A White House official says Elon Musk is working for President Donald Trump as a “special government employee."

Summary

The White House confirmed that Elon Musk is working as a “special government employee” under Trump, granting him significant authority to cut federal spending.

Musk has a government email, office space, and access to sensitive Treasury systems. His team abruptly shut down USAID headquarters on Monday.

Musk is consolidating unchecked power, raising legal and ethical concerns, particularly given his federal contracts.

Musk is unpaid and may not be required to disclose financial interests.

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
    54·
    2 days ago

    Not good enough.

    Just because Trump declares him special doesn’t mean he is, or that he should have special privileges, anymore than his moronic cabinet picks can start moving their shit into their offices before being confirmed by the Senate.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      What if donvict says “I HEREBY declare fElon as special” on his own stupid social media platform? Is that super duper Constitutional enough for everyone?

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
      11·
      2 days ago

      Oh no, this is one of those really fun powers we gave presidents a while back and forgot about. Presidents have a wide ranging authority to temporarily hire people and skip most of the ethics and oversight stuff that comes with normal federal hiring. The limitation is that it’s only good for certain positions, which DOGE, (formerly USDS) is a part of.

    • Cort@lemmy.world
      17·
      2 days ago

      Doubt it. I bet they’ll try to classify any of his communications as presidential advice, which would make them privileged communications not subject to foia

    • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
      66·
      2 days ago

      Fat chance. I read he brought in his own server and connected it to the network at the OMB to spam emails to federal employees. That seems highly illegal.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        352·
        2 days ago

        Gosh, I remember a quaint time in the olden times when having your OWN EMAIL SERVER was something worthy of being lined up against a wall and shot for.

        Guess that only applies to Democratic candidates for President named Hillary.

        Also, and it bears repeating - I guess this would have been jUsTaSbAd under Kamala, because something something neoliberal argle bargle status quo genocide…

      • Tyfud@lemmy.worldEnglish
        48·
        2 days ago

        Legality is just words on a piece of paper if nobody is going to enforce it.

      • wagesj45@fedia.io
        12·
        2 days ago

        I tend to agree, but we should at least try. Pull every lever of governance we have for as long as we have it.

        • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
          7·
          2 days ago

          I don’t disagree but it’s not as if we’re dealing with people who have any sort of integrity or honor, who’ll accept when they’ve done something wrong.

  • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
    54·
    2 days ago

    The richest man on the planet who once joked about ending world hunger is cutting federal spending of the richest and most powerful nation on the planet. Let that sink in for a moment.

    • 1024_Kibibytes@lemm.ee
      21·
      2 days ago

      It’s been on my Bingo card since I realized that he basically bankrolled Trump’s campaign by himself. He set up a PAC just to win the election.

  • frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io
    8·
    2 days ago

    Employees get paid. He’s a special government intern. Violating internship guidelines to prevent abuse of power using unpaid interns in a ‘special’ way. Also these asshats were up in arms about ‘Special Counsel’ investigations being illegal like 2 weeks ago. We good with those again, or no?