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'A Complete Takeover': New Trump Order Entrenches Musk-Led 'Shadow Government'
President Donald Trump's latest executive order "gives Elon Musk, an unelected, hyper-partisan billionaire, unfettered authority over this country's civil service," warned one advocacy group.
Feb 12, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order handing an Elon Musk-led commission sweeping power to oversee federal hiring across non-military departments, entrenching what's been described as a "shadow government" spearheaded by an unelected billionaire.
The new order states that the leader of each non-military federal agency "shall develop a data-driven plan" in coordination with the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), an advisory body that has infiltrated departments across the U.S. government—and accessed highly sensitive data—as part of an unprecedented effort to gut spending and the federal workforce.
"This hiring plan shall include that new career appointment hiring decisions shall be made in consultation with the agency's DOGE Team Lead, consistent with applicable law," the order continues. "The agency shall not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE Team Lead assesses should not be filled, unless the Agency Head determines the positions should be filled."
The order also instructs agency directors to prepare for "large-scale" cuts to the federal workforce.
"It's a complete takeover of the federal government by Musk," investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr wrote in response to the executive action.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office with Musk at his side, Trump on Tuesday called the order "very important" and attacked federal judges who "want to try and stop us," alluding to court orders against DOGE's attempt to access vital government systems.
Musk, who is leading DOGE while simultaneously heading companies that are benefiting directly from his work inside the Trump administration, insisted he's not orchestrating a "hostile takeover" of the federal government, declaring that the public voted for "major government reform" and "they are going to get what they voted for."
The mega-billionaire also falsely claimed DOGE has been transparent as it rampages through the federal government.
"In reality," The Guardiannoted, "Musk has taken great pains to conceal how DOGE has operated, starting with his own involvement in the project. Musk himself is a 'special government employee,' which the White House has said means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public. The DOGE team involves about 40 staffers, but the actual number is not known. Staffers have tried to keep their identities private and refused to give their last names to career officials at the agencies they were detailed to."
Trump's latest executive order (EO) is poised to supercharge the Musk-led assault on and total dismantling of federal agencies, from the U.S. Agency for International Development to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
"This new EO signed today appears to create DOGE as a shadow government across the entire federal government," Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memowrote late Wednesday, adding that the order "seems to make Elon as head of DOGE functionally the president or perhaps something more like a prime minister."
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the advocacy group Democracy Forward, warned in a statement that "this latest attack on public service gives Elon Musk, an unelected, hyper-partisan billionaire, unfettered authority over this country's civil service."
"People and communities across the nation depend on a non-partisan, committed civil service," said Perryman. "Democracy Forward will pursue all legal options available to protect our civil service and the American people from harms that would stem from this executive order."
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A Woman in the Presidency Is Simply Not Enough
Feb 19, 2016
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright tried to issue a mea culpa in The New York Times last week for her recent remarks suggesting that women who are not planning to vote for her friend Hillary Clinton should be condemned to hell. Although it was "the wrong context and the wrong time to use that line," Albright wrote, "I so firmly believe that even today, women have an obligation to help one another."
She added:
The battle for gender equality is still being waged, and it will be easier if we have a woman who prioritizes these issues in the Oval Office and if the gender balance among elected officials reflects that of our country. When women are empowered to make decisions, society benefits. They will raise issues, pass bills and put money into projects that men might overlook or oppose.
Of course, the more women make decisions, the more likely it is that women-centered policies will emerge. However, having female politicians in office does not ensure that feminism, progressive values, or compassion are priorities. To assume so is sexist.
Women like Albright and Clinton--who have climbed the ladders of the political establishment--are to be strongly commended for the chauvinist barriers they have undoubtedly faced and overcome. But in breaking through the glass ceiling, they have conducted themselves first and foremost as skillful politicians rather than as progressive women.
Reading Albright's op-ed reminded me of Afghanistan, a different arena in which the same dynamic has played out.
Remember that the war in Afghanistan was supported by liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans alike. After a GOP president started the war, a Democratic president continued it. Rebuilding a post-Taliban Afghanistan that was friendly to women was touted as one of the outstanding post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy achievements--except that it didn't work. Today, Afghanistan is such a hostile place for women that they might as well be living under the Taliban, as the horrific fatal beating of a young woman by a mob showed last year.
In the aftermath of the Taliban's fall in 2001, women in Washington often spoke about rebuilding the country in a way that ensured that "women had a seat at the table." Indeed, this language has become so ubiquitous that it is now shorthand for women's equality and human rights. The image of a sizeable diplomatic roundtable bringing together all the "stakeholders" (another favored term)--armed warlords and Taliban as well as "women" (any women will do)--conjures up an idealistic vision of democracy and peace. It is a vision that has proved to be empty.
As Afghanistan demonstrated, any woman that the country's myriad fundamentalist armed commanders (most of whom have at some point been beneficiaries of U.S. largesse) would accept would be a woman who would not challenge their power. Clinton (along with Laura Bush) upheld such intellectually bankrupt notions of women's rights through her work with the U.S.-Afghan Women's Council. Educated and well-placed liberal Afghan women were trained to speak with the media and thrust into positions of power as placeholders to demonstrate that women's rights had been achieved. Yet it turns out that most Afghan women in the country's new parliament are "sisters and wives of warlords or tribal leaders chosen merely to fill the required quota of women."
One notable exception was Malalai Joya, the fiery young feminist activist who was legitimately elected to parliament by her community and who spoke out forcefully for women's rights and against domestic warlords and foreign occupiers. But Afghanistan's parliament wasn't designed for women like Joya. It was designed (by the U.S.) to achieve a superficial victory for democracy by showcasing the mere presence of women. Any feminist members of parliament who attempted to exercise their rights in the interests of all women--and ordinary Afghans in general--were excoriated, and her nemeses eventually kicked out Joya. You cannot simply seat women at a table full of armed woman-haters and magically produce democracy and justice.
The same sort of women in Washington, D.C.--including Clinton and Albright--want us to believe that placing a woman, specifically a woman who will not rock the boat, in the White House is a panacea for women's rights. Ordinary American women are expected to celebrate this as a victory, whether it impacts their lives positively and practically or not.
This is the type of identity politics that has long been favored by the U.S. liberal establishment precisely because it distracts us from the political demands of progressive and independent voters.
Eight years ago, we saw a similar dynamic play out in the election of Barack Obama. Most Americans voted for him, first and foremost, because he wasn't George W. Bush but also the ideal demographic alternative to Bush--a blank slate upon whom we could write our hopes and dreams. He could be anything to anybody, just about. The fact that he would be the first black president was the best part of it.
However, Obama was never the progressive candidate we imagined him to be, no matter how much we wanted it. Campaign adviser Anita Dunn, in a recent interview with Ezra Klein, said, "Obama had significant establishment support in his campaign, including from the traditional Democratic donor base." She added, "Obama promised change, not a revolution." Obama's former chief strategist David Axelrod told Klein, "Obama's was not an ideological campaign. There was a big difference in the war, but Obama was not the candidate of the left." Obama's nearly two full terms as president reveal how moderate and pragmatic his approach has been.
Clinton is banking on voters seeing her through a similar lens--as a candidate whose female gender will be enough to quell desires for change and distract the electorate from her Wall Street campaign donations, sizeable personal wealth, foreign policy disasters, and former board membership at Walmart.
Clinton wants voters to see her as a successful woman who has broken through the political glass ceiling and earned her credentials as commander-in-chief. Indeed, through the Clinton Foundation, the former secretary of state initiated a program called No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, aimed at the "full and equal participation of women in political, civil, economic, social and cultural life." Such a program reflects a standard liberal feminist approach to women's rights that ignores the fact that all women need to have the floor raised to break through any ceilings. The full rights of women to food, water, shelter, education, employment, and health care are subservient to tokenism in political arenas that often keep people who are at the bottom well.
No one doubts that Clinton and Albright are brilliant, tough, and experienced women who are probably overqualified for their jobs compared to their male counterparts. However, none means anything to voters tired of prevailing conditions if their political values tend toward preserving the status quo. Feminism cannot be defined solely by helping the highest-achieving women get a "seat at the table."
While the problems that American women face are far smaller echoes of what Afghan women face, as Afghanistan's continued misogyny has shown, putting establishment women into positions of power only ensures one thing--that the establishment view will prevail. That is just as true in the U.S. as it is in Afghanistan.
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Obama Talks Tough On Oil Spill
President Obama did not quite go all Winston Churchill on BP.
He did not say "we will fight them on the beaches..." That would have been a bit too much.
But he did declare, in one of the most critical speeches of his presidency, that: "We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes."
There really was no room left for caution or compromise.
Jun 16, 2010
President Obama did not quite go all Winston Churchill on BP.
He did not say "we will fight them on the beaches..." That would have been a bit too much.
But he did declare, in one of the most critical speeches of his presidency, that: "We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes."
There really was no room left for caution or compromise.
Obama knew he had waited too long to deliver "the speech" about the BP oil spill. Americans had gotten restless. Sure, they blamed BP for being a "bad polluter." But they also were starting to wonder whether their president had a plan to do what the petroleum giant has not, perhaps cannot and probably will not do.
For practical and political reasons, Obama needed to give "the speech."
And when he did finally give it, he gave it his all.
President Obama's Oval Office Address on BP Oil Spill & EnergyThe President addresses the American people from the Oval Office for the first time on the ongoing Administration-wide response ...
This was no Jimmy Carter-in-a-sweater-speech. There were no proposals to turn down the thermostat or check your tire pressure. And there was no talk about a malaise that might be tough to overcome.
Delivering his address Tuesday night from the Oval Office, where president's traditionally speak to the nation in moments of
threat and emergency, Obama appeared as the commander-in-chief in the battle to clean up the spill, restore a battered Gulf Coast, hold BP to account and, maybe, develop the sort of "clean energy" policies that will prevent another such disaster.
Obama, who had referred earlier in the week to the corporate crisis as "an assault on our shores" confronted the challenges with military language.
He laid out what he called "a battleplan."
He called out the National Guard.
He pledged to "mobilize" to "combat" what he called "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced."
He declared: "We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever's necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy."
The rhetoric was right.
The tone was strong.
Of course, as is always the case with this president, the specifics were a little vague.
The bold gestures were administrative:
-
an order that there will be no more deep-sea drilling until a
commission figures out if it can be done safely (not a popular move with oil workers "But for the sake of their safety, and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue," - a thorough shake-up at the Mineral Management Service that will make it "a regulator" not "a partner" of industry,
- an assignment of Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus (a former
Mississippi governor) to "develop a long-term Gulf Coast restoration plan as soon as possible."
But the battleplan was not exactly detailed.
On when oil will actually stop flowing into the gulf, er, well,BP's still in charge of that but the president has directed the company to "mobilize additional equipment and technology" and, er, well: "In the coming weeks and days, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well. This is until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that is expected to stop the leak completely."
On the precise level of accountability that will be demanded of BP, er, well: "We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused." But the president says he's tell the chairman of BP on Wednesday to "set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness." And, importantly, he says that: "This fund will not be controlled by BP... In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party."
But what independent party? Why not the government? And, seriously, what sort of money are we talking about here?
Obama left questions unanswered. This was particularly the case with the linkage he tried to make between addressing the current crisis and developing a "clean energy future."
The president deserves some credit for making the connection, especially after some congressional Democrats urged him to skirt the issue.
He was certainly right to observe that BP's mess "is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean-energy future is now."
But he did not exactly lay out a precise program. "I am happy to look at ... ideas and approaches from either party, as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels," Obama said, slipping into the murky bipartisanship that so muddled the health-care debate. "Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development. All of these approaches have merit, and deserve a fair hearing in the months ahead."
Cool.
But the only really important thing he said in this regard was the kicker line: "the one approach I will not accept is inaction. The one answer I will not settle for is the idea that this challenge is too big and too difficult to meet."
That's right.
The president was at his best when his tone was activist and his initiatives were defined.
Bottom line: He "the speech" -- a little late but with the right rhetoric.
He talked the talk.
But if the president wants to undo the physical and political damage, he is going to have to walk the walk. Or, considering the urgency of the challenge in the Gulf [2]and the urgency of the challenge of creating a sound energy policy for the 21st century: run the run.
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