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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowElon Musk—whose name has become nearly synonymous with the cost-cutting mission of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency—doesn’t actually work for it, the White House said.
Instead, Musk is a senior adviser to the president and “has no greater authority than other senior White House advisers,” said Joshua Fisher, the director of the White House Office of Administration.
Fisher argued late Monday that Musk’s role is separate from the agency he champions, known as DOGE.
The distinction has legal and practical implications. As a direct adviser to the president in the White House Office, Musk’s advice would likely be shielded by executive privilege. And unlike the Office of Management and Budget, the part of the president’s office where DOGE resides, the White House Office is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
Fisher’s description of Musk’s role came in a sworn statement submitted by the government in a case brought last week by the state of New Mexico and 13 other Democratic attorneys general, claiming that Musk has exceeded his authority because he’s not a Senate-confirmed officer of the government.
The government’s representation comes in stark contrast to Musk’s public image as the power behind DOGE.
“Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself. Mr. Musk can only advise the President and communicate the President’s directives,” Fisher wrote.
The US Justice Department submitted the clarification of Musk’s role in a court filing notifying the judge that the government’s lawyers were unaware of any planned mass firings by federal agencies in the next two weeks, responding to a question the judge posed at a hearing Monday.
Those decisions belong to the agencies themselves, DOJ lawyers wrote, and attorneys weren’t in a position to make a “programmatic representation” about “personnel decisions at individual agencies.”
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is weighing whether to grant the states’ request for an immediate, temporary restraining order blocking access by Musk and DOGE staff to internal systems at seven agencies and barring them from taking any steps to remove employees while the case goes forward.
The court filing leaves open the question of who is running DOGE if it isn’t Musk.
On social media, Musk has announced the terms of DOGE’s agreement with the Treasury Department, asked for public input on its hiring decisions and posted a photo of himself behind a gold-plated “DOGE” sign.
But he’s also coyly disavowed any knowledge of DOGE. “What’s this @DOGE thing people keep talking about? Personally, I’ve never heard of it,” he posted Friday with a shrug emoji.
Trump’s executive order creating the entity designated the position of DOGE administrator. Fisher’s declaration said only “Mr. Musk is not the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.”
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“Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.“
They will continually revise what he is called and who he works for, to ensure that he and his work can keep evading all transparency and oversight. The very fact that an unelected immigrant billionaire is calling all the shots in the rapid destruction of government, and no one can pin down where he works or who he works for, says everything you need to know about this illegal and unconstitutional coup.
MUSK is the Capitalist version of Putin ! His power comes from is his toxic wealth he directs his loyal Muskrats with his dog whistles .
What and why is all the above afraid of Musk? Is it just being hip and trendy because big media and social media are afraid he might find some fraud and waste?
Afraid or just have a low regard for?
It’s one thing to look for fraud and waste. It’s another to just walk into a room and fire everyone you can based upon deciding you’re now the smartest person in the room, then working backwards to re-engineer what is needed based on what some kid programmer can suss out.
Put another way, I’d prefer measure twice, cut once instead of cut thrice, never measure. It would cost nothing to walk in, spend 60 days figuring things out, then working with a Congress that Trump controls with an iron fist to cut staffing. Rule of law and all, you know.
Firing the people who manage our nuclear arsenal, then afterwards having to revoke the firings, should have been an offense that led to his termination.
Where this all leads is to the privitazation of federal jobs, with companies in thrall to Trusk, Mumps, the MAGAts and the Muskrats (I liked that one, hadn’t seen it before ) sending tribute to Trusk. It will be more expensive, and less efficient. And service will plummet. Maybe after a few million MAGAts see their Medicare and Medicaid chopped, school funding funneled through the states that wouldn’t fund the poorer districts to begin with, and the rest of the MAGAt/Muskrat program, they’ll wake up in 2026 and get rid of the MAGAt toadies in Congress and elect people who will work for them, not for Trusk.
Hopefully that all happens before our sky is lit up with the glow of nuclear explosions resulting from nuclear warheads being reassembled by Mumps young Python programmers instead of by the people who knew the job but were fired…
All this is happening because our elected “representatives” are spineless and are afraid to question their Dear Leader for fear they may lose their phoney baloney jobs. Can I have a Harumph?