exporters have to comply with American standards when marketing goods and food into the USA but probably find it easier since European standards are usually much higher. A lot of German car makers already have factories in the US anyway.
The EU will respond with reciprocal tariffs just as Mexico and Canada have. It's hard to know which is more important, the dismantling of democracy in the world's richest and most powerful nation or setting off a global trade war.
This is in the first two weeks!!!
