How Elon Musk Is Using DOGE to Weaken His Regulators
Elon Musk, the de facto head of Donald Trump’s government, is also the orchestrator of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But in leading a project to slash government agencies and the federal workforce, Musk is not missing his chance to attack the regulatory agencies that oversee the businesses that have made him the richest man on the planet.
Musk — who bought his position of government power by spending roughly $290 million to elect Trump and Republicans last year — has no Senate-confirmed authority. And as a “special government employee,” he has not filed any financial disclosures. Yet across his career, Musk’s companies have reportedly benefitted from nearly $40 billion in government contracts, subsidies, and tax credits.
The White House has said Musk is policing his own conflicts of interest. Given that Musk’s business portfolio extends from social media, artificial intelligence, and financial instruments to rockets, satellites, and automobiles, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) describes him to Rolling Stone as having the “Mount Everest of conflicts.”
But even as Musk sends entire agencies that he has feuded with to the “woodchipper,” he is continuing to reap new and lucrative government contracts, while deploying minions from his various companies to probe some of the most sensitive data at agencies in government.
Below, we review how Musk is using his expansive executive-branch powers to defang the government agencies that pose a threat to his profits:
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
What’s Musk’s beef?
Musk, who first struck it rich at PayPal, wants to turn X (formerly Twitter) into a peer-to-peer payments platform that would be regulated by the CFPB — the federal watchdog agency that polices corporate fraud, having returned more than $20 billion to tricked consumers.
What DOGE has done:
After Musk posted “CFPB RIP” on X, adding an emoji of a gravestone, the agency has effectively been shuttered. Short-tenured employees were fired en masse. The administration announced it would seek no funding for CFPB, and employees have been placed on forced leave, and ordered to stop all work. CFPB has also dropped investigations into firms it formerly accused of “cheating” customers. Perhaps most important for Musk, the CFPB’s finalized rule to expand oversight of peer-to-peer payment systems is on hold.
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
What’s Musk’s beef?
Last May, the Inspector General of USAID opened a probe into the agency’s provision of internet terminals from Musk’s satellite service Starlink to Ukraine. Musk also appeared to believe — or in any case was happy to parrot — brain-rot conspiracy theories about the aid agency being a “criminal organization” and a “viper’s nest” employing “radical-left marxists who hate America.”
What DOGE has done:
Musk announced on X in early February that USAID was being put through the “wood chipper.” The agency was effectively shuttered, with contracts to aid providers suddenly revoked, and staff called home to be laid off. The shattered remains of the agency have been folded into the State Department, and the vast majority of USAID’s workforce has been put on leave.
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
What’s Musk’s beef?
Musk clashed with the previous head of the FAA, Michael Whitaker, over the agency’s regulation of Musk’s rocket company SpaceX. The agency proposed more than $600,000 in penalties for safety violations at SpaceX in September, and opened an investigation into a recent catastrophic explosion of a SpaceX rocket that sent debris showering across the Caribbean.
What DOGE has done:
Musk effectively forced out Whitaker, who quit at the start of the Trump administration. Despite well-known staffing issues at the FAA, Musk and DOGE fired probationary employees across a wide swath of air safety roles, including lawyers who help keep pilots with drug and alcohol problems from flying, and staff who chart new air hazards like construction cranes on airplane approach paths. During the Trump administration, federal air traffic has been marred by a string of deadly collisions, and near-hit runway mishaps.
Bonus conflict:
Musk’s Starlink, part of SpaceX, is expected to receive a new contract in late February to upgrade FAA’s air traffic IT infrastructure, taking over for Verizon.
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
What’s Musk’s beef
Musk has a long-running feud with the SEC, going back to a 2018 controversy in which Musk tweeted about his hope to take Tesla private at the (stoner-friendly) price of $420 a share — briefly sending the company’s stock price soaring. In a settlement of securities fraud charges, Musk and Tesla later had to each pay $20 million in penalties.
The SEC is also a regulator of cryptocurrency; Musk has long promoted the volatile currency Dogecoin, and is rumored to be a whale, or large-scale crypto investor. (He has said he owns “a bunch” of Dogecoin and that SpaceX holds “a bunch” of bitcoin.)
In January, right before Trump took office, the SEC sued Musk personally, accusing him of failing to abide by transparency requirements in the purchase of Twitter stock in 2022, which allowed him to reap a benefit of $150 million. Musk called the lawsuit “shit” and decried the SEC as being “totally broken.”
What DOGE has done:
Gary Gensler, whom Musk publicly derided as SEC chair, stepped down as Trump took office. Musk and DOGE set up an X account called DOGE SEC whose first tweet established a snitch line. “DOGE is seeking help from the public! Please DM this account with insights on finding and fixing waste, fraud, and abuse relating to the Securities and Exchange Commission,” the account wrote.
NASA
What’s Musk’s beef?
Musk does not have obvious beef with the agency that has a nearly $3 billion contract with SpaceX as part of a mission to return astronauts to the moon.
What DOGE has done:
NASA has so far been prominently spared the buzzsaw treatment that has hit so many other agencies visited by DOGE and reportedly is attempting to negotiate an exemption from the Musk trend of firing shorter-tenured or “probationary” employees.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
What’s Musk’s beef?
NHTSA is America’s road safety regulator, and it has repeatedly clashed with Musk over his attempts to rush self-driving Teslas onto the road. Since 2021, NHTSA has required automakers, like Tesla, to report accidents involving cars with advanced driver assistance systems. In recent months, the agency opened a pair of probes into the dangers posed by the millions of Teslas equipped with “full self driving” and remote driving features.
What DOGE has done:
NHTSA was hit with deep staff cuts, estimated at one-in-ten employees, through a combination of terminations for short-tenured or “probationary” employees, and deferred resignations.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
What’s Musk’s beef?
USDA is reportedly probing Musk’s brain-implant firm Neuralink for possible Animal Welfare Act violations.
What DOGE has done:
DOGE has touted cuts of more than $230 million at the agency, which included mistakenly firing experts working on the bird-flu epidemic that has sent egg prices through the roof.
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