Un-elected Musk takes over major arms of U.S. government

Elon Musk is moving in to take over functions of numerous government departments. The latest encroachment is on. the Treasury Department where he is positioned to attack Social Security among many other things. | Kevin Lamarque/AP

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Elon Musk hasn’t been sleeping well, according to back-of-the-napkin estimates based on the timestamps of his tweets since the new year. Musk made 2,226 tweets since January 1st, an average of 65 tweets per day – or 2.7 tweets per hour. Considering how busy Musk and his henchmen have been in Washington, D.C. since the inauguration, one wonders how well his physical and mental health is holding up.

First came the threatening emails from the Office of Personnel Management earlier last week encouraging millions of federal workers to consider resigning before their jobs were considered for federal downsizing.

Then, as Friday approached, Musk and his army of yes-men expanded their scope of control to the General Services Administration (GSA), the GSA’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), and perhaps most concerningly, the Department of the Treasury. They achieved access through nefarious means, having no legal or physical right to any of these properties, coercing others to swipe them in with access cards, not all of them even possessing government email addresses.

Indeed, many of these foot soldiers have been since exposed by WIRED magazine as being between the ages of 19-24, holding top-level access and temporary security clearance, and having the ability to “bypass the regular security clearance protocols to access the agency’s sensitive compartmented information facility.”

Musk and his henchmen installed their own email servers at OPM, locked out existing employees from network access, and now have unfettered access to an ocean of federal and public data, as well as the main levers of administrative federal operations, including the ability to cut off federal money from any single recipient – from the Pentagon to your grandmother’s social security check.

“This feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world,” said University of Michigan public policy professor Don Moynihan.

Thus nestled into the central mainframe of government operations, Musk mused that the Department of the Treasury “literally never denied a payment,” ignoring the fact that these administrative offices are primarily tasked with dispersing funds as Congress sees fit, not on the whims of a billionaire outlaw.

The constitutional crisis of Trump’s federal funding freeze will work its way through a sympathetic court system, but in the meanwhile Musk’s hit squads of young turks have simply started changing the locks. This, in the wake of Trump’s illegal dismissal of 17 independent inspector generals charged with preventing fraud, abuse, corruption, and theft of public money, indicates that nothing short of an administrative coup is well underway in Washington.

While Musk gloated that “very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days!” as he halted payments to social services contractors, shut down USAID’s website, payments, and operations, and continued tweeting through it all, federal workers were already planning their fightback.

Everett Kelly, the president of the American Federation of Governmental Employees, a union that represents more than 800,000 federal workers, said that “purging the federal government of dedicated career civil servants will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government,” adding that the coercive measures encouraging workers to resign “should not be viewed as voluntary.”

The fightback started with dismissed inspectors generals and agency employees refusing to leave their posts without a fight. Phyllis Fong, inspector general for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, had to be physically removed from the building by security agents. USAID officials who refused to give Musk’s yes men access to classified and sensitive data were likewise removed over the weekend before Trump and Musk unilaterally ordered the entire building to be physically closed as of Monday.

On Sunday, independent media reported that at least 100 workers stood vigil outside of the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building, which houses the Office of Personnel Management and General Services Administration to protest what they see as a hostile takeover. At one point, they physically blocked doors to the building to prevent a group of young “data miners” from entering as DC Metropolitan Police stood by.

Early Monday morning, a few dozen workers gathered outside of the OPM once again. They held signs that read “The world is watching Elon’s fascist coup” and “Keep your hands off our data, you fascist creeps!” and “Democracy died in complacency!” They plan to be a daily presence outside of the building until further notice.

A group called the Fork Off Coalition has already held roundtable discussions via Zoom, along with Indivisible and MoveOn. They are planning a daily presence at OPM, and also a rally for 5 p.m. on Tuesday in front of the Treasury building to “stop the Musk coup.”

There are so many stories of courage, from security people trying to prevent Musk’s lackeys from entering top secret spaces, to the USDA inspector general refusing an illegal order that she be put on leave,” Keya Chatterjee of Free DC, a former federal worker and one of the speakers at today’s OPM rally, told People’s World. “Federal workers are taking their oath of office seriously, while Mush has no oath of office, given that he was neither elected nor confirmed.”

Despite Trump and Musk’s fast-moving efforts at stealing the government out from under the control of elected officials, workers are still essential to operate the levers and pulleys of everyday operations. Unfortunately for MAGA, many of them are represented by unions. In Washington D.C. alone, nearly 12% of all workers are represented by unions; among federal employees, more than one million are likewise represented. Even as the antidemocratic blitzkrieg continues apace, the fight for worker control of democracy is just beginning, with those who swore to protect and defend the Constitution on the front lines.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Taryn Fivek

Taryn Fivek is a reporter for People's World in New York.