Elon Musk tightens grip on gov’t, sparking ‘coup’ accusations

WASHNGTON: Billionaire Elon Musk is tightening his control over broad swaths of the United States government at extraordinary speed, prompting growing alarm from Democrats and constitutional scholars.

In the two weeks since US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Musk, the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has upended the federal bureaucracy, prompting questions about the scope of his authority and warnings of a constitutional crisis, or even a coup.

Acting without oversight of the US Congress, Musk’s lieutenants have brought the work of the US’s main foreign aid agency to a halt, flagged millions of government employees for redundancy, gained access to classified material and sensitive details about millions of Americans, and taken control of the payment system that manages the flow of trillions of dollars of government spending.

Musk, who was named as a “special government employee” by the White House on Monday, does not hold elected office and is not part of Trump’s Cabinet, whose members require confirmation by the US Senate.

“I’ve never ever seen anything like this, never in the history of the country. We always have the president, Cabinet members and the Treasury secretary confirmed by the Senate,” Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer in the administration of former President George W Bush, told Al Jazeera.

“Cabinet members are installed by the president, they coordinate with the White House to implement policy. You can’t just not spend money appropriated by Congress.”

As the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk, the world’s richest man, has billions of dollars worth of government contracts, a fact that has raised concerns about conflicts of interest that could arise in his cost-cutting drive.