Summary
Elon Musk claims his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is shutting down payments to federal contractors, including a Lutheran charity, asserting it is eliminating corruption.
This suggests DOGE has access to Treasury’s payment systems, though officials have not confirmed the extent.
Senator Ron Wyden warned that DOGE may interfere with Social Security, Medicare, and government contracts.
Musk also called USAID “a criminal organization” that should “die,” amid DOGE’s growing influence over federal financial operations.
Technically, Trump just renamed the United States Digital Service to the United States DOGE Service, then created a child agency within it called the United States DOGE Service Temporary Organization reporting directly to the President (which USDS does technically anyways) and hired Musk as a special government employee as head of that. A special government employee is essentially expected to work less than 130 days in the next year and are normally used to fill short term needs, or as expert topic consultants for specific projects, that sort of thing.
USDS is normally basically IT consultancy for other US departments, which is why he has access to a shocking number of keys to the kingdom, as it were.
You don’t have to be confirmed by the Senate for most government jobs (just a specific named handful of high ranking positions, like the Secretaries of various Cabinet Departments), and he was basically given the highest possible position he could without needing to be confirmed by the Senate.
The President has final authority and power over the executive branch and over time increasing power has been placed in the executive branch largely because Congress didn’t want to fight over things every couple of years and the relative stability of a secondary agency staffed with experts was desirable for things like licensing radio bandwidth. USDS isn’t one of these agencies though - it was created by Obama in 2014 to help manage US IT stuff (and basically started from the team that fixed the healthcare.gov site in 2013) and didn’t need to be authorized by Congress because it doesn’t have rulemaking power over anything outside the executive branch and thus doesn’t require Congress to delegate power to it.
As for why he’s giving orders and leading departments, legally he probably shouldn’t be but he’s also been assigned that power by Trump in a way that’s questionably legal. There are at least 3 lawsuits that have been filed arguing that it’s technically an advisory committee and in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. I could totally see a federal judge agreeing with that, but it would eventually go to SCOTUS and we know who’s dick they sucked to get there.
TL;DR: DOGE exists because it’s an existing department (US Digital Service) renamed DOGE, Musk was hired under that department in basically the highest spot that wouldn’t require Senate confirmation and because that department is essentially cross-departmental IT consultancy it gives him access to a shocking amount of federal IT resources. He isn’t being stopped because everyone involved ultimately reports to Trump and Trump has told him to do it. There are at least three lawsuits filed claiming the United States DOGE Service Temporary Organization is in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, but since it’s only existed for like 10 days the courts haven’t really had a chance to even hear arguments about it yet.
Thanks for taking the time. So I guess it is all legal and Musk somehow does have all this authority… It’s bonkers, right? Doesn’t it somehow feel like the U.S. government has been running relatively well for a long time based solely on… the expectation of decency and norms, promises and gentleman’s agreements? There aren’t actual laws, checks or balances to avoid any of this, but it was sort of assumed that nobody in these positions would be pure evil. But then, once they’re in, they can do whatever they want.
Courts are slow everywhere, that’s why it’s a good idea to have some rules and roadblocks, so that someone can’t just start dismantling everything on day one and courts have time to catch up before shit hits the fan.
It’s probably really not and the lawsuits probably have a good argument regarding the FACA, but courts are slow and Trump/Musk are basically steamrolling everything they can. An agency not given any delegated power from Congress functionally taking over and commanding agencies that do have delegated power from Congress probably has more than one means of legal attack against it. But courts are slow and any staff that challenge the Musk bulldozer have been relieved of their positions and escorted from their offices.
And way too much of the public is cheering it on.
The most mind-boggling part imho. Trump and Musk doing all this shit doesn’t surprise me at all. Trump especially has been very clear about the things he wanted to do, Project 2025 wasn’t a secret either, and Musk… well, he’s been fascist-adjacent for a long time with his support for right-wingers the world over… But the fact that normal people can look at this and believe it will make their country better somehow is insane to me.