Musk's WashingtonA close look at how Elon Musk is trying to transform the government.Good evening. For the next few weeks, we're looking at one big story: Elon Musk's efforts to slash the federal bureaucracy and upend the nation's politics. Today, we look at Musk's murky job description, his effusive affection for President Trump and the big fight brewing over your personal data.
Musk is everywhere. His role is still murky.
Early on in his interview with President Trump and Elon Musk yesterday, Fox News's Sean Hannity tried ever so gently to get to the bottom of an important question: What does Musk actually do? "He's your tech support?" Hannity asked, referring to the words on the T-shirt Musk had opened his blazer to reveal a few moments earlier. Musk said he was. "He's much more than that," Trump insisted. The exchange did little to answer the question. Musk's precise role and responsibilities remain so vague, and so shrouded in secrecy, that even he and the president haven't quite agreed on what to call it, or exactly how to talk about it. Trump once said that it would be Musk's job to "lead" the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but a court filing this week said he was not actually the administrator of that effort — although it did not say who was. The White House has called Musk a "special government employee," and Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, insisted that the department merely advised agencies, without the authority to fire people. "He's more powerful than a cabinet secretary, but he is not Senate-confirmed," said Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a former Republican Senate aide, who added that, at the same time, Musk offers little public information about his day-to-day activities. The White House has not laid out exactly how many people are part of Musk's team, or exactly what they are doing. For all of Musk's promises of transparency, the public is learning about his team's work largely through reporting and through, as my colleague Zach Montague pointed out today, legal filings. Even judges are having difficulties ascertaining basic facts about the group's incursion into agencies and the data its staff is collecting. The vagueness serves Musk in a couple of ways. Downplaying his job — as he did during the Hannity interview — might help wall him off from scrutiny, as Zach wrote. But it could also allow his role, and that of his team, to evolve as he and the president see fit. After all, the executive order creating the Department of Government Efficiency said its purpose was to modernize technology and software. But Musk has spent much of his time focused, at least publicly, on cutting costs. Then, last night, he suggested that his real job was to enforce Trump's executive orders. "I feel like they're making the rules up as they're going along," said William Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center who spent 25 years working on issues related to the budget for Senate Republicans.
Today's top stories
MORE ON THE INTERVIEW 'I love the president'They didn't explain the fine details of Musk's job, nor much else of substance. But one thing Musk and Trump did do during their joint appearance last night is to explain just how much they adore each other, Shawn McCreesh writes. "I love the president," Mr. Musk declared straightaway. "I just want to be clear about that." The president, for his part, described Mr. Musk as "a great person," "an amazing person," "a caring person" and "a brilliant guy." It was an overt display of bromance by two men well aware that a lot of people — including Democrats and federal workers — would love for them to break up. Situational as their bond might be, both made an effort to act like family. "I feel like I'm interviewing two brothers here," Hannity said. THE DATA A privacy battle ramps upThe U.S. government collects a mountain of personal information about you, me and everybody else who lives in this country. It's the kind of data that hackers and scammers are always trying to get ahold of — the data you're always being told to protect. That data has swiftly become central to the legal, bureaucratic and political fights raging over Musk's activities. Musk's team of software engineers have repeatedly sought access to this data, my colleagues Andrew Duehren and Cecilia Kang wrote today, calling it critical to the group's hunt for fraud. Experts and some agency leaders say the team should be able to operate without unfettered access to tax records or bank account information. A judge has blocked access to some Treasury records, but some courts have declined to intervene at other agencies. Republican lawmakers who typically raise concerns about data privacy seem unbothered, according to Politico, while Democrats are turning the issue into an attack on the administration. "It's not rocket science: an unelected billionaire should NOT have access to your personal financial info," Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, wrote on X. More from the agencies
MEANWHILE ON X Musk pivots to promoting GrokMy colleague Kate Conger, who covers X, noticed that Musk's feed veered back to one of his business interests today. Here's more from Kate: Few things can break Musk's current focus on the federal government. But the race to build artificial intelligence does occasionally butt in. On Saturday, Musk's private jet left Washington and flew to California, according to a tool that tracks its flight records, and on Tuesday, he debuted the newest version of Grok, the artificial intelligence model he's building at xAI. And he spent Wednesday morning promoting his new product, sharing images generated by Grok and asking his followers to subscribe to X in order to "get the world's smartest AI." The hype around Grok comes as Musk continues to put pressure on his top competitor in the A.I. world, OpenAI. Musk has sued OpenAI, and he recently made a bid to buy it, although its board rejected that offer. Other notable posts:Musk joined Trump in criticizing President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, promoting several accounts on X that lashed out at the Ukrainian leader. Trump and Zelensky have been trading barbs over peace talks with Russia. Musk shared Trump's comments, in which the president called Zelensky a "dictator," and he reposted several right-wing influencers who criticized Zelensky for not holding elections since the Russian invasion in 2022. — Kate Conger
A FACT CHECK Are tens of millions of dead people getting Social Security checks?No. The Social Security Administration is one of the agencies where Musk's team is seeking access to reams of data. That's because Trump officials suspect there are "tens of millions" of dead people receiving Social Security payments, Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said recently. Emily Badger and Minho Kim looked into that claim and found that it most likely comes from a misreading of the publicly available numbers. Yes, the Social Security database includes millions of Americans who are probably dead but who have no death records. But they generally don't collect checks. Got a Tip? Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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Wednesday, February 19, 2025
On Politics: What is Elon Musk’s job?
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