Elon Musk is shredding America’s government like he did Twitter
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Just past midnight on February 3rd, Elon Musk appeared on X to explain what he is doing to the federal government. He had to speak over the patter of his four-year-old son, also called X.
The bureaucracy, Mr Musk argued, constitutes “a fourth branch of government" which is “arguably the most powerful branch." He then came to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which he denounced as little more than a device to funnel taxpayers’ money to Marxists and criminals. He had, he claimed, the full support of Donald Trump and is “shutting it down", notwithstanding that the agency’s existence is mandated by Congress. Later he posted that he had spent the weekend “feeding USAID into the woodchipper".
Even as Mr Musk was speaking, workers at USAID’s headquarters in Washington were being told not to come in the next day. Some 600 of the agency’s staff seem to have been locked out of their emails. That followed a weekend in which the agency’s website went offline; its X feed was deleted; and workers from Mr Musk’s new government unit, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, reportedly tried to enter the agency and were initially stopped by senior staff from downloading classified data.
Later on February 3rd Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, announced he had been made acting head of the agency while it faces “reorganisation". The takedown of USAID is the most dramatic example of what seems to be Mr Musk’s plan for the whole of government. It is drawn from his playbook as a corporate boss.
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