The Dictatorship
Elon Musk is sweeping Washington — and answering to nobody
Much of President Donald Trump’s return to Washington feels familiar, from his withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement to his claim that DEI is to blame for an aircraft accident over Washington. What’s new is his injection of mega-billionaire Elon Musk into the federal government by having him lead a so-called Department of Government Efficiency. So far Musk’s foray into government appears to be based on the model of sloppily gutting a companywhich bodes poorly for a functioning government. Equally concerning is that Musk’s reach appears to far exceed the kind of influence any private citizen should have over the federal government, which is in turn raising a crisis of authority in Washington.
The firehose of news surrounding Musk’s “efficiency” initiatives in Washington has been astonishing. Here’s a quick round-up of some of the most notable developments.
- On Tuesday, millions of federal employees received an email from the Office of Personnel Management demanding that they either accept a huge set of changes to the workplace or resign. The subject line of the email, “Fork in the Road,” was the same subject line Musk used in an email to employees of Twitter shortly after he purchased the company in 2022, and employees of the social media platform were given a similar edict. The Washington Post, citing four people familiar with the situation, reported that the email was the result of Musk’s influence. Among other things, the listed changes to federal jobs included a new “performance culture” and “enhanced standards of conduct.” The email offered federal workers an option to take a “deferred resignation,” which would apparently mean agreeing to leave their jobs now but getting paid through September.
- Musk appears to have acted without consulting at least some of Trump’s inner circle. Those same sources told the Post that the email “blindsided some advisers to President Donald Trump, including officials in the budget office and agencies that typically would be consulted in advance of such monumental changes to personnel and spending policies.” And Reuters cites two agency officials who said Musk aides “have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees.”
- Musk has drawn from his lieutenants in the private sector to help him oversee his interventions in the government. As The New York Times reportshis meddling includes placing a human resources executive from SpaceX as an adviser to the Office of Personnel Management; the head of Musk’s tunneling startup, The Boring Company, who also helped him cut costs at Twitter, at the new Department of Government Efficiency; and a Tesla engineer at the General Services Administration. A Morgan Stanley banker who helped lead Musk’s purchase of Twitter is slated to take a gig at the Commerce Department.
- According to a Washington Post reportciting three people with knowledge of the matter, the “highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems.” That payments system disburses trillions of dollars annually and affects the lives of tens of millions of Americans who, among other things, receive support from Social Security and Medicare. The Post also noted: “It is unclear precisely why Musk’s team sought access to those systems. But both Musk and the Trump administration more broadly have sought to control spending in ways that far exceed efforts by their predecessors and have alarmed legal experts.”
- Musk’s involvement in the General Services Administration includes terminating leases for federal offices. Cost-cutting there could also affect federal contracting and technology services across the government.
This is far from a comprehensive account of Musk’s fingerprints across Washington, but the emerging picture is clear: Musk is everywhere, and he’s telegraphing a mission to radically reduce and reshape the federal workforce around a hazy set of criteria ostensibly tied to performance.
Trump signaled in his campaign that he intended to purge the federal bureaucracy and stack it with loyalists. That was in and of itself a concerning authoritarian pledge. But it’s been surprising that he has enlisted the richest man in the world to help him do it. That man also happens to be an unelected right-wing demagogue with vast private business holdings that put him in several conflicts of interest with the federal government.
Musk appears to be exhibiting the “move fast and break things ethos” that prevails among many Silicon Valley executives. Musk has no experience with or demonstrable understanding of the government of the most powerful country in the world. That hasn’t humbled him. Early signs suggest that Musk is moving at a full sprint and views the federal government the way he viewed Twitter — an institution in need of radical reform through drastic cost-cutting, sweeping changes in internal culture and new features.
Notably, at Twitter, now X, Musk’s swashbuckling approach didn’t have the intended effect: He demolished the company’s valuedestroyed the quality of the product and sparked a mass exodus of users. It’s deeply disturbing to think what he could do to something as complex and consequential as the U.S. government.
The problem is that, even with the obvious financial incentives Musk possesses, we don’t exactly know what he wants to do with his power grabs. The speed and opacity with which Musk is taking action have no precedent in modern politics. It’s also not clear how much, if any, of what he’s doing is even legal or how much may be masking ulterior motives.
As University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket recently noted:
Elon Musk is not a federal employee, nor has he been appointed by the President nor approved by the Senate to have any leadership role in government. The “Department of Government Efficiency,” announced by Trump in a January 20th executive order, is not truly any sort of government department or agency, and even the executive order uses quotes in the title. It’s perfectly fine to have a marketing gimmick like this, but DOGE does not have power over established government agencies, and Musk has no role in government. It does not matter that he is an ally of the President. Musk is a private citizen taking control of established government offices. That is not efficiency; that is a coup.
As NBC News reportedEverett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, has said that resignations prompted by the “Fork in the Road” email “should not be viewed as voluntary.”
“The number of civil servants hasn’t meaningfully changed since 1970, but there are more Americans than ever who rely on government services,” Kelley said. “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.” He added, “Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.”
The National Treasury Employees Union called on its members to refuse to resign and said that the OPM guidance to workers in the “Fork in the Road” email is “questionable at best and possibly violates the rules of conduct that federal employees are required to follow.”
This is a rapidly developing situation, and it’s unclear how far Musk can or will go in pursuing his “rip wires out of the wall until the lights go out” method. But at the moment it looks like a billionaire with a soft spot for extreme right-wing politics is trying to gut the government and muzzle federal bureaucrats with extraordinary speed. What remains to be seen is how the federal workforce, the courts and the public might respond to and reject his shenanigans.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for BLN Daily. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Blue Light News, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter here.
President Donald Trump said Monday that Israel would have been “terminated” without U.S. military intervention against Iranarguing that his administration’s strikes on Tehran’s nuclear program prevented destruction to America’s closest ally in the Middle East.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One while traveling to Michigan, Trump defended the U.S. campaign against Iran, saying it fundamentally altered the balance of power in the region.
“You know who wouldn’t survive without us? Israel. Bibi’s coming, he’ll tell you,” Trump said. “If I didn’t get involved, and I didn’t blow up those nuclear, essentially, soon to be nuclear weapons to dust, Israel would have been terminated months ago.”
Later Monday, while delivering remarks at the General Motors Proving Ground in Milford, Michigan, Trump touted the United States’ strikes in Iran, saying the U.S. had destroyed Tehran’s navy and air force, while diminishing its drone and missile manufacturing capabilities.
While he touted the U.S. military strikes on Iran as a major success, the audience was notably less enthusiastic about his remarks on the war than they were about immigration and the southern border.
Trump was in Milford to bolster support among auto workers and voters in the key battleground state by highlighting his administration’s efforts to revive domestic manufacturing, expand auto industry jobs and strengthen the economy ahead of the midterm elections.
Trump’s remarks came one day before he is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House to discuss the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Trump said he and Netanyahu remain “pretty close” on Iran ahead of their scheduled meeting Tuesday, though he acknowledged minor differences without elaborating.
The U.S. and Iran halted attacks over the weekend, but Trump has repeatedly warned that military action could resume if the talks fail. The president told reporters Iran had reached out seeking renewed negotiations.
“Iran took a beating over the last 14 days, and they asked us very nicely, ‘Please stop. Let’s meet,’” Trump said. “If we don’t make a deal, we go back to the same thing.”
The president also brushed aside concerns raised by Netanyahu over the potential sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, signaling that he would not allow foreign leaders to dictate U.S. arms sales.
“Nobody tells me what we should be selling,” Trump said when asked about Netanyahu’s reported objections. He added that “Turkey’s been a tremendous ally.”
Trump first signaled earlier this month that he was open to restoring Turkey’s access to the F-35 program, reversing a policy that removed the country after it purchased Russia’s S-400 air defense system. Israel has traditionally sought to preserve its qualitative military advantage, including access to more advanced U.S. weapons systems than neighboring countries.
At the rally in Milford, Trump argued his economic agenda is fueling a manufacturing resurgence, even as many Americans continue to grapple with higher gasoline prices and other lingering economic pressures amid the war with Iran.
“I’ve done more for you than your parents,” Trump said to a crowd of autoworkers.
The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $4.11 on Monday, compared with $3.15 a year ago, according to AAA. That is an increase of 0.96 cents per gallon, or about 31%, as fuel prices remain elevated following recent volatility in global oil markets tied to the conflict.
In the latter half of the speech, Trump returned to familiar themes he often discusses on the campaign trail, including border security, crime, election integrity and foreign policy.
Jake Traylor contributed to this story.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
At the end of June, President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies lost — for now — the Supreme Court fight over birthright citizenship. Vice President JD Vance said MAGA needed to keep fighting birthright citizenship after the ruling in Trump v. Barbara, but it’s set its sights on a different nativist victory, this time relying on a set of racist laws the high court approved back at the start of the 20th century.
Just two weeks after the ruling on June 30 didn’t go MAGA’s way, Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., introduced H.R. 9724, the End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act. The bill would deny children born on or after Jan. 1, 2027, in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands automatic citizenship unless at least one parent is already a U.S. citizen or a legal permanent resident. Griffith calls it a crackdown on “birth tourism,” and the bill doesn’t hide where its legal authority comes from.
“The application under the Barbara case of birthright citizenship in the U.S. territories differs from what is established in the 50 U.S. States according to Supreme Court cases,” Griffith noted in a July 16 e-newsletter about the bill. “The birthright discrepancy between the territories and the States dates to legal cases beginning in the early 20th century known as the Insular Cases.”
Those Insular Cases are generally considered so racist that even Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch called them “shameful” back in 2022.
No matter how many times this country calls me a U.S. citizen, Washington still isn’t sure what to do with the place where I was born.
For those unfamiliar with the Insular Cases, from 1901 to 1922, the Supreme Court issued a series of rulings on how much of the Constitution applies to places like Puerto Rico — which had become booty of war after the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898 — and other U.S. possessions. In the lead case, Downes v. Bidwellthe court ruled that Puerto Rico belonged to — but wasn’t part of — the United States in a constitutional sense, and used language like “alien races” and “savage tribes” to describe people living there. The doctrine’s author, Justice Edward Douglass White (a former Confederate soldier), built the reasoning explicitly on “differences of race,” warning against extending citizenship to “uncivilized race[s]” he deemed “completely unfit to receive it.” This year marks the 125th anniversary of that first ruling, and is a topic I cover in a new podcast about Puerto Rican colonialism, aptly titled “American Colony.”
“This bill is divisive, it is racist in its foundation, and it is corrosive of the principles of American law. It fits a broader pattern in Congressman Griffith’s record of measures that diminish Black and brown people,” Rep. Stacey Plaskett, a nonvoting member representing the U.S. Virgin Islands, said in a statement. “To be clear — this bill has not attracted a single cosponsor. It has no discernible path to consideration, particularly given the calendar of inaction the Majority has laid out, but we do not dismiss it. We do note that the Vice President has said this is an idea the Administration is ‘looking at,’ and we take that seriously.”
I was born in Puerto Rico, where U.S. citizens still have fewer rights, so when I saw Griffith’s bill for the first time, it raised the same feeling I have always had when it comes to my own birth certificate: that no matter how many times this country calls me a U.S. citizen, Washington still isn’t sure what to do with the place where I was born. For 125 years, the Insular Cases have viewed Puerto Rico as a second-class colonial possession, even when thousands of Puerto Ricans have fought and died for a country that has never fully accepted them.
Griffith’s bill is just the latest attempt to insult us by threatening the possibility of Puerto Ricans having no citizenship at all. Of course, the bill doesn’t explicitly say that, but the threat is there for anyone born next year in Puerto Rico — because the Insular Cases appear to provide some legal justification for it.
That’s not paranoia. Efrén Rivera Ramos, a law professor and former dean at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law, told “Democracy Now!” that the bill’s own drafting creates exactly this kind of ambiguity — the first part reads as if it strips citizenship from anyone born in Puerto Rico after 2027, and only in the bill’s very last provision does it narrow that down to children of noncitizens and non-permanent residents. That sloppiness, Rivera Ramos warns, “may cause problems in the future” if this bill ever becomes law.
But fighting Griffith’s bill clause by clause misses the point. The Insular Cases need to go entirely, a position Neil Weare, co-director of Right to Democracy, has been pushing in court for years.
“It’s not surprising. Two hundred fifty years after the U.S. rejected colonial rule, the federal government continues to rely on the racist Insular Cases for the idea it can do whatever it wants in U.S. territories regardless of founding principles like ‘consent of the governed’ and all ‘created equal,’” Weare said.
Such a resolution is highly unlikely in this political climate, as long as MAGA is involved. Just last week, the White House brought back the image of Trump tossing paper towels after Hurricane Mariaan image that continues to enrage Puerto Ricans nine years later. To him, Puerto Rico is reduced to a meme. Any prospects of statehood are laughed off whenever he says he wants other countries like Canada, Greenland and Venezuela to become states. In fact, according to Trump, he might cry if places like Puerto Rico were to become states.
So why would we expect anything different when it comes to birthright citizenship?
Trump already made this bet once and lost. The Insular Cases are the backup plan, a racist relic that gets dusted off when the nativists fear the end of a lost America. Colonies like Puerto Rico have lived with that excuse since 1901, and it shouldn’t have to keep proving, generation after generation, that its people deserve the citizenship they already have.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of “The Latino Newsletter” and co-editor of “Pressing Issues from Free Press.”
The Dictatorship
We are pediatricians in South Carolina fighting for parents to get accurate info about vaccines
Parents deserve honest answers about vaccines. They deserve physicians who will listen to their concerns, explain the evidence and help them make informed decisions. Above all, they deserve confidence that the nation’s leading public health institutions are communicating science and not suggesting that there’s uncertainty where none exists.
That is why the recent changes to information presented on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website regarding vaccines and autism are so concerning. News organizations reported in November that the website had been wrongly edited to say, “The statement ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim.” Last week, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said that in exchange for his support for Dr. Erica Schwartz to lead the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services made “a sign of good faith” and “modified the CDC’s autism and vaccines webpage.”
The science has not changed: Vaccines do not cause autism.
But those changes have done nothing to mitigate the concerns. The website continues to wrongly say that a rejection of a link between vaccines and autism isn’t based on evidence. It also says, “Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”
As pediatricians who have spent our careers caring for children and their families, we know that trust is one of the most valuable tools in medicine. Trust takes years to build and moments to erode. At a time when public confidence in health institutions has already been tested, government agencies should be strengthening that trust by communicating what decades of scientific evidence have consistently shown, not reopening questions that have long been settled.
The science has not changed: Vaccines do not cause autism.
This conclusion does not rest on one study, one expert or one government agency. The conclusion follows decades of rigorous research conducted around the world involving millions of children, using multiple study designs and across different populations and health systems.
The evidence is overwhelming.
A 2014 meta-analysis by Taylor and colleagues pooled data from more than 1.2 million children in cohort studies and nearly 10,000 children in case-control studies. The researchers found no association between vaccination and autism spectrum disorder; no association between the measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR, vaccine and autism; and no evidence that thimerosal-containing vaccines or mercury exposure increased autism risk.
In 2021, the Cochrane Collaborationwidely regarded as one of the highest standards in evidence-based medicine, reviewed studies examining MMR, MMRV and varicella vaccines. Once again, researchers found no evidence linking MMR vaccination to autism spectrum disorder.
That same year, an updated systematic review commissioned by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality examined 338 studies identified from more than 56,000 scientific citations. The authors concluded with high-strength evidence that MMR vaccination does not increase the risk of autism.
Perhaps the clearest assessment came from The Lancet Infectious Diseases, where researchers described autism as the example for which evidence demonstrating no relationship with vaccination is “particularly strong.” Study after study, conducted by different investigators using different methodologies in different populations, has reached the same conclusion.
Healthy science welcomes questions. But science also requires us to acknowledge when a question has been answered.
In medicine, that is what scientific consensus looks like.
Healthy science welcomes questions. It encourages new evidence, replication and debate. But science also requires us to acknowledge when a question has been answered. Continuing to imply uncertainty after decades of consistent evidence does not advance scientific inquiry; it risks undermining public confidence in one of the safest and most effective public health interventions ever developed.
Cassidy, a physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was right to emphasize that the overwhelming body of evidence shows vaccines do not cause autism. Reasonable people may disagree about public policy, but scientific facts should not be replaced with political talking points.
The consequences of confusion are not theoretical.
We are already witnessing the return of vaccine-preventable diseases in communities where vaccination rates have fallen. As pediatricians in South Carolinawhich had almost 1,000 cases of measles before May this year, we have seen firsthand the disruption that follows every measles case: public health investigations, exposure notifications, quarantine recommendations, missed school and work and understandable fear among families with infants, children receiving cancer treatment or others who cannot fully be protected through vaccination.
These outbreaks are not acts of fate. They are, in almost every circumstance, preventable.
The overwhelming majority of American parents continue to vaccinate their children because they understand that vaccines save lives. They deserve clear, consistent communication from the institutions they rely on, not messages that suggest long-standing scientific conclusions are suddenly open for debate.
Families affected by autism deserve better than having their children’s diagnoses negatively and repeatedly linked to a theory that has been disproven for more than two decades.
Meanwhile, families affected by autism deserve better than having their children’s diagnoses negatively and repeatedly linked to a theory that has been disproven for more than two decades.
Autism is a complex neurodevelopmental condition that affects millions of children and adults. Families deserve continued investment in understanding its causes, improving early identification, expanding access to evidence-based therapies and ensuring children receive the support they need throughout their lives. Revisiting a debunked vaccine theory does nothing to advance those goals. Instead, it diverts time, attention and resources away from the questions that remain unanswered.
As pediatricians, our responsibility is not to defend political leaders or government agencies. It is to advocate for children and to provide families with the most accurate information available. When misinformation threatens children’s health, even inadvertently, we have an obligation to speak clearly.
Parents should always ask questions. Physicians should always answer them honestly. Public health institutions should always communicate the strongest available evidence.
After decades of careful research involving millions of children, that evidence remains unchanged. Vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines save lives.
Our children deserve public conversations, and public policies, that reflect both truths.
Dr. Martha Edwards graduated from Brown University with a degree in neuroscience and completed medical school and residency at the University of Virginia. She has been recognized with multiple community service awards for her years volunteering in a children’s free clinic and currently serves as the President of the SC Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics
Dr. Deborah Greenhouse is a pediatrician at Palmetto Pediatric and Adolescent Clinic/ South Carolina Pediatric Alliance in Columbia, South Carolina. She is a past president of the South Carolina Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. She has served on the AAP Committee on Federal Government Affairs and is currently the AAP District IV Vice Chair.
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