--- title: Trump and Musk Have Washington on Edge, Just Like They Hoped description: Donald Trump and Elon Musk left a trail of mayhem across the federal government over the weekend, including Treasury, where Musk accessed the payments system canonical: https://time.com/7212276/trump-musk-washington/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-02-03T11:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:12.500Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump and Musk Have Washington on Edge, Just Like They Hoped og:description: Donald Trump and Elon Musk left a trail of mayhem across the federal government over the weekend, including Treasury, where Musk accessed the payments system og:url: https://time.com/7212276/trump-musk-washington/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt208a8dd42416eb7b/6998b30ad32e936f3bcd4ca1/GettyImages-2196824430.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: President Trump Announces Aviation Safety Executive Orders In The Oval Office Of White House og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump and Musk Have Washington on Edge, Just Like They Hoped twitter:description: Donald Trump and Elon Musk left a trail of mayhem across the federal government over the weekend, including Treasury, where Musk accessed the payments system twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt208a8dd42416eb7b/6998b30ad32e936f3bcd4ca1/GettyImages-2196824430.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Trump and Musk Have All of Washington on Edge—Just Like They Wanted > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. Senior correspondent Philip Elliott brings sharp context to the issues driving the capital, connecting the decisions made in Washington to the institutions, industries and people they affect. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: Can He Do That? What Legal Experts Say About Trump’s Most Radical Moves [Watch (HLS stream): Can He Do That? What Legal Experts Say About Trump’s Most Radical Moves](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/SMkQhNDD.m3u8) (3:33)  _Published 2025-02-05. The second Trump Administration has wasted little time in testing the boundaries of executive authority. While many of the President’s supporters are cheering him on, some legal experts see a constitutional crisis unfolding, as many of Trump’s moves raise urgent legal and constitutional questions that could take years to fully unravel._  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Feb 3, 2025 11:00 AM UTC  President Donald Trump talks to reporters from the Resolute Desk at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 30, 2025. President Donald Trump talks to reporters from the Resolute Desk at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 30, 2025. Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Feb 3, 2025 11:00 AM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ The candor on the tarmac Sunday night at Joint Base Andrews, under the wing of the presidential aircraft, came without any flinch of self doubt. “This is retaliatory,” President Donald Trump told reporters, essentially summing up his first two weeks in office in the most inelegant but honest bit of sloganeering. He was talking about tariffs against U.S. neighbors but he just as plausibly was describing his posture toward all corners of his new empire. Gag orders. Mass [firings](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-waging-war-government-rcna190316). Legally questionable [buyouts](https://newrepublic.com/post/191025/donald-trump-buyout-federal-workers-begging). Foiled [breaches](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/us/politics/usaid-official-leave-musk.html) of classified data and personnel files. A game of [chicken](https://time.com/7212166/what-are-tariffs-trump-imposing-import-taxes/) over [sanctions](https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/canada-mexico-want-america-to-feel-the-pain-of-tariffs-too-f8119ccd). Purged [people](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/02/fbi-agents-officials-jan-6-cases-011048) and [websites](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/upshot/trump-government-websites-missing-pages.html) alike. The anxiety across the civil service at this hour is rightly earned and has no sign of slackening. If you’re a career federal worker, you’re marking your time in hours at this point as Trump is looking to shed professional expertise in favor of political hacks. Trump has begun his one-sided war against his foes, and the costs are just starting to be counted. Just ask the feds who found themselves put on leave as [punishment](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/union-official-education-department-employees-leave-dei-training-rcna190337) for having attended diversity training during the first Trump term. The whole pile-up of chaos over the weekend left Washington insiders trying to figure out just how to triage the waves of norm-breaking headlines flowing from the White House without any real push-back from Republicans. Democrats, left in the minority for at least the next two years, tried to summon an opposition but found themselves once again stumbling over each other with so many competing theories about how to blunt the Trump aggressions in any meaningful way. The Democratic National Committee has a new [chief](https://www.wsj.com/politics/democrats-have-a-new-leader-but-havent-come-to-grips-with-failure-ee77234c), but there are no signs a shift in leadership is going to be anything passing for sufficient to counter the turmoil being cooked from the West Wing. The bipartisan Establishment can only shake its head at the massive break from the way things have rolled in the post-World War II cadences. When a veteran FBI agent calls for colleagues to “[dig in](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/us/politics/fbi-new-york-email-trump.html)” against the coming purges, it’s tough to argue that there is an over-reaction. The weekend’s roll of maddening moves came quicker than most could handle. Chasing the developments was like tracing buckshot. Tariffs here and sanctions there. Calls to [re-take](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39149p920no) the Panama Canal would have been banner headlines for typical administrations yet amounted to also-ran stories this weekend. Calls went out for whistleblowers to speak out against the new administration’s attacks on the civil service, but it’s not clear the hotlines had enough manpower to accommodate all the reports of intimidation and bullying. While Hill Democrats’ offices were ready to listen to the horror stories—putting out word to union allies that they want it all—it’s not evident that they have much more power than naming and shaming. After all, even a shocking mid-air [collision](https://time.com/7212199/families-visit-passenger-jet-army-helicopter-crash-site-near-washington-dc/) between a military helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet last week turned into a political proving point, with Trump blaming diversity, equity, and inclusion programs for the fiery and fatal crash over the Potomac River. His loyalists were on TV on Sunday repeating his [fact-free](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/us/politics/vance-duffy-trump-dei-crash.html) assertion that D.E.I. programs were to blame for the bodycount. Given a chance to make anything into a piece of the culture wars, the Trumpists missed no opening, leaving opponents shouting back with facts about a durable credible workforce but not getting nearly as much attention. And, returning to Washington Sunday evening, Trump took a chance to double-down on the flurry of fancy, defending his [empowerment](https://time.com/7177802/elon-musk-donald-trump-2024-election/) of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to take a [hatchet](https://time.com/7099161/elon-musk-donald-trump/) to the whole of government. “I think Elon is doing a good job. He's a big cost-cutter,” Trump said at Andrews. “He's very much into cutting the budget of our federal government.” Musk, who has been [raging](https://time.com/7201887/trump-person-of-the-year-elon-musk/) against anyone who dares to get in his way, is smashing through agencies so quickly that Washington is struggling to fully understand what is happening in real time. A top Treasury official found out what saying no to Musk cost; having denied Musk access to the sensitive system overseeing trillions of dollars in payments, he was [placed](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/us/politics/elon-musk-doge-federal-payments-system.html) on leave and then retired suddenly, allowing Musk’s team to get what it wanted. Separately, the heads of security at U.S. Agency for International Development, the nation’s marquee foreign aid arm, were put on leave after they [refused](https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/02/02/g-s1-46007/usaid-web-site-trump-state-department) to give Musk and his functionaries access to an internal data system that holds the nuts and bolts of a roughly $40 billion pile of cash that handles health care, disaster relief, and foreign assistance programs. The U.S. AID website went offline wholesale, and staffers are bracing for deep cuts and an end to its stand-alone status. Staffers were well aware that Musk had [deemed](https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/02/politics/usaid-officials-leave-musk-doge/index.html) it a “criminal” enterprise that needed to “die.” Given the chance to calm those jitters, Trump did the opposite on Sunday, saying the flagship foreign aid shop is “run by radical lunatics**.**” Neither he nor Musk mentioned that it is the world’s [largest](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/02/usaid-trump-musk/) provider of food assistance. That push from Musk, under the auspices of the self-created Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE, like the crypto [trinket](https://time.com/6981968/shiba-inu-kabosu-dies-doge-meme/)—is barrelling over the typically staid career staff that is tasked with keeping the cogs of bureaucracy going across administrations. In fact, that Musk regime seems to be spreading with little regard for what has been long-standing expectations inside the federal workforce. In this environment, career feds see their time as limited. Trump has made clear he has little regard for their work, [offering](https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/trump-administration-email-urges-federal-workers-to-take-higher-productivity-jobs/3832294/?amp=1) as many as two million the chance to end their career with a six-letter reply-all: “Resign.” He also hinted that loyalty tests were in the offing for those who chose to stay in their jobs. Staying may prove insufferable for those who opt against wearing the red MAGA caps. It’s why feds around town were looking at what is unfolding at U.S. AID as a warning for what is to come more broadly. If Trump and Musk are able to dismantle a popular piece of bureaucratic backwater without much of an objection from the Republican majority, there’s no worry that they could move more forcefully elsewhere. Trump has made clear he wants the federal workforce to reflect his values and any holdouts or remnants of a more professional era are only nuisances. Now that he and Musk have started the hollowing out of the professional spine of the federal government, there’s no telling just how far Trump would go. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ ## Transcript Attempting to dismantle independent agencies, granting private individuals access to government systems, and offering unprecedented federal employee buyouts. These are three recent political moves Trump pushed to test the limits of his presidential power. But can he do that without legal challenges? Trump and Musk want to dismantle USAID, a key agency providing humanitarian aid around the world, and place it under State Department control? And the money they were giving to people that shouldn't be getting it, and to agencies and others that shouldn't be getting it was a shame. So the tremendous fraud. It's a move that could drastically alter decades of humanitarian efforts. Trump is quickly shutting down many of USAID efforts around the world, but legal experts say he can't shut down the agency entirely without Congress's approval because of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998. USAID current legal status restricts the president's ability to abolish the agency unilaterally. Any attempt to dissolve USAID would require new legislation from Congress, and it would be difficult for such a bill to get support from 60 senators, which would be needed to overcome an all but certain filibuster. Elon Musk's team at the Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, now has access to the federal payment system, giving them the ability to monitor and flag potential wasteful or improper payments in the system that handles over $5 billion annually in federal disbursements, including Social Security, Medicare and tax refunds. We're trying to shrink government, and he can probably shrink it as well as anybody else. But the Treasury Department's payment records are more than a federal checkbook. They are part of a highly sensitive system that processes the country's essential transactions. It includes personal information from taxpayers, beneficiaries of federal programs and contractors, raising alarm over the potential for misuse or mishandling of such data. Legal experts say granting Musk and his team access to such sensitive government data potentially contravenes multiple federal statutes, including the Privacy Act of 1974. According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, it's not clear whether Musk or others at Doge have been granted the proper security clearance for the records they are accessing. If they have been granted that that clearance, it's unclear if they went through the rigorous vetting federal employees normally go through to get it. And the president can't just unilaterally ignore the Privacy Act or ignore the tax privacy provisions, or ignore the federal Information Security Management Act, also known as Fisma. Trumps federal buyout program launched in a series of ultimatum emails to federal workers to return to the office full time or resign with a generous buyout might not be legal either. The government's funding is currently set to expire in mid-March. The buyout involves a commitment to pay employees beyond the current appropriations cycle. The move may violate the Antideficiency act, a law that prohibits the government from spending more money than Congress has appropriated, and the Administrative Leave Act, which prevents government agencies from using administrative leave to sideline employees for extended periods without clear justification. Some Democrats have warned that the scheme could lead to unintended consequences, such as the exodus of essential employees, and thereby jeopardizing the government's ability to perform critical functions. Some federal employees have also expressed confusion over whether their positions will be exempt from the resignation offer, with unclear exclusions for certain categories of workers, including those in national security and immigration enforcement. The uncertainty has left many federal employees wondering whether they would truly receive the promised benefits, should they opt to leave. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7212276/trump-musk-washington/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7212276/trump-musk-washington/"},"headline":"Trump and Musk Have All of Washington on Edge—Just Like They Wanted","datePublished":"2025-02-03T11:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:50:12.500Z","description":"This is what watching a purge feels like","url":"https://time.com/7212276/trump-musk-washington/","keywords":["The D.C. 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