‘There Is No Such Thing As the Department of Government Effiency’
And Musk is not legally a federal official of any sort
Repeating it ad nauseam doesn’t make it true, but the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” isn’t actually a department of the federal government, and billionaire Elon Musk has no legal authority.
After the election, Donald Trump announced that he would create this faux “department” to seek out waste, fraud and abuse. He put Musk in charge of the effort, after he put tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Although the project was called the “Department of Government Efficiency,” to sound “official,” it has no statutory authority. Neither does Musk, despite weeks of Musk and his team disrupting and dismantling agencies across the federal government — as well as gaining access to the confidential information of millions of Americans.
Musk has taken to shorthanding this faux federal department as “DOGE.”
The latest flashpoint over Musk’s activities with DOGE came over the weekend when he declared that federal workers either submit an email with five tasks that they performed last week or consider themselves resigned from their positions.
Such a demand is flatly illegal.
“Elon Musk is not a government official,” said Rep Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, and the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “He is the wealthiest person in the world — actually in the history of the world, by far. But he is someone who has this unofficial title as advisor.
“I keep saying this until I am blue in the face: There is no such thing as the Department of Government Efficiency. The fact that everyone keeps going around pretending like this exists doesn’t actually wish it into creation,” Boyle added. “You have to create by law — by an act of Congress — if you’re going to have a [federal] department.”
Boyle is absolutely correct, and creating new federal Cabinet departments is a complex task. The last time it was done was during the presidency of George W Bush, when he and Congress worked together to authorize a new Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
And the Cabinet secretaries that run these federal departments must be confirmed by the US Senate in order to do their jobs.
Musk certainly hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate, and hasn’t even submitted a personal financial disclosure typical for presidential advisors.
“So instead, what is happening is he is acting lawlessly at the president’s direction — or at least allowance — to show up agency-by-agency on an ad hoc basis firing people,” Boyle said during an appearance on MSNBC. “It is wrong. It is illegal.”
And it is why court challenges to Musk’s activities related to government have ruled against Musk and his work, the congressman added.
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