If federal agencies were chocolate bars, Elon Musk is a kid in a candy store.
The world’s richest man can’t keep his hands off the U.S. government, despite not being an elected official. In his current grab for power, he’s reaching out for the U.S. Agency for International Development – attempting to shut down a federal agency that, unlike him, provides billions of dollars worth of humanitarian aid around the world.
In a post on X, Elon Musk called USAID a “criminal organization” on the heels of Donald Trump’s criticism of the agency. USAID was recently the target of Trump administration’s cost cutting efforts, and scores of the agencies’ workers were fired after the president announced a freeze on U.S. foreign aid.
Online criticism wasn’t enough for Musk, and the billionaire decided to ramp it up a notch by sending DOGE employees to USAID’s office in an attempt to get access the organization’s servers. The DOGE employees were rebuffed by USAID’s director of security and his deputy, but the security team leaders’ sound found themselves placed on administrative leave after denying DOGE access.
According to sources present at the scene, the DOGE employees were attempting to access personnel files and security systems that some of them did not have the necessary security clearance to access. It’s not clear what files DOGE team was ultimately able to get their hands on.
USAID isn’t the first government agency to have its security protocols violated by Elon Musk and his employees. DOGE was recently granted access to the Treasury’s payment systems, which dispense trillions of dollars worth of Medicare and Social Security benefits to Americans across the nation. Musk and his team were granted access to the Treasury system by Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. A previous Treasury official attempted to stop Musk and his employees from getting access to the system but was placed on administrative leave, like the USAID security department heads.
Trump and Musk have since announced their intent to shutter USAID entirely, despite lacking the congressional authority (and in Musk’s case, the status of an elected official) to do so. The pair’s efforts are in service of a larger cost-cutting plan concocted by Musk—the billionaire has said that he wants to cut $2 trillion from the federal spending, but has recently walked that figure down.
Musk’s meddling in government affairs has drawn censure from high profile Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren. In a post on X, Warren warned of “consequences” and “harm” that Americans will face due to Musk’s access to “people’s personal information” and his attempts to “shut down government funding.”
“No one elected Elon Musk,” she reminded the American people.
Musk’s has reached a level of political influence that is completely unprecedented for a private citizen, as evidenced by his ability to influence critical government policy from behind a computer screen. Musk first flexed his political muscle by tanking a painstakingly negotiated bipartisan bill set to avert a government shutdown with a series of tweets. Musk sent lawmakers into a frenzy as Donald Trump and J.D. Vance soon joined in on the billionaire’s criticisms.
Musk’s political influence has only grown stronger. And while the billionaire was never elected to office, he was able to buy his way into the Trump administration’s good graces with a $250 million campaign donation. Musk has since bragged about his political sway, writing that he spent the weekend “feeding USAID into the wood chipper” on X.
If Musk isn’t stopped, the U.S. government itself might be next.
Published: Feb 4, 2025 02:46 am