Brian Howey: Elon Musk and a Constitutional Crisis in the Making

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Is the federal government bloated and wasteful? Yes. Is it inefficient? Yes. Could the federal government use a haircut? Yes, and probably a thorough shave.

But there are ways and methods to make changes in a proper constitutional process. Congress controls the purse and, with political courage, could do the things Elon Musk and his cohorts are now attempting to pull off in Washington.

This is a job for Congress, which maintains the power of the purse

Instead, Musk is now a “special government employee.” President Donald Trump appointed the billionaire to head the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk, often described as the world’s richest man, has not been confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Yet he has been handed the keys and codes to the federal government. And he is targeting agencies for elimination.

“The replacement of our constitutional system of government with the whims of an unelected private citizen is a coup,” historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote Monday in her “Letters from an American” on Substack. “The U.S. president has no authority to cut programs created and funded by Congress, and a private citizen tapped by a president has even less standing to try anything so radical.”

Musk made headlines by taking aim at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which he called a “criminal” enterprise. “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk boasted on X.

USAID is a purveyor of “soft power” by providing humanitarian aid in developing nations. It runs the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which The Associated Press describes this way: “Over two decades, the program with bipartisan support has been credited with saving more than 25 million lives, the vast majority in Africa, the continent it was designed to help most. More than 8 million in South Africa live with HIV, and authorities say PEPFAR helps provide life-saving antiretroviral treatment to 5.5 million people every day.”

Ending these daily HIV treatments would be stupid. It would allow the virus to evolve and morph into a new worldwide health threat well beyond Africa.

Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, told the AP that even short interruptions to antiretroviral treatment are risky. “HIV viral loads rebound in about three weeks if you go off antiretrovirals,” he said.

Richardson noted that Republicans control both houses of Congress. “If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development, for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change.

“But they are not doing that,” said Richardson, who teaches at Boston College. “Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes.”

This past weekend, Musk, with Trump’s imprimatur, sent teams into a number of U.S. federal agencies’ offices to access government and individual financial data.

The Washington Post reported that Musk’s DOGE staffers accessed sensitive internal data systems, including those of the U.S. Treasury. According to an email to Small Business Administration employees, Musk’s engineers accessed that agency’s human resources, contracts and payment systems.

In a complaint filed by federal employee unions, “The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented.”

“Their breaching of the computers” at the U.S. Treasury and USAID “compromises our national intelligence systems, which must now be considered insecure,” Richardson reported.

On a livestream Sunday night, Musk said of his coming destruction of the federal government: “President Trump takes improving government efficiency very seriously. Obviously, although it is a humorous name, ironically, I think DOGE will have a very serious and significant impact on government waste and fraud and abuse, which is really astonishing in its scale and scope.

“If it’s not possible now, it will never be possible,” Musk added. “This is our shot. If we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen.”

Trump’s Office of Management and Budget also attempted to freeze trillions of dollars of federal spending, prompting a temporary restraining order from federal Judge Loren AliKhan, who wrote that “actions in this case potentially run roughshod over a ‘bulwark of the Constitution’ by interfering with Congress’s appropriation of federal funds. Because the funding freeze threatens the lifeline that keeps countless organizations operational, plaintiffs have met their burden of showing irreparable harm.”

Musk is replicating what he did after he purchased Twitter in 2022. He sent in teams of young engineers to look for cost reductions. They slashed about 80% of the company’s employees, and the platform renamed X has become a cesspool of less-monitored content.

Then there is an array of potential conflicts of interest, as one of Musk’s private companies, SpaceX, holds billions of dollars in federal contracts.

Folks, this is a constitutional crisis in the making. These are emerging dictatorial powers replacing the lawful order that has served Americans well for nearly 250 years.

Brian A. Howey is senior writer and columnist for Howey Politics Indiana/State Affairs.