Bye-Bye, Elon

It was predictable. From the moment Elon Musk was portrayed as Donald Trump’s co-president, with his son wiping boogers on the Resolute Desk during a presentation, Musk was going to have to go. Trump can’t share the spotlight like that. And it comes as little surprise that Musk is leaving Washington when, along the way, his reported $20 million attempt to influence Wisconsin's Supreme Court election significantly backfired; he was such a turnoff to Wisconsin voters that Democrat Susan Crawford won with 54% of the vote.

There are still lingering questions, like what exactly did Musk, via DOGE, walk out the door with? This is one of the most disturbing unanswered questions so far in this administration. Musk invested $250 million in the election. You can be sure he didn’t walk away empty-handed.

Musk has tried to pass his departure off as something that was always planned, retweeting a post that said, “In the coming days, legacy media will try to convince you that President Trump and Elon Musk are no longer friends and that’s why Musk left. What they won’t tell you is that Elon was a Special Government Employee, limited to 130 days of service and that term ends tomorrow.” While that’s true, when has this administration ever played by the rules when it wanted something? Musk could have stayed in place for a long time, perhaps years, as the issue was litigated in the courts. But he’s gone now.

There has been speculation about Musk’s departure coming on the heels of his criticism of Trump’s budget bill, but Trump, for his part, posted, “I am having a Press Conference tomorrow at 1:30 P.M. EST, with Elon Musk, at the Oval Office. This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific!” Coming from a president who has never hesitated to fire someone who has fallen out of favor in a tweet, this at least suggests a healthy appreciation of the power and resources Musk has at his disposal. But Trump will undoubtedly be happier not to share the media’s attention with someone who was portrayed as his equal.

Among the unanswered questions here is whether and what personal data that was in the possession of agencies DOGE infiltrated Musk will continue to have access to. That data could potentially be used for a number of different purposes, but one that comes to mind is using that data to secretively microtarget voters.

In 2024, Musk reportedly funded an ad campaign that targeted “Jewish and Arab voters in battleground states with contradictory advertisements about Kamala Harris’s position on Israel.” Government agencies like Social Security hold a great deal of sensitive information about individuals that could be used to assess approaches that would influence them. The problem is that there has never been transparency with the public, despite all of the claims, about precisely what DOGE was doing and what information it accessed and retained. The Center for American Progress reported that, “DOGE has persistently pursued unrestricted access to this sensitive and carefully protected data. SSA staff who stood up for Americans’ private information have left the agency in response to DOGE’s pressures, been physically removed, or been replaced by formerly suspended employees who helped DOGE.”

Despite a decision by a federal judge that required DOGE to stand down and turn in information, there have been lingering concerns about compliance. As a result of this incursion, as a federal court opinion summarized, “SSA provided members of the SSA DOGE Team with unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans [despite having] never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems.” That should be enough to give us pause.

All questions here—and little if anything in the way of answers. But it’s important to put those markers down and make sure we don’t forget them as Musk eases his way off the public stage. What does “gone” mean here? Is his access to government information cut off? Will the young, inexperienced group he put together really shut down his access as they continue to work?

This week on its website, DOGE is giving top billing to its important work…finding unused government credit cards and shutting them down.

They’ve also been busy canceling what they say are unnecessary contracts, which run into the billions of dollars. We will only find out whether they were truly unnecessary as we head into a future where contracts and projects that experts working in executive branch agencies deemed necessary have been curtailed or canceled. Like the report today that HHS has canceled a contract with Moderna to develop, test, and license vaccines for flu strains that could trigger future pandemics, including the dangerous H5N1 bird flu virus. Let’s hope we don’t ever need that one.

So, bye Elon. But like Trump, I have a feeling it’s not really goodbye.

We’re in this together,

Joyce