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      Elon Musk’s gutting of US agencies is illegal, experts say. How do you muzzle Doge?

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      In 2022, the Pentagon proudly announced a committee on diversity and inclusion, with a marine veteran and senior director at Tesla, serving as a member. The same person, who spent nearly six years at Tesla, also helped push Elon Musk to make Juneteenth a company-wide holiday. But Musk is a notorious recipient of lucrative government contracts and changes with the winds of presidential administrations.Now in 2025, as a “special government employee” heading up the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Musk is going to war with those kinds of government diversity and inclusion programs and slashing whatever he sees as a “waste” of public coffers.But legal resistance is mounting, as Doge faces countless lawsuits alleging everything from privacy concerns to free speech violations, which all leads to one important question: is any of this even legal?Laurence Tribe, one of the nation’s leading and preeminent constitutional scholars and a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, has already argued that much of Trump’s blitzkrieg of executive orders on the day of his inauguration disregards the US constitution. He told the Guardian he saw Musk’s actions as furthering that culture.On whether Doge and Musk can legally have this much power over an array of government departments, Tribe was emphatic: “NO.”Musk has applied a buckshot method across the government, offering CIA agents walking papers while appraising the Department of Education – all at the same time.Tribe said the lack of guardrails being placed on Doge’s maverick initiatives, raises “both” questions of illegality and ethical wrongdoing that can be challenged in court. As for Musk’s status as a federal contractor (such as his StarLink work with the Pentagon) and now a government employee, Tribe sees it as “absolutely” a legal conflict of interest.Musk is certainly facing roadblocks: protests at the buildings of USAid – another target of Doge he called a “radical-left political psy op” on X – have brought in hundreds and attracted broader Democratic backlash. But Doge continues unabated, honoring Trump’s campaign promise to rid the federal government of the “woke” Biden era.On Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders went further, telling CNN: “What Musk is doing is illegal and unconstitutional.”Sanders explained how outright deleting an agency like USAid, which was itself a creation of Congress, requires congressional approval.“You can’t do it unilaterally,” he said.But with a Republican supreme court supermajority that almost always sides with the Trump administration, any of these lawsuits that do end up being tested in the highest US court risks rulings in favor of Musk and Doge. Many of these Doge-related lawsuits will go on for months and be heard by benches stacked with Trump appointees from his first presidency. Musk has also begun publicly chastising lower court judges who go against the spirit of the administration.Doge, nonetheless, will continue to be sued.It took only minutes after Trump was sworn in for a Maryland-based public interest law firm to file a 30-page lawsuit alleging Musk’s Doge should be considered a “federal advisory committee”, which makes it subject to government transparency laws and public scrutiny, which includes note keeping and meeting records, as required by law. So far, Musk has reportedly employed a team of very young programmers who brazenly took control of the treasury department payment system, which gave them access to the addresses, social security numbers and bank account information of Americans.Tribe says that act alone raises, “serious issues of privacy”. Doge is indeed already facing legal action for that treasury fiasco, with a judge approving a temporary hold on Doge from fully accessing the payment system, while another judge ordered a freeze on the deadline for federal workers to accept a buyout.Ultimately, the only real guardrails on Musk and Doge will be in the hands of the courts. Even if Doge is found to be violating labor laws, national security statutes or constitutional rights – cases will inevitably be gummed up in the legal process, which could allow enough time for some of these federal workers to relent and take buyouts.“Obviously what Musk is doing is illegal,” said Ed Ongweso Jr, a senior researcher at Security in Context, an international project of scholars housed at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “And on some level it boils down to the world’s richest man – a child of apartheid who surrounds himself with sycophantic phrenologists – trying to consolidate control over as much of the state apparatus as possible.”Ongweso has been following the rise of the tech-bro class and its cozying up to presidential administrations. Musk’s Doge takeover is the latest iteration.“For years, both parties have fetishized Silicon Valley to varying degrees, eagerly swallowing the sector’s gibberish about making governance efficient via algorithmic rule via privatization,” he said.Ongweso pointed out that Musk is a veteran of the mass layoff and knows they come with lawsuits. But it hasn’t stopped him before.At Tesla’s Fremont, California, plant a Black former employee was awarded $3.2m in a racial harassment case, while the plant itself has been sued multiple times on racial discrimination and labor law grounds.“Learning that a key Doge staffer was a skull measuring eugenicist should come as no surprise given the rampant racism (slurs, swastikas, a hanging noose, etc) at Musk’s Fremont Tesla factory,” he said.And when it comes to laying off workers, Musk has the same recycled playbook.“He’s been sued for failing to provide advance notice for 2024 mass layoffs at Tesla and for 2022 Twitter layoffs that were a transparent attempt to get out of severance pay,” explained Ongweso.“It’s obvious lawsuits aren’t a deterrent for the world’s richest man – why would he stop mass layoffs, slashing and burning operations, or recruiting racists when it’s worked out so well for him that he’s now in firm control of America’s administrative state?” More

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      Trump to announce 25% aluminum and steel tariffs as China’s levies against US come into effect

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      Donald Trump has said he will announce new 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the US on Monday that would affect “everybody’, including its largest trading partners Canada and Mexico, in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul.Trump’s pre-announcement came as China’s retaliatory tariffs, announced last week, came into effect. The measures target $14bn worth of products with a 15% tariff on coal and LNG, and 10% on crude oil, farm equipment and some vehicles.The US president, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, also said he would announce reciprocal tariffs – raising US tariff rates to match those of trading partners – on Tuesday or Wednesday, which would take effect “almost immediately”. “And very simply, it’s, if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said of the reciprocal tariff plan.The move on steel and aluminum brought a swift reaction from Doug Ford, the premier of the Canadian province of Ontario, who accused the US president of “shifting goalposts and constant chaos” that would put the economy at risk.Monday’s tariffs would come on top of existing metals duties.The largest sources of US steel imports are Canada, Brazil and Mexico, followed by South Korea and Vietnam, according to government and American Iron and Steel Institute data.By a large margin, Canada is the largest supplier of primary aluminum metal to the US, accounting for 79% of total imports in the first 11 months of 2024. Mexico is a major supplier of aluminum scrap and aluminum alloy.During his first term, Trump imposed tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum, but later granted several trading partners duty-free quotas, including Canada, Mexico and Brazil.Joe Biden extended these quotas to Britain, Japan and the European Union, and US steel mill capacity utilization has dropped in recent years. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that the new tariffs would come on top of the existing duties on steel and aluminum.Trump’s rollout of tariffs has been widely criticised and prompted volatile market reactions and fear of more to come. Beijing has lodged a complaint with the World Trade Organisation, but otherwise has been muted in its response. The tariffs imposed by Trump are far below the level he had threatened during the election campaign, and analysts have said China was prepared for them.Beijing’s actions – which also include investigations into several US companies including Google – were seen by analysts as measured and allowing room for negotiation.Amid wider pushback against Trump’s economic heavy-handedness, French President Emmanuel Macron warned in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he was willing to go “head-to-head” on tariffs with the US president. “I already did so, and I will did (sic) it again.”Macron told CNN that the EU should not be a “top priority” for the US, saying: “Is the European Union your first problem? No, I don’t think so. Your first problem is China, so you should focus on the first problem.”Macron said tariffs would harm European economies but also the US, given the level of economic ties. “It means if you put tariffs on a lot of sectors, it will increase the costs and create inflation in the US. Is it what your people want? I’m not so sure,” he said.He said the EU must be ready to react to US actions, but stressed that the 27-nation bloc should mainly “act for ourselves”. “This is why, for me, the top priority of Europe is competitiveness agenda, is defence and security agenda, is AI ambition, and let’s go fast for ourselves.“If in the meanwhile, we have [a] tariff issue, we will discuss them and we will fix it.”Trump has long complained about the EU’s 10% tariffs on auto imports being much higher than the US car rate of 2.5%. He frequently states that Europe “won’t take our cars” but ships millions west across the Atlantic every year.The European Commission said on Monday it would react to protect EU interests, but said it would not respond until it had detailed or written clarification of the measures. “The EU sees no justification for the imposition of tariffs on its exports. We will react to protect the interests of European businesses, workers and consumers from unjustified measures,” the commission said in a statement.Trump has also flagged tariffs against Taiwan’s semiconductor industry – which he has repeatedly and without evidence accused of stealing US business. Taiwan now appears to be scrambling to prevent that happening. This week senior economic officials will fly to the US to meet their counterparts. Taiwan’s government and state-run petroleum company are also reportedly taking steps to buy more US gas and oil to reduce Taiwan’s trade surplus – a key factor cited by Trump in enacting tariffs.Reuters contributed to this article. More

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      The greatest scandal is individual power | Brief letters

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      Scandalous as Donald Trump’s actions may be, they do not constitute the greatest scandal (Trump’s foreign aid cuts could be ‘big strategic mistake’, says Lammy, 7 February). That lies rather in the fact that a system purporting to display democracy to the world allows so much power to be concentrated in one individual’s hands. The eventual departure of the individual person will do nothing to rectify that colossal democratic deficit.Keith GrahamEmeritus professor of social and political philosophy, Bristol “Robert works hard, not always with success”, a Cardiff secondary school teacher once wrote on my report (Letters, 6 February). Another noted that my essays “would be improved with the inclusion of facts”. Fair play.Rob SkinnerChalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire Isn’t hiding train departure times minutes before scheduled departure (‘So patronising’: rail bosses spark anger by hiding train departure times, 6 February) to avoid platform rushes rather like removing the last carriage to avoid casualties in rear-end collisions?Prof Alan AlexanderEdinburgh Re the assertion the Elon Musk put a chip in a man’s brain (Elon Musk put a chip in this paralysed man’s brain. Now he can move things with his mind. Should we be amazed – or terrified?, 8 February), did he also put the engine in my neighbour’s Tesla? Please don’t exaggerate his superhero credentials.Caroline Newland-SmithStewkley, Buckinghamshire Yes, the PSA test probably does promote stress and anxiety (Letters, 5 February). But so does prostate cancer.Greg Shurgold(Radical prostatectomy 2017), Oxford More

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      Trump’s acting chief of federal financial watchdog orders staff to pause activity

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      Russell Vought, Donald Trump’s newly installed acting head of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced on Saturday he had cut off the agency’s budget and reportedly instructed staff to suspend all activities including the supervision of companies overseen by the agency.Reuters and NBC News reported that Vought wrote a memo to employees saying he had taken on the role of acting head of the agency, an independent watchdog that was founded in 2011 as an arm of the Federal Reserve to promote fairness in the financial sector.Vought, who was confirmed on a party line vote last week to lead the office of management and budget, also announced on Saturday evening on Elon Musk’s social media platform X that he was zeroing out the CFPB’s funding for the next fiscal quarter, saying the more than $700m in cash on hand was sufficient.In his Saturday missive, Vought ordered staff to “cease all supervision and examination activity”, going a step further than a directive issued last week by the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, whom Trump had briefly put in charge after firing Rohit Chopra.According to an internal email obtained by Reuters, the Washington CFPB headquarters will be closed for the coming week and all employees are to work remotely.The CFPB, which Congress created in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, supervises consumer-facing financial companies like banks, title lenders, mortgage originators and cash transfer services to prevent unfair, deceptive and abusive practices and other predatory conduct.Vought’s order leaves much of that business activity without federal government oversight.The weekend moves continued a lighting advance by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk to remake the federal government that drew protests from agency workers on Saturday morning and condemnation from top Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill.Musk, whose platform X is seeking to enter the consumer financial marketplace, has said in the past he would “delete” the agency responsible for consumer protection. Representatives of his “department of government efficiency” have been granted administrative-level access to all of the agency’s IT systems, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Union officials said on Friday that Musk was effectively seeking to seize control of his own regulator.In a statement, Dennis Kelleher, head of Better Markets, which advocates for stricter government oversight of the financial sector, accused Trump of throwing his own voters “to the financial wolves.“This latest attempt to kill the consumer bureau is another slap in the face for all Americans who depend on basic financial products and services, but especially for those in the multi-racial working-class coalition of Americans that helped elect President Trump,” Kelleher said. More

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      ‘They will collide eventually’: how long will the Trump-Musk relationship survive?

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      A picture is worth a thousand words – or, more precisely, $288m. That was the sum tech entrepreneur Elon Musk donated to Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign. His reward was dramatically illustrated by the cover of this week’s Time magazine: an image of Musk, coffee cup in hand, sitting behind the Resolute desk used by every US president since Jimmy Carter.Some speculated that the picture of “President Musk” was designed to provoke the thin-skinned Trump, who is known to revere Time magazine and has twice been named its “person of the year”. The president reacted on Friday with a pointed joke: “Is Time magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that.”Musk, for his part, wrote on his X social media platform: “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man.”It was the consummation of an unlikely relationship that is bringing an unnerving revolution to America. Trump and Musk share an appetite for disruption, rule-breaking and goading liberals. The convergence of the world’s most powerful man and the world’s richest man spells double trouble for democracy in the eyes of critics.Can the bromance last? Recent history is littered with examples of Trump acolytes who threatened to steal some of his limelight and paid the price. Sceptics have been predicting the demise of the Trump-Musk axis almost since it began, suggesting that two giant egos will surely collide.But others perceive a symbiotic relationship that might go the distance. Joe Walsh, a former Republican representative and a Trump critic, said: “They’re the two most powerful people on the planet right now. They desperately need each other.“They’re in this for the long haul so people who think this thing’s going to bust up in a month or two are smoking something. We’re looking at four years of these two doing this. They are like two monsters and every day they’re growing stronger.”At first glance, Trump and Musk have little in common. Trump is a 78-year-old property developer and reality TV star from New York who came to politics late, spends hours on the golf course and has a cultural frame of reference rooted in the 1980s.Musk, 53, was born in South Africa during the era of racial apartheid, made his fortune in Silicon Valley and is chief executive of Tesla, an electric vehicle maker, and SpaceX, a rocket company aiming for the stars. He has publicly stated that he has Asperger syndrome, part of the autism spectrum.View image in fullscreenIn 2016, he said Trump “doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States”. In 2022, Trump described Musk as a “bullshit artist” for supporting his opponents in 2016 and 2020. By last year, both were singing a different tune.Musk threw his weight behind Trump in the election against Kamala Harris, becoming his top donor, speaking at campaign rallies and elevating pro-Trump propaganda on his X social media platform. He spent election night at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and celebrated his inauguration with an apparent Nazi salute.Musk has so far been the biggest single difference between Trump’s first term as president and his second. Dubbed “first buddy”, he was appointed as head of the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), a taskforce aimed at restructuring federal agencies, cutting budgets, rooting out waste and corruption, and dismissing employees.Musk, known for a leadership style that rules by fear and demands total loyalty from workers, has duly brought a Silicon Valley-style “move fast and break things” approach to scything through the federal government with no regard for the constitution or rule of law.His Doge team of young software engineers quickly gained access to the treasury payment system, which is responsible for a billion payments a year totaling $5tn. It includes sensitive information involving bank accounts and social security payments.Then Doge shuttered the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) without seeking the necessary authority from Congress, destroying a tool of American soft power and severing vital food and medicine programmes worldwide. Musk tweeted gleefully: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”Doge’s tactics have included locking out employees, freezing funding, terminating leases and offering “deferred resignation” packages to workers. Musk is also using his X platform to promote Trump’s agenda, attack critics and make outrageous statements. He labelled USAid as “evil” and a “criminal organization” without providing evidence.Musk is not a full-time government employee, instead holding a “special government employee” status, allowing him to sidestep financial disclosure and public vetting processes. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, said: “An unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.”But Trump appears unconcerned, claiming: “Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval. And we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where not appropriate, we won’t.” A White House source told the Guardian that the president had recruited Musk to do “crazy shit” and he was delivering.To some commentators, the match makes sense. Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University in California, said: “It’s safe to assume Donald Trump has always admired wealth and there are only a handful of people on the planet whom he can look northward to in terms of wealth and Musk is one of them.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Trump obviously has the power that Musk thrives on but the one thing that might be in common here is they both enjoy being disrupters and mischief makers.”Musk has incentives both financial and ideological. His companies have extensive contracts with the federal government and, as head of Doge, he is in a position to streamline regulations to directly benefit them.He has also found common cause with Trump and his “Make America Great Again” (Maga) movement, making it clear that he is focused on eradicating the so-called “woke” agenda. He eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at X, formerly Twitter, and appears to be bringing that mindset to his government work.View image in fullscreenHe shares Trump’s worldview on race. Musk has falsely claimed that the South African government is allowing a “genocide” against white farmers; Trump announced that he would shut down all aid to South Africa over what he alleged was a “massive human rights violation” in the form of a new land rights law.Still, no honeymoon lasts forever. Musk’s approval rating is falling fast, even among Republicans. Just 43% of Republican respondents say they want Musk to have “a little” influence, and 17% say they want him to have “none at all”, according to a recent poll from the Economist/YouGov.This week, protesters outside government buildings carried hand-painted placards complaining: “Nobody elected Elon.” Democrats in Congress have made him their prime target, accusing him of an illegal power grab. Representative Jared Golden of Maine posted on X: “My constituents, and a majority of this country, put Trump in the White House, not this unelected, weirdo billionaire.”This could make Musk a useful foil for Trump, deflecting attention from the president. But it might also eventually turn Musk into a political liability, leading voters to question which is the master and which the puppet. Pressure from allies such as Steve Bannon, a sharp critic of Musk and other tech oligarchs, and Republicans in Congress would surely grow ahead of next year’s midterm elections.Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a pro-democracy group that this week released an attack ad titled “President Musk”, said: “They will collide eventually. When Trump sees Elon causing political damage to him, he’ll cut the cord in a hot minute.“It won’t even take five heartbeats. Once he sees that Elon is dragging him down in the polling – and Elon has become spectacularly unpopular in the last few weeks – Elon’s going to have a rough moment.”On the other hand, Musk is not like anyone that Trump has encountered before. His estimated wealth of $426bn dwarfs that of the president. He wields huge power and influence through X. He might prove harder to dispose of than previous lieutenants.Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “I don’t know how he solves a problem like Elon. He can fire or destroy anyone else. He can brush Marco Rubio off. He could destroy JD Vance’s political future with a Truth Social post. But he’s stuck with Elon Musk.“Elon Musk now has his own power base. He’s got his own cult of personality. There’s going to come a moment where these egos are going to clash – there can be only one master of the universe at the same time – but how is this resolved? How does Trump disentangle himself from the Frankenstein’s monster that he’s gotten into bed with?” More

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      The Observer view: Vengeful and reckless, Donald Trump must not go unchallenged | Observer editorial

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      The 47th president of the United States is a danger to his country, Britain and the world. Who would have thought that sentence would ever be written? And yet, less than three weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, it is barely controversial to many people looking on from shell-shocked democracies beyond America’s shores. By his destructive, vindictive, illegal and irrational actions, Trump sets himself beyond the pale. In place of American exceptionalism, the world must now learn to manage, and if necessary confront, a gross American objectionablism.Proof of these assertions is to be found in the White House’s daily outpourings. Seeking revenge against those who tried to punish his attempted 6 January 2021 electoral coup, Trump is weaponising the justice department by executive order. Political opponents, FBI agents, prosecutors, media outlets and journalists are in his sights. In contrast, about 1,500 convicted Capitol Hill rioters have been pardoned. He has even had the gall to withdraw the security clearance of his predecessor, Joe Biden, citing mental incapacity.Trump is treating federal government agencies like enemy territory to be stormed and purged of deep state, so-called woke and liberal elements. To this end, he has recruited the sycophantic billionaire, Elon Musk, and teams of youthful, unaccountable acolytes to physically take over offices and computer systems, suspend, lock out or sack civil servants and seize control of programmes and budgets. The treasury, the education department, the federal election commission and independent government watchdogs are all under the hammer wielded, principally, by Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”. Nor has the CIA and the wider “intelligence community” escaped Trump’s vendetta. It, too, faces mass firings under the proposed leadership of Tulsi Gabbard, a Russia apologist. Putting the anti-vax conspiracy theorist, Robert F Kennedy Jr, in charge of health and human services demonstrates how little Trump really cares about ordinary people’s welfare.Trump’s arbitrary, often unlawful orders indulge other far-right obsessions. Diversity, equity and inclusion polices, in particular transgender rights, are under siege. He has demanded a halt to the rollout of EV charging stations, declared open season on wildlife and the environment by relaxing oil and gas drilling regulations, and withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement. He even wants to ban paper straws, preferring plastic. From an immediate international perspective, Trump’s decision to eviscerate USAid, the world’s biggest foreign aid provider, and the attempted sacking of nearly all its staff, is the most savagely objectionable misdeed of all.His freezing of USAid’s $42.8bn (£34.5bn) budget spells death or renewed suffering for millions of dependent people, from Sudan to Bangladesh to Ukraine. The US accounts for about $4 in every $10 spent globally on humanitarian aid. To the instant human toll, as Britain’s former prime minister Gordon Brown points out, must be added a loss of US global influence that will benefit authoritarian rivals China and Russia. “The era when American leaders valued their soft power is coming to an end,” Brown wrote. His view was echoed by foreign secretary David Lammy, who described Trump’s mindless aid vandalism as a “big strategic mistake”.Trump’s egotistic rampage is causing widespread additional international damage and confusion. His on-off tariff wars with China, Canada and, prospectively, the EU; his militarisation of migration policy along the US border with Mexico; his imperialistic vow to seize Greenland by force from Nato ally Denmark; and his disdain for the UN, typified by his withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, are all decisions underscoring his broader contempt for the multilateralist, rules-based international order. Nothing more damningly illustrates that contempt than yet another outrageous executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC).Trump’s ICC attack was prompted in part by a wish to protect Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister and court-indicted war crimes suspect, who was feted at the White House last week. He used this occasion to unveil his most absurd, most dangerous idea to date: a forcible “clean-out” of the 2 million inhabitants of Gaza and a US-owned “Riviera” real estate development amid the ruins of their Palestinian homeland. This wheeze is too ignorant, too insulting and too inhumane to be taken entirely seriously. Yet that has not stopped Israeli and US rightwingers using it as potential justification for wrecking the ceasefire, resuming the war and laying the ground for annexations in Gaza and the West Bank.Trump, the convicted felon, proves each day that he is unfit for the high office he holds. He aims to destroy the fundamentals of American democracy: the separation of powers, civil and voting rights, secularism, free speech and equality under the law. He is a menace to global peace, stability and prosperity. Pushback has begun, largely through the courts. Yet a few defiant judges cannot win this huge, rapidly developing struggle. The Democrats, stunned into virtual silence, must wake up. Meanwhile, Britain and the western democracies must take a united stand. So far, Keir Starmer and his ministers have been too circumspect. They must be bolder and braver in their criticism and in upholding British values.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe rise of Trump and like-minded far-right populists, lawless bullies and anti-democratic autocrats around the world is the great challenge of our age. Trump the objectionable is setting the world on fire. More

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      While Trump blathers about tariffs and Gaza, Musk is executing a coup d’état | John Naughton

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      Way back in 2019, Steve Bannon, then a Trump consigliere, outlined in a TV interview a strategy for managing information. “The opposition party is the media,” he said, “And because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time… All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang.”Since his re-election, Donald Trump has been following this script to the letter, and the media, not to mention the entire world, are feeling punch-drunk. Which is, as Bannon pointed out, enabling other members of the Trump crew to get their stuff done. Really bad stuff too, to which the world has not been paying enough attention.Prime suspect in this respect is Elon Musk, whom Trump has chosen to slash $2tn off US government spending. Late on Friday 31 January, he and a few of his goons gained access to the Department of Treasury payments system – the system that processes the federal spending that makes up more than a fifth of the US economy. More importantly, Musk and a 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who has previously worked for two of his companies, were given the ability to make changes to the payments system, thereby enabling them to stop disbursements of taxpayers’ dollars to recipients that the Trump crowd decide are illegitimate – for example a $367m payment to an outfit called Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service Inc.It’s conceivable, of course, that this payment was an example of the wasteful federal spending that Musk and co are pledged to root out and eliminate. But that is not the point. The point is that all the spending passing through the system constitutes expenditure that has been authorised by Congress. Traditionally, the system was run by apolitical civil servants who had no authority to decide whether a particular payment was unwise or unacceptable. Now, suddenly, that power has been appropriated by an unelected billionaire who spent a quarter of a billion dollars to ensure that Trump was elected.But the Treasury coup is just one part of a bigger story. Musk is not just going after payments, he’s also going after jobs, salaries and the employment status of federal employees. And his strategy mirrors what he did to Twitter after being forced to buy it. At around 5pm on 28 January, millions of US government employees received an email from Musk with the subject line “Fork in the Road”. The message in the email was stark: accept a sweeping set of workplace changes or resign within nine days. It was more or less a replica of the email that Twitter employees received in November 2022 and it signals an intention to do to the federal bureaucracy what he did to Twitter in 2022: hollow it out and subject it to intensive personal control.It’s worth pondering the immensity of what’s happening while Trump blathers on about tariffs, acquiring Gaza, buying Greenland, trolling Justin Trudeau and generally “flooding the zone” with crap. As Mike Masnick, a distinguished tech commentator, puts it: “A private citizen with zero constitutional authority is effectively seizing control of critical government functions. The constitution explicitly requires Senate confirmation for anyone wielding significant federal power – a requirement Musk has simply ignored as he installs his loyalists throughout the government while demanding access to basically all of the levers of power, and pushing out anyone who stands in his way.”Musk’s arrival at the heart of American power signals a new, sinister kind of technocracy – an obnoxious blend of obscene wealth, narcissism, arrogance, determination, IQ and the kind of “solutionism” that believes there is no problem that cannot be solved by technology. He reminds Masnick of “a toddler ‘fixing’ a grandfather clock by removing its pendulum. Yes, the clock needed maintenance – but now it can’t tell time at all. The federal government absolutely needs reform, but what we’re seeing isn’t reform – it’s vandalism dressed up as innovation.”The strange thing is that what most people expected from Trump 2.0 was his usual performative chaos: perhaps a bit less than last time, but chaos nonetheless. What no one saw coming was a tech bro who spotted an opportunity to use AI to re-engineer the US government in the name of the “efficiency” that Silicon Valley worships, and was able to pay hundreds of millions to get into the driving seat. In the bad old days, insurgent colonels would surround the presidential palace with tanks and capture the radio station. Thanks to Trump, Musk didn’t have to worry about the palace, and he already had his own radio station (X), so he went straight to the heart of the matter – the Treasury. What we’re watching is nothing less than a thoroughly modern coup d’état.What I’ve been readingLLMs and a flawed paradigm
      An astute essay by Erik J Larsen on his Substack, Colligo, about the large language models that the tech industry calls “AIs”.How to raise your artificial intelligence
      A fascinating conversation with psychologist Alison Gopnik and AI scientist Melanie Mitchell in the LA Review of Books.The Musk junta Nice satirical piece by Garrett Graff on Doomsday Scenario, imagining how foreign correspondents would report on current events in Washington DC.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk More

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      Who is helping Elon Musk gut the US government?

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      Elon Musk’s rapid attempt to defund and depopulate the federal government has thrown US politics into chaos while the billionaire’s so-called “department of government efficiency” seizes control of operations at key agencies. Carrying out this hostile takeover are a team of staffers made up of wealthy executives, far-right ideologues and young engineers that have come to make up “Doge”.At government institutions such as the treasury department, General Services Administration and United States Agency for International Development, Musk’s allies have gained access to computer systems, including the sensitive personal data and payment information of tens of millions of Americans. His team is working to shut down USAid, the world’s largest single supplier of humanitarian aid, and members have been spotted at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Education and National Institutes of Health.To undertake this unprecedented and potentially illegal gutting of public funding, Musk has assembled loyalists who largely lack government experience and who range from tech elites to Maga diehards, according to a review of the people publicly associated with Doge.Doge has not released any detailed account of who is working at the unofficial agency, and Musk, along with other staff, is technically a “special government employee”, which allows him and others to evade ethics and financial disclosures that would normally apply to government workers. The Doge team has taken steps to avoid public scrutiny, including limiting their online footprints.A lawsuit filed by unions of federal workers alleges that Musk’s allies in Doge have held calls and interviews in which they have withheld their last names in an effort to escape media scrutiny. These interviewers have also allegedly refused to answer questions while talking to federal employees.Musk shared a letter on X sent to him from the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor for Washington DC that vowed to pursue “any and all legal action against anyone who impedes your work or threatens your people”, which includes identifying them.As hundreds of employees were put on administrative leave at USAid, several sources told the Guardian that Musk was directing Doge’s day-to-day operations personally.“This was just the Doge dudes just literally on the phone with Musk just getting directions from him,” one USAid employee said.Within the White House, Musk appears to be running Doge with a high degree of independence and with Donald Trump’s backing. The president briefly praised Musk’s team on Monday, although he said that he had not met with them personally.“They work, actually, out of the White House,” Trump said. “They’re smart people.”A Doge spokesperson did not respond to a list of questions concerning its staff and operations.Tech executives and engineers take over major agenciesSeveral people at Doge come directly from Musk’s private companies, including the Boring Company, Tesla and xAI. One executive taking a lead role overseeing the effort, according to multiple outlets, is Musk’s longtime lieutenant Steve Davis.Davis has worked for Musk in different capacities for about 20 years and is president of the tunnel-digging Boring Company. He was present on Saturday night at USAid when Doge staffers and agency security officials clashed over Musk’s team’s demands for access to restricted areas, multiple sources told the Guardian. When USAid officials attempted to block the team, two sources said that Davis threatened to bring in US marshals to the agency. The Guardian granted anonymity to those sources to protect them from retaliation.Davis is known for cost cutting and running fast-paced operations, which have at times resulted in clashes with safety regulators. While he was president of Boring in 2023, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) found that 15 to 20 Boring employees in Las Vegas had been burned with chemical accelerants due to hazardous working conditions at the site. The company’s former safety manager told Fortune that Davis had undercut and isolated him in ways that prohibited him from doing his job, while former employees said Davis imposed difficult deadlines and encouraged a breakneck pace. One Boring employee emailed the safety manager warning that workers “consistently flirted with death” while in the tunnels, according to Fortune. The Boring Company did not return a request for comment on these allegations.Another former Musk employee, Amanda Scales, worked at the billionaire’s artificial intelligence startup xAI before becoming chief of staff at the office of personnel management, which functions as the government’s human resources agency. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the acting head of OPM instructed heads of agencies to send Scales a list of employees on probationary periods or administrative leave as the new administration seeks to make drastic cuts to the federal workforce.Allies of the world’s richest man have also been placed in key positions at the General Services Administration – which handles government real estate and federal IT structure – and the treasury department. The former Tesla engineer Thomas Shedd is now in charge of the GSA’s Technology Transformation Services, with 404 Media reporting that Shedd told workers he wants to implant artificial intelligence throughout government systems to write software and automate services. Musk himself has said he wants to deploy AI to review government payments for potential waste.Tom Krause, the CEO of the multibillion-dollar tech company Cloud Software Group, and a Musk ally, is now working within the treasury department. A judge ruled on Thursday that he was one of two “special government employees” associated with Doge who can access sensitive treasury data.View image in fullscreenSeveral tech moguls have said they are collaborating with Doge, though it’s not always clear in what capacity. The billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who donated $2.5m to a pro-Trump political action committee and celebrated his re-election, told the New York Times last month that he was “helping Doge”. Andreessen did not go into detail on what his help entailed and said he was not speaking for Musk, but he appeared to have advance knowledge of Doge’s goals and told the Times it had plans for “the money side”, head count and regulation. Weeks after the interview, Musk’s lieutenants went after the money side of the federal government – the treasury department.In addition to the more established executives working at Doge or collaborating with the group, Wired reported that Musk had hired a group of young engineers fresh out of college or high school who possess little experience outside of tiny tech firms. These Doge staffers, who according to the outlet range from 19 to 25 years old, have at times been given huge amounts of access and power over the federal government – including sources telling Wired that the engineer Marko Elez had gained direct “write access” to treasury department payment systems.Elez resigned on Thursday after the Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his links to a now-deleted social media account that promoted eugenics and racism. Among other racist posts, the account posted on X that “you could not pay me to marry outside my ethnicity” and called for repealing the Civil Rights Act, according to the Journal. Earlier that day, a judge had granted Elez and one other Doge employee the power to see sensitive treasury department data.Elez was reinstated on Friday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnother young Doge staffer with access to sensitive government systems, 19-year-old Edward Coristine, has gone by the username “Big Balls” online and founded a company called “Tesla.Sexy LLC”, according to Wired. He has reportedly been on calls with GSA employees as they are asked to defend their jobs.“These people are clueless, given how smart they’re supposed to be,” one USAid employee currently on administrative leave said of the young Doge team. “They’re under the impression that if you just say [to do something], then it will magically happen.”Maga world gets a role in DogeAlong with the staff working with Doge full-time, with some even sleeping in government buildings, Musk’s team has worked in tandem with Trump hardliners to dismantle or exert control over government agencies. Doge staffers showed up to USAid in the past week with Peter Marocco, who briefly served at several agencies during Trump’s first term and was accused by multiple staffers of poor leadership and toxic workplace behavior.Marocco was allegedly photographed inside the Capitol building during the January 6 riot, according to a widely cited, citizen-led investigation that has accurately named numerous other rioters. When Dallas’s D Magazine asked him about the allegations last year, Marocco did not deny them but called the reports “smear tactics”.The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has now tapped Marocco to run USAid and review its programs as Musk continues work to shut down the agency entirely. Current and former USAid staffers told the Guardian last week that Marocco represented a disaster for the agency, with one former official calling him “a destroyer”.“He’s the most unqualified person to be sitting in any seat of government, let alone the person who has the keys to our foreign assistance,” another former colleague at USAid who still works at the agency said.Also working with Doge is the far-right Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is head of a “delivering on government efficiency” group within the House oversight committee. Greene, who has espoused numerous extremist conspiracies and in 2022 spoke at a white nationalist event, has used her power to demand that NPR and PBS testify about their operations. Greene cited a PBS report that stated Musk gave “what appeared to be a fascist salute” during a speech last month as one of the reasons to compel the news outlet’s executives to appear at the hearing.The conservative ideology extends to Doge’s human resources department, where the head of HR is an employment attorney and consultant who has promoted a “non-woke” alternative to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, 404 Media reported. Stephanie Holmes told the rightwing Federalist Society in 2022 that she started her firm to counter the “really progressive ideology that HR was pushing into corporate America”.The spokesperson for Doge is Katie Miller, who is married to the deputy White House chief of staff, Stephen Miller. Before working at Doge, Miller was Mike Pence’s press secretary and a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, where she defended Trump’s anti-immigration policies, including during the period when it was separating families at the border. During Doge’s takeover of agencies on Sunday, Miller issued a statement on X claiming that no violations of security protocol had taken place. On Wednesday night, she told reporters that Musk would decide for himself when his actions constituted a conflict of interest.Stephen Miller has also begun working closely with Musk in the new Trump administration, according to the New York Times, and on Monday went on Fox News to defend the shutdown of USAid by decrying it as a “swamp nest of bureaucrats”. During Trump’s first term, Miller served as a key policy adviser and pushed for extreme policies such as banning immigration and travel from Muslim-majority countries. In 2019, more than 50 civil rights organizations and 20 Democratic senators called for Miller’s resignation after it emerged that he had sent hundreds of emails to far-right editors at Breitbart that included him citing information from prominent white nationalist websites.Changing staff and hidden identitiesSome of the people who had been associated with Doge in the months before Trump’s official order on 20 January have either been given roles elsewhere in the administration or pushed out entirely. The former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was originally slated to co-lead Doge with Musk, trumpeting the agency in posts on X. He left after reportedly facing internal tensions with the Tesla CEO and announced a run for Ohio governor.The former Trump tech adviser Michael Kratsios was helping interview hires for Doge, according to Bloomberg, but has since been nominated as the president’s science adviser. The top Silicon Valley investment banker and Musk ally Michael Grimes was also reportedly in discussions about joining Doge. He’s now expected to join the commerce department.Others hold unclear roles within Musk’s unofficial agency, such as the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Baris Akis, who, the New York Times reported, has become close to Musk and an integral part of Doge in recent weeks. Akis is a Turkish national who does not hold US citizenship, according to the Atlantic, which reported that Trump’s advisers declined Musk’s request to officially hire him because of his immigration status. It is unclear in what capacity, if any, he is still involved in the effort. The Doge spokesperson, Katie Miller, did not respond to a request for comment on whether Akis is still involved in Doge.Government watchdog groups have condemned the lack of transparency around Doge’s operations.“It’s inappropriate for the federal government to purposely hide the identities of senior officials who are shaping the policies and servicing the public,” said Scott Amey, the general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight. “These officials must be held accountable for their work, both by their colleagues and the public. It’s also crucial that these officials abide by ethics and transparency requirements to assure the public they are serving in the best interest of our communities.”Andrew Roth contributed reporting More