Musk Is Now the 'De Facto President'

As Elon Musk stood beside him, President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that gives Musk's Department of Government Efficiency group control over hiring and firing at federal agencies. Six takes on what that means:

• Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo: "I don't think it's too much to say that it puts Musk functionally in control of the US government," he writes, noting that "political commissars" will be assigned to each federal agency and given control over hiring and firing, with a requirement that for every four people who are let go, only one person can be hired. "We're in dystopian quasi-science fiction territory here," Marshall concludes.

• Rex Huppke, USA Today: He likewise calls Musk the nation's "most powerful person" and "de facto president"—an "unelected rich snot" who is "demolishing the federal government, probably illegally" and "acting downright gleeful about thousands upon thousands of Americans losing their jobs." "It is vile, bordering on sadism," Huppke writes. "Losing a job is a catastrophe for most families. It's not a damn joke."
• Tressie McMillan Cottom, New York Times: Musk wants to dismantle and "demoralize" the federal government, she writes, noting his "narration of power as a vicarious gamelike experience of dominance" is "a skilled manipulation of content in a content-saturated culture" that "obscures what is actually happening." Look beyond his exuberant tweets and you'll see "a strategic takeover of national interests that will demolish the state's functionality in a way that benefits the ones swinging the hammer."

• Allison Stanger, US News: Trump and Musk's efforts to dismantle oversight, gain "unprecedented access to government data," and promote cryptocurrency suggest an effort to place the US "in entirely private hands," she writes. "We're fundamentally altering the relationship between private power and public governance" and in the process "undermining American national security, as well as the constitutional power of We, the People."
• Nicole Russell, USA Today: Taxpayers should be celebrating these efforts "to bring financial responsibility to the federal government," she writes, noting that as a parent, she'd love to know why $268 billion in annual education funding hasn't delivered "a better return on our investment." She believes Trump when he says billions of dollars in waste and fraud will be found and argues the hunt "is exactly what Americans want."
• Cal Thomas, Tribune Content Agency: Indeed, Trump promised to downsize government, and now he's following through on that promise, writes Thomas. He compares Musk's moves to "spring cleaning," the eliminating of "wasteful, fraudulent, and, in many cases, unnecessary and duplicative programs" that came from bureaucrats and regulators who, like Musk, weren't elected by the people. And "sometimes it takes a chainsaw, instead of a scalpel, to get a job done."

(More DOGE stories.)