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Musk's takeover causes panic among some federal workers

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DOGE's creation faces lawsuits from unions and watchdogs

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Trump sets out to restructure government

By Tim Reid and Marisa Taylor

WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) -

Elon Musk's rapid takeover of two U.S. government agencies

has enabled the South African-born billionaire to exert

unprecedented control over America's 2.2-million-member federal

workforce and begin a dramatic reshaping of government.

The world's richest man and an ally of President Donald

Trump, Musk, 53, has in two weeks created a new center of power

in Washington as he executes Trump's cost-cutting initiative to

reduce the size of the U.S. government.

The CEO of Tesla and founder of SpaceX, Musk has

acted swiftly since Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration, deploying

teams of current and former employees of his companies as his

agents.

Musk's actions have fostered a wave of panic among

government workers and public protests in Washington and at

times have threatened to overshadow Trump's own agenda.

Trump's up-and-down trade war with neighboring Canada and

Mexico vied this week for space on front pages with Musk's

effort to shut down USAID, the Agency for International

Development, America's main humanitarian aid agency to the

world.

Musk's efforts are part of a massive government

restructuring by Trump, who has fired and sidelined hundreds of

civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the

bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.

Americans are witnessing "an extraordinary centralization of

power in someone who lacks a top-level security clearance and

has not been subject to any Senate confirmation process," said

Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at

the University of Michigan.

"Musk has unprecedented and centralized control of the basic

plumbing of government," he added.

Nonetheless, Musk operates at Trump's pleasure. The

president told reporters on Monday that the billionaire had to

seek approval from the White House for any of his actions.

"Elon can't do and won't do anything without our approval,

and we'll give him the approval, where appropriate; where not

appropriate, we won't. But he reports in."

Asked who they are more worried about when it comes to the

prospect of being fired, an employee of the General Services

Administration that manages federal property and services said:

"Musk. No one is really talking about Trump."

Trump has put Musk in charge of what both men call the

Department of Government Efficiency. Despite its name, it is not

a department, Musk does not draw a government salary, and DOGE's

creation immediately drew lawsuits from government unions,

watchdogs and public interest groups.

Exactly who makes up DOGE is unclear. The Trump

administration has not released a list of DOGE employees. Nor

has it said how they are being paid, how many have entered each

agency, and whether they are government workers. That raises

questions about who they are answerable to - Musk or Trump as

head of the executive branch.

Musk and his DOGE lieutenants have taken over the Office of

Personnel Management and the General Services Administration

along with their computer systems.

OPM is the human resources arm of the U.S. government,

overseeing 2.2 million government workers. From there, emails

have been sent out in the past week offering federal employees

financial incentives to quit. The GSA oversees most government

contracts and manages federal property.

At least four current and former Musk aides are part of

a team that has taken over OPM, shutting out some senior

managers from their own computer systems, sources told Reuters.

Musk visited the GSA last Thursday, an official said, while

members of his team moved into the agency.

On Friday, a Musk team gained access to the U.S. Treasury

Department's payment system, which sends out more than $6

trillion a year on behalf of federal agencies and contains the

personal information of millions of Americans who receive Social

Security payments, tax refunds and other monies from government.

Michael Linden, a senior official during the administration

of former President Joe Biden at the Office of Management and

Budget, a powerful agency that oversees the federal budget, said

the access by Musk's aides to payment systems gives them

extraordinary potential power.

"They could get to pick and choose which payments the

federal government makes," Linden said in an interview.

Neither Musk nor the White House immediately responded to a

request for comment.

Trump has repeatedly said that the federal bureaucracy is

bloated and inefficient, and needs to be downsized. He also

accuses many federal workers of being liberal ideologues out to

thwart his agenda.

MUSK EXCEEDING HIS AUTHORITY

"Those of us who have worked at Elon's companies can see his

fingerprints all over what's happening inside the federal

government right now," said Thomas Moline, a former SpaceX

senior avionics engineer. "It's a very seat-of-the-pants affair

with Elon's loyalists scrambling to execute his every whim and

desire as fast as possible."

Governance experts say Musk appears to have already gone

beyond the mandate granted by the executive order Trump signed

setting up DOGE on Jan. 20.

That order mandated it to modernize federal technology and

software "to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity."

Other orders on hiring freezes and recruitment say DOGE should

work with other agencies to make recommendations.

Musk and his aides appear to be doing much more than simply

making recommendations.

Employees from DOGE have clashed with security officials

over access to sensitive information at the Washington

headquarters of USAID and have been heavily involved in the

downsizing of the agency.

Fear is gripping many civil servants, and they have taken to

Reddit, Signal and Facebook to report on what is going on inside

their agencies and discuss how to respond. They also warn that

DOGE personnel are watermarking and otherwise embedding

identifiers like additional spacing in emails to track down

suspected leakers.

Musk's critics, including Democratic lawmakers, have accused

him of a hostile takeover of government. Federal worker unions

sued to block Musk's access to sensitive computer systems.

"We don't have a fourth branch of government called Elon

Musk," U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from

Maryland, told reporters during a protest outside USAID

headquarters.

'FORK IN THE ROAD'

Echoing language Musk used when he slashed Twitter's

workforce after buying the social media company in 2022, an

email was sent to all government employees titled "Fork in the

Road" offering them deferred resignation, a scheme to pay

workers through September if they offered to resign by Feb. 6.

A second email encouraged government workers to seek more

productive jobs in the private sector. Federal employee unions

have urged workers not to take the offer, warning it may not be

legal, as it is unclear how the payoffs would be funded.

Unions representing the employees filed a lawsuit on Tuesday

to block the administration's plan to offer buyouts, even as a

U.S. official told Reuters that more than 20,000 employees were

planning on quitting.

Nick Bednar, an associate professor of law at the University

of Minnesota Law School, said it was deeply concerning that Musk

and his aides have such enormous power over federal personnel

and federal payments "when they seemingly have very little

accountability."

It was also extraordinary that Musk, whose companies have

multiple contracts with the U.S. government, had been put in a

position that would raise so many questions about conflicts of

interest, he said.