No One Cares When Presidential Advisers Want Bigger Government
Elon Musk’s unclear position on the federal government’s organization chart continues to generate controversy and legal problems for the Trump administration.
Despite being the seemingly powerful, very public face of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with the full backing of President Donald Trump, the administration’s lawyers claim in various court filings that Musk has no official role in either of the White House units bearing the DOGE label.
Instead, as Reason‘s Jacob Sullum explained yesterday, they say that Musk is officially just a senior adviser to Trump within the White House office.
Opponents of DOGE have seized on Musk’s unclear White House role to file lawsuits challenging DOGE’s authority to access government data, shrink federal staff, and reorganize federal departments.
A collection of Democratic attorney generals even filed a lawsuit claiming that Musk’s role within the federal government is unconstitutional, as his vast apparent powers show him to be not an adviser but a principal officer who needs Senate confirmation.
DOGE critics in the media have claimed that Musk has appointed himself as a “dictator” and that he’s currently staging a coup within the federal government.
Yet, Musk is hardly the first White House adviser to have great influence over government policy. His advisory role is only causing problems because DOGE’s mission involves telling government workers what to do instead of bossing around private citizens and companies.
Contrast the uproar about Musk’s position within the government to the appointment of Andy Slavitt as a senior White House adviser on President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 response task force.
Slavitt, somewhat ironically, initially entered government as part of the Obama administration team fixing the rollout of Healthcare.gov. That effort spawned the U.S. Digital Service, which has since been converted into the U.S. DOGE Service under Trump.
Slavitt’s retu
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