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The Politics Shed- A Free Text Book for all students of Politics.
To stop power being concentrated, the Constitution splits it between government branches. This keeps things in check. Congress holds the "power of the purse". The president alone commands the military. This is the power of the sword. Separate branches hold these powers. They balance each other. For example, Congress can cut funds for military actions it dislikes.
Trump and Musk are redefining this balance.
Trump and Musk are redefining this balance.
Elon Musk's control over key government data breaks US law. It threatens privacy and reshapes the constitution.
Musk's group accessed a Treasury database. This database manages over £4 trillion in federal funds. They are fighting with IRS leaders for tax return access. Tax returns are highly protected federal data. They also seek Social Security data with medical and bank records. A court blocked Musk from accessing student loan data. But this block is temporary. Musk also wanted wage and income data. This is very sensitive information for most workers.
The effects of Musk and Trump's seizing of power are:
Musk's team took control of the Treasury's payment system. This system distributes funds from Congress, used by agencies. This action put the president into Congress's financial role. The White House wants to use data control to block approved funds, which is against the law.
The president's power has limits. Congress creates and controls agencies via laws. The president can only guide their work within those laws. To go beyond those laws, he needs a clear constitutional right to overrule Congress.
Musk has slashed the ranks of federal employees, shut down agencies whose authority challenges his own, and leveraged artificial intelligence to decide where to cut, promising a government executed by chatbots such as Grok, from Musk’s own A.I. company. DOGE has gained access to Americans’ private data and developed tools to e-mail the entire federal government at once, a digital megaphone that Musk recently used to demand that employees send in a list of their weekly accomplishments.
Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, has arranged his own deals with Trump’s government, including Stargate, a heavily hyped data-center project worth a potential five hundred billion dollars. Apple recently announced its own five-hundred-billion-dollar investment campaign in the U.S. over the next four years, including a plan to begin building A.I. servers in Texas. On Truth Social, Trump posted approvingly that Apple’s plans demonstrated “FAITH IN WHAT WE ARE DOING.”
Doge officials arrived at the offices of an independent agency dedicated to promoting peace broke into an open standoff involving the police. Elon Musk’s government cutters marched into the agency’s headquarters and evicted its officials.
The dramatic scene played out in Washington on Monday afternoon as Mr. Musk’s team was rebuffed from the U.S. Institute of Peace, an agency that President Trump has ordered dismantled, then entered it with law enforcement officers. Agency officials say that because the institute is a congressionally chartered nonprofit that is not part of the executive branch, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk do not have the authority to gut its operations.
“DOGE just came into the building — they’re inside the building — they’re bringing the F.B.I. and brought a bunch of D.C. police,” Sophia Lin, a lawyer for the institute, said by telephone as she and other officials were being escorted out.
George Moose, who was fired as the institute’s acting president last week but is challenging his dismissal, accused Mr. Musk’s team of breaking in. “Our statute is very clear about the status of this building and this institute,” he told reporters. “So what has happened here today is an illegal takeover by elements of the executive branch of a private nonprofit corporation.”
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